Apple hasn't sent out any official invitations just yet, but it's largely believed that Tim Cook and co. will unveil the iPhone 5 at a special media event slated to take place on September 12 to be followed by a launch on September 21. So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the LG CEO Han Sang-beom recently announced that the company has started mass production on newer and thinner iPhone 5 displays.
Apple hasn’t sent out any official invitations just yet, but it’s largely believed that Tim Cook and co. will unveil the iPhone 5 at a special media event slated to take place on September 12 to be followed by a launch on September 21.
So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the LG CEO Han Sang-beom recently announced that the company has started mass production on newer and thinner iPhone 5 displays.
“We just began mass production and we don’t expect any disruption in supplies,” Sang-beom told reporters, according to a report first relayed by Reuters.
The iPhone displays in question are said to incorporate in-cell technology wherein the touch sensors are incorporated into the LCD itself, thereby avoiding the use of a separate touchscreen layer. Consequently, the overall display will be thinner and, according to some, that much more crisp as well.
Sang-beom, in comments relayed by the Wall Street Journal, added that even though “in-cell technology is teh industry’s latest development”, LG will “be able to supply the panels without any fail.”
Along with LG Display, they also said, the Japanese liquid-crystal-display makers Sharp Corp. and Japan Display Inc.–a new company that combined three Japanese electronics makers’ display units–are also currently mass producing panels for the next iPhone using the in-cell technology, which integrates touch sensors into the LCD, making it unnecessary to have a separate touch-screen layer.
For Apple, the absence of the layer would help it make the whole device slimmer, or make extra room available for other components such as batteries. But in-cell touch screens are harder to manufacture than conventional LCD screens, fueling concerns that the panel makers may scramble to achieve high yield rates for the new touch screens that may even affect the global sales of the new iPhone device.
To date, each iPhone model has sold more units than all preceding models combined. That’s an incredible feat and with the iPhone 5, it seems that Apple’s streak in that regard will continue. In addition to a larger 4-inch screen, the iPhone 5 will likely support 4G LTE as well. Those two factors, coupled with the relatively minor upgrade that was the iPhone 4S, should result in lines out the door on Friday, September 21.
Lastly, photos purporting to be the iPhone 5 emerged a few weeks ago and here’s what we may have in store for us come September 12.
Related: The iPhone patent Steve Jobs particularly cared about
