iPhone 5S: Rumors versus Predictions

By Jim Lundy

It is that time of year and all the Apple watchers are loading up their blogs with iPhone 5S rumors to drive viewers to their respective sites.  There is no doubt that the iPhone 5S is coming. That said, iOS 7 is coming too and on the day it launches, the beauty of the Apple software distribution model is everyone can download it and run it on just about any iPhone Model.  Apple has established a pattern of releases with its iPhones, but with the rise of Samsung, is Apple moving too slowly on innovation?

If you parse what Apple CEO Tim Cook has said, there is no doubt Apple will have some surprises up its sleeve in the second half of 2013. Suffice to say, Steve Jobs was very busy at Apple the last few years before he passed.

Will Apple pull some of the innovations planned for later models and put them into this year?  The answer is most likely yes, if it doesn’t include major hardware changes. Apple slipped a voice recognition chip into the iPhone 4s and it took 60 days after the launch of the iPhone 4S for people to discover that. So here goes with our list of predictions for what the iPhone 5S will have in its feature set.

iPhone 5S Predictions

Rumored Feature	iPhone 5s Prediction	Comment
Retina Resolution	The Apple iPhone 5S will be include a Retina HD Display.	A must do.
Faster Processor	Apple will include a faster processor in the iPhone 5S.	Higher memory options are a given, chip could stay the same.
Better Battery	Apple will enhance battery performance on the iPhone 5S.	A must do.
New Colors	Apple will offer the iPhone 5S in White and Black.	Most people use a case, so the color choice doesn’t matter.
Better Camera	Apple will upgrade the camera lens in the iPhone 5S.	No brainer.
Different Sizes	The iPhone 5S will be the same size as the iPhone 5.
Surprises	The iPhone 5S will include at least one feature that no one predicted.

Apple has often delivered innovation with its off-cycle iPhone Launches. The iPhone 4S was the model that first included Siri and that feature helped to power record sales during the 2011 holiday season.

On the very last prediction, we are expecting that at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June, Apple will unveil the new iPad Mini Retina Models, as well as the iPad 5. We predict that the iPhone 5S will ship at the end of September 2013.

Lastly, most of the updates to the iPhone 5S hardware will pale in comparison to the iOS updates coming in iOS 7. We will cover iOS 7 in a future blog post.