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Apple's new iPhone 15 is an underwhelming 'slap in the face,' say disappointed fans
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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I don’t know why people expect massive jumps every single year. There’s only so much you can really change year over year at this point.
You don’t need to upgrade every damn year. Apple supports each phone for a minimum of 5-6 years.
Yeah, I'm sure if you just upgrade every 3-4 years there's plenty that's been added that makes it worthwhile.
Most definitely. Phones are no longer really throw away devices. They’re full fledged little supercomputers in your pocket and they’re expensive as fuck.
Nobody upgrades their laptop or PC every year. Hell, the most important components like CPU, GPU, and RAM don’t even get new releases every year.
Phones are damn near as powerful today. Nobody but someone that is already pushing the most powerful flagships to the limit can or will take advantage of the incremental updates.
I’m 85% sure I’m going to get the 15. I’m upgrading from my XR so hopefully it’ll be pretty major for me.
Agree 3-4 cycle makes it feel amazing.
XR to 15 is more like 5 cycles, so I think this upgrade is going to be a huge improvement for you. I upgraded from it after a mere two (though to the 12 Pro and not the 12) and the difference was very noticeable, especially in the display and camera, but also just in how much smoother and snappier everything got.
Also on an XR and just bought a 15 Pro.
The XR is still snappy. The battery only is at 80% of its original life, but otherwise it’s fine.
I’m very excited for the USB-C and wifi 6E. The rest I don’t care about, but I imagine I will be impressed by the speed when I get it.
I’m at 85% battery
I’m mostly excited about better battery, usb-c, and 5g cellular. Mag charging is interesting but I already have qi chargers all over the place.
I honestly don’t understand. I’m on my 11 pro at 86% battery. Might just use it for many more years after a battery swap, why would I want to change every year? I love the sharper edges of the new ones, and now also the dynamic island and USB C, but I’m not going waste money when my current phone still can do anything as fast as the day I purchased it.
I upgraded from 11 to 14 pro and was pretty underwhelmed. It was kinda worth it for the camera but besides that, it’s the exact same phone.
Then they shouldn't release every year and create a new batch of endless ewaste and demand in natural resources mined by exploited labor.
Your talking about where you place the blame: the drug dealer with no regard for human life as long as they are profitable, or the drug user who is weak, sick and often incapable of breaking their unhealthy habit.
There’s no requirement for you to upgrade every year if you don’t want to but without it, what would the people who need something new do? I’m upgrading this year from an iPhone X that is really on its last legs. Broken screen, charging more than once a day etc. It’s served it’s purpose well but now is the time for a new one. A two or three year refresh cycle would mean I would be potentially buying a two year old phone today. Why would I want that when I keep things for several years?
Shit, even my 5-6 year old S9 was pretty decent at the end, and fairly similar to my new phone. I only upgraded because the network chip was getting wonky, which made me a bit uneasy about getting stranded somewhere.
I can't wait for the EU regs about removable batteries to kick in. Now, if only we could finally move to a display technology that doesn't suffer from burn-in....
Well, Motorola isn't known for providing updates very long either...
I'd be more interested in legislation forcing them to release at least security updates for a decade. My phone is 6 years old, works absolutely fine (even the battery), but it hasn't received any security parches for a couple of years, meaning it's insecure and I have to replace it even though it works great. Complete buffoonery.
Edit: I mean more than the screen thing, not the battery thing.
I'm still on an S10. Battery life sucks and the screen has been cracked for years, but she still works just fine. No motivation at all to spend $1k on an 'upgrade'
Because we had massive jumps from like 1999-2008. Bring those back.
Because cellphones were just emerging then. The technology was rapidly changing all the time
And when you look back, a ton of the innovations were trying to solve a part of the problem that modern smartphones have solved and then some.
When texting took off, companies tried to innovate better ways than T9 to do that. So you ended up with variations of full keyboards. Slide out, on the face, swivel, etc.
Flip phones and other slide outs tried to maximize screen space before touchscreens were around or good. When the screen is only useable as a screen you have to get creative to still have a keyboard.
When cameras first got out into phones they sucked. So companies put a ton of effort into innovating that. Hell cameras are still one of the main focuses on innovation. It’s just that there are diminishing returns with what you can package in a phone. So it takes a lot more work to get a small improvement.
Beyond that, most of the innovation is under the hood and less noticeable. Improving the chip architecture to be more powerful and more efficient. On device encryption for security. Lidar scanning for 3d modeling. Better integration with the ecosystems.
Beyond those you still have innovations like the foldable, which right now still kinda suck. Just like phones did when they started trying to innovate. Foldables will lead to crazier innovation down the line with the added space. Right now they’re still just trying to get the folding screen decent.
Once a technology matures, you stop seeing massive jumps and innovation becomes evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Another 10-15 years and you may see phones slow down to laptop pace, where a new model is only released every few years and then the jump between generations is bigger by comparison because you’ll have three years of work into it rather than one.
What would you add to a flagship smart phone that hasn't already been done and is actually possible with the technology available?
The solution here is to vote with your wallet and not pay $1000+ for the latest flagship if you can buy a $300 phone from a couple years ago that's pretty much the same thing.
I’d add a personal assistant that lives up to the promise. It can make reservations for you, find out when your friends are available, navigate phone trees, etc.
Find out when your friends are available might be kind of creepy. Unsavoury people knowing that you're away for a week and that your house is empty sounds like a dream for criminals, I also wouldn't want people phoning me saying "I can see you're free tonight, let's do something" or a boss saying, "I can see you're available for overtime this weekend, that's good!". It would also depend on people making their schedules available to the cloud and to make them accurate.
The make reservations thing could be interesting as could the phone tree navigating, but I wouldn't put these ideas on the same scale as capacitive touchscreens, hd screens, front cameras, fast charging, wireless charging, amoled displays, 3/4/5G, bezeless phones, folding screens etc. Do you see what I'm saying?
So stop releasing “new” phones every year.
This year's new phones are for people that last bought a phone in 2020 or earlier. If the average user is on a three year upgrade cycle (what the data shows as I recall) then you'd expect roughly 1/3 of people to upgrade every year.
This is better for Apple, as it keeps their revenue more spread out instead of heavily concentrated in year one of a three year cycle.
This is better for consumers, as it means new features and upgrades are constantly being made. If they want to upgrade early they can, and they'll get new features even if it's only been two years.
This is also better for both Apple and consumers because there's more opportunities to course-correct or respond to feedback over issues. If Apple only released a phone every other or every three years, it'd take that much longer for the switch to USB-C.
Just because a new product is launched does not mean you need to buy it. Nvidia released a new GPU last year, but I didn't buy it even though it's newer than what I currently have. Arguing that new phones shouldn't come out each year is like arguing that new cars shouldn't come out each year. It makes no sense.
I fall squarely into that 3-year cycle. My old iPhone 12 Pro, which is—as others would very plainly say—still pretty capable, is liable to go to my mother. My husband’s will go to one of the nieces or nephews.
For me, this “slap in the face” upgrade is shaping up to be a pretty substantial upgrade. And, I’m good with spending my money on that.
Im going from a 11 to a 15 pro. Good jump for me
I’m in the same boat. Will be replacing my 12 Pro, which will go to my wife, hers to my kid. We get about 10 years out of each phone, by using them like this. The improvements I get for upgrading only after three years are very significant!
Fully agree. It’s like people have no impulse control, and feel like they need to have the shiny new gadget, then cry when it’s not radically different from last year’s model. I’m still on my 11 pro, was holding off for the arrival of USB C, but it’s still working perfectly, so I might just upgrade in 1-2 years.
Yup. I’ve got a base 12. Jumping to a 15 pro max will be a pretty huge upgrade for me. Almost double the battery life, pretty much all the cameras will be massively better, I’ll get the third telephoto lens, the chip is massively faster than the one I have, usb-c, the dynamic island, the action button. A ton will be a jump for me.
For someone with a 14 pro max, there’s no real reason to. Nor is it really intended for them. Now, Apple sure as shit isn’t going to come out and say “no don’t buy our product”, because that would be stupid. But they make it easy to keep a phone for longer with the support for those of us that want to do that. Most companies will maybe give 3 OS and 3 years of security updates. Apple does 5-6 years for OS and still randomly patch old phones like the iPhone 5s with security updates.
I'm planning to upgrade from a 12 mini, which partly influenced my choice of years too (having seen 3 year data was the main part!). If I had a 12 Pro I think I'd have kept it for an extra year, but the battery is just not sufficient for how my phone use has changed.
I think furthering your extra details here too is I saw someone point out that one of Apple's slides for the base 15 was comparing its performance to the base 12. Apple knows how often people upgrade. Picking the 12 as a comparison point wouldn't be an accident — we're the single largest target audience for the 15. And in a year, they will in all likelihood compare the 16 to the 13 for the same reason.
Person with iPhone 11 can still upgrade. Not everyone buys phone on same cycle. So they have to release it. But you don’t have to buy it.
And most people are not buying new phones every cycle these days. Unless there really is a major experience change - which is rare now that the product is mature.
That doesn’t solve anything though. There are improvements every year, just not enough to upgrade every single year.
And there are always people that do keep their device for several years upgrading in any given year.
Stop buying $1000+ flagships if they're not worth it. No company is going to stop producing anything that people are willing to pay for.