Great joy at the company ASE in Taiwan: According to a media report, the supplier is said to have received a major order from Apple to produce solid-state buttons. These are intended to replace the previously mechanical buttons in future iPhones. This was already expected for the iPhone 15 last year, but was then rumored to have been postponed due to production problems.
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The iPhone 16 could already come with hard buttons on both sides of the device, reports the Economic Daily News citing sources in the supply chain. Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) will deliver system-in-a-package modules for this purpose. In order to simulate the feeling of real keys, the integration of two additional taptic engines is planned.
Advantages of solid-state buttons
Solid-state buttons have several advantages over mechanical buttons. They are considered to be more durable because they have no moving parts and are more reliable because, for example, they B. are protected from contamination and require less space in the device. They should also reduce energy consumption and also function silently when necessary.
Apple has plans to integrate the volume buttons, the power button, the action button and the supposedly planned new record button into the device as hard buttons. For ASE, this is a huge order that requires a lot of new machines and storage capacity. ASE is headquartered in Taiwan and has facilities in China and other Asian countries. There is also a branch in the USA, in California. The company has been working with Apple for years and has supplied parts for mobile phone antennas and WLAN components, for example.
Already in the iPhone 16?
However, there are also skeptical voices as to whether the alleged major order will already be reflected in the iPhone 16 or whether the changes will only be made in a later model.
(mki)