Network World - The iOSsphere sees the world in a grain of sand, or at least, in obscure internal electronic components. The discerning eye can see the true implications of an unchanged SIM card tray design, for example.
You just need to have your own source, someone who knows details and shares them, whispering them in your ear or caressing a keyboard, who has access to mysterious Green Folders. This week, the sources stand up to be counted, all one of them: Goodbye to the wondrous Liquidmetal, to tear-drop designs, and hello to thinner bodies and bigger screens.
You read it here second.
"Our hopes of a liquid metal iPhone could very well be dashed."
-- Tyler Lee, Ubergizmo, on how a purported iPhone 5 SIM card tray reveals that the Next iPhone will probably be just
like the current one.
And you can forget about that awesome Liquidmetal construction, too.
Replacement parts supplier SW-Box is considered by many to be a fount of reliable information about "leaked" parts, which is odd given they're offering parts that are a "perfect fit" for products that haven't been announced yet, let alone released.
In keeping with this heritage, the company recently posted a photo of the "iPhone 5 Sim Card Tray Holder Slot - Silver" and the iOSsphere illuminati were all over it, drawing the conclusions to which lesser mortals are oblivious.
Thus Ubergizmo's Tyler Lee glumly concluded that "our hopes of a liquid metal iPhone could very well be dashed."
Liquidmetal is the Wonder Metal that so many Next iPhone Fans are yearning for, because it promises a thinner and lighter and cool-feeling iPhone.
Lee clearly pored over the photo, with all the passionate intensity of a NSA analyst checking out satellite images of Osama bin Laden's last hiding place. "Based on its design, it is reminiscent of the iPhone 4/4S which seems to suggest that 2012's iPhone will not differ too greatly from the iPhone 4/4S' design," he concludes.
It's obvious, really. If an internal part that is only present in CDMA iPhones hasn't changed, how can anything else change? In particular you can kiss goodbye the longstanding rumor of a "teardrop" design, which would have one end of the phone thicker than the other.
Lee isn't completely credulous, of course. "However given that there are probably just as many fake Apple parts as there are real ones, until we actually see the device for ourselves we will be taking this with a grain of salt for now," he writes.
The only thing worse than all those fake Apple parts is the fact that Lee is only taking this with a single grain of salt instead of something approaching bulk-loading volumes.
Thank heavens for well-sourced rumors. Otherwise we'd be stuck with all those badly sourced ones.
"We have some details to share," announces the generous Jeremy Horwitz at iLounge. And not just any details but details that "match and expand upon details we received back in March." And those March details were "suggesting that Apple is abandoning the long-rumored 'teardrop-shaped iPhone 5' in favor of another glass-bodied design," Horwitz reminds us.
He gets right to it.
"What we've learned: the new iPhone will indeed be longer and thinner than the iPhone 4 and 4S." Wow! Not only that, he knows the actual dimensions. "Approximate measurements are 125mm by 58.5mm by 7.4mm -- a 10mm jump in height, nearly 2mm reduction in thickness, and virtually identical width," Horwitz reports.
Rollup isn't sure why 58.5mm is considered "approximate." Maybe they were eye-balling it in terms of inches and converting to the metric scale on the fly. In any case, the metric measures yield 4.92 x 2.30 x 0.29 inches. Approximately. The current approximate dimensions of the iPhone 4S are 4.5 x 2.31 x 0.37 inches. Apparently the one one-hundredth inch difference in width warrants describing it as "virtually identical."
But there's more: a "major change" in the rear casing. Apple will be "adding a metal panel to the central back of the new iPhone," Horwitz reveals. "This panel will be flat, not curved, and metal, not ceramic." So the metal panel on the back will be, you know, metal instead of ceramic. And flat. Approximately.
In case this is hard to visualize, iLounge went the extra mile to illustrate it. "Our artist's rendition provides a rough idea of what this change will look like; it echoes the current-generation iMac design, to be sure." To be sure it does, approximately, as you can see for yourself.
"The change in height will include a lengthening of the prior 3.5" screen to roughly 4" on the diagonal," Horwitz continues, piling on those details. "As the new iPhone won't widen, this appears to confirm that Apple will change the new iPhone's aspect ratio for the first time since the original iPhone was introduced in 2007, adding additional pixels to the top and bottom of the screen. A change of this sort took place between the fourth and fifth generations of the iPod nano, but didn't impact any third-party software. This obviously will."
Yes it will. No question. If the aspect ratio actually did change. This issue has been debated for at least the last 12 months, and Horwitz doesn't add much to it, or elaborate on it, or bother to describe just what the impact would be.
The best recent treatment of this topic, in early April by a poster at The Verge, expands on an idea originally suggested by a caller to the weekly Vergecast: if Apple changes the iPhone aspect ratio from the current 4:3 to 9:5. The result would be a screen that's longer but not wider, moving from a 3.5-inch to a 4.0-inch diagonal, preserving the Retina Display pixel density, and offering more room for apps without requiring changes to the apps.
Horwitz also says the Next iPhone will have a new, smaller Dock Connector on the bottom of the phone.
Talk about a cornucopia of details. And they all come from "our source," explains Horwitz, doubtless with some proprietary pride. So, an unnamed somebody. Nothing "approximate" about that. And you don't have to keep repeating "according to an unnamed source." That might just introduce a worm of doubt in the trusting minds of readers.
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