Disappointed that Apple announced a somewhat incremental update to the iPhone yesterday with the 4S, rather than dropping a whole new number on us with the iPhone 5? Well, analysts are speculating that the reason why we all collectively sighed at the iPhone 4S yesterday instead of immediately left work to camp outside of our nearest iPhone for the iPhone 5 is because the iPhone 5 won’t drop until LTE technology is ready for compact smartphones.
With the penchant for sleek design Apple has had ever since they ditched the old multicolored clamshell MacBooks, also known as the Legally BlondeBook, coupled with the tiny printed circuit board sitting pretty inside the iPhone 4, the current state of the iPhone wouldn’t allow enough room for an extra chip to enable LTE, without shrinking the size of other integral components within the phone, like the battery.
Will Strauss, president of wireless chip market research firm Forward Concepts, feels that Apple is saving the iPhone 5 for the LTE version of their phone. Seeing as how naming and version number conventions tend to go, the software and incremental hardware upgrades the 4S received wouldn’t really warrant a new whole version number, whereas enabling LTE would.
CEO of Anadtech and chip expert Anand Shimpi says a new Qualcomm chip should be available in the second quarter of next year and should be able to provide a single chip LTE solution for smartphone developers, which would be able to enable LTE without shrinking the size of other parts within the phone. Along with the chip issue, analysts also feel we didn’t see the iPhone 5 because LTE coverage isn’t too widely available yet, and that would defeat the purpose of a phone that would spread as wide as one sporting the iPhone brand.
So, whether or not the LTE speculation is why the 4S announcement made a number of people disappointed yesterday, like we all said a few months ago when we were patiently awaiting the iPhone 5, we’ll just have to keep waiting.
(via CNET)
Published: Oct 5, 2011 10:31 am