Regarding your questions – I’ll do my best to answer and add a few links for detail where appropriate:

the iPhone battery: The standard battery is a 3.7V 1400 mAh Lithium Ion Polymer battery…. If memory serves on how to calculate Watt Hours, that is equal to 5180 mVah which in turn is 5.18 Watt Hours. As for how much life you get for the battery depending on the use, Apple issued a comparative chart back in June in a press release (it can be found here).

Regarding the consoles: there have been whispers and rumors but I really have nothing more than guesses The safe bet is a good ways off. Both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are still considered “next gen” right now. Both also have received tremendous investment in their designs. The chip structure and blu ray bundling with the PS3 are case in point. Given the PS2 is not even fazed out yet, and game developers are just starting to build momentum for PS3 games (the SDK prices were only lowered in November 2007 to encourage more development (story here)) So… from Sony I wouldn’t expect anything before 2010 other than evolutionary changes to the existing platforms – things like different drive sizes, new controllers or other home entertainment features like DVR technology (which incidentally was bundled with PS3s in Europe last August. See here for that). On the other hand, Sony’s product marketers have some times been downright illogical in some of their moves. I’ve been hard on that in a few past posts, including the one linked article in particular. Given the track record, as unlikely as a change is, I wouldn’t rule anything out absolutely. At Microsoft, given the spend and established user base, I wouldn’t expect anything dramatic to change for the Xbox line either. And as for Nintendo, they’re still fighting to get supply to match demand and dominating with both console and portable despite far less computing power. It’s hard to imagine what they would do next, or when, given the success they’re having.

Regarding the GPUs – I suspect there are some great article opportunities tied to them. In fact, I’ve done some light coverage of them in the past. One recent article (linked here) was an overview of some of the alternate uses game consoles are getting. It’s truly amazing: military use of the Wii controller to control robots as one example. And with regards to GPU’s — a distributed computing application for cancer and medical research from Stanford that harnessed the GPU architecture on the PS3 to function as a global computational network is another. As of the last report, by the researchers’ estimates, using PS3’s when the consoles were idle advanced their research 10 years. The wider press didn’t cover it much, but its incredible.

Down the road I will try and get something more on the GPU’s as time allows. I’m always open to posting guest author work though, so if you come across something on the space or are a writer yourself, I’m glad to take a look at articles and put something up for the site’s audience to read.

I had a question for you regarding the i-phone. How many watt hours is the battery on the current i-phone version?

FYI, the Apple laptops sport battery lives of:
68 Watt Hours MacBook Pro (17 inch model and upgraded 15 inch model)
60 Watt Hours MacBook Pro (cheaper 15 inch model)
55 Watt Hours MacBook
37 Watt Hours MacBook Air

I also liked the article on gaming. I had no idea people still bought so many PS2s. Nintendo’s strenght is stunning.

Do you have any visibility on when the next generation console might be coming to market? Is it 2009? If so, what NVDA GForce GPU will it sport? NVDA has done an amazing bringing GPUs to market.

Maybe think about an article on the GPUs for consols at some point in the future.