There have been many speculations regarding this year’s iPhones including frosted glass casing, reverse wireless charging, iOS 13 with Dark Mode and also the square camera design. The latest news however reveals that the phone might also come with new antenna technology.
The existing iPhone XR, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max are currently using liquid crystal polymer (LCP) which caused limitations in terms of the radio performance. To fix the issue, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo stated that the new iPhones will instead use modified-PI (MPI) that is comparable to LCP when it comes to performance, but cheaper and also easier to be produced.
Despite that, MPI will not be a permanent switch as Kuo believes that the 2020 iPhones will switch back to LCP. The analyst thinks that the production issues and technology limitations that are hindering the radio performance of LCP now will be resolved by then, which is why the switch of materials will only be for this year’s iPhones.
On the other hand, Kuo also said that the future iPad models will probably be using LCP material, and will probably be launched within the timeframe of 2019’s Q4 and 2020’s Q1.
