7 ms·

The author makes a good argument (and I always love reading about the nitty gritty of Apple's construction and what they not merely do, but do at incredible sca

by xoa 10y ago

The author makes a good argument (and I always love reading about the nitty gritty of Apple's construction and what they not merely do, but do at incredible scale and consistency), and additionally some of the structural tradeoffs involved in ceramics may be unacceptable for general survivability in a phone-sized form factor. But even so I was surprised in his 3 option list he ignored an obvious 4th. He's correct about scaling and switchover challenges, and that at least as of right now Apple doesn't seem to have any major leaps forward in ceramic manufacturing actively deployed in a product, which in turn means iPhone-scale mass manufacturer would be incredibly expensive/difficult, even for Apple. But that's probably part of why Apple doesn't do it in the Watch either. Instead, they have an entire lineup of Watches, and then use a very expensive, niche process only for an ultra premium skin. While I still consider it unlikely (Apple hasn't done this sort of thing in one of its main lines since the TAM in 1997), if they wanted to start the playing with an advanced material they couldn't get to scale quickly one way would be to just port the Apple Watch strategy and make it exclusive to a special high end model, ie., a ceramic "iPhone Edition" for $2-3k or whatever along with the normal color options. The 10th anniversary of the iPhone would be an occasion for that too. That strategy would have the standard advantages in terms of natural market forces: very high pricing simultaneously limits demand and ensures a large margin for R&D, handling issues, and scale out. There are still plenty of downsides and again ZrO2 ceramics may just plain not be appropriate for the future of general Apple products regardless of manufacturing. But if they had a 10 year plan to do a major material shift in their product lines, simply reflecting reality and making the new material premium at launch then moving it down the stack seems like it'd be an option they could now pursue given that they've already gone some distance to getting the public used to the idea of differently priced "skins" on an identical internal hardware platform.

Animats 10y ago
additionally some of the structural tradeoffs involved in ceramics may be unacceptable for general survivability in a phone-sized form factor. Um, yes. Look how much trouble Apple has with bending. Remember "bendgate". A ceramic will crack, not bend. The other direction, flexible phones, has promise. Flexible printed circuits already exist. Flexible displays exist. Flexible batteries are probably possible. Flexible front transparent cover should be possible. Samsung has tried some things in this space, and has shipped a slightly curved phone. So far, no really flexible phones. The main problem is making it flexible while limiting the amount of bend. Maybe a stiff flat spring...
- vegabook 10y ago
  I doubt anybody wants a bendy battery in their phone anytime soon, given heightening consumer awareness of how dangerous high energy Lithium Ion can be, and how sensitive they are to damage.
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    That sounds like a marketing opportunity to me. "Normal lithium ion batteries are rigid, making them susceptible to damage. When bent, they catch fire." (Graphic of phone catching on fire) "The new bendy battery bends, rather than breaks. This keeps you and your loved ones safe!"
    - wolfgke 10y ago
      > "Normal lithium ion batteries are rigid, making them susceptible to damage. When bent, they catch fire." This together with a bendable iPhone is marketing the iPhone to people that the TSA rather does not want to let into planes. :-)
  - Splines 10y ago
    > given heightening consumer awareness of how dangerous high energy Lithium Ion can be, and how sensitive they are to damage. I assume you're talking about the Note 7? To be honest, I think the details about the why and how of the Note 7 fires are lost on the general populace. Most people don't particularly care why (and they shouldn't need to), they just care that it happens.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- duaneb 10y ago
  While a flexible battery would be really cool, I thought flexibility was a major problem for lithium ion.
  - 10y ago
pavlov 10y ago
My gut feeling is also that an iPhone Edition is coming in March 2017, and it will be ceramic at a price closer to $2k. Apple probably also wants to update the iPhone SE (which was released last March), so it would coincide neatly. That would create a new cadence for iPhone updates: - New "Series" introduction every even year in September - New S model every odd year in September - New Edition model and SE model every March With the Watch, Apple has started using the Series nomenclature ("Apple Watch Series 2"). That would work for iPhones as well. So the current iPhone 7 and 7 Plus is really the first two models of "Series 7", and next up will be "iPhone Series 7 Edition" and "iPhone Series 7 SE".
- twoodfin 10y ago
  First, I don't think Apple is likely to ever introduce an "Edition" iPhone in the mold of the Edition watches (that is, a purely cosmetic or material variation at >3X the cost of the base model). It's simply not worth pushing the iPhones the vast majority of people will actually buy out of the "top end" category. Every second in a keynote spent ogling over a $2000 ceramic iPhone is a second that's not selling to (and indeed may be discouraging) the customers who are going to make Apple real money. When Apple made a "gold" iPhone they didn't charge a penny more for it, and people went nuts. Second, even if Apple were to go down the "Edition" route, a schedule where the "best" iPhone comes out six months after a more "boring" phone with the same guts doesn't make sense. They'd be Osborne'ing themselves every year: "Yeah, the iPhone 9 looks great, but rumor has it the Edition will be made of carbon fiber! I'm going to stick with my 8 for a few more months."
  - pavlov 10y ago
    "Yeah, the iPhone 9 looks great, but rumor has it the Edition will be made of carbon fiber! I'm going to stick with my 8 for a few more months." That actually seems like the perfect outcome? Currently iPhone sales are heavily seasonal towards the end of the calendar year. Seasonality always carries risks (e.g. potential supply issues). If a group of customers waited 6 months to buy a higher-margin luxury product instead, that would be a net gain for Apple.
smpetrey 10y ago
Food for thought: https://twitter.com/i/moments/788073951511535616 https://twitter.com/i/moments/788073951511535616
LordHumungous 10y ago
I would pay a hundred extra for a steel unibody phone. The thing would be bomb proof.
- bigiain 10y ago
  I wonder what that'd end up being like? A machined steel iPhone, perhaps with all the exterior dimensions 0.5 or 1mm bigger - would it be "cool"? Or would it just be the jacked-up-Hummer of the phone world?
  - 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
    The iPhone 4 was steel with glass front and back panels. Still my favourite design.
- ridgeguy 10y ago
  Could be a challenge to keep the internal compass working right.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - LordHumungous 10y ago
    Haha good point!
- jonknee 10y ago
  ... Except for the very large piece of glass making up 45% of the phone's surface.
gak_pdx 10y ago
I avoided writing about the structural stuff in the article, only because ceramics - beyond the basic, off the shelf stuff, are WAY above my paygrade. Some people argue that ceramics are OK for a phone (that Mi5? I think, has a ceramic shell back, and seems to be holding up OK in the field). Ceramics are interesting in that they could be the perfect material for so many things, if only a few very short limitations could be overcome - chief among them being brittleness and ease of manufacturing. As such, there are a lot of big brains working in proprietary labs, trying to gain an edge... and getting close in a lot of cases. So Apple could have solved that and is waiting to get closer to launch to disclose through patents. Who knows? What we DO know is that no current ceramic process can scale to iPhone volumes, and if Apple did solve that... we would have seen at least a little bit of that tech getting tested in the Edition. Since we didn't, I can't see it working out for a phone. If I was going to re-write it, I would be a bit clearer on that and also add the possibility of a ceramic Edition. I don't know if Apple is that in love with this as a material though.

by xoa 10y ago

Animats 10y ago

additionally some of the structural tradeoffs involved in ceramics may be unacceptable for general survivability in a phone-sized form factor. Um, yes. Look how much trouble Apple has with bending. Remember "bendgate". A ceramic will crack, not bend. The other direction, flexible phones, has promise. Flexible printed circuits already exist. Flexible displays exist. Flexible batteries are probably possible. Flexible front transparent cover should be possible. Samsung has tried some things in this space, and has shipped a slightly curved phone. So far, no really flexible phones. The main problem is making it flexible while limiting the amount of bend. Maybe a stiff flat spring...

vegabook 10y ago
I doubt anybody wants a bendy battery in their phone anytime soon, given heightening consumer awareness of how dangerous high energy Lithium Ion can be, and how sensitive they are to damage.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  That sounds like a marketing opportunity to me. "Normal lithium ion batteries are rigid, making them susceptible to damage. When bent, they catch fire." (Graphic of phone catching on fire) "The new bendy battery bends, rather than breaks. This keeps you and your loved ones safe!"
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > "Normal lithium ion batteries are rigid, making them susceptible to damage. When bent, they catch fire." This together with a bendable iPhone is marketing the iPhone to people that the TSA rather does not want to let into planes. :-)
- Splines 10y ago
  > given heightening consumer awareness of how dangerous high energy Lithium Ion can be, and how sensitive they are to damage. I assume you're talking about the Note 7? To be honest, I think the details about the why and how of the Note 7 fires are lost on the general populace. Most people don't particularly care why (and they shouldn't need to), they just care that it happens.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
duaneb 10y ago
While a flexible battery would be really cool, I thought flexibility was a major problem for lithium ion.
- 10y ago

pavlov 10y ago

My gut feeling is also that an iPhone Edition is coming in March 2017, and it will be ceramic at a price closer to $2k. Apple probably also wants to update the iPhone SE (which was released last March), so it would coincide neatly. That would create a new cadence for iPhone updates: - New "Series" introduction every even year in September - New S model every odd year in September - New Edition model and SE model every March With the Watch, Apple has started using the Series nomenclature ("Apple Watch Series 2"). That would work for iPhones as well. So the current iPhone 7 and 7 Plus is really the first two models of "Series 7", and next up will be "iPhone Series 7 Edition" and "iPhone Series 7 SE".

twoodfin 10y ago
First, I don't think Apple is likely to ever introduce an "Edition" iPhone in the mold of the Edition watches (that is, a purely cosmetic or material variation at >3X the cost of the base model). It's simply not worth pushing the iPhones the vast majority of people will actually buy out of the "top end" category. Every second in a keynote spent ogling over a $2000 ceramic iPhone is a second that's not selling to (and indeed may be discouraging) the customers who are going to make Apple real money. When Apple made a "gold" iPhone they didn't charge a penny more for it, and people went nuts. Second, even if Apple were to go down the "Edition" route, a schedule where the "best" iPhone comes out six months after a more "boring" phone with the same guts doesn't make sense. They'd be Osborne'ing themselves every year: "Yeah, the iPhone 9 looks great, but rumor has it the Edition will be made of carbon fiber! I'm going to stick with my 8 for a few more months."
- pavlov 10y ago
  "Yeah, the iPhone 9 looks great, but rumor has it the Edition will be made of carbon fiber! I'm going to stick with my 8 for a few more months." That actually seems like the perfect outcome? Currently iPhone sales are heavily seasonal towards the end of the calendar year. Seasonality always carries risks (e.g. potential supply issues). If a group of customers waited 6 months to buy a higher-margin luxury product instead, that would be a net gain for Apple.

smpetrey 10y ago

Food for thought: https://twitter.com/i/moments/788073951511535616 https://twitter.com/i/moments/788073951511535616

LordHumungous 10y ago

I would pay a hundred extra for a steel unibody phone. The thing would be bomb proof.

bigiain 10y ago
I wonder what that'd end up being like? A machined steel iPhone, perhaps with all the exterior dimensions 0.5 or 1mm bigger - would it be "cool"? Or would it just be the jacked-up-Hummer of the phone world?
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
  The iPhone 4 was steel with glass front and back panels. Still my favourite design.
ridgeguy 10y ago
Could be a challenge to keep the internal compass working right.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- LordHumungous 10y ago
  Haha good point!
jonknee 10y ago
... Except for the very large piece of glass making up 45% of the phone's surface.

gak_pdx 10y ago

I avoided writing about the structural stuff in the article, only because ceramics - beyond the basic, off the shelf stuff, are WAY above my paygrade. Some people argue that ceramics are OK for a phone (that Mi5? I think, has a ceramic shell back, and seems to be holding up OK in the field). Ceramics are interesting in that they could be the perfect material for so many things, if only a few very short limitations could be overcome - chief among them being brittleness and ease of manufacturing. As such, there are a lot of big brains working in proprietary labs, trying to gain an edge... and getting close in a lot of cases. So Apple could have solved that and is waiting to get closer to launch to disclose through patents. Who knows? What we DO know is that no current ceramic process can scale to iPhone volumes, and if Apple did solve that... we would have seen at least a little bit of that tech getting tested in the Edition. Since we didn't, I can't see it working out for a phone. If I was going to re-write it, I would be a bit clearer on that and also add the possibility of a ceramic Edition. I don't know if Apple is that in love with this as a material though.