Apple Loop: New iPhone X Problems, iPhone 8 Growing Battery Issues, Apple's Arrogant Decision

Taking a look back at another week of news from Cupertino, this week’s Apple Loop includes new battery problems for the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, the limited stock of the iPhone X, why Apple has lost its design edge, the arrogance of the iPhone X notch, the iPhone 7 vs the new handsets, iOS 11 update issues, Qualcomm and Apple’s legal fight, and Facebook Messenger’s Apple Music extension.

Apple Loop is here to remind you of a few of the very many discussions that have happened around Apple over the last seven days (and you can read my weekly digest of Android news here on Forbes).

iPhone 8 Battery Problems

Apple has confirmed that it is investigating issues with ‘swelling batteries’ on the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 plus handsets. A very small number of incidents have been reported where batteries have buckled the outer chassis and frames of the new smartphones. Gordon Kelly reports:

At this stage little is known about the fault, though the Independent’s states Apple believes the problem is caused by “battery swelling” and it is not thought to pose a safety concern like Samsung’s infamous problem with exploding Galaxy Note 7 batteries.

That said Apple has had its own battery problems during the last year and initiated a battery recall program for some iPhone 6S models.

More on the problems here on Forbes.

The new iPhone 8, iPhone X and iPhone 8S are displayed during an Apple special event . (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

iPhone X Supply Shortage

With upwards of fifty million pre-orders expected, the iPhone X could be Apple’s fastest selling iPhone when it goes on sale in November… but it’s not clear that Apple has the capability to fulfil the volume of pre-orders before the New Year. Ming-Chi Kuo’s analysis has been reported on by many, including Business Insider’s Kif Leswing:

“While we revise down 2017F iPhone X shipments on TrueDepth Camera production & assembly difficulties, it represents a great challenge for Android camp to replicate," Ming-Chi Kuo, a KGI Securities analyst, wrote in an "Apple Insight" note seen by Business Insider. Kuo now thinks Apple will ship 30 million to 35 million iPhone X units in 2017, down from his previous estimate of 40 million.

Other reports paint a bleaker picture, but the clear message is this. Apple’s wonder-phone is going to be in  short supply for the rest of 2017, and the chances are the situation won’t improve during the early months of 2018.

Apple Has Lost Its Design Edge

Apple’s legendary reputation for design is just that, argues Joshua Topolsky. A legend. The latest hardware and software releases have steadily been weakening Apple’s trump card of being masters of design. Topolsky suggests that the turning point was iOS 7, but the biggest visual sign of this loss of mojo is the sensor ‘notch’ in the iPhone X display:

It is bad design, and as a result, bad for the user experience. The justification for the notch (the new Face ID tech, which lets you unlock the device just by looking at it) could have easily been accomplished with no visual break in the display. Yet here is this awkward blind spot cradled by two blobs of actual screenspace.

It is, put plainly, a visually disgusting element. One which undermines the core premise of the iPhone X’s design (“all screen”), and offers a feature as an excuse which is really an answer in search of a question

More from Topolsky on this at The Outline.

The new iPhone X is displayed during an Apple special event at the Steve Jobs Theatre on the Apple Park campus (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Or Is The Notch Apple’s Arrogance?

The other angle to this view is that Apple has designed the notch the way that it wants, but the decision was made to put the branding and visual identity of the iPhone ahead of user interaction and a clean look to the handset’s interface. I argued this point earlier in the week:

Up until [the iPhone X], every iPhone had the circular home key and bezels in roughly similar proportions. That meant that a black outline of the bezels and a white circle under a white screen creates an iconic look. Marketing materials, website images, and in-app iconography could clearly identify that ‘this is an iPhone’.

With the move to ‘all screen’ smartphones and minimal bezels showing in the front-on profile, that iconography is lost in a sea of smartphones with the same design shape. From Samsung and Xiaomi, to Huawei and LG, and beyond, the smartphone is losing distinctiveness.

Not with the notch. Now the iPhone has something that makes it both ‘all screen’ and ‘all iPhone’. The notch is the identifier, and who cares how awkward and MacGyvered it looks.