A new report has surfaced today suggesting that the iPhone 5 was not released this summer primarily because the A5 chip within was overheating, and resolving the issue pushed it’s release later into the year.
The story (from Chinese website Sohu.com) goes that Apple’s hardware team is having a difficult time keeping that dual-core chip appropriately cool in the very tiny cooling space that the iPhone’s body offers. The suggestion is that this has led Apple to delay the iPhone 5 launch for an unspecified period of time, possibly into 2012.
The story also mentions that Apple will be migrating over to a new 28-nanometer manufacturing process with the A6 chip, which they claim is due to arrive next year. The current A5 chip is based on a 45-nanometer process, and is nearly double the size of the A4 processor found in the iPhone 4.
Personally, I take this one with a high degree of skepticism – it’s very unlikely that Sohu would have access to any of this information at all, particularly when it comes to the A6 chip. Furthermore, it’s equally plausible that the September release of the iPhone 5 could be much more of a political release decision than a hardware issue, and could likely be due to iOS 5 just not being ready for a summer release.
Whatever the real story is, I very much doubt that Sohu.com has it, so I’m keeping this rumor at arm’s length, and I recommend that you do as well.
