Preview - The New iPhone - What We Know and What We Hope We Know

Its getting to be that time of year again. After taking a longer than average 16 month break between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4s, the iPhone is now firmly entrenched in the Fall release window for all future releases. September-October is the perfect spot for new iPhones to come out because the mad rush of holiday shopping will be right around the corner. So what can we expect this year? I will break down what we know and what we hope we know.

What we know:
The New iPhone, as I believe it will be called is going to be coming out sometime in the next 2 months, as upticks in parts manufacturing have already confirmed. The only real hard facts we have on The New iPhone come on the software side of things, meaning that some older iPhones (4 and 4s mainly) can also make use of these features, but we'll touch on a few of them anyway.

The first iOS 6 feature will be Maps. Apple has dropped their partnership with Google Maps for this iteration of iOS in favor of their own Maps app. This new Maps will offer turn-by-turn navigation, real time traffic updates, and 3D flyover views of major cities. Siri will also be getting smarter in iOS6 (The Siri we know right now is still just a beta). An entirely new feature is Passbook, which will be a smart way of keeping your airline tickets, movie tickets, coupons, and retail store cards all saved on your phone for easy access right when you need it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there will be at least one more big surprise feature on the software side of things that we haven't seen yet but it might be that for The New iPhone the hardware will be the biggest surprise.

What we hope we know:
(The following is all going to be rumors and my opinions)
To compete in the ever expanding smart phone market The New iPhone is going to have to go big or go home and I mean that literally. If my sources are to be believed The New iPhone will drop the 3.5 inch screen that has been dwarfed in the shadow of gigantic Android monstrosities and go for a large but not cumbersome 4 inch 16:9 screen. The new screen size will keep the iPhone in the game with other phones, making movie watching and web browsing that much easier but still allowing the device to be comfortably pocketable.

The New iPhone may also be dropping the back glass panel and going for a solid, two-tone, aluminum (or liquid metal?) unibody enclosure to save on space. Along with new thinner screen technology for the front panel, this should allow more than enough room on the inside to beef up the specs of the processor, memory, battery, etc. If past trends continue we will also likely get a camera upgrade as well (fingers crossed for a higher quality front facing camera). Other new additions we can see in the supposedly leaked photos are the new mini dock connector and mini sim card slot both of which Apple has been pushing for.

Things we can't see in photos specifically but can still hope for are 4G LTE support and NFC. We will have to wait and see what the final product looks like and pray that it surpassed our expectations. Another rumor flying around is the elusive 7 inch mini iPad which may be shown off at the same time as The New iPhone. The iPhone event is said to take place September 12th with the product releasing 9 days after that.

Source: engadget iLab Factory