ClickTickBoom - July 2011 Rumours - By Clickster

It's been a quiet month in the tech world so it's difficult to know what to talk about in this month's column in all honesty and with nothing much in the way of facts to be going on I will be discussing rumours and conjecture. Let's face it though, we all love a good gossip!

Rumours of the iPhone 5 continue to rumble on with a release date of September this year currently being touted as the release date. Whether this will be a fully fledged iPhone 5 though is open to debate depending on which rumour source you put most faith in. Rumours range from a slight update in the same style as the iPhone 4 with no drastic changes other than more memory and a faster processor (the same one that's in the iPad 2 most likely), a drastic change which means a slimmer phone that's a complete change from the current styling with updated components or another suggestion appears to be there won't be an update, what they will do is keep the iPhone 4 going as the fully fledged top of the range phone and then release an entry level iPhone (a baby iPhone if you will) to compete with the entry level Android devices that are so popular currently. So which of these is right? Only Apple know, and as usual they are keeping tight lipped. Personally I think they are missing out on a market in not supplying an entry level device for the people who want an iPhone but can't justify/afford the high premium you must pay. This is where Android are becoming so popular after all. Instead of paying £500 for an iPhone you can get a HTC Wildfire which still allows you access to email, internet and Apps for around £150. For the user who is uncertain of how much they will use the device this is a no-brainer. Having said that, it's not Apple's style to compete on price, their MacBooks have been more expensive than a laptop for years and this hasn't harmed their profit margins. In fact it is right up their street as Apple like to have their consumers think they own an elite product, a baby iPhone may have a detrimental impact on this. If I was a betting man I would suggest that the new iPhone will be announced in September for an October launch just in time for Christmas and will be no major update to the current iPhone 4, I have no real basis of which to say this other than my gut feeling though so please don't quote me.

Elsewhere in Apple-land there are already rumblings of a new iPad (aka iPad 3). The rumours are thin on the ground but essentially point to a Retina display on the new one. To be honest there isn't much to this rumour that a small chimpanzee couldn't have figured out. I was surprised that the Retina display wasn't put in the iPad 2 as it was already in the iPhone 4 which had been released 12 months prior to the iPad 2! The only reason I can see that it was left out was because they wanted to hold something back as they knew they were short on stuff to enthuse over in 12 months for the iPad 3. Since we are a good 6 months away from a new iPad though anything could happen and I am sure the rumours will continue to roll on. By December it will probably be rumoured to play holographic porn with smellovision!

One other rumour that caught my eye this week is the rumour of Playstation 4. For a rumour it's quite bold in all honesty as it claims that the Playstation 4 will be released in 2012. Yes that said RELEASED not announced, RELEASED. Once again I must re-iterate that these are only my opinions and this rumour has been published by a fairly well respected news site but I cannot understand how this could possibly be the case. At this year's E3 press conference Sony had some apologising and smoke-screening to do to move attention away from the fact that the PSN had been hacked and unavailable for a month. Achieving that goal would have been so much easier for them if they had announced a new Playstation 4. They didn't do this so to now think that they are going to just release a new machine next year seems ludicrous. Typically when a new console is about to be released it goes through a 12-18 month hype cycle before its released. They announce it at E3 generally in July of the first year and show some tech demos and some games that are in the works, the following E3 they show some more "finished" games and wow people a bit more ready for release in the September a few months later. To think that Sony are going against this and chose to ignore an opportunity to redeem themselves a bit at this years E3 is implausible to me. Playstation 4 ANNOUNCED in 2012? Yeah I will buy into that. Playstation 4 RELEASED in 2012? Do me a favour.

For more from the world of tech visit my blog www.clicktickboom.com!

--Steve