Are you excited about the newest iPhone coming out next week? Well hold your horses, cowboys. Things may not be as dandy as they seem to be.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple has some trouble with iPhone 8’s manufacturing process. These unspecified issues, taking place largely in Foxconn factories, will probably lead to A), delay of release and/or limited supply of the phone, and B), dropping the promised TouchID feature. Foxconn tries to deal with this crisis by offering some kind of bonuses to its employees referrals -probably an attempt to get more hands on deck.
While we do not know what exacly is iPhone 8’s manufacturing problem, The Wall Street Journal suggests it was two things. First, implementation of the Touch ID into the touch screen turned out to be too much for Apple’s engineers, whom eventually ditched the project (after or before Apple ditching them, as one can imagine) in favour of facial identification. Second is Apple’s inferior OLED display manufacturing process. Last July I wrote about how Apple wants to be making its own OLED panels. Well, it does, but their manufacturing process is, reportedly, much less efficient than Samsung’s, taking longer, using up more resources and with a higher risk of failure.
All of the above put together may well lead to a phone that will be released both later than anticipated and without some of the promised functions. Well, Apple fans, keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best. Perhaps that situation is not as bad as it seems to be.
We will learn more on September 12th.