Yesterday I had the good fortune to go on CNBC and talk about NFC technologies, and how it could change the way we spend money.    It was largely speculated that this 'contactless' payment system, that is already found in Europe and the Nexus S would make its way to the iPhone 5.  Which got me thinking… What else would I like to see in the iPhone 5 from a purely hardware perspective. (A software list is coming soon).   You all know I have an affinity for unnecessarily long introductions, so I'll cut to the chase.  Here is my top 5 (most realistic) wish list for the iPhone 5.

Top 5 iPhone 5 Features Wish List

5.  Bigger screen. 3."5 inches seemed huge back in 2007.   Now however, 3.5" is almost diminutive when sitting next to a 4" packing Galaxy S, or the 4.3" Droid X or Evo.  The incredibly high resolution (940 X640) does definitely make up for the smaller size, but with phones quickly becoming mini-tablets, 3.5" seems like last years innovation.

iPhone 54. More storage. I'm not going to get crazy here and say we need to have removable storage.    It's Apple after all.  That would be like asking for unicorn babies…it's not going to happen.  However, with Android being able to hot swap Micro SD cards of incrementally larger sizes, having a fixed 16 or 32 gig module just doesn't cut it, or seem very modern anymore.

3. Better Battery Life. Miliamp hours mean nothing to me.  It's real world performance that holds the most weight.    Apple claims we get 7 hours of talk time on 3G and 6 hours of web browsing over the mobile network.  I hate to call anyone a liar, but lets just say the conditions have to be ideal to come even close to that.  I recognize I'm a power user.  I'm checking e-mails pushed down from an exchange server every 5 minutes, and use my cell phone as my primary way of communication, so yeah, I push the battery boundaries.    Come end of day, I'm checking my battery percentages almost as much as my e-mail.  I'm not asking for anything crazy, just a battery that I know will last me through the day…and maybe a game or two of Angry Birds.

2. Faster Processor. The A4 is a screamer, and arguably one of the fastest chips of its generation.  But that generation has past, and we are living in a dual core world now.  In order to retain a competitive edge (whether necessary or not) Apple needs to step up with an A5 chip that will put Tegra 2 to shame.  Dual 1.5 GHz cores will get it done for me.  It may just be a pipe dream, and I know real world performance is way more important than clock speed, but come on…how cool would it be to have that?  Assuming the battery could keep up.

1. 4G LTE. Having just a taste of 4G LTE while in Vegas for CES was like giving just a sip of wine to an alcoholic.    Insensitive analogy aside, I was pulling down 16 mbs and 9 up, which meant I could upload a 100 mb video file in around 10 mins.  Totally awesome.   This is the big thing holding me back from a Verizon iPhone 4.  Big Red has their 4G network already, and their footprint is growing by the day.  AT&T promised to turn theirs on sometime this year.  The jump from 3-4G is tremendous, and should be considered a requirement before you get your next phone.  After all, it's one extra G.

What hardware features would you like to see in the iPhone 5?  Did we miss anything?