Apple have always been a company to keep everyone in as much suspense as possible, it’s all part of their plan to keep us fascinated with them. It’s Apple’s tremendous effort in marketing and branding that has made their products so successful, and so fans hang on every rumour and debate every tiny hint from the company about new products. But even giant companies are susceptible to leaks, and when we discovered these pictures which are allegedly of the new budget iPhone, you can only imagine how excited we were.
We can’t say for sure whether this is the real deal, but we certainly have good reason to believe it is. This picture doesn’t show the new iPhone itself, rather the rear shell of it, but that can give away a lot of hints about what the actual phone will look like.
The most obvious difference to the iPhone 5 is that this phone here has a polycarbonate plastic shell, very similar to the stuff used on the old Apple Macs – whilst it’s a strong statement, and we definitely instantly associate that shiny white with Apple, some fans have criticized the move saying it’s a huge step back from the current aluminium cases. The reason for this is because the new iPhone is supposed to be sold at a lower price point, and of course, polycarbonate looks good but is still relatively cheap to produce.
Well, when we say cheap, we mean cheaper. The new iPhone is supposed to come in at $300, or between £229 and £249, still a bit pricey to be called “budget”, but I suppose in the grand scheme of Apple products, that’s a lot less than you’d pay for anything else.
The polycarbonate shell also means more colours may be available, allegedly red, blue, yellow, black and white.
We guess the shell measures in at around 0.4 to 0.6mm thick, which would make the iPhone itself around 9mm thick, with a height of 120mm and a width of around 60mm, so Apple is still retaining that light and convenient, sleek style even though the price has gone down, but that’s still wider and taller than the iPhone 4/4s.
We’ve also heard rumours the new iPhone will have a might A5 2nd Generation processor, much like the iPad mini, and it may have a 32nm diecast – so I guess that’s some good news that will be received well even by people who don’t like the aesthetics of this phone. We think on top of that the budget iPhone will have a 3.5inch retina screen; like the iPhone 4 – not as big as the iPhone 5 though. I guess they must have shaved a bit off the price of production there! Other similarities to the iPhone 4 include that the budget iPhone will have an alleged 5MP camera.
So it seems to have all the features of the iPhone 4, just in a cheaper shell, and whilst we’re excited for this dangerous new move with Apple’s style, we’re debating whether it’s better to get a used iPhone 4 for that price! Either way, we’ll be finding out what the general consensus is on October 15th when the new phone goes on sale.
What do you think? An exciting new design statement, or a sub-par iPhone 5? The jury’s out on this one.
This guest post was contributed by Holly Powell on behalf of Tactus iPad Case, specialists in Apple accessories.
