Kayo external battery on an iPhone 5.
Doubt is rising in the Apple rumor community as to whether a completely redesigned iPhone 5 will actually arrive this year. The doubt mainly comes from a lack of physical evidence—there have been no true iPhone 5 parts leaked, all we’ve seen so far are parts that fit an iPhone 4S concept. With the sheer amount of parts makers involved, surely something, anything, would have leaked by now?
Well, there’s one Chinese company that still thinks a redesigned iPhone 5 is coming. Battery accessory maker Kayo, based in Shenzhen, China, were the iPhone is assembled, just supplied its designs for an external battery for the iPhone 5.
According to Kayo, at least, the rumors we’ve heard about the iPhone 5 are true. The iPhone 5 will have an elongated oval home button, wider edge-to-edge screen, the mute/ringer switch will be located to the other side, and the phone will be wedged-shaped and incredibly thin, thinner than any Samsung phone. (We’re also hearing that Apple chose to relocate the mute/ringer switch to make it more comfortable to use the volume-up button as a camera shutter button—part of the new functionality to be introduced by iOS 5.)
We would caution that we’ve only seen Kayo’s renderings and not one of their actual batteries, which says to us they haven’t fully committed to an iPhone 5 arriving. It’s one thing to pump out a cheap silicone iPhone 5 case, which costs pennies each to produce. It’s quite another to pump out external batteries.
