iPhone 5 Wedge Form Factor And 3.7″ Display Rumors Ramp Up, But There's This Imminent White iPhone 4 Release…..

Read Charles Moore's new column on the new possible shape of the iPhone 5 and the imminent release of a white iPhone 4s.

Hope everyone had a great Easter weekend. We're back in the harness, with new rumors afoot about the iPhone 5's revised form factor. Will it be made of carbon fiber? (extremely doubtful this time around), aluminum? (considerably more probable), or stick with the current glass back? (I'm guessing likely not).

thisismynext.com's Joshua Topolsky says that while current Internet chatter is suggesting the iPhone 5 will be little more than a speed bump (ie: A5 chip) and feature enhancement in the iPhone 4 form factor what he's been hearing from a variety of unnamed sources is that the iPhone 5 will have a more iPod touch or mini iPad 2 look, with a larger display screen of perhaps 3.7," retaining the present resolution, and occupying most of the device's front face with only a slim marginal bezel, but with a larger Home button also supporting gestures.

Why not an even four-inch screen? The reasoning is that with 3.7″ diagonal and the current resolution, pixel density – the key to Apple's Retina Display bragging rights, would drop from 326 ppi only down to 312 ppi — still comfortably above the somewhat arbitrary Retina Display technology threshold of 300 ppi. However, with a four-inch screen, pixel density with the same resolution would go down to 288 ppi.

Even with a 3.7″ screen, rendering would be somewhat less sharp than it is with the iPhone 4′s display. A good analogy is the G3 iBook and Pismo PowerBook laptops I was running back to back several years ago. Both machines had 1064 x 768 resolution displays, but the Pismo's was 14.1″ while the iBook display was 12.1″ in physical dimension, which made its rendering significantly sharper and crisper than with the larger PowerBook's screen.

Other rumors include an iPhone5 with a larger display and a wedge or teardrop shape thinner than the iPhone 4 and reminiscent of the generation 2 MacBook Air.

However, here's the thing once again; a redesign that radical for release this coming summer or even fall would not set well with a whole lot of folks who've just bought Verizon CDMA iPhone 4s and white iPhone 4s (expected to start selling by the end of the week — possibly as early as Wednesday April 27), who are going to be unhappy campers. A degree of this dynamic is inevitable with the release of any new product upgrade. Think of the folks who had just bought MacBook Airs last September. It happened to me when I bought an aluminum unibody MacBook three months before Apple morphed that model into the 13″ MacBook Pro with FireWire and SD Card support. However, in this instance, a radical iPhone 5 revamp release sometime in the June – September time window would be really hot on the heels of the white iPhone 4 release.

Not that I'm certain Apple won't do it anyway, but why would they go to the considerable trouble of ramping up white iPhone 4 production and channel distribution only to replace it with a new model in just a couple or three months' time? Doing so just to wring a few more sales out of a lame duck iPhone 4 seems pretty cynical, and Apple is usually a classier act than that. Which is another reason why I think an iPhone "4S" upgrade with an A5 processor and perhaps an 8 megapixel camera seems more likely in the near term, with the iPhone 5 release held off until late fall or even 2012.

On Monday, Chris Chang of the Chinese Apple-oriented site M.I.C. Gadget posted an image of a white iPhone with a larger display than depictions of the white iPhone 4 have shown, which he says my be someone's mockup…. or…."prototype iPhone with an A5 processor that game developers are using to prepare their iPhone 5 apps." Interesting, but nothing conclusive there. Still mostly rumors and conjecture, but the white iPhone 4 at least should be reality by the end of the week.

Apple Likely to Integrate iCloud for the iPhone 5

Apple has been rumored to move from its current online file storage provider, MobileMe, to iCloud, which has recently been renamed to CloudMe. The overhauling of this internet service that started as iTools and renamed in 2008 together with the release of the then- launched iPhone 3G is said to unfold together with the release of the rumored next generation of iPhone, the Apple iPhone5. The iPhone 5 will be released with the much talked about operating system, the iOS 5. The beta version of the iCloud service is also said to be prepped up for the operating system for the Apple Macbooks, the Mac OS X Lion.

Sources say that Apple has purchased the domain name iCloud.com for $4.5 million from the Sweddish company, Xcerion who is responsible for creating iCloud. iCloud, on the other hand, was just rebranded as CloudMe with the company purchasing the domain name CloudMe.com.

News and rumors has it that Apple's rumored iCloud service is focused on music streaming and downloads with Apple recently closing a deal with at least two major record labels to allow the company to stream and distribute copyrighted materials to users and subscribers.

Apple's current MobileMe service which costs $99 annually offers users with 20 GB of virtual file storage memory for music which you can access from anywhere in the world using different devices, such as iPad, desktop or laptop computers and smart phones. But reporters and Apple close- watchers suggest that there are strong evidences pointing to the company's efforts to broaden the scope of their storage, with hopes that the service will become an online diary and locker where users can store their precious moments such as videos, pictures and music files.

Apple is also said to be overheard stating that they might make the MobileMe service- which will eventually be known as iCloud- free for its users. This strategy would lead to sky- rocket sales and convince more consumers to take a hold of their hardware devices. This plan would lead to more intrigues and speculations about Apple's need to upgrade the amount of memory storage that they have on their iPhones and other devices.

By fall of this year, we'll get to see the revamped and renamed internet cloud service from Apple- that, if rumors about the September release of the iPhone 5 are true.

White iPhone selling out fast as shipping times increase to five days

Just a day following the arrival of white iPhone 4, Apple's been seen increasing shipping estimates for online orders in several countries to five business days, an increase from the previous estimate of 3-5 days. If you place a white iPhone 4 order via the online Apple store in Italy, UK, Spain, France, Ireland and many other countries, you'll have to wait at least five business days for delivery.

The different-colored iPhone drew crowds in Hong Kong, Singapore and China who formed long lines to get their hands on the handset. The Hong Kong launch attracted hundreds of iPhone scalpers. No word of possible supply problems in those countries at press time, though. Shipping estimates for the US and are still in the 3-5 days range. If history is an indication, Americans will be the last to feel the effects of what appears to be constrained white iPhone 4 supply.Apple currently sells white iPhone 4 in the United States and UK plus nearly thirty countries around the world, including Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, and Thailand.

The company promised in a press release that the handset will be available  in "many more countries around the world soon".

The iPhone 5 Compendium: A Complete List Of Rumored iPhone 5 Features To Date

The tech community has been prognosticating about the features of the iPhone5 ever since the iPhone 4 made its debut in the summer of 2010. Here's a quick yet thorough list of purported features that very well may end up on the iPhone 5.

Do a quick review of the articles here on the iPhone 5 News Blog and you start to realize that there are a virtual myriad of new, possible features that could be coming to the iPhone 5. The list is staggering! For as much as we would like to see most of these features end up on the iPhone 5, that simply won't be the case: as the saying goes, you can please some of the people some of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time.

Besides, Steve Jobs and Apple will have to hold some of these goodies back to make the iPhone 6 something to get excited about.

But because news sites and blogs tend to report on rumored features for the iPhone 5 as they pop up, you rarely get anything more than a "roundup" of the hottest iPhone 5 topics. What we've done here is listed everything that we've heard about for the iPhone 5, and give our take on both the coolness factor (how much of a "wow" it will cause at the iPhone 5′s announcement) and the probability factor that a feature will end up on the iPhone 5.

Be sure to check out our new page on all of the rumored iPhone 5 Features, and be sure to let us know if we missed anything!

Angry Birds boss says Apple's iPhone 'changed everything'

Speaking at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing on Wednesday, the head of Rovio Mobile, the developer behind the bestselling Angry Birds app, said that Apple's iPhone has changed the whole mobile market, noting also that the franchise has become the third most copied brand in China, behind Disney and Hello Kitty.

Vesterbacka, whose job title is the "Mighty Eagle" of Rovio, quizzed the crowd of more than two thousand attendees to discover that "mostly everybody" had played Angry Birds.The popular app has grown "faster than any brand ever before," quickly becoming a global phenomenon. The Angry Birds Rio version of the game became the fastest downloaded game ever with 10 million downloads in 10 days, said Vesterbacka.

Many of those games were developed for other gaming publishing houses; Angry Birds was Rovio's first attempt at developing its own intellectual property and franchise.

Despite lacking a fully implemented marketing plan in China, Angry Birds' popularity has spread to the country, which boasts more than 300 million mobile internet users. According to Vesterbacka, Rovio is now the third most copied brand in China, behind only Disney and Hello Kitty.

Vesterbacka showing an early design sketch of Angry Birds

Vesterbacka admitted that, in spite of the copying, the company was excited to break into the local market and had set a goal to become "the most copied brand in China," while adding that Rovio would "also like to sell authentic products as well."

Rovio's goal is to hit 100 million downloads in China in 2011, on its way to becoming a "leading entertainment brand" in the country in 2012. "We think we can do it, and to do that we're setting up a local operation and investing a lot into creating special versions of Angry Birds" for Chinese users.

Vesterbacka onstage at the GMIC in Beijing

Vesterbacka also attributed much of his company's success to Apple. When comparing the current mobile game climate with black-and-white feature phone games like Snake, he noted that "we have Apple to thank for a lot of change in the industry."

"Apple brought out the iPhone and it changed everything," he said, adding that before the arrival of the iPhone and App Store, carriers and handset makers prevented developers from directly reaching their fans.

"Apple created the distribution for us that we didn't have before. All of a sudden, great games mattered," said Vesterbacka. With Apple's new distribution model, Rovio was able to attain an unprecedented "hockey stick" growth curve. "We are seeing smartphone growth explode, and we are riding that wave," the executive said.

Vesterbacka pointed to Rovio's decision to design the game "around the characters" as contributing to Angry Birds' mass appeal. The company looked to Pixar and other entertainment franchises as models for "character-driven development."

According to the developer, 40 percent of Angry Birds customers make opt for the "Mighty Eagle" in-app purchase, compared to 2 to 3 percent for most companies. Rovio's goal is to reach a 50 percent conversion rate for in-app purchases.

Vesterbacka has been a vocal advocate for the iOS platform. Late last year, he said in an interview that he expects Apple to be "the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective."

Though Rovio has seen some success on the Android platform, Vesterbacka sees "fragmentation of the [Android] ecosystem" as an issue. "The carriers [are] messing with the experience again," he said, adding that Android is "open, but not really open, a very Google centric ecosystem.

Last November, Vesterbacka apologized to fans for poor Angry Birds performance across a variety of Android devices and promised to develop a "lighter solution" for lower-end Android devices.

iPhone 4S Pictured, Possibly iPhone 5

The speculation over the next generation iOS smartphone continues and now we have what is apparently leaked images of what is being called the iPhone 4S hitting the net waves, and apparently said iPhone 4S runs the new iOS seen previously on video.

The pictures of this iPhone 4S come our way courtesy of the iPhone Download Blog and by way of Mic Gadget who don't actually say where or how they came by the pictures, so there is a possibility it could be a mockup.

However info on this iPhone 4S seems to match up with previous info on the iPhone 5, and as we know, Apple tends to put a name to their smartphones that doesn't always match up with the reported name so the iPhone 4S could be Apple's moniker for the iPhone5, although as usual that is of course speculation.

The new images seem to run along similar line as previous images reported by the BGR, and seem to support the info that the iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S whichever you wish to call it will come with a larger display of roughly 3.7-inches.

Having said that, you should for the moment treat all this as rumour as there isn't really any real evidence that these images are of the real deal next generation iPhone.

There have been numerous rumours over the iPhone 5 in the past ranging from being similar to the iPod Touch, to the iPhone 5 having NFC, to an old school design.

But what do our reader's think about the name iPhone 4S? Let's face it Apple went with iPhone 3GS so it could be that iPhone 4S is the next handset. Also notably the images are of a white version so could this mean that Apple will deliver a white iPhone 5/4S when they finally get round to releasing the thing?

What are your thoughts, do you think this Phone 4S is a fake or close to the real design?

iPhone Won't Have 4G Until At Least 2012

Speculation has been that Apple could possibly introduce an LTE/4G iPhone in the coming year. Some even thought that Apple pushed back the iPhone5′s announcement to wait for LTE saturation in the U.S.

Will we see an iPhone 4G this September? According to both Apple and the LTE industry, it doesn't look hopeful…

 

The chips needed to equip the iPhone with 4G/LTE capability don't exist yet. And they won't exist until at least early 2012.

Forbes reports,

"Rumor has it the next-generation iPhone won't arrive until September. If so, it won't offer the crazy fast data speeds promised by next-generation 4G wireless networks.

That's because access to the turbo-charged networks that make Verizon's Thunderbolt handset crazy fast require a combination of chips Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said Wednesday Apple won't use."

Apple has previously shown interest in LTE, but Apple's own Tim Cook made no bones about Apple's current stance on LTE in yesterday's earnings call.

Apple's COO, Tim Cook,

"The first generation of LTE chip-sets force a lot of design compromises with the handset, and some of those we are just not willing to make."

The chipset industry and U.S. network infrastructure just can't handle iPhone-level saturation when it comes to LTE. 4G devices in the U.S. market like the Verizon Thunderbolt rely on two chips to deliver lighting fast speeds and communication between Verizon's 4G and 3G signals.

Apple doesn't like the design compromises that would need to be made to accommodate two chips for 4G in the next iPhone. And the type of chips that would appease Apple won't be available to the market until at least next year.

"Those chips won't appear in handsets until next year, says Will Strauss, president of wireless chip tracker Forward Concepts. "They're right that there's nothing out there that fits the bill, and likely nothing will until the fourth quarter of this year," Strauss says when asked about Cook's remarks."

Don't hold your breath for an iPhone 4G this fall. The sixth generation iPhone will probably be LTE-capable, but September's device will most likely run on good old 3G.

What do you think? Is Apple just blowing smoke? Will we be surprised with an iPhone 4G this year?