“More information coming from supply chains in Asia is showing that Apple will most likely switch to ultra-thin G/G touch technology for its iPhone released in 2016 and remain using in-cell for the unit released in 2015,” Siu Han and Alex Wolfgram report for DigiTimes.
“Makers have already begun sending samples of fully laminated G/G technology to Apple and Corning along with Asahi Glass have also reportedly sent glass samples,” Han and Wolfgram report. “G/G touch panels may also help Apple develop bezel-free smartphones as in-cell touch panels reportedly are struggling with touch sensitivity on the edges.”
Han and Wolfgram report, “Additionally, in-cell touch panels also make it difficult for vendors to pursue higher resolutions including Ultra HD (4K) due to current bottlenecks, the observers said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Same size phone, larger display area. With Apple’s incidental touch detection technology working so well as to be invisible to the end user, what’s not to like?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Dan K.” and “Sarah” for the heads up.]
I highly doubt it; it is DigiTimes, which is making up things half of the time.
Bezels are ergonomic and they also help to make iPhone look way thinner than it is, so in actual use thinner competitor phones look thicker than iPhone.
How about same size display, smaller phone?
Apple needs space for separate physical Home button (technologies that could help get rid of physical button have their serious drawbacks), and, for symmetry reasons, the same space has to be on top. Besides, this additional space helps make iPhones thinner.
What’s not to like? A LOT!
These phones are expensive and at times or certain angles or with certain drops, they are fragile. Even with my 6, the screen is now closer to the edge than ever before. My case, which thank God is NOT an Otter Box–has a very slight raised lip or edge around the entire phone to help protect it. My 6 now functions differently with this configuration than it did with phones before (and my InCase basic Slider. With my big fingers, which used to work perfectly with previous iPhones and cases, I now have trouble moving apps from one screen to another as the phone has trouble registering that even my thinner fingers are right on the edge. Some apps will also have trouble registering an edge contact.
If they go bezel free, there will be a LOT more of that! To protect your expensive investment, a good case is a great idea, but if the cases affect actual function due to Apple’s design (as they already do–even the slim ones) it will likely be a bigger problem.
For people with money to burn or who never make an error in holding or moving their phone, it won’t be an issue, but for the rest of us mere mortals, it will be making me curse at my phone even more as something as simple as moving an icon can take minutes not seconds even now trying to get the phone to register the contact, right or left. And I’m only 6′ and relatively thin. My hands aren’t huge by any account.
So yes, MDN, there are things NOT to like in a bezel-free phone. Insurance still requires you to pay $200 for a new phone and you can only get so many.
I share some of your concerns with a touch-free surface even with incidental touch protection, which likely will have some issues with it in use case margins.
The whole concept of protective cases highlights a fundamental cognitive disconnect between the case design and user perception of its function. Users have always cared greatly about the design of the iPhone. “What’s Jony’s team going to come up with this year? How beautiful will the shape be? How big will it be? How easy will it be to hold? Will the camera lens stick out?” And so on. Yet with all this affection (and sometimes loathing) for the exterior design, the first thing many users do is cover it up with a case protector. I’ve never understood this because to me it’s like buying a beautiful car with elegant lines and then putting a bib on it for protection, which is absolutely asinine IMHO!
But OK, I get that people want more protection than the case currently provides. iPhones are pretty tough already but people clearly want even more robustness. So I’ve come to the conclusion that the Apple design team needs to address this. Maybe the “unapologetically plastic” iPhone is the way of the future, with an extra mailable case.
But it will also need solid electronics packaging that could withstand 10,000+ G peak impacts. The military does this with gun-hardened electronics. Apple certainly could do this too. Of course, iFixit would hate this design because you couldn’t swap out anything if something were to go wrong because the whole iPhone would be one solid piece of kit.
And maybe in the not too distant future Apple will figure out how to 3D print their solid block iPhones.
Zero iPhone drops since the iPhone 5 era.
Working from home has helped with that, though. Most of the time it’s just on my desk.
That phone has WITCHCRAFT! Burn them! Burn them all!