Thursday, December 22, 2011

iPhone 5 predictions

Since it's near the end of the year it's a good time to make some predictions for 2012. Remind me to come back next year to see if my predictions were correct.
    Of course there will be an iPhone 5 released in 2012. This would fit the now historic pattern of releases: 3, 3S, 4, 4S, 5. The iPhone 5 will obviously support the new 4G cellular wireless standard. It's a bit of a shame that the iPhone numbering has got out of sync with the technology but I guess we'll not be moving on from 4G anytime soon so we'll not notice for long.
    Many pundits are predicting that the iPhone 5 will have a larger 4" screen as shown in the mock-up to the right. I predict this will not happen. The iPhone's 3.5" screen is no accident. It's big enough and not too small. I think people really don't understand Apple if they think they will bring out bigger screens for the iPhone and smaller screens for the iPad. Their dimensions were very carefully selected to be fit for purpose. Apple don't need to get into a "my screen's bigger than yours" battle but they do want to keep life simple for their app developers. That said if the iPhone 5 is to have a different design, as we'd expect from the new numeral designator, then it's hard to see how they can improve on the gorgeous (IMHO) iPhone 4. Slightly slimmer, slightly lighter perhaps. An A6 quad-core processor, almost certainly. Better screen resolution, but what's the point, it's already perfect. A better camera? Again, isn't 8 Mega pixels enough? I think you can see that after four years of rapid progress, smartphone hardware evolution is possibly reaching a plateau. We just don't need more grunt and higher and higher resolutions; better battery life, RFID they would be useful.

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