What to realistically expect with the new iPhone tomorrow




The new iPhone is coming tomorrow. That’s a fact. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, there’s very little we know for sure about the new iPhone, or any other product that Apple may chose to announce at tomorrow’s event. That said, there are a couple of things that we can deduce simply based off of the limited amount of information we have.

1) The new iPhone will have a longer 4″ display with a 1136×640 resolution.
This is just a given at this point. Every leaked part, rumored information, and line of code analyzed leading up to this announcement has just made certain at this point that the new iPhone will have an elongated display that measures 4″ diagonally, featuring a 1336×640 display. The simulator included in the iOS 6 SDK already allows users via some small tweaks to adjust resolution to exactly that, resulting in a single extra row of icons on the Springboard.

2) The new iPhone will have a two tone design similar, remain similar to the iPhone 4/4S.
This one comes from the supply chain more than anything else – the new iPhone will remain, overall, very similar to the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S. Don’t expect any major, groundbreaking changes like the jump from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4. The backside of the iPhone will likely be half the color of the phone (black or white, just like all other generations other than the first), with aluminum parts on the back.

3) A new, smaller dock connector incompatible with all your current iPod, iPad, and iPhone accessories.
Since the introduction of the first iPod back in 2001, Apple has had the same dock connector that worked with the same accessories as one big ecosystem. (Well, almost – there was a switch from FireWire to USB that did cause an issue or two.) Not anymore – the new iPhone will almost certainly introduce a new, smaller 18-pin dock connector, which will presumably make its way to all other Apple products within a generation. Yes, this means your current accessories likely won’t work with the new iPhone.

4) Headphone jack on the bottom.
The new iPhones, much like the iPod touch, will have the headphone jack on the bottom. This is based off of supply chain leaks. There has also been some evidence suggesting that the new iPhone will introduce a totally redesigned pair of headphones, but we’ve seen a pretty limited amount of rumors surrounding that thus far, so that’s far from a certainty.

5) It’ll have new internals.
This is pretty vague, but we really don’t know much more than that. It’ll almost certainly have somewhat upgraded internals. I expect the SoC to be upgraded in some capacity – perhaps to the third-generation iPad’s A5X? Or will we be seeing something more in the direction of an A6 – which has also been seen referenced in iOS’s code as early as iOS 5.1? We all know the iPhone 4S has what Apple calls one of the best smartphone cameras in the world, will we see an upgrade to that as well? What about storage space? A lot is still unknown.

6) No NFC.
A lot of people expected NFC support to make an appearance not only in this year’s iPhone upgrade, but also leading up to the iPhone 4S as well. Unfortunately, all signs points to no such luck once again – something that a lot of tech analysts have also heard.