While the rumour mill is literally overflowing with news about the upcoming iPhones (there’s 3 of them) this year, we aren’t sure as to where do all of these individual bits of information fit in. Adding to the mix is another leak from Taiwan, which hints that the new iPhone will make use of a forged stainless steel chassis.
The news comes from DigiTimes who’s sources come Apple’s supply line. The publication claims that Apple has made a big decision by sharing component orders between Foxconn and Jabil in order to get their hands on forged stainless steel chassis for an upcoming iPhone. The steel chassis would come from US-based supplier, Jabil and it would be sandwiched between the two sheets of reinforced glass.
Of course the idea does sound very familiar. Apple could be looking back at its design ideas from its earlier days for inspiration. We are talking about the old iPhone 4, which used a similar materials with a soft steel chassis sandwiched between two slabs of glass.
The difference here is that instead of milling the metal, Apple plans forge the metal alloy into the required chassis which would make the end result stronger and a lot lighter than its current series 7,000 aluminium backs on the iPhone 7.
More importantly, this would also make the process cheaper for Apple, bringing down the additional cost of CNC machining needed to cut through a block of aluminium (several times over). As the publication points out, quality control is also more stable with forging when compared to milling.
The added benefit here is that iPhone could also get slimmer.