This is NOT What the iPhone 6 Will Look Like

Concept art is by its very nature one person's imagining of what a product may look like when (or if) it is ever released.

While some companies go as far as producing their own concept images of what future products may look like - predominantly car manufacturers - in the consumer electronics industry we rarely, if ever, see major companies shown their hand so obviously.

This is for a very good reason. The development of consumer electronics such as tablets and smartphones is now happening at such a rapid pace that the release of any concept art is likely to tip off your competitors to what you are working on now.

iPhone 6 Air and iPhone 6c

Therefore it is left to artists and designers to come up with what they think the next iteration of popular products will look like, and while some are good, most are widely speculative and will never see the light of day.

Like most things in consumer tech, Apple is the company which concept artists focus most of their attention on, and the latest product to be imagined is the iPhone 6 - or more accurately the iPhone 6 Air and the iPhone 6c.

Now I have no problem with someone trying to imagine what a product might look like, but if you are going to do it, there are two ways of going about it.

Either do your research and try to get the design as close as possible to what will be released, or go nuts, and create something so off the wall that it will be immediately recognisable as pure imagination.

The problem arises when a piece of concept art falls between two stools - as is the case with the latest output from Eric Vasille of iPhonesoft.

Wacky

Vasille has produced beautiful looking images of his idea of what an iPhone 6 might look like, but almost every detail is likely to be wrong, and is no where near wacky enough to be that interesting.

Vasille's concept is for an iPhone 6 Air, following on from the Macbook Air and last year's iPad Air. The iPhone 6 Air will be just 6mm thin and feature a modest screen size increase to 4.5in.

Apple is reportedly testing screen sizes ranging from 4.7in up to 5.5in and with most flagship Android devices coming in around the 5in mark, most people expect Apple's next iPhone will be closer to 5in than 4.5in.

Screen ratio

The designer has also imagined Apple removing almost all the bezels at the size of the screen, creating an edge-to-edge display. While it might look nice, this would likely change the screen ratio, making it much more difficult for developers to support their apps, something Apple has so far been very keen to avoid.

The biggest problem I have with Eric's design choices may sound petty, but the inclusion of an SD card slot is just about the last thing anyone expects to see on a new iPhone.

Apple has never included expandable storage on any of its smartphones or tablets and there is no reason to suspect this is going to change any time soon.

At 6mm thick, the iPhone 6 would also be ludicrously thin, and while there are some phones out there under 6mm, these are mostly from unknown Chinese manufacturers looking to grab the "thinnest phone in the world" title.

Despite this slim profile, Vasille is expecting Apple to cram an all-new 20 megapixel sensor, dual LED flash and image stabilisation mechanism into the iPhone 6.

Gone for gold

It would have been better had the designer just gone for gold and created a sliver-thin sheet of glass which contains everything needed for the phone to operate - at least then we would have known it was pure imagination.

Vasille also has a stab at the iPhone 6c, an update to the plastic iPhone 5c launch last year, which is essentially the same as the iPhone 6 Air but with a blue plastic coating.

Concept art is always intriguing, whether speculative or right-on-the-money, but designs like this which show a lack of imagination/research are just disappointing.

If you want a better approximation of what the iPhone 6 could look like, the always-impressive Italian studio ADR has some interesting thoughts.