iOS is a far cry from being an ugly mobile operating system, but there’s certainly a bit of wiggle room for Apple to improve on it. Unfortunately, first party redesigns from Apple can be few and far in between.
Amid those circumstances, it’s not uncommon for third parties to develop concepts for jailbreak tweaks or themes that make an interface more aesthetically pleasing than it comes out of the box.
The Phone app that comes pre-installed on every iPhone from the factory sports a barebones and simplistic design that just works. Given its tried and true reputation, the Phone app hasn’t seen many changes over the years, and some might even argue that it’s getting a bit stale.
If you’re jailbroken, then the good news is that you don’t have to settle for a boring Phone app anymore. A newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Bongwater by iOS developer qwertyuiop1379 breathes new life into the Phone app by bringing a highly requested Phone app redesign concept to life.
Toronto-Ontario based designer Iskander Utebayev took it upon himself to imagine what a clamshell-folding iPhone might function. His vision for a foldable iPhone may have taken certain cues from recent clamshell devices such as Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip and Motorola's resurrected Razr, but it's on a whole new level of intuitiveness.
Anytime you jailbreak an iOS device, one of the first things you’re ever advised to do is change your handset’s root password, which is commonly used to access elevated privileges in mobile terminal when entering complex commands. The password is always “alpine” out of the box, but users can change this to almost anything they want to increase their handset's security from a commonly-known password.
As imperative as changing the root password may be, many jailbreakers either forget to do so or shrug off its importance. For that reason, we’re particularly fond of a sleek concept that was shared to /r/jailbreak over the weekend that rethinks the way jailbreakers will interact with their root password after jailbreaking their handset for the first time.
Apple is expected to release the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR successors in the fall and much of the debate has thus far focused on that massive rectangular-shaped camera bump that we saw on CAD renderings. One designer has put together some cool mockups imagining the next iPhone with a minimal camera bump and a notch-less appearance thanks to a hole-punch display like we saw on the Galaxy S10 range.
New renders surfaced on the web today, purporting to show the design of Apple's next handset. In a joint venture, Indian website CompareRaja and notorious smartphone leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer (OnLeaks) released the images, which they believe to represent a legitimate iPhone prototype.
iPhone and iPad are held back in the productivity department in part due to Apple's decision not to adopt a more comprehensive menu system beyond iOS's weird popovers.
Apple is busy selling new iPhones and is about to unveil refreshed iPads, but that doesn't mean that the next major version of iPhone and iPad mobile operating system, iOS 13, is not being worked on as we speak. In fact, Bloomberg broke in the summer that iOS 13 would bring an overhauled Home screen, tabs in all apps, multitasking enhancements and other perks.
Taking Steven Troughton-Smith's findings regarding iPhone 8's resizable, auto-hideable virtual Home button and a split status bar on either side of a notch at the top of an OLED display, user interface designer Maksim Petriv took it upon himself to imagine how popular apps like Apple's Music, Instagram and Twitter might embrace the notch and look like running on iPhone 8.
With Apple's high-end iPhone 8 rumored to feature a notch in the middle of the iOS status bar at the top of its seamless screen, Max Rudberg has come up with some thought-provoking mockups that highlight how the Cupertino firm could own that pesky break in the OLED display.
His mockups are also full of smart ideas regarding potential changes to the iOS user interface on iPhone 8 that would afford a much more convenient bottom-oriented navigation.
Apple is probably never going to build anything remotely like it, but the very idea of a transparent iPhone does make for exciting conceptual artwork, as evidenced by a batch of high-quality renderings commissioned by German magazine Curved.de, published today.
Conceptual renderings and mockups of iPhone 8 have been increasingly feeding the rumor-mill in the absence of leaked components, to the point where they've become a major part of the excitement surrounding unreleased Apple products.
Taking rumors at face value, talented 3D artists and CAD addicts conceptualize what Apple's next handset might look like. More often than not their work is off the mark, but some of the concepts we've seen thus far are plausible and give us nice food for thought.
We asked our resident video editor Andrew O'Hara to create a short video summarizing some of the conceptual iPhone 8 renderings we've featured thus far here on iDownloadBlog.
Without further ado, watch our video roundup of iPhone 8 concepts and mockups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKqCKdEGEPk
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The video features work by these artists and publications:
Steel Drake Techno Configurations Venlamin Geskin Imran Taylor Handy Abo Vergleich Benjamin Geskin ConceptsiPhone AlHasan Husni Vianney le Masne Computer Bild iFanr Martin HajekPart 2 of iPhone 8 concept roundup will explore additional iPhone 8 concepts.
On a recent conference call with Wall Street analysts and investors, Apple CEO Tim Cook has attributed what he believes to be “a pause” in iPhone purchases to the rumor-mill and leaks that have been proliferating earlier than usual this year.
“We’re seeing what we believe to be a pause in purchases on iPhone, which we believe are due to the earlier and much more frequent reports about future iPhones,” he said.
How do you like the conceptual artworks and 3D models highlighted in Andrew's video? Which is your favorite one, and why? Which one will we see, if any, come this fall?
Let us know by posting a comment below.