Apple iPhone 5: Will it be ever required ?

Reports of an upcoming iPhone 5 continue to keep the netizens busy but how is Apple's year old phone, the iPhone 4, faring against the new breed of Androids?

All Things D recently published a report by BTIG Research that says iPhone 4 is still a winner on both AT&T and Verizon networks. The research group surveyed over 250 Verizon and AT&T stores asking them to reveal their top selling smartphone.

Verizon launched an iPhone 4 on its network just five months ago and, thus, its response to the aforementioned survey question is a veritable proof of iPhone 4 success. Fifty-one percent of Verizon stores which took part in the survey said that iPhone 4 was their best selling phone and 38 percent said it shared the top spot with HTC Thunderbolt and Samsung's Droid Charge.

On AT&T network, 65 percent of the respondents stated that iPhone 4 was their top selling smartphone while 31 percent said Androids were the top brand.

The industry is rife with expectation over the release of the next iPhone rendition, the iPhone 5, which many surmise would be released in September and is touted to feature an 8MP camera, edge-to-edge display - possibly a 3.7-inch curved glass display, tear drop design and A5 processor.

However, just comparing the iPhone 4 with phones like HTC Thunderbolt and Samsung Droid Charge reveals that iPhone 4 pretty much matches the specifications of aforementioned phones. Apple iPhone 4 has been able to hold against the Android breed underscoring the fact that it's not merely about device specifications, as success depends on having a vibrant ecosystem of apps, OS, billing mechanism and complimentary devices.

The iPhone 4 was launched in June 2010. The phone sports a 3.5-inch display with a screen resolution of 960x640 pixels. iPhone 4 is powered by the A4 microchip, the same chip which powered the first iPad. It also has a 5MP camera with 720p video capture ability. The phone offers up to 7 hours talk time on 3G and 14 hours talk time on 2G. The phone weighs 4.8 oz and is 0.37-inch thick. It comes in two internal memory configurations 16GB and 32GB and is now available in colors black and white and also comes in an unlocked version.

The two Android phones which are doing well on the Verizon circuit are HTC Thunderbolt and Samsung Droid Charge but Apple iPhone 4 is still ahead of these phones. Both the phones run on Verizon's LTE 4G network. HTC Thunderbolt runs on Android 2.2 or Froyo and is expected to receive an Android 2.3 or Gingerbread update by the end of this month. The phone features a 4.3-unch display with 800x480 screen resolution. It is powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and offers 768MB RAM and has 8GB internal memory. It is 0.5-inch thick and weighs 5.7oz. It has an 8MP rear-facing camera with 720p video capture capability.

While the other named competitor from Samsung camp Droid Charge, which was also named by Apple in its patent lawsuit, comes equipped with a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display with 800x480 screen resolutions. The phone runs on 1GHz Hummingbird chipset and features Android 2.2 or Froyo. It offers 512MB RAM and 2GB internal memory, weighs about 5.04 oz and is 0.46-inch thick. The phone also comes equipped with 8MP rear-facing and 1.3 MP front-facing cameras.

Though it is expected that iPhone 5 will feature superphone-like specifications, the market verdict seems to state that iPhone 4 with its current specification sheet is still the customer's choice.

Read: Apple iPhone 5 Guide: Surprisingly no 4G

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