What to Expect at the iPhone 5 Launch on Oct 4 - Technology - Communication

There is no rumor, no guesswork, Apple has started sending invites for an iPhone event at Apple's Cupertino campus on Oct. 4.

Okay, I am getting ahead of myself a bit. The invite does not explicitly mention an iPhone 5. It just promises we'll talk about the iPhone.

This will be Apple's first iPhone event since June 2010, when it released the iPhone 4. iPhone 5 demand is expected to be strong, thanks to the lack of a phone release this summer and the addition of the iPhone on the Verizon network. Sprint is also expected to get the iPhone.

Rumormill has it that the tech giant is also likely to unveil a second, cheaper iPhone model based off the current iPhone 4. The event will be the first with Tim Cook as CEO.

The new iPhone has been rumored to have an 8 MP camera, 1 GB of RAM, an aluminum back, a larger screen and a slew of other upgrades. Apple is also expected to unveil a new Assistant feature for iOS 5 and will bring some special guests on stage.

A Major Redesign

Shortly after Apple unveiled iOS 5, the cloud-friendly operating system that will soon reside inside current and future iPhones, there was speculation that the iPhone 5 would look almost exactly like the iPhone 4. The innards would be different, but most people could simply swath iPhone 5's in the same cases as their previously adored iPhone 4s.

But soon enough, some eagle-eyed folks spotted new iPhone cases that would in no way house current iPhones or the doppelganger iPhone 5. Answer? The iPhone 5 will be radical design departure. Some believe it will be thinner, or perhaps tapered. Others insist it will be wider.

Personally, I love the current design. I know, antenna attenuation nearly ruined the initial iPhone 4 launch, but my Verizon model moved the antenna bar breaks around and I rarely, if ever, lose signal. Plus, I don't want a wider phone (read "bigger") phone.

A Faster Phone

Duh! Even if we didn't know about the A5 chip, Apple's custom dual-core CPU, why would Apple do a major product launch without raising the performance bar? We rely on our smartphones to do more every day; they simply have to get more powerful -- as any good computer should, under Moore's Law. Apple will also likely increase the amount and quality of RAM--which always has a big impact on performance. These changes will be necessary if Apple does some of the other things we've been speculating about.

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