Apple iPhones are an insanely expensive piece of smartphone tech but new rumours suggest that a cheaper, plastic iPhone is already in the works in China.
When they said that the revolution would be digitised, they forgot to mention that said technological advancements would most certainly not be cheap. You’d be hard pushed to find present market gadgets sans touchscreen and nearly every piece of future tech has some kind of sensor that acknowledges your existence as more than a button pressing fiend. This is what we as consumers want and so this is what’s being delivered in droves, and for the most part, we’re happy the pay the premium. However, there are plenty amongst us who would happily see the cost of higher technological living come down and Apple, keen to provide this, are preparing to launch a budget, plastic iPhone for much less of a cost.
The biggest ‘low cost’ selling point of the budget iPhone is that its body will be made out of plastic. Scrapping any fancy metals, the hard, plastic body rumoured to make up the phone is said to be quite thick but still quite aesthetically pleasing. This body is also said to come in a variety of colours so that the budget loving masses won’t be stuck for choice. The phone allows Apple to create a a new base of Apple fans whilst still selling the expensive stuff to its cult following, which will hopefully help them gain a market that they are losing to Google Android powered devices.
While rumours about the budget iPhone have been circling the Internet for a few weeks, the phone has popped up again, this time in China, as a report on a production line said to be making the phone, has shed some insight. According to the China Labor Watch report on Pegatron, an Apple manufacturing partner, “[Pegatron’s] assembled products include iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, and low-priced plastic iPhones.” The report then went on to say the following, giving us even more insight into what the low end smartphone could be like, “Today’s work is to paste protective film on the iPhone’s plastic back cover to prevent it from being scratched on assembly lines. This iPhone model with a plastic cover will soon be released on the market by Apple. […] The new cell phone has not yet been put into mass production, so quantity is not as important.”
There’s currently no word on cost for the yet, unannounced iPhone, but speculation suggests that we’ll see it on sale before the end of the year, so we’ll keep you updated.
Source: Computerworld
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