While everybody and their grandmothers are speculating about what the iPhone 5 will be like, we decided to check out what it is likely NOT to have.
It has been the most rumoured gadget in a while. Everyone (us included) has been trying to catch a glimpse of the next iPhone (various described as iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and iPhone 4GS, and has also been speculating about what the next Godphone will be like and what it will contain. Well, as a Danish prince in a Shakespearean play so poignantly spoke in a soliloquy, what is not there needs to be balanced against what is. So even as the world (and we too) wonders about what the iPhone 5 will be, we put on our tech Hamlet hat and wondered about what it would not be. And well, we are reasonably certainly it will NOT have the following:
- Expandable memory: We still remember smiling benignly at the first iPhone and remarking that it had no chance of surviving without a memory card slot. Four years down the line, we are eating humble pie (yum!), and an increasing number of manufacturers are going down the fixed Flash memory route. So no, the iPhone 5 is unlikely to have expandable memory. You want more space? Go flying into the cloud!
- Removable battery: Oh yes, we remember the horrified expressions of people who went about saying “We cannot remove the battery! What do we do when the phone hangs?” Well, we are still looking for a solution to that one, although considering the fact that none of the four iPhones we have used has ever truly hung on us, we are not too worried about the absence of a battery that you can get your mitts on and diddle around. We don’t expect Apple will be either. So, yep, no removable battery in the next iPhone either. And the next one either!
- USB port: Apart from bleating about the absence of Flash support (oh yes, oh yes, how much we and close to a hundred million users have missed it!), one of the biggest criticisms levelled against the iPhone is the use of a proprietary port for charging and connecting to a computer or for charging. The critics can scream their heads off – we do not see Apple going the USB or Micro USB way for the iPhone. Or the iPad yet for that matter. So, all you wannabe Jack Sparrows who want to plug a USB flash drive into it and pirate content, will have to look for other ways to do so.
- Larger screen: All right, we are going out on a bit of a limb here, but notwithstanding all the stuff about the new device having a 3.7 inch or a 4.0 inch display, we are going with Apple staying with the same screen size. The rationale – well, it has served them exceptionally well so far and has kept the iPhone large enough to watch videos on while being handy enough to be handled (you won’t see too many ladies lugging around the 4.3 inch touchscreen affairs of competitors). Why meddle with something that works so well?
- Higher price: We have been observing with interest how Apple has gently and subtly emerged as a price warrior in recent times. Be it the iPad, the iPods or even the 8GB iPhone 3GS, Apple has of late been careful enough to not let prices touch stratospheric limits. And we do not think the iPhone 5 will be overpriced as compared to its predecessor, the iPhone 4. Yes, it will undoubtedly be a high-end phone, but we do not expect it to be an extravagantly priced one.
So there are our five predictions for what the iPhone 5 will not have. Some of them might seem to be obvious, but that does not rule out the chance of our being totally wrong – heck, this is Apple we are talking about, a company that keeps on tearing up the rule books, including the ones it has written itself. We just think we might have got some of them right. And even if we don’t, heck, that’s the price you pay of trying to be a tech Hamlet. To guess or not to guess…
