Liquidmetal and Lazy Reporting

Posted by rapatel0 on May 24, 2012 01:26 pm 13

I was reading a couple of articles on around the internet talking about how the iPhone would sport liquid metal in its construction. These articles cited observations of how liquid metal is "super cool and futuristic" also it is transparent. Kinda useless information and the latter point has no supporting evidence, at least I couldn't find any.

After reading the Liquidmetal company website, liquid metal is basically an metal alloy that can be processed in the same way as thermoplastics. Thermoplastic processes operate by injecting a plastic into a mold at high temperatures. At high temperatures, the material behaves more like a pliable liquid thus allowing easy processing. By cooling the liquid the material hardens into its final shape. Liquidmetal allows you to do the same thing with a specific metal alloy.

The key benefits seem to be easy and flexible processing of diverse shapes. Moreover, the nature of the material facilitates greater tolerance to stress then bulk metal alloys, indicating that the Liquidmetal parts can be more durable.This point would likely present apple with two options: a more durable phone design overall, or a thinner design with the same durability. Given apple's tendencies, the latter case seems more likely. Secondly, it simplifies the unibody macbook design. Instead of beginning with a big chunk of metal and carving out the unibody panels, you can just injection mold the metal into the targeted shape.

This is just speculation, but given the nature of the articles (it is just a rumor after all), speculation is all that is possible. What annoys me is that no one (that I am aware of) bothered to do a little bit of digging. Seriously, all I did was google Liquidmetal, click the first link, and read the company website. Also, there is nothing indicating that the material is transparent. Lazy...

Also, I'm not blaming theVerge, I don't think they ran an article on it.