14 DAY TRIAL // A new forecast is available from KGI Securities regarding Apple’s 2013 roadmap, with a particular focus on the iPhone 5S, the up-and-coming revision to the company’s flagship product.
While not confirmed, the existence of the iPhone 5S has been given away by numerous hardware leaks, some of which indicate that Apple may adopt some new colors this time around.
Ming-Chi Kuo, of KGI Securities, agrees. He and his fellow analysts “forecast the new model will add a new look, a golden casing, and a new option for larger 128GB storage, to offer greater differentiation from iPhone 5.”
The storage on all iPhones today is 64GB, which means Apple could be upping the ante this year, perhaps discontinuing 16GB options in the process.
Processor-wise, the phone will sport an A7 SoC (system-on-a-chip) based on ARMv8 and featuring 1GB LPDDR3 RAM (memory), according to the KGI research note.
“We reckon A7 will upgrade memory bandwidth spec to LPDDR3 from LPDDR2 adapted by A6, in an effort to improve system performance,” according to Kuo.
“Since Apple is in charge of both hardware and OS design, it is capable of minimalizing memory capacity at an optimized state. Therefore, A7’s RAM will likely be unchanged at 1GB.”
A sapphire home button with fingerprint sensor will also be available with the 5S, while the main camera sensor will remains unchanged (at 8 megapixels), “but [will feature] a larger F2.0 aperture with dual flash lights,” Kuo says.
As far as Near Field Commication goes, Kuo doesn’t believe that Apple plans to include NFC hardware in this year’s iPhone upgrade.
However, since NFC is highly dependent on radio-transparent materials, and since Apple is reportedly preparing a polycarbonate iPhone 5C, perhaps NFC could be part of the 2013 iPhone refresh.
That last bit is our take, not Kuo’s.
