Report: Next iPhone Will Be Thinner, Longer, Have A Metal Back And Look Like This [Gallery]

The new iPhone could be a little longer, a little thinner and a lot sexier.

iLounge has had decent luck predicting new iOS devices recently, managing earlier this year to correctly prophesize most of the details about the new iPad (although consensus had pretty much agreed upon them already).

Now iLounge is doing the same for the iPhone 4S, and while they echo a lot of the current speculation about a thinner iPhone 5 with a longer 4-inch display, the professional renders iLounge has put together are absolutely top-notch. This would be an incredibly attractive iPhone.

According to iLounge, the new iPhone will have a longer iPhone display that will increase the length of the phone by about 10mm while keeping the width the same. Making the iPhone bigger in this fashion would allow Apple to fit an LTE chip and more battery into the device, while assuring that the new iPhone can still be used for one-handed texting. It would also be backwards compatible with current iPhone apps, since apps not updated for the new iPhone could simply be letterboxed.

Another advantage of a longer body is that Apple could make the device thinner. In fact, iLounge believes the new iPhone will be around 20% thinner than the iPhone 4S. They also foresee a sexy metal back, which I think looks absolutely lovely as they envision it in their mockups (and should cut down on back plate shattering). The rest of CoM’s editorial staff says I’m bonkers though, and it’s hideous, so what do I know?

Finally, iLounge claims — again, echoing earlier reports — that Apple’s finally going to change the Apple Dock Connector so that it’s smaller. The biggest advantage here is that Apple can regain all the space inside of the iPhone that is dedicated to the larger Dock Connector mechanism and cram it with more useful components, like battery.

I’ve been skeptical that I would want a larger iPhone, but barring the weird half-metal back, this device looks great. Sure, the iPhone becomes longer… but it also becomes thinner and gets LTE and better battery life. This is an iPhone I could properly swoon over.

• Source iLounge

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