iPhone 5 Price Shrinking, Not Screen, Claim Insiders

Persistent rumors of a smaller – or, more recently, larger – iPhone are apparently untrue, with insiders suggesting that instead Apple is looking to shrink the price of the iOS smartphone. According to the NYTimes' anonymous sources the new iPhone 5, expected to arrive this summer, will offer voice command control and perhaps a broader range of SKUs, all with the same physical size but differing in certain core ways.

"Although the innards of the phone, including memory size or camera quality, could change to offer a less expensive model, the size of the device would not vary" claims the source, who has supposedly worked on multiple versions of the iPhone 5. Changing the physical scale, with a smaller display, is unlikely to actually work out cost-effective for Apple, and would require that iOS developers rework their apps to suit.

Meanwhile, earlier talk of a MobileMe makeover has apparently been corroborated, becoming a free service offering wireless sync and media streaming. "The goal is that your photos and other media content will eventually just sync across all your Apple devices without people having to do anything" the source claims, suggesting that reducing the amount of onboard storage future iPhones required – since content could be streamed instead – would add up to a cheaper handset.