iPhone 6 Key Features: 6 Killer Factors Engineers Could Be Developing Before Release on Fall 2014
Rumours about iPhone 6 includes bigger screen display, improved camera, Quantum dots, two model variants and sapphire glass. But are these features already on the works or still being developed to become commercially viable? Here are the features and upgrades iPhone 6 may have on its release date.
Quantum Dots
Haydn Shaughnessy, contributor at Forbes believes that Apple plans to make the screen display as the killer factor on the iPhone 6 by upgrading the quality compared to other smartphones instead of sizing up the screen.
This killer factor is called the Quantum Dot technology similar to what Amazon used for Kindle Fire HDX. For Apple, Quantum Dot used for iPhone 6 will bring wider colour gamut compared to Kindle Fire. It allows the iPhone 6 to cover greater ranges of colours, more saturate display and more accurate visual representation that could outperform IPS LCD and Super AMOLED by Samsung.
An Apple patent application was filed in September 2012 and surfaced again in December 2013 pointing Apple's development of Quantom Dot displays.
Sapphire or Gorilla Glass
Several rumours and speculations claim that Apple may shift from Corning Gorilla Glass to Sapphire Cover Glass as protection to the display screen of iPhone 6. Apple planned to make synthetic sapphire glass last year but people do not really know how tough sapphire glass compared to Gorilla Glass which is currently used on iPhone 5S.
In Science, sapphire falls behind diamond as the toughest mineral known on Earth which made Apple interested on applying to their future devices. However, using glass mineral may cause problem in manufacturing that has been pointed out by Corning. Sapphire is thicker and heavier than Gorilla Glass and Apple could experience difficulty to make it so thin to fit on iPhone 6 and next-gen iPad Air lightweight factor.
Upgrading the GPU
Imagination Technologies announced at the Mobile World Congress that Apple may become bound on the upcoming 192-core mobile graphics processing unit on future iPhones and iPad devices based on a post by Apple Insider.
Apple has been using PowerVR GPU from Imagination and it is also possibly that the iOS maker will apply the latest 192-core GPU from the company. PowerVR GX6650 features six unified shading clusters and 192 cores that processes 12 pixels per clock and can be used to new high-end devices, high-resolution tablets and 4K resolution enabled television sets. Have you imagined the combination of 192-cores GPU and 64-bit CPU?
Dual Wi-Fi Channels
Samsung got first on dual Internet connection using both Wi-Fi and LTE radios on Galaxy S5 but Apple may use the newer Broadcom 5G 802.11ac chipset to bring Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) on future iOS devices. Broadcom's new Wi-Fi chip is designed on smaller platform devices such as smartphones and tablets that delivers double Wi-Fi performance but efficiently saves power of up to 25 per cent using wireless applications.
Camera Improvements
Samsung and Sony released their 2014 flagship Android smartphones with a wide range of camera improvements namely Timeshift video, 4K recording, Fast Auto Focus and video stabiliser. According to Weibo, Apple may keep the 8 MP camera from iPhone 5S to the iPhone 6 except upgraded with f/2.0 aperture.
Lower aperture allows the iPhone 6 to shoot images and videos better under low-light scenes and overall quality of the camera lens. In addition, Apple may also upgrade the sensor size to improve general quality as what Samsung and Sony did on their current flagship models.
Two iPhone 6 Variants
Reports revealed that iPhone 6 will come into two variants - from 4.3 to 5 inches and the other beyond 5 inches. Leaked images of alleged iPhone 6 showed zero bezels and slimmer than iPhone 5S but the device looks very similar to the body size of the current iPhone.
Larger screen iPhone 6 could be pointing out a variation to compete against Samsung Galaxy Note series and other larger Android devices under the "phablet" classification. However, the "iPhablet" device remain unknown if to feature any stylus-like accessories, similar apps used for multimedia and designing.
Apple is engaging on hiring more supply chain managers to speed up development of iPhone 6 and next-generation iPad Air. Reports revealed engineers coming from Taiwan for exclusive manufacturing of iPhone 6.