Clear the way for 120 Hz Display
September they say, on the Pro, Same as LiDAR so
You’ll see
All the Wi-Fi 6E, just no Touch ID
So not psyched, plus the lack of a terabyte
And 13 not 12 s is stressed
But let’s break down new leaks bound round this thing
Before the next iPhone rings
(With apologies to Chuck D!)
iPhone 13 vs. iPhone 12s
Economic Daily News, which has a whopping 43% accuracy rating according to AppleTracks — yup, somehow less accurate than a coin toss — says:
“the supply chain has reported that this year's new phone will be named iPhone 13”
Now, I’ll get to the surprising, and annoying news in a bootlooped minute, but as anyone who follows this channel knows, Apple can and will name any iPhone anything they damn well please. They typically have a preferred name, but they can make up their minds basically until they need to start printing boxes and billboards. So, iPhone 13, iPhone 12s, iPhone the Dark Knight Returns and, yes, iPhone Mother of Dragons, it all really depends on whether Apple wants to set expectations and drive sales higher with a new number, like they did when they used iPhone 8 instead of iPhone 7s, or tamp them down with a more internal, less external update, like iPhone XS before iPhone 11. I’ve got a whole entire video up on how this all works, so check it out.
120 Hz
Look, me to you, I really need Apple to ship a 120Hz display just so we can finally kill all the will-they-won’t-they about 120Hz displays, like we’ve done for 5G.
But, not today satan, so yes, 120 Hz, even higher refresh rate displays are easy. Other phones have had them going on a couple years. Good high refresh rate displays, ones that don’t screw up power management or force summary deresolution or just chew through battery life is hard. Especially at iPhone scale, which is 10s of millions of units.
But there’ve been several reports now that Samsung, maybe even LG, have nailed OLED processes at just exactly that scale, and with LTPO and IGZO, which will enable ProMotion. That’s Apple’s marketing name for adaptive refresh, what lets the Apple Watch go from 1-60Hz for the always-on display and the iPad Pro from 24-120Hz for both power saving and to show movies at 24fps the way nature and Hollywood intended.
Where the rumors currently break down is on whether or not ProMotion will be coming to all the iPhone 13 models this fall, or just the Pro models.
Just the Pro models make the kind of sense that does for me. First, Apple’s kept ProMotion exclusive to the iPad Pro for over 4 years now. Because, second, the Pro models are better able to absorb the higher cost of the displays.
And the non-Pro models already saw their prices hiked last year just for going OLED and 5G.
Same for LiDAR. Same same.
Touch ID
Mark Gurman and Debbi Wu, in addition to saying the iPhone is back on its traditional September launch schedule, with a sharply increased production run, and a slightly decreased notch.
But, that while Apple has tested an in-display fingerprint scanner for this year’s devices, that feature will likely not appear on this generation
Which is Bloomberg hedgingese for not gonna happen. Maybe not even in the power button like the iPad Air already shipped.
Now, the first law of Vulcan metaphysics might be nothing unreal exists, but only slightly less first is the second law — nothing unannounced doesn’t exist.
Basically, because it would not only be more competitive with other phones, it will be far, far more practice for people with iPhones. I mean, having a second form of biometrics just makes all the sense in the post-pandemic, mask-sensible world, and gets us one step closer to the passive, persistent authentication system of my dreams. So, forgive me if I won’t not believe it until I don’t see it.
Wi-Fi 6E
1 Terabyte of storage sounds like a no, but slightly better than randomly accurate rumor shop DigiTimes says Apple Wi-Fi 6 is good to G.O. Something Barkleys also rumored back in January.
Wi-Fi 6E is a better version of Wi-Fi 6. A… dare I say… go version of Wi-Fi 6 that stretches into the similarly fast but way, way less congested 6Ghz frequency. Which means it should end up letting you use more of that available speed. If you have a Wi-Fi 6E compatible router, which should also be better than many of the early Wi-Fi 6 non-E routers… we can hope.
Especially since Apple does tends to be hella aggressive when it comes to adopting new Wi-Fi versions in the iPhone line, unlike cellular technologies where they tends to wait a bit for power draw to go down and next-generation networks to build up.