“Apple is applying a technology that blocks off electromagnetic waves to iPhone 7,” Han Juyeop reports for The Electronic Times.It is a measure to increase device’s performance while decreasing electromagnetic interference to major chips and to solve people’s fear on electromagnetic waves from Smartphones.”
“According to industry on the 15th, Apple is applying EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference) Shield technology to variety of digital chips, radio frequency (RF), connectivity (wireless LAN, Bluetooth) chips and others that also include AP (application processor) and modems,” Han reports. “Although it has been applying this technology to PCB (Printing Circuit Board) and connector, this is the first time when it is applying this technology to most of major chips.”
“It has decided to use this technology due to interference in wireless communication and others as clock signals of digital chips have recently increased,” Han reports. “When EMI Shield technology is applied, unexpected signals that happen due to electromagnetic interference can be prevented. Also circuit boards can also be assembled more elaborate. When mounting space between chips is decreased, areas that are left over can be used for batteries and eventually increase times that batteries can last.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be the world’s most advanced pocket computers.
Then instead of making higher capacity batteries, you can make it even thinner, just in case I want to use it as a scalpel.
Didn’t computers have EMI shields years ago?
Yes, as the entire box and the connectors to those boxes.
Individual chips? Not so much — except for a limited subset of specialty chips.
Putting high clocking (think GHz) chips very, very close to each other invites cross-talk and cross chip interference. Circuit board runs are typically designed to minimize near end cross talk and far end cross talk, but if you put the chips themselves too close together, the cross talk happens directly between chips circumventing anything you did on the circuit boards themselves.
While others may have done this in the past, this is the first I’ve heard of anyone attempting to do it in mass produced (many millions per year), commercial chips. If true, it will be a new class of chips that Apple can cram together allowing greater design flexibility.
So they can increase battery life? Nah.
So they can create an iPhone that is 0.01 mm thick? Yea, that’s more likely.
I really wish it would do shielding from IT doofuses, CDO’s and other workplace nutjobs.
Not sure how much this will reduce EM radiation that people are worried about since most of that stuff actually comes from the antennae/radios and not the actual electronics.
The antenna is designed to radiate ( or receive ). This rumour concerns dealing with unwanted radiation from individual chips. It is at a level that is massively below the level of EM radiation from the antenna which some people are concerned about.
When digital chips are operating at high frequencies, one side-effect is that they act as low power radio transmitters. This is unwanted radiation that can adversely affect nearby components and this proposal is to shield that radiation at source. If you’ve ever put an AM radio too close to a computer or almost any digital device, you’ve probably heard this spurious radiation.
This unwanted radiation can be picked up by adjacent chips and adversely affect their performance. Components are getting packed ever more closely together and the effect of electromagnetic induction is very much greatest when you’re closer to the source ( the inverse square law ), so shielding of individual chips works to diminish unwanted signals leaving chips and also to reduce the reception of those unwanted signals by nearby chips if they too are shielded.
Exactly.. Perhaps for the benefit of the downvoter I should have been more clear “…EM radiation [harmful to humans] that people are worried about…”
Does this mean I can finally take off my tinfoil hat? 😉
Not for you 🙂
Apple should rename the iPhone to what it should have been in the first place. It is a COMputer and a COMmunicator, thus it should be called an iCom.
There’s been a company trading as Icom for 50 years. The Icom radio company would most certainly have strong objections to Apple using their name for a different range of radio communication devices and would have a very strong case in law to prevent Apple using their name.
Disregarding all of that, the idea of changing the name of the iPhone is a non-starter. It’s very well established and the iPhone name is a very valuable asset.
But will it protect my iPhone from the EMP from a solar flare or nuclear blast?
I answered your question below…
This is a terrific idea!
However, keep in mind that EMF (electromagnetic force) shielding is not absolute. It is relative. Even a well-made and grounded Faraday cage is only as good as the amount of EM (electromagnetism) it is able to divert away from the protected core.
Going to extremes:
It’s highly unlikely that EMI shielding is going to protect an iPhone from a massive EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse).
Darn. Better start working on the steam-driven smartphone. 😉
If only the machines had this technology in The Matrix. Those EMP blasts would have done nothing but expedite the inevitability.