I'm not a great graphic artist, but I wondered what a future pair of AirPods might be like. I thought it would be neat if you could still listen to music when you leave your phone behind. Here are a few mock-up concepts of what I hope we see in the future:
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Concept mockups: AirPods Pro with always-on display case
- Thread starter hkeely
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Nice concept. You never know. I was reading a 20 year old thread here where the OP was toting a iTablet. 
Fair point, but I think the AirPods case will get some screen eventually, even if just to display battery life. Screen technology is becoming so cheap that at some point, why not include a display to provide basic information, and from there, features can grow year-after-year.
Alternatively, imagine that the phone becomes the case. Take the original iPod, for example. It was large enough in size that today's AirPods could have fit inside that iPod for charging/storage. If AirPods continue to get smaller for the ear, perhaps one day they'd fit inside of our iPhones.
Battery and/or chip tech will have to improve drastically.
I'm also one of those people that doesn't baby my AP cases. Scratches on my cases means nothing to me. I would hate to have to start worrying about a display on my case.
But, if Apple decided to bring back the iPod (even if the name is different). This concept would be amazing for a stand-alone player.
If I just need to throw something together on paper, I can also create the most amazing products in the world.This is amazing, I love your imagination!
I love it. I'd probably pay up to $1000 for something like this. I am sure Apple has prototypes of this somewhere. I think the case would need to be bigger to accommodate for a larger display, battery, and of course the other internal components. Hopefully a Taptic Engine makes it into the case.