It might be CES season, a show that Apple has famously ignored forever, but the company has a habit of staying in the news – even when it’s actively staying out of it. The latest reports suggest the iPhone Air 2 will receive a number of upgrades that could make the smartphone a hotter proposition when the sequel arrives, possibly in 2027.
A new report from The Elec suggests Apple could use a display innovation designed for the forthcoming iPhone Fold to boost the iPhone Air 2. According to the report, the iPhone Fold will use a Samsung OLED technology called CoE (Color Filter on Encapsulation) and could also deploy the technology in order to make the iPhone Air 2 display thinner a year later.
This technology works by removing the customary polariser from the OLED panel and applying the colour filter to a protective encapsulation layer. The end result could be a thinner display stack overall, while there’s less loss of brightness and less power consumed in the process. Win-win.
The slimmer display could lead to a slimmer iPhone Air 2, or it could create a little more room within the chassis to resolve another requested upgrade for a second-generation iPhone Air – a larger capacity battery that’s also more efficient.
The report calls the tech “advantageous for thin panel implementation,” and says Apple will decide later this year whether to choose COE for the iPhone Air 2.
The Elec’s report quotes an industry official as saying (translated from Korean): “Samsung Display can already digest the CoE process, but we are reviewing the expansion of Apple’s foldable product lineup after this year and complementary investments in preparation for the possibility of CoE application such as iPhone Air in 2027.”
According to the report, Samsung plans to debut the COE technology within this year’s Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Flip 8 phones.
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