Apple iPhone 5, we hear you cry? But surely the dust has yet to settle on the launch of the much-hyped iPhone 4? Sadly, while such rumours are hardly the sort of thing you want to hear when you’ve just signed your life away on a 24-month mobile contract in order to get your hands on Apple’s newest handset, the march of progress is unstoppable. Apple is a company that likes the sound of ringing tills, so yearly hardware updates are unavoidable.
However, it’s still very early days for the iPhone 5 yet. Little is known of the device outside of speculation and rumour, although some solid facts seem to be drifting through the grapevine from trusted sources. Here’s our handy run-down of why we think the iPhone 5 could blow away the competition in 2011.
More power to you One of the most obvious areas of improvement will be raw technical specifications. Many rival phones are now sporting 1GHz processors as standard, so we’d imagine that Apple will bolster the CPU of the iPhone 5 to at least 1.2GHz.
Who knows, the company may even choose a dual-core chip, which will make the phone one of the most powerful available. Dual-core Android devices – such as the LG Star – are already looming on the horizon, and we all know how much Steve Jobs hates to be outclassed by competitors.
A healthy jump in RAM is also a given, and will not only allow the new phone to play existing games even faster, but will also allow developers to really stretch their legs with groundbreaking new 3D titles.
Watching on the big screenIndustry experts were a little surprised when Apple stuck with a 3.5-inch screen for the iPhone 4, especially when rival phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S were boasting 4-inch variants. This was mitigated by the pin-sharp Retina technology utilised by the screen, which makes it the highest resolution phones on the market today – even sharper than the gigantic 4.3-inch screen of the HTC Desire HD.
It’s almost a given that the iPhone 5 will feature an enlarged screen, although the word on the street is that Apple will stick with the more reserved 3.7-inch type, rather than a pocket-bursting 4-incher.
Keeping up with the Paranoid Android Sure, Windows Phone 7 has made a splash lately and RIM’s BlackBerry brand continues to appeal to business types, but it’s fairly obvious to anyone with eyes that the iPhone’s biggest rival at present is Google’s Android platform.
With a staggering 300,000 handset activations a day, Android is rapidly becoming the mobile OS of choice for many smartphone addicts. As a result, it’s getting some seriously juicy technology – with Near Field Communication (which will make its Android debut in the Samsung Nexus S) being one of the most tantalising.
Not one to let such advancements go unchecked, it’s been said that Apple will push NFC chip inside the iPhone 5, allowing it to operate like a virtual wallet. It’s pretty obvious that this kind of thing is going to be absolutely massive in the near future – some credit cards already use a variant of this concept, as do public travel cards. Being able to pay for your bagel and cup of coffee with your phone is going to be something of a revelation, and there’s a good chance that iPhone 5 buyers will get to experience this financial revolution at some point in 2011.
A radical new design, with new materials This is the one rumour we’re less included to listen to, but it’s worth mentioning. Whenever a new iPhone is on the cards, it seems to trigger a flood of outlandish fan-made concept renders, all showcasing zany ideas and form factors.
When you bear in mind that Apple retained the shape of the 3G when it launched the 3GS, we’re willing to wager that the iPhone 5 will bear more than a passing resemblance to its direct predecessor, the iPhone 4. This is a good thing – the iPhone 4 is a seriously sexy product.
One element we imagine Apple will tinker with is the antenna. Scare-stories of dropped calls and poor signal quality have all but died down now, but we’re positive that the designers of the new iPhone will subtly alter the internals to ensure that these apparent issues don’t plague the release of the 5th generation iPhone.
Whatever the new iPhone holds in store for us, one thing is for sure – it’s going to be a game-changing piece of technology, and only a fool would bet against it being one of 2011’s biggest launches.
