“I think that any iPhone range changes will be left until September, and while I wouldn’t expect any radical changes to the pricing structures or value, the iPhone 5C is currently sitting on the bottom rung of the ladder with a rather pathetic 8 GB of internal storage,” Ewan Spence writes for Forbes.
“While the iPhone 5s does have Touch ID, it does not have the hardware to support Apple Pay, and Cupertino is putting a huge amount of focus on mobile payments. If I was Tim Cook I would want all of my handsets to be Apple Pay compatible. That would require some re-engineering on the 5s,” Spence writes. “Couple that required re-engineering with the loss of the colored polycarbonate styling of the iPhone 5c, add in the continued demand for the smaller four-inch screened smartphone, and the answer is a reworked iPhone 5s with Apple Pay support added into a polycarbonate-based four-inch handset.”
“Arguably this would be seen as a ‘new’ handset rather than a discounted older handset, and that approach makes it an easier sale on the high street by Apple Store staff, carriers, and third-party resellers. It just needs a name to tie it into the ‘new’ Apple ecosystem that differentiates it from the existing handsets and evokes a strong reaction in consumers,” Spence writes. “How does the iPhone 6c sound to you?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: While we maintain that “in general, the only people who still think they want a 4-inch iPhone are those who do not yet own a 4.7-inch iPhone 6 or 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus,” we absolutely do understand that, not in general, a smaller iPhone does offer certain benefits – pocketability, bringing along GPS for Apple Watch runners and cyclists, etc. (As iPhone 6 Plus users, we do know what it’s like to have one strapped to your arm while running. It’s not small.)
What if Apple went even a bit further and made a 4-inch, hard-coated polycarbonate “iPhone 6c” that was just a bit thicker in order to deliver heretofore untold battery life and a certain degree of indestructibility? Any takers?