Apple’s iPhone has become the default smartphone choice globally since the first iPhone. It reflects in their global market share. The iPhone has always come up with innovative features every year when it launches in September. It is almost a mature smartphone lineup now except for it lacks a few widely loved features like an always-on display which could be the highlight feature of the upcoming iPhone 13 line, says Mark Gurman in his newsletter ‘Power On’.
The always-on display is a feature present on many flagship android smartphones which show limited information on the handset’s screen when the phone is locked/asleep. This feature although has never arrived iPhone yet, but is available on Apple’s own Apple Watch from a long time.
For this feature to function smoothly and not consume a major chunk of battery, the device must house an OLED or AMOLED display which the iPhones never had until the unveiling of the iPhone X on November 3, 2017. All the other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S lineup had this kind of display for a long time. OLED display technology allows it to only brighten the pixels that are showing colors other than Black, that’s how it consumes less battery while showing the minimal lock screen texts. It was not possible on Liquid Retina LCD displays featured on previous iPhones as well as iPhone XR and iPhone 11 which were released after the iPhone X. The reason being cost. OLED displays are expensive to manufacture.
But things changed when last year at the iPhone 12 series launch event, the whole smartphone lineup featured an OLED display, but still no always-on functionality sadly. The reason speculated by experts is that Apple did it to save battery on the new iPhones as they featured 5G capability, and 5G is really battery intensive right now.
If we were to believe in Ghuman’s speculations and what he says becomes a reality, we will finally see an iPhone with an always-on display which we have been waiting for for 4 years now.
The iPhone 13 lineup unveiling is set to be in a few months. The newly designed MacBook Pro with new Apple-designed silicone is also set to be launched after the iPhone lineup
The others features which could also be unveiled with the new iPhones are a 120hz display and a portless iPhone perhaps.
