After analyzing the latest chatter in Apple’s supply chain following a trip to Asia this week, Barclays Research analysts predicted the Cupertino firm will offer a next-generation ‘iPhone 8’ in 2017 in two sizes, one with a screen measuring five inches and the other featuring a 5.8-inch display.
Because the handsets will utilize curved screens, they’re expected to have a bezel-less design allowing them to increase display size while retaining the same overall size as the current 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhones.
Barclays’ research says only the 5.8-inch iPhone 8 will use OLEDs while the five-incher would presumably use the same LCD screens as prior iPhones. The analysts think the larger iPhone 8 screens will “extend vertically as well as horizontally”, with Apple moving to an in-screen Home button solution for the forthcoming handsets.
OLED panels for the 5.8-inch device are said to be initially supplied by Samsung Display and LG Display, with Foxconn-owned Sharp predicted to join the supply chain for OLED iPhones by 2018 (or possibly earlier).
Barclays’Â Blayne Curtis, Christopher Hemmelgarn, Thomas O’Malley and Jerry Zhang:
iPhone 8 design didn’t sound 100 percent locked down, but we believe the move is to a bezel-less design with screen sizes getting larger and curved edges in the original envelope. The iPhone 8 moves to five inches (from 4.7 inches) and the iPhone 8 Plus moves to 5.8 inches from 5.5 inches.
The Cupertino firm could obtain additional OLEDs from Japan Display, which received a bailout from the government-backed fund Innovation Network Corp. of Japan.
According to Sharp’s CEO, the next iPhone will feature the all-glass design that KGI Securities Ming-Chi Kuo has been saying all along in his reports to clients.
Source: MacRumors