This is a rather beautiful concept for what the next-gen iPhone could look like, courtesy of French designer Antoine Brieux. . It’s fanciful stuff, of course, featuring a Liquid Metal casing, but what I find most interesting is this idea that the home button could be replaced with a “virtual home button” that displays on a larger 4.5-inch widescreen display.
Since there’d be no physical home button, Apple could increase the touchscreen’s aspect ratio to 16:9 and make it bigger while (almost) keeping the same form factor, and when an app needed to use that extra bit of display, the home button would whisk away.
Totally improbable, of course. If Apple’s going to ditch the home button, which I doubt they ever will, they won’t do something as half-assed and indecisive as virtualize it. Still, it’s an interesting notion, and really does show how much room that damn home button takes up. Ditching it would clear up a lot of real estate, even if it serves an important purpose for grounding a user and always keeping them aware of where they are in the operating system, and how to get home.
[via Nowhere Else]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
23 responses to “Introducing The Liquid Metal iPhone 5 [Concept Gallery]”
Cool mockups, but I would hate the name “iPhone 5LM.” 3GS and 4S have rolled off the tongue nicely, not to mention Apple’s recent shift with the “new iPad.” I’m certain they’ll do the same this Autumn with the new iPhone.
They labeled the “new iPad” just that because it’s a “PC”, not an iDevice. It’ll be taking the same naming as Apple’s other PC’s like “late 2011 iMac” or “early 2012 Macbook Air”. The iPhone 5 will be called just that.
There’s a reason why Steve Jobs gave complete control of design to Ive. If he hadn’t and concepts like this were to be made, then it would be only a matter of time before iDevices look exactly like Androids.
Pass on your giant 4.5 inch screen. Do I look like a Galaxy Note user? Puleez. And no home button? You might as well slap an Android logo on it since you are getting rid of everything that makes an iPhone an iPhone.
The iPad is an iDevice. It runs iOS, is called the iPad, and is in the sub-$1,000 price range.
You also forget that Apple has its own aesthetic. This design is only an elongated version of the iPhone 4/4S design. The problem is that Android phone makers are copying the iPhones design. To be fair, the iPhone 4’s design looks incredibly similar to a Bold 9000
not sure how the designer thinks it’ll have a A6 processor when apple clearly chose to not go that route and went with a dual-core processor and a quad-core gpu
Beautiful mockup. I’d buy it in a glimpse.
Now you let me know how that headphone jack and the speaker would fit. One thing is miniaturizing components, but two objects (speaker and the headphone jack) can’t occupy the same space. Some ANDROID phones have it centered, but they are thick as a brick.
I’d say the jack needs to remain where it currently is, and then you would have a more credible mockup.
I won’t argue facts with you. The New iPad will not be named as if it was an iDevice anymore. I don’t care what OS it runs – that wasn’t my point. This guy seems to think that the iPhone 5 will adopt the same nomenclature and I was stating that it wasn’t true. You will begin to see the iPad take the same nomenclature as the Mac line. nuff said.
You seriously think the iPhone looks incredibly similar to the bold 9000? What, because they’re both black and rectangular? Is there an iPhone out there with a physical keyboard that I’m unaware of? You must be joking!
Ugly phone. Nothing about it says ?. Looks like some LG/Nokia/HTC crap.
Looks kind of like a zune hd…
Great looking concept, very impressive!
completely accurate except for the placement of the headphone jack. top left or die
‘nice’ looking, but impratical.
Pretty good concept, I think it looks noce. 4.5 inch screen is a meh, but other than that, looks great. Oh and @Tannerbott. Apple chose to go with the quad core GPU in the iPad because it needed it to power the Retina Display, the iPhone has no need for the Quad core GPU, so Apple may opt for a quad core CPU instead, thus the A6 for the iPhone
iPhone 6 , not iPhone 5.
1st iPhone = iPhone
2nd iPhone = iPhone 3G
3rd iPhone = iPhone 3GS
4th iPhone = iPhone 4 (the only iPhone named because it was the nth model)
5th iPhone = iPhone 4S (incremental update to iPhone 4)
So you’re saying that a company that’s as obsessed with detail as Apple, will call their 6th model, ‘iPhone 5’?
I hate these phone mockups which are basically a larger screen with little to no bezel. They look completely stretched/distorted.
I’m sorry but the iPad is a device and the next iPhone will definitely not be the iPhone 5, simply because it is the 6th one. It will almost certainly be just ‘iPhone’, or if you want to get really technical, it will be ‘iPhone (6th generation)’.
This is cool just make them different colors, and change the interface and you have your best sellar for a few years.
If you want to obsess over the fact that the next iPhone is actually the 6th one and not the 5th (therefore, I MUST be wrong) then go right ahead. FOR THE LAST TIME – my point was that the iPad has no longer followed the numbering nomenclature like other iDevices and that it will now follow the nomenclature of the Mac line. Apple has repeatably stated that the iPad is a “post-PC device” and that is the very reason why they left out the “numbers” from the new iPad – just like the Mac line. It’s not the iMac 5 or the MBP 6.. Nor will the iPad be any longer.
there’s a design flaw on the headphone jack location. how can it fit behind the earpiece speaker in that thin phone? I don’t see how mock up artists keep making that mistake.
Bad placement of the Apple logo.