Chances are you’ve never heard of the Taiwanese company “Catcher Technologies”, but that doesn’t mean they’re not important. They’re one of the firms that produces the metal bodies for Apple’s products, specifically the iPad. According to a fresh rumor from the Japanese publication EMSOnes, it appears that Catcher will begin shipping metal bodies to Samsung this month for their next flagship phone, the Galaxy S5.
How credible is this rumor? People have been complaining about Samsung’s choice of materials since dinosaurs roamed the earth, and for good reason too. No one likes spending $600 or more on a smartphone to have it built out of the same plastic you’d find in a McDonald’s Happy Meal. A metal phone would obviously silence the critics, but can Catcher satiate Samsung’s demands?
You have to remember that the reason Samsung goes with plastic is that they simply don’t have the equipment necessary to produce tens of millions of devices made out of something more exotic. It’s very possible that Samsung went to Catcher with a suitcase full of gold bricks and told them that they want in on the milling machines needed to make high quality enclosures.
When will we actually know if this rumor is true or not? Well, that’s tricky. The latest GS5 rumors seem to suggest that the phone will hit the market by the end of Q1 2014. If true, then that’s just four months away, which isn’t very long.
Watch this space.