This is a third-hand depiction – a mockup of a sketch from a source – of what the iPhone 5 may look like, from the guys at This Is My Next.
So, what all’s going on in this mockup here, which they’re careful to say “isn’t fact” and might be based on “design prototypes and not production-ready phones”?
• The design is “more like the iPod touch than the iPhone 4,” according to their source, possibly with the same “teardrop” silhouette as the MacBook Air.
• A screen that “will occupy the entire (or near to it) front of the phone, meaning almost no bezel”. Same 960×540 resolution, and if the size goes up to 3.7 inches, the pixel density’ll drop to 312ppi (which is still “Retina display” level). There may be some further wizardry going on with bonded glass technology, apparently – in the iPhone 4, bonded glass technology what makes it seem like the screen and glass are one, indivisible thing.
• The engorged home button is “doing double duty as a gesture area”, with gestures coming later in iOS.
If these proportions are accurate, they already make me nostalgic for the more rigidly structured iPhone 4. (It looks possibly awkward to hold, too.) But! I wouldn’t be totally surprised if Apple significantly alters the iPhone design in a way so that it’s no longer susceptible to the antenna weak spot (or at least, criticism of it) or that’s quite as fragile, with a glass back.
Other things we’ve heard or expect about the iPhone 5: It’s probably got the iPad 2’s A5 chip (or something similar), it might use an 8MP camera sensor from Sony, and it’s likely gonna show up in September. Oh, and you will probably want to get rid of your current iPhone and buy it.
Yeah, it’s that time of year. [This Is My Next]