Jul 15, 2011 07:35 GMT  ·  By

Apple’s engineering team is having trouble keeping the A5 chip cool inside the chassis of the yet-unreleased iPhone 5, this being the primary reason why Apple has broken its annual refresh cycle, a Chinese report claims.

Relying on a Google translation, Mac-centric blog 9to5Mac points out to a report by Sohu.com which, for the first time in months, seems to be the first site to have a plausible theory for the iPhone 5 delay.

Not that readers shouldn’t take these overheating claims with a boulder-sized grain of salt, but since it’s fairly possible, we thought we’d let you in on the latest rumors.

The story is simple: Apple’s silicon team is facing difficulties in keeping the A5 chip in cool working conditions inside a next-generations iPhone that is likely even thinner than the current-generation model.

As with all iPhone models, Apple will dedicate most of the space inside to the battery.

The electronics generally occupy less than 40 percent of the available space inside Apple’s smartphones, but that's only because the logic board is highly crowded, hence the difficulty to keep a low temperature.

The author of the Chinese report goes to speculate that the much-rumored iPhone 4S is more likely to arrive this year.

Apple would attempt to deflect attention from the iPhone 5 by throwing in this incremental upgrade to the iPhone line. Specifications cited in the report include an eight-megapixel camera, a Gorilla glass display, a dual-core variant of the A4 chip and “4G network” support.

Needless to point out, readers needn’t lend too much credence to these claims.

After all, the A5 is performing beautifully inside the iPad 2. Granted, the Apple tablet has a far bigger ‘living-room’ for the dual-core chip.

Whether it’s a major upgrade, or an incremental one, Apple is widely expected to introduce a new iPhone this year. What would you say it is?