When it comes to Apple, many people's first impression may be "innovation." Since the birth of this brand, Apple has repeatedly broken market awareness and launched a variety of innovative products with advanced ideas. As a trademark product of Apple, the iPhone series once broke the product concept of the traditional button mobile phone market with its advanced product design, setting off a wave of all-touch screen smartphones.
Today, unlike in the past, even the most "religious" fruit powder today can hardly deny the increasing mediocrity of new apple products. Aside from the multi-camera module, which has the ability to return to the first echelon, and the A15 processor, which consumes as much energy as ever, Apple has not been able to surprise people as in previous years. The bangs and fuselage design that have remained unchanged for four years have gradually fermented rumors that Apple has lost its ability to innovate among consumers, media and manufacturers.
The "squeezed toothpaste" of the iPhone 13 makes fruit fans look forward to the iPhone 14 product more. Recently, the supply chain has begun to frequently spread the news about the new iPhone, according to domestic media reports, Apple has been arranging foundries for iPhone 14 series trial production work, the current design and production of new machines for final adjustment work.
Although there are still more than half a year before the release of the next generation of iPhones, the product design has basically been finalized and trial production has begun. Combined with the source of all parties, Apple will abandon the bangs design this time, the iPhone 14 is likely to use the digging screen design, and the wishes of fruit fans can finally be realized on the iPhone 14. The question is, can this product become the key to Apple's recovery of reputation?
No bangs, more exclamation points
In fact, as early as last September, when the iPhone 13 was just released, There was a Korean media The Elec that it had received the exact news that the iPhone 14 Pro series would be equipped with a punched screen design, rather than a bang screen that had been used for many years.
Subsequently, Jon Prosser, an Apple whistleblower on Twitter, also confirmed the punched screen design of the iPhone 14, and he also claimed to have seen the prototype of the iPhone 14 Pro Max with the punched screen design removed from the bangs, and even exposed a series of renderings.
Judging from the early exposure map, many whistleblowers believe that Apple will use the centering and digging design commonly found on the market. As shown in the figure, although such a design looks more conventional, it can indeed improve the screen ratio while improving the appearance of the next generation of iPhone13, thereby bringing consumers a better visual experience.
As for Face ID? Apples naturally have preparations. Last July, Apple obtained a patent for touch ID/Face ID under the screen, and the patent report pointed out that Apple set the sensor behind the screen, above the imaging aperture or adjacent display areas at a lower pixel density, thereby increasing the distance between pixels, facilitating the reception of more light, so that Face ID works smoothly.
To put it bluntly, it is the basic principle of the off-screen camera.
However, this conjecture was quickly rejected. According to Guo Mingqi, an analyst at Tianfeng International, because of the poor screen display effect and under-screen imaging effect, the true full-screen iPhone with off-screen fingerprints, periscope telephoto cameras and no punching/bangs is likely to be launched until 2023. In other words, the iPhone 14 released this year is obviously not catching up.
Although face ID under the screen is hopeless, Apple's idea of abandoning "bangs" has not changed. In September last year, domestic digital blogger @i Bing Universe exposed a design drawing of the iPhone 14 for the first time, and in February this year, panel analyst Ross Young officially confirmed Apple's "punching + pill" design plan.
As shown in the figure, the mobile phone on this rendering has two digging parts, namely the long digging hole that inherits the Face ID element and the small round hole where the front camera is placed, the two digging holes are not connected together, it looks like an exclamation point, so netizens vividly call it the "exclamation point screen".
It has to be said that the intuitive change brought about by the "exclamation point screen" is the increase in the display area, and by removing the area that does not contain cameras and sensors in the original bangs, Apple has successfully avoided the waste of the screen display area. Although this design idea is somewhat simple and rude, and even causes controversy among netizens, it does have a fairly good degree of recognition.
However, from the current revelations, not all iPhone 14 users can enjoy the new design, and only the high-end Pro series can enjoy this "honor".
As for choosing the traditional "small bangs" or the trendy "exclamation screen", it depends on the preferences of the consumer himself.
Lead the way, or is it an emergency?
Apple has always liked to go its own way.
Whether it is the Jobs era or the post-Jobs era, Apple has always been the "one" that does not fit in the consumer electronics market, but the two eras are somewhat different in the direction of persistence. In Jobs's day, Apple was obsessed with innovative product design. From the original iPhone all the way to the iPhone 4S, Apple's product design and concept are a few streets ahead of its peers, and Jobs has reversed people's perception of smartphones and led a trend of the times.
In the post-Jobs era, Apple began to obsess over product designs that could "succeed." From the iPhone X to the iPhone 13 series, in the past four years, the Android mobile phone market has undergone many evolutions, from the liu hai screen, the water drop screen, the lifting screen, the digging screen to the real full screen, the screen ratio of the mobile phone continues to increase, and Apple has spent a full four years holding its own bangs.
The only thing that can be called progress is the slightly narrowed bangs of last year.
In fact, after entering the era of full screen, Apple has been criticized by the design of Liu Haiping. Not only that, from the three-camera module of the iPhone 11 Pro series, to the 5G network of the iPhone 12 series, and then to the high-brush screen of the iPhone 13 Pro series, the improvement in design and performance of the iPhone series in recent years is not large, and the main selling point is even more unremarkable.
In order to improve the attractiveness of the product, Apple had to adopt a sales strategy of "increasing the amount without increasing the price". For example, the iPhone 13 series upgrades the minimum configuration of the product to 128G capacity, and the product pricing is consistent with the pricing of the iPhone 12 series 64G capacity. Although the iPhone 13 series was uneventful in innovation, the success of this strategy led to the final sales far exceeding expectations.
The problem is that the sales strategy of "increasing the amount without increasing the price" does not always work. By 2022, Apple seems to have played all the cards that could have been played in the past, the 5G network has been fully popularized, the iPhone 13 Pro series has also used a high-brush screen, and the excellent energy consumption ratio of the A15 processor has made many fruit fans ready for "nail households", and Apple urgently needs a new selling point to stimulate users to replace the iPhone 14.
The question is, what is the most concerned iPhone selling point for fruit fans at present?
The answer is appearance, for many iPhone users, Liu Haiping can be said to be a rare grudge on the current iPhone design. As many users complained, "Apple has not changed the appearance for four years, and it feels like it has not been replaced every year, which is really difficult to top." ”
For many fruit fans, a major motivation for the replacement machine is to let others know that they have changed the new machine. Because of this, whenever the iPhone 14 or will use the digging design after the emergence of the news, iPhone 14 related hot search will begin to appear frequently, and each time can attract a lot of netizens' attention. Many netizens are even more blunt, as long as the iPhone dares to change the digging hole design and directly buy the explosion, even if the king of heaven Lao Tzu comes, he can't stop me from changing the iPhone 14.
Netizens all know the truth, how can Apple not understand it? The problem is that apple's current under-screen technology has not met expectations, and the true full-screen iPhone that many fruit fans dream of is just a dream; if you want to use the center-in-centered hole design, apple must give up the Face ID that has been the main push; in order to retain Face ID, Apple finally can only compromise and use the exclamation point punching design to solve the problem of lenses and sensors.
In other words, the product design of this year's iPhone 14 is more like Apple's emergency move than the elaborate design that led the trend. Fortunately, from the feedback given above on social media, most of the fruit fans are still relatively satisfied with the exclamation point punching design, and the fruit fans are more concerned about whether this screen can bring users a different aesthetic experience than the higher screen ratio.
For Apple, what is more important now is the maturity of the under-screen camera technology. From the perspective of existing products, there are still many problems with the off-screen camera, although OLED can transmit light, but the impact of light transmittance and diffraction is still very large, and the display effect of the off-screen area and the imaging ability of the off-screen camera will be greatly reduced, and does not meet Apple's use standards.
The iPhone can't stay the same forever, and users can't indulge it forever. Hopefully, the changes in the iPhone 14 series are just the beginning, and in the future we can also see Apple's pursuit of design in the iPhone 15 or the new product line. Otherwise, in the future when the Android ecosystem gradually rises and gradually integrates with the Windows ecosystem, how long Apple's ecological advantages can be retained is unknown.