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A roundup of all the latest rumors about Apple's next iPhone
Now here's a head scratcher: Online resellers in China are taking orders for Apple's next iPhone, which the company has yet to even acknowledge the existence of, let alone sell here in the United States.
Reuters is reporting that China's largest e-commerce platform, Taobao, has started accepting preorders for the mythical iPhone 5, complete with mocked-up photos of the device and a list of specs which may or may not be accurate.
So what exactly do we know about the next iPhone?
The iPhone 5 (or is that "new iPhone"?) is widely expected to have a larger display -- 4.0 inches, up from the current 3.5 inches, thanks to adding a bit of extra height to the handset.
The headphone jack has likely been relocated to the base of the handset, where a smaller dock connector will evict the 30-pin model used since its introduction on the third-generation iPod back in 2003.
Inside, the next iPhone is likely to introduce a more powerful quad-core A6 processor coupled with 1GB of RAM, although it's unlikely that the onboard storage will leap beyond its current 64GB maximum capacity.
Given that the iPhone 5 is unlikely to launch in China at the same time as the U.S., these resellers will likely purchase the handsets in Hong Kong or abroad and slip them into mainland China.
Customers there are already forking over a deposit of 1,000 yuan (roughly $160 USD) in the hopes of being the first to secure one this fall, with some willing to pay the full asking price of 6,999 yuan ($1,110 USD).
So exactly how many Chinese buyers are falling for this?
"Demand is high," a Taobao seller nicknamed Xiaoyu told Reuters. "Yesterday someone just bought two phones. Altogether we have about two dozen orders."
Not a bad day's work for something that doesn't even exist yet…
Now here's a head scratcher: Online resellers in China are taking orders for Apple's next iPhone, which the company has yet to even acknowledge the existence of, let alone sell here in the United States.
Reuters is reporting that China's largest e-commerce platform, Taobao, has started accepting preorders for the mythical iPhone 5, complete with mocked-up photos of the device and a list of specs which may or may not be accurate.
So what exactly do we know about the next iPhone?
The iPhone 5 (or is that "new iPhone"?) is widely expected to have a larger display -- 4.0 inches, up from the current 3.5 inches, thanks to adding a bit of extra height to the handset.
The headphone jack has likely been relocated to the base of the handset, where a smaller dock connector will evict the 30-pin model used since its introduction on the third-generation iPod back in 2003.
Inside, the next iPhone is likely to introduce a more powerful quad-core A6 processor coupled with 1GB of RAM, although it's unlikely that the onboard storage will leap beyond its current 64GB maximum capacity.
Given that the iPhone 5 is unlikely to launch in China at the same time as the U.S., these resellers will likely purchase the handsets in Hong Kong or abroad and slip them into mainland China.
Customers there are already forking over a deposit of 1,000 yuan (roughly $160 USD) in the hopes of being the first to secure one this fall, with some willing to pay the full asking price of 6,999 yuan ($1,110 USD).
So exactly how many Chinese buyers are falling for this?
"Demand is high," a Taobao seller nicknamed Xiaoyu told Reuters. "Yesterday someone just bought two phones. Altogether we have about two dozen orders."
Not a bad day's work for something that doesn't even exist yet…
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