Apple iPhone HD to be launched on June 22?

Rumors are circulating on the web that Apple plans to introduce the fourth generation iPhone, named iPhone HD, on Tuesday June 22 at a press event in San Francisco. The new device is expected to add support for multitasking and will feature some hardware improvements, such as an Apple A4 family processor and a resolution bump to 960 x 640 pixels. Full details can be found at DailyTech.

According to Jon Gruber, a nice hardware update is planned as well. To counter the higher resolutions on Android and Windows Phone 7 Series handsets, the resolution reportedly will get the bump to 960x640. Apple recently aired its new iFrame 960x540 video format, exactly 100 pixels less in width, lending credence to this rumor (the extra pixels would likely be reserved for important functions).

The CPU is expected to be in the Apple A4 family of systems on a chip (SOCs), which is thought to contain a Cortex-A8 CPU core (Samsung) paired with a PowerVR SGX (Imagination Technologies) graphics processor (GPU). Apple's current iPhone 3GS uses an 0.833 GHz A8 chip underclocked to 600 MHz, while the new iPad is thought to use a fully clocked A8. The iPhone HD will likely employ an A4, with an A8 computing core clocked higher than that in the iPhone 3GS, possibly running at 0.8 GHz or full speed. In addition, the SGX GPU should be more powerful, by virtue than the iPhone 3GS's PowerVR MBX Lite GPU (which is currently on a separate chip).