Apple seems to be doing its best to catch up to the rest of the smartphone world in terms of accessories. With the new iPhone 8 and upcoming iPhone X (pronounced “ten,” mind you), we’re seeing Apple finally join the wireless charging party. This is a huge deal for promotional products companies who create charging mats, since they don’t have to work around Apple’s proprietary Lightning cable.
Since we just got our annual fix of iPhones, it’s a little premature to start looking into future models already. But, that’s just what people do in the consumer tech game, isn’t it? The big rumor here is that Apple is going to appeal to accessory makers in another way—by incorporating stylus technology on iPhones by 2019.
WCCF Tech writes:
This new rumor comes from The Investor and it details that Apple is mulling the idea of an Apple Pencil that is strictly designed for the 2019 iPhone, meaning that the stylus could be a lot smaller and thinner than the accessory that is used with the iPad Pro series. It states that this pen accessory is expected to adopt a supercapacitor stylus type, which will result in cost benefits.
Steve Jobs was vocally against using styluses on his iPhone products, saying instead that humans were born with 10 perfectly good ones (20 if you’re really talented—my words, not his.).
But, after Tim Cook took the helm following Jobs’s death, Apple has been more flexible and open to meeting consumers in the middle. After all, this is something companies like Samsung have been doing for years now.
It’s too soon to know whether Apple will make their Apple Pencil technology completely proprietary, meaning iPhone users won’t be able to use third-party stylus products on their phones. But, the move to wireless charging via third-party accessories that we saw just last month is a good sign.
