Slashdot Mirror
Apple Developing Curve Screen iPhones and Improved Sensors
An anonymous reader writes "An Apple insider who asked not to be identified because the information is classified told Bloomberg that Apple's next iPhone models will come with curve displays and enhanced touchscreen sensors that can detect heavy and light touches. The two models -- 4.7-inches and 5.5-inches -- would be Apple's largest iPhones. Apple is still developing the two models and the person disclosed that Apple could launch the devices in the third quarter of next year."
Is this for anti glare or something?
No, I think it is to extract more money from wallets.
Still with an OS that lacks features that have become standard in other platforms, still with sucky app management, still with a lack of control for a device you won.....all for twice the price of an equivalent Nexus phone.
No thanks. A phone where I can't install a browser of my choice(not just a reskin), download torrents on, use widgets(yes, they greatly increase productivity) on or not have every damn app as an icon on a home screen isn't much use to me.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
At last! It's nice to see Apple innovating and taking the lead again.
Apple is not developing large screen phones with curved displays, they are inventing large screen phones with curved displays.
Still with an OS that lacks features that have become standard in other platforms, still with sucky app management, still with a lack of control for a device you won.....all for twice the price of an equivalent Nexus phone.
No thanks. A phone where I can't install a browser of my choice(not just a reskin), download torrents on, use widgets(yes, they greatly increase productivity) on or not have every damn app as an icon on a home screen isn't much use to me.
I just bought a Nexus 5, coming from an iPhone5. I still haven't figured out how to get widgets on my lock screen (apparently, it's *not* just a setting in security - all the JB guides refer to things that KitKat doesn't permit). I sure hope that isn't a feature regression, cause I can get weather on my iOS7 lockscreen (with a drop-slider). Furthermore, during setup/install, I had to enter my wifi password twice (once before update, then after update it forgot all my settings), and it blanked out in an enitre screen. Add to that the fact that the built-in PDF renderer failed on 2 documents I tried to download, and that swiftkey is slow to load, the Chrome location bar is poorly spaced (causing me to wipe out several addresses), and the general confusion about how things are done (there's a search app and the browser app - look and behave similarly but aren't the same).
The bluetooth seems to work better with apps on my Nexus, and the screen real-estate is nice. But ... there are a lot of things that the previous-year iPhone did much better/cleaner than the Nexus does. I'm not going back just yet - but so far it isn't a bed of roses here. Hoping I can sort out some of these expectation misses before I feel forced to send this device back.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
They heard everyone else was doing it so they wanted to make sure everyone thought it was their idea. Like all the other stuff they come up with (and patent).
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Is the letter "d" particularly expensive these days?
"...iPhone models will come with curve displays and enhance touchscreen sensors," Why not, "curved displays and enhanced touchscreen sensors"?
I'm not so much a grammar Nazi as someone who believes that if you're going to write something for a large (or even small) audience you should make an effort to write clearly in respect for that audience. I'll probably get the "You jerk, you know what he meant!" response but I stand by my point.
Maybe the curved screen is for the planned iWatch. Apple tends to use tricks so the press and industrial spies don't know accurately what feature will go to which product.
Table-ized A.I.
I currently live in Asia (1.5 years in Singapore and now in Hong Kong) and I've seen Android (mainly Samsung) phones getting more and more popular over that period. This is very obvious when observing people in the metro.
From discussions, it is mainly the large screen size that draws many people to these Samsung devices. Leaving out the tiring arguments of fanboys of each camp, non-technical people liked the iphones just fine, sometimes preferring the way it works, but mainly they prefer a bigger screen.
Myself, I prefer a compact phone - I have an iPhone 4S and would love it with 5S guts. But it is obvious that Apple should have been selling bigger phones since a good time already. So, considering that the brand still has goodwill amongst non slashdotty users, I can imagine that they will win back some users with these bigger phones.
Regarding the technical changes. I like the idea of a pressure-level sensitive sensor. I can imagine that a curved screen will look very posh (nothing wrong with that, in fact since a number of years I like buying things that are nicely designed, even if at a premium), but it's to my mind not really a true value add. I do expect that a curved screen will look much more natural on an eventual iWatch.
My first thought is that it would be to prevent screen damage - if the display is curved and you place it face down on a flat surface there will be only two points of contact.
First you need to check that box in security as you saw.
Then at the lock screen sweep from left (all the way left) to right. You'll get to a blank screen with a plus sign on it. Click the plus sign and you can add a widget.Now if you want that to be the default widget instead of one you have to sweep to get to, then you have to sweep back to the main lock screen, click and hold it and drag it to the "remove" item at the top.
The setup/install is screwed, you do have to go through setup at least partially twice due to that update.
The PDF renderer is bizarre and on top of that it interacts with the terrible download UI in bad ways. Frequently my phone will finish the pdf download in the notifications, then show nothing at all, then like 30 seconds later it'll bring a PDF reader to the front (my Nexus 4 did it too). And if you want to view the PDF again later, you have to click the link again, watch it download (not sure it's downloading or just verifying an existing download) before it can be viewed again.
I love how the notifications work compared to the iPhone though. And the keyboard is about 10x better than the iPhone one, using the iPhone one now is like torture to me.
It kills me that there is virtually no help for anything. Try asking the phone questions like "what are those icons up at the top of the screen" (the notifications). You can do so either with the excellent voice search or by typing it, either way it won't give you any answer, it just searches the web. And even if a result comes back from the web, the result isn't keyed to the OS you are running. Back when I was running ICS on my Nexus 4 I would search and get "help" answers that only applied to Gingerbread.
Speaking of notifications, I watched two ladies use their Samsung Galaxies last week, both had notifications lined up all across the top of their screen. They didn't know what a notification was, how to view/answer it or how to make them go away. Really sad.
I do like the Nexus 5 though, better than the Nexus 4 I had before it. And it's a heck of a value. But it still has a ways to go to catch up to the iPhone in usability in many ways.
Now, if I could just get Apple to see what the Nexus 5 does right and copy that. The price. The screen. The keyboard. The ability to use bluetooth (non-4.0) devices without an Apple auth chip installed. The ability to use other mail clients as if they were built-in.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Aside from novelty, the point of a curved display is to squeeze more screen area into the same footprint.
Huh? What are you smoking? I think you should lay off it...
No sig today...
You've hit the nail on the head.
ie. Nobody has a clue what it's for.
No sig today...
Not if you wear sarcasm pants.
No sig today...
Android has a show pointer locations setting in developer options that gives the size and pressure of the touch (among other things) and it seems to give a good indication of both. At least on the 3 devices I've owned, not sure if they all work that well.
Cheers
No, I think it is to extract more money from wallets.
Yep. It's a "novelty" - a conversation point.
All it has to do is look weird and people will find ways they think it's "better" to justify it to themselves.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/29/samsung-galaxy-round-hands-on/
The sad thing is: In a few years we'll all have this whether we want it or not, there won't be anything but curved phones in the shops. After that they'll start selling us "classic shape" phones at a premium price. So it goes.
No sig today...
Apple develops many things that never go to market. Inside sources usually give up this information for a chance at being important.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Nobody has a clue what it's for.
Perhaps it is a woman-thing.
If it's curved and can vibrate, women will find the clue sometime, if only for the geeks around here asking stupid questions when on a date.