iPhone 5 guide

Posted on by

 

The iPhone 4S left Apple fans divided. It might have been a new phone on the inside, but after 15 months of rumours and longing, many expected a genre-smashing design too.

 

 

Fortunately, the next iPhone will almost certainly enjoy a fresh look from Apple design guru Jonathan Ive. It’s shaping up for an autumn release again, but if you look hard enough, cross your fingers and make a wish, there are already some clues as to what the new model might offer.

Design

Manufacturers of iPhone cases bet their entire piggy banks on the new iPhone 4S shell getting a revamp. It turned out they based their designs on a prototype leaked from Foxconn, the mega-factory that produces iPhones for Apple.

Apparently the prototype was sold to one of these case manufactures for £2,000, sending the iPhone accessory industry into overdrive. Tens of thousands of cases were produced, only for Apple CEO Tim Cook to put out their plastic-moulding fire with the announcement that the 4S would have the same body as the iPhone 4.

Now it looks as though this prototype really might have been an iPhone 5 all along — it just wasn’t set for a 2011 release.

So what did it look like? It was a smaller cousin to the iPad 2, with a thin form factor, tapered edges and flat back. And, like the iPad 2, it will probably be made from aluminium. Apple buys tonnes of the stuff for its computer line anyway, and it’s relatively cheap and strong. Just what you want when you build a phone.

A curious design point on these cases was what appeared to be a wider ‘home’ button. Some think this might have some kind of swipe functionality, so you can flick through ebooks without touching the screen. It’s hardly a selling point, but the real reason for a change could simply be that it allows more space for a bigger screen.

There is one alternative iPhone 5 design out there. One happy snapper managed to get a photo of a next-gen iPhone being used in public. We judged it to have a thin form factor, a slightly curved back and a thin antennae band around the edge, which sits well as an evolutionary design to follow the iPhone 4S. The latest rumours suggest a similar design, with a rubber or plastic bezel surrounding the external antennae band, just like those bumper cases Apple handed out when the iPhone 4 kept dropping calls.

We doubt Apple will permanently build a soft material like rubber into its products, but this does suggest it won’t completely ditch the external antennae design just yet.

An external antenna saves bags of space inside the phone, so in some ways this is more convincing than the tapered-edge design theory. Then again, Apple tests loads of designs, so we won’t really know until an Apple engineer gets drunk and leaves a prototype in a bar yet again.

Screen size

Even the most fervent Apple fans have HTC envy, what with its 4.7-inch screens, and it’s proving to be a major selling point.

According to the rumours, Apple considered its own screen boost to around 4 inches, but there’s a couple of reasons why it didn’t change with the 4S — and they might still be true this year.

Boosting the iPhone screen would step on the toes of the iPad, which is designed to fill the gap between phones and desktop computers. If the iPhone screen grows, people might rather get an iPhone than both products. And let’s be honest, we’d all prefer one killer device than break the bank buying two.

A better technical reason is to do with the screen resolution. There’s two options for Apple here. The first is to increase the resolution along with the display size, but then existing apps will need an update or scale-up and might look rubbish. Imagine the reaction when Apple asks developers of the 400,000+ iPhone apps to go back and add new graphics. Then imagine the queue for Apple’s approval process. It’s a nightmare for everyone involved.

Alternatively, Apple could increase the display size but keep the same 640×960-pixel resolution. The thing is, the iPhone 4S’s retina display is actually one of the best HD screens available. It’s so good, the human eye can’t distinguish an individual pixel at a normal reading distance.

Stretching that same resolution across a larger screen and you’ll be left with a lower dot per inch (dpi) count. It won’t look as stunningly crisp and sharp as the iPhone 4S, which means a compromise in quality — something Apple don’t do. Maybe older apps will sit in the middle of the new screen in their original resolution, surrounded by the largest bezel known to man, but it won’t be pretty.

Whatever happens, the screen size will probably become Apple’s biggest headache over the next year.

Camera

You might wonder where Apple can really go after enabling 1080p-resolution video recording on the iPhone 4S and high dynamic range (HDR) photos with iOS 5, which capture a greater range of tonal detail.

Here’s an idea — why not merge the two and bring about HDR videos? That’s exactly what could be in store, thanks to Sony, which recently developed a special camera sensor that allows HDR movies on a phone for the first time.

If you’re wondering what this actually means, think back to any occasion you took a picture or video indoors next to a window. Focus outside and the room appears dark, but focus inside and the window becomes a washed-out square of white light. HDR is a special technique which balances multiple sources of light for a clear, colourful image in a snap.

Given that Sony already provides the iPhone 4S sensor, HDR videos are suddenly looking like a solid bet for the next iPhone.

Hardware

It’s a safe bet to say the iPhone 5 and the new iPad will pack a quad-core A6 processor, following on from the dual-core A5 that sits in current models.

Storage is dandy, but the iPhone 5 won’t need to improve on the 4S capacities of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB. Why pay a bomb for 128GB when iCloud can look after the rest of your media library?

Will the iPhone 5 get 4G?

Macworld quoted an analyst who thinks Apple will dive on a quad-mode chip from Qualcomm, which can connect to 3G and 4G (or rather, LTE if you want to be specific), but many countries still lack the network to support it. Here in the UK, BT and Everything Everywhere only recently started live tests for it in Cornwall. We may have to wait as long as 2015 until we see it rolled out.

Of course, coverage in the US is ramping up and if the chips are cheap enough, Apple might just go for it. Let’s hope its inclusion helps goad governments into properly sorting out their networks so we can ditch our broadband contracts and use iPhones as portable modems instead.

Social networking

Will Apple build on its Find My Friends feature from iOS 5? In the past it has filed several patents for a new kind of location-based social network, where users are matched based on their iTunes library or location.

Let’s say you’re in a club, for example, and have the social network switched on. Your iPhone might identify others who share your interests or have travelled to the same places. You can preview their profile on your phone, then go over and break the ice. The proposed interface even has a small map to show you where to find that person.

So rather than competing with social networks like Twitter and Facebook, it will be a social platform that enhances real-world interaction.

There’s no hard evidence that Apple will introduce this next year, or ever. But there’s something very Apple about the exclusive nature of such a platform, where you need an iPhone to take part.

It would give its failed Ping network on iTunes a new meaning too, because the title would be more at home on a mobile, where you actually ping messages to people.

Waterproof

In the words of Alan Moore, smart phones have turned us all into superhumans. That is, until you drop them in the toilet.

Enter HZO, the company behind a nano-tech masterpiece that makes any electronic item waterproof from the inside. One tech demo showed an iPod Touch being dipped into a fish bowl while still playing back music without a hitch.

Pocketlint heard from the HZO boss that Apple and Samsung were interested in the new nano-tech, but if a concrete deal were underway then Apple would certainly tell its new partner to keep quiet. And while HZO sounds like magic from a wand, it’s not a new tech at all.

‘Conformal coatings’, as they are known, have been around for years, so it’s not like Apple hasn’t considered them before. In some cases, this kind of treatment can even contribute to overheating — and who wants to dip their phone into a bath just to cool it off?

Mobile payment system

It could be time for Apple to finally embed a near field communication (NFC) chip in its phone, similar to that of an Oyster card used to tap in on the London Underground.

This would allow the iPhone to replace your credit card, so you could just swipe it against a reader in a shop for small purchases, and potentially enter your PIN directly onto the phone’s screen for larger ones. With Google Wallet now offering mobile payments through the Nexus S 4G in the US, Apple will certainly want its foot in the door on the high street before too long.

iPhone 5 summary

Below is a quick round-up of our predictions for the iPhone 5. It’s early days, but for now we think the following are likely:

  • A6 quad-core processor
  • 1GB memory
  • New form factor
  • Larger screen
  • HDR video recording

We’re filing the following in our ‘maybe’ cabinet:

  • 4G support
  • Mobile NFC payments
  • iPhone-exclusive social platform
  • Wider home button, or a touch-sensitive area under the screen
  • Waterproof circuits

Will you save your pennies for the iPhone 5, or was the iPhone 4S enough for you? Share your reaction in the comments section below, or head over to our Facebook page.