Apple iPhone 7s with 5.8-inch AMOLED display and wireless charging planned for 2017

News has it that Apple has planned a new iPhone model for 2017. The upcoming high-end smartphone slated to launch next year (and likely to be called iPhone 7s and 7s Plus) may come with a 5.8-inch AMOLED display with curved glass case instead of the aluminum seen in the model, so far.

According to an investor note obtained by Apple Insider, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, known for accurate predictions about upcoming Apple products, said that the new device will feature a design similar to iPhone 4/4s ‘glass sandwich’ but with curved panels on front/back and not flat slabs.

According to the report, Kuo also predicts the company will be using some exotic materials that will differentiate the iPhone from its competitors. As aforesaid, Kuo believes Apple could opt for glass for the new case design as the material is easy to mold and is thin and light. Plastic and ceramic could be some other options.

In terms of features, Apple’s next-generation iPhone is also likely to feature wireless charging along with a new biometric recognition technology such as face and iris scanning. It should be noted that the company recently acquired Emotient, a facial recognition specialist and also Faceshift, a real-time 3D rendering company.

Earlier this month, there was another report that pointed out at Apple’s plans of launching an iPhone with 5.8-inch OLED display sometime in 2017-2018. The report also added that the company is planning to release two variants of its large-screen iPhone 7 Plus this year out of which, one will be with a single-lens camera and one with a dual-lens camera. The dual-lens variant has been rumoured to be marketed as the iPhone Pro respectively.

Rumours for new iPhone with a 5.8-inch Samsung made display emerges again

We recently heard that next year Apple will launch a new size variant of the iPhone which could measure at 5-inches. Now we are hearing that a new larger variant might also be introduced.

The new variant is rumoured to feature a 5.8-inch Super AMOLED display which will be made Samsung. Now this isn’t new as we have heard about a similar rumour dropping in March, even before the iPhone 7 was launched. As reported by DigiTimes, Samsung Display will exclusively manufacture displays for the more premium variant. Initially it will be produced in small quantities starting March and production will be increased post May-June.

If the report is true, it would make it the fourth variant planned for 2017.  This rumours matches to a previous report that suggested 2017 will see four new iPhones coming from Apple. However, it could also be one of the many testing units planned for the iPhone 8.

It is too early to say if Apple will announce new size variants as the iPhone 7 was just launched a few months back. While we are expecting the iPhone 7s and 7s Plus next year, there is a possibility that Apple will jump to ‘8’ or even launch both at a different timeframe in the same year.

Smart Meters, Dumb Backlash

Smart meters can save energy and money and prevent blackouts. So why did the residents of Bakersfield, California hate them so much?

As Barack Obama signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill in February of 2009, he promised it would “place smart meters in homes to make our energy bills lower, make outages less likely, and make it easier to use clean energy.”

Sounds great, right? But in Bakersfield, California, one of the first American cities to get smart meters on a large scale, many residents hated them. Pacific Gas and Electric, California’s largest utility company, was sure its smart meters would be a hit. Instead, it faced an unexpected consumer backlash and a public-relations nightmare.

First, the basics: A smart meter is just a higher-tech version of your current home-electricity meter. What makes it “smart” is that it can measure a house’s energy use in real time (or near real time) and report back to the utility company remotely.

Because they can send information back to the utility company, smart meters make meter-reading trips to customers’ homes unnecessary. That saves utility companies money. But the big benefit of smart meters is “dynamic pricing.” By providing utility companies with near real-time information about how much energy people in a given area are using, smart meters allow them to set the price for electricity according to the current demand.

That means that the price of electricity might be higher in the middle of a hot summer afternoon, when lots of people are using air conditioners, and lower during a temperate spring night, when most appliances are off. With dynamic pricing, consumers know when to conserve, the utility company knows how much electricity to provide at any given time, and outages are much less likely because the variable price keeps supply and demand in balance.

After California’s energy crisis of 2000 and 2001, the promise that dynamic pricing could prevent blackouts was especially attractive. As Governor Gray Davis said at the time, raising prices during periods of peak demand would have “solved this problem in twenty minutes.”

From 2003 to 2005, California ran a pilot study with 2,500 customers, to make sure people actually responded to dynamic prices. The results were dramatic. With dynamic pricing, people dropped their peak demand by 13 percent. So in 2006, PG&E started handing out smart meters in Bakersfield, a fast-growing oil and agricultural city in the hot Central Valley. For two years, the rollout in Bakersfield went smoothly enough. Then, suddenly, late in the summer of 2009, customers started complaining. Their bills had spiked considerably, they said, and many were suspicious that the new smart meters might be at fault. This was surprising: The initial rollout didn’t involve dynamic pricing; it was just laying the groundwork by getting the smart meters into people’s homes.

Gates Spearheads $1B Clean Tech Effort

One year after a powerhouse group of technology executives and venture capital icons met to form the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, the group, led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, has launched a US$1 billion investment fund to support clean energy startups around the world.

The Breakthrough Energy Fund, chaired by Gates, is designed to jumpstart an entire new generation of entrepreneurs developing radical new approaches to providing reliable and low-cost energy, with zero carbon emissions as the end goal.

Institutional partners, including the University of California, will help generate research ideas. Strategic partners, including Southern Co. and others, will help the group with regulatory issues, and figure out which companies have the most promise.

In addition to Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition's board members include John Arnold, co-chair of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation; John Doerr, chair of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers; and Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures.

Star Power

Other leading members include Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba Group; Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries; Hasso Plattner, cofounder of SAP; Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon; and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn.

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently joined the investor group, bringing the membership to 21, Gates said.

"Breakthrough technologies ... have the potential to be one of the best investment opportunities of the 21st century," Doerr said earlier this week, in a conference call with reporters.

The fund will invest in a wide variety of companies -- storage, transportation, agricultural, electrical generation and industrial, among others. The fund will offer a range of financing, from seed capital to early stage investment and capitalization.

The fund will take advantage of a lot of lessons learned about financing clean energy companies, and apply those lessons to the new venture, Doerr said.

The fund will emphasize taking a "long, patient view" toward investment, in order to give companies enough time to properly develop, Khosla said during the conference call.

The fund will be able to handle seven-, eight- and nine-figure investments, Arnold added, and it will focus on revolutionary versus evolutionary investments -- that is, those designed to push aggressively toward significant emission reductions.

"While there might be long-term business gains, I personally believe that this is part of [Gates'] philanthropic work to improve overall human conditions, particularly for the next generation," observed Farah Saeed, principal consultant at Frost & Sullivan.

"Also, there is the attraction of using technology to resolve existing issues around improving affordability and vast availability of clean energy," she told TechNewsWorld.

DoE Support

U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz hailed the launch of the new fund as a breakthrough that will help push the U.S. into greater standing in the clean energy field, and he warned against the dangers of rolling back this progress.

"Because of the United States' longstanding commitment to technology innovation, we have a head start on developing next generation clean-energy technologies," Moniz said. "However, if the United States chooses to back away from a redoubled commitment to innovation, it will be American entrepreneurs, manufacturers and workers who will be put at competitive disadvantage in developing breakthrough technologies and creating jobs.