iPhone 5 benefits from mystery appearance, unlike iP4

Mystery appearance for the win. When the iPhone 5 debuts, it'll be the first iPhone to surface since 2008 whose appearance won't already be known to the world. Last year the iPhone 4 was released after its prototype had already been exposed by those who found it in a bar. And the year before, the iPhone 3GS turned out to have a physically identical external design to the previous iPhone 3G. That gives Apple the potential for shock value in 2011 which is hasn't had for generations when it comes to its flagship smartphone product. Things could still go wrong. An iPhone5 prototype could once again become lost and found, though such a fiasco happening twice in a row seems unlikely. Or Apple could fail to produce an all-new iPhone 5 and be forced to punt with an "iPhone 4 part two" after all (which would be more like an "iPhone 4 part four" after the release of the original iPhone 4, the Verizon iPhone 4, and the white iPhone 4 in the interim). But assuming Apple manages to dodge both of those unfortunate pitfalls, the iPhone 5 will take the world by surprise when it's unveiled – and that'll count for more than it logically should.What's in a new design? A lot, actually. Consider how much the white iPhone 4 has boosted overall iPhone 4 sales by, despite the fact that it offers literally nothing more than a color change and the fact that it comes so close to the end of the iPhone 4 era. Then again, Apple could do as much harm as good if a redesigned iPhone 5 ends up being not to the public's stylistic liking. Most folks don't talk about it now, but the dirty little secret of the iPhone 4 era is that when that supposed prototype did surface back in 2010, many said it had to be a fake because it was too ugly, too boxy, to un-Apple-like to be a real Apple product. Then later Apple debuted the iPhone 4 and it looked identical to the "ugly boxy" prototype, and yet few called it out for being just that, despite having harshly judged it as such before learning that it really was an Apple design. So with Apple having spent the past year peddling an iPhone 4 design which not only was known about long prior to its launch but was also pre-judged to have been on the unattractive side, Apple has the potential to pull a double whammy with the iPhone 5g: it can shake things up by delivering any new-looking model at all, and shake them up even further by delivering something that's not as unattractive as the model it replaces. All Apple really has to do, seemingly, is to revert back to the curvaceous styling of the iPhone 3G/3GS era, which was widely liked, but of course updated so as to feel like a 2011 product and not a 2009 one. Here's more on the iPhone 5 news.