Everything else is pure speculation — and if you read any definitive, insider reports about the iPhone 5 being announced today, they’re lying. The fact is, an iPhone will be released, but it could very easily be a cheaper, “sidegrade” iPhone 4S; a stopgap until the iPhone 5 is ready. The iPhone 4S is expected to look the same as the iPhone 4, but feature the newer A5 processor (found in the iPad 2), possibly more RAM (1GB), and a lower price point (the 64GB iPhone 4S will cost around the same as today’s 32GB iPhone 4). There’s a strong chance that this is the only iPhone that will be announced today.
Today will also see the announcement of iOS 5, which will power the new iPhone when it’s released sometime in October, and will probably end up being the centerpiece of the keynote. There’s no doubt that Apple held back some of iOS 5′s key features when it was released to developers in June — and the faster processor and increased RAM inside the iPhone 4S could indicate that we’re about to see the release of Apple’s voice-control “Assistant.”
Assistant — or Apple Assistant, or Virtual Personal Assistant, or whatever it ends up being called — will bring, at long last, speech-to-text to iOS devices. If you’re used an Android smartphone or tablet, you will have used Google’s built-in voice search — and, at its most basic, this is what Assistant will do for iOS. As the name suggests, though, this piece of software will do a whole lot more. For a start, it will bring system-wide voice control — “launch Angry Birds”, “check email” — but because the software is based on Siri, an app (and underlying technology) that Apple acquired in April for a rumored $200 million, we know that Assistant will be so much more.
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