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For This Year's iPhone, Apple Is Ditching Lightning Connector and Home Button, But Embracing USB Type-C and Curved Display (wsj.com)
Apple has decided to adopt a flexible display for at least one model of the new iPhone, reports WSJ. From the report: People with direct knowledge of Apple's production plans said the Cupertino, Calif., company has decided to go ahead with the technology, and it will release a phone model using the OLED screens this year (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source). The technology allows manufacturers to bend screens in ways they couldn't previously -- such as by introducing a curve at the edge of the phone as in some Samsung models. However, once the phone is manufactured, the OLED screen can't be bent or folded by the user, at least with current technology. Using OLED displays would allow Apple to introduce a phone with a new look to fuel sales. They said Apple would introduce other updates including a USB-C port for the power cord and other peripheral devices instead of the company's original Lightning connector. The models would also do away with a physical home button, they said. Those updates would give the iPhone features already available on other smartphones.
So they are making an s7 edge without a home button.
new year new connector new headphones again!
Has hell frozen over?
If this is true (it seems to be just a rumour) then it will be two years in a row that Apple made users' existing headphones obsolete. That would be brave/arrogant/foolish even by Apple's standards.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
It's abuot time they had the courage to use an existing standard on iPhones.
Still no headphone jack though - and yes, I'm still bitter.
Sounds like with the addition of wireless charging, lack of headphone jack, and removing the home button - they are on track to make a phone that is a totally sealed slab. Once the last remaining physical connector goes away, it would be trivial to make a waterproof, dust-proof device.
Side benefit for Apple - even harder to replace the battery.
For all of their hype about courage, design, etc, I've always subscribed somewhat to the idea that Apple like proprietary because it drives more marginal revenue for them via licensing and (at least initially) single-source supplier status on some aspects of their hardware.
Which makes it seem strange that they would abandon Lightning for an industry standard connector. Dropping 30 pin connectors made sense from a practical perspective, and IIRC, they have some kind of proprietary chip in them which enables Apple to get a licensing cut (or guarantee quality standards, depending on how you like your kool-aid).
A standard connector would end their relative monopoly on cabling.
The rest of it -- virtual home button, etc, I'm totally willing to believe. The home button would actually be in keeping with their stated goals of removing bulky fixtures and connectors.
They've had the ability to have multiple apps open at once, and to copy & paste between them for some time now.
The change to 'push home button to unlock' is relatively recent, and the switch to a lack of button had been done 5+ years ago on the Pre3. (might have been on the Pre2 as well, I only had the Pre & Pre3). And they finally get wireless charging, which was an upgrade for the Pre (released in 2009).
The UI became more WebOS-like, switching to cards that you can sort through rather than the strip of icons at the bottom of the screen. (although it's still one card per app, not one stack of cards per app, with related windows stacked together, even if it's the MS Word reader and the web browser stacked w/ mail, as that's how you opened those windows).
Now they just need to make the notifications less crappy. An alarm that you can shut off by grabbing for you phone while half asleep? Who's stupid idea was that? .... and I'm wishing I had held out for the blackberry. Finally made the cutover to iPhone this weekend, after trying to get used to it for a few months while the Pre3 was my main phone.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
*Taps mic*
*Clears throat*
I have a lot of money to spend on a device, since I only do so every 4 or 5 years.
Could some "brave" soul please take a break from curving displays, gluing batteries, and adding bling to their phones, and address my market segment?
I really want to give someone my money.
For it, you will need to build a device that:
- Has a user-swappable battery, preferably with an ultracap allowing hot replacement. It's not really a hard to do. - Is too thick. I want pundits to reel. I want trash talk. "What kind of fashionista would buy this?" - Lasts 48 hours on a charge most days, and cannot self-discharge within 16 hours with all radios active and CPU bouncing off the thermal governor - Speaks all radio protocols fluently, with dual sim support - Is IP67 - Has a barometer, thermometer, hygrometer, full IMU with a razor sharp compass, GPS and GLONASS - Has both USB-C and MicroUSB on the bottom - Has great speakers - Has 4gb or 6gb RAM, and the best CPU currently available - No onboard storage.. just two raid1 MicroSD card slots with a battery-backed memory buffer Name your price. Since I don't let carriers leach my money away on phone contracts, nor do I toss out my phone every year, I (and a sizable market of people like me) have a lot of money to spend on a truly flagship device.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I think you overestimate the size of the market of people like you. Buuuut I digress. Have you looked at any of the OnePlus phones? The 3+ doesn't have everything you're looking for, but it's probably the closest you'll get.
It'll be called the iPhone 7S and 7S+. It'll have the same design as the iPhone 7/7S, same connectors, slightly faster processor, slightly better camera, slightly better battery life, slightly better video performance, slightly better network support and iOS 11.
You know, like they've been doing since about 2011 when they first introduced the 4S.
At which point, we'll see that people who have "knowledge of the matter" really don't have any at all.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Well I'd go for that phone he wants. So there's at least 2 of us. :)
I suspect many people on this site would. But Slashdot is its own little niche.
...are a hideous example of function following form. The curve makes it difficult to protect the phone, and do not improve functionality in any way. It's something that needs to go away.
Memory-backed microSD storage is significantly faster than NAND storage in all but edge-case scenarios.
RAID-1 array of microSD cards is significantly more reliable than NAND storage.
Seriously dude or dudette, what are you smoking?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Please do not compare open back case and replace battery with use a heat gun, pry carefully a glass back, 15 minutes later if you are lucky and did not break anything, dissemble a number of components to remove a battery. Been there done that, no more, thank you! Re: "spouting misinformation" and "All of those things that have replaceable batteries are unable to make phone calls or write texts" - no comments.