Saturday, September 3, 2011

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

iPhone 5 Cases, Specs Seemingly Debunked By Top Media Source

Posted: 03 Sep 2011 01:52 PM PDT


iphone 5MacRumors may not know it, but they’ve just poked a gaping hole into the purported iPhone 5 case story that has been hanging around the rumor mill all summer.

It appears that MacRumors has the done the heavy lifting in exploding the claims that the current el cheap-o iPhone 5 cases currently being sold ahead of the next iPhone release are in fact fraudulent.

A phenomenal MacRumors article today reveals an impressive array of specs and blueprints of the iPhone 5 that their own designers retro-designed from the original design document that they reported on back on July 26th. The design specs from this article came originally from MobileFun, who included the design document (a kind of graphical blueprint) along with snapshots of the purported iPhone 5 cases, which were reported to have come from a different manufacturer. However, MobileFun stipulated that “this release seems to corroborate many of the features indicated by the first image,” and that the specs and iPhone 5 case were copesthetic with one another.

MacRumors‘ findings, however, suggest otherwise.

After explaining that “Based on that same design document, we commissioned a set of renderings in an attempt to get an idea of what the iPhone 5 might look like,” there was one problem: “What we can’t explain, however, is that the actual third-party cases circulating are significantly longer and wider than what the design document would have suggested.”

In other words, the purported specs of the iPhone 5 suggested by the design document blueprint in the original article from MobileFun apparently don’t produce an iPhone 5 that fits the cases that are supposedly designed from that same blueprint!

iphone 5 case design document

The purported iPhone 5 case design document, originally from MobileFun

Oops.

MacRumors has been incredibly generous and magnanamous in their own report, concluding, “Unfortunately, we don’t have any definitive answers.” Other tech websites, like 9to5Mac, seem more than willing to forgive the incongruity between the specs of the original iPhone 5 case design document and mis-fitting iPhone 5 cases by saying simply, “why would case manufacturers begin spending millions of dollars to build these cases without any definite knowledge?”

The fact remains, however, that none of these reported iPhone 5 cases are being released by any of the top-tier iPhone case manufacturers. Instead, they seem to be coming from the same level of manufacturer that creates “dollar store” iPhone cases that cost pennies to produce at most. Thus, it really remains to be seen if “millions of dollars” are being spent on this current crop of speculative iPhone 5 cases, and instead woud suggest that opportunists in Asia are looking to capitalize on the old adage that a sucker is born every minute.

On the contrary, the iPhone 5 News Blog‘s source is an executive at a legitimate iPhone case manufacturer in Asia, and his source is from one of the largest iPhone case companies in the world. All of these sources are saying the opposite: that the next iPhone will retain the same form factor as the iPhone 4. That notion, along with recent photos of leaked components, remains much more realistic than the “phantom iPhone 5″ with a 4-inch screen that these iPhone 5 cases purport.

iPhone 5 Case-Gate: Something’s Fishy

While the rest of the iPhone 5 rumor mill is busy trying to sort out who is telling the truth and who is lying with respect to the lost iPhone 5 prototype, no one is asking questions about this story, and what part (or all) of it is true/untrue? To be sure, MacRumors is the honest broker in the story, since it was they who did the due diligence in determining that the iPhone 5 the original MobileFun design blueprint would produce would not fit into the cases that were created from the same blueprint.

Remember, MobileFun claimed in their article, “If these images are authentic – and we have every reason to believe that they are – then the iPhone 5 is a radical evolution of the iPhone concept, and a bigger departure from the iPhone 4 than previous case images have shown.” If we take Mobilefun’s word for it and both the design document and iPhone 5 case photos are “authentic,” then it means that the iPhone 5 cases are so poorly made that they don’t even fit the iPhone 5 specs that they are supposedly based on.

Or, another possibility is that MobileFun was sent fake photos — either one or both of them are fake — and it was irresponsible to say that the iPhone 5 case “seems to corroborate many of the features indicated by the first image” of the iPhone 5 design. Clearly, they do not, and because they do not, the entire reliability of their story is contaminated — meaning that the long line of stories that came after it are all rendered bupkis.

At this juncture, it would be interesting for iPhone enthusiasts to be made privy to what MobileFun knew, and when they knew it. This story has dominated the iPhone 5 rumor mill for the entire duration of the summer, and it now appears that the entire story has been debunked even before the next iPhone is released.

Related: “More iPhone 5 Case Sightings, and What You Need To Know About iPhone Case Designers.”
Many thanks to MacRumors for their insightful report!


By

Sept 7th iPhone 5 Media Event Fading: What Are the Alternatives?

Posted: 03 Sep 2011 07:45 AM PDT


It appears that Apple has not publicly announced the September 7th Media event that CNET UK and Kodawarisan both prophesied to be the iPhone 5 announcement, nor have any of the top-tier media sources received press invitations.

As Friday’s news cycle came to a close, hopes were dashed once again, as word of Apple’s purported September 7th media event to announce the iPhone 5 failed to hit the news wires. It was just like the 2011 WWDC all over again — except this time, there was even more consensus in the tech community that the September 7th iPhone 5 announcement would materialize. Given the fact that the U.S. will be observing the Labor Day holiday on Monday, many assumed that a media event would need to have been announced by Friday at the latest in order to give the media enough preparation to attend and cover the press conference.

The September 7th iPhone 5 announcement date was first espoused by CNET UK way back on June 7th, when they said, “We've charted the dates, earwigged the rumours and consulted our iPod Ouija board. After 16 hours of number-crunching on the CNET UK supercomputer, we have determined the most likely release date for the iPhone 5 — 7 September 2011.”

At the time, that date seemed to materialize out of thin air, and while CNET UK‘s rationale for choosing the date — based on an educated guess of when the iPod is usually announced, coinciding with the official release of iOS 5 — seemed logical, pinpointing the exact date seemed a bit hyperbolic. But the September 7th iPhone 5 prediction gained further traction in mid August, when Japanese tech website Kodawarisan confirmed a September 7th Apple media event. MacRumors reported that the event “"has been widely expected to also incorporate the rumored iPhone 5 announcement. We confirmed with Kodawarisan that the date was not the product of guesswork, but came from a source in the know."

Now, however, it appears that CNET UK and Kodawarisan’s audacious claims are about to prove false. Conversely, Apple media guru Jim Dalrymple stands to have gotten the story right, when he reported soon after the Kodawarisan story that there would be no September 7th iPhone 5 announcement.

Jim, as usual, you da man.

Other Possible iPhone 5 Announcement Dates

So, with the September 7th announcement date seemingly off the table, when is the next possible announcement for this month?

There are three or four possible dates still rattling around in the iPhone 5 rumor mill that are still in play. The first date could be September 9th, since the iPod media event typically takes place on September 9th. Apple could ostensibly make a media event announcement next Tuesday in preparation for a Friday announcement. Of course, when you consider that Sprint has given the media well over a month to prepare for their October 7th event, giving the press three days to prepare seems like quite a rush.

Second, September 12th was another date that had been bandied about in the iPhone 5 rumor mill. This rumor came from a purported “insider” at Telefonica. The 12th is a Monday, which means that Apple would be giving the media considerably more time to travel to their event. Also, from a news perspective, Monday is typically the best day to have a media event, with Friday being the worst.

The third possible iPhone 5 announcement date would be a press conference that coincides with the only other conspicuous media event on record at the moment: Sprint’s October 7th event in New York City. Sprint is expected to announce the next iPhone at this event. However, considering that Sprint’s event is in New York and Apple’s event would ostensibly be on or near Cupertino, having an Apple media event on the same day as Sprint’s would be unlikely. However, a possible alternative could be Wednesday, October 5th. If the next iPhone is to be called the “iPhone 5,” it would give them a chance to leverage the “5″ in the name with the date, the A5 chip, and iOs 5. That’s a lot of 5s.

(Let’s hope they don’t try to add yet another “5″ to the mix by waiting to release the iPhone 5 on 5/5/12!)

Of course, all of this conjecturing, while possibly fun or intriguing, is, in the end, a complete exercise in futility. As we discussed in our article, “iPhone 5 Release Date Roulette: September 7th, 12th or None of the Above?” it’s quite possible that Apple will comb the iPhone 5 rumor mill and deduce an announcement dat for the iPhone 5 that will very purposely defy all of the most “credible” announcement date rumors, just to ensure that the announcement of the announcement will make the biggest splash possible.

 


By