As we all await the announcement of the next iPhone later today at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, new rumours and leaks are still being made, about both the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4S. Let’s go over what’s been said so far:
Processor: The new iPhone 4S will almost certainly offer a faster dual core processor to remain competitive against the marauding Android handsets. Apple already uses a dual core ARM A5 chip in their iPad, so including this in the next iPhone seems like an inevitability.
RAM: The iPhone 4S is due to receive an upgrade to 1GB of RAM, doubling its previous amount.
Internal Storage: We’ve received word from a Vodafone executive that the new iPhone will include options of up to 64 GB of flash storage. These are corroborated by screenshots taken of the Vodafone Germany website, where iPhone 4S in Black and White were offered with 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB for a few minutes.
Camera: We’ve received quite a few words on this upgraded component, including photos of the camera assembly itself via Chinese manufacturers. The camera looks to be upgraded to 8 megapixels and is said to include a back-lit sensor to improve low-light image quality. There are also references to panoramic photos in the iOS 5 documentation, so expect this feature to be standard.
Speech: Ever since Apple acquired personal assistant app developer Siri last year, insiders have expected improved voice control to the iPhone. This looks to be coming together nicely, with reports of a new application called Assistant which will be capable of performing a number of speech recognition and speech synthesis tasks, including transcribing dictated messages and performing more voice-activated commands than ever before.
Whilst the iPhone 4 already contains voice control, the level of integration is said to be ‘world changing’ according to Siri co-founder Norman Winarsky, who heralds it as the first ‘real AI with real market use’. Assistant will reportedly only be available on the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, as it requires the RAM and CPU upgrades that both will include.
Form factor: One place in which Apple is not innovating is the form factor of the iPhone 4S. The new iPhone looks to be including only internal changes; the display, buttons and size all look like they’ll be the same size. This means that we can stock iPhone 4S accessories, including iPhone 4S screen protectors and iPhone 4S cases quite quickly.
Release Date: The iPhone 4S is expected to be available quite soon after the 4th of October, anywhere between the 4th and the 14th or so we hear.
We’ll have to see which of these rumours are true once the announcement is actually made — here at Mobile Fun we’ll be covering the launch and offering iPhone 5 accessories as soon as ever we can afterwards. An iPhone 5 rumour roundup will follow this post shortly.
Let me know what you think via social media channels as usual, or via the comments section.