An allegedly reliable source provided iOSDoc with a photo of the iPhone 5S's motherboard on Monday Feb. 18, which reveals, if authentic, that the new phone would run Apple's A7 CPU.
It is the same size as Apple's A6 motherboard, so the 5S will probably have the same 4-inch display as the iPhone 5. The A7 is a quad-core processor with 1.2 GHz and iOS 7. Design-wise, it will only be getting hardware and software improvements, including a better Siri.
The 5S should run faster than the dual-core A6, iOSDoc reports, and will feature the PowerVR quad-core SGX554MP4 graphics processor. A RAM upgrade also seems to be in the works, a dual-channel 2GB LPDDR-800 memory to replace the 1GB. But with the extra power, both CPU and GPU acquire gaming potential while becoming energy hogs, which could significantly shorten the life of an iPhone battery — Apple hopefully has some plans in store to handle the extra strain.
These specs are great for Apple, but the tech giant is still catching up to high-end phones running Android, many of which have been running on 2GB RAM and quad-core processors for months now. AndroidGeeks points out that an extra gigabyte of RAM is purely a marketing move, as the iOS doesn't allow multitasking on its platform, a function that iPhones could probably use — if it ever increases its display size.
In addition to the 5S, Apple is also reportedly working on a cheap version of the iPhone, as well as the iPhone 6 (though 6 will probably not be arriving until 2014). The IBTimes speculates that the iPhone 5S will be released soon, as sales of the iPhone 5 dropped substantially in the wake of the announcement of a cheap iPhone and the iPhone 5S. Over five million units of the iPhone 5 were sold in its first weekend when it launched in September 2012, and the 5S could be seeing a June release date.
Peter Misek, a Jefferies analyst, said the original plan was to release an iPhone with a bigger screen, but manufacturers are having trouble scaling the original 4-inch screen up to 4.8 inches.
