It's just over three weeks until the rumored Sept. 10 introduction of the iPhone 5S, and the rumors are coming hot and heavy. The latest rumors, reported in an article on CNET, say the new phone may also come in a gold or champagne color. Plus, it may follow the precedent of the iPad 4 and offer an option of 128GB of memory. Also, this new baby is rumored to be even faster, thanks to a new A7 chip. A post on AppleInsider suggests this new chip will boost performance by 20 percent and that it may use a 64-bit architecture.
In addition to memory and performance, the camera is also expected to get an upgrade. According to the CNET article, it will likely still be 8 megapixels but will come with a larger f/2.0 aperture. Also, there have been multiple rumors that the new phone will have a dual LED flash. As I understand it, a dual LED flash emits twice as much light, meaning you can illuminate subjects that are farther away. It's also better for low-light situations. The larger aperture also is good for low light situations because it lets in more light, allowing for a faster shutter speed.
Many rumors in the past week have been saying the new phone will use a scratch-proof sapphire crystal for the rumored fingerprint sensor. Obviously, a scratched sensor could mess up the image of your fingerprint, so it makes sense that Apple would use an extremely hard material. According to 9To5Mac, the home button on the iPhone 5S will double as a fingerprint sensor and, instead of being concave, will protrude just slightly from the phone. What's the point of such a sensor? Quoting a market analyst, 9To5Mac says, "Apple will likely be able to offer users a more secure and more intuitive way to conduct mobile payment transactions and access cloud computing services, thereby strengthening advantages of the ecosystem."
As you can see, many of the features are "under the hood." Overall, the form factor should be pretty much identical to the current iPhone. This follows Apple's typical pattern of changing the phone outwardly every two years and making performance upgrades in the alternate years.
It will be fun to see what Apple introduces, and whether these rumors hold true. And if Apple does indeed also introduce a low-cost iPhone 5C, that will certainly generate a lot of interest.