'iPhone 6s' Display Panel With Mystery Chip Is Slightly Heavier and Thicker Than iPhone 6 Version

[macduke]

A slightly thicker and heavier display would seem to give credibility to the recent rumor of a slightly reduced battery capacity. The leaked chipset showed a 10% larger surface area for the A9 despite it going to a 14nm process. This would suggest that many components are integrated into the A9 and therefore more power efficient. Combine that with the energy efficient software improvements in iOS 9 and you have battery life that is probably better than the last generation.

As for speed improvements, it would be difficult to make significant gains when dealing with a smaller battery, so I only expect some moderate gains at best. I think that's completely fine because the processor in the iPhone is certainly fast enough for phone tasks. I expect performance to increase the most when it comes to the graphics chips. I think the increase in A9 die size suggests an increase in the number of graphics cores. There may be an extra processor core like in the A8X but I'm not sure if they can do it on this energy budget. I think the single biggest thing that will contribute to increased performance on the next iPhone is 2GB of RAM.

Another thing that may help is faster flash memory, but I don't think there are any concrete rumors about that at the moment. NAND speed in phones usually lags behind significantly so some improvements there would be great. But that might also depend on the power budget.

 

[MacFather]

Deleted.

 

[cashxx]

These leaks need to stop.....all it does is hurt Apple! If these leaks are being leaked to the press what is being leaked to other companies!?

 

[Andrei90]

Its announced in almost 10 days, who's interested in this nonsense?

How about report some actual Mac news and rumours - you know like the news I sent you that the Mac Pros have silently been updated to use the 2000Mb/s read/write flash drives found in the latest Macbook Air's and Pros.

Or the fact that the 2015 Macbook Air refresh has just been silently updated to use 4k sector sized drives like the 12" Retina Macbook. This wasn't the case when they were first released earlier in the year, and now any recent 13" or 11" Macbook Airs require at least Yosemite 10.10.5 to boot.

Not a sign of any of that though cos we're all so interested in finding out which way an iPhone connector cable might bend apparently.

(Oh sorry, apparently people do care about a rumour about Force Touch that everyone already knows the phone is getting anyway rather than any actual unknown news about Macs, my bad - I guess a site called MacRumors that posted news on actual Mac's probably wouldn't get many hits)

Nobody cares about macs anymore, get over it.

 

[Andrei90]

So... Thicker phone, smaller battery and still a protruding camera?
This all for a gimmick like force touch?

How can you call it a gmiick if you haven't use it?

 

[jsavvy]

I've been hearing all the hype about Force Touch but I'm not sold yet. I'm hoping to see some awesome use cases for it. Not sure what those would be though. C'mon Apple, wow me!

 

[rp2011]

With force touch they should enable an alert when someone sits on their phone. Bendgate solved.

Siri: "auuww you're hurting me!"

 

[greenstumps]

If they keep the camera nub I wont buy one, if they make it flush or do a proper sexy camera bump like the Nokia 1020, I'm in.

 

[guspasho]

So... Thicker phone, smaller battery and still a protruding camera?
This all for a gimmick like force touch?

Right? Whose idea was it to allow the camera to stick out? If they were going to make it thicker anyway, why not make it at least as thick as the camera so it doesn't have to stick out?

Apparently I'm the only one that cares about this. I never hear MacRumors bring it up as an issue. Does everyone just put cases on their iPhones?

 

[Sinjin57]

With the possible 2mm increase in thickness.. thoughts on iphone6 cases will fit? Specifically a mophie made for the 6.. one that hard shell form fitting...

 

[ruler22]

With the possible 2mm increase in thickness.. thoughts on iphone6 cases will fit? Specifically a mophie made for the 6.. one that hard shell form fitting...

The iPhone 6S is only expected to be 0.2mm thicker, not 2mm thicker, than the iPhone 6. I do not know for sure, but I'd expect most cases to work fine with it, as it's not a huge increase.

 

[name99]

With force touch they should enable an alert when someone sits on their phone. Bendgate solved.

This is a funny comment; but as a technical point force touch (at least on the phone) is hooked up to only respond to "capacitive" touches. In other words if you touch in a way that would generate a touch response, then touch harder, force touch will kick in. But if you press while wearing gloves or if you press with a piece of wood or whatever, no force touch. I assume this is, at least in part, to ignore presses that result just by accident when your watch bumps things.

Meaning that if you sat on your phone while naked, force touch on the phone might be activated. But for the normal (for most of us...) situation of sitting on your phone while wearing pants, it may not be.

(Of course what Apple could do is just have a direct pressure/bending sensor so that if you squeeze/bend the phone too much it squeals in pain...)

 

[name99]

So... Thicker phone, smaller battery and still a protruding camera?
This all for a gimmick like force touch?

You're confident that force touch is a gimmick?
Might I respectfully guess that you've never actually used it; but are nevertheless utterly convinced that your limited imagination can project exactly how it will be used?
There's a reason Steve Jobs said asking people in focus groups what they wanted was a waste of time...

 

[flur]

Meaning that if you sat on your phone while naked, force touch on the phone might be activated. But for the normal (for most of us...) situation of sitting on your phone while wearing pants, it may not be.

Heehee. Press Release: "Force Touch will tell you if you're about to sit on your phone, but only if you keep it inside your underwear." Queue a new trend of storing phones pressed up against the naked butt cheek.

 

[Gav2k]

'Mystery chip' hardly a mystery.

When you look at previous versions there are 4/5 cables. Adding force touch would require another cable. Ever tried repairing an iPhone?

Given that picture shows the display Touch ID digitiser and maybe force touch is in place that's 3/4 cables being replaced by 1 which in my books is good.

 

[G4er?]

"Ride, Apple ride, upon your mystery chip..."

 

[jdoll021]

When you think about it, its actually insane that Apple went out of its way to reduce the weight of the backing in order to compensate for the screen

Sometimes I think their "laser-like focus" is overkill and blinds them to the point where they get too obsessive over things people don't really give a rip about or could just live with. For example, their ever escalating war for thinness. How much have they compromised on functionality to cater to their perception of how thin people think their device should be?

 

[Crzyrio]

Sometimes I think their "laser-like focus" is overkill and blinds them to the point where they get too obsessive over things people don't really give a rip about or could just live with. For example, their ever escalating war for thinness. How much have they compromised on functionality to cater to their perception of how thin people think their device should be?

I personally feel the thinness level of the iPhone 6 is almost required for the larger size.

Using a 4.7in phone with the same thickness as the iphone 4 would be horrible to use.

 

[alexgowers]

Force Click/touch is gonna be bigger than we expect. I personally find the idea of being able to have a secondary click enthralling on a touch device. That it could feel like pressing a touch pad and the OS functionality options are the first time available outside a traditional mouse combo. iOS has become less intuitive with all the swipes and weird pull downs, force click could once again make it intuitive to use. Like force click a website image to save etc, long pressed kind of achieve the same thing but force touch makes you have two levels, like swiping around in an app or game, but force touching when you want to fire. You can't achieve that with long pressed. Imagine in a drawing app, being able to switch to an eraser etc. The possibilities really are just so great. An iPad with force touch might just be the coolest thing i can think of.

 

[StyxMaker]

How can you call it a gmiick if you haven't use it?

Don't you know? Everything Apple adds to the iPhone is just a 'gimmick'.

 

[Apples n' Stone]

Considering this is a RUMOUR site, I would suggest quite a few.

Who would have thought. Is there no limit to your knowledge?!?!

 

[Apples n' Stone]

A slightly thicker and heavier display would seem to give credibility to the recent rumor of a slightly reduced battery capacity. The leaked chipset showed a 10% larger surface area for the A9 despite it going to a 14nm process. This would suggest that many components are integrated into the A9 and therefore more power efficient. Combine that with the energy efficient software improvements in iOS 9 and you have battery life that is probably better than the last generation.

As for speed improvements, it would be difficult to make significant gains when dealing with a smaller battery, so I only expect some moderate gains at best. I think that's completely fine because the processor in the iPhone is certainly fast enough for phone tasks. I expect performance to increase the most when it comes to the graphics chips. I think the increase in A9 die size suggests an increase in the number of graphics cores. There may be an extra processor core like in the A8X but I'm not sure if they can do it on this energy budget. I think the single biggest thing that will contribute to increased performance on the next iPhone is 2GB of RAM.

Another thing that may help is faster flash memory, but I don't think there are any concrete rumors about that at the moment. NAND speed in phones usually lags behind significantly so some improvements there would be great. But that might also depend on the power budget.

Exactly, summed it up brilliantly.

 

[Andrei90]

Don't you know? Everything Apple adds to the iPhone is just a 'gimmick'.

But he hasn't even see it! lol.

 

[DCIFRTHS]

Nobody cares about macs anymore, get over it.

I don't agree with the original poster (that no one is interested in this article) and I certainly don't agree with the statement that no one is interested in Macs anymore.

 

[Keirasplace]

Right? Whose idea was it to allow the camera to stick out? If they were going to make it thicker anyway, why not make it at least as thick as the camera so it doesn't have to stick out?

Apparently I'm the only one that cares about this. I never hear MacRumors bring it up as an issue. Does everyone just put cases on their iPhones?

Because that would affect the max size of the sensor and thus photo quality (because of physics).