Recent comments from super-reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and others have focused on the colors expected for the next iPhones.
A gold version of the models expected to take over from the current iPhone X is not a surprise as we’ve already seen indications that Apple wanted to do that already when the FCC appeared to leak details of prototypes.
But it’s the suggestion that the lower-priced iPhone with LCD screen might come in multiple colors that has caught the imagination. Kuo has hinted at five colors: gray, white, blue, red and orange.
First of all, it is unthinkable that there won’t be a black, or as Apple calls it, Space Gray, version of a new iPhone. It is the color that has been with us since day one in June 2007. So that’s what I think Kuo is referring to when he says gray. Second, white is likely to be an extension of the current silver finish that is current on the iPhone 8 and iPhone X (though it’s definitely not the same color on both of those current models). Or maybe this will be the moment Apple reverts to white instead of silver – not seen since the iPhone 5c and iPhone 4s.
So that leaves us with blue, red and orange, a range that is the most colorful since the iPhone 5c and the first time so many colors have been available in a glass finish, assuming that’s what the new iPhones have.
Here’s the thing with colors: they’re tricky to get right. HTC and Nokia have both been great at tinting their handsets with appealing hues but many more companies have not. You need someone with good taste, great taste even, arbitrating over what works and what doesn’t.
Fortunately, Apple has Jony Ive and a team of color-sensitive designers around him who have exquisite taste. Look no further than the consistently attractive colors on Apple Watch bands.
And it’s here that I think we can look for the inspiration that will lead to blue, red and – for me the most exciting – orange finishes.
Back in the days of the iPhone 5c, there were also five hues, white, blue, green, coral pink and yellow. When Christopher Bailey was Chief Creative Officer at Burberry, he told me that he’d choose the yellow iPhone 5c, “because it makes you smile”.
Color, then, is an intensely personal choice and one to which we have an emotional reaction.
My iPhone 5c was green, with that slightly acidic, eye-popping lime flavor to it. That’s what I think the orange will be like, a citrus finish with an acidic edge that will tickle your retina. Not just Retina display, Retina-tingling.
And there’s another clue, again from the current range of Watch bands. Mine is called lemonade and is gorgeous. It has the same pastel-but-unmissable citrus edge to it and we know it’s one that Jony Ive likes as he’s wearing it in a recent photo when he gave a long interview to online watch magazine, Hodinkee.
There it is, gleaming on his wrist with the white ceramic Apple Watch Series 3 (and the interview is a great read, by the way).
If you’d asked me, or absolutely anyone, come to that, what colors the next iPhone would come in, the answer would never have been orange. Which is part of Ive’s gift, to outpace fashion.
Now, though, I can’t wait.
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