I agree. I like the fact that all the extra features that some people seem to think are the only things that count as real innovations, e.g. extra sensors such as motion and fingerprint, have been added so now we're left with an increase in screen size next year and it's going to be really interesting to see how good an engineering job Apple can do with that in terms of going up to something like a 4.7" screen with the minimum possible impact on overall device size, weight and power consumption. It's going to take hundreds, probably thousands, of innovative design changes for the internals that some people seem to disregard but are really important to people who appreciate all the hidden effort that goes into good design.
For size a 4.7" 16:9 screen is going to be about 59mm wide and the current iPhone is 58.6mm wide. Going almost edge-to-edge but allowing 3 or 4 mm either side for the casing and a bit of bezel would give a new width of somewhere between 65mm and 67mm, i.e. less than a cm wider than the 5s. With a bit of reduction in the speaker and home button areas Apple could probably maintain the same height and, so that they keep as much battery volume as possible, I wouldn't expect them to change the thickness much if at all.
Weight will be interesting. Can they reduce the density of components such as the screen and the casing enough to offset the increased volume and actually keep the weight the same? I doubt that but I would hope that it would at least keep below the weight of the old iPhone 4 which would be impressive for an iPhone with a 4.7" screen to be lighter than the old 3.5" iPhone although in fairness Samsung's S4 is actually lighter than the old iPhone 4, I guess that glass back really added to the weight of the iPhone 4.
For power consumption I'm really hoping that Apple will pull something out of the bag here and not only maintain the battery life of the 5s while at the same time going to a bigger screen but will actually be able to do better than that and give a boost to battery life, maybe even a significant one. That'll be a big challenge as well.
As for other new stuff, I suppose that cameras get better ever generation so that's virtually a given.
Maybe the iPhone 6 will finally get NFC hardware if Apple eventually realises that there are countries outside of the USA, many of which have widespread deployment of RFID technology (e.g. 34.5 million contactless cards issued and 158 thousand contactless terminals installed in the UK and that number goes up every month), but I'm not optimistic. I'm getting increasingly annoyed with Apple for ignoring RFID technology and, if they really do start promoting some contactless payment system that's incompatible with the terminals that by this time next year will probably be in almost every shop and restaurant in the UK (and some other countries are further ahead than the UK in this) I'll probably switch to an NFC-enabled Android phone.
- Julian
