iPhone will get a design overhaul next year, according to often-reliable analyst Ming Chi-Kuo.
Gone will be the rounded edges – both in the OLED panel itself, and the chassis around the handset, replaced instead with a more industrial, squared design.
If that sounds at all familiar it’s because Apple used a similar design language with its iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, which is often heralded as one of the most beautiful handsets that Sir Jony Ive and his close-knit team of designers have put together (although our money would be on the iPhone 5 as the best example of what the company can achieve when it’s firing on all cylinders).
It makes sense that Apple would return to this well for the iPhone, after all, it has already adopted a very similar design with its flagship iPad Pro line-up last year. The tablet lost the subtle curves found on earlier models in favour of sharp, definite edges.
Ming-Chi Kuo, who shared his research note with TF International Securities – where it was spotted by the eagle-eyed team at MacRumours, claims the next iPhone (presumably named iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, if Apple continues with the naming convention established this year) will have a new metal frame with “a more complex segmentation design, new trenching and injection molding procedures, and sapphire or glass cover assembly to protect the trench injection molding structure.”
Sir Jony Ive was the first to introduced the exposed aluminium frame sandwiched between panels of strengthened glass on the front and rear of the handset – a design that’s now commonplace on the shelves of Carphone Warehouse.
Although the renown British designer will leave his position as Chief Design Officer at the end of the year to start his own industrial design company in San Fransisco, which will count Apple as one of its first clients, the design of the iPhone 12 will already be locked down, likely making it one of the Jony Ive’s last. It will be interesting to see the designer and his team return to a similar look to the iPhone 4 design.
Of course, Apple isn’t just tweaking the design for the sake of it.
According to Ming-Chi Kuo, the new grooving and injecting of the metal will reduce the negative shielding on higher frequency transmissions from the internal antenna, which should boost signal. That’s something that’s going to be very important if the latest whispers about Apple bringing 5G support to its flagship iPhone line-up prove to be accurate.
The new chassis design also enables Apple to make some fundamental tweaks to the design of the next iPhone. The latest whispers suggest Apple will opt for a 5.4-inch touchscreen on the iPhone 11 Pro successor, which has a 5.8-inch screen, while the larger iPhone 11 Pro Max follow-up will jump to a palm-stretching 6.7-inch panel, compared to 6.5-inch on the current model.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that the all-new look, as well as the draw of new features – like 5G speeds, will trigger a massive wave of upgrades. Kuo predicts smartphone shipments of 85 million units in 2020, compared to 75 million new iPhones sold in 2019.
Given the fondness for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 design, coupled with the awesome look of the new iPad Pro, we cannot wait to see what Sir Jony Ive and co. have cooked-up.