iPhone 5 by design

Dying to see what the iPhone 5 looks like? According to CAD designs taken from a prominent tech website earlier this month, a German tech site has created a physical hardware mock-up of the supposed iPhone 5. Please note that these are only mock-ups of a possible version of the iPhone 5. Nothing is set in stone and most certainly not this design. But currently this is the most likely design candidate for the iPhone 5.

The design
The prototype was created from a single piece of aluminium and is thicker at the top than it is at the bottom, creating a “teardrop” styled phone. The proto-iPhone 5 also moves its mute button to the other side of the device. Proto-iPhone 5 is 110mm tall and 60mm wide.

The aluminium back is an excellent material that works well with aerials and there is no reason Apple would refuse its customers the reward of better reception.

The home button is changes from circular to oval shaped. The purported reasons for this is saving precious space on the iPhone 5. The image below is made up of the proto-iPhone 5 on top, the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS

The camera
The placement of the LED and camera is unknown in the proto-iPhone 5 but a leaked image supposedly shows off a picture from the new Apple device. It also shows that the image quality has not been drastically upgraded. All signs point towards an 8MP camera though.

The guts of the beast
We already know a fair share about iOS 5, but what of the most important feature — the “Assistant”? Apple is hoping that its new software will replace typing with a (finally) capable dictation platform built into its messaging tools. Apple has licensed voice software from Nuance, one of the world leaders in speech to text recognition.

As for possible hardware inside the iPhone 5, all signs point to a dual-core A5 chip powering a 960×540 screen. The screen is slightly larger than the iPhone 4 thanks to the extra inch.