iPhone 5 to retain glass back of iPhone 4 and 4S?

The next couple of weeks are going to belong to the iPad. It’s a given: it will be announced on Wednesday, will release (probably) a week or two later, and, in between, it will be talked about incessantly. However, there is another Apple device that’s capable of stealing a few headlines. Yes, iPhone 5 rumors are still coming.

The latest rumor claims to debunk much of the accepted line of thinking about the iPhone 5. Though many have been expecting to see an iPhone with an aluminum back (see our conceptualized iPhone 5), iLounge reports that the next iPhone will instead have either a glass or ceramic back.

If Apple went with a glass back for the next iPhone, then the design would probably look similar to the iPhone 4/4S. Even if it were thinner, more widely-proportioned, and had a larger screen, there are only so many ways that you can sandwich two pieces of glass together. The back wouldn’t likely be rounded (that would make it highly prone to scratches and breaks), so we’d probably see two flat pieces of Gorilla Glass again held together by a stainless steel antenna.

That Gorilla Glass could be the key to making the next iPhone thinner. When Corning announced Gorilla Glass 2 at CES, the company made it clear that it wasn’t stronger than standard Gorilla Glass; instead, it offered the same strength in a thinner package. Apple, who worships at the altar of lightness and thinness, wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to use the new material — especially since Apple already uses Gorilla Glass in the iPhone.

In addition to the larger screen and thinner design, frequent iPhone 5 rumors include LTE, an NFC chip, and (less likely) the removal of the home button. It’s commonly expected to ship either in June/July — like the first four iPhones — or in the iPhone 4S’ October release slot.