So, Apple will hold a media event on April 8th to give us a sneak peek into the future of iPhone OS 4.0. As you can guess, the 4.0 update will be one of the most important updates the iPhone will go through this year, as it will mark the path Apple is following regarding its mobile phone, most of all when compared to the recently releases iPad.

Will it be nothing more than a performance update issued for a new device to be released in June? Or will it bring brand new features to make the iPhone a complete different device from the iPad?

I say both, with some exceptions.

Let me state this straight up: I expect iPhone OS 4.O to bring some multitasking functions. But as I said many times before, I don’t think we’ll see a “real” multitasking pretty much like the Mac OS X one, as I’m more orientated towards a way to quickly switch between applications. Like I said on Twitter today, I think the Pre / ProSwitcher model is the one to follow. Someone reported that Apple might introduce a “switch between application icons” feature, but we’re talking about the same thing anyway. So you won’t be able to use Tweetie and Omnifocus at the same time (like you’d want to), but you’ll have the possibility to background them and let them run behind the app you’re focused on, and quickly jump back to them with an exposè-like command. Whether this might seriously kill your iPhone battery life, I expect Apple to say something like “it’s up to you. More apps running in the background means less battery life”.

The Lockscreen will go under major refinements as well. As it is now, it’s completely useless, unless you only want to see a watch or you have a jailbroken device (Lockinfo, Snow Cover) I’m not saying that Apple will introduce a Lockinfo-like feature, but I hope they will supercharge the lockscreen with additional information about what’s going on with your iPhone, possibly letting the user decide which information to display through Settings.app. You want to display new mails? Or iCal entries? That’s fine, just choose. But then again, what if Apples opens the lockscreen to developers and gives them to possibility to display apps notifications on it? Perhaps for backgrounded applications? It might be interesting. Speculations aside, Lockscreen changes are something I’m quite sure about.

One application I’d like to see improved is Mail. And basing on Steve Jobs’ recent mail about a unified inbox coming soon, I’m pretty sure we’ll see some changes in iPhone OS next version as well. Unified inbox, smart folders, local spam filtering, attachments: this is what I’m looking forward to. But overall, I guess I just hope Apple will introduce the features that made Mail.app on Mac the great app it is.

As for the Springboard, I don’t think we’ll see nothing more than the possibility to choose custom wallpapers and hide some icons from it. All in all, I think the actual Springboard is perfect.

More than a prediction, this is just something I thought of last night and I think would be great to see implemented. A single place to dump all your attachments and files saved from the web. Not a simple file browser (remember, the file system structure must be hidden to the end user) but some sort of repository for all the files you may stumble upon when surfing or doing email. Then, these files might be linked to the applications that support this feature, enabling you to, say, import a PDF into Things Touch as an attachment to a task. Of course photos must go into Photos.app, but the file types iPhone OS doesn’t currently support shouldn’t go waste. I’m not saying Apple should implement .zip compression on the iPhone, just give us the chance to save files and, perhaps, move them to our Macs later. MobileMe overhaul for Mac, iPad and iPhone? Perhaps I’m just dreaming.

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As for the release date, this is quite a problem to predict. Because if a new iPhone isn’t on its way, then Apple might as well preview the OS 4.0 in three days and open the first beta to developers on the same day, then release it by June. But after putting some thought on it, my best guess is that Apple will just preview the iPhone OS 4.0 on Thursday, keep it quiet for one month, schedule the WWDC in the first week of June and announce new iPhone and 0S 4.0 SDK there. In this way, we should be able to purchase the new iPhone, with a new built-in firmware by the end of June and developers have the time to update their applications for the new OS.

All in all, I’m sure OS 4.0 will be more innovative and “important” than OS 3.0. See you on Thursday, folks.