This is not back to the future. Times have changed, people have changed.
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Other iPhone 14 rumours suggest the most lacklustre update ever.
- Thread starter NewBench
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That seems pretty much par the course of android smartphones. They may be able to beat the iPhone in one area (and most try to, in order to serve as a marketing point), but it usually comes at the expense of some other area, so you aren't really getting a better device at the end of the day. Merely a different basket of compromises.
Only Apple has enough resource to build and keep the OS to close to perfect level while having an expensive brand name. Samsung is the only one close to Apple but still not that level yet.
Also, at this point, customers are looking for ecosystems, not just phones.
I think in time perhaps the headphone jack will make a return once the whole environmental disaster thing comes to a head.
Apple got rid of the headphone jack because they sell wireless headphones which are have built in redundancy (their battery) thus meaning instead of *most* people buying a decent set of wired cans and sticking with them, people will buy new wireless headphones every few years. Smart move for apple, poor one for the environment.
Retina display or 326 ppi is basically as clear as the human eye can detect. 4K resolution on a phone or 500+ ppi is a waste of resources. I would like Apple to keep the resolution on their phones as is and keep improving the quality of their OLED panels. Resolution is NOT important and has been used as a marketing gimmick for the last decade.
I have already said it is not the 4k, just the panel picture quality. Just like computer monitor, even the same 1080p kind has some very cheap TN monitor or super expensive professional kind.
I have no idea what Apple ecosystem really can do even I have few Apple products at home. I only use air drop sometimes but I would not say it is anything important. I use Google stuff much more even with iphone.
Start with an iPhone.
Get an Apple Watch, AirPods, sprinkle a few AirTags here and there.
Subscribe to Apple One (for TV+, Apple Music, iCloud). On top of services like Maps, Siri, Reading List and iMessage.
Get an iPad (which lets you share apps with your iPhone), Apple Pencil, Smart Keyboard.
Apple TV for closer integration with the other apps and services.
Get another Mac for airdrop, continuity, universal control.
I do use my fair share of google services, but try to default to Apple's own whenever possible. 😬
So basically an opinion.
Yep. The universe is against you in this one. But I do understand ymmv.
To each their own. The only google app I use is gmail. Spit searches between between bing and google. Use Apple Maps. Ymmv.
Base on my understanding, the ecosystem is mainly about you can share stuff through different Apple devices like you can reply a phone message with macbook. I think it is useful for someone very rich and each second costs a lot.
If 3.5mm jack come back then who buy expensive airpod series? So it will never come back
There are perfectly valid reasons to not want an iPhone, but there have been some undeniably impressive revisions to the iPhone since the original 2G.
The 5S was a big one, catching everyone off-guard by dropping the first 64-bit ARM CPU in a smartphone and bumping single-core performance so much it took the better part of a decade for entry-level Android phones to catch up (the 2019 Galaxy A20 only manages 229 single-core on GeekBench vs 259 for the 2013 iPhone 5S), while also ushering in the modern era of biometric authentication with Touch ID.
The generational jump in performance from the iPhone 6 to the 6S (72% faster single-core) was pretty impressive too.
Maybe one of the Pro features being included such as the pro motion screen, the always on display or the new design on the front? Surely one of those 3 features wouldn’t be that much to ask
Two iterative features not ground breaking/shattering as the OP highlights. Anything else?
Too many disadvantageous variables to forecast a return of the headphone jack.
Firstly, unlike the Macbook Pro 16” where customers could possibly accept a thicker, heavier device, the iPhone, especially the pro models, are already borderline heavy/unwieldy. There is only so much internal real estate and the headphone jack would on a whole not be as beneficial for most customers compared to say a larger camera sensor or bigger capacity battery.
Secondly, internal DACs don’t sound the same, they do not consistently use the same DAC for each iteration of the iPhone. I remember how amazing sweet my AKG K3003 sounded on the iPhone 6 Plus. Unfortunately it sounded much dryer/flat with the iPhone 6S plus. Meaning if you really want any proper control of your portable sound, you probably want to invest in a portable headphone amplifier. This makes the return of the headphone jack non essential since there are decks that work through the lightning ports.
Thirdly, while traditional iEMs do not require batteries, they do break. Even those that cost a couple of thousands. Even when I literally baby my iEMs, I have had many a frustrating encounter of iEMs that stop producing sound on just one side.
Fourthly even if by some miracle, you find a perfect pair of iEMs, one that is extremely comfortable, inserts perfectly into your ear canals, gives you a good seal, has your preferred target curve, is not microphonic, has good passive noise cancellation, does not cause fatigue with long term listening, it will still be unable to deal with different audio environments the way TWS do today with both active noise cancellation and transparency mode.
Having used the AirPods Pro since Nov 2019, I find it unnecessary burdensome, almost daunting, to connect a pair of wired iEMs to any of my apple devices. It serves no purpose to highlight all the merits of the AirPods Pro of which there are many, since this is after all an iPhone thread, suffice to say my experience of using the AirPods Pro had been so seamless and fantastic, I have personally never even considered connecting a pair of wired iEMs to my iPad Pro and was only made aware of the lack of headphone jack because I read this thread.
So no, I really don’t think headphone jacks are coming back to the iPhone, ever.
They are not iterative, they are outright new features. Unlike slight tweaks to the camera and a 2% increase in processor speed, which are not new features and are iterative
Let's look at what the 13 pro max added over the 12 pro max.
A15 processor, promotion, larger battery, cinematic mode, slightly better zoom.
By themselves, none of them seem revolutionary, but they come together to to form a pretty compelling list of improvements, which is precisely what Apple is famed for - continuous iteration, which you can only have when the design of the device doesn't change too much from year to year.
Coming from a 8+, I felt it was finally time to upgrade, not least because my 8+ was getting pretty bad battery life, and iOS 14.5 allowed you to (finally) unlock your iPhone with your Apple Watch, meaning wearing of face masks was less of an issue. That and I tripped and fell the other day and ended up cracking the edge of my phone.
I think the days of a new iteration of smartphone adding so many new "must have" features that make consumers go "wow!" and feel like they have to run out and upgrade is long gone. Technology simply doesn't improve that quickly anymore, and Apple wouldn't be able to produce anywhere near that many iPhones anyways (remember that they have over 1 billion active iPhone users, and are projected to sell 200+ million iPhones a year, which means that realistically speaking, Apple can only accommodate about ¼ to 1/5 of their user base upgrading at any one time anyways.
So I think the iPhone 14 will prove a compelling upgrade for users using anything from the iPhone 7 (which won't get iOS 16) to the iPhone 11 (where you will see the biggest boost with the OLED display). 11 pro / pro max users may appreciate the ability to unlock your phone while still wearing a face mask (which is still being enforced in some asian countries like Singapore), but 12 and 13 users likely shouldn't see a need to.
Assuming Apple can get their supply chain in order, you are still easily looking at potentially close to 300 million iPhones sold over the course of the following year, so the problem faces this year won't be demand, but supply.
The thing is, I am fine with iterative updates to these devices. However, I challenged the people complaining here to come up with a "wow" idea and yet all the ideas bounced by them are considered iterative. Goes to show that people don't know what they want.
I understand the workings in engineering and at this point all phone makers have hit a soft limit as phones are practically doing what laptops can if not more. All that remains is to improve and adapt new techs as they are implemented.
One idea that I floated here was true wireless charging. Using a strong EM to induce charging while sitting in your couch, or rather without having the phone next to the coil.