Metallic Glass iPhone 5 to battle pottery Samsung Galaxy S3 The next iPhone will be cased in "Liquidmetal" says a Korean news outlet quoting "industry sources". The talkative Korean rumour-mongers have also repeated predictions that Samsung's upcoming S3, their next Galaxy smartphone, will be made of high-tech ceramics. Liquidmetal is the trade name for metal alloy with the structure …
My thoughts exactly- if this wonder material is as brilliant as we are led to believe, $11 seems awfully cheap for an economic way to process it.
Do any Reggies here have the 3G tool? And if so, have you performed some destructive testing on it, possibly whilst bored or drunk? Any observations? : D
"Do any Reggies here have the 3G tool? And if so, have you performed some destructive testing on it, possibly whilst bored or drunk? Any observations? : D"
I have one on my desk, I wasn't aware of its construction method but have always been intrigued by it. Although it's just a little bit of metal I couldn't find any injection seam or evidence of cutting so I was baffled as to how it was made without lots of effort being put into finishing.
As for it's properties, it's pretty rigid and resistant to flexing or mild bending. I haven't gone the whole destructive testing route yet because it seems wrong somehow to damage a nice shiny things, I'll wait until I've had more to drink.
My old Seiko watch had a Saphlex glass (a layer of saphire on a hard glass).
It was about the only part of that watch that didn't break, scratch or fail completely in some way in the 4.5 years I managed to keep it going.
I wish my current Citizen watch had the same type to stop the scratches.
Google "Vertu Ascent Liquidmetal" and look at the dates (2004). This was already a production-ready product, and even in mobile phones, long before Apple were sold a license to use it.
And "licence" is the key word, here -- they get to be the only CE company using the material; they didn't get access to the IP behind its manufacture.
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Omega's been using it for a while on its Planet Ocean range. If the advert is anything to go by, the iphone will retain its striking appearance indefinitely and you'll need an 8000 Watt laser ray to engrave your name on the back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZcsWVqLC5I
But it also suggests the next iphone ads will be even worse than the last ones, and note that Omega hiked its prices a heck of a lot in the last few years!
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Hahaha, I know. They buy a slim phone and then clad it in gaudy plastic. Almost every iPhone I see is like this.
I've never used a case for my phones. Then again, I'm pretty sure if I used a case on my Sony Ericsson P990, it would have made a suspicious bulge in my pocket, more than it already did. Great phone at the time though.
"Hahaha, I know. They buy a slim phone and then clad it in gaudy plastic. Almost every iPhone I see is like this."
That too. Transforming a slim phone into a brick.
The trick to keeping a phone looking good without a cover is to put it into your pocket facing your leg. And put all your keys, coins and other scratchy things into another pocket. I have an HTC Desire which is over 2 years old now and aside from a very slight scratch has managed to survive all that time in such a way. I don't even think the screen is made of glass.
isnt this the exact same rumour that was flying around for the last 2 versions of iphone?
i was interested in it before from a materials standpoint only to discover that the phone was standard kit and only the lil pokey thing was liquid metal - next will be the rumour that the entire samsung galaxy s3 will be entirely made of gorrilla glass, oh wait they said that before too
those korean guys have some imagination.
Oh my, it seems I may have upset a fanboy.
There are a few things you can do to find out more info about this, copy and paste(I know we never could, but nowadays Apple let us...yay!) this: 'iOS safari javascript crash' in to google and then read. Or, you can go and do what I did and went in to a shiny high street store and asked a 'genius' all about it. His response, and I'll quote him verbatim: "Yes, we've known about this bug for ages but apparently they can't fix it. Download Opera on your device and use that. It just works." I gave him 10 out of 10 for getting the slogan in even though he was talking about a product not made by Apple.
For the record, I did download Opera and guess what...it just worked. Off you go then, have a look at some "real" websites (but I'd use Opera if I were you)...
You could have patented it, possibly, before the competition.
You may have found however that the prior art on things like PDAs go back much further than you might first think.
Unfortunately one of the requirements for a patent application is that you haven't told anyone about it.
"Metallic Glass" is still a metal and it's still not transparent!
The "glass" part refers to the way the atoms are ordered when cooled rapidly, remain locked in the liquid atomic structure rather than forming normal crystals, hence the reason the company that makes it is called "Liquidmetal".
But it is NOT a "glossy glass-that-acts-like-metal". It is not glass and is still a metal!
Nice pic here: http://www.engadget.com/2005/03/31/scientists-develop-metallic-glass/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal
yea and guess what apple it will come with a whopping price tag maybe higher than the iPhone 4s price tag. my brother has a iPhone 4s and its so annoying in using it restrictive on what you do on it like putting your own ringtone on you have to go through a stupid way unlike other phones where you just bring the menu up on the song and select set as ringtone eh. plus he had issues when he was putting songs on the stupid cloud service was filling his phone up that he didn't want. all I can say is forget apple there a horrible company ill never touch apples ever.
"But it also suggests the next iphone ads will be even worse than the last ones, and note that Omega hiked its prices a heck of a lot in the last few years!"
Probably more to do with the strength of the Swiss franc vs other currencies making their exports very expensive. My Omega Seamaster is worth more second hand (after about 8 years) than I paid for it - of course the new version is now very much more expensive.
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