Mike Wuerthele
A new report highlights Apple's involvement with wireless charging protocol specification Qi's organizing body, and claims that Apple's iPhone moves are driven more by marketing needs than by any particular drive for innovation in new products.
On Thursday, a report from Reuters noted that Apple's anniversary phone, commonly referred to as the "iPhone 8," is coming, but claims that "a radical new design is not expected." The report cites two-year and growing consumer iPhone upgrade cycles and "Apple's own business and marketing needs" as the prime movers to what technologies are included in any new iPhone.
"When a market gets saturated, the growth is all about refresh," said Bob O'Donnell of Technalysis Research to Reuters. "This is exactly what happened to PCs. It's exactly what happened to tablets. It's starting to happen to smartphones."
As an example of Apple's slow technology adoption, the report cites wireless charging, which is said to be included in one form or another in the iPhone 8. According to unnamed sources familiar with the matter, there are at least five different groups working with Apple on the technology — despite there being only two main suppliers and developers of the tech.
One well-developed technology, Qi, utilizes one coil inside a compatible device phone needing rough alignment with a matching coil on a designated pad. Apple is a member of the Wireless Power Consortium, the governing body behind the Qi charging standard.
The competing Airfuel specification supports a coil as well as magnetic resonance which does not need to be placed in the same proximity, or accuracy, as a device with a Qi coil. Apple has no known affiliation with the Airfuel specification group.
Other technologies expected to be in the $1000 and up "iPhone 8" include glass-sandwich design, a laser-based 3d facial recognition scanner, and a fingerprint sensor and FaceTime camera embedded behind the front display.
The "iPhone 7s," also expected in the fall, may include some or none of these new technologies also noted by the Reuters report. It is not clear why Reuters believes that the inclusion of these features won't constitute a "radical new design" for an "iPhone 8," however.
"iPhone set the standard for mobile computing in its first decade and we are just getting started," said Apple CEO Tim Cook on the anniversary of the iPhone. "The best is yet to come."
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32 Comments
Oh, Apple! How much doomed art thou?
So if I'm reading this correctly, a bod from Reuters read a bunch of rumours and then came up with another rumour backed up by sources unfamiliar with the matter.
Got it to hand it Cook. He said he'd double down on leaks, and by the looks of the clueless guesswork swamping the internet, he's done just that.
I think Apple advantage in this field can be their efficiency and elegance of their inductive charging solution based on patent that relaxes need for strict positioning as mentioned earlier here:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/10/25/apple-invention-uses-ferrofluids-to-enhance-induction-charging-performance
To me, it seems that any sort of charging pad is almost more restrictive than just plugging in a lightning or USB cable. Once plugged it, the device can be turned at any angle, limited only by the length of the cable. Until a device can be wirelessly charged at some distance from the source, it's really not all that useful, in my opinion.
Contradictatory indeed: "Apple is close-mouthed about upcoming product features, but analysts and reports from Asian component suppliers and others indicate that high-resolution displays based on OLED technology -- possibly with curved edges -- are likely to be part of the anniversary phone. A radical new design is not expected, according to analysts."
Referring to possible new 3D sensors: "That sensor could be upgraded to a higher-resolution version that could handle 3-D mapping for facial recognition, said Jim Morrison, vice president at TechInsights.
Some analysts also speculate the company could remove the phone's home button, placing it and a fingerprint sensor beneath the front display glass, based on patents the company has filed."
So in short, the phone is rumored to have a radical redesign and many new features, but isn't expected to be a radical redesign or include many new features...