Apple’s A4 Chip Could Be The Minimum Requirement For Running iOS 5

With iOS 4, Apple left the original iPhone and iPod Touch behind in the dust of iOS 3.1.3, and even the iPhone 3G could not avail itself of some of iOS 4’s most notable features, like multitasking. As long as you at least had an iPhone 3GS, though, you’d be fine.

Given how many problems the iPhone 3G hardware had running iOS 4.0, it should come as no surprise that Apple is hoping to consign that hardware to the dustbin when they debut iOS 5 at WWDC next month. What may be more surprising is that the iPhone 3GS will go into the dustbin too.

The rumor comes from Eldar Murtazin, a Russian analyst and editor-in-chief of Mobile Review, who writes in an unsubstantiated tweet.

Just one comment. Apple iPhone 3Gs wont be upgradable to iOS 5.x. iPhone 4 will.

Many blogs are reporting this story as Apple leaving the iPhone 3GS behind with iOS 5, but Murtazin’s actual wording is ambiguous: he seems to be pluralizing iPhone 3G in one sentence, but then in the next, he lists the iPhone 4 as a minimum spec for iOS 4.

I imagine the truth will be similar to iOS 4: the iPhone 3G won’t be supported, and the 3GS will only support some new features of the OS. What do you think, though? Will an A4 CPU be the minimum spec for iOS 5?

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