It might not be BlackBerry’s “Defence Department” trusted level of email, but the PlayBook finally gets its OS 2.0 and native email, calendaring and more, adding a new lease of life to RIM’s trim tablet.
If there’s a new or rehashed iPhone rumour, it must surely be a day of the week ending in Y, with the latest suggesting a 4-inch screen will finally arrive, a new design will also come (but no teardrop shape), and perhaps a restoration of the iPhone launch to the US summer timeframe.
iPhone rumours – ya gotta love ‘em. Whether they’re right, or they’re wrong, they make for fantastically and speculatively fun reading, even when various reports based on the same rumour claim opposite things.
One example comes from the Washington Post which suggests that the iPhone 5 is coming in the Northern Hemisphere summer, while PC World says that Apple “probably won’t rush for a summer launch”.
There are good reasons for both sides of the story, which seems to have come via 9to5Mac.com.
PC World naturally points to Apple’s recent earnings which showed that iPhone sales – using 3G technologies, dramatically outsold Android phones with 4G, showing that 4G tech isn’t crucial to iPhones selling.
After all, iPhones deliver an experience that Android phones can only dream of delivering, with a better approximation of the iOS experience through Android’s ICS 4.0 OS simply not available to the vast majority of Android phone owners out there.
That said, “everyone” expects the iPhone 5 to actually get 4G LTE technology, given the fact that 4G LTE networks are out there and growing, but clearly it will all depend on just how much battery life Apple can deliver when 4G is on.
We already “know” that Apple wasn’t happy with the performance of initial 4G LTE chipsets as they would have led to “design compromises” Apple wasn’t willing to make.
Today, those chipsets are said to be in their second generation, but might Apple wait for the third generation of 4G LTE chipsets to appear first?
Perhaps Apple is doing just that, and will delay the iPhone 5 launch to the same timeframe as the iPhone 4S was launched in, just to get the extra battery life that such a next-gen chipset would, in theory, deliver.
Now, these reports have come to light because Foxconn moles have apparently squeaked and leaked some info about prototype iPhone 5 devices, which 9to5Mac’s report says “aren’t final devices”.
They also claim that the next iPhone won’t have the “teardrop” shape, but will be “symmetrical”, as well as being longer and wider thanks to that 4-inch screen size.
Whatever the truth of these rumours and reports, the facts are that the next iPhone is still months away, likely at least 6 months if not 8 or more.
So, if you have a shiny new iPhone 4S, rest easy, it’s still going to be the very latest model for months yet, and if you’re thinking of getting a new iPhone to replace your iPhone 2G, 3G, 3GS or 4, it’s safe to do so: Apple’s not about to launch a new version next week or anything like that.
All we do know for certain is that a replacement to the iPhone 4S is definitely coming, but might Apple call it the iPhone 4G or 4GS to take advantage of the 4G craze… or will they call it the iPhone 5?
David Frost
| SYDNEY, Feb. 22, 2012—Silver Peak Systems, the leader in data centre class wide area network (WAN) optimisation, today continues to revoluti…
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