Following up on the crazy that was yesterday’s iPhone G4 (iPhone HD/iPhone 4G) hardware leaks, Daring Fireball looked into the glass-like backing of the device, and brings up an old Apple patent for fancy, futuristic ceramics:

Multiple sources familiar with the next iPhone have confirmed to me that the back is made out of some sort of fancy glass — and looks pretty much exactly like what’s pictured at Engadget. [...] reader Antoine Hebert emailed with this 2006 Apple patent, for high-durability ceramic enclosures. Glass-like appearance and feel but far stronger and more scratch resistant. And: radio transparent.

We know the current, hi-tech plastic back on the iPhone 3GS (and iPhone 3G before it) is so durable it will not blend, so will glass-like ceramics be equally tough? Tough enough to survive a fall?

Meanwhile, 9to5Mac points us to a Korea Times where Samsung seems to confirm Apple will be using their own system-on-a-chip (SoC) for the 4th generation iPhone, like it does with the Apple A4 for the iPad.

If that chip is as blazing fast as we hope it will be, maybe ceramics is a better choice for the backing anyway. What do you think?

“Will it Blend?” — harmless fun, senseless gadget murder, or… educational science experiment?

While the original iPhone 2G’s shiny metallic backing was powdered by the uber-chopper, the iPhone 3G’s plasticky backing, counter-intuitively, survived pretty much in one piece (one really thrashed piece, granted).

Macenstein claims their birdy pointed out “Apple never said it was plastic.”

However, Steve Jobs said just that during the WWDC 2008 Keynote (at roughly the 1:26:20 mark in the podcast version): “It’s got a full plastic back.”

Sure, that might have been a simplification (after all, it looks like plastic), and surviving a blend and being remarkably tough and (hopefully) scratch resistant does raise some questions. So what are the the answers? Macenstein’s source theorizes that:

About 2 years ago apple had a patent for an indestructible ceramic housing for handheld devices that block no wireless frequencies.” That patent is patent #20060268528, and describes a zirconia/Yttrium hybrid that may have an additional silicon coating applied “on the exterior surface to prevent cracking and protect the ceramic shell from undesirable forces as for example when the ceramic shell is dropped.”

Either way, Apple VP of Design, Jonathan Ive is known for prototyping like a madman, and really revolutionizing materials (titanium Powerbooks and dual-injected iPods anyone?), so whether its a plastic-based hybrid or not, there’s probably a little magic in there somewhere.

(Just nothing fingerprint resistant… yet.)