After the iPhone 4S, there must be an iPhone 5: here's what we believe it will bring

A lot of us were expecting Apple to introduce the iPhone 5 yesterday, especially when it took it longer than usual to be ready for a public announcement. However, that wasn't the case, and instead, the company unveiled what many prefer to refer to as simply an upgrade, or a facelift of the iPhone 4, rather than a brand new model.

Indeed, the similarities between what Apple did with the iPhone 3GS and what it's doing with the iPhone 4S are pretty obvious. For example, in both cases, it kept the exact same appearance of the preceding device, and offered mostly inner improvements. These exact habits of the company, however, allow us to come up with a relatively safe guess about some of the features that next year's iPhone will eventually bring. While we can in no way be certain about anything, of course, we believe that there's quite a decent chance of seeing this stuff in the...

iPhone 5

Yep, that's what we believe the name of next year's iPhone will be. We don't think Apple will opt for “iPhone 6”, even though it might be the sixth iPhone in the series. We believe it was more of a coincidence for the iPhone 4 to be the fourth iPhone. Of course, there's always the possibility of Apple adding a 4G radio, along with some other stuff, and calling it the iPhone 4GS, but at least for now, our money is on iPhone 5 (figuratively speaking, of course; we ain't betting any money on that stuff).

The image is for illustrative purposes only

Redesign

If we follow the way Apple tends to upgrade the iPhone through the years, a redesign should be almost imminent with the iPhone 5. The iPhone 3G had a new design, the 3GS didn't. The iPhone 4 had a new design, the 4S doesn't. So, with the iPhone 5, we're willing to believe that we'll see something new out of Apple's camp, as far as physical appearance goes.

Quad-core processor

The reason for us to believe that the Apple iPhone 5 will feature a quad-core processor stems from the fact that the first quad-core processors, most probably courtesy of NVIDIA, are expected to ship inside tablets as soon as this Holiday season. Meanwhile, the first quad-core smartphones should arrive some time in the first half of 2012. Naturally, Apple wouldn't want to release a dual-core smartphone in a world dominated by quad-core monsters, so it's fairly safe to believe that the A6, if that's how it'll be called, with pack a total of four cores. Similarly to how the A4 and A5 were introduced, we expect the A6 to make its first appearance inside the iPad 3, and to later be utilized with the iPhone 5 as well.

4G LTE connectivity

All major U.S. carriers including AT&T, Verizon and Sprint (the future of T-Mobile is uncertain) should have LTE networks up and running next year, so it's a relatively safe bet to say that Apple will finally equip its precious smartphone with an LTE radio, making it competitive with the rest of the LTE gang out there.

These are the features that we believe are very possible to appear in the Apple iPhone 5. We wouldn't add stuff like a “bigger screen”, or a gesture area, because, well, that's not very probable, and we have no indications to believe it will happen. What's your opinion on the matter? Can you think of other new features that will most probably appear in the iPhone 5?