Apple expected to unveil iPhone 5 today

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple fans are amped. The computer and gadget maker is expected to announce a new, more powerful version of its wildly popular smartphone this week – more than a year after it unveiled the iPhone 4.

Last week, Apple Inc. emailed invitations to a media event at its headquarters in Cupertino this morning. The invite says “let’s talk iPhone,” implying the normally secretive company intends to show off the latest version of the device. In the past, Apple has typically introduced a new iPhone during the summer, but this year it was expected to hold off until the fall.

The new iPhone is expected to have a number of changes, the biggest of which will likely be under the hood: the inclusion of Apple’s latest iOS mobile software, iOS 5, which has been slated for release this fall.

IOS 5 will include things such as wireless device setup and content syncing, and beefed-up camera, email and Web-browsing apps. A new iPhone is also expected to include Apple’s forthcoming iCloud service, which will store content such as music, documents, apps and photos on Apple’s servers and let you access them wirelessly on numerous devices.

One of the most notable hardware changes many industry watchers are predicting is the inclusion of a more powerful chip: Apple’s dual-core A5 processor, which is the same chip it uses in its current iPad. The iPhone 4 runs on Apple’s older A4 chip, and the move to a more capable chip should improve things such as multitasking, opening apps and gaming.