Rumoured iPhone 5—possibly, maybe, . . .

I tried very hard to resist posting anything about the new iPhone 5 that Apple may, or may not, be announcing in a couple of weeks. Are they announcing a new iPhone? Or are they going to announce the rumoured iPad Mini? Or something else altogether? You never know with Apple. Maybe the rumoured iTV. Maybe all three . . .

But if the tech writers across the Web have it right then one of the things that they will be announcing is the the ‘new’ iPhone, which may, or may not, be called the iPhone 5.

If the tech writers have it right then then, unlike most of the other major mobile phone manufacturers, Apple are not going for a physically bigger screen—well not much bigger anyway. IF they have it right then the new iPhone, if that is what they are announcing, will have a screen that is physically the exact same width as the current iPhone, but it will be a fraction under half an inch taller; making the whole phone about a third of inch taller than the iPhone 4.

So it will have a slightly longer, but not any wider, screen.

This is kind of an odd move for Apple considering that the market trends show that people are flocking to the larger screen phones from HTC and Samsung. As one writer said, the sort of base size for a mobile phone screen is now considered to be 4.5”.

It will be interesting to see how Apple ‘sell’ their somewhat smaller screen iPhone. It will probably go along the lines of something like … their extensive research has shown that what they are using as the screen width is the optimal size for a mobile phone screen regardless of what people actually prefer or think they want.

So. What else? Well the new phone, if they release one, is supposed to be flatter and lighter. It is also supposed to use the new smaller nano-SIM card (so everyone is going to need to go and get a new SIM card from their providers). It is also supposed to have a completely new dock interface. If this is the case then you would expect that Apple will provide a dock converter of some kind in the box; otherwise everyone’s current Apple iPhone dock accessories are not going to be able to be used and it seems unlikely (to me anyway) that Apple would do that without providing some kind of converter gadget or cable in the box.

From what I have read the new iPhone still does not provide the number one feature requested by users—the ability to use an external SD memory card.

So. Now we wait and see.