I don't agree on most of these reasons. Light transmission is really good on sapphire, so not a great difference with glass.
I believe the number 1 reason is:
1- They want to test it first.
Apple always do tests, but most of the people do not realize it. For example, do people realize that before making the Ipad big screen they tested it in the magic touchpad?.
Between the Iphone and the Ipad there is a huge size gap that means lots of problems when you do things in the millions, so they added a glass screen to millions of laptops touchpads.
They got lots of useful information from service repairs, and they did hide their testing in front of their competitors eyes without them realizing.
Competitors used plastic in their touchpads. When they could connect the dots(it they did at all), it was too late, Apple was years ahead.
If they start selling their watches in the millions, and I think they will, mass producing sapphire will make cost plumb.
There will be testing early at a scale that nobody had done before. I worked for a company that manufactured sapphire glass for the military. We made very expensive SINGLE units for equipment like cameras, and it was only for the exterior side.
If a market is created, innovation will come. What we did was very expensive and we did not care about price.
We did work that was so "last century", like creating huge blocks like stones, then cutting and polishing it.
I am certain that a better method, more energy efficient like growing crystals in molds, is possible, but it needs to have demand in order to justify the investment.
I am going with the line in the article about the fragility of the sapphire, it simply does not take impacts as well as glass especially in the sizes being used. Kind of like how yields are with semiconductors, getting this large requires much better processes than they have now.
I am simply glad we got past the use of glass on the backs of phones like the iPhone 4 generation had. All that did for me is have me learn how to swap the piece myself.
I think glass breakage is pretty low in the issues people have with these phones, weight and battery life are bigger issues.
Apple has been testing sapphire. It has been in the cover for the camera since the iPhone 5 over two years ago. What is interesting is that they have gone back to glass for the lens cover in the new phones. My wife had a problem with her iPhone 5 shortly after purchase. After she dropped it on the floor (not especially hard) photos had these small, magenta flecks that no amount of cleaning could get rid of. Apple swapped it out no problem, but when I first heard that they moved back to glass for the new camera in the 6 series, I wondered if they decided that sapphire just wasn't going to work for this use case.
I suspect, they've learned quite a bit from the sapphire cover on the camera, hence their comfort in deploying it to the higher end watch models.
Bulk transmission through the material should be similar. But sapphire has a higher refractive index than gorilla glass (1.77 vs 1.5 or thereabouts) and thus reflects more at each surface. Reducing reflectance with a coating works, but as the article points out, costs money and is less durable.
Agreed. You can see this every single time. Like the fingerprint scanner, didn't go out in 4 or 5 or 6. It happened in one of their 'between' phones, in 5S/5C. They test it, if it works, okay great, now we can build our payment's product on top of it.
That's the way you can be successful. The massive risk would be to create a fingerprint thing and try to bootstrap a payments platform on day 1 when 0 users have their fingerprint scanned.
Testing is a big part of apple, and I think this screen is part of that philosophy.
A quick check of Thorlabs (supplier of optics) shows that their Sapphire windows have < 90% transmission, while their Fused Sillica or BK7 windows have 90% - 95% transmission. Granted, those may be different from the current Apple glass (anyone know the exact variety) but < 90% transmission isn't all that hot.
I would be absurdly happy to find a phone like a Note 3/4 that's 2x as thick and has 2-3x as much battery. Not that the Note has poor battery life (it easily last a full 12-16 hours of pretty heavy usage).
I really don't care much about thinness in phones, but I do care about having a forever battery and I'd happily trade 3mm of pocket space for it.
If you really don't care about size there are plenty of options, especially for phones like the Note3 with replaceable backs[1].Even for the iPhone you can buy a wrap around case that embeds a battery.
Meanwhile I get 3-4 days on my Galaxy S5 (which can be further increased with their "ultra" power saving mode). Battery life has come a LONG way (again) in recent times. I'm almost back to feature phone levels and I can honestly say it's a bit of a relief. I went on a weekend trip to London and forgot my charger... no problem whatsoever. Just a couple of years ago I'd have been forced to trudge down to a crummy store and buy a charger right there and then.
Doesn't the ultra mode pretty much leave the phone unusable? Everything except Phone calls and SMS is off. Same can be achieved with any Android smartphone or switching off Mobile Data/WiFi/GPS/Bluetooh on the iPhone, I used to do this when hiking etc with my iPhone and it lasted me days as-well.
This isn't a dig at you personally, but the idea of somebody saying "This phone is unusuable! You can't do anything except make calls and text with it!" is just so hilarious to me.
It is, until you start replacing the word "phone" with "pocket computer".
Our smartphones are now computers with phone call making abilities, not phones with some computing abilities.
Whenever someone says that I'm inclined to say that all statistics show that Android users use their phone less than iPhone users. Could it be that you use it less than an iPhone user? Be honest now... could you drain the battery in less than a day if you used it thoroughly?
"Android users" includes people getting free android phones because there is practically no alternative. They use their phone as a phone, nothing more. I'll wager that Galaxy S5 users are going to be far more similar to iPhone users in their usage patterns than the average android user.
My Note 3 has wifi and data running all the time, and bluetooth/GPS running whenever I'm in the car (~an hour a day, usually?), and I haven't ever gotten more than a day on a charge. Are you using that much less than I am, or is my dumb, giant screen finally catching up with me?
I have had the same experience with my note 3. Everyone raves about the battery life, but there's no way I could make it through a day with out a full charge.
When I held a S5 it felt a bit too thick to be comfortable for my hand size. I don't think I've got particularly small hands, but it was definitely a bit too much for longer than quicker interaction use.
its not perfect, you cannot simulate wrapping your hands around the device but you can actually hold an existing device up and get a good idea of what it will be like
Sure, and on screen the S5 might not look too big, but in my hands it felt ungainly and awkward for anything longer than a few minutes. The point I was making was that the 6+ might be a better tradeoff with less battery life but a slimmer profile to 'fit' better in hand.
On the other hand, the first thing I did when I got my note 3 is buy a case so it wasn't so blasted thin. I think the fact that there is barely any side edge on these phones makes them difficult to hold onto.
That depends on normal usage. Also, if this is correct, then putting bigger battery would still gain more days, only it would be 3 or 4 days, which would be great.
I can't imagine Apple didn't think of that. And then make many foam, clay, and metal models based around that idea. I have a feeling that the bigger 4.7" display forced them to make the overall device thinner in order to maintain a good "feel" in your hand. A 4.7" iPhone as thick as the 5S probably feels like a brick after just a short period of use.
Can't you achieve the same effect by buying a case with a built-in battery? Admittedly you would have to remove the case in order to use the lightning port for syncing, but I suspect most people do that rarely, if at all, anyway.
I tether quite a lot (where I live usable free wifi is practically impossible to come by, where as LTE is everywhere). To prevent the phone battery going flat after an hour I tether over USB.
Also, battery life improvement was very much expected. The resolution barely increased (for the 6), the GPU is more powerful, and the battery is larger. If everything else besides the screen size stays the same or gets more efficient, and the battery increases linearly, too, then the increase in battery life should be positive.
I was always under the impression that this is why screen size initially was increased, to cover the space needed for a larger battery. The side benefit of course being, look we have big screens.
I haven't found a site that breaks out power usage by hardware features in a phone, I have seen sites on how apps can affect it. Would be interesting to know jut which parts of the phone are the worst consumers of power
Android has an embedded energy monitor. On my Nexus 7, the screen consistently uses >60% of the whole, even though the tablet spends most of its time in idle (with the screen turned off) and I keep wifi turned on the whole day, including during commute when it connects to dozens of APs.
EDIT: Oh, and I also listen to podcasts and music over bluetooth for hours/day. It hardly seems to make a dent.
The screen is the number one power draw, though I think it's true that generally the larger the device the larger the battery and that more than cancels out the larger screen. See iPad vs. iPhone battery life for example (but remember to include/exclude 3/4G for fair comparisons).
> Also, the battery was increased beyond the power needed for the extra display.
Yes but that makes sense. Horizontal phone size 5S->6+ increased by ~69%, screen size increased by say 65%. Overall phone volume increased by ~58%. If battery was 50% of the 5S volume and volume of electronics hasn't changed in 6+, the battery volume has increased by 116%. Some of these assumptions are likely off and the volumes slightly inaccurate but the point should stand.
I think the answer to this is that Apple bought half a billion dollars of saphire for the high-end Watch models, and never intended it to go towards the iPhone. That's why it didn't end up in the phones.
It might also be a partial explanation for not launching the watch yet, they're simply waiting for enough yield to manufacture launch inventory.
Smartphone glass always has been that flexible and strong, Corning have had various videos demonstrating that online for a while.
His follow up video was only a few days later, after people pointed this out to him, and fairly convincingly showed that this was just a newer generation of glass.
Actually this video was a pretty good proof that the screen is indeed made of glass. Too bad none of the tech news website who relayed that rumor bothered asking a materials engineer (or anyone who knows the first thing about sapphire). Or even used common sense for that matter (if it bends like glass and get scratched like glass, chances are it's not sapphire).
Up until seeing this HN thread I thought that leak was true and that iPhone6 had some mazing new screen glass tech. I was impressed by it. Still impressive I suppose, but now it definitely seems more like a "trick"
For what it's worth, I've had two iPhones now, both with gorilla glass, over the last 3 years. I've dropped both, accidentally leaned on them a couple times, and accidentally shoved them into the same pocket with keys. No scratches. Just lots of smudges and oiliness after the oleophobic coating wears off.
Really? My iPhone 5 is covered in tiny scratches, and I feel like I've made a real effort to keep it away from keys and change. No major structural damage, just lots of little scratches.
In my experience keys and change don’t matter. The metal is too soft to scratch phone screens. (Besides being soft, keys and change also tends to not have much in the way of really sharp edges. Maybe new keys do, but don’t they get quite smooth over time? The aluminium case is potentially a different story.)
What matters is sand. (For what it’s worth my iPhone has three, four scratches after a year. I’m pretty certain they are all from when I slid my phone around on some surface with a grain of sand between surface and phone – which I usually try to avoid, but oh well. That’s it.)
To be honest, though, for me personally scratches don’t matter. In normal usage they are invisible and while they do annoy me I would rather the phone be more resistant to falling down.
Pocket sand, putting your phone face down on any surface where sand might have been is enough for scratches.
It's all about hardness [1], ordinary iron / metal is quite soft (4 - 5) scale on mohs scale, while gorilla glass is at least a 7. It has nothing to do with how "sharp" an object is, paper will never scratch steel and regular keys will never scratch glass. Someone on XDA [2] made quite a passionate case about this.
"By the way, some reports stated that up until a few weeks before the iPhone announcement, Apple was going to use sapphire but dropped it because of yield issues. This is not true."
Only the cost reason makes sense to me. Surely the other reasons (such as transmitivity of Saphire) would have been investigated before putting down .5 billion dollars on the counter. The cost, on the other hand, can be passed down to the consumer, when in leading position.
"Manufacturers know that consumers are starting to care a lot more about the impact that the products they buy are having on the environment. Sapphire requires 100 times more energy to produce than glass. The energy requirements alone make sapphire problematic as a viable material to use on a smartphone. None of the folks I talked to had any idea how they could solve this problem given the nature of the material itself."
FYI, as reported on Last Week Tonight, Time had merged its editorial and advertising groups, and is going forward as a content marketing company, not a news reporting company.
As much as I would love for Apple to find the "perfect" glass that would require blunt force impact from a sledgehammer before it would crack, I wonder if their efforts would be better spent figuring out a way to make the glass more easily and more affordably replaced. An implementation that would almost render the screen disposable (but still as durable or very close to as durable as it is today).
Unfortunately with the way the phones are constructed today, the glass has become an entire assembly.
When you etch the touchscreen on the back of the glass and then bond the whole thing to the LCD with optically clear adhesive, you've created one single piece that's nearly half of the phone's guts.
If people are okay with the LCD moving backwards and leaving an airgap like the first phones, then perhaps it's possible.
My friend replaces iPhone screens and back glass all the time. I think he charges people 20-30$ cad to cover the cost of the parts. Takes him less than 10 minutes.
Most screens come with the kit of tools you need for the tiny screws and to pop off the ribbon cable connectors.
I think that is pretty quick easy and cheap. I feel bad for people who go to Genius Bar to have this done for $150.
If he's only charging $20-30, he's only replacing the glass. The Genius Bar is probably replacing the screen and glass since that's an easier procedure for them than just the glass.
I think the screen is one unit and you can't just replace the glass on the screen. It is a very quick procedure for my friend too. A couple of screws and a ribbon connector and away you go.
The parts are cheap on eBay. So far the $3 battery has been a dud though.
My own experience with the iphone 5 has been pretty good as far as durability is concerned. I live dangerously i guess... in that i never really saw the point in buying a super thin phone then throwing a thick case on it, so I have no case.
I've dropped my phone numerous times, but I have dropped it twice onto concrete, once with considerable force. So far, no cracks! Just one data point, but also demonstrating that what we have now isn't terrible.
But there are plenty of other materials that do not form naturally that we make use of in devices.
It seems misleading to call sapphire "THE" hardest next to diamond when there is another harder material that we can produce using a similar processes.
It isnt misleading since because it doesn't occur, it isn't something you need to worry about scratching your phone. If people start wearing rings made of it or if artificial beaches start using it as sand, your point will rise above pedantism :P
Apple has always, always had price delineation across the range. They've also probably sat down and looked at expected use-cases for their Watch product range, the Sport doesn't receive a Sapphire display which could be price motivated as well but as the above article says the Sapphire is likely to be more effected by drops or impacts. If you're engaged in a sport there's a higher chance of catching the screen than if you're just wandering around, which makes sense to be have a screen that's more impact resistant.
That still doesn't justify 'Apple's days of pandering to peasants are over' though. There's going to be a low end, a mid-range and an ultra-high end. I personally think the Watch & Support will be reasonably close in price, and the Edition will be incredibly expensive due to materials cost.
The low-end watch won't have a sapphire screen. To an extent, the reason the expensive ones will may simply be that having sapphire screens is a thing you do in the >$1000 watch industry; it's expected.
Very interesting about the density and energy impacts on sapphire vs glass. In a watch context (where the chance of dropping is less than the chance of scratching the face) the use of sapphire presents some additional challenges for battery life. If the Apple Watch intends to use sapphire, this might play into some of the rumours that release has been delayed because of battery life concerns.
Smartphone category is barely competitive. It is a basic economic law of luxury products: as long as there are people willing to pay - the price will increase.
25% increase in price can cause 20% decrease in sales and still result in the same net income.
Amusing that the author leads with a reference to his own incorrect prediction and then follows up with the sage advice that "all of us need to be more careful before jumping to conclusions in areas like this."
Will be interesting if the 6s (or whatever) comes out next year goes for the sapphire screen and introduces the apple watch style 'force touch' capability
As an off-topic comment, when did time.com switch to such an obnoxious layout? Taking two inches off the side and an inch off the top is absolutely ridiculous.
There is a bit of a negative reinforcement recursion going on in the industry, and this is a great example of it.
Make lots of pieces claiming sources and reasons for why Apple is going to do something big and new and innovative. Endless pageviews, speculation, etc.
Apple releases a very nice, but completely traditional and incremental upgrade.
Make lots of pieces explaining why Apple not doing those things you previously said they would do is actually best, because of contrived justifications and reasons. Tonnes of pageviews and links.
Rinse repeat. This has happened with every Apple release this decade.
With all the downsides to sapphire (cost, thickness, light transmission), you start wondering if the previous iPhones were using this material just as a marketing point and not because there was an actual benefit to the users.
They’ve been using it on the camera lenses and the surface of the fingerprint sensor, not on the display.
In both of those applications, scratch resistance is extremely important. Also, those are both small, which makes them cheaper and easier to engineer, as well as less likely to shatter.
what a tale for such a irrelevant detail. iPhone users are such a category of people of their own, talking about iPhone rumors and truths is like new ways to make conversations.
do you know you can have a smartphone that has the same functionalities, for one tenth of the price ? how is that not news ?
I believe the number 1 reason is:
1- They want to test it first.
Apple always do tests, but most of the people do not realize it. For example, do people realize that before making the Ipad big screen they tested it in the magic touchpad?.
Between the Iphone and the Ipad there is a huge size gap that means lots of problems when you do things in the millions, so they added a glass screen to millions of laptops touchpads.
They got lots of useful information from service repairs, and they did hide their testing in front of their competitors eyes without them realizing.
Competitors used plastic in their touchpads. When they could connect the dots(it they did at all), it was too late, Apple was years ahead.
If they start selling their watches in the millions, and I think they will, mass producing sapphire will make cost plumb.
There will be testing early at a scale that nobody had done before. I worked for a company that manufactured sapphire glass for the military. We made very expensive SINGLE units for equipment like cameras, and it was only for the exterior side.
If a market is created, innovation will come. What we did was very expensive and we did not care about price.
We did work that was so "last century", like creating huge blocks like stones, then cutting and polishing it.
I am certain that a better method, more energy efficient like growing crystals in molds, is possible, but it needs to have demand in order to justify the investment.