AI2xxx

Looks like a nice option for those that desire a 4 inch phone, but I don't think I could go back to something that small.

sog35 said:

thewhitefalcon said:

Yeah, having a device that rocks back and forth due to not being flush on the surface while using the Pencil is brilliant. The one flaw on this thing. 

its called having a case

You shouldn't be required to have a case to mend a flaw with the device.

copeland said:

AI2xxx said:

Ceramic would be pretty interesting. It would also reduce the weight of the phone, like the Xiaomi Mi5 Pro.


Note the weight is even lower than the iPhone 6S.

Cost shouldn't be a problem given the fact this phone sells for $350 USD.

Sorry to burst your bubble on this one, but aluminum has a desity of 2.7 and zirconia of about 6.
So you would have to reduce the volume of the material by at least 1/2 to get the same weight and I don't believe better mechanical properties can support that.

Zirconia, or any specific ceramic, had not been specified in this rumor. There are thousands of ceramics, cordierite, for example, has a density of 2.3 g/cc. Less material could potentially be used as well.

melgross said:

AI2xxx said:

Ceramic would be pretty interesting. It would also reduce the weight of the phone, like the Xiaomi Mi5 Pro.



Note the weight is even lower than the iPhone 6S.

Cost shouldn't be a problem given the fact this phone sells for $350 USD.

What has to be understood about these Chinese manufacturers is that the reason the price of their top line phones are so low is because the Chinese government gives these manufacturers loans at below market rates, and doesn't expect them to be paid back, which is, in effect, subsidizing them. In addition, we don't see many of these phones being sold out of China and some other countries there because they don't honor patents. As soon as these phones go on sale outside of those countries, they will be sued.

these companies have the same cost as Apple and Samsung, so there's no magic to the pricing, just billions in subsidies. And because of those subsidies, as well as other government practices,  the Chinese banking industry is in trouble.

While I can't comment on government loans, Xiaomi has openly stated that their devices are sold at (or close) to cost.

As for the device itself, the combination of ceramic and metal has been getting some positive feedback thus far. I think it could be an interesting combination should this rumor, about a future iPhone, be true.

misa said:

I hope everyone realizes that external GPU's are dead in the water. Why would you pay 800$ for an external GPU, only to cripple it to 4 PCIe lanes? Especially on a laptop. And these external bridge boxes cost hundreds of dollars. 

A fool and their money is soon parted speaks pretty loudly for that. You'd be better off saving the money spent on the external bits and buying the most amount of laptop CPU+GPU power as possible, and unfortunately the trend for the last 5 years has been to move backwards with weaker CPU's and weaker GPU's in all but the top-end part, and the top end part ends up being crippled by poor cooling due to the trendy "thin" ultrabook platform. Ughh.

You're missing the point of having a thin/light device that can do a lot more when docked. 

The word "cripple" is not exactly appropriate, especially for those using it for gaming (Thunderbolt 3 uses PCIe x4 3.0):






The cost for a dock+GPU is not as much as you make it out to be. The Acer one in that video will retail for under $300 USD and that dock has a GTX 960M + 4GB GDDR5 inside:



Razer has completely embraced TB3 external GPU, in fact, just today they announced a new Razer Blade laptop for $2000 with an i7-6700HQ (4 cores,  8 threads), 16GB DDR4 RAM, PCIe SSD, 3200x1800 IGZO display and a GTX 970M (6GB VRAM). This laptop, can also use Thunderbolt 3 to be paired with an additional GPU:
Razer's recent ultrabook can also use an external GPU via TB3:



Another important thing is that newer API's such as DX12 take load off of the CPU and will be able to utilize the internal GPU and the external GPU for additional performance: