It’s always interesting to hear the latest details and leaks of Apple’s upcoming devices, and the very recent 1440mAh battery picture “leak” from 9to5Mac and one of its sources, Sonny Dickson (who has posted a stack of so-called iPhone 5 parts), makes for interesting reading – and interesting viewing.
Apple is a company that likes to nail down the details, that likes to get involved in the nitty-gritty, to take responsibility for things that other companies just buy off the shelf, and to deliver an integrated experience that rocks – no matter what choices and decisions it has made in creating hardware.
That has been the case for all previous iDevices up until now, including the new iPad which had a massive battery increase to cope with the Retina resolution and a quad-core graphics processor, even arriving as a slightly thicker device, while delivering the smoothest visuals still available on today’s tablets.
When it comes to battery technologies, Apple is no slouch here either, and takes responsibility for crucial factors like the battery chemistry, and how its processor and associated chips sip or suck upon the included battery source.
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So, ensuring everything works together as smoothly as possible is what Apple does, and considering it makes hardware so it can deliver the best software, this is no surprise.
What is a surprise, however, is the revelation that the next iPhone might only have a battery that sounds like it is only slightly more powerful than that of the iPhone 4S.
Of course, as has been speculated online, Apple might be looking to include TWO of these batteries in its next iPhone, but given the space constraints and the rumoured thinner nature of the iPhone 5, this seems unlikely - although what seems unlikely today could easily be tomorrow's reality.
There have also been suggestions online that perhaps the iPhone 5 won’t have a quad-core processor after all, just as the new iPad lacked a quad-core CPU, despite a quad-core (graphics) GPU.
Perhaps Apple is not yet ready to unleash quad-core power seeing as all current apps have been written to run on dual-core systems, or perhaps Apple has managed to create a quad-core processor that knows when to take the pedal off the metal, and when to slam it down.
Indeed, as we’ve seen with the Nvidia Tegra 3, which has five cores, its quad-cores are ready to go when power is needed, but a fifth core at less than half the clock-speed of the quad-cores sits ready to run when no grunt is needed – and perhaps Apple has something similar in mind, seeing as it designs its own ARM chips, just as it designs its own batteries.
Alternatively, as has been suggested online, the battery in question might not be the one destined for the iPhone 5 – it might instead be destined for a new “cheaper” and upgraded iPhone 4S to act as the entry-level iPhone (and finally doing away with the iPhone 3GS and 4 at retail altogether), or perhaps an iPod Touch 5 model.
The simple fact is that no-one knows, and despite the photos that 9to5Mac source Sonny Dickson has put up on his site, along with 9to5Mac’s own commentary, we’re going to have to wait for an iFixit teardown – or a more complete iPhone 5 leak before the expected September 12 launch date – before we all know the truth.
Until then, we hope that whatever battery Apple ends up putting into the iPhone 5 ends up being the fiercest and most powerful Mountain Li-ion possible.
