Summer is coming and the first reliable rumors about what the next iPhone will look like, despite the pandemic and the shortage of microprocessors that is putting entire sectors in difficulty. We wrote “reliable” because, in the Chinese factories, the final specifications have arrived for the models that will be in stores in October, in time for Christmas shopping. And some rumors begin to leak. These are just rumors, nothing official, but year after year many of these rumors are ultimately true results.
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The issue of number 13 (and 17)
Let’s start with the least understandable thing, at least for us Italians: the name of the telephone. Following the progression that has been going on for many years, the device that will be presented after the summer and which follows the current iPhone 12, should be called iPhone 13. However, the number 13 is considered very unfortunate in the US. More or less like ours 17. So much so that in the elevators of American skyscrapers there is no thirteenth floor and the US airlines jump directly from the twelfth to the thirteenth row of seats. It seemed that Apple would have called this iPhone with the abbreviation 12S, but then Tim Cook would have had an afterthought: it is not superstitious, at least according to the rumors, and has decided that the phone will be called iPhone 13. Who knows if it will bring him luck.
Four sizes to choose from
In the next model, the body of the phone will not change radically compared to the current iPhone 12. Indeed, it will be difficult to distinguish between the devices of the two generations, if not for details such as the notch and the rear camera. The body remains the same for industrial life cycle reasons (Apple has been running the same frame for at least two generations). As such, the company will continue to offer four versions of the same size of the current generation: iPhone Mini with 5.4-inch screen, normal with 6.1 “screen and Pro with the same size (but more rear cameras) and Pro Max 6.7”.
All four will have a notch, the front notch with the cameras for the Facial recognition, half the size. The phone will be slightly thicker to accommodate a slightly larger battery (around two millimeters). According to the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, this will be accompanied by a technological evolution, but also to the fact that it will be more efficient thanks to the power of the A15 processor, capable of obtaining better images from less data.
The new cameras
Unlike the iPhone 12, which has two cameras stacked on top of each other, the 13 will have them diagonally, always with the same positioning. The 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max will always have 3 cameras, but of much more generous dimensions, due to the optical stabilizer, the greater power of the sensors, the more performing optical group. There are no unambiguous indications of camera improvements, but a phone cover maker from Apple has a preliminary version of the body was shown on the Japanese site Mac Otakara which shows an optical block of the iPhone 13 Pro that is even larger than that of the 12 Pro.
The rear cameras will be brighter, that is, they will be able capture more light (aperture smaller than f / 1.5), will have greater efficiency and, according to analysts, will be able to focus faster and even in lower light conditions. This is also thanks to the Lidar sensor, now present in the Pro versions, but perhaps, some argue, with the iPhone 13 also in the other models.
A super powerful chip for super fast 5G
According to rumors collected by analysts, inside the iPhone 13 there will be the new chip made by Apple which will be called A15 and will also be made by the Taiwanese Tsmc with 5 nanometer processing. According to rumors, the company would have started producing the new Apple chip as early as the end of May. It is the most valuable and difficult to make piece of the new phone and you need many: at least 100 million, just for the first shipment.
Apple will also use i Qualcomm’s 5G modem, probably the Snapdragon X60, and in the future the X65 and X70. All iPhone 13s will have the ability to exploit 5G millimeter networks (today only iPhone 12 models destined for the US market have this technology) as the standard is becoming established around the world. In addition, according to Barclays analysts, Apple will also insert the support for wifi 6E, which offers extended functionality of wifi 6, such as 6 GHz third frequency and higher efficiency.
More battery and a more performing screen
Apple’s new phones will have to contend with more and larger numbers of internal components, which take away valuable battery space. For this, always according to rumors, iPhones 13 will be slightly thicker (and the cameras will protrude about a millimeter more). The battery will be larger overall in all models and will allow for much greater autonomy (even 20-30%), thanks also to the greater efficiency of the new A15 processors.
In total there should be an overall improvement in all features. Also, the on-screen rendering will be enhanced because the new phones will have one OLED screen with LTPO technology produced by the Korean Lg and Samsung with 120Hz ProMotion refresh and the possibility, according to Max Weinbach, to be always on like the Apple Watch, that is to always show the time and other critical information (battery level, signal, notifications) with minimal energy consumption.
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Still Lightning, no USB-C
It is known that Apple plans to make a phone in the future completely devoid of connection ports, which will be recharged only wirelessly through electric induction, as is already the case in a secondary way with the current iPhone 12.
However, the iPhone 13 will not be like this, and it won’t use USB-C ports either: according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, it will still use Apple’s old proprietary Lightning plug because USB-C is considered less secure and not very reliable for waterproofing. Apple aims to have the highest possible certification of appliances for water and dust resistance and for the crash resistance of displays.
An interesting note, according to rumors, is that Apple is considering whether to raise the maximum amount of memory that can be purchased for phones: currently the iPhone 12 arrive at 512 Gb, but version 13 could hit a terabyte record. In addition to cost, however, such a large amount of memory would have a non-marginal impact on consumption as well.
The future beyond the iPhone 13
Furthermore, the company would have decided to keep the form factor of the 2020 phones also for the devices that will be presented at the end of this year, as we wrote above, but it plans a small revolution for 2022.
According to other rumors coming this time no longer from Chinese factories, with iPhone 14 will come deleted the Mini model and (in the opinion of Ming-Chi Kuo) the notch will be eliminated entirely. For face recognition we will use a camera drowned in the front display and a fingerprint sensor instead placed on the screen or perhaps on the power button (as happens with the latest generation of iPad Air).
According to Barclays, all of this will only be possible with the iPhone 14 thanks to the improvements of the fingerprint recognition sensors and for those necessary for the Face Id architecture (video face recognition) that have made significant progress in the laboratory, but are not yet ready for production.
Apple also aims to achieve Steve Jobs’ old dream: an essential phone, which has nothing useless. Jobs didn’t like buttons and cables, and the iPhone 14 of 2022 could be this: a completely enclosed device, with no sockets of any kind.
In addition, the iPhone 14 should update the cameras with new technologies: new lenses with a very wide angle of image capture, which exploit artificial intelligence to follow and zoom in on the subject of the photograph or video without losing image quality and offering the ability to frame any photo. While the iPhone 13 should have lenses with a moderately higher resolution than last year’s, the iPhone 14 should have 48 Mp sensors capable of recording and processing 8K video.
Finally, Apple has been working for some time on the creation of modem chips for 5G and future generations of telephone networks, in order to be able to stamp from Qualcomm (which currently holds a de facto monopoly on the market, thanks also to the American lock for Huawei) and an iPhone with a folding screen. Lagging behind Samsung, Huawei and Motorola, a future iPhone Fold it should solve the problems of Korean and Chinese phones and have revolutionary ergonomic features. But none of this will likely be seen before 2023.
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