“Investor sentiment is soaring for Apple, as well as its hit smartphone, with the tech giant selling over 37 million smartphones in its recent fiscal first quarter.,” Chris Ciaccia reports for TheStreet. “Channing Smith, portfolio manager at Capital Advisors Growth Fund believes Apple will continue to set the bar with a 4G-enabled iPhone, which he expects in the fall. ‘We expect it to have Near Field Communications (NFC), a larger screen, and a better camera – we expect it will be done without conceding battery life,’ he said, over the phone.”
“Intriguingly, Apple has been granted a patent for an iPhone made entirely of glass. This could be for the new iPhone, or a future version of the product,” Ciaccia reports. “It’s not clear, though, what Apple will even call its new iPhone. The gadget maker has typically numbered its latest offerings, although ditched this nomenclature for the new iPad.”
Ciaccia reports, “The Cupertino, Calif.-based firm has kept the iPhone’s design fairly stable, with a 3.5-inch screen size, tweaking it slightly, as it refines the four-year old product. There are rumors, however, that Apple may decide to radically alter the next version of the phone, increasing the screen size to 4.6-inches… The next iPhone may also be slightly thicker than its predecessors, as Apple tries to keep the battery life the same if it is going to run on high-speed networks… Apple blog 9to5Mac.com, for example, shows that the new version of Apple’s mobile operating system has code for a potential LTE-enabled iPhone… Besides LTE, the other major feature which may be in the new iPhone is Near-Field Communications (NFC)”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If anything’s a given, it’s that Apple’s next-gen iPhone will be 4G LTE-capable.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
Considering that third generation iPad already includes newer, less power hungry cell/LTE chip, even iPhone will be able to handle this smoothly.
However, it should be noted that sixth generation iPhone most probably will have the sale design as iPhone 4 and iPhone 4G.
It is absolutely unique visually, unmatched even by knock-off producers like Samsung. There is no point to change this design — the same as there was no point to change MacBook Pro design, which is the basically the same since 2001.
(No, there will be no superthin droplet shaped iPhone — LTE is too power hungry to allow this.)
Agreed. Think Porsche 911, introduced in 1963, continued with an air cooled engine until 1989, close successors still in production with water cooled engines. When you get it right there is no need to change the external package for changes sake.
I’m surprised the memory wasn’t upgraded to 128mb with new iPad but hope iPhone 5 will jump it to allow more room for HD movies and larger iBooks
You mean 128GB flash?
The RAM is 1G.
iPhone already doubled maximum flash memory four months ago. Even more dense flash memory chips will not be available this autumn yet.
Future versions will remain pocket-friendly so a 4.6″ screen is a no-go. Another thing that speaks against that is the need to retain “retina-level” pixel density and the same H/W aspect ratio and pixel counts as the 4 and 4S. These all lead us to believe that any screen size increase will be slight, more along the lines of pushing the edges of the screen as close to the edges as possible.
4G/LTE is a given.
Improved camera capabilities are a given.
The rest of the specs depend upon finding the sweet spot between:
Processing power
Graphics capabilities
Battery life
Base and BTO storage capacities
Thickness
Weight
Production cost at acceptable quality levels
how do you know boss?
All glass iPhone? I wonder if it will have a front and back screen?
All “glass” computer. Read “The City and the Stars” by Arthur C. Clarke.
Now iPhone is already all-glass — it has only thin metal frame, which is used as antenna. Moving antenna inside would make the phone thicker, so it is not an likely option.
Along the same lines, what if the back of the phone was also touch surface. Scrolling with the same hand that holds the phone. I hold my phone with my index finger on the back of the phone near the top. Very natural to use that finger to scroll. Coould also incorporate simultaneous front/back multitouch.
We’ve already been told the A5X is not suitable for a phone. (Too hot?) So probably an A6. I’d like a new hardware design, but if there’s LTE and the whole iWallet thing, it can’t stay the same. It’s either hardware or software, sometimes both. It’s been a while since Apple blew everyone out of the water, we’re due I think.
“The gadget maker has typically…”
“gadget maker”?? You kidding me??
Leave the 4.6″ phone to the other who can’t make a decent phone and just sell features. 4.6″ sets them apart for a while, but it sure isn’t a pocket or a single hand friendly size. As Ive says, we don’t do anything unless we can do it better. 4.6″ isn’t better in my book, just a vacuous marketing feature.
“others” damn fat fingers!
I hope they put a larger screen on the new iPhone
I hope they don’t.
Also a given: the name will simply be iPhone