iPhone 17 rumored to return to curved sides with new material blending
Share:
Renders of possible iPhone 17 designs based on previous leaks. A new rumor claims that the iPhone 17 range will feature a redesigned chassis that does away with straight edges. Previous rumors have claimed that Apple is returning to aluminum for the iPhone 17 range, although those claims were disputed. Now a further leaker has come forward to claim that there will be a significant redesign that sees Apple going back to smoothly curved edges.
According to Fixed-Focus Digital on Chinese social media site Weibo, Apple has developed a new manufacturing process concerning how different materials can be blended together to avoid straight edges. "The splicing materials of the iPhone series have been shared," writes the leaker on Weibo, in translation. "The key is that the Deco connection area of the fuselage and the rear shell is a slope rather than a step.".
That phase, "Deco connection" is unclear but from the context appears to refer to the appearance of the edge. The claim is that the front and back glass of the iPhone will be blended with a single smooth transition, instead of having a separate frame around the chassis.
While if the report is correct, the manufacturing process is new, Apple has very often used curved sides for the iPhone. The original iPhone was curved, for instance, and so were all of them up to the iPhone 4 in 2010. Curved edges then returned for the iPhone 6. They remained until the iPhone 12 range.
