When Steve Jobs first displayed Apple’s new tablet computer, dubbed “iPad”, one of the first thoughts to cross my mind was “Is this a preview of the next generation iPhone OS?”

While the new device is claimed to be running a modified version of the iPhone OS, I speculate some of the features of the iPad OS (aka: 3D Dock, iBooks, new versions of Calendar and Contacts, and others) might find their way over to the iPhone and iPod touch devices.

Engadget reported early Friday morning, that the iPad OS has been ‘jailbroken’ to run on the iPhone and iPod touch, however after watching the included YouTube video, the “iPad OS” is simply a hacked iPhone with an applied springboard theme applied. Here’s the link to the Engadget report.

Although, with the release of Apple’s updated iPhone SDK to include the tablet, more screenshots have been released from the tablet’s simulator. Some shots have revealed the green “Touch to return to Call” bar at the top of the screen in the tablet’s SDK. There are also calls to “Take Photo”, references to the video camera found on the iPhone 3GS.

So is the tablet’s SDK already touting features for next years’ revision to include a camera and VoIP conversations, is this a glimpse at next generation iPhone OS, or is Apple just including all elements of their devices (from the iPod touch, iPhone, and the new tablet) into the SDK so they don’t have to specialize their development tools for third party developers?

Either way, Apple has shown off what they’ve learned from developing the iPhone OS into a robust mobile system and have taken it to the next step. I know I’m expecting a major update to the iPhone OS now that Apple has shown off their advancements in their mobile systems.

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