This rumour has been running around since before the iPhone 4 was announced and it's not hard to see the appeal in such a design. The idea is that the vast majority of the phone's body is entirely made of glass, allowing you to see right through to the other side with the on screen items projected into it with some form of electronic witchcraft, while all the major components and gubbins such as the battery, speakers, camera, SIM card and motherboard are buried in the opaque outer limits of the phone. From a design standpoint, it's certainly something very different and most mockups made by people make the phone look positively sexy, but there are so many problems with a solution like this it would be beyond comprehension for Apple to actually solve them. Firstly, even with tempered/Gorilla glass, the phone would be more fragile than your Grandma's antique china set and one drop would result in a huge mess of shattered glass shards just ready to be stepped on. Then you would have to factor in how much of a selling point the iPhone's screen actually is. Despite competition from Samsung, the screen on the iPhone 5S is a wonderful thing to behold, it's sharp, crisp and incredibly detailed. To have a fully functioning clear phone would involve forcing everything on screen to be largely translucent, ruining not only the functionality of your apps, but diminishing the overall impact of what the screen can do. Then there's the issue of having a reduced footprint for the battery, squeezing complicated electronics into areas little more than a couple of centimetres wide, manufacturing limitations and the aforementioned durability concerns. Moreover though, while clear screens have existed for a while, it would be a huge engineering nightmare to make a fully functional, entirely clear touchscreen that matches the iPhone for sensitivity and responsiveness. Lastly, who remembers the unmitigated failures that were the LG GD-900 (with it's transparent keypad) and the Sony Ericsson X5 (with it's clear monochrome screen)? No one? Thought so.
I am a man of many interests. I am a passionate gamer, running my own YouTube channel (The Gadget Addicts) showing off the best of modern gaming in the form of Let's Play videos.
I am an ardent musician, having been a guitarist for the past 13 years. I am also a massive geek, I adore science fiction and fantasy films and TV shows and am trying to work up the courage to start writing a novel. If I can ever think of a good story to tell...
I live with my wife in the North East of England and own a belligerent little black cat.
