Coming back from Easter seems as good a time as any to get to grips with all the rumours and gossip surrounding the next generation Apple iPhone 5 which should be arriving within the next few months. With Nokia releasing the flagship Windows Phone 7.5-running Lumia 900, HTC just releasing the wonderful One X, and Samsung on the verge of releasing the Galaxy S3 – what has Apple got up its sleeve to compete?
Display
There is a limit to the improvements that Apple can bring to the table with the same 3.5″ retina display that has been on the iPhone 4 and 4S. It would be a good bet, then that Apple may be pushing the screen size up to around 4″. A display that size could still fit within a phone body around the same size as previous iPhones which remain the most comfortable size to hold.
Connectivity
Those of us in Europe may still only have 3G available (even here in London), but 4G is now pretty widespread in the US and a new iPhone not taking advantage of those increased speeds would be asking for negative comparisons with its Android and WP7 counterparts. The iPad already has a 4G chip, so putting that same SoC inside the iPhone 5 is very likely.
Android smartphones have had NFC for a while now, and Apple will need to offer the same mobile payments technoliogy within the next iPhone in order to compete with Google Wallet.
To step away from the pack and to coincide with the launch of the rumoured Apple TV, Apple may have created their own HD streaming standard that will work over the wireless 802.11n standard. There is no need to build a separate wireless protocol from scratch, but Apple may have created a proprietary HD streaming service that would link together its iPhones, iPads, and future devices with a large-screened Apple TV.
CPU and SoC
The next iPhone will likely be playing catchup with the new iPad 3 in terms of its chipset – with the phone packing the same A5X SoC. This will give the phone a huge quad-core graphics boost and put it up there with the other smartphones around that are running Tegra 3 or the new Samsung Exynos that will be in the Samsung Galaxy S3. This chip is built by Samsung too.
Battery
The iPad 3 had to fit in a bigger and better battery in order to power that huge new retina display and improved graphics chip, and the iPhone 5 will likely need to do the same. This will add a little bit of weight to the phone, but nothing too much – what will be interesting is how Apple fit in the bigger size – expect some more curves to make the bigger size fit more comfortably in the hand.