Wait. What about the satellite antenna? The other things are far off enough that "noted" analyst Kuo will have moved those predictions around several times (in some cases, several times more than he has already) until it will be claimed that he was "accurate."
Seriously! How do I become a noted analyst, getting to make things up, and getting a headline on ai.com?
Who cares what Kuo thinks, just tell me what actually is happening.
Are there people out there that actually want a folding iPhone? I don’t mean people that would buy one if they were available, because that may or may not include me. I mean people that actively wish that Apple would make one, and are longing for the day that they do. How many of those people are out there?
Tech is not out there just yet. I can see myself getting a 2-hinge (tri-fold as it were) as it would be a nice phone and bed video player, book reader combo.
Eg, when folded up, 6" 2:1 aspect ratio, which is just a little shorter than today's iPhones, and when unfolded, it would be 9.7" 3:2. Problem is that the thickness is pretty darn hard to workaround. You want the folded thickness to be about 0.4" (12mm) or less, about the original iPhone thickness. This means when unfolded, it would be about 0.16" (4mm). Not a lot of room for display and battery.
If it is thin phone thick, about 0.27" (7mm), that would make for a 0.83" (21mm) thick device when folded. The bulk is really adding up. Also have a mass issue. Thing is going to be about 0.5 lb. Heavy.
The current issue imo with folding phones is that there isn't a comfortable aspect ratio for either folded or unfolded configurations, robustness aside.
Also, the radius of the fold point I would assume must be a certain size in order to be able to reliably bend without showing significant disruption at the fold line. I can't imagine there's a material that would ever make this practical. Hope I'm wrong, but it feels like a stretch..
I keep commenting on the superlative modifiers oft appended to Ming-Chi Kuo’s name because it’s got to be an intentional manipulation. It doesn’t just happen here, but also on various other Apple news and rumor sites. With great regularity, Kuo gets laudatory descriptors from an oddly consistent set of terms, while other analysts are only cited by their names, employers, and occasionally a negative descriptor like “sketchy.”
Kuo’s predictions are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and his accuracy is frequently a moving target. There is no apparent tabulation anywhere that keeps score in any meaningful way that could allow for direct comparison of accuracy among the various analysts and prognosticators.
So how is it Kuo’s so often presumed to be more accurate than everyone else? My best guess is that Kuo’s notes are made available to news and rumor sites in the form of a subscription, and the terms for quoting directly from those notes include a requirement to add those laudatory modifiers with some regularity. I will add that this then seems to bleed over into the next level - even when other writers disagree with Kuo, or commenters on sites like this call BS on a Kuo prediction, it comes with an acknowledgement of Kuo's reputation for being the best or most accurate. Again, if somebody has actually kept score and those claims can be substantiated, I would like to see it. That would change everything and negate the concerns I'm raising here.
I get that predicting the future product pipeline of a company that wishes to tightly control that information is difficult, and accuracy will be dubious for any analyst. Fans and investors want to know what’s coming, and Apple wants to remain competitive without tipping its hand to other manufacturers.
So in that context, why does it matter that Kuo gets boosts to his reputation? It matters because it appears to be an intentional manipulation. If Kuo’s reputation is artificially inflated simply through repetition of unverifiable claims regarding his accuracy, the information he provides is then taken more seriously than is actually warranted. For end-user enthusiasts, it really doesn’t matter, but when purchasing decisions and investment strategies are influenced, it starts to really affect people. That’s when it becomes a problem.
Are there people out there that actually want a folding iPhone? I don’t mean people that would buy one if they were available, because that may or may not include me. I mean people that actively wish that Apple would make one, and are longing for the day that they do. How many of those people are out there?
Probably not that many. That doesn't mean it's something we won't see a lot of, eventually. If we look at the progress of display technology from a resolution, power consumption and thickness standpoint over the past 20 years, it's not hard to imagine phones and tablets that are 1/2 or 1/4 the thickness of today's devices. Imagine an iPad that is the thickness of a few pieces of paper, one that rolls up and folds in your pocket. Imagine contact lenses that do everything our phones do today at 8x the resolution. That's probably where we are headed.
Consider:
In the year 2000, most TVs were still CRT. A 32" TV was at least 12-16" deep and weighed 150 lbs.
By 2005, all computer displays were LCD, as were the vast majority of TVs. A 40" plasma TV at the time was about 5" thick and weighed about 50 lbs.
By 2010, all displays were either LCD or plasma, the iPhone and iPad were released, and a typical TV was about 3" thick.
Currently, we have 70" televisions that cost $500 and are less than 2" thick, weighing less than 30 lbs. 20 years prior, the television was half the screen size, 8x the weight, and 8-10x the thickness. Just following that same pace of innovation, we'll have much more than folding phones in 20 years.
Why anyone still gives Kuo any credit is beyond me. He just repeats industry trends over and over. His actual predictions are mostly wrong. He has been "predicting" mini LED-equipped MacBooks "coming up" the past 5 years or so, getting it wrong each time.
Are there people out there that actually want a folding iPhone? I don’t mean people that would buy one if they were available, because that may or may not include me. I mean people that actively wish that Apple would make one, and are longing for the day that they do. How many of those people are out there?
Probably not that many. That doesn't mean it's something we won't see a lot of, eventually. If we look at the progress of display technology from a resolution, power consumption and thickness standpoint over the past 20 years, it's not hard to imagine phones and tablets that are 1/2 or 1/4 the thickness of today's devices. Imagine an iPad that is the thickness of a few pieces of paper, one that rolls up and folds in your pocket. Imagine contact lenses that do everything our phones do today at 8x the resolution. That's probably where we are headed.
Consider:
In the year 2000, most TVs were still CRT. A 32" TV was at least 12-16" deep and weighed 150 lbs.
By 2005, all computer displays were LCD, as were the vast majority of TVs. A 40" plasma TV at the time was about 5" thick and weighed about 50 lbs.
By 2010, all displays were either LCD or plasma, the iPhone and iPad were released, and a typical TV was about 3" thick.
Currently, we have 70" televisions that cost $500 and are less than 2" thick, weighing less than 30 lbs. 20 years prior, the television was half the screen size, 8x the weight, and 8-10x the thickness. Just following that same pace of innovation, we'll have much more than folding phones in 20 years.
Of course, a significant part of the Apple ethos that Steve Jobs left behind is creating things that people didn't know that they wanted, but then become indispensable. Jobs did it with iPhone and Cook has done it with Apple Watch. A foldable iPhone doesn't fulfill that ethos on novelty alone. If it just delivers the same thing as a slab phone, but in a different form factor, the novelty of it will quickly wear off and become meaningless. This is particularly true if that novelty comes at a cost of significantly higher breakage and failure rates inherent in the folding hardware. The question then becomes, what's the use case for that technology beyond being a fashion statement? Samsung is already selling the things as a fashion statement. Apple won't come behind that several years later just to deliver on a four-year-old fashion trend.
Are there people out there that actually want a folding iPhone? I don’t mean people that would buy one if they were available, because that may or may not include me. I mean people that actively wish that Apple would make one, and are longing for the day that they do. How many of those people are out there?
Probably not that many. That doesn't mean it's something we won't see a lot of, eventually. If we look at the progress of display technology from a resolution, power consumption and thickness standpoint over the past 20 years, it's not hard to imagine phones and tablets that are 1/2 or 1/4 the thickness of today's devices. Imagine an iPad that is the thickness of a few pieces of paper, one that rolls up and folds in your pocket. Imagine contact lenses that do everything our phones do today at 8x the resolution. That's probably where we are headed.
Consider:
In the year 2000, most TVs were still CRT. A 32" TV was at least 12-16" deep and weighed 150 lbs.
By 2005, all computer displays were LCD, as were the vast majority of TVs. A 40" plasma TV at the time was about 5" thick and weighed about 50 lbs.
By 2010, all displays were either LCD or plasma, the iPhone and iPad were released, and a typical TV was about 3" thick.
Currently, we have 70" televisions that cost $500 and are less than 2" thick, weighing less than 30 lbs. 20 years prior, the television was half the screen size, 8x the weight, and 8-10x the thickness. Just following that same pace of innovation, we'll have much more than folding phones in 20 years.
Of course, a significant part of the Apple ethos that Steve Jobs left behind is creating things that people didn't know that they wanted, but then become indispensable. Jobs did it with iPhone and Cook has done it with Apple Watch. A foldable iPhone doesn't fulfill that ethos on novelty alone. If it just delivers the same thing as a slab phone, but in a different form factor, the novelty of it will quickly wear off and become meaningless. This is particularly true if that novelty comes at a cost of significantly higher breakage and failure rates inherent in the folding hardware. The question then becomes, what's the use case for that technology beyond being a fashion statement? Samsung is already selling the things as a fashion statement. Apple won't come behind that several years later just to deliver on a four-year-old fashion trend.
Comments
Kuo’s predictions are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and his accuracy is frequently a moving target. There is no apparent tabulation anywhere that keeps score in any meaningful way that could allow for direct comparison of accuracy among the various analysts and prognosticators.
Consider:
In the year 2000, most TVs were still CRT. A 32" TV was at least 12-16" deep and weighed 150 lbs.
By 2005, all computer displays were LCD, as were the vast majority of TVs. A 40" plasma TV at the time was about 5" thick and weighed about 50 lbs.
By 2010, all displays were either LCD or plasma, the iPhone and iPad were released, and a typical TV was about 3" thick.
Currently, we have 70" televisions that cost $500 and are less than 2" thick, weighing less than 30 lbs. 20 years prior, the television was half the screen size, 8x the weight, and 8-10x the thickness. Just following that same pace of innovation, we'll have much more than folding phones in 20 years.