Adding weight to speculation that iPhone 5 will represent the biggest leap forward in the platform's architecture to date, 9to5Mac reports select developers have been handed prototypes of the device equipped with the firm's dual-core A5 chip.

Their task? To up the ante and create games that specifically take advantage of the chip's extra power.

Pushing boundaries

The A5 has already featured inside iPad 2, offering studios what Apple claims is nine times the GPU power and twice the overall performance of its predecessor.

As such, developers are to use the prototype devices – which are believed to be nothing more than an iPhone 4 with an A5 chip built in, running a specialised version of iOS 4 – to push the platform's boundaries and serve up specialised games for the handset.

The games that result will be used as a major marketing tool come iPhone 5's release, arguably acting as a direct response to specialised Android handsets that also have gaming at their heart, such as Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play.

Chips on the side

"These developers, seemingly from high-level gaming outfits, have been given what is essentially an iPhone 4 but with an A5 processor instead of an A4," 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman says in the report.

"The person who chose to share this information with us calls it the 'iPhone 4S', though the device itself only has typical Apple prototype nomenclature. He also shared that the device spends its evenings in a safe in the company's offices."

Other speculation suggests iPhone 5 – which is believed will ship, along with iOS 5, in September – will come equipped with an 8MP camera and Qualcomm's MDM6600 chip, which is both GSM and CDMA compatible.

[source: 9to5Mac]