Saturday, August 20, 2011

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

iPhone 5 Delayed Until December To Get A6 Chip? Don’t Bet On It

Posted: 20 Aug 2011 08:39 AM PDT


The prospect of the A5 chip getting outfoxed by more powerful Android chips is prompting some in the tech media to believe the iPhone 5 will be further delayed in order to get the A6 chip. Read why this is highly doubtful.

When it comes to projecting the release of the iPhone 5, the tech media is constantly moving the goalposts.

In spite of a prevailing concensus that September will be ground zero for the iPhone 5 announcement — with early October as the probable window for its official launch — a new article from IBT suggests that the iPhone 5 could be delayed even further into December. Their rationale? It’s all about chips. According to IBT writer Carl Bagh, the new Samsung Celox,”even though it is released in Korea — is a cause of concern for Apple, which is yet to release its iPhone 5.” The thinking here is that, “While the A5 dual-core chipset can challenge the Galaxy S2 and other NVIDIA Tegra 2 chip-based Android phones, it cannot match the power of dual-core 1.5GHz chipsets” that are soon to make their way onto competing Android smartphones.

The A6 chip that Apple has in the works, however, is seen to be a more than worthy competitor to the new processing power of Android smartphones. The A6 will feature the highly advanced 3D IC technology. And because TSMC is believed to be well along the way to having the A6 ready for production in a future Apple device, Carl Bagh thinks that Cupertino might simply skip the A5 chip for the iPhone and wait for the A6 to be ready — which could be around December: “Apple could further delay the iPhone 5 launch as it places a faster A6 chipset in the upcoming iPhone. Recently, Computerworld reported that certain Taiwanese suppliers of Apple claim they are starting the production of 25 million iPhone 5 units that would be delivered in the second half of this year, essentially confirming a December release. Hence, Apple would rather delay an iPhone 5 than release a phone with an A5 processor to tackle the mighty Androids with 1.5GHz dual-core chipsets.”

On balance, it’s easy to imagine how Apple could think this way about the iPhone release schedule — if you have chips on the brain. But as we have stated in multiple articles on the iPhone 5 News Blog, the vast majority of consumers will not make their smartphone choice based on chips and processors — for the average consumer, form factor and features are king. This is an obvious fact that even the most “techy” tech writers seem to gloss over when prognosticating about the iPhone 5.

Moreover, correct me if I’m wrong, but if the iPhone 5 turns out to feature an A6 chip instead of the current A5, would that not mean that Apple invested copious amounts of time, money, and resources into the A5 chip, just so that it could be used in one mobile device — the iPad 2? Simply put, successful corporations like Apple do not invest heavily in successful technology like the A5 chip without ensuring that they are going to get a healthy return on investment on its development. While the iPad 2 has sold well, the real payoff will be with the iPhone 5.

The only way that this scenario could prove to be true is if the report that the iPhone 5 prototypes are having major overheating issues with the A5 chip, and that engineers have yet to to solve the problem. But that seems to be highly unlikely, since anecdotal reports suggest that the iPhone 5 is currently in production.

Thanks to iPhone 5′er Ashley for the tip!


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Windows Rushes Mango OS to Compete with iPhone 5, iOS 5

Posted: 20 Aug 2011 07:15 AM PDT


Windows has managed to complete Mango, its new mobile OS, ahead of schedule in order to compete with the iPhone 5‘s iOS 5 & Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich this Fall.

When it comes to software development, going over budget and over deadline is par for the course. But in the case of Mango, Windows’ new OS build, they did the unthinkable: they actually finished it early. According to Kevin Parrish at TomsGuide, “Peter Wissinger, Microsoft's director of Mobile Business in the Nordic countries, reportedly released an official update on Friday in regards to the status of Mango, the massive update for Windows Phone 7. According to Wissinger, the update was actually completed earlier than planned, and is now up to the phone manufacturers to distribute accordingly.”

In point of fact, Mango was completed back on July 26th. So, it would seem that this new news about it is less about making an announcement about the project completion, and more about publicly pressuring the manufacturers into sticking it into their new smartphones.

While Windows may be seen as the red-headed stepchild of mobile OS, it is a more widely-deployed operating system than you may realize: HTC, LG, Samsung, Dell, Acer, Fujitsu, Nokia and ZTE Corporation all utilize it in devices one way or another, as well as Samsung’s Windows Phone 7, its flagship smartphone design. And given the excitement over the much anticipated release of both iOS 5 and Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as the palpable decline of RIM in the consumer sector of the smartphone market, Mango might see an opportunity to gain market share and popularity.

That being said, there isn’t currently an upcoming Windows smartphone design that is garnering the same attention and anticipation as the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S 2, or Nexus Prime; Windows Phone 7 receives considerably less attention in the media sphere. It is precisely for this reason that the Mango development team is putting public pressure for manufacturers of Windows phones to fast track deployment of the new version of its OS.



iOS 5 More Delicious Than Ice Cream Sandwich & Mango?

Let’s be dreadfully clear about one thing: I love ice cream sandwiches. I also love sliced mango in the morning. But in spite of these gastronomic distractions of mine, I still tend to think that iOS 5, no matter how derivitive it may be of some of Android’s functionality, will manage to be more palatable than that of the new Android and Windows OS versions. The quinessential feature of a good mobile operating system is reliability, and although Android’s newest update has managed to iron out some bugs (I’m using my wife’s Android to type this post, and their text editing improvements make composing and writing much easier), my guess is that iOS 5, running on the iPhone 5, will be a thing of beauty.

There is something to be said for the fact that Apple produces both its operating system and hardware in-house — in this way, the iPhone 5 is ensured to be finely-tuned to the new OS in ways that Samsung’s GS2 or even the Nexus Prime cannot achieve. Perhaps this is precisely why Google seeks to acquire Motorola — for the chance to craft a smartphone in-house that won’t involve another company’s design. But for this current round of smartphones and operating systems, it’s hard to imagine how the iPhone 5 and iOS 5 will be supplanted in quality or performance by Windows’ Mango or Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich.

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