Apple Inc: 18 Coolest and Most Unusual Facts

Below are 18 of the most cool and unusual facts about Apple Inc. The company began in a humble suburban garage in Los Altos, California, in 1976 and since then it has grown to be the beloved corporate juggernaut that it is. Along the way, a number of interesting, incredible, and silly things have happened. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. The very first apple computer ever built cost $666.66.

This evil number came about by adding 33% to the wholesale price of $500–not because Steve Jobs worshiped Satan. Although, it is just as hard to disprove something as it is to prove it.

2. Scientist Carl Sagan sued Apple for defamation, but lost.

In 1994 Power MacIntosh was being developed under the code name “Carl Sagan”. Sagan was not happy with this, stating that his endorsement is not for sale. The engineers on the project changed the code name to “BHA”, which meant, according the them, “Butt-Head Astronomer”. Apple’s lawyers made them change the name, so they chose “LAW”, which meant, according to them, “Lawyers Are Wimps”. Sagan took his case to the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, but was not successful.

The butt-head must’ve hired the wrong wimps.

3. Apple has the patent for ‘slide-to-unlock’.

Sliding our finger to unlock a glowing device has become a ritual for millions. Apple has turned its patent portfolio into a ravenous monster, and high-tech patent law has become a ridiculous circus in recent years. Apple sued Samsung for infringing on its slide-to-unlock patent, and for many other things as well. Apple also sued Google-owned Motorola for using the “slide-to-unlock”, even though their device used tapping instead of sliding. Apple argued, according to Judge Richard Posner, “that a tap is a zero-length swipe.”

Posner dismissed the case, saying “That’s silly. It’s like saying that a point is a zero-length line.” Philosophers and mathematicians have a special opportunity to stroke their beards over this one.

4. Fake Apple stores in China were so convincing that even their employees thought they were real.

In the Southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, 22 inauthentic Apple stores were found to be unlawfully using Apple’s brand and logo. They were discovered after an American expatriate wrote a blog post about one of the shops. According the the BBC, “Staff in the original fake shop believed they were working in a real Apple store.”

5. The top nine Apple executives make more money than 95,000 Apple factory workers in China.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the nine-person executive leadership team received $441 million in compensation, which is about the same as 95,000 workers in the Foxcann factory where Apple products are assembled. The 2012 findings were similar. According to a Fair Labor Association report, “64.3 percent of workers thought that their salary was not sufficient to cover their basic needs” despite working an average of 56 hours per week.

Apple’s Timothy Cook made $378 million in 2011.

6. Apple’s original logo was nothing like it is now.

The first apple logo was an old-timey, black-and-white crest which featured a drawing of Isaac Newton reading a book under an apple tree, with a single glowing apple suspended in the tree above his head–a drop of inspiration. This logo was designed by forgotten Apple co-founder Ronald Wayne.

 7. Apple finally beat Microsoft.

Apple Inc. grossed $65 billion in revenue in 2011, while Microsoft earned $62 billion. It was a hard-fought battle that took decades, but Apple came out on top. Who would’ve guessed?

8. Microsoft spends way more than Apple does on research.

The Microsoft budget for research is at $8.7 billion per year, while Apple’s is only $1.7 billion. And yet there’s no lineups at the Microsoft Store!

9. Apple cannot market iPhones in Brazil because another company owns the trademark.

The Brazilian telecommunications company IGM Electronica owns the brand Gradiente, which filed for exclusive rights to the name “iPhone” in 2000, before Apple had produced its iPhone. It took seven years but eventually the rights were granted, and the G-Gradiente iPhone was launched in 2007.

The Gradiente iPhone runs on Android, not the Mac operating system.

10. Steve Jobs eliminated all corporate charity programs in 1997.

After resuming control of the company, Steve Jobs nixed all philanthropic initiatives by Apple Inc. Bill Gates, on the other hand, is known for giving so much of his wealth to charity. To Jobs’ credit, he later signed Apple Inc. up for the Project Red program which made them the largest contributor to the Global Fund’s fight against AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

11. Steve Wozniak gave 80,000 of his own Apple shares to employees who would not otherwise have gotten any after the IPO.

Wozniak is often considered the conscience of Apple Inc. When the company was heating up, he felt that many employees received unfair portions of stock. To make up for this, Wozniak unloaded 80,000 of his own Apple shares at a price that was more than fair. Today these are worth billions, of course.

12. Apple had a third co-founder, Ronald Wayne, who sold his shares for $800 in 1977.

When Apple was incorporated, Wayne sold his shares back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. His 10% of Apple would be worth somewhere around $35 billion today. According to Apple Confidential, Wayne stated: “I have never had the slightest pangs of regret, because I made the best decision with the information available to me at the time. My contribution was not so great that I felt I had been diddled with in any way.”

What austerity and sincerity. An icon of true greatness: the man who cannot be diddled with.

13. Smoking near an Apple computer may void its warranty.

Apple users have claimed that their Applecare warranties were voided due to secondhand smoke, according to Consumerist, even though smoke damage is not mentioned specifically in the Applecare contract.

Apparently, nicotine is considered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administraion to be a hazardous substance, so Apple employees are not required to repair anything deemed hazardous to their health–including computers that have been smoked upon.

14. Apple’s Siri keeps your data for two years.

According to Wired, everything you’ve whispered into your Siri application is stored for two years. For the first six months the data is associated with your account; it then becomes dissociated from you but is stored for another 18 months for product testing and development.

Oh yeah, Apple Inc. can also track wherever your devices are at all times, to always know where you are and where you’ve been.

15. Apple once had more cash in the bank than the US Treasury had money to spend.

According the Financial Post, Apple Inc. grew richer than Uncle Sam, having more cash on hand than the entire U.S. had spending room. This was due to the debt ceiling crisis of July 2011. Apple Inc. boasted cash reserves of $75.88 billion while Washington had an operating balance of $73.77 billion. A major difference, however, is that Apple’s figure refers to its reserve of cash, the government’s value is the amount of spending room it has before reaching an arbitrary debt ceiling.

16. Apple now has the highest market value of any private company in the world.

Apple Inc. is sitting at $416.6 billion. Exxon-Mobile is second at $400.4 billion.

17. Apple Corps, a company founded by The Beatles, was engaged in a legal battle with Apple Inc. over trademark rights for 28 years.

In 1981, they reached a settlement: Apple would not to enter the music business, and Apple Corps would not to enter the computer business. When Apple added MIDI audio-recording capabilities to its computers, Apple Corps sued them again, claiming violation of their earlier agreement. This was devastating to then Apple Computer.

When iTunes exploded in the 2000s, Apple Corps again contended they were violating a previous agreement. It wasn’t until 2010 that Beatles songs were available on iTunes.

18. Apple puts new employees on fake projects to see if they can be trusted

According to Inside Apple by Adam Lashinky, new employees at Apple are put through a rigorous testing period to evaluate their trustworthiness. New hires have even been tasked with developing fake products during this probationary period. I wonder how that iHammer is coming along?

 

Thank you for reading the top 18 cool and unusual facts about Apple Inc.

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Apple sends invite for September 10 special event invitation Cracked. Plastic and Aluminium iPhones expected

After tons of rumours, here is official confirmation from Apple that it's hosting a special event on September 10 in San Francisco, where it's expected to announce two new iPhones and the final version of iOS 7, the next iteration of its mobile OS.

The invitation contains colored circles, filled and unfilled, and says only "Let's brighten everyone's day" with the colourful new UI of iOS 7. The colored circles represent Plastic iPhone expected to be iPhone 5C in different colors. The unfilled circles represent the iPhone 5S made of Aluminium Unibody design.

So be prepared for the new iPhoneS

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Apple’s 2013 in Rumors: Fingerprint Sensors and More Retina Displays, but No iTV

A much slimmer iPad, an iPad Mini with a Retina display and an iPhone with a built-in fingerprint reader could all be on tap for 2013, according to one industry analyst.
As MacRumors reports, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has published a research report that tries to predict Apple‘s entire 2013 product lineup. Although analysts tend to have terrible track records with Apple rumors, Kuo is a notable exception.
Let’s do a quick look at some of his past forecasts:

• Kuo’s January 2011 predictions about the iPad 2, including the dual-core processor, camera specs and screen resolution turned out mostly accurate. (He was off by 0.2 GHz on the clock speed of the A5 chip.)
• Apple’s iPhone 5 achieved a thickness of under 8 mm, thanks to in-cell touch technology and the use of a metal back plate instead of glass, just as Kuo predicted five months before launch.
• As Kuo expected, Apple discontinued the 17-inch MacBook Pro last year and redesigned its iMacs, but without Retina displays.

That’s a pretty good track record. So let’s hear out Kuo’s predictions for 2013:

• The iPhone 5S will be similar to its predecessor, but with a faster processor, a better camera with smart LED flash and a fingerprint reader built into the home button, which would reduce the need for passwords everywhere. Keep in mind that Apple acquired AuthenTec, a maker of fingerprint sensor technology, last year.
• A cheaper iPhone for prepaid and emerging markets–a popular rumor these days–would be a lot like the iPhone 5, but with a plastic enclosure, available in six colors.
• The next iPad will be considerably slimmer and lighter. That’d make sense given that Apple had to add bulk to its third-generation iPad to accommodate a Retina display. Kuo expects the iPad Mini to get a Retina display as well this year.
• Non-Retina display MacBook Pros will meet their maker this year, as Apple moves to an all-Retina lineup at lower prices than before.
• The MacBook Air line won’t get Retina displays this year, Kuo believes. Their main improvement will be an upgrade to Intel‘s Haswell platform, which will allow for better battery life. Apple’s iMac and Mac Mini line may get a similar upgrade, sans Retina.
• The fourth-generation iPod Touch will be discontinued, but Apple may sell a cheaper fifth-generation model in its place, with 8 GB of storage and no rear camera, starting at $199.
• Kuo thinks the Apple TV set-top box will get a refresh, but didn’t offer any details. The fabled Apple television, however, appears to be drifting off to 2014 due to those pesky content issues.

Kuo thinks most of this stuff will happen in the second half of the year, with the exception of a first quarter Apple TV refresh and new MacBook Airs in late Q2.
While there aren’t a lot of wild and crazy things on the list, Apple tends to avoid radical changes to its products, despite conventional wisdom. The fact that most of these predictions are quite reasonable–tame, even–makes me more likely to believe them. The most contentious claims are the less expensive iPhone (which smart Apple watchers no longer dismiss outright) and thumbprint tracking in the iPhone 5S (which at this point just seems like a matter of time). I wouldn’t count on Kuo’s forecast proving 100 percent accurate, but as a rough estimate of what to expect from Apple this year, it works.

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iPhone 6 Features and Rumors

Even without Apple being at the gigantic Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas, it proved to be a treasure trove of iPhone 6 revelations for those with the wit to look beneath the surface of things.
Things like IGZO screens. And Gorilla Glass 3.
Also this week: The sky darkened under the crisscrossing trajectories of contradictory speculation: The Next iPhone would be smaller and cheaper; and bigger and cheaper; and bigger and more expensive. Or something.
iPhone 6 feature revealed by Sharp at CES
And they didn’t even realise it! Not so sharp, after all, apparently.
GottaBeMobile’s Adam Mills found Sharp’s booth, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where the company was proudly showing its IGZO display technology. (You can check out GottaBeMobile’s video, which shows a prototype tablet sporting the prototype display.)
“Sharp not only showed off flexible displays like Samsung, but maybe more importantly, the company showed off its IGZO display technology, the same technology that has been rumored to be coming with the next iPhone model, presumably called the iPhone 5S or the iPhone 6,”Mill announced, just in case you weren’t au courant with the IGZO rumours, which are almost as tediously repetitive as the rumours that Apple’s next iWhatever will have a fabulous Liquidmetal body.
IGZO displays can be brighter, higher-than-1080p resolution, and much more power efficient than conventional displays, according to Sharp, which with several other display vendors is a major supplier to Apple.
In a few sentences, possibly using copy/paste or a macro, Mills deftly summed up months of rumours about the next iPhone. And then he ruined it all at the end.
“Keep in mind, Apple rumors often don’t pan out so it’s possible that Apple will go in a different direction with the new iPad and the new iPhone in 2013,” he wrote.
No one has yet connected the dots between another CES reveal and the Next iPhone: TrackingPoint’s Precision Guided Firearm (PCWorld has details), which marries a high-tech digital scope and sensors with a custom-built Surgeon Rifles bolt-action long rifle. Among other things, the PGF uses Wi-Fi to display its high-tech in-scope image and data on its accessory iPad mini. Using the Next iPhone and a new software protocol, iShoot, to remotely control the rifle, upload photos and video to iCloud, and automatically sync calendars with your local butcher is an obvious next step.
iPhone 6 will have triple strength Gorilla Glass
If only we could have CES once a month instead of once a year.
Jonathan Leggett, of USwitch.com, was hanging around in Vegas, too, and took note of Corning’s announcement that a “new strain of Gorilla Glass purported to be three times tougher than the version currently in service on top-end smartphones, paving the way for a new generation of more robust handsets.”
And one Very Special New Generation Handset in particular.
According to a March 2012 post by 9to5Mac’s Seth Weintraub, Apple and Corning’s relationship has been “shrouded in mystery.” The glassmaker was never mentioned in Apple marketing material and “even isn’t included in Apple’s supplier lists,” he wrote. But on March 2, 2012, “Apple released its US Jobs report which included the following info: ‘Corning employees in Kentucky and New York who create the majority of the glass for iPhone…,’” Weintraub noted.
“Debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, Gorilla Glass 3 has been conditioned to be less brittle than ever before thanks to an ion-bonding treatment and some clever atomic jiggery-pokery that we’re not even going to pretend to understand,” Leggett wrote, with disarming humility. (But the neat British-ism “jiggery-pokery” usually suggests trickery or underhandedness rather than manipulation.)
With somewhat less humility, Leggett didn’t hesitate to draw the obvious conclusion.
“With rumours indicating that Samsung could opt for a plastic screen for its next kit – possibly even a flexible one – we think [GG3 is] most likely to debut on the sixth-gen iPhone,” he declared. “Especially given that Gorilla Glass has featured in every iPhone since the iPhone 4 dropped back in 2010.”
iPhone 6 will be a higher-end iPhone
Without a trace of irony, a BGR post this week says that a “new report adds weight to recent rumors” that Apple will launch more than one iPhone model by mid-2013.
The “report” is that treasure trove of firsthand, in-depth knowledge called the Note to Investors, this one by stock analyst T. Michael Walkley, of Canaccord Genuity. In the note, Walkley “sees,” according to BGR’s Zach Epstein, “Apple launching a new ‘higher-end iPhone’ sometime in the June quarter, and a low-end model could be in the works as well.”
Whoa. Not just a cheaper iPhone 6-or-whatever but also a more expensive one!
According to BGR, Walkley wrote, “We believe Apple could launch a higher-end iPhone model by the June quarter versus its more typical September/October timing for a new iPhone launch. We also believe Apple could potentially launch a lower-end iPhone focused on more price-sensitive pre-paid markets, as we believe consumers in markets such as China, Latin America and Eastern Europe would have very strong demand for a more affordably priced 3G iPhone.”
Walkley clearly is willing to take the Rumour Games to the next level, since among the most fecund of recent rumours has been the one insisting that Apple must, must introduce a less expensive version of the iPhone, or face Collapse, Failure, Utter Destruction, and the End of the World.
Probably the more expensive Next iPhone will have a much larger screen, in super high-def with IGZO, a quad-core processor, bigger battery, a kaleidoscope of colours, and Gorilla Glass 3 if not 4. Oh yes: and NFC contactless payments.
iPhone 6 shows radical redesign: It looks just like the iPod nano
For a long time, we have boycotted any mention of “concept art,” a.k.a. “fan art,” that purports to show what the Next iPhone will look like, based on current rumours, febrile imagings, or certain organic chemical agents. Or some combination thereof.
But when Macworld‘s Ashleigh Allsopp headlines her post, “Is this what Apple’s iPhone 6 will look like?” we’ll make an exception.
Although she doesn’t answer the headline’s question, we will boldly go where so far no one apparently has and say, “Uh, no.”
“New images of a potential iPhone 6 design have been created based on an alleged test prototype, sporting a similar shape to the latest iPod nano,” Allsopp reveals.
The renderings are the latest by a talented Italian designer, Federico Ciccarese, with the Twitter handle @ciccaresedesign, a website where he posts these illustrations, and an acknowledged need for some work assignments.
Ciccarese mentions something about his newest creations being based on some iPhone test prototype, but in practice it looks like he just “grew” the iPod nano into the Next iPhone. And added something called “iOSX,” a hybrid blend of iOS and OS X. And this is what he comes up with.
Here is his previous rendering of the expected iPhone 5, and you can judge for yourself how closely that resembled the final product.
iPhone 6 will be cheaper than iPhone 5 … but it will also be bigger
This is getting confusing, even by the standards of iOSphere rumouring: smaller and cheaper; bigger and more expensive; bigger but cheaper; more expensive but smaller. All of the above.
A characteristically brief and anonymously sourced story at International Business Times repeated the rumour that “according to supply-chain sources,” Apple will introduce a low-cost version of iPhone for China and similar markets, in the latter half of 2013. So far, so yawn.
But there was this little iOSphere twist: “Some sources claimed that they have seen the sample of the low-cost iPhone, which will come with a larger display …” So the intensely rumoured “iPhone mini” moniker refers to the phone’s price, not its dimension.
The reasons for the cheaper but bigger iPhone 6? “Growing sales of the iPad mini … may have served as an impetus for Apple to roll out a low-cost iPhone …” And “Qualcomm’s recent launch of its latest family of Snapdragon chipsets … for the entry-level to mid-range smartphones may pave the way for Apple bringing out the low-cost iPhone …”
The latter reason is a bit odd, verging on a technical non sequitur. Because Qualcomm offers the ARM-based Snapdragon as a mobile system on a chip, with the processor integrated with a bunch of other components. With the iPhone 5′s A6 chip, Apple apparently has for the first time custom-designed its own ARM-based main processor, manufactured by Samsung. Apple does use Qualcomm’s mobile data modem chipsets, but not the Snapdragon.
“You’d think if Apple wanted to make a low-cost iPhone, it would be small,” wrote Dave Smith, at International Business Times, after reading the DigiTimes account of unsupported anonymous speculation. “An ‘iPhone nano,’ if you will.” (Smith must have been watching Frederico’s design blog!)
You would think that. But you would be wrong. Apple is, after all, magical.
“If DigiTimes’ sources are correct, Apple’s “low-cost iPhone” could easily look like a Galaxy S3 smartphone, and given its ‘low cost,’ it might even compete with Samsung’s prices, too,” Smith concluded.
So if DigiTimes’ sources are correct, Apple is going to imitate the Galaxy S III and voluntarily start a price war with Samsung.
DigiTimes and various stock analysts agree, according to Smith: “Apple wants to sell a lower-priced iPhone. Whether the ‘iPhone 6′ will be bigger or smaller has yet to be determined; Apple simply wants it to be cheaper.” Clearly. “The obvious explanation: A cheaper iPhone — easily the company’s most popular product — would help Apple penetrate some key markets, particularly those Eastern, lower-income areas like China and India.”
We can hear Apple CEO Tim Cook now, the new Colossus gazing to the East and crying out, “Give me your tired, your poor, your lower-income huddled masses yearning to buy an Apple iPhone, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the phoneless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my cheaper iPhone 6 beside the golden door.”

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iPhone Mini wont debut. Phil Schiller Says It Won’t Be The ‘Future Of Apple Products’

If Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster is to be believed, the widely rumored low-cost iPhone could help Apple cater to a market representing as many as 580 million potential customers. But it seems that the Cupertino tech giant is not in a mood to take it into consideration as a company executive simply turned the rumor down in a one-to-one interview with a Chinese newspaper.

Apple is not in a mood to take a low cost iPhone into consideration as the company's SVP of Worldwide marketing Phil Schiller simply turned the rumor down in a one-to-one interview with a Chinese newspaper.Apple SVP of Worldwide marketing Phil Schiller told Chinese newspaper Shanghai Evening News in an official interview that regardless of the popularity of cheaper smartphones, this would “never be the future of Apple products.”

Although iPhone’s market share rose in the fourth quarter of 2011 and in the first quarter of 2012, standing at 23 percent, it dropped down drastically to just 14.6 percent worldwide in the third quarter of 2012. Schiller did address this concern, but tried to validate Apple’s current position in the market saying that the low-cost smartphones have created a new segment in the smartphone market, which Apple does not want to explore.

Schiller said that targeting the low-end of the market by making a cheaper iPhone was not Apple’s way of doing things. Instead, in every product that Apple creates, it considers “using only the best technology available. This includes the production pipeline, the Retina display, the unibody design, to provide the best product to the market.”
“So a lot of people in the Chinese market using a functional machine, some manufacturers use cheap smartphones replace feature phones, but this is not Apple’s product development direction,” said Schiller.
Criticizing some of Apple’s competitors for releasing “multiple products in one breath,” Schiller said that after purchasing such products customers often ended up with “no suitable software products and user experience.”
Apple doesn’t want that to happen to its customers, and as Redmond Pie noted, Schiller argued that “a small product line ensures maximum software and accessory compatibility by reducing the effort on the part of developers and manufacturers to ensure that their products work on all devices.”
There is no doubt that Apple’s market share in smartphones segment has dropped notably in recent times, but despite that the company has claimed to have made significant profits.
“At first, non-smartphones were popular in the Chinese market, now cheap smartphones are more popular and non-smartphones are out,” Schiller added. “Despite the popularity of cheap smartphones, this will never be the future of Apple’s products. In fact, although Apple’s market share of smartphones is just about 20%, we own the 75% of the profit.”
Schiller nailed the cheaper iPhone rumor down. But should his comment be considered conclusive?
“Schiller’s statements aren’t conclusive in the way that they refer to exactly what price points that Apple will be targeting, only that ‘cheap smartphones’ aren’t really Apple’s fare,” said Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web. “This has always been the case and even with the ‘free’ iPhones, you’re still getting top-notch build quality, just from a couple of models ago. A ‘cheap’ smartphone would imply worse materials or construction in order to meet a price point.”
iDownloadBlog pointed to another report from Edible Apple, saying people should not confuse between a cheap iPhone and a more affordable iPhone.
“The iPad Mini is by no means cheap, but it’s certainly more affordable than the flagship iPad 4th generation,” said the report. “Similarly, a more economical iPhone might be a boon for Apple to the extent that they make more money per device sold than they currently do selling older generation models at steep discounts.”
So what’s your take on a cheaper or, to be more precise, an affordable iPhone? Will a low-cost but not cheaply made iPhone debut in 2013?

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Do you know why iPhone 5 is the Fastest mobile on Planet? Here is the benchmark results

This morning we finally got our hands on Apple's iPhone 5. While we are eager to get started on battery life testing, that'll happen late tonight after a full day's worth of use and a recharge cycle. Meanwhile, we went straight to work on performance testing. As we've mentioned before, the A6 SoC makes use of a pair of Apple's own CPU cores that implement the ARMv7 ISA. These aren't vanilla Cortex A9s or Cortex A15s, but rather something of Apple's own design. For its GPU Apple integrated a PowerVR SGX543MP3 GPU running at higher clocks than the dual-core 543MP2 in the A5. The result is compute performance that's similar to the A5X in Apple's 3rd generation iPad, but with a smaller overall die area. The A6 has a narrower memory interface compared to the A5x (64-bits vs. 128-bits), but that makes sense given the much lower display resolution (0.7MP vs. 3.1MP).
As always, our performance analysis starts out on the CPU. Although we originally thought the A6 ran its two CPU cores at 1GHz, it looks like max clocks range between 800MHz and 1.2GHz depending on load. Geekbench reports clock speed at launch, which varied depending on CPU load. With an app download process in the background I got Geekbench to report a 1.2GHz clock speed, and with everything quiet in the background the A6 reported 800MHz after being queried. This isn't anything new as dynamic voltage/frequency adjustment is in all smartphones, but we do now have a better idea of the range.

The other thing I noticed is that without a network active I'm able to get another ~10% performance boost over the standard results while on a network. Take the BrowserMark results below for example, the first two runs are without the iPhone 5 being active on AT&T's network while the latter two are after I'd migrated my account over. The same was true for SunSpider performance, I saw numbers in the low 810ms range before I registered the device with AT&T.

Clean, No Network

After Registering

Overall, the performance of the A6 CPU cores seems to be very good. The iPhone 4S numbers below are updated to iOS 6.0 so you can get an idea of performance improvement.

As we mentioned in our earlier post, SunSpider is a small enough benchmark that it really acts as a cache test. The memory interface on the A6 seems tangibly better than any previous ARM based design, and the advantage here even outpaces Intel's own Medfield SoC.
I also ran some data using Google's V8 and Octane benchmarks, both bigger JavaScript tests than SunSpider. I had an AT&T HTC One X with me while in New York today (up here for meetings this week) and included its results in the charts below. Note that the default HTC web browser won't run the full Octane suite so I used Chrome there. I didn't use Chrome for the V8 test because it produced lower numbers than the stock browser for some reason.

Here we see huge gains over the iPhone 4S, but much closer performance to the One X. In the case of Google's V8 benchmark the two phones are effectively identical, although Octane gives the iPhone 5 a 30% lead once more.
These are still narrowly focused tests, we'll be doing some more holisitic browser tests over the coming days. Finally we have Geekbench 2, comparing the iPhone 5 and 4S:

Geekbench 2 Performance
Geekbench 2 Overall Scores	Apple iPhone 4S	Apple iPhone 5
Geekbench Score	628	1640
Integer	545	1252
Floating Point	737	2101
Memory	747	1862
Stream	299	946

Apple claimed a 2x CPU performance advantage compared to the iPhone 4S during the launch event for the 5. How does that claim match up with our numbers? Pretty good actually:

This is hardly the most comprehensive list of CPU benchmarks, but on average we're seeing the iPhone 5 deliver 2.13x the scores of the iPhone 4S. We'll be running more application level tests over the coming days so stay tuned for those.

A6 GPU Performance: Nearly Identical to the iPad 3

Before we got a die shot of Apple's A6 we had good information pointing to a three core PowerVR SGX 543MP3 in the new design. As a recap, Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX543 GPU core features four USSE2 pipes. Each pipe has a 4-way vector ALU that can crank out 4 multiply-adds per clock, which works out to be 16 MADs per clock or 32 FLOPS. Imagination lets the customer stick multiple 543 cores together, which scales compute performance linearly. The A5 featured a two core design, running at approximately 200MHz based on our latest news. The A5X in the 3rd generation iPad featured a four core design, running at the same 200MHz clock speed.
The A6 on the other hand features a three core PowerVR SGX 543MP3, running at higher clock speeds to deliver a good balance of die size while still delivering on Apple's 2x GPU performance claim. The raw specs are below:

Mobile SoC GPU Comparison
	Adreno 225	PowerVR SGX 540	PowerVR SGX 543MP2	PowerVR SGX 543MP3	PowerVR SGX 543MP4	Mali-400 MP4	Tegra 3
SIMD Name	-	USSE	USSE2	USSE2	USSE2	Core	Core
# of SIMDs	8	4	8	12	16	4 + 1	12
MADs per SIMD	4	2	4	4	4	4 / 2	1
Total MADs	32	8	32	48	64	18	12
GFLOPS @ 200MHz	12.8 GFLOPS	3.2 GFLOPS	12.8 GFLOPS	19.2 GFLOPS	25.6 GFLOPS	7.2 GFLOPS	4.8 GFLOPS
GFLOPS As Shipped by Apple/ASUS	-	-	12.8 GFLOPS	25.5 GFLOPS	25.6 GFLOPS	-	12 GFLOPS

The result is peak theoretical GPU performance that's near identical to the A5X in the 3rd generation iPad. The main difference is memory bandwidth. The A5X features a 128-bit wide memory interface while the A6 retains the same 64-bit wide interface as the standard A5. In memory bandwidth limited situations, the A5X will still be quicker but it's quite likely that at the iPhone 5's native resolution we won't see that happen.
We ran through the full GLBenchmark 2.5 suite to get a good idea of GPU performance. Note that the 3rd gen iPad results are still on iOS 5.1 so there's a chance you'll see some numbers change as we move to iOS 6.
We'll start out with the raw theoretical numbers beginning with fill rate:

The iPhone 5 nips at the heels of the 3rd generation iPad here, at 1.65GTexels/s. The performance advantage over the iPhone 4S is more than double, and even the Galaxy S 3 can't come close.

Triangle throughput is similarly strong:

Take resolution into account and the iPhone 5 is actually faster than the new iPad, but normalize for resolution using GLBenchmark's offscreen mode and the A5X and A6 look identical:

The fragment lit texture test does very well on the iPhone 5, once again when you take into account the much lower resolution of the 5's display performance is significantly better than on the iPad:

The next set of results are the gameplay simulation tests, which attempt to give you an idea of what game performance based on Kishonti's engine would look like. These tests tend to be compute monsters, so they'll make a great stress test for the iPhone 5's new GPU:

Egypt HD was the great equalizer when we first met it, but the iPhone 5 does very well here. The biggest surprise however is just how well the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro with Adreno 320 GPU does by comparison. LG's Optimus G, a device Brian flew to Seoul, South Korea to benchmark, is hot on the heels of the new iPhone.

When we run everything at 1080p the iPhone 5 looks a lot like the new iPad, and is about 2x the performance of the Galaxy S 3. Here, LG's Optimus G actually outperforms the iPhone 5! It looks like Qualcomm's Adreno 320 is quite competant in a phone.

The Egypt classic tests are much lighter workloads and are likely a good indication of the type of performance you can expect from many games today available on the app store. At its native resolution, the iPhone 5 has no problems hitting the 60 fps vsync limit.

Remove vsync, render at 1080p and you see what the GPUs can really do. Here the iPhone 5 pulls ahead of the Adreno 320 based LG Optimus G and even slightly ahead of the new iPad.
Once again, looking at GLBenchmark's on-screen and offscreen Egypt tests we can get a good idea of how the iPhone 5 measures up to Apple's claims of 2x the GPU performance of the iPhone 4S:

Removing the clearly vsync limited result from the on-screen Egypt Classic test, the iPhone 5 performs about 2.26x the speed of the 4S. If we include that result in the average you're still looking at a 1.95x average. As we've seen in the past, these gains don't typically translate into dramatically higher frame rates in games, but games with better visual quality instead.

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6324/the-iphone-5-performance-preview

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iPhone 5 Release date

iPhone 5 – Will It Be Released in June 2012?

While this is a hotly debated topic in the cyber-world, the chances of the iPhone 5 being released before June seem bleak. Apple has always scheduled their iPad release sometime around March. This year could see the launch of the new iPad 3. They would not want to release another version of the iPhone (iPhone 5) in just 6 months after the iPhone 4S, as it could hit their revenues being generated from it, nor would they want to have the phone competing with the pad for sales.
The iPhone 5 is a next generation phone which will include great features, but not likely to have a brand new design. There have been rumors that the iPhone 5 will feature 4G LTE technology. If this is true, then Apple may actually change the design of the iPhone 5 to house the different modem that is needed.  This will enable high-speed transfer of voice and video data around the globe. This will be one revolutionary feature fans are waiting for.

Camera buffs will continue to enjoy the high resolution camera that the iPhone 5 will sport – likely at least an 8MP camera but possibly higher. The current version of the iPhone–the 4S–features an 8MP camera that has received great reviews from 4S users. The screen is definitely larger at 4 inches on iPhone 5 as opposed to the current 3.5 inches on iPhone 4S. The iPhone 5 will make use of Apple’s latest cloud technology iCloud and an upgraded version of the iOS5 software to power the phone.

Another interesting rumor is that the phone will not have buttons. Instead, a technology called ‘assistive touch’ will be utilized. The iPhone 5 will also have a new touch panel that will allow users to control with touch what could only be controlled by buttons in the older versions. However, considering Apple’s technology, they might not be ready to do away with the hardware buttons – they might assign new functions to them instead.

We might see changes to the cable connections. AppleInsider.com discovered that Apple was interested in exploring magnetic data, headphone and power connections much like the MagSafe adapters used on MacBooks. The cable that Apple is proposing is an all-in-one magnetic programmable cable that can be used on multiple portable devices. This addition, if realized, can make the iPhone 5 a lot sturdier as the phone can be sealed completely. Moisture will be kept out of the device, thereby, safeguarding valuable electronic components that could otherwise be damaged.
With the release of the iPad 3 tentatively scheduled for March 2012, as recently announced by Bloomberg, the iPhone 5 cannot be far behind.  If all goes well, we could even be holding a phone with 3D motion technology instead of the touchscreen. We can only watch and wait to see what else will be revealed about this powerful portable device.

iPhone 5 – Can you be one of first ones to have it?

iPhone 5 is a hot topic on the market today, things changing everyday, new features, new technologies talked about everyday. You can stay up to date by subscribing to this website and by reading our latest stories about this dream phone. Bookmark this page, visit the site for newer information and also to find how you can get your hands on iPhone 5 before everyone else does. Stay ahead in the race, keep yourself up to date.
Leave a comment to let us know if you found this post useful and also let us know what more you would like to know about the iPhone 5 launch so we can do our best to fetch that for you.

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iPhone5

As the 5th generation of the iPhone is on the verge of being released, and with all the speculations spreading on the Internet about the iPhone 5, people are anticipating and desperately waiting for the launch of the smartphone, which is now expected to happen in Summer 2012. Many fans and current Apple iPhone consumers are wondering what groundbreaking features Apple will add to the new iPhone 5.

UPDATE: The most recent rumors indicate that the iPhone 5 will have a 4+ inch display, possibly made by Korean giant LG. However rumors of a teardrop-shaped device have been shelved after a Foxconn employee in China revealed that samples so far are symmetrical in thickness. (Foxconn is the company that currently manufactures the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 for Apple.) The same source reveals that neither of the samples have the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S forms, and that neither of the devices seen so far are the final versions. This employee has however failed to indicate any concrete features that are set to appear in this next generation of iPhone.

This article summarizes the various features and specifications that are expected to sport the device.

iPhone 5 Features

Although Apple does not reveal the exact specifications and features until the device is officially unveiled, we could dictate some of the main features that are expected. However, rumor of the new iPhone 5 features, in terms of both hardware and software upgrades, will definitely entice any smartphone buyer.

The upcoming phone is expected to sport the Apple’s latest and greatest A5 processor chip, iCloud service, higher-resolution camera, and a 4+ inch screen size. Here are some of the most anticipated 

iOS 5

Apple announced iOS 5.0 and its features during the WWDC 2011 keynote address on June 6, 2011. The user interface is based on the concept of direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures. It is expected to come with more than 200 new features that will include improved Notification System, News Stand and iMessage.

iMessage is an application that is developed to compete with Blackberry Messenger. The app will allow iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad users to communicate (much like a chat service) with each other. The iMessage feature has been integrated into the SMS/MMS application used originally on the iPhone models.

iCloud

The iPhone5 is expected to have the iCloud service.

Apple’s iPhone 5 is expected to feature the new iCloud service for wireless remote access of music from all computers and mobile devices.

The iPhone5 will automatically sync with the iCloud which will allow users to store photos, apps, calendars and documents without having them to store in the phone’s memory. Apple is also looking to tie up with top music label companies to license songs for the iCloud service.

However, rumors state that Apple might release a low-cost “iCloud iPhone” alongside the iPhone 5. It could be named the “iPhone Mini”

“The iPhone Mini (or iPhone Nano, or whatever) could have significantly less storage than a typical iPhone. Most likely 8 gigabytes of storage – the same as the lowest end iPhones right now. Apple won’t prevent users from storing their own content, because that would be crazy. But since it has a small amount of memory, Apple will likely push the ability to stream media via MobileMe as well.”

A5 Processor to power the iPhone5

iPhone 5 will house the A5 as the main processor, which technically is the same chip that currently powers the iPad 2. The A5 contains a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU with NEON SIMD accelerator and a dual core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, which means that the iPhone5 can do twice the work at once. The processor speed will be somewhere between 1.2 to 1.5 GHz, with probably a 1GB RAM.

The processor upgrade is done not just to increase the processing speed of the phone, but also to compete with the newly launched Samsung Galaxy S II.

The A5 chip might effectively increase the power use, however, it is said that the chip has “got a dynamic power management”, which can lower the [speed] depending on the workload, and thus efficiently make use of the power.

iPhone 5 to Sport a Better Camera

The iPhone 4 sports a 5 megapixel camera, so I’m expecting that the iPhone 5 will have a rear-facing 8MP dual-LED flash camera. However, this isn’t really “awesome”, since most of the high-end Android smartphones come with an 8MP camera. Along with that, the iPhone 5 is expected to have a front-facing camera for video chatting.
According to sources, Apple has filed several patent applications relating to 3D picture capturing to the US Patent and Trademark Office later in March. This indicates that the iPhone 5 might feature a 3D camera. The filing indicates that the device will be capable of capturing, processing and rendering 3D images with dual-camera hardware.

Another interesting feature is that the iPhone 5 will be capable of taking pictures in Panorama. It will work similarly to the ’360 Panorama’ application in the App Store. It will let you take pictures in a sequence as you move the camera from one side to another, which in the end will effortlessly stitch the images together to create a panorama.

Additionally, if Apple really wants to keep up with the competition to Android, then it might consider improving upon the video resolution to a full 1080p HD recording. Currently iPhone 4 has a 720p video capture at 30 frames per second.

Display and Resolution

There hasn’t been a better screen resolution since the release of the iPhone 4. Currently the iPhone 4 has a 3.5 inches screen size, and sources indicate that Apple might stay locked with the current size. But a few other sources (including a recent rumor from a Foxconn employee in China) say that Apple is planning to increase the screen size to 4+ inch with higher screen resolution.

Image credits: PhoneArena.com

However, the iPhone 5 could be slightly wider and thinner. The dimensions are calculated to be: 4.33″ x 2.36″ and .27″ thickness at the top and .21″ at the bottom, whereas the dimensions of iPhone 4 are: 4.5″ x 2.31″ x .37″

Other iPhone5 Features

Here are some of the other features that we can expect from the iPhone 5:

Other iPhone 5 Features

• Face Recognition Security
• 4G/LTE support *
• A new, sleeker body design
• OLED screen
• Scratch proof and shatter proof screen
• Wireless sync with iTunes
• Extended battery life
• Flash support
• SIM-less phone **
• Physical keyboard
• Increased RAM (from 512MB to 1GB)
• New multi-tasking look
• HD audio
• Built-in GPS

(*) According the AT&T documents leaked by LulzSec, the Apple iPhone 5 will offer 4G and will be LTE (Long Term Evolution) network compatible. LTE is a project of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), and is the latest standard in the mobile network technology.

(**) According to International Business Times, it is rumoured that the iPhone 5 will feature a new SIM-less design with 2 to 3 internal antennas for CDMA and GSM compatibility, which will make it a “worldphone”.

The above mentioned features are some of the improvements that we can expect from Apple. However, we cannot assure you that they can be true, but most of the upgrades are more likely to be utilized.

Apple definitely wants to fight back against Android smartphone makers like HTC and Samsung, and perhaps it is why the new iPhone 5 will host some of the outstanding features.

iPhone 5 Launch Date

Apple follows a tradition to launch new devices in their summer Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), but that didn’t happen this year.

However, BGR reported that an AT&T Vice President has confirmed to several employees that the iPhone 5 that boasts a stronger chip for processing data and a more advanced camera is scheduled to be launched in early October. Additionally, the VP communicated the following to a group of managers: “Expect things to get really, really busy in the next 35-50 days, so prepare your teams accordingly.”

We can expect the announcement of the iPhone 5 later this year, possibly at the 2012 edition of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which is likely to take place in June 2012. The release date would then be set for a few months later.

The iPhone 4 has proven to be one of the most successful smartphones of all time with selling over 1.7 million devices in just three days of availability, and iPhone 4S sales hit the roof with more than 600,000 units sold on the first day. We are expecting that the iPhone 5 will certainly replicate this success, and one thing is for sure – the sales of iPhone 5 will definitely boom and we can expect a huge number of people lined up at Apple stores when the device is available for sale.

iPhone 5 Video

Check out the video we made about the iPhone 5:
Expected features and specs, price, and release date…

iPhone 5 Price

At this stage no official price has been unveiled but we expect the iPhone 5 to be the same price than the iPhone 4S when it was released. We will update this section as soon as we have more information on that topic.

What do you think of iPhone 5? Will you buy it? What additional iPhone 5 features are you expecting? Please let us know by leaving your comments below. If you want to read our review of the iPhone 4S, please click this link: iPhone 4S

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