Mr_Grey

SpamSandwich said:

A two lens system makes no sense to me. If there were a depth-sensing LIDAR-like sensor instead of a second lens, I could see some use for that.

Well, once you have two (or more) cameras tied together in this fashion you can do lots of different processing on the images and one of those choices is actually depth-sensing.  LIDAR seems unlikely in the extreme given that it would require lasers embedded into the phone which is neither thick enough to accommodate them, nor powerful enough to drive the lasers.  

mattinoz said:

SpamSandwich said:

Seeing as most people cover their phone with a case, not really a concern.

Only since the 6 have most people covered their phones.
The 5 was very serviceable naked phone but even the most dedicated iPhone nudists have covered up with the 6 thanks to it's middle age spread.

I think you're just making that up.  I also think that anyone who says "most people cover their phones" is probably making it up.  

Even if it's 60/40 in favour of cases for iOS devices, that still leaves 400 million people who don't use a case.  

sflocal said:

1983 said:

Antenna bands at the top and bottom edges is definitely a more tidy and elegant solution than the current spaghetti soup on the 6/6s. But I was hoping with the rumoured move to a non-metallic or Liquid-metal casing material that it could be made to look completely seamless, we'll see...

My favorite iPhone design will always be the glass-clad iPhone4.  For me personally, it was the classiest design for a phone today.  Sure, it was on the delicate side, but it was a gorgeous piece of engineering.

Like Steve Jobs said about it, it reminded him of an old Leica.  I hope they one day revisit that design.

Well you might get your wish.  The presence of lines of any kind argues against the previous rumours of an all new casing material.  The repositioning of the lines (although the article is both vague on that and a poor description), suggests two materials in a sandwich of sorts, like the iPhone 4 series.  

If the edge was liquid metal for instance, the front glass and the back zirconia crystal it would essentially be the same as iPhone 4 (only presumably rounded like the 6 series), and would fit this description as well as the previous rumour about materials.  

Such a phone would be almost indestructible. Also, both zirconia and liquid metal can be "doped" to appear to the eye to look exactly like each other.  The zirconia can easily be made to look like the shiny liquid metal we've seen previously or like aluminium if desired.  The liquid metal in turn can look like shiny metal, aluminium, or even glass in some instances.  Apple has many patents that are specifically about zirconia inclusions in liquid metal bases and vice versa.

They've been researching these materials in concert with each other for years now, but perhaps they've only found out it's impossible.  We can't know for now. 

nhughes said:

SpamSandwich said:

This should've been folded into the first post about the Smart Connector. Certainly not worthy of another nearly identical thread.

That story is a day old and this is a new, different leak.

Not really.  This is a story based on the Engadget story which was a copy of the 9to5Mac story yesterday evening which was based on the first version of this story from AppleInsider yesterday morning.  It's really all the same story.  The schematic came out last week and had three or four stories of it's own in the self-same manner, but now it's been included in these stories.  

tmay said:

... For me the key event for Mac's is the adoption of TB 3/USB C, ...

I would like to see Apple instead "gift" the lightning connector to the USB group as a replacement.  In essence I agree with what you're saying, I just think that lightning could carry all the same data and it's just a better plug.  To me, USB-C is only really a better plug compared to it's clunky USB predecessors.