Along with summer there’s not just pollen allergies and flip-flops on the way, it’s also time for new waves of rumors of Apple’s new iPhone models. Analysts now claims that the launch of iPhone 5 is planned for October while others say that the smartphone will get a liquid metal body design.
iPhone 5 should therefore be launched no earlier than this fall if we are to believe the latest rumors on the Internet and this sounds after all, quite likely since the predecessor, iPhone 4S, was launched in October last year. According to the analyst Gene Munster from Piper Jaffray, Apple should have been open to an earlier launch of their successor to the iPhone 4S, but that Qualcomm that manufacture the LTE/4G modem circuits that is expected to find their way into the iPhone 5 has had som problems with the availability, which is something that would make a launch in October suitable. Munster also points to the fact that Apple is going to use a new design language, which fit right in with other recent information.
The more sensational rumor arrives from the news paper Korea IT which claims that Apple is going to take advantage of the LiquidMetal technology that they acquired during 2010 for $30 million. Liquid metal is an alloy of titanium, nickel, copper, zirconium and other metals that should give a feeling of glass and at the same time the material is as strong as metal. The material should be almost perfect for smartphones since it’s light, scratch resistant and durable.
Another advantage with liquid metal is that the material can be shaped like plastic, through injections and not just be lathed like harder metals. This is something that could open doors for Apple’s designes with the legend Jonathan Ive at the front to create a new kind of unibody cases or other exciting solutions to the next generation iPhone. The material should also be able to be shaped with a thinner profile that weighs less than todays combination of metal and glass.
Last year alot of people though this would be what iPhone 4S would look like.
Even if information like this should be taken lightly – don’t we all remember what the iPhone 4S were supposed to look like? There’re several things that indicate that Apple has a new design solution in the pipeline. First of all the company used the same basic design for two generations of the iPhone with the 4 and 4S manufactured in an almost identical physical shape. That we can expect a new industrial design for the iPhone 5 feels pretty likely. That LiquidMetal as recently as December 2011 announced that it had began to ship the first commersial solutions using their new manufacturing technology should signify that the company’s liquid metal is ready for bigger challenges.
Apple is far from the only ones that experiment with different manufacturing materials on the smartphone market, which include Motorola with its use of carbon fiber in the RAZR, not to mention HTC with its One series which has shown what unique and exciting solutions that can be created with some fresh ideas. While the rumor is that Samsung is going to use a ceamic case on the Galaxy S III, we will at least be able to answear in a few weeks.
Source: Korea IT News, Bloomberg
