According to the foreign media, Apple's next iPhone would adopt stainless steel die cast phone case instead of aluminum. So the rumor of glass sandwich design might be true, that is, metal frame in the middle of two-sided glasses.
Taiwan Media Digi Times reported that Apple ordered a batch of
die casting stainless steel IPhone cases from its manufacturing partner Jabil instead of Apple's most important supplier Foxconn.
Apple's previous iPhone that was using stainless steel material is iPhone 4s. But Apple replaced the metal with aluminum since iPhone 5. Aluminum is light and more durable, so it is widely used in all Apple's products. Since the bending incident of iPhone 6 in 2014, Apple adopted aluminum 7000 series, which first appeared in Apple Watch.
Rumor says that Apple will reuse steel material for iPhone 8, but the manufacturing technology is quit different from iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s. Especially Apple is going to adopt the technology of metal die casting instead of steel rolling.
Casting is a machining method, which put the metal between mold tool and mold for extrusion forming. Compared to the cutting machining technology like CNC machining, forging method sometimes can provide greater flexibility for designing.
In view of the zear for high precision machining of apple's products and extremely pay attention to the small details such as the internal thread and anchor point, it is possible to make use of the CNC machining technology during the manufacturing.
The latest news is the same as the former report. The former news said that the next iPhone will adopt a design that uses all glasses. As early as in April last year, the famous analysist whose name is Guo Ming predicted Apple would launch an iPhone with glass housing. After that there are more news coming up about iPhone 8, which contains OLED screen, the function of wireless charging, the main keyboard that was hidden under the screen and so on.
Just like before, we predict that Apple would design the new iPhone to be lighter and thinner, and it is a must to use material which has lighter weight.