Recently surfaced rumors have suggested that the iPhone 7 will be thinner and lighter than the iPhone 6s, and a new report from Korean site ETNews shares some technical details on the methods Apple may use to save space internally and make the device a bit thinner.
However, at present, the iPhone 6S is thin enough and there is little chance that users are looking for the device to be thinner, as far a priority improvements are considered. Things like improved battery life, or more storage, or even better front camera would however definitely feature in the list.
Putting aside all the grievances that we have from Apple, it is quite amazing to see how the company is having success in making next generation devices thinner while tweaking the performance and the camera and at the same time maintaining almost same battery performance.
Right: Samsung Galaxy S7
Image credit: Android Pit
The report relays that Apple with the iPhone 7 will take advantage of a new Fan Out Packaging technology for the device’s antenna switching module (ASM).
“Fan Out technology is a technology that increases the number of I/O (Input/Output) terminals within a package by pulling out the wiring of I/O terminals to outside from a semiconductor chip (Die), which is a previous step before packaging. As the area of a chip had become narrower as manufacturing processes had become finer, it was difficult to increase the number of I/O terminals. Because industries do not want to increase the size of a chip just for I/O terminals, they have been paying attention to Fan Out Packaging technology recently. It is most cost effective from production cost perspective if the number of I/O terminals increases within a package while still decreasing the size of a chip,” the description for the technology says.
Moreover, the report also adds the fact that Apple is the first to use this technology and the rest front-running smartphone manufacturers are expected to follow suit inevitably as well.