14 DAY TRIAL // Speculation that reached the web earlier this month indicated that Apple’s anniversary iPhone X could be a short-lived model, as the company allegedly planned to kill it off as soon as this year.
But a report from Korean-based newspaper The Investor suggests this is not the case, as Apple wants to keep the iPhone X around until at least 2019.
Contrary to most of the reports so far, the cited source says that Apple isn’t going to launch three new iPhone models this year, but only two of them, both of which will be sold alongside the iPhone X. This means the 2018 iPhone lineup will indeed include three different models, as the other rumors suggested, but only three of them would be new.
Two new iPhone models coming this year
As far as the new iPhone versions go, if this new tidbit is accurate then Apple is working on two models with 5.85- and 6.46-inch displays. While the latter does make sense because it could be the Plus-sized version of the iPhone X, not the same thing can be said about the first, whose screen size is pretty close to the iPhone X and would barely bring a noticeable difference in terms of usability.
Previously, it was believed that Apple’s refreshed lineup would include three models with displays of 5.8 inches (a successor to the iPhone X), 6.1 inches (a more affordable model with LCD screen), and 6.4 or 6.5 inches (the Plus sibling of the iPhone X).
The same report indicates that Apple is also looking at other suppliers for the 2018 lineup of iPhones, and the battery of the upcoming models would be produced by LG Chem. The L-shaped unit that’s being used on the iPhone X will be retained.
It remains to be seen how much of this new report is true, but for the time being, it seems it’s way too early to think of the iPhone X as a retired product. Apple typically keeps previous-generation iPhone models around for several years, making them available at discounted prices once upgraded hardware is unveiled.