Leaked: More Low-Cost iPhone Photos

iPhones in blue and white are now among the rumored new line of cheap iPhones allegedly coming soon.

Following the colorful iPhone shells we showed you last weekend, these additions to the budget plastic iPhone add fuel to the rumor mills.

There's more. Intrigued by the possibility of these plastic shells for low-cost iPhones,MacRumors commissioned Federico Ciccarese to create digital renderings of the budget iPhone.

Take a look below, complete with iOS 7 onscreen. (These renderings don't include the blue version of the rumored cheap iPhone.)

Ciccarese took the shapes of the plastic shells in the leaked photos and fleshed them out into entire handsets. The overall result looks similar to an iPhone 5 covered in plastic.

Ciccarese estimates the thickness of the new iPhone 5 at 8.5 millimeters, almost a millimeter thicker than the current iPhone 5, which measures 7.6 mm thick. In his vision of a low-cost iPhone, rectangular volume controls replace the round buttons with the "plus" and "minus" symbols that are reminiscent of Leica cameras.

While these are lovely renderings, they are simply guesswork based on leaked photos that may or may not resemble the final product. We most likely won't have a better idea until September, when some analysts have predicted this entry-level iPhone may see the light of day.

The price could be around $300 — less than half of that of the standard iPhone, which now costs $649 unlocked.

Would you rather spend more on a metal iPhone or save money with a colorful plastic shell? Let us know in the comments below.

iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 details emerge online

Rumours that Apple will debut at least two new smartphones this year gathered pace today, after a Chinese source claimed to have seen the forthcoming devices.

Posting on micro blogging service, Sina Tech, Old Yao claims his friend at one of Apple’s Chinese parts suppliers has laid eyes on the new edition of the standard-sized iPhone, AKA the iPhone 5S, and the phablet-sized iPhone 6.

According to said insider, the iPhone 5S isn’t too different from the current-gen model in the looks stakes. That tallies with other recent reports suggesting that improvements that the next-generation handset brings will be largely restricted to the phone’s internals.

The iPhone 6, meanwhile, is a different matter and is purportedly longer – Yao claims it packs a five-inch screen - and wider than the iPhone 5, but is also thinner.

Although that’s not a terribly concrete description, it’s sure to add to the clamour of tech voicesforecasting that Apple’s 2013 product portfolio will include a tablet-smartphone hybrid aimed at seeing off the challenge from the Samsung’s Note range.

Still, before you get too excited, it’s worth remembering that we can’t set too much store in Old Yao’s claims, given that it’s been hard to verify what kind of industry credentials he’s got. If indeed, he’s got any at all.

Either way, given the Samsung Galaxy Note and Note 2’s huge sales, it seems likely that demand for an Apple phablet would be huge. And with a putative spec sheet that takes in a super HD camera, 128GB of storage and Near Field Communications, it’s not hard to see why.

Via:

CNET

iPhone 5S rumoured specs: Apple A7 quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, 12-megapixel camera

iPhone 5S release date has been the subject of a lot of speculation off-late. While some reports have indicated the phone may launch in June-July, others insist that the next generation iPhone will release in August. However, there has been very little information coming out in terms of the purported specs of the phone. Until now.

The folks over at DroidGator have come across a picture of what they claim is a iPhone 5Smotherboard. They add that the picture was sent to them from an IP belonging to Apple HQ in Cupertino, thereby lending credence to the image. The website says the new motherboard is similar in size to the iPhone 4S motherboard, which "may mean that the future iPhone 5S should arrive with the same touchscreen that the previous handset has: 4 inches."

The picture also shows a A7 chip, which the website claims is a quad-core processor, clocked at 1.2GHz. Other rumoured specs include 2GB RAM and Power SGX554MP4 GPU. The website also claims the new iPhone will ship with a faster Siri, with support for additional languages.

Additionally, Redmond Pie is reporting via Tinhte.vn that the iPhone 5S will ship with a 12-megapixel camera with improved low-light performance.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that Foxconn, the company that manufacturers iPhone and other Apple products in China, has stepped up hiring at its Zhengzhou plant. The company said Monday it has added about 10,000 assembly-line workers a week in Zhengzhou, its major production facility for iPhones. This increase in hiring is being seen as a sign that Apple is gearing up to produce the new iPhone.

"We have been very busy recently as we will start mass-producing the new iPhone soon," a Zhengzhou-based Foxconn executive with direct knowledge of production plans told WSJ.