The iPhone 5 News Blog

New, purported iPhone 5S parts suggest big changes to the inner hardware of the iPhone 5S. Is this a much-needed improvement from the iPhone 5, or making room for something new?

iPhone 5S parts appearances continue to surface around the web, with many people beginning to wonder if the iPhone 5S could indeed show up in June. While that prospect is highly unlikely — we still don’t have iOS 7 beta — the cavalcade of new parts is a good sign; it shows that the iPhone 5S is indeed on track for a late summer release. Last week, we reported on a few 5S parts coming to the surface — a motherboard, complete with camera component and vibrator motor. a new round of photos, however, show a new of inner hardware components that suggest a different set-up for the iPhone 5S.

Is this rearranging of the iPhone 5S components a fix for the iPhone 5, or is Apple making room for one big hardware feature? Read More

It appears that the long-anticipated appearance of “Google Glass” has at least begun to make its way onto the tech scene. Today, Google unveiled “OK Glass,” which the company put on display as its answer to Apple’s Siri. The difference? OK Glass is voice command with a new piece of hardware: camera, monitor, and microphone-equipped eyewear. Read More

Apple has continued to make serious inroads into the business sector with its iPhone. But Blackberry’s sleek, new Z10 seeks to offer business users hardware features that trump the iPhone 5 from a business perspective.

Business users have always been the bread and butter for Blackberry. With its iconic (or some would call “outdated”) qwerty thumb boards, their smartphone designs, while seemingly antiquated by consumer stands compared to the iPhone, Android, and Windows 8-based competitor models, continued to appeal to business professionals long after Blackberry’s designs lost total touch with pop culture. It was only over the course of the past few years that Apple and Android really started to suck up even business users from Blackberry’s market share.

With the Blackberry Z10, we see the company once again looking to penetrate the smartphone market, and while the design is decidedly channelling the iPhone 5, Blackberry will once again look to appeal to business and casual users alike. with all of that being said, how does the iPhone 5 and Blackberry Z10 stack up against one another? Read More

Even without a smartphone to compete with Google and Apple, Facebook’s graph search is going to be a headache for Google Search — and has effectively leapfrogged Apple own plans to enter the search market.

If following the news and rumors of mobile gadgets and hardware is your game, then yesterday’s “big announcement” from Facebook probably fell way short of the mark you for in terms of excitement. The unveiling of Facebook’s new Graph Search is a less tangible product to wrap one’s head around. Doesn’t Facebook already have a search feature?

Yes, they do, but Graph Search is actually a big thing for the search market — and for avid Facebook users (all billion of them). In case you were unaware, revenues from online ads are way down — especially for Google AdWords and Facebook. While Google appears to be flailing for solutions to fix this problem, Facebook is circling the wagons: they’ve recently limited the reach of posts on Facebook pages in order to force businesses into using Facebook ads to reach a larger audience, and now Graph Search will leverage Facebook’s deep banks of personal user data to to keep its users from leaving Facebook — thus being exposed to more advertising.

This sort of thing is Google’s dream — and Apple’s nightmare. Read More

The tech media is making a lot out of the rumors from China that the iPhone 5S is in “pre-production.” Even if that’s true, there still would not be enough lead time for a Q1 2013 iPhone 5S release date.

Stories on tech blogs persist that an iPhone 5S release date for sometime in the first quarter of 2013 is a distinct possibility. Citing a questionable report from the China Times, which was translated using Google Translate, it appears that the iPhone 5S has already entered “pre-production,” putting it in line with an early 2013 release.

But is this even close to being a realistic projection for an iPhone 5S release?

Tech Crunch appears to have a more realistic timeframe:

Assuming, for a second, that these rumors have any truth to them, an iPhone 5S beginning test production in December and ramping up to full shipping volumes early next year would likely hit store shelves right around six months from when the iPhone 5 was released.

Based on Tech Crunch‘s assumption, the iPhone 5S could possibly be in line for a WWDC release. Of course, that would also most likely require an alpha release of iOS 7 at the same time, as Apple typically ensures that the new iOS is ready to go for its latest iPhone iteration. We’ll know by the early spring if that will be the case. But you’ll recall that there were testing rumors for the iPhone back in early April of this year, which conforms with Tech Crunch’s estimation.

So is June a possibility? Yes, a slight one. But Q1 2013? Fat chance.

I took a look back into the iPhone 5 News Blog‘s annals of rumor coverage, and I found a commonality: pre-production doesn’t mean a whole lot. It’s really just a fancy term for testing prototypes. For all we know, there are currently a few iPhone 5S “species” floating around the Cupertino campus, and because Foxconn may have churned out a couple hundred of each, that’s called “pre-production.”

A good barometer for when we are about 3 months out from an iPhone announcement is when the chip manufacturers begin to ramp up production. Read, for example, Charles Moore’s article from back on June 17th, 2012 about Qualcomm, Broadcom, STMicroelectronics, NXP, Texas Instruments (TI) and OmniVision pumping out processors for iPhone 5 production. That was almost three months to the day before the official announcement of the iPhone 5. Since we can expect a new processor on the iPhone 5 — the iPhone 4S got one — we’d probably need to be hearing right now from Gene Munster or some other supply chain guru about a chip ramp-up to even have a chance of an iPhone 5S release date in March, 2013.

Originally posted by Michael Nace on the iPhone 5S News Blog.

From The Atlantic Wire

The longtime rival U.S. mobile carriers are vying for position in the iPhone market. AT&T has appeared to have drawn first blood in iPhone 5 sales.

Just when it seemed like the long-held AT&T and Verizon rivalry had simmered down in the tech media, the appearance of the iPhone 5 has once again rekindled the debate over who is indeed the best carrier for the world’s most high-profile smartphone. After Sprint — a distant third in the U.S.’s mobile carrier market — made headlines last week according to a non-scientific survey that its own iPhone 5 units offer the best call clarity, AT&T has made some news by claiming iPhone 5 sales dominance over Verizon.

Read More

The iPhone 5 News Blog was started on August 22nd, 2010. From that day until the iPhone 5′s September 12, 2012 announcement, this little tech rumor blog has had almost 11 million visits. Thank you for time and participation into making the blog a fun, interesting online community of readers and commenters!

It’s amazing to think that a blog theme that cost $35 bucks turned into such a burgeoning community of tech enthusiasts, but it sure has. Yesterday, in the midst of Tim Cook’s presentation of the iPhone 5, the blog had 725 people on it. Take a look at the stats from Google Analytics’ real-time visitor data:

Typically, the blog has anywhere from 40 to 60 people “sitting” on it at one time. When big websites like The Drudge Report pick up our stories, we typically have upwards of 400 on the blog at one time. But having 725 was an incredible sight to behold (and the reason why the blog got really slow).

Yesterday wasn’t the biggest traffic day we ever had — that came on May 2nd, when we had 153,203 visits in just one day (the day of the “UPS” story), and the iPhone 4S announcement day broke 100,000 as well. But we had a ton of visitors yesterday, to be sure.

The reason why I wanted to share these stats with you is that it shows how the readers and commenters of this blog really made it into what it became — a kind of “iPhone 5 hangout.” We didn’t break a whole lot of news here, and the blog itself never had the features and breadth of other tech blogs. But what it did — and hopefully will continue to have — is a dynamic interchange of passion, excitement, criticism, and conjecture about how technology impacts our culture. I think that’s why following tech rumors has become a kind of hobby unto itself — prognosticating about future technology is nothing new, and it’s a pastime that implicitly reveals more about the people themselves who use the technology than the technology itself.

So, that’s why we’re going to continue the prognosticating of the next iPhone over at the iPhone 6 News Blog. It’ll be a new chapter for Apple, and for us all.

The iPhone 5 News Blog still has work yet to do. We’ll be reporting on post-announcement iPhone 5 news here — there’s bound to be plenty more made in the months to come.

On behalf of myself, Charles, Sven, and Erik who helped immensely in the tech side of the side, we thank you for reading and commenting daily. We never take it for granted.

By Michael Nace

With the inevitability of a 4G LTE iPhone 5, the tech media is beginning to report on the technical complexities of an LTE iPhone 5 in the world market. For the U.S., can Sprint offer a truly 4G iPhone 5, and will it be big success for them?

We haven’t heard or talked too much about Sprint lately in relation to the iPhone 5. Left in a kind of mobile Purgatory, Sprint appears to be treading water as usual in the marketplace. It was well documented last year that Sprint was rolling the dice on the iPhone, in spite of the fact that their deal with Apple was not going to be a winning short-term proposition. The gambit for Sprint, however, was that they could lock in more or their subscribers long term, since losing customers to the dreaded “churn” has been a real thorn in their side. In addition, their industry-leading flat rate data plan was to be a lure for on boarding customers for their eventual 4G rollout.

Well, with the iPhone 5 set to be 4G LTE, here is where it will pay off — assuming the Sprint 4G LTE iPhone 5 really materializes on Sprint after all. Read More

Modern technology has done a great to deal to improve communication, business productivity, medicine, and other critical aspects of life. But it also provides the basis much of our entertainment as well. And no company’s products constitute “fun” more than Apple’s gadgets.

There was a time — not too long ago — where video games were the domain of children, and computers were only capable of either running games or business applications. Few people were able to imagine how other elements of entertainment would come to home and mobile computing — things like music, video, the internet, social media, and a million other technological diversions.

In this way, the iPhones and iPads of the world have become grownups’ toys.

But the entertainment factor of the iPhone and iPad is certainly not lost on the younger generation, either. More and more apps are being crafted with the youth demographic in mind. And by “youth,” I don’t necessarily mean “teenager” — that age bracket has had its share of online entertainment for quite some time now. A newer movement in app development is to make games and apps that blur the lines between education and fun. The iPad, in particular, has become a very effective tool in exposing children to mobile computing and gesture-controlled apps. Because of this, a new generation is springing up behind up whose little fingers know how to peruse the iPhone and iPad as well, if not better, than we do.

I recently asked my 6 year-old son to try to collect his thoughts on how we views the iPhone and iPad. This is what he typed:

Hi, I am Elliott. I am 6 years old .

I love the iPad because of the apps.

Here are some apps that I like:

For instance, angry birds space is going to be my favorite app.

I like it because of the birds and pigs  come on play it.

We have to kill the pigs always.

I don’t like monster dash It’s a bad app.

I like the I  pad  and Iphone to use it to play  apps.

Here is  a new product from apple.

Next we have the Iphone It’s cool.

Also angry birds is also a fun app for Iphone.

Moody monster is ok.

Fruit ninja puss in boots is good too.

Of course, Elliott focuses on the arcade variety of apps in our Apple ecosphere, but the fact is, the iPhone and iPad afford him the opportunity to practice math, spelling, astronomy, history, and other subjects. It even seems as if the format of the iPad makes it easier to expose Elliott to academic concepts that are a bit more advanced than what he gets taught at school. Elliott seems to agree:

What’s better a computer the Iphone or Ipad?

I choose  Ipad because it has a big screen.

And don’t have a mouse.

It’s true that the iPad is clearly well-suited for the classroom environment — much more so than even the laptop. Steve Jobs had a vision of the iPad — perhaps as a modern-era stand-in for the old chalk slate of yesteryear — as a learning device that would lend all kinds of educational benefits to students from kindergarten on up, giving young students the benefit of developing fine motor skills and rudimentary concepts.

There’s no doubt that the educational factor in Apple products — and particularly the iPad — was a passion for Steve Jobs. now that he is gone, we can only hope that Tim Cook and the rest of the Apple team remain as committed to continuing to make its products accessible to the youth going forward. But Elliott offers Cupertino plenty of encouragement to keep pressing on with their good work:

There are great products by apple.

Keep up the good work apple.

You can do it apple.

The iPhone 5 News Blog fact-checks paid Network World troll John Cox and his cynical weekly mischaracterizations of the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 rumor mills.

Network World blogger John Cox appears to make some portion of his living these days trolling the various tech-related websites included in the Google News aggregate who speculate on the iPhone 5 and iPad 3. Espousing journalistic integrity, Cox regularly seeks to expose the blog posts from these tech websites — including the iPhone 5 News Blog — as shoddy, irresponsible journalism. It remains to be seen why it hasn’t dawned on Mr. Cox that blogs such as this one are not by any means staffed by bona fide news journalists (we’re pretty clear about that on our About Us page, which states “We do not ‘break news’ here.”)

At the same time, John Cox essentially does exactly what we do here — just one abstraction level farther away from the original story. His hook in every article is, “You read it here second.” That’s actually not true: you, dear reader, read it here second — you read it third in Cox’s article, along with his flippant tone, misquotes, and mischaracterizations.

Mr. Cox apparently fails to understand or enjoy the fun of speculating, opining, and discussing rumored Apple gadgets. And nor do his readers, as most of his roll-up articles fail to garner more than a couple supportive comments. However, since no one is holding Cox’s accounts to account, we thought we’d start a little column, entitled the Troll-Up.

You read it here fourth:

One of Cox’s riffs is to deride bloggers for referring to “many people.” “many analysts,” or “many stories,” as opposed to listing all of them in our blog posts. He takes aim at InRumor first:

“Nicole” at InRumor starts her post, headlined “Will the iPhone 5 be released as ‘The New iPhone’?” with a quote from Apple CEO Tim Cook, concluding this week’s new iPad announcement: “Across the year, you’re going to see a lot more of this kind of innovation.”

Apparently, calling the Next iPhone the new iPhone is the height of this kind of innovation, in Nicole’s eyes.

Not just some people, but “many people” are confused by Apple’s name game with the new iPad, Nicole declares.

Wait — so, many people weren’t confused by Apple’s name game with the new iPad? Like you, I follow Google News all day, every day, and there were articles up and down the news wire reporting on the confusion and discussion that came out of the New iPad launch event. It had been widely reported that the New iPad would be either “iPad 3″ or “iPad HD” — no one saw “the New iPad” coming. Even Phil Schiller admitted that they chose not to give the New iPad a conventional name in order to defy expectations. When expectations are defied, people get confused. And when Apple does it to the iPad, many people get confused.

Cox takes aim at me on this as well:

If Nicole is confused, Michael Nace at iPhone5NewsBlog seems to be enduring an existential crisis brought on by the name of the new iPad and its implications for the name of the new iPhone.

“Apple Enthusiasts Confused Over ‘New iPad’ Name,” his headline declares.

Really? I’m having an existential crisis brought on by the name of the new iPad? According to Cox:

Nace is disconcerted. “[I]t is Apple’s marketing department that has ginned up its own customers by establishing reasonable naming conventions for its devices — and then wantonly breaking them in disconcerting fashion,” he complains. We’ve always wondered where Apple’s wanton naming-convention breakers were lurking.

“With the ‘New iPad,’we don’t really know what we have here,” Nace continues, the angst clearly deepening. “Is this a refresh of the iPad 2, or an overhauled design? According to the preponderance of evidence from the mainstream tech media, the New iPad has not impressed enough to warrant calling it an overhaul. Thus, even though the New iPad is the third-generation iPad, will there be an ‘iPad 3′ next year?”

Disconcerted? Angst-ridden? Apparently so, according to Cox. Cue the flippancy: “Our head is going to explode. Why, oh why is Apple causing us now to wonder if the fourth-generation iPad will actually be called iPad 3?”

Believe it or not, however, Cox actually manages to levy an opinion, all while mocking everyone else for having one. He states it as thus:

Nace and Nicole are among those who truly believe the product name is either “The New iPad” or “New iPad.” Yet clearly it’s not. Apple’s Website product tab simply says “iPad.” The text refers variously to “third-generation” and “new” but both terms clearly are, to use Nace’s own term, “qualifiers,” not the proper name of the product.

But that’s not entirely right, is it? While tabs and URL subfolders at apple.com simply use “iPad,” “The New iPad” is used widespread all over the website, including the store page, to differentiate the new iPad iteration. Even top consumer electronics companies like Case-Mate are using the term “New iPad.” The point here, however, is not that Mr. Cox’s opinion is wrong, but rather that he has the audacity to levy one just after poking fun at other blogs who did the same.

What’s particularly galling about Mr. Cox’s sanctimonious coverage of the iPhone 5 and iPad rumor mills is that he manages to engage in it more decadently than most of the other blogs and writers he derides weekly. In an article entitled, “Apple iPad 3 may have new textured touch interface,” dated March 7th at 10:41 am ET, Cox seemed to have been going for a blockbuster pre-iPad launch bombshell article, hoping to take credit for preempting a revolutionary haptic feature for the iPad 3′s screen.

Mr. Cox wades stridently into the iPad 3 rumor mill: “The iPad 3 may feature what’s known as a haptics screen – one that gives your fingers the sensation of different physical textures, depending on the image they’re touching. The supplier named, in a news story by the British mobile website Pocket-Lint, is Finland-based Senseg, which acknowledged in a separate story last year that it’s “working with a certain tablet maker based in Cupertino,” Calif. Apple is headquartered there.”

Why is it that citing primary sources like Mac Rumors, 9to5Mac, IBT, and the Wall Street Journal — news outlets citied on this blog regularly — never seem to be good enough to pass muster in Mr. Cox’s column, but Pocket-Lint is a super-credible source? Even Cox himself admits that the basis of the rumor is a result of suggestions: “Pocket-Lint’s Stuart Miles stitches together some suggestive “no comment” comments from Senseg executives, with a hands-on experience of the technology at Mobile World Congress in Spain earlier this month.”

Are you kidding me? This is as speculative and rumorish as anything else Cox mocks in his articles. Besides which, the haptic feedback patent is as old as the hills — it dates back to the summer of 2010 — and it is total rumor mill fodder.

Mind you: at face value, I have no problem whatsoever with Mr. Cox’s article — that’s the kind of thing I and many other bloggers do on a daily basis on our respective blogs. I just think we’d all like to see John Cox play by the same rules he criticizes other blogs for breaking. Until then, his weekly rumor roll-ups will continue to smack of hypocrisy.

People like John Cox have long complained about rumor mills, and the fact that there is seldom “hard news” to report on. To not enjoy or appreciate the fun of speculation is fine — but to both mock and engage in it simultaneously in the guise of a “roll-up” article would seem to be worthy of a response. Hence, the “troll-up.”

By Michael Nace