For those of you who have not had internet for the past few days, apparently a prototype iPhone 4G has been accidentally released into the wild. After paying a reported $5,000 to $10,000 for the device--which was allegedly obtained in a Redwood City bar, where an Apple engineer left it after having beer(s)--Gizmodo posted photos and video of the device and commissioned a teardown for authenticity. No one can say if this is one of many iterations or a final design, but the conclusion was that the device was indeed made by Apple. And they reportedly want the thing back.
The Resultant Media Frenzy contains everything from assertions that this was an insanely complicated but engineered media leak to a bunch of gullibles that have been duped into thinking this is Jonathan Ive's Twitter account. Reading these things is more depressing than informative and I wish I hadn't.
One thing that is not in dispute is that the new design, if this is indeed the final, is different. In addition to two cameras--one front-facing for video chatting, one in the back as with the last model--Gizmodo's shots reveal the device is now perfectly flat, with no curved back; aesthetically this harkens back to the first iPhone, which I preferred because you could place it flat on a desk and tap on the screen without creating the seesaw effect of the current generation. But Gizmodo concludes that this new flatness is technology-driven--the interior of the phone is so jam-packed with components that any other shape would have been difficult.
The back is neither plastic nor metal, and appears to be glass or some type of ceramic. As for why plastic might have been replaced, I'd speculate that it's either because flat plastic usually doesn't look very good--regular, mild use has distressed the flat plastic of my Sam-Hecht-designed LaCie external hard drive, for instance--or because Apple is incorporating a new touch-sensitive technology on the back of the device. (I've been wrong about that latter point before, though.)
The aluminum band that now runs around the device have caused many to liken it to Braun and Dieter Rams' '80s aesthetic. If anything this is a testament to Dieter Rams' design skills: Like Syd Mead's production designs for Blade Runner, Rams perfected a style that has not been much improved upon since and has aged, aesthetically speaking, very well.
New, separate and metal volume buttons have been added. Gizmodo intelligently speculates that one of these is intended to be used, when the phone is in camera mode, as a physical shutter button. I like that analysis and hope that it's true.
One thing I found of interest is Slate's assertion that "The iPhone has reached the limits of industrial design." On the one hand I can see the point they're trying to make--that minimalism and miniaturization have removed any of this device's aesthetic wiggle room--but on the other hand, it reminds me of the historically-disputed quote from the 1800s that "Everything that can be invented has been invented;" it speaks of a certain lack of imagination.
What do you think? It's true that if you take televisions, laptops, and now cell phones and put a bunch of them next to each other, you'd have difficulty telling one from another from across the room. But I don't think this means the ID of these devices is hitting its limits; I think the design nuances are simply becoming smaller.
One could argue that the user interface designer for the iPhone (and a lot of other devices) have far more influence on the user experience than the person who designs the physical housing. Are these things separate, and should they be? Do you think we're seeing the beginning of the end, where everything moves towards black rectangles, the ID'er declines and the UI guy rises? Opinions please.
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ID is a wide field that encompasses many gigs
- form, innovation, and research get a lot of print on core77, but that is just the front end of design.
- materials, process, assembly, finish, and color are the physical end of design. Designing something minimal is not easy, thats why few can do it well - look at the motorola droid and compare it with the iphone and you will see the devil is in the details.
Now if you are one of those who tend to argue that consumers will never notice these things, then look at apples results.
I'm sure apple spends much more money on UI design than physical product design. It's probably more on engineering design than those hot sketches ID'ers rejoice so much about.
It's time for ID to evolve more into IxD, ergonomics, fashion and engineering. And it's time ID gets rid of that damn stereotype of sketching ability equaling design ability. I can't imagine Jonathan Ives ever doing marker renderings at Apple. I can imagine him though fussing over radii in Solidworks and debating interaction models with UI designers
The iPhone is a great example of good ID, but there's plenty of bad examples if you ask me so there is still place for ID improvements.
Is not a matter of objects being all box-shaped, is a matter of them being the best they can and Apple has an outstanding way of achieving this.
UI can also make the difference, so good UI and good ID do make a winning product.
To its credit, UI is becoming king, especially on interactive devices, but it's not likely that the bare forms that are tending to be made now will be the only forms we see from this point on, unless it's unanimously agreed that "it is the only proper way" for these products to provide a successful user experience. This design trend, while resulting in beautiful, potentially iconic designs, might very well eventually become boring and tiresome to users as (or if) these design nuances become more familiar... will there eventually be a rebellion of expression? Hmmmm...
Minimalism as a trend makes sense for flexible-purpose devices. Maximizing screen area is the logical choice to allow for the greatest variety of experiences on the platform, and extraneous elements distract from that. I don't think we'll be moving away from the "big screen, small bezel, minimal buttons" look for smartphones and televisions anytime soon, though designs like the new HTC Droid Incredible and the Sony Bravia NX800 show there's still interesting design things to be done within those constraints. Apple's not in a place to use those kinds of risky design flourishes, though--as long as they're insisting on a single-device-choice platform, they can't use masculine, racecar-inspired design elements or out-of-left-field construction paradigms for fear of alienating part of their userbase. Companies with broader product lines have a lot more room to experiment than a company whose strategy is a limited product line with minimal product overlap.
Companies with broader product lines also have room to make more appliance-like devices that don't require the gigantic screens. Feature phones designed to perform one task well, for example, have a lot more space to explore unique design elements. The first-gen Microsoft Kin phones seem to have a bit of iPhone Envy when closed, but I wouldn't be shocked to see something unique from their second-generation entries.
The role of ID and IxD on handheld consumer electronics is shifting. The ID guy will need to know when to step back and let the UI guy work his magic, but the ID guy's input will still make a difference between a forgettable or unusable product and an amazing experience. We'll be the stagehands and set designers--doing the important legwork to make sure everything's in place for the UI to shine. It's not as glamorous a role, but it's just as critical.
There are still so many possibilities for phones, just less for a 100% touch screen device.
First, miniaturization can remove a device's aesthetic wiggle room only if you're optimizing for the smallest possible package. What we have with the iPhone is that the size of the insides and the size of the outside are close to parity. If the internals were shrunk in half Apple wouldn't make a phone half the size because that would make for a pretty crappy phone. So if the outside stays roughly the same size and the internals shrink you get your wiggle room. Take the iPod nano for example, because the internals are so much smaller in respect to it's enclosure it can be as curvy as it wants to be.
But all of this is assuming that Ive wants things to be curvy which I'm not convinced he does. If you look at the Apple products that feature big curves iPad/iMac/MB Air/iPhone 3GS, they use curves APPEAR thin rather than actually BE thin. The new iPhone is thin without having to fake it.
Second, in response to Farhad Manjoo's complaint that the new iPhone looks like the old one, the answer is: of course it does. Every other Apple product follows the same pattern: Spend more time than you can ever imagine on the initial version then spend years refining the hell out of it. The MacBook Pro doesn't look all that different from a TiBook but people don't seem to complain. When a product does change radically (iMac/iPod) it's because they feel that new design is fundamentally better for the user, not to satisfy your desire to have something that looks different. If you want different for the sake of being different you're looking at the wrong company.
Then again, consumer electronics are just about the least interesting form of design to my tastes, so maybe I should just stay out of this debate...
That said, i think that whenever there is a best seller which combines aesthetics and usability, such as the iphone, all the others try to imitate. It is too hard to invent the next limit, so inevitably they copy the shell, hoping this way to get some shares of the market..
From a design perspective the major issue with previous iPhones was the sensitivity to scratches on the glossy plastic part. A flat and hard ceramic panel is a good solution and does not influence wireless peformance.
Experienced IDers will know that these kinds of new innovative solutions take a lot of effort and time to develop. Not only the technical aspect but also the commercialisation i.e. making it affordable enough.
Seriously, though, some products get mature. And when that happens, designers can focus on something new.