The following iPhone will be made of Apple's "stunning ceramic," a light, super-smooth, scratch-resistant compound that's already being utilized on the new Apple Watch Edition. That's the speculation, anyway, but one that's strongly argued by self-styled "alchemist and metaphysician" Brian Roemmele on Quora.
Roemmele points to three Apple filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to back up his prediction. Collectively, they present that Apple has developed techniques to make ceramic components that contain electronics.
A Patent theory
The latest filing, published Sept. 8, is the most intriguing. It's a patent application that describes how Apple could "co-mold" a housing for an electronic device from a polymer which could be a plastic or rubber and ceramic. The ceramic part is the external housing, while the polymer, which is easier to mold into intricate shapes, comes into contact with the electronics. Co-molding the materials means the components can be made more precisely and quickly than if they were fabricated independently and then glued together the filing states.
Ceramics a perfect fit for smartphone housing
It bodes well for a smartphone to have a ceramic housing. The filing goes through ceramic's benefits, reading like a drier version of the ad copy depicting the ceramic Apple Watch Edition. It notes that ceramics are "highly scratch resistant," capable of achieving "high degree of surface polish," and don't weigh a lot. "Ceramic materials have various qualities that make them especially valuable for use in the electronic device housing," the document reads.
Hold your horses!
Before we get too excited about this, let's consider that Roemmele's theory is based on patent application filings, which are routinely held up by tremendous tech companies like Apple. The majority of these patents never see the light of day in a commercial device, so we should take them with a grain of salt. But it's not hard to see why Apple would be interested in a material that could make the next iPhone lighter, shinier, smoother, and more brilliantly colored the iPhone 8 in "stunning ceramic."
