Even though the 2019 iPhone models have yet to be officially announced, the rumor mill is buzzing with details as to what to expect from the 2020 iPhones.
Granted, these are to be taken with a hefty grain of salt, but there’s some interesting speculation to be had at present.
As of now, the cool cats at Digitimes claim that Apple plans to use VCSEL time-of-flight (ToF) sensors on the rear camera of the 2020 iPhone.
VCSEL stands for Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser. This functions a type of semiconductor that emits a low-power laser (usually infrared) that is used in a lot of consumer devices today for simple range-finding. The general notion is that this will assist in augmented reality, Apple would use a more complex chip that fires a big grid of lasers, then measures the time-of-flight for that light to determine distance. Effectively, this would produce a low-res “image” where each pixel has depth info rather than color.
In short, this would allow the device to receive a much more accurate 3D representation of the scene in front of the camera, which could help with both computation photography as well as augmented reality.
According to generally-very-accurate analyst Ming-Ching Kuo, Apple will stick with the three-model lineup it introduced with the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR in 2018, but will switch to 5.4-, 6.1-, and 6.7-inch OLED screens.
Finally, and as expected, Apple is thought to be adding 5G modems to the 2020 iPhone. Kuo stated that the faster connectivity will be limited to the XS and XS Max, with the XR retaining LTE 4G for at least a year. He also notes that Apple is working on its own 5G modem, which the company hopes will be ready by 2022 or 2023.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.