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New claim: iPhone 5 was a goer until Jobs bottled it
Bad battery life and new display blamed
Apple was planning to launch the iPhone 5 this year, but it bottled it because Steve Jobs wasn't happy, Business Insider reports, quoting a source who claims to have played with a prototype months before the 4S was announced.
Claiming that the 4S is a stop-gap, the industry mole revealed that the iPhone he saw had a 4in screen, compared to the 4S's 3.5in display and an aluminium back, like the iPad 2. The home button was capacitive touch-based as opposed to a physical press button, said the mole.
Other features included a 10 megapixel camera, a faster processor chip and a much slimmer form factor – more like the iPod Touch than the iPhone 4. Bad battery life seemed to be a major catch.
Siri was present but it was called "Assistant".
Steve stepped in to kill the iPhone 5 because he thought that the bigger screen would fragment the iOS ecosystem and make some apps look less than perfect on the new phone.
The details do tally with earlier rumours from case-makers on MacRumours. But whether it's a true story, just something Apple was trying out or simply the wet dream of one attention-seeking fanboi, we're only likely to find out if suggestions that the iPhone 5 will arrive in 2012 prove true as well. ®