When your wife is out and you’re home alone, most of us, given the first chance, will raid the kitchen, stock up on snacks, and glue ourselves to the TV: lost in an FPS battle of relentless shooting and strategic hiding. A handful of others might call friends for an impromptu beer party. But for a creator, curiosity is the driving force. A free mind nurtures that curiosity, and for a designer – wife away – sparks ideation; just like in the one who envisioned the latest iPhone design.
This iPhone design is not so much about predicting the next Apple move and graphically displaying the ideation. It’s a random thought about what the prized iPhone could be in its bare state – without the cover – if it were not slimy and protruding in places.
Designer: Braz de Pina
Conceived and rendered by Brazilian designer Braz de Pina, who is essentially a Principal Designer at Microsoft, the iPhone Ultra–Vision, as he calls it – is a tantalizing concept that replaces the traditional square camera bump and gives the iPhone a nice grip to hold and use without a rubbery cover. The thought of creating an iPhone that can be used without the case came randomly to the designer one day, he says “I was sitting on my couch … thinking about my phone and its rubbery blue cover. I pondered … why do we buy a beautiful product only to cover it up?”
We all buy the iPhone – besides our loyalty to the Apple ecosystem – for its thin profile, exemplary design, and holistic smartphone experience. But this experience is concealed behind a silicone cover for most of its lifetime in our hands. Addressing this, may be made up – but I think a considerable -challenge, Braz de Pina’s iPhone Ultra has a durable rubber frame. It skips past the idea of thinness and thickens the body so that the camera array at the back can be aligned against the phone surface to eliminate the protruding bump at the back.
While some Android phone OEMs have tested and gone past the idea of a retractable selfie camera, iPhone Ultra thinks it’s an idea worth 2025. The retractable front camera – from images – seems pretty straightforward, but in 2025, maybe if it swivels 360 degrees, some company – if not Apple – may just take the cue. Anyway, the 3D renders describe the concept better than the words can; so, I leave you to check out the images of what a Microsoft designer thinks iPhone could be!
The post iPhone Ultra concept visualizes Apple’s smartphone in rubber body with straight camera array first appeared on Yanko Design.