The smartphone world is buzzing about rumors for the new Iphone. The new Iphone is rumored to be launched on September 10 in an event in San Francisco, which means that the invitations for the event would be sent to the press sometime around September 3. This time, Apple is reported to be releasing two models of iPhone, one is the iPhone 5s and the other a cheaper variant, reportedly named as the iPhone 5C. Here is a complete rumor roundup from multiple sources about the next generation iPhone.
Fingerprint Sensor
There is absolutely no doubt regarding the fact that the new iPhone will come with a biometric fingerprint sensor.Code for biometric scanning has already been discovered in the beta versions of IOS 7 (by Hamza Sood) released to developers.
The sensor will be placed just beneath the home button. To authenticate you just have to place your thumb on the home button. If this technology is there in the next iPhone, it will solve many complex problems. Users don’t need to enter or even remember a passcode everytime. Now we don’t have to enter our Apple ID password everytime we purchase an app, something i think was very frustrating but also necessary for security related purposes. The Keychain information that is protected with a passcode will now be protected with a metric related to your fingerprint. And most of all, the technology will be very simple to use which i think will make it very popular. Everyones knows that when Apple acquired Authentec for $356 million, a company known for having developed technology to authenticate users based on fingerprints that can actually be embedded into IOS devices, they must have done it for a very good reason.
IOS 7
Again, there is absolutely no doubt about the fact that the new Iphone will come with IOS 7 preinstalled. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out this video from WWDC 2013 introducing the key features of IOS 7.
An A7 Chip
Photo Credit: Macrumors
Surely the new Iphone will be powered by a new A7 chip. Over the last few years, Apple has been able to increase the processing speed of the new chip to twice as that of that of the previous chip. I expect it to be the same way this year as well. The interesting part is that Apple has again been working with Samsung in developing this chip.
Other Hardware improvements
We already know about the software improvements that the new Iphone is suppossed to have (IOS 7). The new Iphone is reported to come with the same amount of RAM (1 GB) as the previous generation iPhones. The camera is reported to have a dual-LED flash for taking better pictures in low light. However, the rumors suggest that it will be an 8 MP camera again. Personally, i would like to see the number go up.
A new cheaper variant and more colours
This time, Apple is also rumored to be coming out with a cheaper variant of the current Iphone, probably named as iPhone 5C, which will have a plastic back instead of an aluminium one. This will help Apple is cutting down the manufacturing costs and hence make the iPhone 5C cheaper than its current lineup of iPhones. It is also rumored that this cheaper variant of the iPhone will be coated in Liquid Metal, thereby making it scratch resistant, as is supposedly shown in the video below. Apple’s acquisition of Liquid Metal did make a lot of news 3 years ago, but since then we haven’t seen the technology being used in Apple products. Maybe now is the time.
It is also rumored that the iPhone 5S will come in black, white and champagne gold colour whereas the iPhone 5C will have much more colours to offer to its users.
One More thing
This comes from the era when Steve Jobs was the CEO of Apple. Apple had always been successful at hiding that “One more thing” from the people and most of the time it has proved to be the most groundbreaking feature of that product. However, since the passing of late Steve Jobs, we haven’t seen that “One more thing” being mentioned in Apple presentations. Hoping it to be the other way round this time.
In any case, there is not much time left. If the rumored date Sept 10 is true, invitations to the press will be sent by 3rd Sept and there will definitely be some hint in the image that Apple usually sends out with their invitations. Looking forward to the event ….