Thursday, September 1, 2011

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

Bigger Screen iPhone 5? Chinese Case Makers – Yea; OEM Panel Suppliers – Nay

Posted: 31 Aug 2011 10:22 PM PDT


Chinese Apple-watcher blogsite M.I.C. Gadget's Chris Chang, who previously reported that early iPhone 5 cases are "now everywhere" in China, now says Chinese case manufacturers are confident enough in the leaked designs that they're starting to mass-produce iPone cases of, all types that are flooding the market.

Chang has posted a new gallery of case designs, noting that only an iPhone is as thin as an iPod touch could fit in these cases perfectly. The cases come in various colors and materials, and reveal some design clues regarding the upcoming iPhone 5, which,if the Chinese case designers have made an accurate call, indicate that in addition to being wider and longer, the cases show the mute switch being moved to the opposite side of the device, a handset as thin as the iPod touch, and an aluminum back like the iPad 2.

You can check them out here.

The cases are available on Chinese trade site Alibaba.com,
which you can check out here (Chinese language).

Chris Chang's blog contradicts a report from Taiwanese tech industry trade journal Digitimes's Yenting Chen and Joseph Tsai who say that despite rumors about the iPhone 5 featuring a 4.2-inch display circulating within the IT market for a while, their anonymous sources at upstream touchscreen panel suppliers are telling them that the iPhone 5′s panel size will still be smaller than 4-inch.

Chen and Tsai do agree with Chang that the new phone's back design will be metal chassis instead of reinforced-glass, but their sources contend that widely-rumored iPhone 5 specifications speculating a 4- to 4.2-inch HD touch panel, 8-megapixel camera, full HD video recording, an A5 dual-core processor and new ultra-thin industrial design reflect mote the market’s expectations for iPhone 5 than factual reality, and that iPhone will not have many differences compared to iPhone 4 in terms of components. What they're predicting is an iPhone 5 with a 3.5- to 3.7-inch panel with a design that will allow the screen bezel to be thinner, make the screen look larger.\ than it actually will be.

Meanwhile, French Apple-centric news site HardMac's Lionel also predicts that Apple will do away with the glass back and give the iPhone 5 a more conventional metal back, and that they're also hearing that the screen will not be much larger, perhaps only by a few millimetres, than the iPhone 4's display. If he's right, it further corroborates intel that the iPhone 5 News Blog received from its own exclusive sources recently as Michael reported on Tuesday, that the iPhone 5 will utilize the same form factor and screen size as the iPhone 4, although as he observed, it's entirely possible that everything we are seeing and hearing right now from the rumor mill is planted by Apple to lower expectations and make a much more radical new iPhone 5design a more spectacular splash when it's finally announced — that is if Apple actually calls the next iPhone "iPhone 5," — but that's another movie.