Apple has an exclusive license for Liquidmetal alloy that promises waterproof and stronger smartphones. Herman Haidin's "iPhone Essence" design concept includes a Liquidmetal layer for the device's base cooling system.
The Ukrainian designer's design concept is presented on his page on the website Behance.net. Another design change is replacing the standard 3.5mm headphone jack with a Lightning based audio input and adding another speaker in the place where the headphone jack currently resides. According to MacRumors, citing a Barclays analyst report, Apple would also introduce noise cancellation technology using technology from Cirrus Logic.
When it comes to the hardware improvements, the Pocket Lint blog reported that iPhone 7 might feature Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon processors that pack a superfast new modem. The new model is dubbed the Snapdragon X16 LTE modem and it is capable of download speeds up to 1Gbps. Users who will have the new modem in their smartphone will be able to access the cloud, make crisper video calls and play 360 videos, if they are on a network capable of delivering these speeds up to 1Gbps. According to the marketers, this would be called 5G.
Electronic Times reports that for the A10 processor Apple is partnering exclusively with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., leaving Samsung outside of the partnership. Some analysts consider that as a risky move since Apple will remain with only one supplier for one of the key components of its devices. Market analysts are also warning about some sales risks for the next generation iPhone 7 since Samsung's Galaxy S7 will come on the market well in advance of Apple's device.
In recent months, Apple's stick has slumped. However, not everyone's outlook is bleak for the iPhone 7. For example, a survey from Bank of America Merrill Lynch has found that it will be high demand for the iPhone 7, even so much demand that it could negatively affect iPhone 6s sales.
