There have been reports circulating for months suggesting that Apple will release a 4-inch iPhone 6C as a successor to the iPhone 5C, which was released in 2013. However, well-informed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities thinks this is unlikely to happen—at least this year anyway.
Will there be an iPhone 6C?
Benjamin Mayo of 9to5 Mac notes that production on this year’s iPhones is probably still months away. As a result, it’s hard to say with Kuo is correct in saying the rumors about a 4-inch iPhone 6C coming this year are probably not accurate. However, it should be noted that the KGI analyst has been right often enough about Apple’s plans in the past.
And anyway, he used the word “unlikely,” leaving room for that to change because Apple is known for often changing its mind at the last possible second.
iPhone 6S to feature Force Touch?
Another rumor we’ve heard several times is that the Force Touch technology Apple is debuting this year in the Apple Watch and the new MacBooks is going to be in the iPhone 6S. Kuo seems to think that this is likely, but he adds that it will probably work differently in the iPhone 6S than it will in the watch and laptops.
Force Touch enables the Apple Watch to distinguish between a tap and a press. It works by directly sensing the amount of force that is being applied to the display. For the iPhone 6S, Kuo suggests it will base the differentiation between a tap and a press on how much of the user’s finger is touching the display. This basically means that if the user presses more of their finger on the screen, it would signify a press rather than a tap.
How Force Touch might work on the iPhone 6S
9to5 Mac explains than the current iPhone models already have some sense of how much of the user’s finger is touching the display. The difference is that current models do more of an estimation than what Force Touch would potentially be able to do. The idea would be that Force Touch would bring a more accurate sense of how much of the user’s finger is touching the display.
Kuo said the Force Touch sensor will sit right underneath the backlight, which would mean that the iPhone 6S will have an internal structure that’s similar to that of the Galaxy Note. The difference would be that the iPhone 6S would have to be more advanced because Force Touch requires more complex processing.
iPhone 7 or iPhone 6S this year?
Kuo uses the name “iPhone 7,” however, instead of iPhone 6S for this year’s model. The suggestion that Apple might skip the S iteration and choose the iPhone 7 name for this year seems purely like speculation though. Kuo suggests that Apple could skip the iPhone 6S name because it adds the Force Touch technology to it. The reason for this would be to set the phone significantly apart from previous models that don’t have Force Touch.
The analyst also did not specify that Apple would keep Force Touch only for the iPhone 6S Plus, which contradicts another report from earlier today.
