iPhone 5: See You in September?
Dust off the urban camping gear — the next iteration of the iPhone is reportedly on track for a September launch.
Supply chain sources are telling the occasionally accurate DigiTimes that Pegatron Technology has received orders to build 15 million iPhone 5/iPhone 4S handsets as the device’s presumed fall launch nears.
As others have reported before, DigiTimes claims that the iPhone 5 will not be a major update from iPhone 4. In design, it will feature only slight modifications from its predecessor; the real improvements will be found under the hood. There we can expect to find the faster A5 processor on which the iPad 2 runs, a higher resolution 8 megapixel rear camera and perhaps a Qualcomm dual mode GSM/CDMA baseband as well.
And as for that September launch time frame, my guess would be that it’s reasonably accurate. As I wrote earlier this year, it’s entirely plausible that Apple would commandeer its annual September media event to launch the latest iPhone:
Buzzwise, the iPod has been subsumed by the iPhone. And the continuing evolution of the iPod line isn’t nearly as exciting as it once was; just look over the hardware announced at last year’s fall music event: A new Shuffle that looked a lot like its second generation predecessor, a smaller multitouch nano, a thinner iPod touch and a smaller Apple TV. Pretty staid stuff for Apple.
And we’re likely to see more of the same at this year’s event. Let’s face it, once you’ve perfected the iPod the way Apple has, there’s only so much you can do to refine it, and we’re at the point now where “thinner” and “smaller” aren’t the impressive achievements they were a few years back.
So why not spice things up by throwing the iPhone into the mix?