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Iphone Apple

Apple Plans a Thinner iPhone in 2025 (theinformation.com) 81

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Apple is developing a significantly thinner version of the iPhone [non-paywalled source] that could be released as early as 2025, The Information reported Friday, citing three people with direct knowledge of the project. From the report: The slimmer iPhone could be released concurrently with the iPhone 17, expected in September 2025, according to the three people with direct knowledge and two others familiar with the project. It could be priced higher than the iPhone Pro Max, currently Apple's most expensive model starting at $1,200, they said.

The people familiar with the project described the new iPhone, internally code-named D23, as a major redesign -- similar to the iPhone X, which Apple marketed as a technological leap from previous generations and which started at $1,000 when it was released in 2017. Several of its novel features, such as FaceID, the OLED screen and glass back, became standard in subsequent models.
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Apple Plans a Thinner iPhone in 2025 More

Apple Plans a Thinner iPhone in 2025

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  • Anything thinner would need to be very stiff or support a fair amount of bending, otherwise its going to break often.

  • Expect thicker cases to compensate (Score:3)

    by WoodstockJeff ( 568111 ) on Friday May 17, 2024 @12:23PM (#64479483) Homepage

    After the first batch of people damage their phones, the cases will get thicker to protect them.

  • Thick or thin (Score:4, Funny)

    by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Friday May 17, 2024 @12:24PM (#64479485)

    This is shocking news! I'm positively floored that they would consider such a move. This thickness-shaming has to end.

  • Not sure (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fropenn ( 1116699 ) on Friday May 17, 2024 @12:24PM (#64479489)
    why a thinner phone is necessary. If you are spending that much for a phone, you will have plenty of room in your pocket as your wallet will be empty.

    • Re:Not sure (Score:4, Insightful)

      by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Friday May 17, 2024 @12:38PM (#64479545)

      Even as an Apple person, I don't understand the obsession with thinness either. They are thin enough!! Hell, without a case, they're so thin and slippery that I can't even hold the fucking things.

      I use a UAG Monarch case with my 14 Pro Max. Personally I feel the thickness and heft is pretty much perfect. The only improvements I see necessary are:

      1). Absolute liquid proofing

      2). USB-C port.

      3). More memory at a cheaper price and longer battery life with faster charging is always welcome.

      I don't need a better camera, more speed, more notch action or anything else.

      • My iPhone X is plenty thin enough, thin enough that in its case I feel it is still thin enough. Frankly, I do not see this new ultra-thin phone as being survivable out in the real world.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by edwdig ( 47888 )

        It seems to go thru a cycle every few years. People complain the phone is too thick, so they make a thin model. Usually coincides with a larger design change, like getting rid of the home button or making larger screens standard. Then people say "Yeah this is good, but I wish the battery lasted longer". So the next model is a little thicker to put a bigger battery in. Repeat another time or two. Then we're back to "I wish the phone was thinner", and the cycle repeats.

        • Yeah.

          Current iPhone max:es are in the "big, heavy and big battery" category.

          But it works.

          My iPhone 15 pro max is the first phone since the Nokia 6310i where I do not feel the "out of power soon" - anxiety. While we are nowhere near the use time of that Nokia phone, the fact that it lasts me 2 days/charge means that even if I forget to charge some night I will not run out and it lasts even a long flight of movie etc watching.

          But it is big and heavy..

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tzanger ( 1575 )

        agreed; I don't want thinner, but I do want flatter. Make the phone as thick as the lenses so the damn thing lies flat and fill that extra volume with battery. And USB C, and bring back the 'mini' form factor. I hate these phablets and am hoping my 13 mini will last until they come to their senses, like my 2011 air lasted until they abandoned their idiotic butterfly keyboard design.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Even as an Apple person, I don't understand the obsession with thinness either. They are thin enough!! Hell, without a case, they're so thin and slippery that I can't even hold the fucking things.

        I use a UAG Monarch case with my 14 Pro Max. Personally I feel the thickness and heft is pretty much perfect. The only improvements I see necessary are:

        1). Absolute liquid proofing

        2). USB-C port.

        3). More memory at a cheaper price and longer battery life with faster charging is always welcome.

        I don't need a better camera, more speed, more notch action or anything else.

        But if they made one that wasn't fragile, had sufficient memory (or even worse, expandable memory like say an SD card or USB storage) and had sufficient battery capacity how could they convince you to buy a new £1000 phone next year?

        My Nokia X30 doesn't go in a case because it's not stupidly fragile.

    • It's an attempt to move to the platonic ideal of a phone, something John Siracusa calls the 'naked robotic core'.

      You make the phone basically nothing but a piece of glass that has all the functionality that you need, and then you start strapping things to it to make it fit your life better. Thin cases for the most basic protection, more rugged cases, cases with extra battery, and you're not burdened down by the decisions the company made for you, you just buy the outside that you need to match the extremely

  • same thing they keep doing (Score:3)

    by Turkinolith ( 7180598 ) on Friday May 17, 2024 @12:25PM (#64479493)
    "Thinner" seems to be their main objective for the past several years. Their already pretty dang thin, At this point it's coming at the cost of structural integrity and battery size.
    • "Thinner" is an objective metric that can be set as a goal and communicated to the public. Neither of these things is my job, so I'll join the "who gives a shit" chorus.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        One-year survival rate is also an objective metric that can be set as a goal and communicated to the public. Unlike thinness, it is a metric that customers actually *do* care about. Improving the former while harming the latter is the quickest way to kill a company.

        The iPhone is already too thin. Realistically, no good can come from making it thinner. The best case scenario is that they end up with bend-gate all over again. The worst case is that the case flexing causes battery fires and people get ge

    • It has always come at the expense of battery size. That's literally the whole reason they have to throttle old phones.

  • Why do people want thin devices? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Are skinny jeans still a thing?

    I miss laptops with room for real keyboard travel, and phones with room for headphone jacks and long-lasting batteries.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Are skinny jeans still a thing?

      I miss laptops with room for real keyboard travel, and phones with room for headphone jacks and long-lasting batteries.

      Why? You can still get both. Lots of gaming laptops have mechanical keyboards with generous levels of key travel and there's plenty of mobile phones with headphone jacks still on the market, there's even some with that and replaceable batteries.

  • Apple people have those tight tight pants, thin phones don't stand a chance.

  • Thicker (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LatencyKills ( 1213908 ) on Friday May 17, 2024 @12:37PM (#64479535)

    I don't want a thinner phone. I want a more durable phone with a longer battery life. The second I get a phone, I put it in a case that doubles the thickness, so what has my fancy thin phone gotten me?

    • It got you a phone with a case as thin as a old phone without a case

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pruss ( 246395 )

      Well, if you add a case to a thinner phone, the combined package will likely be thinner than adding a case to a thicker phone. So there may still be a slight benefit.

      By the way, what seems to me to be silly is having phones that are *mostly* thin, but with camera lenses sticking out. One could keep the same maximum thickness (i.e., the thickness at the point of the lenses) and yet have a lot more battery volume. There is pretty much zero benefit from the phone being PARTLY thinner. The case still has to pro

      • No because the case will need to be thicker due to the phone being more fragile

        • No because the case will need to be thicker due to the phone being more fragile

          This does not appear to be true in practice. The new thinner iPad is testing out to be just as durable.

    • I don't want a thinner phone. I want a more durable phone with a longer battery life.

      Buy a different phone. There's more than one on the market you know. Not every company exists to produce a product with the label "Exclusively designed for LatencyKills".

    • The option to not have a thick heavy phone sometimes if you decide to take the case off.

      I've been going without a case on my iPhone 11 for a few months now without any trouble. I'm planning to upgrade this year anyway, so durability is less of a concern at this point, and it's nice to have a thinner and lighter phone for a few months. The case was also trapping heat and my phone was overheating when I was running the public betas.

      Smaller devices inherently offer more options than bigger, heavier phones. I c

    • >The second I get a phone, I put it in a case that doubles the thickness
      I used to get cases the triple the thickness, because when battery life started going from a week per charge to a day, I used cases that have an embedded battery bank.
  • ...they put under the hydraulic press [youtube.com] also the iPhone ?!?
  • Everywhere I go I see people (mostly women) carrying their phones in their back pockets. I've always wondered how these thin things don't crack when the person sits down. I can't see making these things much thinner really.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm not sure if you understand, but I do. One day I put on my girlfriends jeans by accident, we're just about the same size so I didn't notice anything wrong at first. Then I tried to put my phone in the front pocket. I was very confused for a bit as the pocket was only half as deep as mine was. They would likely fall out if they were in a front pocket of woman's pants that were graced with front pockets even those with a boyfriend cut.
  • Whether or not you are a fan of Apple or thinness in phones, this is no more than fevered speculation about something two iterations away. Either this is clickbait for dreamers or it is a new low at attempted insider trading. Glenda the Good Witch says "You have no power here."

  • Thinner phone that requires reinforced case (Score:3)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Friday May 17, 2024 @12:41PM (#64479555)
    I don't understand what the point of having thinner phones when universally everybody puts protective case around phones, because they are too fragile. I still remember when it was rare to be needing a case.

    • Those were the flip-phone days!

      Before Gorilla Glass half the drops of flat phones were fatal.

    • I don't understand what the point of having thinner phones when universally everybody puts protective case around phones, because they are too fragile. I still remember when it was rare to be needing a case.

      Cases are for grip and to add a ridge above the bezel to protect the screen. That is what makes them protective. You can still have a thinner phone and put it in a thinner protective case.

      • add a ridge above the bezel to protect the screen

        And this is why Android phones with the "curved edge" screens suck. A pox on Samsung's house for popularizing this horrible design.

  • Give me a thick option (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Friday May 17, 2024 @01:00PM (#64479605) Homepage Journal

    My current phone (pixel 5) is 8.2mm thick (thin!) and has a plastic textured backside that won't slip out of my fingers, and won't shatter. Give me a 1cm thick phone that doesn't need a case, has a bigger battery, doesn't have a glass back. I have zero desire for anything thinner than 8mm. I don't want a 3mm sheet of glass.

    • What if they sold you a 3mm sheet of glass but then you could chose to buy a 5mm case with it? Or a 10mm case? Or a 2mm case?

      If you get an 8mm phone you can never go thinner than 8mm, even if there are a few isolated situations where you MIGHT want to have a smaller, lighter phone. Reduced size a step towards greater modularity (potentially).

      • In my opinion the only reason for the case is to make up for the fact that it's too fragile for regular use.

        • I've been without a case for about 10 months now. It started as a way to alleviate heat problems, but I haven't had any trouble, despite dropping my phone several times while caseless.

          Cases are used for all sorts of things, fashion, for one. But my old case was a popsocket case, and that adds a fair amount of utility. I may buy a bike-mount quadlock case when I upgrade my phone.

          You can also buy cases with extra battery packs in them.

          It is certainly true that most cases are used for extra protection most of

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      This. Non-slip surface, resiliant, fits in one hand, good battery life, useable lifetime of at least 5 years. That'd be pretty much my perfect phone.

  • If not, I will wait a few more years...

  • Most people don't have calipers to measure thickness. From the iPhone 6 to the present, the thickness has ranged from 0.28 to 0.33 inches. That's just barely more than 1 mm. If those different iPhone models were compared side by side, it would still require some effort to eyeball which one was the thinnest. However, holding each phone one at a time, I'm not sure most people could gauge which was the thinnest.

    This means that Apple is selling a feature that most people can't easily sense. Small differenc

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I assume you meant 1 cm.

      • I assume you meant 1 cm.

        Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant that the range of iPhone thicknesses since iPhone 6 has range from 0.28 to 0.33 inches, which is a range of 0.05 inches or 1.27 mm (maybe a little more or less since the inches are likely rounded off). That difference of 1.27 mm is not noticeable by most people without either a caliper or a side-by-side comparison.

  • Thinner still? (Score:3)

    by WeatherServo9 ( 1393327 ) on Friday May 17, 2024 @01:21PM (#64479661)
    Oh dear lord. What's with this obsession with thinner and thinner? Guessing I'll just end up with a thicker case to protect it so no net gain. If it gets too thin it will be a pain to pick up when laying flat on a table (at least for my older not particularly dexterous hands). Really, the iPhone is pretty much complete - there's not much more to do except incremental upgrades to the camera or microphones, etc. A standardized charging connector would be nice. But except for some minor quirks like that the form factor is basically fine now, of all the tweaks that could be made I don't see thinner as one of the ones that improves anything that still needs to be improved.

    • If it gets too thin it will be a pain to pick up when laying flat on a table ...

      Apple's newer / thinner iPhones will come with a spatula to help with that. :-)

      What's with this obsession with thinner and thinner?

      Maybe their designers used to work in women's fashion?
      Next, they'll get the phones hooked on heroin so they can be even thinner.

    • There's really no valuable improvement possible to make with most modern technology. But companies must continuously pretend to make progress and "improve" the product. So any excuse will do, the smallest incremental improvement now is spun into the reason you should just throw your old phone in the garbage and spend 1000 bucks or so to get the new thing.

      We had peak functionality about 15 years ago.
    • I recall a Dave Barry article from years back talking about (paraphrased) someone talking on "a cellphone the size of a grain of rice, to whatever area code the rear bumper of their giant SUV is in". Recall also that all bicycles weigh 50 pounds.

  • Apple Plans a Thinner iPhone in 2025

    The ads for these phones will show Apple crushing older, thicker, iPhones ... :-)

    More seriously, (a) how thin to phones need to be and (b) how thin can they be w/o being fragile WRT bending and damage. They already fit in any pocket in that respect. The problem there is ever-increasing length x width of phones. Pretty soon they'll just be tablets -- which would actually simplify their product line.

  • I'd heard a similar rumor, but with a different dimension being decreased. So in English my rumor was that the phone would be less wide. So it might be taller, but the screen dimension would be tweaked so it would be more usable one handed. That still sounds goofy, but combined with this one, I'm left thinking someone misunderstood what thin meant, but it wasn't me.

  • They just won't do it so violently this time.

  • The thinner the phone, the thicker the case you will need in order to protect it from damage. In the end, what you carry is the same size. But I guess the thinner version looks more beautiful on display in the Apple Store. The last time you will see it out of the case.

  • The first thing I did after buying an iPhone SE 3rd gen was put it in an Otterbox case cause it was unusably slippery and fragile.

    • The first thing I did after buying an iPhone SE 3rd gen was put it in an Otterbox case cause it was unusably slippery and fragile.

      You people must be butter fingers or something. I've had my iPhone for 3 years. NO CASE. Never dropped it. Looks like new. And if you know who I am IRL, then you know I work around power tools, do wood and metal working, etc. I don't seem to have any issues dropping my phone or keeping my phone like new without a case.

  • Translation (Score:3)

    by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Friday May 17, 2024 @03:18PM (#64480015) Journal

    Apple Plans a More Fragile Phone With Less Battery for 2025

    Does literally anyone look at the existing iPhone and say "Man, that's a great phone, but it would be so much better if it was 1mm thinner!" ?

  • As well as the duh factor pretty wiggly on timing.
  • I mean, we need the fashion statement to change every so often

  • The new and improved, lighter and thinner iPhone 85! Now only 11 nanometers thin! (iPhone Case 85 to protect your new toy sold separately)

    • Here's the thickness of each phone Apple has introduced:

      2G: 11.6mm
      3G: 12.3mm
      3GS: 12.3mm
      4: 9.3mm
      4S: 9.3mm
      5: 7.6mm
      5S: 7.6mm
      SE: 7.6mm
      6: 6.9mm
      6+: 7.1mm
      6S: 7.1mm
      6S+: 7.3mm
      7: 7.1mm
      7+: 7.3mm
      8: 7.3mm
      8+: 7.5mm
      X: 7.7mm
      XS: 7.7mm
      XS Max: 7.7mm
      XR: 8.3mm
      11: 8.3mm
      11 Pro: 8.1mm
      11 Pro Max: 8.1mm
      SE 2nd gen: 7.3mm
      12: 7.4mm
      12 Mini: 7.4mm
      12 Pro: 7.4mm
      12 Pro Max: 7.4mm
      13: 7.65mm
      13 Mini: 7.65mm
      13 Pro: 7.65mm
      13 Pro Max: 7.65mm
      SE 3rd Gen: 7.3mm
      14: 7.8mm
      14 Plus: 7.8mm
      14 Pro: 7.85mm
      14 Pro Max: 7.85mm
      15: 7.8mm
      15 Plus: 7.8mm
      15 Pro: 8.25

  • With a replaceable battery and without the extra crap that makes them weigh more?

    It's too old and slow but I miss my old LG phone. I could pop the back off anytime I wanted and slot in a new battery with no special tools and the back case was a cheap piece of plastic so the entire thing barely weighed anything.

    It's like how if you go and buy a monitor it's a pain in the ass to find one with a matte display even though those are by far the best for your eyes. But glossy monitors sell better and showro
  • What the fuck is the obsession with an even thinner more fragile device. They are already if anything too thin, would prefer more battery life and a little thicker.

  • Stick to strawberry!

  • What's that obsession with thin? Compensating for a beer belly?

    Can't remember anyone ever posting anywhere that what they'd really want is a thinner iPhone.

    I want a new SE. I want a phone I can use with one hand. I want a phone that after 5 years still holds a charge for 2 days. I want a phone that I can drop once or twice and it won't be damaged. Yeah, I know that's what cases are for, but I detest cases. I want a phone that doesn't slip out of fingers or pockets.

    Also, I want a phone that detects when you

  • What? Because it looks cool? Add thickness, and you could have a much bigger battery. It could be repairable...oh, right...

  • Iphones are getting so thin, that pretty soon the front will be coming out the back, and you'll be able to use them as a straight razor.

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