Force Touch for upcoming iPhones has entered mass production

iPhone 6 inside view retina hd display

Both analysts and the rumor-mill agree that a screen which senses force you apply to it should be one of the marquee hardware features of Apple’s upcoming ‘iPhone 6s’ and ‘iPhone 6s Plus’ smartphones. Plus, it certainly doesn’t hurt that Apple thinks Force Touch iPhones will be a huge success.

Force Touch for the upcoming iPhones entered trial production earlier this month and now Apple supplier TPK has reportedly ramped up volume manufacturing of the force sensors, according to a report Friday by DigiTimes.

Supply chain reports told DigiTimes, a Taiwanese trade publication, that Apple is aiming to ship 36-40 million new handsets in the third quarter and 50 million in the fourth quarter of this year.

Total iPhone shipments in 2015 should reach an estimated 230 million units.

TPK, which was commissioned by Apple to build force sensors for the forthcoming iPhones, expects its revenue to jump a whopping fifty percent in the third quarter on the back of Force Touch business.

The company reported a 22.7 percent annual revenue decline in the June quarter as smartphone growth decelerated and selling prices for small to medium-size tablet touch panels fell.

Although 2015 is an “S-upgrade” year for the iPhone, all checks indicate that 2015 will mark the biggest iPhone upgrade to date.

The devices’ exterior should be largely unchanged from the current models, sans a lot stronger Series 7000 aluminum chassis, and they’re expected to stay at 4.7 and 5.5-inch display sizes.

On the inside, however, the devices should offer an Apple-designed ‘A9’ processor with faster CPU and graphics performance, 2GB of RAM for smooth multitasking, force-sensing technology as mentioned before, an updated Qualcomm baseband modem for up to twice as fast 4G LTE networking at 300Mbps, improved NFC, a faster and more reliable Touch ID and “the biggest camera jump ever,” if what Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is hearing is anything to go by (think 5MP camera out the front and 12MP shooter with 4K video capture out the back).

Oh, and the entry-level 16GB model should finally go away.

Source: DigiTimes