iPhone 5 to be skinniest Apple yet SHOCK
But as much to do with the battery as the touchscreen tech
The next iPhone will be skinnier than the current one, but not entirely - as the Wall Street Journal would have us believe - because Apple will use advanced touchscreen tech.
How does the paper know that's what Apple plans to do? The inevitable people familiar with what Apple is up to but who can't allow themselves to be named. So, an authorised leak then.
The iPhone 5's LCD will be thinner - approximately 0.44mm less than the one in the iPhone 4S, it is thought, based on past forecasts from display market analysts who've considered the technologies available to Apple for phone thinning.
The prime candidate is what's called "in-cell" touch technology, which embeds the sensors into the display panel instead of simply slapping a sensor layer on top with optically clear glue sandwiched in between. Both Sharp and LG make in-cell touchscreens, which require fewer separate steps to manufacture than standard phone touchscreen display panels do but are currently more expensive to make because yields are much lower.
All good stuff, of course, but shaving 0.44mm off the display unit doesn't make for an appreciably thinner phone. So Apple will have to fit a more svelte battery, which would allow it to reduce the iPhone's thickness by a further 0.46mm. Getting rid of the 4S' glass back and replacing it with metal will help the girth reduction further.
The upshot, as analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, of broker KGI Securities, said back in April, the 9.3mm thick 4S could be superseded by a 7.9mm iPhone 5.
Separately, more snaps have appeared of what is claimed to be the new phone's faceplate, these ones following the now-standard pattern of a taller handset that looks like an iPhone 4S stretched to accommodate a 4in display. ®
COMMENTS
Well, you read the iPhone articles and post comments for a start. That suggests a certain level of sh*t givingness.
Whether it is a flying sh*t or just a slow moving or resting sh*t is open for debate.
Why is everyone competing to make the thinnest phone possible?
Would it not perhaps make more sense to make the one with the best battery life? Or Signal?
No?
Too easy?
Still everyone will know you've got lots of money when you sit and play with it, which I suppose is the key point.
You're all wrong!
The new iPhone will be made of cheese. It will be 2" thick and come with a free case made of cream crackers. The connection will be updated, as the rumours correctly state, with the new iCelery connector - which will be a 1 pin parallel design, and require everyone to buy new peripherals.
I wish they could get over the obsessive compulsive disorder with thinness. I understand that the thinner it is, the lighter it usually is but really we are talking grams and fractions of grams. Has the human race became so weak armed that we can't support that extra gram in our hand. I mean a screen that will reduce the thickness of the phone by half a millimetre and an overall reduction in thickness by just over ONE MILLIMETRE. Well fuck me, I'm certainly going to notice the difference there. Personally I will just stick with my 4S, I know it's a chore having to lug that huge fucking breeze block of a phone around with me, but I'm sure I could invest in some sort of arm and wrist support accessory that will help me hold the hefty fucker to my ear.
Re: You're all wrong!
> made of cheese. It will be 2" thick and come with a free case made of cream crackers.
whereupon Apple will be sued by Google. on the basis that it infringes the look and feel of an ice cream sandwich...
