With pretty much nothing confirmed about the details of apple’s upcoming iPhone release in September, the Wall Street Journal has actually learned something, from unnamed sources briefed on Apple’s future plans, about the iPhone that will undoubtedly be released next year. We hate to call it the iPhone 6, because it could very well be called iPhone 5S for all we know. The rumor isn’t groundbreaking; all it mentions is that there may be a new charging mechanism and the possibility for an edge-to-edge screen (something that already has been rumored for this year’s iPhone). What’s interesting is that a major media outlet, especially one as reputable (and usually correct) as the WSJ, would speculate, or publish speculation, about a device that is still two major hardware updates away.
If anything, this tells us that the oft-deemed paranoid marketing tactics employed by Apple are still as effective as anything else out there. Controlling hardware/software details until the moment of launch has been effective for iPhone sales and hype until now, and if it gets the WSJ speculating on the next next iPhone a year in advance, someone’s doing their job well.
In the meantime, many people are still looking forward to September, when the next iPhone will likely be released to millions of fans. Rumored improvements are a metal back that will act as the antenna, improvements to the CPU (upgrading to the A5, currently found in the iPad 2), and of course, iOS 5. Analysts are saying that it will be only a modest improvement over the iPhone 4, leading many to believe that it will be an incremental evolution, much like the iPhone 3 series.