Could this be the iPhone 5, or just another graphic designer’s wet dream?
While some believe the magic is all in Steve Jobs’ head, there’s only about an hour and a half until the end of the world as we know it – that’s right, Apple’s launch of the iPhone 4S/5. I’m literally trembling with anticipation. No, I am.
So what’s this new gadget likely to look like? Will it be white, black, teardrop-shaped, identical in shape to the last iPhone, made of cheese? These are some of the all-important questions that thousands of Apple rumour sites have been asking themselves since the last time they asked themselves these exact same questions about the iPhone launch before this iPhone launch.
But if you really must know now what Apple is about to announce, here’s what the rumour mill has suggested.
MacRumors.com suggests it will have an A5 processor, 1 GB RAM, 8-megapixel rear camera, GSM+CDMA, and HSPA+. It may have a GSOH.
MacRumors.com has also mooted the possibility that the latest design could be teardrop-shaped, i.e. have more rounded edges than previous iPhone devices. This is partly based on the ‘lost’ iPhone design that Apple accidentally/deliberately left in yet another bar in yet another PR embarrassment/masterstroke designed to stoke up exactly the kind of rumor sites that do Apple’s PR for it.
An iPhone with very slightly rounded edges would obviously be news of such mind-boggling gravity that the world’s entire population will mark the launch with a two-minute silence. The official two-minute silence will be officially brought to an end by Steve Jobs singing Chas & Dave’s hit Rabbit over a billion tiny loudspeakers: "Rabbit x 20. You got a beutiful chin, you got beutiful skin, you got a beutiful face, you got taste, you got beutiful eyes, you got beutiful thighs" etc. No, really.
Content from our partners
BoyGeniusReport, meanwhile, believes that Sprint may have signed an exclusive deal for the iPhone 5: "I have been told that Sprint will be getting the iPhone 5 — yes the real iPhone 5, not the iPhone 4S — as an exclusive," BoyGenius writes. "And it will be a 4G WiMAX device. AT&T and Verizon would launch the iPhone 4S and get the iPhone 5 some time in the first quarter of next year as an LTE device. Globally, the iPhone 5 might be available as a 4G HSPA+ device."
Finally Thenextweb believes the iPhone will have an 8 megapixel camera – yes 8 megapixels. "Sources familiar with Apple’s plans have revealed to us that Apple will indeed debut the new iPhone 4S today, featuring an 8-megapixel camera with "enhanced optics" and "more definitive GPS features" thanks to Apple’s new A5 processor," said Thenextweb.
Eight megapixels? No wonder a nice chap at Virgin Media Business has found the time, despite the obvious impending end of the world-style Apple press event happening in about an hour, to write in and offer a dire warning about the likely impact of the latest iPhone on mobile networks: "Whatever the cosmetic changes, the new handsets are certain to be bandwidth heavy.. without action, mobile providers may find themselves struggling with increasingly slow connection speeds – something that consumers in this day and age just won’t accept," said the firm’s head of mobile and broadcast, George Wareing.
George’s prediction is probably the only one in this article of which you can be certain. Oh, apart from the fact that the world is destined to go through this Apple cycle of leak-rumour-announcement until we have turned every last gallon of oil in the world into some white plastic with an Apple logo on it. Go figure.
You can follow this author on twitter at www.twitter.com/jasonstamper but he knows absolutely no "sources familiar with developments" at Apple so you may not want to bother.
