With so many leaked iPhone parts floating around these days, it was inevitable that we’d eventually see an assembled pre-production iPhone 5 built out of repair parts. Case in point – the photo above which leaked to the web just last week.
What’s more, we even have this video which purports to show the iPhone 5 housing.
With so much information about the iPhone 5 in tow, industrial designer Don Lehman took a look at a few of the leaked photos and discussed the benefits Apple will attain from what appears to be a unibody iPhone 5 body.
The same properties that unibody designs give to Apple’s laptops apply to this design as well: stronger, lighter, and thinner. You can see from this picture the tool path of the CNC machine that made the unibody backplate of this design. The tool path sort of looks like the lines that are made when a farmer plows a field. This started out as a single block of metal and the CNC carved that metal out until you have what you see here.
You can also see the bosses (screw attachment points) that are part of this unibody backplate. Those aren’t separate pieces — those are part of that same unibody piece. They are the most important detail of this design. Having those bosses integrated into the material allows for the part to be stronger, thinner, and lighter. It condenses several parts into one better part.
Check out much more of his analysis over here at The TechBlock
Tue, Aug 14, 2012
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