Monday, August 29, 2011

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

Rumored 4.5″ HTC Will Make a Refreshed iPhone 5 Screen Look Tiny

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 07:56 AM PDT


An upcoming new Droid smartphone from HTC is promising a beefy 4.5″ screen. If the iPhone 5 turns out to use the same screen and form factor as the 4, its screen will look puny next to its competitors.

The recent debate and conflicting rumors over whether the iPhone 5 will turn out to be either a refresh our an overhaul has had much to do with the form factor of the next iPhone design, and whether form factor alone determines if a new iPhone is indeed a refresh or an overhaul. Given the fact that the iPhone 3Gs was a refresh of the 3G and featured the same form factor, and the iPhone 4 was an overhaul and offered a completely new form factor, this syllogism leads many iPhone users to use form factor as a litmus test for the new iPhone’s level of ingenuity, in spite of the fact that the 3Gs and 4 were refreshes and overhauls, respectively, based on other features moreso than form factor alone.

Whether the iPhone 5 will need to have a new form factor or not for you to consider it an overhaul, however, will not change the fact that, if the next iPhone retains the same screen dimensions as the current iPhone 4, it will undoubtedly be outclassed by its top Android rivals in screen size.

Both the Samsung Galaxy S 2 and the Nexus Prime are slated to get 4.3″ screens that would dwarf the current screen specs of the iPhone 4. This is bound to irk avid iPhone users, who have been clamoring for a larger, edge to edge screen for the iPhone 5 since the start of the rumor cycle. Smartphone users as a whole are beginning to recognize that, as smartphones become smarter, the need for a larger gesture area becomes apparent. Typing, for example, is particularly painful on a 3.5″ screen (which I am currently experiencing as I write this blog post, thanks to Hurricane Irene knocking out my power for 36 hours and counting. Thank God for 3G.) Even if the next iPhone features significant upgrades, such as an 8 megapixel camera or even 4G, the lack of a larger screen could create a gap between Apple and Android.

To add insult to injury, there is yet another new Droid phone coming up that will up the ante with an even bigger screen. The HTC “Waikiki” – which is perhaps the stupidest rumored name I’ve ever heard come out of the Droid universe, next only to Ice Cream Sandwich – is rumored to sport a luscious 4.5″ screen, along with an impressive list of features such as 1.2 Ghz dual core processor, 1 GB RAM, 8 megapixel camera, and qHD display.

It’s enough to make an iPhone user feel jealous.

IPhone 5 TV Ads In Production For October Launch, LTE/4G Unlikely

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 06:58 AM PDT


Apple has begun production of commercial TV ad spots for the iPhone 5 according to a report by Appleinsider’s Kasper Jade. One of Jade’s unnamed sources of this intelligence tells him that the shoot is being done in and around Los Angeles under the oversight of Apple’s longtime ad agency TBWAChiatDay, while another mole “with a proven track record” informs him that production of the commercials is not scheduled to wrap until the middle of the first week of October, which adds credence to widespread expectation that the product itself will not hit retail channels until well into October.

Jade also cites a BGR report citing an AT&T exec giving his staff a heads-up that things are about to get “really, really busy in the next 35-50 days.” Based on analysis of the scuttlebutt from various sources and reports, Jade says the Appleinsider consensus is that either October 7 or October 14 are the likeliest dates for consumer availability of the iPhone 5, noting that three and a bit years ago, AppleInsider posted reports of the first iPhone 3G commercial being in production roughly five weeks before the product reached market on July 11th, 2008. http://www.beatweek.com/news/9006-blown-iphone-5-release-date-sees-hurricane-irene-impact-on-launch/ Beatweek’s Johnny Major says that the iPhone 5 announcement event will be held in San Francisco or Cupertino, California, as usual, somewhat ahead of the actual release, noting that the gap between announcement and consumer availability for the iPhone 4 was seventeen days.

Meanwhile, turning to the prospects for a 4G equipped iPhone 5, The Street Contributor Anton Wahlman, suggests that its unlikely, at least for the first rollout, and says that If history is any guide, there will probably not be an iPhone supporting LTE until closer to mid-2012.

Wahlman observes that while Apple can be bleeding-edge innovative in some industrial design contexts, it tends to be very conservative when it comes to adopting new radio technologies, noting that for example when the original iPhone launched in 2007, it supported EDGE only even though HSPA (3G) was already commonplace in the market at the time. With respect to LTE, he suggests that one factor influencing Apple’s foot-dragging is likely battery life, which he notes that in currently-available LTE devices ranges from very bad to terrible.

He thinks that a possible pragmatic workaround would be for Apple to build a special special, “thicker” version of the iPhone 5 for Verizon and AT&T LTE compatibility, but that such a solution would likely be deemed unacceptable inelegant by Apple.

He also observes that, objectively speaking, LTE, while offering speeds dramatically superior to any other cellular data network. really isn’t quite ready for prime time, with implementation still highly fragmented, no single support chip capable of supporting both Verizon and AT&T’s versions of LTE, and things even more chaotic. In other countries where at least i the early going LTE can be expected to run on a spectrum of different frequencies, with no chip that can handle all of them. Way too clunky to suit Apple’s philosophy, but Wahlman posed the question of what is to be done should this problem not be resolved in time for the iPhone 6 launch sometime around mid-2012? A head-scratcher for sure, and possibly reason to anticipate the possibility of an iPhone 6 delay next year.