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iPhone 15 Pro Models Rumored to Feature Titanium Frame, Taptic Buttons, Increased RAM, and More

theorist9 said:
Assuming they use a thick enough frame to achieve the same stiffness regardless of material, we have:

m ~ d/ E^(1/3), where m is the mass, d is the density, and E is the Young's modulus.

Thus:
m_Al ~ 2.7/10^(1/3) = 1.25
m_Ti ~ 4.5/15.5^(1/3) = 1.80
m_Fe (stainless steel) ~ 7.9/29^(1/3) = 2.57

From this we can predict the mass of a titanium frame would be about half-way between that of an aluminum frame (which is on the iPhone 14) and a stainless steel frame (which is on the iPhone 14 Pro).
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This is interesting. I’m a bit unsure of the units you’re using.

I’ve found this paragraph from a wiki page:

Generally, Ti-6Al-4V is used in applications up to 400 degrees Celsius. It has a density of roughly 4420 kg/m3, Young's modulus of 120 GPa, and tensile strength of 1000 MPa.[13] By comparison, annealed type 316 stainless steel has a density of 8000 kg/m3, modulus of 193 GPa, and tensile strength of 570 MPa.[14]Tempered 6061 aluminium alloy has a density of 2700 kg/m3, modulus of 69 GPa, and tensile strength of 310 MPa, respectively.
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The thing that occurred to me from your calcs is that stainless steel is an alloy. So comparing to plain Titanium is a bit unfair as it’s very likely Apple would use an alloy of Titanium rather than the plain element.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_alloy
 
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TheYayAreaLiving 🎗 said:
Apple should consider making iPhone 15 Ultra (Ceramic Edition) ⚪️

They did it with Apple Watch before.

www.macrumors.com

Apple Tested Ceramic Apple Watch Edition Two Years Before It Launched

The ceramic Apple Watch Edition dated back to 2014, despite the high-end model not launching until 2016 with the Apple Watch Series 2, according to...
www.macrumors.com www.macrumors.com
Click to expand...

hmmmm. The Oppo Find X5 Pro has a full 1 piece molded back in both White and Black that really looks nice, to me anyhow. This could allow Apple to reach REALLY far back like the 3GS models with the solid back ;)
 
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robinp said:
This is interesting. I’m a bit unsure of the units you’re using.

I’ve found this paragraph from a wiki page:



The thing that occurred to me from your calcs is that stainless steel is an alloy. So comparing to plain Titanium is a bit unfair as it’s very likely Apple would use an alloy of Titanium rather than the plain element.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_alloy
Click to expand...
Also consider that most metals in consumer products are indeed alloy's not their pure form even if mentioned as such. Its not like there is a specific regulation that'll enforce a specific metal used is of 9x% high etc.

Remember the TiBook G4 (PowerBook G4 Titanium)? As beautiful of a design that was, it had like 'Titanium shards in it. Think of it like the Titanium in your ICE cars Catalytic converter. It's not like you can melt it down and get a full Troy Ounce of it to get market value, there is barely a few single digit of grams therein.
 
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MacFin said:
Call me old school, but I hate the idea of removing physical buttons and replacing them with haptic ones. I think this could easily be as stupid a move as Apple implementing a touch bar on Macbooks and then reversing back to a regular keyboard. Here's my reasoning.

Most of us who live in colder countries use gloves. With haptic feedback, you can no longer easily operate the phone, especially adjusting the volume when listening to music. This applies not only when you are holding the phone but also when it's in your pocket. I cannot tell you how often I still adjust the volume while my iPhone is still in my pocket. With haptics, we can say good buy to all of this.

Secondly, haptics will mean a small "revolution" in custom cases for the iPhones since unless you use some special materials, you can't really get the buttons working. Obviously, this issue is fairly easy to solve (just make cutouts for the buttons) or buy the case directly from Apple since they have found the perfect "solution" for the problem they intentionally created.

I get that one reason Apple might want to ditch physical buttons might be to improve water resistance, but it already has excellent water resistance. Apple does not need to create a phone that can live underwater 24/7 so what other true benefits of solid buttons really have? A much better idea would be to focus on improving cold resistance, which is still rubbish since once the temperatures go below -10 Celcius iPhones tend to shut down.

The greatest irony in this all is that all Apple engineers constantly seem to forget that half of the people on this planet live in areas that get cold during winter; hence, gloves are a big part of the smartphone experience. Now they want to cripple their iPhone user experience to brag about new "technological enhancements" that actually make the user experience worse.

Regular buttons don't need any power source, but haptics do. So technically adding haptics requires more components that could at some point, fail or break down + they also add that small battery drain too. That all being said, I really struggle to understand what "good" Apple can really archive by abandoning classic buttons.
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Haptic buttons are based on pressure so they work with gloves. I don't see why the taptic engine can't be tuned to provide a similar amount of feedback to a physical button press but that's a big maybe.

The benefit of haptic buttons isn't necessarily water resistance, but rather the buttons can be reprogrammed to become a two stage shutter button when in the camera app. I think that's pretty cool but I agree, better feedback when using gloves in cold weather is probably a better option.
 
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robinp said:
This is interesting. I’m a bit unsure of the units you’re using.

I’ve found this paragraph from a wiki page:



The thing that occurred to me from your calcs is that stainless steel is an alloy. So comparing to plain Titanium is a bit unfair as it’s very likely Apple would use an alloy of Titanium rather than the plain element.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_alloy
Click to expand...
The units I'm using are g/cm^3 for density and Mpsi (millions of psi) for Young's modulus. Since I'm calculating the relative masses, the units don't matter, so long as they are consistent. But, yes, I would have added the units if I had been less rushed.

The reason I used the 15.5 value for the Young's modulus of Ti isn't that I was assuming it would be pure Ti. Instead, I'd read the titanium used in watches is typically either grade 2 (commercially pure Ti) or grade 5 (Ti-6Al-4) (see: https://www.ablogtowatch.com/titanium-watch-guide/ ), so I guessed Apple would use one or the other. Their Young's moduli are 14.9 Mpsi and 16.5 Mpsi, respectively, so since I wanted to do just a rough calculation, I approximately split the difference at 15.5 Mpsi. See:

Note also the value I used for Al is that for 6000-series Al alloys.

Feel free to redo the calculations with your values--I think you'll find the conclusion is the same: That, for a fixed stiffness target, the mass of Ti needed is about half-way between that of Al and stainless. Hence my conclusion, contrary to your characterization, is not unfair to Ti.

Note also that, based on the functional form of the equation, the Young's modulus has much less effect than the density on the mass needed. The way to understand that is to think of how sitffness varies with density and Young's modulus for a fixed mass. If you double the Young's modulus, you double the stiffness. But if you halve the density, you can make the sheet twice as thick, and the stiffness is proportional to the thickness cubed. Hence density is much more important than Young's modulus when you are trying to determine relative stiffness for a fixed mass, and thus relative mass for a fixed stiffness.
 
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dannyyankou said:
Durability and hardness are different things. According to mohs scale of hardness (basically measures scratch resistance), titanium falls between aluminum and steel
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Uh oh. Are we going to have another iPhone 5 (black) situation on our hands?
 
TheYayAreaLiving 🎗 said:
No, it doesn’t. It’s more durable and exclusively premium. It feels very nice when you touch it.
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Apple will not be using pure Titanium, (not good for precision machining of petty consumer gadgets). Titanium as most consumers know it, is typically alloyed with iron or aluminum, like the AWU. These varieties are quite strong, but do not all have high surface hardness (scratch resistance). The really hard stuff is Titanium Nitride (TiN) which is sapphire-like, and so hard it's mostly used to anodize finished steel machine tooling.
 
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DeepIn2U said:
Also consider that most metals in consumer products are indeed alloy's not their pure form even if mentioned as such. Its not like there is a specific regulation that'll enforce a specific metal used is of 9x% high etc.

Remember the TiBook G4 (PowerBook G4 Titanium)? As beautiful of a design that was, it had like 'Titanium shards in it. Think of it like the Titanium in your ICE cars Catalytic converter. It's not like you can melt it down and get a full Troy Ounce of it to get market value, there is barely a few single digit of grams therein.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that’s kind of my point. But they’ve clarified they were working on the basis of alloys anyway.
 
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Last 3 years almost the same hardware except the camera. This is supposed to be the big hardware upgrade Year. titanium case, periscope camera and digital buttons is not going to bring Apple the sales they want and need
Enough said
 
Oh look, Apple is trying to save me money. I was going to change my phone in summer maybe. Almost convinced to go for a Pro. But if they drop the physical buttons i might go for the previous model or for the non Pro...
 
Wow, Apple will be doing something different this year with iPhone. First time since 2017. Now how much will the price increase? 🙄
 
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Gengar said:
I wonder how much the 512GB is gonna be?

Can’t wait though. Titanium finish, periscope lens, rumored better battery life… it’s everything I want.
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I’m guessing that price increase which was originally rumored for the 14 Pro will become reality for the 15 Pro/15 Ultra if titanium replaces the stainless steel. I also remember the rumor that titanium would be exclusive to the 6.7” 15 Ultra. So maybe a $100 increase?
 
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bushman4 said:
Last 3 years almost the same hardware except the camera. This is supposed to be the big hardware upgrade Year. titanium case, periscope camera and digital buttons is not going to bring Apple the sales they want and need
Enough said
Click to expand...
You forgot Thunderbolt 4 or USB-C 4 ... 40 Gbps data transfer over wire is still more reliable than WiFi and thus faster without interference to move RAW photos and especially ProRES videos for editing in Premier or FinalCutPro.

maybe the ability to edit directly on storage of an iPhone Pro and keep both the original data an the edited finished content?
 
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MacFin said:
Call me old school, but I hate the idea of removing physical buttons and replacing them with haptic ones. I think this could easily be as stupid a move as Apple implementing a touch bar on Macbooks and then reversing back to a regular keyboard. Here's my reasoning.

Most of us who live in colder countries use gloves. With haptic feedback, you can no longer easily operate the phone, especially adjusting the volume when listening to music. This applies not only when you are holding the phone but also when it's in your pocket. I cannot tell you how often I still adjust the volume while my iPhone is still in my pocket. With haptics, we can say good buy to all of this.

Secondly, haptics will mean a small "revolution" in custom cases for the iPhones since unless you use some special materials, you can't really get the buttons working. Obviously, this issue is fairly easy to solve (just make cutouts for the buttons) or buy the case directly from Apple since they have found the perfect "solution" for the problem they intentionally created.

I get that one reason Apple might want to ditch physical buttons might be to improve water resistance, but it already has excellent water resistance. Apple does not need to create a phone that can live underwater 24/7 so what other true benefits of solid buttons really have? A much better idea would be to focus on improving cold resistance, which is still rubbish since once the temperatures go below -10 Celcius iPhones tend to shut down.

The greatest irony in this all is that all Apple engineers constantly seem to forget that half of the people on this planet live in areas that get cold during winter; hence, gloves are a big part of the smartphone experience. Now they want to cripple their iPhone user experience to brag about new "technological enhancements" that actually make the user experience worse.

Regular buttons don't need any power source, but haptics do. So technically adding haptics requires more components that could at some point, fail or break down + they also add that small battery drain too. That all being said, I really struggle to understand what "good" Apple can really archive by abandoning classic buttons.
Click to expand...

That's a good post. Perhaps the buttons will be sensitive and large enough to work with gloves. We might see a slightly thicker phone, the same as the current iPad Pro, because of the inclusion of a USB-C port.
 
MacNut said:
Honestly I think Apple finally ran out of things to shove into the phone to make it better.
Click to expand...
Yes, around the iPhone 11. Incremental updates to draw in the fans every year that go WOW....other than that, in real world use, an 11/pro is just as good as the 14/pro in every day useage. which is great. I would still be using my 11 if I wasn't a dummy and buy the 64gb version. I loved my 11 more than my 13.
 
The point and shoot pro said:
Yes, around the iPhone 11. Incremental updates to draw in the fans every year that go WOW....other than that, in real world use, an 11/pro is just as good as the 14/pro in every day useage. which is great. I would still be using my 11 if I wasn't a dummy and buy the 64gb version. I loved my 11 more than my 13.
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I feel the same way except I am still using my 11 Pro. It's been very solid but sometimes has some freeze ups. I've been wanting to get one with larger capacity but I can't see myself spending that money when this one is fine. AT&T has been generous with trade in values but I'm hoping the next one comes with USB-C and is more solid overall.
 
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I've considered buying a refurbed one with a larger capacity but they're too expensive. Just a couple hundred more and I can pick up a 14.
 
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