By Zanub Saeed
It is being reported that a thinner screen will be used in the next version of the Apple iPhone, rumored to be the long-awaited iPhone 5, said the Wall Street Journal this week.
The new iPhone is currently being manufactured in Japan and China, and will use new technology to make thinner clear touch-screens that consumers can use to navigate their smartphones, noted the Wall Street Journal in a report published on Tuesday.
Japanese liquid-crystal-display makers Sharp Corp. and Japan Display Inc., and South Korea's LG Display are all currently mass-producing panels that would be used for the next iPhone, said the Wall Street Journal, using something called in-cell technology, sand people familiar with the current developments in the new iPhone, sand the publication. The iPhone 4 currently has a 9.3 millimeter-thick screen, said Apple.
"The technology integrates touch sensors into the LCD, making it unnecessary to have a separate touch-screen layer," Juro Osawa and Lorraine Luk reported in the Wall Street Journal. "The absence of the layer, usually about half a millimeter thick, not only makes the whole screen thinner, but the quality of displayed images would improve, said DisplaySearch analyst Hiroshi Hayase."
With a thinner screen, the overall new iPhone may be slimmer, noted the Wall Street Journal, or could make room for other needed components, like batteries.
Presently, Apple has not issued an official release date for the new iPhone, which may or may not be the iPhone 5, but rumors are surfacing that it will be sometime this fall.
