Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 5 is one of the most awaited events this year, and not only for the fans of the company and its products: investors and partners are also eagerly awaiting the unveiling of yet another guaranteed success, as evidenced by the increase in stock prices that led Apple to be the most valued company ever at one point – that’s a pretty impressive achievement for a device that is only rumors at the moment.
Despite there being no official confirmation of anything related to the iPhone 5, we know it’s coming and we know it’ll be here by the end of fall (possibly alongside its bigger brother, the iPad Mini). With that in mind, let’s do a recap of everything that we know about the iPhone 5 – rumors, speculations and facts.
First of all, let’s start with what we do know about the iPhone 5. The new smartphone will have pretty much the same design as the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 – a rectangular slab style smartphone with a metal frame and rounded edges, with the only noticeable changes being the thickness of the body, which will most likely decrease. The front will still be fully covered by a Gorilla glass, but the back cover may be made of aluminum this time around – the underlying sandwich construction will still be there, though.
It’s also been all but confirmed that the iPhone 5 will have a bigger display. Everyone is 99% sure it will be a 4 inch unit, and judging by some leaked shots of the front panel, the increase in size will mostly be in length, allowing the phone to fit in more pixels and a bigger display inside a frame that is the same size as the previous iPhones.
Of the internal hardware, the only thing that’s been confirmed by trusted sources is that the iPhone 5 will have LTE connectivity – it’s about time Apple did this, seeing as everyone else has jumped on the 4G LTE bandwagon a long time ago (in tech time, at least).
Now, for the rumors and speculations. It’s long been rumored that the iPhone 5 will be a bigger upgrade than its predecessor, the 4S – that is in line with the way Apple released the iPhone 3GS and 4. The internal hardware will see the most changes – along with the display, it’s expected that pretty much every major component will be upgraded.
The processor will be the all new A6 quad core, with a more powerful graphics adapter, and while the amount of RAM could stay the same, the amount of storage space for the top model is likely to be increased to 128 GB. The phone will also feature an NFC sensor, a new connector (it’s about time they replaced it) and a new touch digitizer that’s built into the display – the decrease in thickness will likely be because of that. The battery is also expected to increase in size in order to keep up with the LTE radio, just as Apple did with the third iPad (which has a battery double the size of the iPad 2).
A lot of new features are expected to pop up in the software, as well – that is to be expected, however we have no idea what Apple might surprise us with this time. Samsung did a pretty good job at marketing the Galaxy S3 as nature-inspired and “made for humans”, and Siri has proven that a software feature can be every bit as desirable as a hardware one. Many people would actually prefer better software over better hardware, but we won’t know what road Apple will take until the device actually announced. Until then, all we can do is wait and read all the tech blogs we can :-).
The iPhone 5 will be announced sometime this fall, and I’m sure it will be one of the best phones on the market when it comes out, just like its predecessors.
