Eldar Murtazin is a Russian mobile phone guru with an uncanny knack for getting his hands on unreleased phones. While most of Murtazin’s information and scoops have involved non-Apple products, Murtazin recently tweeted that the next major iOS update, iOS 5, will only run on the iPhone 4 and the next-gen iPhone. In other words, iPhone 3GS users are out of luck.
“Just one comment. Apple iPhone 3Gs wont be upgradable to iOS 5.x. iPhone 4 will”, the tweet reads.
While Apple has typically made new iOS updates extremely backwards compatible, arguably to a fault, an iOS update that excludes iPhone 3GS owners would mark a departure from Apple’s efforts to keep previous owners with the most up to date mobile OS. Note that iOS 4, released last June, was backwards compatible going back two generations to the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 3G.
While Murtazin’s tweet should be taken with a grain of salt, he does have a good track record and it is worth nothing that iOS 5 is largely believed to be a major and significant iOS update. That said, it stands to reason that Apple would only want its upcoming OS update to run on hardware powerful enough to deliver the high level of performance and user experience iPhone users have grown accustomed to.
Apple will take the final wraps off of iOS 5 in the coming weeks at WWDC scheduled to kick off on June 6. While specific features remain murky, iOS 5 is rumored to be heavily focused on location and cloud-based services along with significant voice recognition integration.
