The iPhone 7 has been out for a few weeks, which means that it’s time for the iPhone 8 rumor mill to kick into high gear.
Spearheading the latest batch of speculation (while simultaneously promoting an upcoming book) is tech pundit Robert Scoble.
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“The next iPhone will be, I am told, a clear piece of glass (er, Gorilla Glass sandwich with other polycarbonates for being pretty shatter resistant if dropped) with a next-generation OLED screen (I have several sources confirming this).”
OK, let’s stop right there. So right off the bat we’re back to that old rumor of a transparent iPhone. Now, I hate to be a wet blanket, and I don’t want to underestimate what the brains at Apple are capable of, but this seems to be a very wild prediction.
And as evidence to back up my claim, I present you Exhibit A, the photograph of all the stuff that’s inside the iPhone 7:
Here’s what’s inside the iPhone 7.
iFixit
Almost all that space behind the display is currently taken up with stuff — circuit boards, ribbons, speakers, connectors, and let’s not forget the bit that powers everything, the battery.
How is Apple going to hide this? Fortunately, new “sources” have the details:
“Also, updates from new sources: expect battery and antennas to be hidden around the edges of the screen, which explains how Apple will fit in some of the pieces even while most of the chips that make up a phone are in a pack/strip at the bottom of the phone.”
Oh, OK, that explains everything … wait, no it doesn’t.
While there’s no doubt that Apple could make the mainboard denser, and possibly integrate some of the components, the idea that everything that’s inside the iPhone, including the battery, could be crammed behind the bezel frankly doesn’t make sense.
Remember, Apple can’t make a camera that fits into the iPhone 7 without having to have an unsightly protrusion on the back of the handset.
Scoble goes on:
“You pop it into a headset which has eye sensors on it, which enables the next iPhone to have a higher apparent frame rate and polygon count than a PC with a Nvidia 1080 card in it.”
So Apple has the capability to make a transparent iPhone that transforms into AR/VR goggles complete with “eye sensors,” but the company can’t do away with that awful camera nubbin?
Color me skeptical.
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