Hasta La Gadget!

Samsung’s memory and displays will be absent from the first batch of Apple’s new iPhone, insiders claim, after pricing and legal disagreements saw the Cupertino firm slash orders from its long-time rival. Patent fight tensions and arguments over costs have led to a stalemate of sorts, insiders tell Reuters and Bloomberg, though Apple is also believed to be working to reduce its reliance on any one individual company. However, Apple hasn’t been able to entirely oust Samsung from its iPhone 5 supply chain: the processor powering the new smartphone will apparently still be produced by the South Korean firm.

Samsung has been one of Apple’s largest suppliers in the past years, with the Cupertino company apparently contributing around 9-percent of Samsung’s overall revenue and being the firm’s largest individual customer. However the iPhone 5 will see Apple greater diversify its components chain, with LG Display, Sharp and Japan Display KK each tipped to be providing the new panels – believed to be larger than the current 3.5-inch screen – for the upcoming handset.

That strategy may well prove to be a difficult one to achieve, however. Earlier reports suggested that Sharp had encountered unforeseen production problems and missed its delivery schedule to Apple’s manufacturing partners, potentially leading to supply bottlenecks.

Samsung’s place in new Apple hardware has been gradually phased out, meanwhile. The much-rumored “iPad mini” is expected to use displays from AUO and LG Display, not Samsung, while Toshiba, Elpida Memory, and SK Hynix are the company’s first choice for iPhone 5 storage and RAM chips.

“Samsung is still on the list of initial memory chip suppliers [for new iPhones]” a source said of the Korean company’s sidelining. “But Apple orders have been trending down and Samsung is making up for the reduced order from others, notably Samsung’s handset business.”

That handset business continues to grow, and increasingly sucks up supply from Samsung’s own component arms. The company sold 20m Galaxy S III handsets in 100 days, it announced yesterday, a showcase of Samsung’s expertise in Super AMOLED displays, Exynos processors, memory, and more.

Tensions in Apple and Samsung’s dual roles – competitors in the marketplace, but tightly-interdependent customer and supplier for components – are not new. Last year, Apple is believed to have explored replacing Samsung as processor manufacturer with upstart TSMC, though concerns about yields apparently scuppered the plans.

Apple slashes Samsung’s iPhone 5 involvement says supply chain is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While the next-gen iPhone announcement has been scheduled for the 12^th of September, if the rumors are correct, the iPad mini will be seeing an announcement at a later date instead. In any case with a month to go to that rumored date, seeing more leaks and rumors at this point in time is common, like the latest leak which has revealed the rear shell of the iPad mini. These set of photos were obtained by NetEase and as you can see in the picture above, it sports the smaller dock connector and the grills for the speakers. Of course it’s hard to say if these photos are even legitimate, so we suggest you take them with a grain of salt for now but be sure to check back with us at a later date where hopefully Apple will make an official announcement pertaining to the tablet. In the meantime, what do you guys think? Are we looking at fake components or do you think this could be the real thing?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Unknown iPad identifiers show up in developer logs, could this be the iPad mini?, iPad mini name confirmed?,

Instapaper creator Marco Arment is reporting that he has discovered references to two new iPads in Instapaper’s device stats: iPad2,5 and iPad2,6. He’s never seen these devices before, and he’s thinking that they might be references to the long-rumored iPad Mini. Of course, he also points out that these entries could have been faked by hackers, but he doesn’t think that’s likely, and makes the case for the iPad Mini pretty well.

First, some background. Arment says that iPad2,1 to iPad2,3 are the three different versions of the regular iPad 2 – Wi-Fi, GSM, and CDMA. iPad2,4 is the die-shrunk iPad 2 that was released around the time of the third-gen iPad, bringing the price of the iPad 2 down as people were going crazy over the latest iteration. That brings us iPad 2,5 and iPad 2,6, which Arment admits could be GSM and CDMA version of the die-shrunk model, but he also says that releasing new iPad 2 models at this point in time would be “a pretty strange move.”

Instead, Arment has a feeling that these model references are for two versions of the iPad Mini – Wi-Fi and GSM. If that’s the case, then we just got a better of what the iPad Mini will be when it finally arrives. “This suggests that the iPad Mini is, effectively, an iPad 2,” Arment writes, “an A5 with 512 MB of RAM and enough GPU power to drive the Gruber Display, but not a Retina Display.”

He thinks that the iPad Mini will be a mishmash of new and old parts, potentially including the new iPhone’s LTE chip. This will allow Apple to offer a lower-cost tablet with the iPad Mini, and it’s expected to hit a sweet spot right around $249. Naturally, we can expect a premium of around $100 for an iPad Mini with LTE functionality, perhaps bringing that price up to $349. This is a very exciting new development, and with Apple’s rumored iPhone/iPad event coming up on September 12, we might not have much longer before we find out if Arment’s predictions were right on the money. Stay tuned.

[Image via Ciccaresedesign]

iPad Mini appears in Apple code as iPad 2 redux is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

There has been a lot of rumors surrounding the iPad mini, such as how the name itself, originally coined through the rumors, has been “confirmed” by Apple. Well if you’re still a skeptic, and rightly so, here’s one more piece of evidence that might suggest that the iPad mini is for real. Instapaper’s developer, Marco Arment, discovered that recently two “curious entries” were spotted in Instapaper’s device stats and were revealed to be the “iPad2,5” and “iPad2,6” identifiers.

As it stands, the identifiers go up to “iPad2,4” at the moment which is basically the iPad 2 WiFi model with the new 32mn process manufactured A5 chip. It is possible that these two identifiers would be the CDMA and GSM versions of the iPad 2, but Arment believes that isn’t the case as it is pretty late into the product’s lifecycle and would be an unusual move by Apple. In any case this is hardly confirmation but it is still interesting to note and according to Arment, he’s “never had a device show up [on the logs] that didn’t end up being a real, about-to-be-released Apple device.” What do you guys think?

[Image credit – iMore]

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: iPad mini name confirmed?, iPad mini now pegged for October launch [Rumor],

Apple is ready to release the new iPad Mini in October 2012. The company will have two separate press events later this year, one for the iPhone 5 in September and one for the iPad Mini in October. For your info, the new iPad Mini features a 7.85-inch touchscreen display. Stay tuned for more updates. [PCLaunches]