Apple is testing more than 10 different prototypes of the iPhone 8

[MUSIC] What's shaking and baking? Brian Tong here and welcome to the Apple Byte for everything good and bad inside the world of Apple. Now if you guess I was in Hawaii last week, you're correct. But other people swore it was Haiti or Hitachi, the company in Japan or even Hungari with an I. Now let's get to the show. And for all of you waiting for EarPods to come out, we might actually see them before the end of the year after an email by a MacRumors reader asked Tim Cook about them. Now Cook responded with, "Sorry for the delay. We are finalizing them and I anticipate we will begin to ship them over the next few weeks." Now the email has been confirmed to originate from Apple's corporate servers. These emails can potentially be fake, but Apple did not respond to any of our follow-ups. Now, will they make it in time for the holiday season? Come on Apple! Airpods 2016, let's make iPhones great again. [MUSIC] There's also lots of iPhone hate stories flying around this week. A Wall Street Journal report jumps on board with other rumors that a curved [UNKNOWN] display iPhone could come as soon as next year. And let's be honest, it needs to be something special for it's tenth anniversary phone to bring back excitement. To a brand that's honestly lost some of its mojo. Now the report says the OLED model would come with a higher price tag because they're more expensive to produce. But Apple might not even decide to release the model because it's one of more than ten prototypes being considered. So then I saw all these clickbait headlines claiming, "The iPhone 8 has ten prototypes." See the casual audience AKA Facebook. David didn't know what to do with them so, when they hard that. But in other related news Apple is working on IQ iPhones like they do every year. All right Apple is also ask suppliers to increase their output of the over displaced in anticipation for next year model. Samsung will most likely be the primary OLED supplier in 2017. Other manufacturers just aren't able to provide the amount of inventory needed. But the hope is Sharp, LG Display and Japan Display will be able to help out in 2018. As it stands now, rumor reports still believe there will be three new iPhones next year, two LCD-based iPhones with the current 4.7 and 5.5 inch screen sizes. And a flagship [UNKNOWN] model with a screen size somewhere between 5.1 and 5.2 inches. And a flagship [UNKNOWN] model with a screen size somewhere between 5.1 and 5.2 inches. With all three models rumored to add wireless charging. And a rear glass backing. Okay, a recent Apple patent granted to them reveals the company has been actively looking at an iPhone with a full screen foldable display. The design would require a flexible metal support structure on the back of an OLED display that could be folded in half. to fit in your pocket. It's kind of a throwback to clam shells cellphones from the 90s. Shout out to the Motorola Razor or what NFL quarterback Andrew Lockwood call, his current cellphone. See that picture was take in August of 2016. Come on, Andrew That's a bad apple. [SOUND] Or we could have called that bad luck. [SOUND] Okay, examples of the patent even show the phone design folded to protect the screen or flipped around and folded the opposite way. To expose the screen completely. The patent was first filed for in July of 2014. I don't expect to see this design yet, but there really is some old-school charm for it. And if you're thirsty for more iPad news, a new report from Mac Otakara says the new rumored 10.9-inch iPad Will have the same footprint as the current 9.7 inch iPad with smaller vessels. The report also suggests, Apple will replace the physical home button and embed it directly onto the screen. And the new iPad might be the first product we see this rumoured text Even before the iPhone 8. It also says the new 10.9 inch model thickness will increase to 7.5 millimeters and the larger 12.9 iPad Pro will see an increase of three millimeters. Then the standard 7.9 inch iPad will still remain to serve education and enterprise markets OLED displays are still not expected for the Ipad lineup in 2017, and wont make it in there until 2018, but we're expecting this new lineup in the first half of next year. And, remember we told you last week that Apple was discontinuing its line of airport wireless routers, that's not expected to change, but Sometimes tiny can be cruel. Apple beat out all other vendors. You can see the breakdown here. And it was the only company to receive a five star Power Circle consumer rating, which places it amongst the best. Timing sucks, and you know what? That's just a sad apple. [LAUGH] And inarguably the best news this week, Netflix will now allow for you to download shows and movies from the service to view offline for no additional cost. So update the iOS and Android app and you can click on the Download icon that allows you to watch it without an internet connection. This doesn't apply to everything on Netflix right now. Really, it's most Netflix shows that are available, but plans are to continue to roll it out and it makes the service even better. All right, that's gonna do it for this week's show. You can email us at theapplebyte@cnet.com or tweet me @briantong. Thanks so much for watching. We'll catch you all next time for the byte of the apple. [MUSIC]