Apple iPhone Forum

9to5 Mac reports today that according to a new report from Digitimes, one of Apple’s main partners, TSMC, is set to experience record profits this year, thanks in large part to its manufacturing of Apple’s forthcoming A12 system-on-a-chip for the 2018 iPhone line-up.

Apple’s iPhone X and iPhone 8 both have an A11 chip that uses a 10 nanometer process, but the new A12 chip is thought to use a 7 nanometer process. The industry has been working to make gaps smaller in chip wafer feature sizes, as smaller process sizes lower costs at the same time as increasing density, resulting in chips that can go faster at the same heat input.

The A12 chip, which TSMC is set to start producing very soon, is one of the very first 7nm chips to be mass produced. Because the A12 is...

MacRumors reports that Apple has already begun its annual preparations for Earth Day, which takes place on Sunday this year. Apple usually likes to do something special for the day, and this year is no exception, with logos on some of its retail stores around the world already getting green leaves instead of the usual white ones.

MacRumors has pictures of the Apple store in Singapore’s Orchard Road with its brand new green leaf adornment, and that’s expected to be the first of many stores to have the decoration.

As is customary in Apple retail stores around the world on Earth Day, many Apple employees will also be wearing green shirts instead of their regular blue shirts. It’s also possible that Apple will be having a special Earth Day event at its Cupertino...

The iPhone SE, along with the iPhone 6s, is one of the only two iPhones still on sale that still has a headphone jack, but now, according to Japanese blog Macotakara, via 9to5 Mac, Apple might have finally removed the headphone jack from the forthcoming iPhone SE 2. It’s possible that the removal of the headphone jack will add to the phone’s water resistance.

According to Macotakara’s source, the iPhone SE 2 will launch in May, and will have the same style of 4-inch display and design as the iPhone 5, but with the addition of an A10 chip, the same as that used in the iPhone 7. This is an upgrade from the previous model’s A9 chip, the same as that used in the iPhone 6s. The new iPhone SE 2 will still have Apple Pay support via NFC.

Macotakara’s information comes...

According to a story from The Wall Street Journal today, via AppleInsider, Apple’s bid to bring another OLED display supplier on board aside from Samsung may have run into an obstacle thanks to LG “struggling” with the quality of its OLED panel production. The WSJ says that due to its manufacturing problems, it may not be ready to begin mass production of OLED displays for Apple’s forthcoming iPhones in July. According to the report, there is some dispute within Apple’s management as to whether or not LG will be able to make the deadline for the start of production. Some think it will, some think it won’t.

The WSJ explains that the current problem is caused by the fact that LG Display’s speciality is TV-sized OLED panels, but it “has yet to nail down” the...

MacRumors reports today on an interview that Apple CEO Tim Cook gave to The Sydney Morning Herald recently in which he talked about why Apple will never merge iPad and Mac for a unified software and hardware platform.

“We don’t believe in sort of watering down one for the other,” Cook told The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Wells. “One of the reasons that both of them are incredible is because we pushed them to do what they do well. And if you begin to merge the two…you begin to make trade-offs and compromises.”

“So maybe the company would be more efficient at the end of the day, but that’s not what it’s about,” continued Cook. “It’s about giving people things that they can then use to help them change the world or express their passion or express their creativity....

AppleInsider reports today on a new note to investors from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, in which he says that one version of Apple’s rumoured forthcoming LCD iPhone could be dual-SIM dual standby (DSDS) capable, with two physical SIM card slots and no eSIM support. A second LCD model could have the usual single-SIM slot, and could cost from $550 to $650, even cheaper than the figure of between $700 and $800 that was rumoured back in January. The DSDS version would probably cost a little more, approximately $650 to $750.

Kuo also predicts that the rumoured 6.5-inch OLED iPhone will also have DSDS capabilities, but he thinks that the smaller, 5.8-inch OLED iPhone X will not come with a dual-SIM variant.

DSDS has several very useful features to it, such as...

AppleInsider reports today that according to new figures from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, Samsung is still beating Apple in terms of smartphone activations in the last quarter, with Samsung having 39% of activations, 8% more than Apple, which had 31%. LG came in a long behind the top two with 14% of activations, and the Other group had just 17%.

Back in the December 2017 quarter, Apple was slightly ahead of Samsung with more than 40% of activations, mainly due to the launch of the iPhone X and iPhones 8 and 8 Plus, but now Samsung has taken the lead back again, albeit by a very small margin.

However, as far as customer loyalty is concerned, Apple is still ahead of Samsung, with over 90% loyalty. CIRP bases its figures on how many people activating...

Business Insider reports today that according to car insurance company Everquote, Apple’s new ‘Do Not Disturb While Driving’ feature has led to those drivers who have the feature on their phone using their phones 8% less than previously.

That might not sound like a lot, but with Everquote’s app showing that around 37% of trips logged still involve phone use while driving, every little helps, and hopefully this is just the start.

Everquote found that during those 37% of trips, drivers were using their phones for sometimes as much as 11% of the time, which translate to around 3 minutes of a 29 minute drive.

Everquote crunched the numbers from 781 million miles of driving data using sensors such as the iPhone GPS and accelerometer.

Everquote revealed that 70% of...

AppleInsider reports today that a filing issued by a European regulatory agency have given the strongest hint yet that Apple is about to release the iPhone SE 2.

The filing from the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), a body that authorises devices for several countries, including Russia and Armenia, reveal that the commission has green-lit several new iPhones for sale.

The documents, which were first discovered by Consomac, don’t reveal any model names, but rather a string of model numbers, such as A1920 and A1921, none of which have been used previously by any other Apple device.

There’s not much else to learn from the filing, other than that the phones in question will be shipping with iOS 11, although that is more likely to be iOS 11.3 or later, specifically....

According to a new report from CNBC, via 9to5 Mac, new research from Counterpoint shows that in Q4 2017, while the premium smartphone market did not achieve as much growth as expected, Apple was still the most profitable brand, with 86% of the smartphone market profits.

Breaking down those figures a little further, the iPhone X alone was responsible for 21% of total industry revenue and 35% of total industry profits for Q4 2017. Counterpoint notes that this means that the iPhone X generated five times as much profit as 600 Android brands combined.

Counterpoint also said that continuing to sell older models for longer than previously in order to appeal to a variety of price brackets had proved to be a wise and profitable decision.

“Apple still has eight out of...