“Apple’s typically happy to trade battery size for a thinner frame when it comes to each new iPhone, but that may change later this year with the iPhone 7,” Jacob Kleinman reports for TechnoBuffalo. “ETNews reports that the device could sport a bigger battery and a slimmer design thanks to new fan-out chip technology.”
“Apple’s new A10 chip may pack silicon chips and semiconductor compounds together, allowing for a more compact design,” Kleinman reports. “The result should be a more powerful processor that takes up less space inside the device, providing more room for the iPhone 7 battery.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Apple may be using the so-called ‘fan-out'” chip packaging method for the first time in a handset with the iPhone 7, resulting in a more compact motherboard and antenna area, leaving extra space inside for an eventual larger battery to sprawl, despite the purported thinner chassis,” iPhoneArena reports. “This packaging technology fuses the silicon chips and the semiconductor compounds together, resulting in more powerful yet more compact chippery.”
“All welcome changes, but not the only benefits of the ‘fan-out’ tech,” iPhoneArena reports. “It is actually the ASM (Antenna Switching Module) that will see advantages of merging the silicon chip with GaAs (Gallium Arsenide) semiconductor compound, as is tipped to happen in the iPhone 7. Gallium arsenide is good for receiving high-frequency signals with little interference, improving on the signal penetration, but so far two modules were needed on the circuit board, whereas merging them in one with “fan-out” will now save space, yet have the same level of antenna efficiency.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Better battery and still even thinner? iPhone 7 will be Apple’s most massive hit yet!
Better battery life is good, but I believe the phone is already thin enough.
Merging CMOS Si and GaAs on the same chip has been done, but to my knowledge no one has gotten it to work well enough to produce any where near 100 million fully functional, high density chips a year. It will be very interesting to see if Apple can actually pull that off.
The Battery needs to be reinvented. Same old chemical reaction that is used for centuries. I might sound crazy and impossible, but i believe it’s possible someday. just like the phone in 2007.
I agree but Lithium Polymer is very new, not centuries old.
LiLithium-ion IS new technology. Carbon zinc is the old tech that’s been around for two centuries, along with lead acid.
No joke – these batteries have been around for a few millennia. Time for something ultra-modern 🙂
http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-technology/baghdad-battery-0078
The phone is thin enough now. If they do manage to shrink things enough to put a bigger battery in than do so and give us longer battery life!
Information like this makes modern era Star Trek series (TGN and onward) even more watchable. Some would criticize the solutions they come up with to solve the problems. But then we get stuff like this, Gallium Arsenide semiconductor compounds and fan-out tech, and it suddenly isn’t so convenient anymore.
The tech world is amazing.
Is it just me, or is this terminology not logical. I am really having a hard time imagining how “fanning out” components makes them more compact in volume and results in more room.
I want an iPhone that’s not so thin that it bends when it’s in my pocket. I love my iPhone but I’m not at all impressed with the sturdiness of the 6 and 6S models. The SE is looking good to me simply because I know it is sturdier.
Actually, in bend tests, the SE is LESS sturdy.
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/04/iphone-se-vs-6s-drop-bend-water-tests/
I don’t want an iPhone with edges as thin and sharp as the Mac Mini. That could be dangerous.