It seems like the rumors are really coming to life. Specially when these rumors form part of Chinese news stories. According to China Times (yes, it’s China Times this time!), the next iPhone dubbed as iPhone 5 has already gone into trial production stage at Foxconn and a leaked sample iPhone 5 suggests that it will have an overhauled metallic back cover that will help solve the reception problem so rampant in iPhone 4.
What’s more is the evidence of NFC chip right inside iPhone! For those who do not know, NFC or Near Field Communication is a way to interact with other devices and it’s very soon going to become a de-facto standard for mobile payments where your iPhone becomes your credit card. I doubt that it is true since earlier rumors suggested that Apple will wait for NFC technology to mature before deciding how it will implement it in iPhone. We have been talking about RFID in iPhone 4 (Radio Frequency IDentification) which is another way to do Near Field Communication.
Here’s a shot of what looks like a leaked iPhone 5 from Foxconn China:
It clearly shows that the metal is different from what we found in iPhone 4 but notice the encircled portion of the rim, iPhone 5 will have the same antenna design? Whatever the case by, let's hope that Apple solves the reception issue in iPhone 5.
Another primary improvement is the larger screen size, reportedly 4 inches which will hopefully decimate competition from Android based smartphones (even though there isn’t much competition to start with!)
I wrote a round up of iPhone 5 related rumors before and this is a solid addition to that. Stay tuned for more updates.