News

iPhone 6 rumor rollup for the week ending June 21

Leaking components, Labor Day frenzy, fingerprinting bezel, liquid cooling

By John Cox, Network World
June 21, 2013 02:36 PM ET

Tantalizing images of iPhone 6, or 5S, components sent the iOSphere into transports of joy, even though no one could explain what the components revealed about the Next iPhone.

Also this week: Labor Day will be The Day of the Next iPhone's release, transforming the summer's traditional last vacation day from traveling frenzy to shopping frenzy; patents show the long-desired fingerprint scanner will be formed into the iPhone's bezel not incorporated with the home button; and "interest" in liquid cooling is translated into production schedules.

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Network World - Tantalizing images of iPhone 6, or 5S, components sent the iOSphere into transports of joy, even though no one could explain what the components revealed about the Next iPhone.

Also this week: Labor Day will be The Day of the Next iPhone's release, transforming the summer's traditional last vacation day from traveling frenzy to shopping frenzy; patents show the long-desired fingerprint scanner will be formed into the iPhone's bezel not incorporated with the home button; and "interest" in liquid cooling is translated into production schedules.

You read it here second.

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"Even if Apple takes three full months to get iOS 7 ready for prime time, that still means the iPhone 6 release date can come as early as the end of August or Labor Day. All that Apple has to do is put the iPhone 6 into factory production sooner, to match the ready date for iOS 7."

— Phil Moore, Stabley Times, describing how Apple's entire supply chain is just sitting around waiting for Apple CEO Tim Cook to call from One Infinite Loop, on his iPhone 5, and order production lines to start cranking

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iPhone 5S logic board and display assembly materialize

There is nothing quite like Next iPhone components to set off the iOSphere. Especially, if no one can make anything of them. Because then you can make up anything about them.

First to appear early Monday morning on June 17 was the Next iPhone's logic board. MacRumors early picked up the trail through Japanese tech sites, and posted "three photos of what may be the bare logic board from the iPhone 5S."

"Unsurprisingly, the shape of the board is nearly identical to that of the iPhone 5 logic board, although it appears to have a slightly different curve along the bottom edge where the logic board would meet the speaker enclosure," writes Eric Slivka.

When all you can say about a new component is that it has "a slightly different curve along the bottom edge," your breaking news starts to look distinctly like broken down news.

But the purported logic board apparently lured out other photos. By early afternoon that same day, Slivka posted another revelation: "iPhone 5S Display Assembly Surfaces, Appears to Fit Leaked Logic Board." 

"Several repair firms, including iHeart Repair, have shared with MacRumors a new set of images from a supplier showing the display assembly of the iPhone 5S," Slivka announced. He concludes, apparently based on nothing more than the fact he can't notice any differences, that these new low-resolution images reveal no "significant changes" to Apple's display technology. Here is the display assembly montage in all its low-res glory. 

But "there is one item of interest supporting the claim that the logic board photos from earlier today are genuine," Slivka concludes.

That one item of interest is that, if you compare the display assemblies of the alleged iPhone 5S and iPhone 5, you can see that the pair of connectors on the flex cables at the top are different. And that those 5S connectors seem to match what may be corresponding connectors on the top of the logic board.