Apple iPhone 5: Fit for business?

We take a look at the rumoured features and hardware of the up-and-coming iPhone 5 to see what business users can expect from Apple’s latest smartphone.

By Richard Goodwin, 10 Feb 2011 at 10:49

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The iPhone, when it launched, was something of a game changer. But a lot has changed since 2007.

Take the Android operating system for example, it’s now the world’s largest mobile OS.

Then there’s the new line of hardware features – dual core processors, NFC chips and netbook-sized portions of RAM – that are about to be unleashed on the market in 2011.

All in all, the market is now a lot more advanced and the competition is armed to the teeth. So what can we expect from the iPhone 5? Will it be another game changer from Apple, or just more of the same?

Antenna issues

Apple did everything right with the iPhone 4. It has multitasking, a Retina Display and even a new sleek design. But then

“Antenna gate” struck and Apple faced arguably one of its biggest PR catastrophes to date.

Fortunately, Apple had a solution up its sleeve: free bumpers for all. And, in the grand scheme of things, it seemed to work. The iPhone 4 went on to be the fastest selling iPhone model to date.

Needless to say, Apple will not be making this mistake again. For one, professional and casual users alike will not tolerate call-dropping, especially when they’ve paid so much for a device. So how is Apple planning to remedy this antenna issue?

According to Patently Apple, Apple’s latest telephonic patent places the antenna behind the Apple logo on its mobile products.

Apple reportedly chose this place as it is “isolated from other electronic components and therefore protected from anything that could potentially block radio-frequency signals”.

3G-enabled FaceTime

One of the key features that Apple is expected to announce along with the next iPhone device – or, possibly even earlier at the iPad 2’s launch – is 3G-enabled FaceTime.

Why Apple didn’t introduce 3G-enabled FaceTime when the service originally launched remains to be seen, especially since services like Fring, Google Talk and Skype have been doing it for quite some time.

Nonetheless, when this feature appears it will be good news for businesses as it enables easier, faster and less limited video conferencing facilities.

According to Rob Bamforth, principal analyst at Quocirca, improved video conferencing within devices like the iPhone and iPad should be attractive to business users. The idea being that employees travel less, which increases their productivity in the work place and, as an added bonus, has a positive knock-on effect on the environment through reduced emissions.

Processing power and RAM

Apple has always been pretty much on the money with its hardware. The iPhone 4 featured Apple’s custom 1 GHz Apple A4 processor and 512MB of RAM – twice that of the iPad. And the iPhone 5 should be no different.

Online speculation from a variety of sources, including 9to5Mac and DigiTimes, seems to suggest that the iPhone 5 will definitely feature some serious hardware improvements. At present, all assertions seem to point towards an updated dual core A4 system-on-a-chip processor, known as the A5.