According to recent reports, the upcoming Apple iPhone 15 Pro may have a frame made of titanium with a rounded back. The material is more expensive than the one that is currently available in the ‘Pro’ models of the brand. The analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, said in a note that Apple would switch to solid-state buttons with the iPhone 15 Pro models and also include three Taptic engines. Turns out that an Apple component supplier may have mentioned the possibility of solid-state buttons on the next iPhone.
As reported by MacRumours, Apple supplier Cirrus Logic in a letter to shareholders confirmed that it would continue to engage with a strategic customer and that it plans to bring a new HPMS component to market in smartphones next year.
MacRumours claims that the component could be the company’s high- performance mixed-signal chips. The CEO of Cirrus Logic John Forsyth stated on an earnings call that such a component would be coming to the market in the back half of next year. Indeed, all of the above news from the Texas-based Semiconductor company line up well with the launch of the next iPhone which, going by tradition, takes place every year in September.
Two of the new Taptic engines will be added to the internal left and right sides of the next-generation iPhone models, according to a previous report by Kuo. These would provide similar haptic feedback as when pressing down on the home button of the Apple iPhone 7, there was a button that did not move but gave the user the impression of being pressed using a Taptic engine. The switch from Apple’s proprietary lightning port to the more common Type-C port is expected to come in the second half of 2020.
While the idea of a button-less iPhone does sound exciting, Chinese manufacturer Vivo had also explored a similar idea back in 2019. The phone had no buttons or ports and relied on a technology called Touch Sense, which was a mix of pressure and touch to get things done. The 2020 version of the Apex was followed by a 3D curved edge display and an invisible selfie camera that sat behind the screen, which was wrapped around the sides of the device.