I avoided writing about the structural stuff in the article, only because ceramics - beyond the basic, off the shelf stuff, are WAY above my paygrade. Some people argue that ceramics are OK for a phone (that Mi5? I think, has a ceramic shell back, and seems to be holding up OK in the field).
Ceramics are interesting in that they could be the perfect material for so many things, if only a few very short limitations could be overcome - chief among them being brittleness and ease of manufacturing. As such, there are a lot of big brains working in proprietary labs, trying to gain an edge... and getting close in a lot of cases.
So Apple could have solved that and is waiting to get closer to launch to disclose through patents. Who knows?
What we DO know is that no current ceramic process can scale to iPhone volumes, and if Apple did solve that... we would have seen at least a little bit of that tech getting tested in the Edition. Since we didn't, I can't see it working out for a phone.
If I was going to re-write it, I would be a bit clearer on that and also add the possibility of a ceramic Edition. I don't know if Apple is that in love with this as a material though.
Ceramics are interesting in that they could be the perfect material for so many things, if only a few very short limitations could be overcome - chief among them being brittleness and ease of manufacturing. As such, there are a lot of big brains working in proprietary labs, trying to gain an edge... and getting close in a lot of cases.
So Apple could have solved that and is waiting to get closer to launch to disclose through patents. Who knows?
What we DO know is that no current ceramic process can scale to iPhone volumes, and if Apple did solve that... we would have seen at least a little bit of that tech getting tested in the Edition. Since we didn't, I can't see it working out for a phone.
If I was going to re-write it, I would be a bit clearer on that and also add the possibility of a ceramic Edition. I don't know if Apple is that in love with this as a material though.