If you follow my writing you probably know I've been harsh with the iPhone 7. Don't get me wrong, it's a good phone in a vacuum. But for a product sold at the highest price on the market, coming from the biggest company in the world, and getting five times as much press as all other phone coverage combined, then I got to scrutinize, and once I do, there's no denying (objectively) that it's an overrated product. Mainstream media in the west write about the iPhone 7 like it's the newest tech ever, and the only real option for Americans (I'm talking the general mainstream media. Dedicated tech media do a much better job of providing perspective). That's just flat out not true. The iPhone 7's design is three-years old, and the top and bottom bezels are larger than literally all other phones on the market. The display is made of inferior tech (LCD) than what is possible.
Apple knows this, and it's been working on fixing all of the above problems for next year's 10th-anniversary iPhone. For sure, the next iPhone will lose those bezels, rock an all-new look, lose the outdated physical home button, and if Apple can have its way, use OLED displays.
There's no arguing that OLED displays are superior to LCD screens. They use less power, display "true" blacks, produce more accurate colors and can be bended. According to a report from Bloomberg, Apple is very keen on using OLED for its next iPhone, except they're running into a major problem: not enough supplies.
OLED screens are more difficult to produce than standard LCD displays, and because Apple sources its panels from contractors, they are, in the words of Bloomberg, "at the mercy of suppliers."
Here, more from Bloomberg, as reported by Mark Gurman and Jungah Lee.
The four largest producers are Samsung Display Co., LG Display Co., Sharp Corp., and Japan Display Inc. While Samsung is on track to be the sole supplier for the new displays next year, the South Korean company may not be able to make enough due to low yield rates combined with increasing iPhone demand.
Yup, Apple needs Samsung to come through if it were to produce the OLED iPhone 8 that it wants. Now, the reports state that there should be enough OLED panel supplies for Apple to release OLED iPhones in limited quantities next year, and that 2018 is the more likely year Apple can finally go all OLED.
A concept image of what the rumored 2017 iPhone could look like, by Concepts iPhone. Photo: Concepts... [+]
But hey, even if the iPhone 8 ends up using LCD panels and keeping those thick bezels, it's not like mainstream media would give the phone a bad review anyway.
