The latest chatter on iPhone 5
A bigger screen, a new design, a faster chip and 4G connectivity. Those mentally queuing up for the new iPhone, you may be able to look forward to a big change if details about screen size and form factor from an analyst’s recent tour of facilities in China hold true.
Business Insider reports that analyst Brian J. White of Topeka Capital Markets wrote to investors: “In our view, this will be the most significant iPhone upgrade with a four-inch screen and a new, sleek look that we believe will require a Unibody case.”
You’ll note that despite the various changes from the introduction of the first iPhone to the fifth (that’d actually be iPhone 4S), the screen size hasn’t changed from 3.5 inches.
The competition has stepped up screen size, most to at least 4 inches. The Galaxy Note sports a huge pocket-bursting screen of 5 inches.
Screen size aside, the look and the addition of 4G connectivity are what White said that Topeka sees driving sales. And in answer to the question of when, he said a fall launch was likely, given the timing of the launch of its incremental predecessor, iPhone 4S.
“We believe the iPhone 5 ramp for the December quarter could be extraordinary, dwarfing previous launches and driving the stock closer to our $1,001 price target,” White wrote. White covers the IT hardware, networking and tech supply chain and is currently on a trip to China.
You’ll remember that White released that $1,001 price target April 2. “We believe the Apple story still has a long way to play out in the coming years and we expect the next 12-18 months to be particularly exciting for the company on multiple fronts,” he wrote last week.
A faster iPhone is likely in the future, according to 9to5Mac. “The iPhone prototypes that we’re talking about have a variation of the A5X’s S5L8945X architecture. Like the A5X-powered iPad, these new iPhone prototypes are packing 1GB of RAM,” 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman wrote.
With the iPhone 4S featuring an 8-megapixel camera, we should expect at least that in the next iteration. Techradar has speculated that Sony’s new back-lighted stacked CMOS imaging sensors could make a debut in the next iPhone. (The 4S uses a Sony camera.)
Sony says its new sensors offer higher pixel numbers, superior quality and faster speeds in a smaller size, according to Techradar.
All good. For those of us who have given up carrying a separate (and better) camera, that’d be great news. After all, the iPhone camera must get faster. While life is happening before you, you have to wait for the camera to decide to open its shutter. The convenience of the iPhone facilitates quick-draw photography. The current camera configuration does not.
What do people really want? Well, there’s some dispute among users about whether they’d prefer a larger screen. Some of our commenters here go back and forth about why bigger is better and some about why they’d go even smaller than the current 3.5-inch screen.
On our readers’ wish list are better battery life, water-resistance, drop-durable bodies that don’t shatter on contact, a better mike and a better speaker.
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The latest chatter on iPhone 5
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