Its more than iPhone 5 event: iOS 5, iCloud, new iPod touch, new iPod refreshes or even new Apple TV.
Updated: Not sure why its voted down. I don't work for Apple.
Translucent Home-Button (maybe out of glass).
Contains multiple color LEDs for notification system. If you get an email your Home-Button 'pulses' green and so on.
If Apple does implement it, my guess is a single-color, white LED backlighting the roundrect label on the home button. "Pulse home button" becomes an additional on/off switch for each app's notifications in Notification Center.
But, this creates a smaller DPI and kind of ruins the retina display.
Think scaleable vector graphics vs pixel. But we'll see.
Highly unlikely. They couldn't make it much bigger without either making it uncomfortably close to the device border, or making the device bigger.
> longer battery life
Quite likely. The iPad 2 has better battery life than the original iPad, with a very similar battery. They might be able to get in a process shrink for the iPhone 5, too.
> faster 801n
As I understand it, this would require multiple antennae, so probably not likely for space reasons.
Refreshes have frequently gone out in the past without any sort of event and I'd guess that this would be the case this time.
A shame but maybe the new MBP in 2012 will incorporate Ivy Bridge.
It will be interesting to see how Cook performs since his style is very low-key compared to Jobs. There is no doubt Schiller, Forstall, Ive and Cue will be there to lend assistance.
It will be a hard sell to get Verizon customers to pass up LTE for the next two years when there are already a few really good Android phones with LTE and most major cities have LTE coverage right now. Not to mention the many more cities will have LTE in just a few months.
I suppose that is just a sacrifice Apple will have to make. It will not matter for AT&T or most of its other carriers around the world.
Last quarter Verizon had a couple LTE Android handsets. They sold 1.2M LTE devices (both handsets and modems) while they sold 2.3M iPhones. The iPhone 5 will be coming 1-2 quarters later, but a lack of LTE might not be as big a deal for the majority of users as it is for, well, people who read this site. Verizon should be posting third quarter numbers in a month so we'll see if LTE has taken off in device sales since then.
Likewise, many users might appreciate the battery life of not having LTE. I don't like not having the latest technology or the best processor. However, I know that in my laptop my quality of using it would be better served by lower temperatures than the faster processor that I have. Likewise, I know that I would be better served by a longer battery life than faster web access on my phone (again, a personal statement not necessarily applicable to you). Just as it is a hard sell to get a phone that won't have the new technology and be stuck with it for 2 years, it's also a hard sell to get a device with significantly reduced battery life knowing that batteries will lose a good bit of capacity over those two years. And which is going to be more meaningful to your usage? It isn't a rhetorical question as users have different usage patterns.
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Frankly, it's a little surprising to me that Apple has waited until October to release an update. I understood why a June/July update wouldn't come with LTE. The chipsets that would offer decent battery life were a good 6-9 months out. However, the Qualcomm MDM9615 (which people have been thinking would be the chipset for the first LTE iPhone) is going to be shipping in samples in "late 2011" and volume in early 2012. That makes the timing a bit harsh. Will this iPhone have a lifespan of 6 months after the last one lasted 15 months? I don't think Apple can wait until October 2012 for an LTE iPhone given that better chipsets are coming soon.
You never know what Apple can pull off. With their cash on hand and chip design abilities, it's possible that it will include LTE. While I don't think the current Verizon LTE lineup offers the size/battery life that Apple would demand to go LTE, the chipsets that would allow that are too close for Apple to be releasing an iPhone that will last an entire year. I can see a non-LTE iPhone selling well through 1Q2012 and not costing Apple too much in terms of marketshare. At the same time, I think a non-LTE iPhone would start becoming a hard sell before the 4th quarter of 2012 (a year from this October).
It's why I'm surprised that Apple didn't release a new iPhone on its normal schedule. A non-LTE iPhone then could have been replaced by an LTE iPhone in the March-July 2012 period and not made those who bought the 2011 iPhone feel like they didn't get at least close to a year before it was replaced.
Also, I wonder if putting the current iPad processor into a phone means that this will be the new cycle.
If I'm unfamiliar and ambivalent, I really doubt the public at large is going to even notice.
Unless you're streaming from Netflix or downloading large files, I don't think LTE will make much of a difference to the vast majority of consumers.
For all of what is being said, no one really knows anything which makes the point moot.
What carriers in the US do that? Verizon has no surcharge for LTE.
Sprint's $10 surcharge started out as a surchage on WiMax phones, but is now a surcharge on any smartphone regardless of what radio it's got.
Fallacy--appeal to anonymous authority. Whose accounts? The people who get paid based on page views?
>It will be a hard sell to get Verizon customers to pass up LTE
Again a fallacious argument and appeal to anonymous authority. Do most customers even know what LTE is AND do they care about it? Is it really a motivating factor in purchasing a phone and what evidence do we have of this?
The other dimension besides battery life is size, and all their LTE phones are pretty big size-wise. My Thunderbolt is huge compared to my old Nexus One or my wife's iPhone 4. I don't know if the bigger screen is now what Android manufacturers feel the market wants, but the thing is fairly thick too, and I imagine that's due to having to pack in all the LTE guts.
I think the iPhone, even with 3G, can still hold its own given both the major size and battery life advantages it has.
[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/4240/htc-thunderbolt-review-fi...
If I were Apple, I would be focusing on diversifying the carrier portfolios to gain leverage over the vendors for a good data plan. If Sprint is willing to provide an acceptable LTE plan, give them exclusivity, and to hell with VZ and AT&T.
It gives some well deserved spotlight to that person for their hard work.
It also prevents the company from developing an image that it is entirely dependent on one person for all it's product development, be it true or not.
It's a media event, you use it for maximum media impact, not thanking the staff. If the guy who headed that team is the best person for the job then you give it to him, if he's not then you don't.
At Apple, the head of the team for any major product release is effectively the CEO.
Also, I hate when they say "according to sources". What sources?! At least macrumors states exactly where they get their info from.
