This may come as a surprise to you, but most owners don't upgrade their phones every year.
What good is the A5 when the A4 can handle everything that iOS5 has to offer? You can talk all day about FEATURE UPGRADES, but that is just not good enough for a 15 month upgrade. Everything that iOS5 has can be handled by the 4 so what incentive is there for iPhone 4 owners to upgrade?
Sure, millions of people will buy the iPhone 4S if that's what it ends up being, but imagine the millions of people who are going to read how much of a waste of an upgrade the phone is if it simply upgrades the camera and the freaking processor.
By the time this releases, most AT&T launch day purchasers will be eligible to upgrade.
And what about the millions around the rest of earth who have had the iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4 on sale and most on contract then huh? I know plenty of people with the standard 18 to 24 month contract for the iPhone and they didn't get an iPhone 4 cause they could not upgrade so to state 'no one' will upgrade to an iPhone 4s cause they all have the iPhone 4 is just plain wrong!
Go and play with an iPad and an iPad 2 side by side with iOS 4 and then come crawling back as you will have seen the big difference a 'small' CPU upgrade has made.....
And what about the millions around the rest of earth who have had the iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4 on sale and most on contract then huh? I know plenty of people with the standard 18 to 24 month contract for the iPhone and they didn't get an iPhone 4 cause they could not upgrade so to state 'no one' will upgrade to an iPhone 4s cause they all have the iPhone 4 is just plain wrong!
This is the most idiotic statement I've ever heard.iOS does not require a big screen due to the way it works, Android does due to the way 'it' works.
I'm talking about iphone 4 users upgrading exclusively. I said nothing about 3GS and previous users.
This is the most idiotic statement I've ever heard.
a 3.5" android screen is just as painful to use as a 3.5" iPhone screen. You either have micro vision and can browse the web on these tiny things, or you don't and would like a larger screen. It's got nothing to do with how "it works".
Wasn't Apple supposedly testing iP5s in iP4 housings? That's probably all this is. Either that or a part for the cheaper 4 variant. Either way, I'm pretty confident the 5 will have SOME sort of design change. I love the design of the iP4, but at the same time it doesn't strike me as a design that Apple can reuse next generation, it's too unique and not enough universally loved. They have to find some kind of middle ground between the 2G/3G/3GS and the 4's designs.
Launch day purchasers number in the couple of millions. You think those dedicated to buy the first day won't again? I was, and still am. A hefty amount in the line with me seemed similar in nature. If you can upgrade at the discounted rate and pay for your new iphone by selling your old one, who wouldn't do that?
loEFFINGl
Do you think Apple employees sit back in there offices and think "Those iPhone 4 owners don't matter because most of them don't upgrade every year anyway! Let's just do a minor upgrade to save money, and give those 3GS people something to buy this time!!!!" If you do, you need to grow something called a brain.
Most iPhone buyers are not gadget geeks like we are.
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You need to not insult other posters. It's against the rules.
I didn't say Apple weren't going to do a major upgrade, that's all we've had every year. The iPhone 5 will be the upgrade. I'm betting the iPhone 4 won't even see an upgrade, aside from a world chip. It'll be the same iPhone 4 that was put on sale last June, same as the iPhone 3GS currently sold is the same iPhone 3GS that was put on sale in June 2009.
But again, most iPhone 4 owners won't upgrade. The tech gadgets geek that just must have the latest will, but they are far from the majority of owners.
You need to not insult other posters. It's against the rules.
I would put my life on the fact that if they release a new iPhone, a newly designed iPhone, MORE iPhone 4 users will buy than if they release a 4S type of device.
actually it seems insulting Apple, Steve Jobs, and Apple users in general is apparently approved.... It's defending against such insults that's not welcome.
Unlike in the past when they kept last year's device as the entry level option as it was just a single model, with iPhone 4 they have two fundamentally different models in GSM & CDMA version.
It makes sense to unify them based on the Qualcomm radio that can support both GSM & CDMA at the same time. They are moving out of Infineon completely, likely will be able to get better pricing on the Qualcomm part considering it's use in every cellular device they make going forward. Makes sense for whatever 'cheap' iPhone to be built around it.
The question of A4 vs. A5 for the cheap phone is more interesting. Both are manufactured using the same 45nm process at Samsung fabs. The A5 has 2.3x the die size of the A4 which is significant. Inside the package there's also 512M of LPDDR2 compared to 256MB of LPDDR of A4. It's hard to see A5 being selected for the cheap device given these facts.
A4 in an A5 package? That would allow them to use a common PCB for both cheap and regular iPhones. No biggie to make two PCB versions just fitting the physically smaller A4 in place of A5 for the cheapo phone.
8GB only for the cheap guy is almost guaranteed. Not sure what flash prices were doing lately but I feel they'll stick to 16/32GB offerings, rather than 64GB on the new ones.
One area of potential cost savings is the display. They produce iPod touches with the same size same resolution screens and look how much they sell them for - unsubsidized! The screen is noticeably worse than the iPhones but hey we're talking a real cheap phone here.
There's not going to be a 4S. It's going to be a 5. It might be in the same chassis as the iPhone 4, but you know what ? It'll still be a major upgrade like the 3GS was from the 3G.
Again, guys, it's simple. 2009, Apple sold the iPhone 3G for 99$ and the 3GS for 199$/299$. 2010, iPhone 3GS for 99$, iPhone 4 for 199$/299$. 2011 is going to be iPhone 4 for 99$, iPhone 5 for 199$/299$.
Explain to me, without a design change, what "major upgrade" is going to be. The screen can't be made any better as far as resolution. The only thing left is to make the camera higher resolution, and to make the device even faster.
Both of which aren't necessary to function properly.
So please, let me know what would make anybody using an iPhone 4 buy this iPhone 5 you are describing.
Explain to me, without a design change, what "major upgrade" is going to be. The screen can't be made any better as far as resolution. The only thing left is to make the camera higher resolution, and to make the device even faster.
Both of which aren't necessary to function properly.
So please, let me know what would make anybody using an iPhone 4 buy this iPhone 5 you are describing.
You do know that the upgrade from 3G to 3GS was quite huge in terms of features and functionality, right?
Granted it didn't look any different, which some people can't get beyond, it was quite a "major upgrade".
Will the iPhone 5 get the same treatment... we'll all see... but that's a dumb statement in it's own cuz how can u not expect a "major upgrade" from 4 to 5 right? Numbers don't lie...![]()
Nothing in iOS 5 requires a faster processor. Not. One. Thing. It is completely compatible with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS.
So, explain to me how you sell the iPhone 5? Regular users don't care about processor speed on their phones -- and rightly so, since a processor is only useful if it adds additional functionality. You could have a 9 GHZ processor in your phone, but if software only requires a 1 GHZ, you are just wasting extra cycles.
Nerds get excited about processors. Regular people get excited about features. If a processor doesn't add new features, it may as well not exist in the minds of anyone with common sense.
Cuz you can't sell to the mass a new iPhone (that looks like the previous iPhone) on software alone. It just doesn't work.