How Apple Can Take the iPhone to the Next Level
Stronger glass, better cameras, longer battery life, and other improvements I still want to see in the iPhone
I’ve seen a lot of discussion lately about the iPhone — or just phones in general — being “good enough.” The argument is that most of our phones already do most of the things most of the people need most of the time. Apple, Samsung, Google, and everyone else should just chill out and stop updating them every year. iPhone 12? Who needs it. It’s exhausting. Enough already.
But are phones really good enough?
Maybe the iPhone (even the hotly rumored upcoming iPhone 12) and maybe all current and expected phones this year are just scratching the surface of their potential.
Design
We’re already seeing some cameras and sensors move behind the display and I expect that’ll continue until all we’re left with is a clean, clear screen, bezel-free for as far as the eye can see.
But what we really need are screens that won’t get scratched or break as easily as they do now. The iPhone is practically responsible for bringing Corning’s Gorilla Glass to mainstream phones, and that ion-exchange chemistry still requires a lot of tuning between strength and hardness, but they…
