The idea of an edge-to-edge screen on the iPhone 7 is a concept at this point.
But it’s a pretty cool concept, you have to admit.
The current rumor has it that the iPhone 7 will sport a very similar look to the iPhone 6s line, an assortment of major form factor changes arriving in 2017. As of late, blogger John Gruber dropped some “scuttlebutt” over on his The Talk Show podcast, the rumors including an edge-to-edge display that eliminates the top and bottom bezels on the device, with the front-facing camera, Touch ID, and other sensors hidden under the display.
Gruber offered the following:
“I think next year’s phone, the 2017 model, the one that will come out in September of 2017. What I have heard — now this is not really from the rumor mill but just scuttlebutt that I’ve heard — is that it will be an all-new form factor.
And there have been some rumors, I guess, but what I’m saying is that I’ve heard this independently and it is completely getting rid of the chin and forehead of the phone. The entire face will be the display. And the Touch ID sensor will be somehow embedded in the display. The front-facing camera will somehow be embedded in the display. The speaker, everything. All the sensors will somehow be behind the display.
What I don’t know… I have no idea, but whether that means that they’re going to shrink the actual thing in your hand to fit the screen sizes we already have, or whether they’re going to grow the screens to fit the devices we’re already used to holding… I don’t know.”
Previous rumors have mentioned a flexible OLED display appearing in the 2017 iPhone. It’s been thought that an OLED display panel would allow for an edge-to-edge screen design and Apple has already signed a deal with Samsung for a portion of the OLED panels needed for the devices.
Multiple rumors have suggested one 2017 iPhone could include a 5.8-inch OLED display, which would perhaps mean Apple plans to have the display wrap around the edges of a 5.5-inch device, but it is not clear how such a screen size would work without top and bottom bezels as suggested by Gruber.
Other rumors mention the iPhone 7 featuring a glass shell, long-range wireless charging, expanded features like iris or facial recognition, a 10-nanometer A11 chip from TSMC, NAND flash memory supplied by Samsung and touch and display driver integration (TTDI) chips since 2015, which would let the Touch ID fingerprint recognition system be embedded directly into the display, allowing for the elimination of the Home button.
It’s also been thought that Apple will remove the “S” from the name and go with a solid numerical name such as the “iPhone 7″ or iPhone 7 Plus”.
Only time will tell, so stay tuned and we’ll bring you additional details as they become available.
Via MacRumors and The Talk Show