Will your next iPhone be ceramic?
Why it might (and might not) be Apple’s material of the future
AN IPHONE WITH an edge-to-edge display has been rumored for a while, but while it’s easy to imagine an iPhone with a screen that fills the front face, it’s much harder to engineer it. One of the major problems is with the strength of the frame around it – as you go thinner and thinner and take away space for support, aluminum could be too soft for the job. An alternative material is needed, and one that Apple has recently started using for the first time is perfect for the job: ceramic.
The new Apple Watch Edition is made in white ceramic, which is four times harder than stainless steel. It also dissipates heat well, and it looks just fantastic. In fact, its glossy white finish is a fine pair with the new Jet Black finish on the iPhone 7 – and goes intriguingly with a rumor that Apple is planning a “Jet White” iPhone in the same shiny finish as the Jet Black model. The material also wouldn’t scratch in the same way the Jet Black iPhone is prone to – ceramic can be as hard as sapphire.
As if to show off just how good ceramic can be for phones, Chines manufacturer Xiaomi has already made a handset very similar to what people are predicting for the iPhone. Called the Mi Mix, it has a 6.4-inch edge-to-edge touchscreen, but because there’s only the tiniest hint of bezel around most of the display, it’s barely any bigger than the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus. Its rear case and buttons are all high-end ceramic, in glossy black. And it’s a real looker.
However, there is a problem with ceramic phones: actually making them. Ceramic is a lot harder to manufacture at large scales than aluminum, so while Xiaomi can produce a relative handful of phones to show off its design strength, producing tens of millions is another matter. Apple’s entire manufacturing process is geared for aluminum, and to switch to emulating the ceramic Watch’s process for iPhones, product designer Greg Koenig estimated that Apple would need over 10 times the number of milling machines and an additional 200,000 employees. We hope it happens, but don’t hold your breath.