iPhone 8

Japan’s Nikkei again reports on upcoming features for Apple’s next iPhone just a month after the launch of the iPhone 7. Three days ago, it reported that there would be 3 versions of the all glass-backed iPhone 8 line including a 5-inch screen model. Today the news organization is reporting that at least the biggest model will use a OLED and Sharp could be making some of those future OLED displays in the US.
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Nikkei Asian Review is adding to recent reports that Apple will move to an all-glass design with the iPhone 8 next year, while reporting that the lineup will add a 5-inch model. Apple previously used an all-glass design with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s, but switched to aluminum backs with the iPhone 5 through iPhone 7. And a 5-inch iPhone 8 would add a new option to the current lineup which includes 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch flagship models.

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We’ve been seeing concept images for a near-bezel-free iPhone 8 for some time now, but there’s a big difference between a purely visual concept and a real-life product. Concept images can completely ignore the engineering challenges, along with the practicalities of such things as earpieces and front-facing cameras.

But Xiaomi’s latest phone, the Mi Mix, shows just what is possible in a real-life phone …

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Tech research giant Gartner is forecasting that the year-on-year decline in iPhone sales will continue through the rest of 2016, but that Apple will return to growth next year.

Overall stats released by the company relate to the mobile phone market as a whole, where it expects total shipments to fall from 1.917B units in 2015 to 1.887B this year before a slow growth beginning in 2017. The company does, though, make specific reference to the role the iPhone will play …

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Long-standing rumors that Apple plans to embed the Home button into the display of future iPhones became more concrete when Bloomberg, the WSJ and NYT all reported that Apple plans make this move in 2017.

We’ve seen a succession of Apple patents for this technology, and another one published today appears to describe a technology that would allow a fingerprint to be recognised almost anywhere on the screen, not just in a fixed location … 

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Reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities has released a new report further forecasting that the 2017 iPhone will likely adopt and glass front and back design like the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s. The idea seems to be that the new Jet Black iPhone 7 has proved highly popular with customers due to the appeal of its glossy finish, and glass would make it much less scratch prone; Apple has recommended customers use a case with the glossy aluminum model to avoid ‘micro abrasions’ from general usage.

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Concept image: @MesutGDesigns

With next year’s iPhone expected to be a major redesign, you can put good money on it that it won’t be called the iPhone 7s. We’ve been tending to use iPhone 8 as a shorthand reference to the 2017 iPhone, and a sketchy report today suggested that some of Apple’s employees may be using the name in the same way, but that’s by no means the only possibility.

Given that the rumored all-glass casing and full-screen face with embedded Home button would represent a pretty dramatic new look, it’s possible that Apple may want to celebrate that difference with a completely new naming strategy … 

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While Apple’s naming convention would normally suggest that next year’s phone would be the iPhone 7s, all the rumors are pointing to a fairly radical redesign – with an all-glass casing and full-screen face with embedded Home button the main changes expected. For that reason, it seems virtually certain that Apple will break the convention.

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Martin Hajek’s concept image predates the dropped headphone socket …

There have been long-standing rumors that Apple is moving toward a Home button embedded in the display of future iPhones, enabling the screen to fill almost the entire front of the device. More recent reports from Bloomberg and the WSJ have specifically suggested that the company will make this move in 2017.

The New York Times is now corroborating these reports with a small paragraph tucked away near the end of its iPhone 7 review …

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Following a similar report from the WSJ earlier this summer, a new report from Bloomberg today briefly mentions that the iPhone introduced in 2017 will not feature the iconic Home button that has been present from the start. The Bloomberg piece focused more broadly on an iPhone for Japan with support for FeliCa payments.

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A pair of KGI reports in March and April suggested that Apple would be switching back from aluminum to glass iPhone casings in 2017, and this is now backed by a Nikkei story today.

Foxconn Technology Group is developing a glass casing for smartphones as its key client Apple Inc. is said to be revamping the iPhone, people familiar with the developments say. Apple is expected to redesign the iPhone, including giving it a glass chassis, in 2017.

A Nikkei source said that Foxconn had been working on developing a glass chassis since last year, though an earlier report made the unlikely-sounding claim that only one iPhone model would make the switch to an all-glass casing …

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Back when most people were on plans that saw them offered a new phone every two years, upgrading wasn’t really a decision. Paying typically $0-200, depending on your plan, saw you get the latest iPhone every other year. It would have been silly to turn it down because you’d pay the same monthly amount either way.

So the only decision most people made was whether to be on the main ‘tick’ cycle, with the new designs, or the ‘tock’ cycle that gave you the S model with the same design but new features.

But now that carriers split out phone costs from usage plans, upgrading your phone becomes a much more conscious decision. You could do it every year, paying more but always having the latest model. You could continue on a two-year cycle. Or you could save a decent chunk of money by sitting out a year.

That latter option might once have seemed unlikely for 9to5Mac readers, who typically like to stay up to date, but this year could potentially be very different …

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While Apple’s orders for the A9 chip in the iPhone 6s/Plus were split between the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung, we heard back in February that TSMC was to be the sole supplier of the A10 chip in the iPhone 7.  A new report from Korea claims that the same is true of the A11 chip destined for next year’s iPhone.

The report appears in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News, via Digitimes.

TSMC is already the exclusive manufacturer of Apple’s A10 chip which will power the upcoming iPhone series slated for launch in September 2016. The Taiwan-based foundry will continue to be the sole supplier of Apple’s next-generation A11 processor that will be built on a 10nm FinFET process, the report indicated, without citing its sources.

TSMC is believed to have a technological edge on its Korean rival, beating Samsung in the race to develop 10-nanometer processes …

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iPhone concept from ConceptsiPhone

With Apple expected to switch to OLED screens for future iPhones, it appears that it may not need to rely completely on the two major manufacturers for long. While Samsung and LG currently manufacture most of the world’s OLED screens between them, Nikkei reports that Sharp expects to be doing the same ‘before 2018’ …

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Apple was today granted a patent for what it describes as a ‘consumer electronic product [which] includes at least a transparent housing and a flexible display.’ The accompanying drawings show a device which has a display which completely wraps around the device – covering front, rear and sides – with only tiny bezels at the top and bottom.

While Apple uses generic language throughout most of the patent text, it does use the example of a smartphone in places, and the main drawing clearly shows an iOS device with a phone icon present, indicating that the company has an iPhone in mind.

If you’re wondering about one oddity in the drawings, there’s a reason for that …

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iPhone concept image by Yasser Farahi

That Nikkei report claiming that Apple is moving to a three-year cycle on major iPhone refreshes would be huge news if true.

Apple currently has a very well-established ‘tick-tock’ cycle where we see a new form-factor every two years, and new features within the same casing on alternate years. That’s a very efficient approach: Apple generates new demand each year without having the pressure to design a whole new model each time.

Some will upgrade every single year; others will be more influenced by design, and buy in ‘tick’ years; others will be more concerned about features, and will buy in ‘tock’ years. The result is that every year, you have a bunch of customers eager to buy.

A switch to a three-year cycle would seem a dangerous one – so could it really be true, or is something else going on … ?

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iPhone concept image by Arthur Reis

Japanese newspaper Nikkei is claiming that Apple is moving from a tick-tock cycle with a major iPhone refresh every two years to a three-year cycle.

Apple will likely take three years between full-model changes of its iPhone devices, a year longer than the current cycle. In a typical two-year term, fall 2016 was supposed to see a major upgrade. But the changes on the model to be launched this autumn will be minor, such as improved camera quality. 

The paper says that the change is driven by two factors …

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While many are still waiting for Apple to officially announce the iPhone 7 this fall, some have already turned their attention to what the company has up its sleeve for next year’s iPhone. According to a report from Bloomberg, suppliers are already preparing to mass produce OLED displays for next year’s flagship device.

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