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Two Intesting iPhone 2 Tidbits

5:49 am, June 9th, 2008, Leander Kahney

iphone_back.jpg

I heard two interesting tidbits about the possible design of the iPhone 2 at the weekend:

Better Battery Thanks To Better Software

3G is generally assumed to be a drain on battery life because of the hardware, which sucks down juice, but it is actually the iPhone’s software that is the problem, according to engineers working on Google’s Android phone. According to a conversation reported to me by a colleague at Wired.com, Google’s engineers say the first iPhone OS was basically a hack. It was adapted from the desktop OS and had none of the advanced power-management features necessary to properly run the networking chips. But the iPhone 2 will have not only better integrated circuits, it will have proper power-management software also.

The iPhone 2 Won’t Have an All-Plastic Case

There are several rumors speculating that the iPhone 2 will have an all-plastic case, replacing the metal back of the current design. But an engineer I talked to last year said the metal cases of the iPod and the iPhone were probably designed to dissipate heat from inside the device . They were likely big heat sinks. And that’s why I doubt the iPhone will have a plastic back, because plastic doesn’t conduct heat as a well as metal.

Posted by Leander Kahney in iPhone | Comment on this article

About the author

Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is senior editor of Cult of Mac, editor of two books about technology culture, Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, and has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Observer in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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6 comments

    Can’t wait to find out.

    Chaz Mangus, on June 9th, 2008 at 6:10 am

    Two “Intesting” iPhone 2 Tidbits… getting an upset stomach over this are you?

    Hypersky, on June 9th, 2008 at 9:39 am

    A metal heat sink that people carry around in their pockets?

    JT, on June 9th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    Well you were half right!!! ;-)

    angusshangus, on June 9th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    Here’s a serious question… is the back panel of the iPhone 1.0 already plastic? Sure, it *looks* like metal. But is it?

    Originally I thought it was metal… but that illusion shattered when my first iPhone had an hard skidding fall onto some rough pavement. The resulting mess of scratches seemed to be in something less like metal and whole lot more like… PLASTIC! I tapped the back and sure enough… it SOUNDED like plastic too.

    Right around that time I ran into this engadget article about laser etching the iPhone, and it seemed to confirm what I’d discovered — the aluminum back is just “really nice plastic”

    http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/17/laser-etching-the-iphone/

    Has anyone cracked open their iPhone and know for sure? Is the “metal” really plastic?

    eyespark, on June 11th, 2008 at 1:57 am

    FWIW, the iPhone case is made from the magnesium alloy, AZ91D. It is electroplated with a tin alloy for corrosion and scuff resistance. Magnesium has good heat conductivity (hence its use as a heat sink) and electrical conductivity and thus doubles as a EMI shield.

    Peter, on June 11th, 2008 at 7:41 am