[Prestidigitweeze]

Good news included relative ease of disassembly and screen replacement access. I really hate the repair-proof battery-glued aspects of the Retina MBP. I'm boycotting that model.

Interesting news included the 338S1077 Cirrus ADC/DAC, which is probably not as good as the International S3's Wolfson but better than the DAC (Yamaha?) used in the Snapdragon S4 in Stateside S3 iterations and in International LTE models of most smartphones.

The design in the picture doesn't look like that of any Cirrus I've ever seen in an iPhone before. I don't have a clue what it's based on.

If its performance is like those of previous iPhone DACs, then it sounds the best in this generation of Stateside smartphones by default, which isn't saying all that much. For all I know, it could sound markedly better or worse.

I might opt for an S3 with a Fiio E7 DAC ($49 as opposed to $599 for portable iPhone DACs) -- the question will be whether I want to carry all that around. A lot depends on whether Google Maps can still be used (reliably) on the iP5. Maps will doubtless improve with updates over the next few years, but I'm not sublimating my travel time to beta software created due to corporate politics when we already have mature options.