Sketchy: iPhone 5 Blueprint Is A Rumor Superimposed On A Rumor
Posted by Michael Nace on Sunday Jun 3, 2012 Under iPhone 5 Opinion, iPhone 5 RumorThe recent purported photos of the iPhone 5 are joined by a detailed schematic that appears to match up with the parts. But in the end, these are all rumors stacked on top of rumors.
There’s no doubt that 9to5Mac’s release of iPhone 5 parts last week continue to be the big story in the rumor mill. Based on what we’ve been reading from commentors on this blog, as well as the rest of the tech sphere, interest and excitement over the purported back plate of the iPhone 5 is waning, with iPhone enthusiasts questioning whether or not it is in keeping with Cupertino’s typical aesthetics. At best, the rumor mill remains ambivalent: the leaked parts, if real, gives fuel to the fire that there could be a surprise release of the iPhone 5 at the WWDC next week, after all. And yet, if folks are not all that excited about the aesthetics, hope of the June announcement might be turning to hope that the parts are fake.
The storyline got a little bit more complex in the past couple of days, when CydiaBlog released a set of purported blueprints for the iPhone 5 — pictured above — that are said to be in near-perfect conformity with the 9to5Mac parts.
For their part, 9to5Mac printed out the blueprints, and did an extensive comparison of their rumored parts with the new rumored schematics, and both appear to corroborate one another in large part, but with some overlap:
Although calculations of the display show an opening less than 0.1-inch over 4-inches, the display could likely measure a flat 4-inches diagonally as the front panel is typically slightly larger than the display. We noted yesterday that our sources informed us that the next-generation iPhone front glass images we posted feature the same width of the current iPhones, which would comfortably allow for an approximate 16:9 aspect ratio. We cannot confirm the schematic is 100 percent legit, or not just a past prototype, but also all the recent evidence points to a 4-inch next-generation iPhone that we expect to see this October.
But for as much as 9to5Mac may have done their due diligence on conflating the two rumors, TechnoBuffalo took the comparisons to a whole ‘nother geeky level (and I mean that in the best of ways. Their process is too extensive to quote here, other than to say that the conclusion was as follows: “you can see that I’ve overlaid the schematic on top of both the screen and the body. Both match up perfectly.” You should definitely take a look at their thorough analysis.
With all this in mind, however, what are we really to make of this blueprint rumor, and how it matches up with the leaked parts?
For as much as there is a plausibility to the leaked parts (even though even they could have easily been fabricated), the blueprint seems, for lack of a better word, “sketchy.” And here’s my: to my thinking, it is much more believable that a worker at Foxconn smuggled out some components to the iPhone 5 than it is that someone got their hands on the official blueprints to the iPhone 5, heisting them out of Cupertino. It has been proven over the past few years that, for all of their efforts, Apple struggles to some degree to ensure high levels of security on product leaks at Foxconn. On their own home turf, however, the Worldwide Loyalty Team must have considerably more power and control. My guess is that a blueprint like this is kept in a secure vault, and the amount of people who have access to it is strictly limited.
I would even guess that component manufacturers only get limited access to the blueprints: for example, if Sharp is manufacturing the display, they only get the designs to the display portion of the iPhone 5 — not the “big picture.”
A very talented draftsman could have easily taken the dimensions outlined in the 9to5Mac article and drawn these up, so that they more or less corroborate their story. Furthermore — and this will come as a downer to the June Truthers — the original parts could have been fabricated from the exacting specs offered by those two forum goers who first posed the idea of the longer 4-inch iPhone display and form factor. It could technically all be a conspiracy — a conspiracy to ratchet up excitement ahead of the WWDC.
Or, the parts could be real and the blueprints could be fake.
Or, both could be real — how’s that for taking a stance?
On balance, I am very skeptical of the blueprints, much less skeptical of the leaked parts, but also not too jazzed about the look of the form factor. So, I am now pulled between hoping that we get a June iPhone 5 announcement, but also hoping that the parts we’ve seen are not the finished product.
By Michael Nace
Michael Nace is the Publisher of the iPhone 5 News Blog and iPhone 6 News Blog. He has published articles about the iPhone since 2010.
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June 3rd, 2012 at 12:25 pm
Amen brother. Exactly.
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June 3rd, 2012 at 12:45 pm
I think the real question is which drawing and mock up do we want to believe is the real deal? Is because one of them support the release date we are hoping for? I am wonder what the general feeling is on a release date now.
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June 3rd, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Well said!
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June 3rd, 2012 at 2:43 pm
i really hope for a june release,but also,i hope the parts are not real.
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June 3rd, 2012 at 3:47 pm
I like the parts and I would be really happy if Apple annonce it so at the WWDC. But infact it’s really important that iOS 6 have really exciting and fantastic things which make it to the best phone, because the hardware specs will not so good like the from the Samsung Galaxy S3. And that’s not bad.
But there is one or maybe two things which confuse me…
What is with the teardrop cases for the iPhone 5 last year ? Was this design at anytime from Apple and why they don’t use it this year? Because this was a design which was entirely new. And wie all await a really big thing which was created by Steve Jobs and not “only” a long iPhone 4S.
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June 3rd, 2012 at 5:06 pm
There was a rumor a few weeks ago bout how the Iphone 5 back would look like that. Doesn’t anybody have a link to that? I wonder if these are fakes generated based on that rumor.
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June 3rd, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Hey guys! First time poster here. I’ve been following the blog for over a year though.
I think the new iPhone will come at WWDC. Think about this guys. Even though the iPhone 4S was released in October, that shouldn’t have been that unexpected, as the white iPhone 4 wasn’t available until March or April of 2011. Apple knew then that they weren’t going to make a June release with iPhone 4S. Yes, I think iPhone 4S was the plan from the get go.
I don’t think the mock-up’s are legit and here’s why. I DO think we get a bigger screen. I think it will measure 3.9inches. I don’t the the new form factor will look ANYTHING like iPhone 4 & 4S. I think it will be wider, also. The aspect ratio will remain the same. And it will ship with iOS 5.2.
People have said that Apple doesn’t care about the millions of contracts that will expire this year due to the original release of iPhone4. My opinion is that they should be. I know dozens of people who will be buying Galaxy’s shortly after WWDC if there isn’t an iPhone announced. Im not one of them. I just hope my poor iPhone 4 can hold up until the release, as I really don’t want to burn my upgrade on 4S
Just my thoughts. I have to finish by saying thanks to all contributors who make this blog one of the highlights of my nightly reads.
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June 3rd, 2012 at 6:57 pm
Let me put it this way, for Father’s Day, I will tell my sons to put any plans for an iPhone 4S on hold as I fully expect the next generation, iPhone 5, to be announced.
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June 3rd, 2012 at 9:45 pm
Heya i’m for the first time here. I found this board and I to find It really useful & it helped me out much. I’m hoping to give one thing back and aid others such as you aided me.
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June 3rd, 2012 at 10:53 pm
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June 4th, 2012 at 10:02 am
@Dan, @George and @Audio,
With that attitude, you’ll be more than welcome here. We keep the conversations lively, sometimes heated, but respectful, and if we lose it, apologies are pretty quick. Occasionally, we get (as Michael puts it) Drudgestruck, where the Drudge Report posts a link, and we get the influx of weird comments, but like bees or gas, if you ignore it, they go away.
(sorry for the visual)
and for the rest of us, only 11 days of Silly Season I left! (Silly Season I ending June 15, 2012)
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June 4th, 2012 at 10:55 am
@Jeff and hopefully June 15 will end of iPhone 5 silly season so that the rumor mill can crank up for the iPhone 6. heck half the fun must be reading about all the crazy rumors.
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June 4th, 2012 at 11:08 am
Guess i’m not included in the demographic segment that cares about how the back looks. My 4s stays in its otterbox except when i’m changing sims. Unless the new phone is revolutionarily indestructible (and if it is, i’m trademarking that term
), the next generation will remain in a case as well.
Would love to see competition from the GS3 push the release timeline to june/july, but I’m calling Sept/Oct. Since there isn’t Iblacklist (or equivalent) in the app store, i’ll wait for the jailbreak before picking up the Iphone5. The desire for a larger screen is less than the disdain of spam calls.
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June 4th, 2012 at 11:09 am
hey, I found this video at youtube. It shows iPhone 6 parts. It is fake or not, what do you think ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ6WM5m63fU
And this mockup from a reader from The Verge. It looks very cool. Now I’m hoping for the the iPhone at the WWDC, which look like the parts
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/31/3055992/the-new-iphone-ios-6-maps-mockups
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June 4th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
I just have a gut feeling that they’re going to at least announce the new iPhone at WWDC. Tim Cook has a LOT to bring to the plate considering this is his first non-Jobs WWDC. I’m hoping he pays homage to the great man (that’s up for dispute with some of you but I thoroughly admired Jobs) and pulls a “one more thing”
However…that being said, if the new iPhone (or iPhone 5) looks anything like the 4; just a longer and taller structure, I’m passing. I love my 4 to death; but there’d be no point to getting a taller screen. If that’s the case, I might as well pick up a HTC One X or Lumia 900; which are by far, the only other two phones I really like (SCREW SAMSUNG and that SIII)
Really hoping for a complete REDESIGN, and not just a few changes…not a fan of that two toned backplate we saw
Speaking of which! Has anybody ever mentioned or considered that the “metal” we saw in the “leaked” pics could just be a thin film? If you look closely at the black one, the words iPhone and serial numbers? are mostly hidden and hard to see…I just can’t see Apple wanting to have it subtle on the black and noticeable on the white. Doesn’t add up..
ONE WEEK!
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June 4th, 2012 at 3:29 pm
I have a hard time believing that with two years to design the iPhone 5, especially if, as rumored, Steve Jobs worked intently on the design of iPhone 5, that Apple is just going to give us a stretched version of the 4/4S which is what these parts look like. Jobs was all about aesthetics so, regardless of whether it’s released in July or September, I’m expecting something very different and very cool.
It would not surprise me if Apple has a team of people who design fake parts or leak rejected designs to throw off the competition, float trial balloons, and create buzz for their products.
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June 5th, 2012 at 8:08 am
I agree
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June 6th, 2012 at 9:38 am
It is truly a great and helpful piece of info. I’m satisfied that you just shared this useful information with us. Please keep us up to date like this. Thank you for sharing.
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