“As we face up to the culmination of another year of hyped-up iPhone speculation, I do see three particular ways in which the iPhone 8 (or whatever Apple calls its new flagship) will indeed be the harbinger of massive and irrevocable change,” Vlad Savov writes for The Verge.
“Phone Screens. The new iPhone will be the biggest reconfiguration of the front of Apple’s smartphone since its inception a decade ago. The mechanical home button was ditched last year in favor of a fixed pad with haptic feedback, and this year Apple is removing the whole thing,” Savov writes. “The iconic outline of an iPhone, featuring two big bars of bezel at top and bottom and a round home button, is going to be no more. We’re all underestimating just how massive a change this will be, and how strong the reaction to it will be. Those of us in the know have grown blasé about bezel-less screens, while most people just aren’t yet aware of what’s coming from Apple. Whether Samsung likes it or not, September 12th will be the date when the majority of people first learn about bezel-less screens… It won’t take months or weeks for everyone to start demanding bezel-free phones, it’ll be instant.”
“Flagship Prices. By most predictions, the new flagship iPhone will be priced somewhere in the vicinity of $1,000, probably starting just below that mark and topping out somewhere above it, subject to spec. This is going to be the biggest upward push that Apple has made with the price of its top iPhone model, though indications are that demand will still likely outstrip supply,” Savov writes. “Augmented Reality. With the instant user base that the iPhone promises to ARKit developers, it’s easy to foresee AR taking off with the launch of the iPhone 8 and iOS 11… The ARKit toolset for creating AR experiences that Apple unveiled as part of its new iOS 11 is a massive upgrade over anything else that’s come before it. That operating system will come preloaded on the iPhone 8 and will be distributed to the majority of iPhones already in use, making for an immediate user base of hundreds of millions of people.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The only reason why Apple waited until now (next week) to move to OLED displays is because nobody could possibly make enough of them (and it’s still going to be the case, that’s why Apple is starting with their high-end flagship in order to try to manage a supply-demand situation that’s about to rapidly get out of control). It was a supply chain capacity issue. Regarding a $1,000+ iPhone, we paid $969 for each of our 256GB Jet Black iPhone 7 Plus units, so what some perceive as “high” prices for a smartphone are nothing new. As for Apple’s AR efforts:
Augmented Reality is going to change everything. — MacDailyNews, July 21, 2017
Someday, hopefully sooner than later, we’ll look back at holding up slabs of metal and glass to access AR as unbelievably quaint. — MacDailyNews, July 28, 2017
The impact of augmented reality cannot be overstated. It will be a paradigm shift larger than the iPhone and the half-assed clones it begat. — MacDailyNews, August 4, 2017
I am so looking forwarder to next week Apple event
What about Touch ID? It’s such an incredible solution that’s still advanced beyond anything the competition has drawn up–and Apple will just toss it aside?
Apple is doomed 😜
It’s not being completely tossed aside. It will likely remain on iPads and possibly some Apple notebooks. Apple has been known to toss away proven technology in the past. It does make sense to evolve products as new tech comes along and then you’ve got all those jackasses always complaining how Apple doesn’t improve its products fast enough. No one I knew ever complained about the iPhone chin bezel and home button but apparently, there were tech-heads and analysts who thought it was antiquated and needed to go away.
Yeah, I have an issue with this part of the rumor as well. I just don’t see Apple tossing aside something that originally cost them almost $400 million and years of R&D. I’m sticking with my opinion that Apple has indeed solved the problem of placing the sensor behind the screen. All this guff about facial recognition may very well end up being a second level of security.
Apple made many $B from that investment. If it is time to move on to a new technology, then Apple is not afraid to make that transition. Certainly they won’t let $400M in sunk costs stop them from making a change.
They wouldn’t “toss it aside” unless they had something that really worked. They’ve been working on this for a very long time. If it wasn’t ready it wouldn’t be in there yet. It’s too important. Touch ID, while amazing, fails when the user’s finger (or the sensor) is wet or dirty. I expect this to work better than that, including in the dark. You ought to be able to simply pick up the phone and start using it.
The great thing about the “pro” model is that due to the comparatively smaller amount they will sell because of the price they won’t face such big problems of having to be able manufacture massive numbers of components which is incredibly hard when it comes to cutting edge technology. It’s one thing to make a couple of thousand of a device with specs that exceed everything else around, but if you’re having to immediately ramp up production to tens of millions then it naturally reduces the extent to which you can introduce innovative new elements. I can’t wait to see what Apple do when they have something that to an extent they can experiment with.
You’re delusional if you think they’d launch with the ability to make anything less than a million Pro units in 30 days.
I wonder if bezel-less smartphones will have much impact for Android users. Most Android smartphone touch sensors/fingerprint readers don’t take up as much room as the iPhone’s touch sensor did. I don’t see Android manufacturers trying to eliminate the touch sensor to replace it with something else. It’s possible only the Android flagship model smartphones might have some other tech, but it’s unlikely to filter down to the low- and mid-tier smartphones if 3D sensors are much more costly to implement.
I was always certain Apple didn’t move to OLED displays sooner due to low yields and the inability for them to be manufactured in large enough numbers. Yet there were always these people complaining Apple was far behind the display curve without understanding the problems of mass production. No company wants to spend money on some tech that produces really low yields. It’s too costly and inefficient to run a company that way. The iPhone’s IPS displays were proven and they weren’t all that bad.
Love the ZDNet dipsh*t reviews by oblivious GenX younger reviewer types (like “Samsung Galaxy Note 8: My first week with a nearly perfect smartphone” HAH!) who conveniently ignore the Samsung tech doesn’t work issues and data dangers of using Google stuff. No respect at all for these clueless idiots with a keyboard and a site to post stuff on. Except some poor slob might believe them.
Not to mention the fact that the new Samsung phone reportedly will start at $929 for the 64GB model. Where is the media outrage at the cost of Samsung’s product??
Overshadowed by Apple’s pricing is my guess. Similar to how India’s population is overshadowed by China’s whenever large populations are mentioned.
So, in other words, you’re an old person who doesn’t even know what the GenX demo is, eh? We’re 36-56 years old, dipshit. And, in case you didn’t catch it, WE run the tech world. Boomers and Millenials are along for the ride.
I can’t say that I’m all that psyched about any of it. Changing the screen is hardly earth shattering. How is the price an ‘innovation’? I am not sold on AR, it’s a cool trick, but I am still not seeing much practical value in it, it seems to me that it will only over-complicate many formerly trivial tasks (though to be fair, I feel similarly about voice control – it is far less efficient for a great many things. I seldom use Siri). Different strokes, I guess . . .
“The iconic outline of an iPhone, featuring two big bars of bezel at top and bottom and a round home button, is going to be no more.”
So it will look like a Samsung phone?
No, I’ll look like a copy of Samsung’s copy of an iPhone…like every phone Samsung has made since the beginnng. Why the fuck are you even on this site? Oh, I know, TROLL!
Bring it on, OLED, bezel-less, etc. I’m ready. Gonna be fun trying to get your hands on one of these new iPhones, if Apple’s pathetic rollout history is any guide.
Run out of tampons again, did ya🙂?