The 13 Pro had ProMotion, 14 Pro had Dynamic Island and Always On display, the 15 Pro had USB-C and the Action Button, the 16 Pro...has maybe slightly faster AI? 4k120fps video? USB-C w/ USB 3? Not things most people would care about.
ProMotion/Always On is still limited to the Pro models which is enough to justfy the upcharge, but it's a surprise they aren't locking a new feature this time.
For me 60Hz on the base model is now a deal breaker. Even our daughter's 300 Euro A54 has a 120Hz screen (though not LTPO). Once you are used to 120Hz on a touch device, it's hard to go back (different on a relatively static computer screen, where I prefer having the high DPI of 5k 27"). So, it's iPhone Pro models until the base model gets >60Hz too.
I’ve actually come to the conclusion that a laggier worse phone display is a feature, not a bug. Quicker response times = more addictive with little to no upside in productivity.
That’s not wrong, look at America, very tasty food and very unhealthy people. In Switzerland the food is no where near as tasty and the people are healthier and in better shape.
I don’t know what Switzerland you are talking about, only 12% of the population is considered obese so I don’t see how over half the men here are obese.
America doesn't have a monopoly on particularly good food.. We have a lot of junk and fast food and cities that are only usable by car which I think are the real issues.
I understand 60 Hz being “a deal breaker” for gaming and VR applications, but on a battery-constrained mobile phone that I carry everywhere? No thanks. I’d rather have more battery life or less weight in my pocket. 60 Hz is more than adequate.
Isn't the difference minimal, particularly with LTPO that can go down to 1hz? Of course this is assuming you aren't gaming at 120hz but rather doing more casual tasks.
Surely that's a joke, what special need could possibly call for requiring more than 60fps (calling it a dealbreaker)? It's nice to have but... it's like having a slightly faster CPU or cellular modem that lets pages load 2ms faster, sure it's nice but... a dealbreaker? Why?
I'm pretty sure what OP meant is "once you try high refresh rate, you can't go back". I had the same feeling many years ago as an android user. And more recently after switching to an OLED monitor.
I read that sentiment often. But I am able to switch between my 60 Hz iPhone 13 and 120 Hz iPad Pro without issue. iPad Pro switches from 120 Hz to 60 Hz when low power mode is activated. I notice the switch but I easily adjust and not think about it.
Well. I used to think the same but I found myself got used to the 60hz display within a week again. It's true it's annoying for the first few days but you know, mankind is an adapting animal.
I generally find the opposite. Experts know how to deal with limited memory. They benefit from more but they understand the tradeoffs. Non-experts get all kinds of bad experiences not realizing the issue is their machine is underpowered.
Maybe 8GB ram is enough for your mom but know lots of non-techies suffering with underpowered machines.
> Non-experts get all kinds of bad experiences not realizing the issue is their machine is underpowered
As always, it depends on how the machine is being used. The encompasses both intent and habits.
Someone who will install ad-spam toolbars will chew through all the memory in the world. That doesn't change the fact that they're largely using their device to e-mail, read news and occasionally open a spreadsheet.
The people I've seen with underpowered machines, wait 5 minutes for them to boot since they are both slow (celeron) and low-mem (so swapping 10-15 times while booting). They they take minutes to launch apps (like open a spreadsheet).
It doesn't matter than they're only using their device to e-mail, read news, and occasionally open a spreadsheet. In fact, reading news is arguably a memory and perf hog. 100s of large images, plus video, etc... taxes any low-powered/low-memory machine. It's bad enough on a fast machine that doesn't slow down but is still covered in ads on the news page. But it's horryfing on an under-powered/under-memory machine.
swapping on an m4 with a midrange pcie 4.0 SSD is quite different from swapping on a celeron with a low-end SATA SSD or spinning rust, plus linux/unix/macos is generally much better with swapping sensibly than windows.
believe it or not, an 8GB macos device is generally quite usable even if it's swapping, as long as it's apple silicon family. yes, it's not going to save if you if your working set is more than 8GB and you need everything in the set, but chrome/firefox do not actually need the 32gb you are probably giving them.
Might have been true 5 years ago, but I don't think this is true now. Base systems with nothing open are using 3+ gigs of memory. Web pages use a ton, but even fairly standard apps will use a gig or more (thanks, electron).
The end result is super slow loading as stuff is swapped, apps crashing (at least on Windows), tabs reloading when you don't want them to.
> Web pages use a ton, but even fairly standard apps will use a gig or more (thanks, electron)
She does most of that on an iPad. The computer is used for e-mail, filling out government forms and looking at spreadsheets. She needs a sturdy machine that works, simply, and doesn't need a lot of babying. A cheap, well-configured Mac running Safari with an ad blocker is just about perfect for that.
The optical zoom on the Pro is so good! I often zoom in 3-5x and still get great results. I've gotten comments from people saying they thought photos of far off building features, etc, were taken with a DSLR.
It's a no-brainer to get the Pro for this reason, if you care about photos.
Really thought they'd upgrade from 12MP to 48MP on the telephoto. iPhone 16 Pro matched the Pixel's 5x optical zoom, but weirdly it remains stuck at 12MP.
When it comes to exchangeable lens cameras (DSLRs/DSLMs), as you increase the number of pixels you very quickly reach a point where you're limited by the optical performance of the lens instead of the sensor. Lots of systems offer a choice between a 24MP and a high pixel count camera (e.g. Nikon Z6/Z7), and you'll find that the high pixel count sibling requires very good lenses to actually achieve a meaningful improvement over 24MP. For these cameras, common wisdom says to stay with 24MP apart from certain niche use cases.
In other words, I wouldn't expect a improvement in capturing actual 48MP pictures in phone cameras, apart perhaps from pixel binning to a smaller size and similar techniques.
Disclaimer: I haven't followed camera tech very closely recently, and I'm not an expert. Take my opinion with a grain of salt.
It might be a 48MP sensor that produces 12MP readout after pixel binning. That's how the sensors on the Sony Xperia 1 work. Does Apple use Sony sensors? I vaguely remember that being a thing.
If image sensor / lens system quality are orthogonal to the final megapixel output, why bother with 48MP output JPEGs? They take up more space, so the practical benefit to smaller files is there.
Is this a real zoom or just a fixed lens with longer focal length? I have read that the 13 Pro does digital zoom between 1x and 2.9x and only at 3x the 3x lens kicks in. So if you have a 5x lens you get digital zoom over an even longer range. So you may end up with worse image quality over a wider range.
That is correct. I treat my 15 Pro like having a set of prime lenses at varying lengths, and so only use 0.5x (13mm), 1x (24mm), 2x (48mm, which is 12MP out of the main camera’s 48MP), or 3x (77mm). In theory, anything between 1x and 2x should be non-digital zoom, but a crop of the 1x 48MP sensor. Anything between 0.5x and 1x, over 2x and less than 3x, or over 3x is digital zoom (crop + upscale). (For the 15 Pro Max, and I assume upcoming 16 Pro models, replace 3x with 5x)
As far as I know, Sony is the only company making phones with “actual” optical zoom, and not just a bunch of primes.
I'd hope it's just a "set of primes" with interpolation/digital zoom between them. At least I wouldn't want to have something that I drop on the floor on regular intervals to have a movable lens assembly that needs micrometer alignment because it's 48mp spread out over just a couple of mm.
The previous model 15 pro already has 3x, so it’s a jump from 3x to 5x. Not enough for me to upgrade already, but a good feature if you like photography or videography.
I agree but I already planned to upgrade to a 16 Pro up from my 12. Biggest thing I’m looking forward to? Battery life.
In the announcement they said “big boost”, and looking at the comparison page I will go from 17h video playback to 27h. That’s not even including the battery degradation I built up in the last 4 years. I’m practically going to double my battery life.
I would be fine with the Pro models getting larger screens if they would shrink the standard phone. I'm still trying to survive with my 12 mini for as long as possible until the battery dies. I tried a standard iPhone 15 for two weeks last year and I wasn't happy with the larger size and returned it.
The mini was a great form factor, fits in more pockets comfortably and the whole screen is within reach of my thumb when using the phone one-handed.
More people want "all of the above" to be larger than want the smaller phone. It does leave those that prefer the truly small phones in a tough spot though, but they are a tiny percentage of buyers and only a fraction of that percentage actually dislike the other options vs would just use the mini when it's available https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopula...
That said I wonder if they'll slip in a new mini model every once in a great while to give that group of users an option.
It's not the phone size, its the reach for my fingers. I can't reach the top left corner with my thumb on these larger screens and UI/UX people keep putting the hamburger for the navigation in that spot.
I'm sure you're aware of this, but bringing it up in case you aren't. On newer Face ID models, you can swipe down on the bottom of the screen (the little grey bar) and it'll toggle the reachability feature so the top of the screen comes into the middle of the display. Basically shoving everything down.
I understand it's not ideal, but I find it a valuable feature when I must operate one handed and sometimes struggle with the same issue.
I've found that feature really difficult to trigger reliably without hitting buttons on the bottom of the screen if they're there. Maybe it's just because I'm on a 13 mini, and before that a 12 mini. But if an app has a bottom navigation bar, I've found it absolutely impossible to trigger reachability without also hitting the bottom navigation.
I did also set up an accessibility feature where you can map a handful of actions to a double or triple tap on the back of the glass, and I mapped double-tap to trigger Reachability. But it's not super fast and overall a bit of a downgrade from the double capacitive TouchID tap on older models.
15 and 15 Pro both had USB-C. The 15 pro just has USB3 capable USB-C (15 regular was USB2 only). Seems like they're keeping that differentiation, which I suppose makes sense given the USB3 PHY is a considerable die cost.
Is it actually a different die though? The A18 and A18 Pro are so close in specs, with the same 6 CPU cores, same 16 NPU cores and only 5 vs. 6 GPU cores that I would guess that they are the very same die just with one GPU cluster and USB3 switched off in the non-Pro version.
On the 15 series it was since they used different chip generations. No idea on the new 16 series, we’ll have to wait for die shots from teardown groups.
A18 Pro is also faster. Typically the speed and 5 vs 6 core difference would use the same die and selecting Pro chips during testing. Chips that tolerate heat better become pro-model chips.
The rumor was that they are different dies. It seems strange because both are made with the same 2nd generation 3nm architecture.
If you’re using the phone to shoot ProRes video, it uses something absurd like 1GB/min of video… so, offloading that video via USB2 would be agonizing.
Some of the video modes are only available if you record directly to external media. 4k HDR ProRes 120fps isn’t going to transfer real time over usb 2.
Are there new hardware features announced for the 16 Pro? Apple definitely would love to add an exclusive feature but it seems like negligible pickings. The "Fusion" or "tetraprism" camera is the only other one that comes to mind.
Fundamentally Apple wants to leverage their supply chain to maximize shared parts between the Pro and base iPhones. Lack of hardware innovations makes it hard to create product differentiation.
This isn't related to the user update cycle discussions, just pointing out it's odd that Apple has always locked a new feature/hardware to a higher SKU to help price discriminate but here it's weaker.
The 13 Pro had ProMotion, 14 Pro had Dynamic Island and Always On display, the 15 Pro had USB-C and the Action Button, the 16 Pro...has maybe slightly faster AI? 4k120fps video? USB-C w/ USB 3? Not things most people would care about.
ProMotion/Always On is still limited to the Pro models which is enough to justfy the upcharge, but it's a surprise they aren't locking a new feature this time.