The low-cost iPhone. The budget iPhone. The plastic iPhone. Whatever you want to call it, the rumours about this product simply won’t die. It seems probable that Apple will target the pay as you go market in the near future with a more affordable iPhone, encouraging new smartphone buyers to enter the iOS ecosystem rather than Android or Windows Phone.
Schematic drawings of such a device have now leaked online, showing the exact dimensions and design of a device called the iPhone Lite – sounds much better than ‘plastic iPhone’, doesn’t it? Sat side by side with an identical drawing of the iPhone 5S, the Light certainly appears to fit the rumours we’ve been hearing in that it’s thicker and curvier like the iPhone 3G/3GS, yet is similar in its rectangular shape to the iPhone 5.
According to these designs, the authenticity of which have not yet been confirmed, the iPhone Lite will be a smidgen taller, wider and thicker than the iPhone 5S, measuring 8.5mm thick to the 5S’ 7.7mm. The Lite also retains the same button locations, front facing camera and sensors and the Lightning dock connection on the bottom.
Apple Insider has since received a 3D rendering of what the budget iPhone will look like with a range of colourful cases on. The render has been created by a “well-known third-party case manufacturer” and to back that up, several iPhone accessories industry experts have weighed in to say they believe the design is pretty spot on.
Of course, the leaked designs also appear to confirm that the iPhone 5S will retain the same design as the iPhone 5, something which was in part confirmed by recently leaked screen and logic board parts.
Case manufacturers can indeed be wrong with their early estimations of Apple’s forthcoming products, but based on what we’ve been hearing in numerous reports and rumours, this looks like a pretty sensible design that could well come from Apple.