Last time we looked at the iPhone 5, we explored ten cool iFeatures we’re likely to see, and despite some iOS 6 crossover, here’s more to love, to hate or adore.
1 – The 19-pin connector. This one’s so heavily rumoured that it’ll be surprising if it doesn’t happen. From talk of a MagSafe dock connector to special chips that force us to use Apple-only cables and properly licensed accessories, through to the fact that your old accessories won’t work with the new iPhone 5 unless Apple makes an adaptor, this one’s causing a ruckus.
Still, Apple has kept the dock connector as is for years and years since the iPod days, so the current and quite large dock connector has certainly had its day in the sun, with a new dock connector a seeming inevitability.
2 – New headphone socket location. Turns out the iPhone 5 is going to have a headphone socket at the bottom of the phone, next to the new dock connector – which its said was also shrunken to its new 19-pin size so that the headphone socket would easily fit down there.
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3 – That 4-inch widescreen with 16:9 aspect ratio should finally mean widescreen videos, TV shows and movies without those dread black bars!
4 – Sure, 4G is coming, but so should faster 3.5G just as with the new iPad. Plenty of people and places won’t have access to 4G LTE, but they will have access to faster 3G, 3.5G and 3.75G speeds – from ye olde WCDMA through to DC-HSPA+, something that will help you get “near” 4G speeds from places that have DC HSPA+ but don’t have 4G – yet.
5 – Smoother Airplay? Will the faster quad-core processor and presumably more efficient Wi-Fi finally give us better, jitter-free Airplay when streaming videos from our iPhones to our big screen TVs? I hope so.
6 – Smarter browser and email for better attachments and file uploads. iOS 6 promises to let you easily upload photos and compatible files from within the browser, or to attach photos or documents into your email messages – from the browser or email client, NOT from within the app those files are stored in.
Basically, this makes the browser and email client on iDevices work the way they do on PCs and Macs, which is the way most people are used to, and it’s a long-awaited development.
7 – Battery life. With Apple packing in so many advanced technologies, will Apple have to subtly lower battery life a little as it did with the new iPad compared with the iPad 2? Let’s hope not, especially given that Apple even goes as far as cooking up its own battery chemistries, so seriously does it take the need to make your own hardware if you’re serious about software.
Perhaps Apple is ready to unveil a battery breakthrough – we can only hope so. At an Intel conference I attended back in 2007, the subject of batteries came up, and an interesting comparison was made.
That was look at Moore’s Law, which sees the number of transistors on a processor doubling every “18 months”, even though the law originally stated two years.
The things is, battery technology was said to double in its capabilities every 18 years in comparison!
So… the iPhone 5 is now in production… Changewave Research says it’s the most anticipated iPhone yet… and it’ll be here, sometime between the next two weeks and the next 13.
The iWait continues!
