this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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At this point I’m trying to figure out what people want from yearly releases. iPhones are pretty much already packed with every feature imaginable. There’s not much more to add without completely transforming the device into something it isn’t.
I really liked the times when features were added and not killed off.
10 years ago you could purchase a flagship phone with IR blaster for controlling whatever you couldn't find a remote for, or trolling people in public spaces by turning off their TVs. Cloud storage wasn't as popular, but if your phone died, the images were safe on the micrSD card. Bluetooth headsets were a thing, but you could always just use a cheap pair of headphones to stick in the headphone jack. People who desired it could install a custom ROM with all kinds of optimizations and less bloat. It used to be a lot more popular back then. Other than cameras, battery life, and reversible and more robust USB-C connectors, there isn't much innovation. I used to feel like I owned my device much more back then. Now I only use the stock ROM, can either use wireless headphones or ones that use the charging port. I can't insert a microSD, or test new features for Android ported from other devices by someone on XDA Developers. I'm not using the phone the way I want, but the way the companies who made it decided on.
The base model of the iPhone still doesn't have USB 3 and won't have the latest USB-PD. The USB 2 standard was released over 20 years ago. The Lightning plug was released over 10 years ago. The plug technology on iPhones is seemingly being kept out of date on purpose. At least that is what people are complaining about.
They repinned the current chipset from the current iPhone 14 to use USB-C, which is why the base model won’t be USB3. They’ve done this with every model, the previous pro becomes the base model chipset next gen.
Next year the base model will likely have USB3. And lightning worked for 99% of Apple users. The 1% complained a lot, but the majority of iPhone users no longer plug in their phone to anything but the wall.
Honestly, with wireless charging, I rarely even plug it into the wall anymore. The only time I really use the Lightning connector is when I'm out for extended periods of time and need to plug into a power bank.
Same here. I have a MagSafe charger stand on my desk and it’s pretty much the only place I charge now. There’s been a few times I’ve tried to transfer files, but iTunes was such a PoS on Windows that I gave up
Apple users really just didn't notice the limitations. Whether you consider that "working" is up to you.
Apple users are used to their phones taking ninety minutes to charge and not lasting the whole day. They consider that "normal" and are unlikely to consider that for Android devices, even cheap ones, sub-1 hour fast charging and all-day battery life are standard, not exceptions.
Apple's (previously) bundled charger is a measly 5 W whereas my cheap $150 OnePlus comes with a 33 W charger, delivering over six times as much power. Granted, Apple devices tend to be more power-efficient than others, but not six times less.
I use my iPhone extensively and it consistently lasts me all day. The iPhone 11 Pro came with a 20w charger in the box (although admittedly they removed the power adapter from the 12)
The context of my original comment is the base iPhone model. Nonetheless, it's still to be noted that the default charger that came with your iPhone 11 (18 W, not 20 W) still delivers 45% less power than the default 33 W charger that came with my OnePlus Nord N20 5G.
From what I can read online, it takes one hour to go from 0 to 80% on an iPhone 11 Pro using the default charger. It takes my phone a bit over half an hour.
Remember, I am comparing an iPhone with an MSRP of $999 to a phone that I bought for $150. Refurbished iPhone 11 Pros still sell for $300.
I believe that my point that iPhones have comparatively poor chargers for their price point stands. Charging technology has not changed significantly from then to now. The effect of Apple's recalcitrance is that even the cheapest Android phones can run circles around iPhones when it comes to charging. I hope Apple with take this opportunity to deliver a better product for their users rather than making only incremental improvements to old technology.
My $200 Motorola came with a 68w charger which is quite frankly ludicrous for a phone, and I prefer to use the slow charger so I don't heat and damage my battery unless I'm in a hurry (and my phone always lasts a whole day of heavy use so I'm almost never in a hurry to charge)
Where did you get the idea that Android phones have longer battery life? iPhones usually do very good in battery life comparisons. Usually you have to go ~20% larger battery on an android device to get the same battery life as an iphone. Of course if you look at just the top charts you get a number of large Android phones with like 7000mAh batteries, which are by far not the norm.
For example by my quick sample of three reviews your one plus nord seems to roughly match iPhone13 battery life but lose to iPhone 14.
I'd say this is actually one reason people buy iPhones. With Apple they can trust that power usage has been implemented well. With Android phones some of them have good battery life and some don't. Even within one brand.
Again, I want to remind you that a $1,000 phone winning against a $150 phone is not a victory at all. The iPhone should have absolutely kerb-stomped mine. The fact that it is even competitive is the point I am trying to make.
You can visualise a sort of bell curve of battery life. My phone is probably somewhere around the 30-40th percentile (and note that a 90th percentile phone is not 2× better, it's probably only 50% better). A bit worse than average but not terrible. It's a cheap phone, after all.
But the issue is that (new) Apple phones I presume are placing consistently around the 60th percentile, which is good and better than average. The issue is that you're paying 80th-percentile prices for 60th-percentile performance. That is the point I'm trying to make. It's relative performance to price, not absolute performance. These numbers are made up but illustrate the point I'm trying to make.
If the iPhone were priced at $400-500, it'd be an excellent value and I would recommend it to a lot more people. That's what I feel a comparable Android would cost. Maybe it could go up to $550 since Apple products do have better build quality and the Apple ecosystem, but at $700 for the latest base model iPhone 14, I think it's just not delivering the value for money compared to Android phones. Of course, that's my opinion. I make decisions based on hardware. Others may make decisions based on the fact that they like the iOS experience and the ecosystem it provides, or even because they just like using Apple products. And yes, the fact that Apple products are of consistently above-average quality does count for something.
I'm not attacking you if you own an iPhone and like it, and I don't judge you for it. I will criticise Apple though, because I feel that Apple is short-changing their customers on the technical side by providing mediocre hardware for not-mediocre prices.
Battery life has nothing to do with the price of the phone because battery size is limited by physical size not price. The cheapest phones actually tend to do well in comparisons.
Apple could fix this by making the phone a few millimetres thicker but I think we both know why they don't
I agree. We don't really need anything else from a pocket computer. Just keep improving what we have. Nothing wrong with that at all. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head and making them buy the new version every year.
Someone else pointed out that for more and more people their phones are replacing a desktop/laptop, and that makes a lot of sense as to why people keep wanting more from them.
A growing population whose interaction with technology is entirely and solely through their thumb (or occasionally both thumbs) is such a sad reality, and voice interaction is nowhere near ready to replace traditional computer interfaces (aka keyboard/mouse).
What more do they need?
Good luck doing any kind of actual productive work on a phone.
Its just a device for chewing through content as fast as your fingers can scroll.
Not everyone needs to use a dedicated desktop/laptop at home. You might do whatever you need to do quicker on a desktop or laptop but if you aren't working that may not be an issue. I know several people who fit this description.
There’s very little I do in my day to day life that can’t be handled on my phone. If I didn’t game I’d probably have a seldomly used laptop.
Online banking, ordering basically anything, paying bills, paying rent, etc can all be done on mobile now. Systems are now built with mobile as a first class use case because people do so much on their phones. Just because you don’t do it doesn’t mean others can’t.
Yes. But real work I said. You didn't read my first paragraph.
Try working with a spreadsheet on a phone. OK?
The second paragraph you have a point. It very useful. However, you won't spend hours with your bankapp or your uber food app. Most of the time its an endless scroller tool. Am I right?
It has nothing to do with features and performance, most people don't use those anyway. You really don't need 8-core CPU on your phone but it's 2 more than 6 and me having 8 and you having 6 has everything to do with that. People love status symbols and pointing them out to others, as if that makes them better by comparison or something.
No matter what others say, you really don't feel limitations of your device. Sure screen might feel a bit faster, animations might feel more fluid. None of those a crucial to device operation and use and certainly not worth paying premium price for newest iteration that has all those marginally improved. It's just consumerism at work.
Case in point, pretty much every MacBook Pro has a TPM chip on it (trusted platform module). Guess how many people used it or has it configured to supply entropy to their systems to increase security. ThinkPads also have those, but most other laptops don't. Even most developers don't know what those are. They are great addition and extra feature for business users... but for the most part it's just another thing on the spec sheet that people pay for but never use.
As for the every imaginable feature... it seems they are being removed rather than added. I found 3.5mm jack useful. I wish we still had qwerty keyboards on our big screen devices as most used feature of phones these days is typing. I wish we had expansion slots and memory cards. I wish we had replaceable batteries so you don't have to depend on finding an outlet on long trips. I wish we had sapphire screens so you don't have to worry about scratching your screen. I wish we had smaller devices because some people just need a phone and not a tablet or they have smaller hands. But naaah... removing those is considered brave.
Better local AI capability. It's definitely something they are working with, introducing new accelerator features with new processors. Currently most of the actually great AI tools still require you to offload the workload to a server somewhere. And some stuff is not worth doing in a mobile device before it can be done at a fraction of the power.
For the basic hardware features, mainly the camera and image processing tools are actually relevant. Almost all non professional photography in the world is now done with phones and there is still a lot to do to improve the miniature cameras.
Some of the greatest new features from the past few years are things people don't even realize weren't always there. Like for example my phone opens up when I pick it up and look at it. And locks when I put it down. This makes usage so much more fluid and is something that did not happen just ten years ago. This kind of UI optimizations are way more important than some numbers in spec sheet. And the local AI processing I mentioned is a key in enabling more situations where the phone understands what you want without you explicitly pressing buttons.
A Siri that doesn't feel like it's ~13.5 years old would be nice, especially with the advancements in LLMs. I use Siri daily (timers, alarms, weather check while in bed, etc.) but it feels SO ancient. Can't even ask it follow-up questions.
Lol wot? "Every feature imaginable" 🤣🤣🤣 did I read this right?!
They just haven't yet "imagined" the many new features we have received in the last few years from non-Apple phones. Don't worry, once Apple "imagines" it, they will acknowledge the only logical truth they could conceive. That Steve Jobs' consciousness uploaded to an iMac has graced them with innovation once again.