Rumour Mill – iPhone 5 will be world’s thinnest phone
It just wouldn’t be Tuesday without an iPhone 5 rumour, would it? Or any other day for that matter. So here it is: the iPhone 5 will, at the time of announcement, be the thinnest smartphone on Earth.
That’s not surprising – the iPhone 4 also made fatties of its peers. But this isn’t idle conjecture: Apple is said to be switching to a new manufacturer for its in-house chips.
Science bit: the A4 and A5 processors – seen in the iPhone 4 and iPads – were made by Samsung. Yet the A6, which could be the driving force behind the iPhone 5 and iPad 3, may instead be farmed out to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
Why move? According to ars technica, it has less to do with Apple and Samsung flinging lawsuits at each other and more to do with TSMC’s 28nm processor architecture (Samsung’s current build uses a 45nm process). The lower power rating of the 28nm chips means Apple could trim valuable fractions off the bellies of its headline mobile devices. And that means, come September, we could be looking at a new world record for world’s thinnest phone. Again.
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Comments
UK1012UK
1 year ago
"iPhone 5 will be world’s thinnest phone" for about 5 minutes.
stickyfiddle
1 year ago
I have to say I'd *much* rather it was the same thickness as the perfectly-adequate iphone4, and they fill that extra space with a bigger battery!!
mclean007
1 year ago
@stickfiddle - I hear you, though it's not so much that there will be extra space to be filled with battery (the physical packaging of a 28nm chip is unlikely to be much different in size to that of a 45nm chip), it's more that the battery drain should be lower for equivalent processing power, so you can get the same battery life from a slimmer, lighter battery. Like you, I'd rather they stuck with the existing battery and prolonged the device's battery life though, rather than trying to shave off another 0.5mm to claim some meaningless "world's thinnest" crown.
Mark John
1 year ago
Nice one-very good