iPhone 5 screen size correction and launch updates

Rating: O2 appears to have leaked the 21st September launch date

Whoops. GoMobile News got it wrong on the iPhone 5 screen size front. It is bigger at 4″. As Ernest Doku, a telecoms expert with uSwitch.com, says, “Thinner, lighter and with a 4-inch screen, the iPhone has gone on a diet and come back leaner and faster. The taller screen caters to the crowd that feed off form factor, but still like the ergonomically comfortable width of the 4S.” As Doku observes, after the bitter disappointment of an underwhelming iPhone 4S, there was pressure on Apple to deliver something very special. It appears to have met expectations in all but won area. The handset doesn’t support NFC. Apple launches one handset a year and in the fast moving world of mobile telecoms, the lack of NFC is a huge mistake. But O2 has given us a launch date.As Fred Huet, md with Greenwich Consulting, comments, “It is just a matter of time before the smartphone replaces the plastic card, and by skipping this technology, Apple may have missed a valuable opportunity to take the lead in this market.”

He continued, “With over 400 million active credit card accounts on file, Apple had a prime opportunity to convert its customers using a sleek mobile payment system tied to the iPhone.”

“Instead they could find that they have fallen behind closest rivals Samsung, Nokia and indeed Motorola, all of whom introduced the technology into their devices last week,” Huet concluded.

GoMobile News is most puzzled by the announcement from UK operator, O2. Yesterday, EE (formerly Everything Everywhere) hinted massively that it would ‘range’ the latest iPhone for its UK 4G network. But it kept schtum on this point.

As far as we can tell, Apple doesn’t want to commit to a launch date for the iPhone 5 as yet. But O2 has just announced, “O2 will launch Apple’s iPhone 5 in all its stores and online from 21 September 2012, with further announcements about pricing and pre-order details coming soon.”

GoMobile News had previously gone with the rumour that the launch was October 1st [2012]. O2 has blown that one away.

Despite what mobile industry experts might feel, Apple does appear to have done enough to retain its lead in the smartphone stakes.

As Doku concludes, “The iPhone has never been about raw horsepower – rather the sum of its parts. And these parts are sleeker, faster and more impressive than any previous iPhone.”

One last thing … “EE will launch an exclusive 4G LTE version of the new iPhone when the EE customer brand launches in the coming weeks.” That’s from EE.

Yet the Daily Mail said, “So far neither iPhone nor BlackBerry are among them [EE's 4G handsets]. ”

Which just goes to prove that all of us can get some things wrong.