Apple employees in Israel seemingly confirm 2017 iPhone will be called iPhone 8

iPhone edge to edge ConceptsiPhone 001

Apple is quietly developing the next iPhone hardware in Herzliya, Israel, and a local employee who solders components for Apple has allegedly confirmed to Business Insider that the tenth anniversary Apple handset will be marketed as ‘iPhone 8’, not ‘iPhone 7s’. The source added that the forthcoming phone will be “different” to the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 7, have a better camera and sport a radical redesign.

“The worker used the term ‘iPhone 8’ unprompted in our conversation,” reads the article. The source added that employees in Israel work on all of Apple’s new products.

Here’s an interesting excerpt from the report:

The employee was informed at the start of the conversation that they were talking to a journalist. When asked what Apple uses the Herzliya facility for, the source (who only spoke in broken English), said: “New products.” They added that Apple doesn’t actually assemble products in Israel.

A second Apple employee that Business Insider spoke to in Herzliya said they “couldn’t talk” about what Apple does in Herzliya, while an employee from networking giant Cisco, which also has an office in the area, said: “I have three friends that work there. They work on the hardware side. Verifications. Something like that.”

Apple employs about 800 people at the Herzliya office, which is situated approximately 15 kilometers north of Tel Aviv city centre. Another Apple office in Haifa is home to approximately 200 employees.

The Herzliya facility was set up nearly five years ago after Apple acquired Israeli flash memory designer Anobit and 3D sensor developer PrimeSense.

Apple also bought Israeli imaging firm LinX whose technology is suspected to power the iSight Duo camera on the iPhone 7 Plus.

Prior rumors have hinted at the iPhone 8 having an edge-to-edge display based on power-sipping OLED display technology that would remove the top and bottom bezels, letting Apple engineers create a 5.5-inch handset that’s smaller in your hand than the current Plus models.

The Home button along with the Touch ID sensor and the front-facing camera are said to be put behind the screen. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the device will drop the aluminum casing in favor of an all-glass enclosure similar to that used in the iPhone 4/4s series.

Source: Business Insider