According to a research report from RBC analyst Capital Markets analyst Amit Daryanani, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) rumored lower cost iPhone may not carry a Retina Display. Daryanani cited supply chain checks for his report and mentioned a June/July timeframe for both the iPhone 5S and the lower cost iPhone.

Our supply-chain checks indicate that AAPL is working to launch multiple new phones in the June/July time-frame this year. Specifically, AAPL will launch the iPhone5s and a more affordable but lower-end iPhone at the same time, in either late CYQ2 or early Q3. The low-end iPhone will have the same 4″ form factor as the iPhone5 but will have plastic casing and no retina display. With a lower price-point, AAPL will be able to target a growing and important part of the Smartphone market (sub-$400 price-band).

It is possible that a lower-cost iPhone could omit the Retina Display as that would allow for a better battery life and a cheaper price tag for consumers. However, Daryanani’s report note about the iPhone not carrying a Retina Display conflicts with earlier reports from KGI securities analyst Ming Chi-Kuo who reported that the low cost iPhone would carry a 4 inch display with 326 pixels per inch. This is the same number of pixels on every iPhone model since the release of the iPhone 4 and on every iPod touch since the 4th generation iPod.

Although the lack of a Retina Display does make sense to reduce costs, it is unlikely that Apple will take a step back on its iOS devices and strip away a feature that should be standard on every device. The new display is currently seen on devices in Apple’s iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch lineups and is even rumored to be included in the next generation of the iPad mini.

The Retina Display is also included on the iPhone 4, which is currently free with a two year contract in the United States. Since the release of iPhone 4, the Retina Display has been a standard feature on iOS devices, much like FaceTime on the company’s new releases.

Apple has required all developers to make their applications compatible with the iPhone 5’s and 5th generation iPod touch’s 4 inch Retina Display. This means that the company is making sure that all apps on the App Store are compatible with the current lineup of devices, as well as future devices.

{Via MacRumors}

Apple has been widely rumored to be working on subscription based music streaming service for iOS devices. When Apple purchased LaLa, many believed that the company would introduce a streaming service. However, the purchase turned out to be to acquire talent to develop iTunes Match service.

Evad3rs released their ‘evasi0n’ unthethered jailbreak for iPhone5 on Tuesday and now 9to5Mac points us to hidden radio icons in iOS 6.1 release. Jailbreaking the iPad with evasi0n and then going through the files in Music.app revealed references to “radio button” with icons bearing resemblance to radio streaming icon in iTunes. Further, it was found that the button files are labeled with “buy” in the filename.

Many news publications like Bloomberg and WSJ previously reported on rumors about Apple working on Pandora competitor and cited music label licensing deals as being one of the hurdles being faced by the company. If those rumors are to be believed and with the hidden radio icons being revealed in iOS 6.1 is any indication then we could be seeing Apple announcing a new music subscription service soon.

Apple could be looking at allowing users to stream music tailored to their taste using the genius data and then integrating it with the iTunes store to allow purchase of favourite tracks. iTunes music store was recently made available in 56 new countries and the Cupertino, Calif. based company could now be looking at launching a music streaming service.

Over the past several months, numerous photos have surfaced online, with websites suggesting that they are genuine parts to Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5. Rumors have also pointed to a media event for the release date announcement of iPhone 5 on September 12th.

The most recent leak comes from Apple.pro, which has posted a set of images of what appears to be a fully assembled iPhone 5 front panel with the home button and the front camera installed. The images were originally posted to a photobucket account, which has a track record of Apple leaks, including the thickness of the new iPad and one of the first to release images of a white panel for the next generation iPhone.

These latest images all but confirm that an iPhone 5 is set to be released in the coming weeks and show the home button and front camera attached to the LCD with metal brackets. The front facing camera is now located on the center of the device, similar to the iPad and iPod touch. The iPhone 5 front panel is expected to be attached to the two toned unibody shell, leaked several weeks ago. The shell would also be 4 inches, to match with the LCD screen.

Japanese site Macotakara has also released details suggesting that the square shaped metal piece at the bottom of the leaked panel may in fact be an NFC chip, which can be used to set up credit cards and other wireless features.

Apple’s next generation iPhone 5 is expected to be announced at a media event on September 12th, followed by a release in retail stores on September 21st. The iPhone 5 is also said to be accompanied by a new iPad Mini and the public release of iOS 6.

{Via MacRumors}

Apple’s next iPhone 5  is expected to be released later this year, most likely in the October timeframe when the iPhone 4S was released this past year. Late last week, Apple won the domain iPhone5.com from a small online forum that operated under the name.

The Cupertino company filed a claim with the World Intellectual Property Organization earlier in the month, to secure the iPhone 5 name. Although there have been no credible reports that the next iPhone would in fact be called “iPhone 5″, Apple is just keeping its options open and would reroute the domain back to the iPhone page on Apple.com.

Apple had trouble securing the domain iPad.com as well as iPhone.com in the past, but is looking to acquire any and all possible names for the next generation iPhone, so as to avoid any confusion. Apple’s WWDC conference is coming up next month on June 11, and iOS 6 is expected to be announced and maybe even a developer preview is made available.

The next generation iPhone 5, slated for an October release is rumored to include a larger 4 inch screen, a micro dock connector, LTE connectivity and perhaps even LiquidMetal offerings either on the bezel, stainless steel frame or on the back. Names for the next iPhone remain unclear, even with a number of rumored features, and at this point, iPhone 5 is the best bet until an official announcement is made.

{via iMore}

Apple released the New iPad 3 about a week ago and new rumors about iPhone 5 continue to surface on the web. On Friday, a report from iMore suggested that Apple’s next generation iPhone 5 is expected to release this Fall and will include LTE, as expected and retain the same 3.5 inch screen.

A number of sources have suggested that Apple is looking to upgrade the new iPhone to a 4-inch screen, but iMore’s sources suggest otherwise. The report also suggests that if not the same 3.5 inch screen, it will be “very similar”.

So to sum up, iPhone 5,1 is on track for:

– Similar if not same sized screen (currently 3.5-inch but not set in stone)
– 4G LTE radio
– New “micro dock” connector
– Fall/October 2012 release

The online publication has a good track record of reporting on Apple product announcements, including the March 7th announcement date for the New iPad as well as the addition of LTE. The fast 4G connectivity is widely expected to be included in the iPhone 5, however, a larger screen size is still questionable.

The inclusion of larger battery, LTE and quad-core graphics to support the retina display has raised some concerns regarding heat, data consumption and battery life. It will be interesting to see if Apple will have to let go of iPhone’s thin form factor in order to include LTE and support quad-core graphics.

{via MacRumors}

Apple released iPhone 4S last October, with a very positive adoption and witnessed increase in sales figures when compared with previous launches. However, rumors on the web are already focusing on the upcoming iPhone 5 (sixth gen), expected to debut this September or October. Japanese blog Macotakara reported on Monday that the sixth gen iPhone will arrive in September or October, similiar to the iPhone 4S and will retain the Fall release pattern.

The report also suggested that Apple is looking to keep this announcement cycle for “many years”. This would allow Apple to release the next gen iPhone exactly one year after the 4S debuted in October of 2011. It would not make any sense for Apple to scale back the announcement to June and release a re-designed iPhone only 8 months after the last generation. However, the possibility of Apple looking to introduce new hardware during WWDC 2012 can’t be completely ruled out.

The iPhone launch now occupies the place of the iPod event, usually held the first week of September as the iPhone and iPad begins to gain more attention from Apple. The iPod line has remained unchanged from the previous year and may experience some serious changes in the coming months, with iPod sales declining drastically over the past few quarters.

The launch of a new iPhone 5 in the September / October timeframe works well for Apple and allows them to take advantage of the upcoming holiday season and experience an increase in sales. The iPhone 4S saw a record 37 million units sold during Apple’s December quarter because of the late debut.

There have been many rumors that Apple is looking to switch back to a June release, however based on this report and many others, it appears that the September/October timeframe will be kept for iPhone 5 release.

{via AppleInsider}

Cult of Mac have picked up on an interesting tidbit about a possible second use for the NFC capabilities expected to be included in the iPhone 5. And that would be an ability to function as a virtual key to your Mac user account, so that you can hijack any Mac and make it behave just like your Mac at home. Presumably with the owners permission, of course!

It’s expected that the communications field that a Near Field Communications (NFC) chip, rumored to be included in the iPhone 5 due out next year, will be used to authenticate financial and electronic ticket transactions in stores, at airports and so forth. But this second use is something that could really turn the way we use computers on its head.

Basically the idea is that when your iPhone is in range of any Mac it will be able to provide data related to your Address Book, Keychains, Email Accounts, Apps, and even your desktop background and layout to that Mac so that you can use it as if you were on your own Macintosh at home. When the iPhone is taken away the Mac will then forget all about the iPhone that “hijacked” it, presumably (hopefully) also forget all of your personal data too, and then revert to whatever settings it had before.

It is very likely that this feature will be closely tied to MobileMe. Making that service all the more important to Apple’s customers. If you are anything like me you probably only keep MobileMe around because you are too lazy to find another way to sync years of browser data, passwords you no longer remember, and in the vain hope that you might get 5 minutes of fame one day tracking down an iPhone thief!

NFC “mobile computing” could well end up being the must have feature of 2011!Whatever the truth of this rumor is, it is clear that NFC and using your iPhone as a virtual key for authenticating your life is high on Apple’s agenda for next year.

Does this kind of feature make you worry about security? Or resign you to renewing MobileMe for yet another year? Have your say in the comments…

iLounge, which has a reasonable track record when it comes to rumours, is reporting some interesting tidbits about new Apple gear for the end of 2010 / beginning of 2011.

New iPod Shuffle:

The small Apple touch screen that we reported on last month is set to be part of a relaunched iPod Shuffle – with a touch screen.

New iPad:

A smaller 7 inch iPad is set for release at the end of the year. And there may well be higher resolution screens in future iPads which are more akin to the iPhone 4’s Retina display.

This makes sense when one considers the push towards a kind of “Resolution Independence” in iOS that Apple is forging ahead with. In other words devices can have various display resolutions but all run similar User Interfaces visually – with little developer effort. This is a clever move by Apple to side step one of the biggest issues for developers on Android, with its multitude of screen sizes and resolutions.

iPhone 5:

This is the least likely rumor in our opinion.

A repackaged iPhone 4 is set to be launched as an early iPhone 5 model. Perhaps with a revised antenna design, the same aesthetics, but a different internal arrangement.

There are also rumours that Apple is looking to save money with a cut down iPhone 4 Bumper, which is cheaper to manufacture. And that that Bumper will perhaps be packaged with iPhone 4s from September onwards. This makes sense as Apple is already dropping packaging on free iPhone Bumpers going out to existing iPhone 4 users.

We are not sure how much of all of this we buy. But if we had to guess we’d say the iPod Shuffle and iPad Mini / Retina Display rumours are not far off the mark.

Do these predictions sound likely to you? Is there anything else you’d like to see? Let us know in the comments…

Yesterday in Part 2 we looked at iMovie for iPhone, Location Awareness, The iPhone 4’s Gyro, and The Glass Case of the iPhone 4.

Today we’ll look a little bit more at the iPhone 4’s overall look and feel, it’s Speed (and battery life) when compared to earlier iPhones, and a few bits and pieces that don’t really fit into any particular category.

The Overall Look & Feel:

Everything about this iPhone screams quality. I’ve already remarked on the heft of the device, and how its glass and steel construction feels cool to touch. But there is another subtle feature to its overall form factor. It really feels incredibly thin. The original iPhone comes closest to the iPhone 4 in this department. The 3G and 3GS feel like they have a beer gut by comparison to both.

But the iPhone 4 feels almost credit card like in its thinness by comparison to all earlier models of iPhone. It is too heavy to comfortably put in your shirt top pocket, but its just about right to put in a jacket pocket.

And, as has been oft repeated by many – including myself, the Stainless Steel frame, and it being slightly proud of the iPhone4’s glass front and back make it feel exactly right in your hands when you hold it to use it as a camera, or to play games which involve motion controls. In some respects this extra grip has gone some way towards making me less fearful of dropping it and breaking the glass, than I am with the current iPod Touch and the 3GS.

The buttons and switches are all solid, and give great feedback when pushed or switched. And the screen is like hard smooth marble to touch, but with just the right amount of friction to make touch activities feel tactile to exactly the correct degree.

Discounting any qualms people may have about the iPhone 4’s performance in any technical department for a moment, the case design, and manufacture quality, as well as the materials used in the iPhone 4’s construction are about as good as it gets in the tech and industrial design industry today.

If the iPhone 4 was a car body it would be a top of the line Porsche, Mercedes or Jaguar – inside and out.

Speed & Battery Life:

The iPhone 4 sports a slightly revised Apple A4 SoC (System on a Chip). Embedded in that device is an ARM Cortex A8, very similar to the one inside the iPad. The iPad is known to run at 1 GHz. It is very clear that for battery life reasons Apple has down clocked the processor in the iPhone 4. But not by a huge margin. Most benchmarks have it coming in at around 800 Mhz. So a cut of 20% in raw horsepower.

Memory wise Apple have done with the iPhone 4 what they should have done with the iPad. They have upped its memory to 512MB. This not only gives a lot more space for multitasking, or suspended apps to hang around in memory. It also gives us a lot more room for tabs to be open in Safari, games to use, and for the system to run smoothly overall.

iOS 4 is noticeably able to handle the kind of tasks that we expect from the iPhone 4, and with far less stuttering than on the 3GS.

Overall the iPhone 4 is around 20% faster at most tasks than the 3GS, and around 35% slower then the iPad. This is across the board on most processor intensive tasks.

When it comes to rendering web pages with lots of graphics the iPhone 4 is on a par with the 3GS. My reasoning for this is because the GPU in the iPhone 4 is working hard to push those 4 pixels for every one that then 3GS and other earlier iDevices are pushing. And this comes back to my caveats in my first iPhone 4 Impressions piece, where I said that we are not going to see a huge leap in graphics performance on the iPhone 4 over the most recent generation of iPhones and iPods.

It is certainly not the end of the world. But it would have been nice if Apple had done something to beef up the GPU in the iPhone 4. But without going to an entirely new GPU they didn’t have much choice. As iOS 4 is refined I expect we may see some improvements to the quite complex rendering pipeline in the iPhone Operating System. Just as we did in revisions of iPhone OS 2.x and OS 3.x on earlier devices. Apple may even decide to turn up the wick a little bit on the iPhone’s SoC, and that may or may not give the graphics a bit of a boost later in its product life cycle.

Having said all that the iPhone 4 is still a very fast beast when compared to all of its immediate rivals. I just always want more!

For more mundane web pages, and general text processing the iPhone 4 is not quite as fast as the Android Nexus One running Froyo, but it’s not far behind, and it sits quite comfortable in the middle of the iPad and the iPhone 3GS in terms of performance.

On pure GeekBench style raw CPU based processing tasks the iPhone 4 comes out a good 20 – 25% faster than the 3GS overall.

All of this performance balancing, and Apple’s decisions on the iPhone 4 lead to one thing. A compromise to give us the best performance possible and still maintain battery life. Just as with iOS 4 “multitasking” Apple have made decisions to ensure that we can surf the web, listen to music, and make calls all day long without trailing a power cord around behind us.

Battery Life:

I’ve done some tests of my own, and also compared my results with other tech experts that I respect to come up with these average results for battery performance on the iPhone 4:

Web browsing over 3G yields around 6.5 hours on the iPhone 4, even with its better performance. That is around an hour and a half longer than on the 3GS.

WiFi browsing tops out at just under 10 hours. An hour or so longer than the 3GS will go. Talk Time is far better than any other mobile phone in its class. At around 7.5 hours it is almost twice the time the 3GS could manage, and the Nexus One is about half of that.

For a quick test on multitasking I had my iPhone 4 run iTunes today while browsing web pages alternately over 3G and Wifi, and checking the odd app from time to time in a repeating pattern throughout the day. My battery ran out after 6 hours. For all of that time my screen was on, and music was playing. That is pretty impressive.

I feel very confident taking my iPhone 4 with me all day and using it as much as I need, and not worrying about charging again until I get home. At a pinch I think I could survive two days without a power point if I was frugal during the second day. Considering how much more is going on on the iPhone 4 when compared to the original iPhone (which has always been great on battery life) that is very impressive – and streets ahead of the iPhone 3GS and 3G.

Final Thoughts:

A lot of differing opinions have been expressed in the press this week about the iPhone 4. At first it launched in an explosion of positive reviews and consumer excitement. Even today stores across the world are either selling out, or sold out already.

And then this reception issue reared its ugly head. It is very clear that some iPhone 4s exhibit a characteristic that can mean that signals get dropped. It is a very well defined and isolated to one small area of the iPhone’s case. And if you have the issue easy to replicate. You can, and should then either take that up with Apple, or simply ignore it by using a carry case. Something that all iPhone users I know have anyway. It also bears repeating that all mobile phones will exhibit this same issue if you hold them in some particular way.

Apple have issued a Press Release today where they explain that the issue with the iPhone 4 is simply the algorithm they use for displaying signal bars on the iPhone 4. In some ways this is true. All cell phones will lose signal if they are insulated by the hand holding them. And Apple argue that their algorithm is misleading people by showing too many bars of signal when in a weak signal area, and that then people are further confused by the signal suddenly dropping away when they touch or squeeze the iPhone 4 case in a particular way.

I am more or less on Apple’s side in this case. But not because I accept their explanation as being the only cause of this problem, or Steve Jobs’ comments that people are “holding the iPhone incorrectly” as being acceptable. I am on Apple’s side because I think that the problem is getting blown out of all proportion by a media scenting blood.

I have used quite a few iPhone 4s this week, and none of them exhibit this problem at all. This makes me very sure that Apple have a manufacturing problem with a small number of iPhones, and not a design problem. A problem which can be fixed for consumers by exchanging faulty iPhone 4s. They also have another problem, which is not actually a signal issue, but the issue they describe with the cell signal strength meter software. I think some people are being misled by Apple’s own cell bar indicator on the iPhone 4, and consequently think they have a faulty iPhone 4, when they don’t. I hope that made sense!

Unfortunately Apple are not dealing with it very well. Their explanation in their Press Release is like something out of a Monty Python script :

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong.

Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

None of this will convince those with problems that they don’t have one. But it also won’t put off those that want an iPhone 4, and look at the problem from the perspective that I think we all should. Some iPhone 4s are not made as well as others.

If you get a bad one, return it. Ask for a new one. Or go buy another brand of phone. Apple do actually suggest this themselves.

As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.

This article is purely about my subjective impressions of the iPhone 4 after having bought one for myself. If you’ll take a leap of faith with me and ignore the reception issue for a minute then I can say that quite honestly this is the mobile phone I dreamed of when I first went into an electronics store in the UK in the late 80’s / early 90’s and paid a small fortune for a Motorola Brick the size of a shoe box. The iPhone 4 is the culmination of all the dreams I had of a Star Trek Communicator when I was a kid, and my own copy of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when I was in my teens, and what I hoped The Apple Newton Message Pad would be.

Quite simply it has the best camera, both for video and stills, that I have ever used on a mobile phone.

The operating system still destroys any other mobile operating system out there for usability and elegance of use.

The GPS is better than some in car GPS systems.

FaceTime is just “sick”. And I mean that in the way it is defined in the urban dictionary vernacular.

And web browsing, emailing and making calls all work fine. More than fine in fact. In my week of use they outstrip anything I have seen on the iPhone 2G, 3G and 3GS by far.

Should You Buy One?

Quite simply.. Yes!

I can’t see a reason not to. If you are still using an original iPhone then the upgrade is a no-brainer. Likewise if you are on an iPhone 3G.

If you are still using a fairly new iPhone 3GS you might want to perhaps wait. You have a fully functional version of iOS 4. And apart from the slight improvements to the GPS unit and the addition of the Gyro in the iPhone 4, you have comparable hardware in your iPhone.

There is the possibility that Apple will move to a dual core ARM Cortex A9 with a vastly improved GPU for the next gen iPhone (iPhone 5 or iPhone 4GS?). In what I believe will be the Apple A5 SoC in an iPhone 5. But it’s going to be a long year for you. And you are going to miss out on some cool stuff.

But I have done that by sticking with my 2G for a long time. And there is no reason you shouldn’t be as happy with your 3GS as I have been with my 2G since the iPhone was first made available to an expectant public.

Game wise I think you are going to see the same quality of entertainment on the iPhone 3GS as you are on the iPhone 4 for some time. And app-wise with the exception of some cool Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality type apps and games you are going to be able to do anything on your 3GS that I can do on my iPhone 4.

But don’t be put off by these reception problems. If it is an issue then Apple will fix it.

If you are unhappy, Apple will exchange it, or refund you.

Well that’s about it for Part 3.

Part 4 will be the end of this series tomorrow. It will be a little shorter, but packed with some cool stuff. I hope you’ve enjoyed it so far.

Do be sure to let me know your thoughts on what I have said in the comments.