“Every other year Apple changes the iPhone’s design, and following new leaks it appears 2016 could well produce the company’s most radical new iPhone to date,” Gordon Kelly writes for Forbes. “Korea’s Commercial Times reports a trio of exciting changes are already being finalised for the iPhone 7 and all three look set to shake up the competition through a combination of innovation and – intriguingly – reviving a feature rivals discarded.”
“There has been speculation about this for some time and now it seems the smoke will indeed lead to fire: Apple is working hard to make the iPhone 7 completely waterproof,” Kelly writes. “With the iPhone 7 the Commercial Times states the [antenna] stripes will become a thing of the past finally leading to a uniform finish… The handset’s body will be constructed from what it simply describes as ‘New Compound Materials’ – and it is these which will allow wireless signals to pass directly through them doing away with the striped antenna gaps.”
“Such a material may sound a little Sci-Fi, but it’s actually something the company has been working on for a while,” Kelly writes. “In fact in June 2015 Apple was granted a patent for ‘Non-capacitive or radio-frequency-transparent materials with anodized metal appearance.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 7000 Series aluminum? Or something else?
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s next-gen iPhone rumored to be ‘waterproof’ – December 29, 2015
Two new Liquidmetal patent applications cover every current Apple product, plus vehicle panels – October 29, 2015
U.S Patent office reveals four Apple patent applications involving Liquidmetal – October 22, 2015
No Home button? Liquidmetal body? What can we expect from next year’s Apple iPhone 7? – October 19, 2015
New Apple patents show continuing work on Liquidmetal – August 11, 2015
The Turing Phone is not made out of Liquidmetal – July 15, 2015
Why does Apple keep extending their partnership with Liquidmetal? – June 25, 2015
Apple extends Liquidmetal exclusivity deal through February 2016 – June 23, 2015
Apple patent signals end of iPhone’s ugly plastic strips – June 22, 2015
Two new Liquidmetal patent filings from Apple revealed; list watch and jewelry among potential uses – April 23, 2015
Liquidmetal’s Apple alliance yet to bear fruit – September 30, 2014
Apple’s new Liquidmetal-related patent sparks speculation – July 7, 2014
Apple patents method for embedding sapphire displays in LiquidMetal device chassis – May 27, 2014
Liquidmetal-Visser agreement paves the way for more rapid adoption of amorphous metal manufacturing – May 21, 2014
Apple extends Liquidmetal exclusivity deal through February 2015 – May 21, 2014
Will it have a big hump on the back?
7000 Series aluminum is not radio-transparent.
Thats what I was thinking. After a long gestation period could it be… no surely not.
Does anyone know if Liquid Metal is transparent to rf?
There have been reports claiming that LM could be transparent to RF, but I haven’t discovered any scientifically credible sources confirming it.
It does seem somewhat unlikely because conventional metals do a pretty good job of blocking RF, but LM seems to be a strange material with unexpected properties.
For some reason my prior comment was moderated into oblivion – basically, the iPod Touch 4th generation had an Rf transparent back cover made of Liquid Metal. Unlike prior iPod Touch models that needed a plastic cut-out on the back to accommodate batteries, this one didn’t have that. Just polished metal.
So, apple tests this out a while back. I bet the trick was to figure out RF transparency for cellular signals, which they would have figured out by now.
At this point, anything is preferable to the plastic stripes. It’s my most hated design element of the iPhone 6 series, and why I switched to an opaque case for the first time.
Liquid metal has an amorphous structure rather than the typical crystalline structure. I do not think that difference would have a significant effect on RF absorption, but I am not a materials engineer.
The Apple patent referenced by MDN is for materials with an anodized metal appearance. That would appear to indicate a non-metallic material with the look of anodized aluminum. It should also be noted that Apple files for (and is granted) numerous patents each year, but relatively few seem to play a major role in their products and the incubation period from concept to release products can take many years.
A new type of plastic?
Waterproof? Yes please, shower will be its second home.
Waterproof maybe, but never corrosion proof.
Your disposable razor blade is much harder than the skin on your face, but the corrosion from water dulls it, and so it is with a “waterproof” iPhone.
Human skin.
Ooh, self healing properties. 😀
I want Dent Proof, Scratch Proof, Indestructible Glass, Waterproof, 24hr Always On Battery Life. I’m waiting for a ANALyst come up with that.
Hey Jubie, still your ANALyst up ya bum. We’re sick of reading juvenile nonsense from dumb-ass peeps who couldn’t tell an iPhone from a BlackBerry. Come up with some better comments please. Sheeeeeessssssh!
Hopefully the device will have a metamaterial which allows on-demand space-time cloaking (event cloaking) coupled to iMessages. I need to send a message into the past which tells me to sell the stock when it was around $135.
ASIDE concerning Forbes:
Just a thought but … The link at “Read more in the full article here” insists that the user deactivate AdBlock, refusing to proceed to the article until that’s accomplished. Since I refused, I to be bullied I instead had to look up the article on the web, and further made the decision “Buh-Bye Forbes”. I appreciate that MDN puts up signs “Blocking Ads hurts the sites you love,” allowing me choice. I think we are otherwise facing a “bAD AGE” of advertising where sites like Forbes will loose more and more traffic. Good luck to them in 2016.
ASIDE concerning Forbes:
Just a thought but … The link at “Read more in the full article here” insists that the user deactivate AdBlock, refusing to proceed to the article until that’s accomplished. Buh-Bye Forbes, good luck in 2016.