I agree. I have the Samsung S10+ with 3 lenses, wide, normal and zoom. And I end up using the wide angle way more frequently than I thought I would. It's super handy.
I was hoping for USB-C and no camera bump on the back. Just make the phone 1mm thicker and add some extra battery. I guess that would be too much... We have to live with the "up to 4h" extra battery life that would probably translate in 1h of extra battery in the real world. It's just depressing.
The 11 Pro is 0.4mm thicker than the XS (and the X/XS were 0.6mm thicker than the 7). They're slowly getting there.
> We have to live with the "up to 4h" extra battery life that would probably translate in 1h of extra battery in the real world
Comparing the numbers to the stated numbers for the iPhone XS, "streaming video" has actually gone down by 3 hours. And they removed the "internet use" spec completely. You can now listen to music for 65 hours instead of 60 though.
Potentially controversial: how much more battery do you need? I have an iPhone 8 and it lasts for two solid days (48 hours) if I forget to charge it and one really heavy day if I do charge it.
I agree that a little extra thickness isn’t too bad (and on USB-C), but I’m pretty happy with my battery life. Do I just not use it as much as most people? I’m genuinely curious.
You don't need a 2 hour long presentation to give small spec bumps. The problem is that everyone now expects this whole yearly circus, and Apple puts on a show even though they only have very incremental improvements to show. It also doesn't help that most of the the cool software features were already announced at WWDC.
Better computational photography with added camera hardware, new immersive audio algorithms, on-CPU changes for optimized ML matrix computations, etc, are not "small spec bumps". If you think they are it's likely because companies like Apple are so incredible at delivering this kind of stuff that it seems routine.
Will have to try it out but it sounds very much like fluff
> on-CPU changes for optimized ML matrix computations
So faster matrix multiplies are a user-facing feature?
Other than the camera changes, there was no features an average user would be excited over. No new tech like face unlock, animojis, Samsung's audio focus, Pixel's Soli, or other real new features.
1. Spec bumps: These are mostly invisible to the consumer, it just gives them a phone that's slightly faster or lasts longer. Faster matrix multiply falls into this category.
2. Features: These are actual changes the user can see and interact with. I named a few examples, both on software (animoji/sound focus) and hardware (face unlock/soli) side.
This presentation had almost none of the latter, other than Dark Mode. I'm not sure why that statement is so hard to understand. None of the stuff you named were really features. No one goes to the store to buy the phone with the slightly faster cpu or better matrix multiplies.
> Now we're instead having a discussion about Android phones and Animojis?
Because you & apple during the presentation made is sound like computational photography in phones was something ground breaking and never before seen. Its been in the Pixel phone for years.
No one said it was new. They said it was big for Apple. Yes, Apple is always behind their competitors in many things, but that’s not why people buy Apple.
I'm never sure why everything always has to be about "X was slow to do Y, and now they're finally catching up to Z".
It is how it is, just let it be. If you prefer a certain brand then just go with that brand. Otherwise it's just a wasted effort to be trying to brag for one brand you don't even work for that they did something faster than another one.
Other than the 20% faster CPU, 4-5 additional hours of battery life, 2e6:1 contrast ratio, and 30% faster FaceID (which might be the difference between the phone seeming to immediately unlock and pausing briefly)?
If Intel or AMD announces a 20% faster chip it would be met with applause. Now imagine if they announced a 20% faster chip that also used 25% less energy. And it also takes great pictures with three different lenses, recognizes your face, has one of the best screens ever made, and so on. If that's not impressive, what would Apple have to do to be impressive?
Every one of those features appeared in Chinese & Korean Android phones 2-3 years ago. Neither are these "feats", nor are they unique to Apple. They're already behind the curve on these features.
The only commendable thing is scale, when Apple adds these features they reach 10X in unit sales per SKU compared to the competition.
what I find odd is Apple appears disconnected from their audience, this was not the first presentation where Tim or others seem to pause waiting for an expected cheer that was not to materialize.
I was hoping to get rid of the notch. I had an iPhone X, I'm typing this on a OnePlus 7. There's a few phones now that have no notches or holes in the screen.
An intern’s Unity project presented by a carnival barker who speaks to the audience like their average age is four years old is not a large step out of line of Konami’s expected behavior.
honestly, the XS/XR one was the same for me. I have an iPhone X and there was zero temptation to upgrade to XS/XR and a meh amount to the 11/11 Pro (11R/11S).
I think phone advancement cycles have hit a point where I'm kind of underwhelmed from everyone and that's fine. I just want Apple to come out with one using USB-C instead of Lightning (to match iPad Pro and MacBook Pro and being able to rid myself of my lightning cables), 5G (for future proofing), and maybe in-display fingerprint.
I could go for a model like that and my next upgrades will probably just be the batteries until it bites the dust.
Same. I bought a 7+ when my 6 died, and I hated every minute with that phone. My X is, IMO, the best iPhone I've ever owned, and have no real desire to upgrade. Usually I upgrade every 2 years, on the "S" cycle (the 6 was an aberration), as I cared more about performance than having the latest 'look' phone.
This is probably the first time I haven't felt the hankering at the 2 year mark.
This is me. I'm still rocking an iPhone 7 but use an iPhone X as my work phone. I think the iPhone 11 will get the upgrade for my personal device but I'll probably still with the X for work unless I notice a huge difference in camera quality.
Yep, I've got an iPhone X and feel like it's fine for another year. Although the battery life improvements are supposed to be notable? Personally the next big thing I'm waiting for is USB-C so iPhone 12 it is...
To each their own. The improvements in computational photography like automatically stitching a few pictures together for higher resolution and night mode are pretty incredible. And the improved dynamic range, resolution, and added wide angle lens are nice improvements.
I've updated every 2 years for the past 8 years or so -- even back then I never felt the need to upgrade the very next year, but by 2 years out I've always been pretty excited for the improvements. And this year that still holds, I'm excited to upgrade my iPhone X.
"Incredible" is a pretty big stretch. When you can calibrate the cameras yourself, the math isn't actually that difficult to work out. Also, there are plenty of us that use the phone in a "pro" sense as a mobile computing device, not as a photographer or film director.
If you type the say command into Terminal on a Mac and have it say "iPhone X" or "Mac OS X" it will pronounce it correctly (Ten instead of X). Doesn't relate much to the argument, other than being a neat easter egg.
They're changing the product positioning in the line so that the most popular model is now the "normal" one, and premium models are a step up from that. Honestly I like it better than giving the high end model the default branding with a worse model below it that most people will actually buy.
1.5 hour just to re-announce Arcade/TV+, and give a small spec bump to iPad, Apple Watch and iPhone. What a waste of time. The only real new feature the iPhone got was Night Mode which is an exact copy of the computational stuff Pixel does with Night Sight, from their description.
My company with low 5-digit users hosts an hour-long monthly webinar about product updates. The iPhone is one of the most popular consumer items in the world, I think it’s reasonable for Apple to spend 1.5 hours/year talking about what’s changing
I was hoping for Tile-like trackers. I wonder if they'll show up later this fall in a different event. Would make sense to put it close to the holiday shopping season. Still, would have liked to have seen them today...
Thats why no one talks about it cumulatively. By cumulative logic every new iPhone release is the most interesting ever by definition because its... cumulative.
I was able about to order an XS Max, so I'm pretty content with better camera/battery/charger, though I imagine if you were already semi-up-to-date there's not really a whole lot new for most users.
