iPhone 6: An edgy concept

Folks, stop bitching and complaining about this or that idea being good&#x2F;bad&#x2F;impractical etc, etc. It&#x27;s a designer&#x27;s demo portfolio work.<p><a href="http://www.johnnyplaid.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.johnnyplaid.com</a><p>Designers do this stuff because they have ideas about how devices and interfaces can change and they explore those ideas. It doesn&#x27;t seem to me that Johnny is making claims about inside information. He&#x27;s using his visual talents to create mockups of what might be possible in the future.<p>The medium is different, but the process isn&#x27;t any different than sci-fi writers setting stories in the future or me making UI wireframes for an application. It&#x27;s just ways of exploring what could be done.<p>The last point is to realize that this is most likely just personal portfolio work. Some of us have github profiles and others have PSD&#x27;s. Just think about the exposure Johnny is getting out of this and how it might get him more work in the future. That&#x27;s the best reason for him to make this.

I would highly recommend the majority of you here to stay away from fashion shows and car conventions if this is your reaction to this concept.

Someone said on Twitter the other day, I wonder what UI designers could come up with if they weren&#x27;t hamstrung by the fact that it needs to be built by a developer? I can&#x27;t help but think of exactly that whenever I see one of these hardware mockups. This is what designers can do when they aren&#x27;t hamstrung by the need to actually have it built by hardware engineers.<p>An interesting intellectual exercise and a beautiful design, but that only applies if you think it could be real, or else it&#x27;s the hardware equivalent of a Minority Report interface. I just don&#x27;t see this in my hand within the next 20 years. That makes it easy to be pessimistic.<p>In reference to the top comment, that&#x27;s why good Sci Fi tends to focus on how the technology affects the future society and interpersonal relationships, not simply marvelling at the technology itself. Calling this the &quot;iPhone 6&quot; mockup and not simply a future phone or even iPhone puts a certain expectation on it, as does the mention of specs that would only be impressive for a year or two.<p>You can&#x27;t have it both ways. Either it&#x27;s an entirely theoretical mockup that can&#x27;t be criticized and it&#x27;s simply design work or I&#x27;m supposed to imagine it as the iPhone that&#x27;s on the market two years from now with the specs listed on that page.

I don&#x27;t understand the point of these mockups unless they have an actual prototype. It&#x27;s easy to hand-wave about how great a product will be that can&#x27;t be built. The borderless glass is probably a non-starter because of chipping. And why would you make an aluminum&#x2F;carbon fiber composite? Aluminum and carbon fiber both serve the same purpose in a composite structure. You&#x27;d use something like a metal-matrix aluminum composite instead, set in resin.

Why do designers pull numbers out of their ass to make a concept sound more appealing? &quot;Dual quad core processor!&quot; yeah, well my concept has dual octocore processors and my concept will be liquid cooled! I mean phase change cooled!

I don&#x27;t understand why so many designers attempt to push the limits of material science while clearly being almost entirely ignorant of it. For example, carbon fiber composites do bend. You can make springs out of them. Also, if you could figure out how to manufacture graphene at a scale large enough to use them on iphone screens you&#x27;d probably win the Nobel.<p>You can&#x27;t push the boundary of what&#x27;s possible without already understanding the physics and engineering of the existing boundary. Otherwise you&#x27;re just another kid with a pretend jetpack made out of 2 liter soda bottles. It&#x27;s fun, and perhaps praiseworthy for a kid... but as an adult you look a bit silly claiming the design is something real.

That Magsafe Lightning concept would never work. Not only is there not enough space to fit powerful enough magnets, not only is the Lightning connector 8-pin, but one of the only reasons MagSafe even works is that laptops are strong enough to still be in the same place if tugged slightly. Your phone will now not only be tugged along with the cord, but will then disconnect more easily and fly across the room.

I love the idea of wrapping the display around the side of the phone and having touch sensors to detect when you&#x27;re holding your phone. I have this problem where I&#x27;m holding the phone with one hand and trying to press something with my thumb. It doesn&#x27;t register as a touch because part of my hand is contacting the front of the screen, causing my action to be interpreted as some sort of two-finger gesture. With accurate information about where my hand is, this would be easy to fix.<p>One question: why not a 1920x1080 screen? The Galaxy S4 already has that resolution.

The icons in those home screen mockups look a heck of a lot better than the real ones:<p><a href="http://apple.com/ios/ios7" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;apple.com&#x2F;ios&#x2F;ios7</a>

Here&#x27;s an idea. Make a phone with a case that is strong enough to withstand the drops that inevitably happen! Putting so much effort into cool looking things that have to be covered by dorky cases is an illustration of the irrational at the heart of tech fetishes.

I&#x27;m reminded of the Samsung prototype on the left here: <a href="http://www.mobilephones.com/news/samsung-reveal-flexible-phone-prototype/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mobilephones.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;samsung-reveal-flexible-pho...</a><p>where the screen comes round the edge of the surface. Pretty, and a lot more likely to be in production this decade.

It is obvious that this is not an attempt at trying to design a plausible iPhone. It is an attempt to show case his design chops. Unfortunately, I can&#x27;t give him full marks on his design, I was put off by his &quot;Accidental Gesture Recognition&quot; paragraph. It is a short paragraph of 7 lines, 3 of which are hyphenated.<p>Pedantry aside, I think the mockups look great.

The design looks amazing, even though most people will probably have the device covered up with a phone cover. Also retina 2 sounds like i would need 3 versions of every image in my app which is getting to be a bit much.

&gt; <i>The only way to create a true edge-to-edge display is to remove the edge all together.</i><p>And moisture is the essence of wetness.

This is awesome! Very well made, I hope someone from Apple HR is watching...

Not gonna lie, I would buy that in a heartbeat.

Would the aluminum + carbon fiber be a weave of aluminum mixed in with the carbon weave (similar to Pagani&#x27;s carbotanium for the Huayra&#x27;s body panels), or an aluminum galvanization process on the surface of the carbon fiber (similar to the galvanized carbon fiber in the Porsche 918 Spyder)?

The icons! Those icons look great, for the most part. Still &#x27;flat&#x27; while keeping the iOS personality.

I fail to comprehend this kind of fetish

Very impressive - I&#x27;d love to have something that looked that damn cool. The wrap around screen kept making me think of infinity pools.

The iPhone, as boring as it is, at least has a distinct look. This is a rectangle with beveled corners.

1) Not very original<p>2) Not going to happen

And then you put a cover &#x2F; bumper ...

With that design of touch sensors on the edge, it would open it up to support being used as a chording keyboard in the style of the classic DataEgg - <a href="http://xaphoon.com/dataegg/DataEggNewShape.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;xaphoon.com&#x2F;dataegg&#x2F;DataEggNewShape.jpg</a>

Everything about this design, from the edge to edge glass, to the Lightening + Magsafe connector is super appealing, but it&#x27;s too much of a jump for Apple. Their design style is much slower and more iterative than this.<p>Arguably the biggest hardware leap so far was the 3gs -&gt; 4, and that was limited to an aesthetic re-envisioning, a camera improvement, screen resolution upgrade, and processor bump.<p>This design showcases improvements that Apple would likely spread out over 3 generations: everything listed for their biggest leap above, plus new input mechanisms, new connector, significantly less heft, and waterproofing (!!).<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong -- I&#x27;d buy this in an instant, but it looks more like iPhone 8, than 6.

A neat design here, but I&#x27;d rather see designs that are more creative. What about an iShirt whose color could change via bluetooth from your phone, depending on how many unread emails you have?<p>And the quote about graphene was distracting to me because I know for certain that Apple would not have a layer of graphene that would be as thick as Saran Wrap. That&#x27;s crazy talk- too expensive. I know he wasn&#x27;t saying it would be that thick, but that was the first thing that came to mind: &quot;no way they would do that&quot;.

I think that design looks amazing. I like the concept of MagSafe connector but the world would shit a brick if they changed it again that quickly.

Wow, some of the reactions here are really petty-minded to me.<p>This guy just made mockups of a future iteration he imagined, of a product he probably uses and likes. Something designers have published to the interwebs for years. It can be fun and a nice way to improve on your skills.<p>It don&#x27;t get what justifies the hate some people here show up with. If you don&#x27;t like it, just skip it and enjoy something else.

Is this a joke? Lol, how are you supposed to use this with one hand. The design (from a presentation perspective) is beautiful, the idea from a practicality standpoint is 100% useless. I couldn&#x27;t tell if this was serious until I was like 75% of the way through.

It does look great, but Im not sure my hands and fingers would fare well if the edges got chipped. A chipped edge would not be enough to pay lots to get it fixed, where as a shattered screen is. As a result, I see minor injury being a bit of a problem.

I think the Calculation for Screen Size were off. ( Unless I am Wrong ) Assuming no changes in Resolution Scale to iPhone 5, a Display that is 5.86cm Width would be 4.7&quot; Diagonal.<p>Which incidentally fits in with the latest rumours on 4.7&quot; display. Um....

Here&#x27;s where the guy loses me: the sample movie on the phone is Lone Ranger.

This would be the coolest god damn phone. If Apple made the smaller form factor again with a slightly bigger screen, I&#x27;d be on that. I hate the wonky rectangle of the 5.<p>Thanks, Johnny. This stuff is fun to think about.

I like pure design concept, without regarding to technical limitation.<p>I like pure technology design concept without regarding to economical consideration.<p>This design is just plain form design plus some wanna-be technical terms.

This is not even a good portfolio piece. The typography is really bad.

Some nice ideas in there, but I have a few objections: On a practical level, this would be more better described as a prototype for the iPhone 8 + iOS X ... or something a bit further out than next year. Is that too nit-picky? Probably. As far as the aesthetics go - it looks almost exactly like the HTC One, albeit without a bezel. For a product designer with imaginative ideas about nearly everything else, I would have hoped for a more interesting enclosure design.

How long until apple&#x27;s lawyers shut this down for using their trademarks all over the place without permission?

Ок. It&#x27;s cool! Do same OS cool concept and I am ready to buy.

Yet his site doesn&#x27;t allow pinchzoom on mobile devices

Won&#x27;t happen.

96GB drive? Seems fishy to me.

Dishonest linkbait headline.