That's what people in semiconductors do -- they try to take a bunch of features and package it in a single chip to reduce costs. There are chips out there with temperature, accelerometer, and proximity sensors packaged in a single unit. There was a time when an actual quartz crystal was needed as a resonator, and now those are replaced with mems technology so that one can package more into a single silicon chip.
I'm sure we can all remember the time when the cpu & gpu were separate chips.
Kinda sorta. See the tech specs page[0] and the LTE compatibility page[1]. There are actually three different models. All three have 3G GSM/EDGE support. But they support different LTE bands. And only the CDMA model adds the CDMA frequencies.
How is the 'biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone' simply a taller screen and newer processor? What about NFC? Wireless charging? Sorry Apple, but this just isn't that impressive.
Jobs/Apple was never about bundling tons of irrelevant features together (wireless charging? Please...), and winning by ticking feature checkboxes.
Jobs used to introduce a new iPod model every year or so. And he also got to introduce 4 iPhone models. Lots of times the changes were incremental (3G -> 3GS for example).
Heck, back in the day, a new color or some more storage was considered a huge improvement over the previous iPod model. People literally went bezerk in the possibility that the next iPod could also play video (imagine that!).
And now you have a mature phone, in it's 6th version, fast as hell, with a GPU that you would have killed for to have in your laptop half a decade ago, camera, gyro, retina, bigger screen, thin, new extremely featured iOS, some 500.000+ apps etc. What exactly do you want with that? Magic sprinkle dust?
I would be satisfied even if Apple had only sticked to making computers/OS. They have far surpassed that. Nobody even asked them to make mp3 players, phones, or tablets in the first place. Since we will be using all of the above for the next 20 years, I think they will be fine, even if they dont pull another market/device out of their hats...
The same could be said about the first gen ipod, when compared against the current lineup of mp3 players at the time. The ipod didn't even have wifi or a color display!
>I wanted something that would be qualitatively better than current Android phones. It didn't deliver. At all.
IMHO, it's better than any Android phone out there, bar none. From the construction, to the display, to the weight and size, to the cpu/gpu combo, and more importantly to the huge app ecosystem that makes use of standard gizmos inside it, and ties it all together. Plus the media ecosystem. Plus the third-party peripheral ecosystem.
>It's trivial for the phone to be better than 5+ year old tech. But that's a completely irrelevant comparison.
Yes, completely irrelevant, since it's also better than any 1 month old tech, or the previous iPhone itself.
What's the competition? Some Android phone that will be left without an update to the next Android version and which has the subpar Android app ecosystem and subpar construction/design? Or the Lumia that doesn't even have an OS out of beta yet and is "due to arrive later this year"?
As if anyone except history books and nerds care who DID invent them.
What matters is who made them popular and got them in our collective hands en masse.
That's when the revolution starts, when people start buying them so you have improvements and cheaper price due to economies of scale, and you also get an ecosystem of apps, etc.
Tablets pre-iPad might as well have been non-existing. Same for smartphones pre iPhone. I had several (Nokia, Sony Erricson etc. After the iPhone you couldn't stand this crap for a moment).
I also had 2-3 mp3 players pre iPod. Including some bizarro Sony's own format players. Not even close to what we expect post-iPod.
Apple created the modern smartphone; they did definitely not invent all the necessary technologies but they were absolutely the first ones to come up with a package that people actually loved and bought. Before that, such a package did definitely NOT exist. Together with the "Apps" and AppStore, that is a market that Apple created.
And they did the same with the tablet, they created a market that did not exist before - from existing technologies.
I know. That's why I said: the modern smartphone. I have used a couple of those you mentioned and they just weren't the same. I doubt they even remotely pushed the kind of crazy numbers Apple and Androids are seeing each year now.
Yes, but that's also why I said that they didn't "create" the modern smartphone. Everything that they "created" already existed before they came along.
There's no doubt that they packaged things very nicely and have been very successful, but it's not as if they created this market out of thin air. They surely did not invent the general concept that they've been so successful implementing.
The market for smartphones you see now? Teens, kids, moms and everyone else? Yes, they created that. And they created the package, granted out of existing technologies but the package does matter.
The problem is that it draws attention to the fact that other than literally a size change, there is not terribly much that makes this an unusually "big" update.
I guess. They can't all be the 'biggest' though. And the subtlety is in fact the play on typical marketing-speak, which, as evidenced by the parent comment here -- and many others -- is typically ingested wholesale by the consuming public.
I imagine AAPL are not worried about turning off the hyper-literal critics amongst the crowd.
Good lord, what am I doing debating/discussing a marketing headline... Anyway.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to fault them for not changing much; sometimes there simply isn't a lot that should be changed. I just think it wasn't a particularly bright wording.
Plus, "simply a taller screen and newer processor", really? New screen, new processor, new innards, new machining and construction, new connector, new iOS, new camera, improved battery life AND lighter.
NFC and wireless charging? Who promised you that? And who delivers those at the moment?
Name for me one brand new feature. This is a product update, this isn't deserving of a new version number, and it certainly isn't "the biggest thing to happen to the iphone since iphone".
This isn't to say it's a bad device, just infinite hype for zero payoff.
Well, to be fair, NFC is capable of two way communication where scanning a barcode is one way communication. You are comparing galaxies to apples ;)
As an android (GS3) user I would have liked the iPhone to get NFC (and NFC based mobile payments) for the simple reason that the more phones capable of NFC payments the more merchants are likely to support it which benefits all of us (or at least all of us interested in paying for things with our phones).
The same argument would hold true for wireless charging, but it would probably be unlikely for Apple to adopt the emerging "Qi" wireless charging standard and instead roll it's own.
You could use the front facing camera and display a barcode on the iPhone screen. Voila NFC.
I know I'm going to take down votes for this, but for 90% of the population NFC is a solution in search of a problem. For most people cash, credit, or debit work just fine. NFC isn't a 10X better payment solution. Most people have to carry something on them to carry cards, drivers licenses, etc in which they will place their payment card. Instead of fiddling with your wallet, now you're fiddling with your phone.
Fair enough, but there are at least some point of sale systems that have NFC already, I have yet to see a system that is set up to display a barcode for the phone to read and then read a barcode on the phone (without moving the phone).
> For most people cash, credit, or debit work just fine.
Phones worked just fine for most people in 2006. Phones' screens were just fine in 2009...
Paypass and Paywave are a considerable improvement over chip and PIN or singing a slip of paper. Faster, less fumbling. Necessary, no; an improvement, yes.
The iPhone was a 10X improvement over what was out there, if you upgraded your whole phone experience got better.
Retina was a 4X improvement (4X as many pixels) after looking at retina the 3GS looked ugly, if you upgraded your entire phone experience got better.
Now lets take a look at what happens if you get an NFC phone, you still have to take your wallet, and then you have to ask everyone whether their payment system supports NFC. 95% of the time you're going to be taking out your wallet. It's not a 10X improvement therefore adoption will be slow.
And it still doesn't work when the power is out unlike cash. I'm actually starting to go away from any payment system that isn't cash, because cash is universally accepted, even the Olympics takes cash.
If NFC was on par with the aforementioned features it would be in the new phone.
> you have to ask everyone whether their payment system supports NFC.
Have you ever used Paypass? The readers are pretty conspicuous, large pad above the chip card reader, no need to ask just like you don't need to ask if someone takes cards when you see the reader.
> And it still doesn't work when the power is out unlike cash.
Sure, and phones don't work when the cellular network is down, unlike shouting. But the last time I was unable to pay with a card because power or network were down was in 2010 and that's the only instance I can actually remember since, like, 2005.
Let's not get into the parts where POSes will probably go down too if power goes out...
You know, after reading your post I have to agree that yes, NFC being vulnerable to the same problems as it's alternatives makes it 10X better.
I'm sure any day now Apple will come out with NFC in the iPhone 5S as they realize they've missed out on a huge opportunity.
Please pay no attention to the ticketing app of which they will probably take a 30% cut. NFC is where the money's at which is why people have stopped buying iPhones and are instead only buying phones with NFC.
I just tossed my wallet, 4S, debit/credit cards, and cash into the garbage, now I just carry around my Galaxy Nexus looking for someone who wants to me to beam them bitcoins. I'm looking forward to walking 5 KM to get to a grocery store to buy food now that I can't drive (my drivers license just got revoked because the police won't accept a picture of it) and theres no where to sell me food in < 5KM (they don't support NFC).
NFC really does change everything, it's a whole new way of living.
Your reactions are amusingly similar to reactions people had to touchscreen phones before the touchscreens became good. Yes, of course, take away my keyboard, I'll just type my BBMs on shitty glass! Those damn touchscreens, a solution in search of a problem.
As a point of interest I can buy food with NFC within a 12 minute walk, and I don't even have an NFC phone.
Yes, you've hit the nail on the head, my reactions to NFC before it became good is the same reaction I had to touchscreens before they became good.
The reason why the iPhone was revolutionary wasn't because it had a touch screen it was because it didn't suck. When NFC stops sucking I'll stop saying it sucks.
I thought bump was awesome too, then I realized how inconvenient it was. I could hand you a business card, or I could fiddle with my phone, show you how to download the app, etc. NFC is bump with out the bumping. It's still too fiddly.
The iPaq, Newtown, Palm Pilot, and the Android G1 were solutions in search of a problem just like the current incantation of NFC is.
I think Apple is betting heavily on PassBook, which I think is superior to NFC, but would eventually fail if it's not an open standard (and even if it was open, Google and others would never use it because not using it would hurt Apple more). Maybe they should've integrated PassBook with NFC...
I think their decision to go with PassBook will backfire (like Thunderbolt did - It's even more niche than Mac itself!) and they'll add NFC in iPhone 6 like they added USB3 support.
That said, I'm not in a market that either of these technologies are likely to be used in the foreseeable future (5-10 years), so I personally don't care one way or another :) NFC/PassBook catching on just make me more jealous!
I don't think they are betting heavily against NFC or that passbook is superior to NFC. I think Apple sees more profit potential in leveraging Apple IDs for payment and they are cautiously hoping it will take off faster then NFC but won't hesitate to swap NFC chips in if that starts to see widespread adoption.
I'm not sure what you mean. 3.5G to LTE is a simple improvement along a one-dimensional axis - bandwidth. Maybe two metrics, if you want to account for the latency improvement. There are no such straightforward metrics for comparing Gopher and WWW. So no, that kind of thinking does not arrive at WWW being a slight improvement over Gopher.
That's not to say incremental improvements to existing features, such as LTE, can't be reason enough to sell a device (note that wasn't the question, though). As others have pointed out, though, Edge to 3G felt like a more significant step than 3G to LTE, though, just as 56k to 1 Mbit DSL felt like a more significant step than 1 MBit to 16 Mbit or 16 Mbit to 50 Mbit.
Most cellphone makers will come up with a new product name or number because someone sneezed at the factory, and you're complaining that Apple went from 4 to 5 in two years merely because they improved every single aspect of the phone? Gee. Tough crowd.
"infinite hype"? Where? They announced an event, the day came, they announced the product. A slogan like that on the product announcement/product page, does not amount to "infinite hype".
If you want to see "infinite hype", check the Microsoft Courier and other hypeware, in which videos were made, the press touted it for months, it was announced to be "the future" and nothing came of it.
"Zero payoff"? Really? It's an amazing device to upgrade to, after your 2-year contract ends, even if it doesn't have magic unicorn powers. It's the best iPhone YET made, period, I don't think someone can argue against that (and no, it's not a guarantee with any product update to be better than the last one).
Your response amounts to the proverbial: "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame".
>Name for me one brand new feature
"Brand new" is used here to preempt any mention of the tons of incremental improvements?
Funny, I seem to recall that the disillusioned techie reaction to the 4S was that it was also a non-update. Same shell. Modest internal updates and the only feature of note (Siri) was panned as an app that Apple bought that merely caught it up to other phones that already had voice control.
One problem with the 4S was the rumors of an iPhone 5 with a tapered design. (If you Googled for iPhone it would autocomplete "iPhone 5" — I guess bad rumors are now self-reinforcing.) At least this time the rumors were accurate and people can't complain that they were expecting more.
For me it was that my original iPhone contract was finally up and I could get 3G. Is that the one with gyroscope? -- Jobs playing Jenga during the keynote?
The S really was the feature. Besides the performance bump for everything (e.g. loading web pages twice as fast) it let you run a class of apps you simply couldn't only earlier iphones (e.g. unreal engine).
Other then that copy and paste and enough memory to keep more then 2 tabs open in safari were what I remember.
It was the first I bought but key features it hit included tethering, stereo bluetooth support, compass (and maybe improved GPS) and performance.
The 5 seems like a solid step. I don't see the need to upgrade every year but if you compare back to the 4 rather than the 4S the performance should be a massive jump. Support for 5GHz wifi could mean a real speed boost too and the bigger screen should be nice.
The S variants certainly didn’t – and this adds more than every S variant ever did.
Looking at the construction, the 3G was never something to write home about. The technology forced Apple's hand and they had to make that plastic monster. Acceptable, not great. Like the 5, the 3G improved every aspect of its predecessor and it added 3G.
The 5 is just like the 3G – only that this time around the construction is at least on par or better (likely, looking at first hand ons, still, only speculation at this point) than that of the predecessor. It’s also, quite obviously, less fragile. So Apple has done much more on the construction front, but the jump from 3G to LTE is also arguably not as important than the jump from Edge to 3G.
Looking at the specs and comparing them with other phones you get the same picture you always got. It’s a wash. Those kinds of comparisons never mattered.
In conclusion: no 3GS to 4 jump, but certainly a 1 to 3G jump.
Also a familiar sight since the 3G, geeks are disappointed, the phone sells faster than Apple can make it.
This phone is no surprise. It’s Apple doing what they have always done.
Larger screen is a "new feature" since we are talking about hardware. LTE would be a new feature as well. Not having a big piece of glass on the back seems like a new feature too (my iPhone 4S has had a cracked back for a couple of months). I know this may seem silly, but a new dock connector that is symmetrical and is easier to plug in without looking is a new feature as well. Also, something about a panorama camera, but I wouldn't call that a BFD)
Faster, slimmer, lighter and longer lasting - yes, these are really good updates in a small piece of equipment that iPhone 5 is, there's no denying that.
But what really irks me is the way Apple marketing team is hyping it up - "This is the best <insert iDevice> we have ever made!", "This is revolutionary!", "This will change everything you were doing before!"...
A slathering of these so often during the entire event and then on with their advertisements makes me cringe and shake my head with disappointment. This iPhone and the iPod[x] are pretty much an iteration and minor upgrade, not what the actual 'revolutionary' things were - iTouch, iPhone, iPad, retina display, etc.
I don't expect 'revolutionary' every year or any time, I just expect some sincerity announcing.
Yeah you're right, they should get up on stage in front of the worlds media and say "It's an OK iPhone. You know, not great great, but pretty good... pffffft, we really could do better but hey ho, here's the new iPhone".
Are you an idiot?
And it is the best iPhone they've ever made. And the iPhone is arguably the best phone out there, so they sort of have a fair bit of credibility when they say that stuff.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
I don't follow this stuff closely, but isn't that what they said when they announced the 3gs and the 4s ? There isn't anything really new in the phone they announced today, so it's more like a 4ss than a 5.
Unless they're going the linux kernel route and changing their version numbering ;)
Since they only release once a year, this one doesn't only have to hold its own against the competition right now, but also against whatever the others put out in 10 months.
Yeah, some people will always wait for the next iPhone. But for others, who have a more "neutral" point of view, this iPhone might look very bad in 10 months.
True, but if you look at it like Apple vs Android, the Android camp has many releases a year. So if you're a consumer and you're buying a smartphone in 10 months, your choice is between the "outdated" iPhone or one of the latest Android phones.
1) Construction (machining, materials, fitting them inside the case, industrial design). Unparalleled.
2) Screen. Top notch (high dpi, improved saturation).
3) Camera. One of the best in the business. Tons of apps for it, even photo books and indie movies videos done with it.
4) Apps ecosystem. Unparalleled in number and quality.
5) OS. Mature, not laggy, full featured, designed with far more coherence than Android and far more functionality in mind than just modernist design compared to Metro.
6) OS Upgrades. You do not even get any with most Android phones. And don't happen to the new Windows mobile os version.
7) Peripherals ecosystem: from health tracking devices, to tripods, to MIDI, unparalleled.
8) No carrier branded bullshit (apps, look etc): priceless.
I think what is pissing most people off is that up until iphone 4 (not 4s), the iphone was arguably the best smart phone around. 4s and 5 have been improvements to the iphone but have not added anything over its competitors. Most of the competitors can do what the iphone 5 does and more (such as NFC and / or wireless charging).
Bottom line: There is no reason to stick with the iphone 5 other than "I am stuck in the eco system", or "I love apple" or "It is good enough". The "better than the others" argument doesn't fly anymore.
I said they do more, and most top of the line phones from other manufacturers have them. Even if it does not make the other phones better, lacking those features only makes it worse.
> Why does every new phone have to be a fucking revolution?
I completely agree.
But Apple has a habit of making it seem like everything they do is revolutionary. It's very good marketing.
> Apple reinvents the phone [1]
> This changes everything. Again.
> The biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone
> A magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price
> Resolutionary
Again, I agree with you. But what I'm getting at is that Apple's brand of marketing creates a lot of hype and I'm sure they like it that way.
It's not about phones. People want to be distracted from everyday life. "Revolutionary" tech releases satisfy that need, especially for a slice of society which is both intellectual and a bit manic-depressive. It's sad, but for a lot of these people, new phones/tech are the only real things they have to show off/feel excited about/have strong opinions on/argue about/dream about. It's fundamentally about fantasy, and the reaction you see today is what happens when reality fails to satisfy that fantasy.
Let's compare this to the changes in Samsung Galaxy S3 compared to the S2:
- Slightly larger screen
- Faster CPU
- Improved camera
- Added LTE
- Faster Wifi
- Added NFC
- Added a couple of sensors
- Better battery life
- Heavier
Not a whole lot different from the iPhone changelist, and I bet it's not a whole lot different from any other phone maker's changelist between generations either.
But Samsung didn't deliver any magic in the S3 - and what could Apple have delivered as a super-duper-WOW feature? I cannot think of any technologies out there that they haven't squeezed in there yet and I don't think "wireless charging" is anything to really care about, novelty and "OMG!" factor aside. Adding NFC would have also been just catching up and personally, I cannot see the benefit from NFC and it looks like Apple can't either.
So what is left then? What COULD they have added to floor people? Nuclear reactor? Drones? I cannot think of anything.
it certainly isn't "the biggest thing to happen to the iphone since iphone"
If you look at the changes between previous models it really is. Just about every single component has been upgraded. There have never been this many changes at once in an iPhone. The 3GS->4 upgrade comes close but when you get into the sort of second tier of features the 4S->5 list is quite a bit longer. If you're judging it by significance of the upgrades that may be a little different. I think the 3GS->4 still wins out there. On the raw numbers though the 4S->5 simply has more changes.
I don't understand all the negative reactions - name one brand new and truly "wowing" feature the new Galaxy brought to the table? Pretty much all modern smartphones are at the technological cutting-edge and I cannot think of much they could possible squeeze into those things. You already have all sorts of sensors and pretty much all connectivity options you could possibly want and it can do frakking 3D games in the palm of your hand too and play music and videos and etc.
NFC could be interesting but I am happy enough with paying with my CCs or directly playing with my ATM card in a LOT of stores here in Europe. I don't see what paying-over-NFC could do for me. And wireless charging? Sounds incredible and very "sexy" for the average user but really, very "meh" for me. You still going to have to plug something in somewhere... I could not care less.
I can understand people feel a little disappointed but really, what was everyone expecting??? ALL current smartphones were just relatively small updates to existing models. Everyone is doing the "xx% slimmer/lighter/longer/bigger" increments and has been for some time now. There was no "paradigm shift" in ANY one of them. What were people hoping Apple would do... add a nuclear reactor or some drones or what?
There are many. The easiest answer is being able to run iOS apps -- which for many overrides almost anything else. Another is deep integration with Macs and AppleTV -- that solves real problems for me that (for example) wireless charging does not -- it's better, but not along a vector I care about (i.e. would make a decision on or pay for).
Even just counting hardware, a giant battery and a much better processor enable a lot of use cases. Does the S3 have three mics, equivalent WIFI speed, as good a camera?
Cmon man, besides the fact that it's thinner, lighter, sturdier, has a higher density screen, a better screen technology, better graphics performance, better phone quality, a better camera, better media ecosystem, better apps, and will get timely & regular OS updates for several years what else have the Cupertinians done for us lately?
A list of barely perceptible (and some unproven) differences won't help Apple as the market share steadily trends away from them.
I like to keep it simple. Larger screen, faster processor, expandable storage, Flash, Google Navigation, freedom to from Apple's draconian grip...take my money Samsung!
It's no wonder Apple is suing. They know they're playing catch-up.
They are getting all of the profit share (and actually increasing market share slightly). In the long term, if you take all the profits, others can't compete unless they do so asymmetrically (make profit some other way). No one has shown that they are doing this yet -- Google and Amazon have plays, but I don't see how Samsung can do this -- they need to make profit from the phone, and they don't make enough to compete long-term.
2) My Android has seamless integration to my Samsung TV and home media as well as laptop and PC via OSS apps and software. Again, we're debating branding at this point whether you want to say your AppleTV is better than my media solution, subjective.
Objectively your points about speed and camera are true though. I'm wont deny its a quick phone but I have to agree with others saying it didn't bring anything innovative or new.
True but saying The Dark Knight is better then Clooney Batman is also a subjective judgement. Despite being a subjective judgement, if an overwhelming number of reasonable people agree with something you can comfortably assert it.
"didn't bring anything innovative or new"
Well console quality graphics will certainly be new if they deliver on this.
Wideband audio + beamforming promises superior telephone performance which the iphone has always been sort of meh at. I'm only aware of one phone each that brings either of those (latest evo has HD audio and HTC one has beamforming) and none that have both
Being able to run an app I want is a feature of my phone.
It's all subjective. Even if you have an objective, measurable difference (processor speed), that only matters if I value the difference (subjective) -- which I don't. The iPhone 4S is fast enough for me -- I can't make use of an improvement in speed.
I can make use of new iOS apps (and do on almost a daily basis). If there were apps I wanted that needed the iPhone 5 to run, that might persuade me. If a Samsung phone could run iOS apps, then I would choose based on price (probably).
If you don't agree, then of course, the iPhone isn't interesting. It's just a glass box with components without the apps. I wouldn't even have a smart phone at all without the App Store.
I'm not sure about real-life speeds, but the iPhone's 802.11n is the bare-minimum 1 antenna, 1 channel version. Even my 3-year old laptop has a 300 Mbps chip built in.
Phones with larger screens, widescreen, higher resolution (1280x720 is common now), NFC, and LTE. Like last year's Galaxy Nexus and the HTC One X and Galaxy S 3 that have been out for months.
The Nokia 920 announced last week has all of that too, plus wireless charging, and a genuine leap forward in camera technology for phones.
Apple is under no obligation to match anyone feature for feature, but for people who follow phones of various types, it seems bizarre and somewhat frustrating the way new iPhones get vastly outsized publicity for devices that are increasingly becoming trailing indicators of where the mobile industry is going.
A large screen is not always a feature. You can type on an iPhone screen with one thumb, I couldn't comfortably manage that on my old Evo 4G. The DPI is the same as last year's iPhone, basically identical with the Lumia 920 due out later this year (330 vs 332).
It almost was at the time, I think only 2 phones had been produced with higher DPI before, and the iPhone blew them away on color gamut, viewing angles, etc.
What about the reversible cable connector? When was the last time you had a cable that didn't require looking at the cable before plugging it in? I know it's not really an innovation, but I don't understand why all cables can only have one way of going in -- when you plug in your usb cable, it's not obvious that it's upside down. Nobody looks at their audio cable when they plug in earphones; why can't normal computer cables be like this?
It does take a little more circuitry to detect orientation, but it seems like it would be worth it for a connector that gets used a lot.
Yes...
But the micro USB cable is interchangable between many devices. There is always one somewhere when you forgot yours.
Making it something completely new and unstandard and charge 30$ for an adaptor to everything up to your car that supported the old connector does not seem to be that much of an improvement. I see a lot of trouble in adopting the new iPhone and not many gains other than its faster lighter and lasts longer.
I think everyone understands the reasoning behind preferring micro usb, but why can't engineers consider users when designing a new connector? I feel like Apple is probably the only company who would go that extra mile to make cables user friendly -- I just don't see other companies making an effort to make cables friendlier to users. It's probably why Apple chose to design a connector themselves instead of choosing a universal standard.
> NFC and wireless charging? Who promised you that? And who delivers those at the moment?
I believe the new Lumia 920 by Nokia has both NFC and wireless charging. Not that those alone make one better than the other but just pointing out that they do exist.
Sorry, false dilemma and totally disingenuous. Just because no one promised it doesn't mean that one couldn't hope for it or be disappointed at its absence. Similarly, having big deal features like those are reasonable expectations for comparison to the original Iphone for "bigness" which I interpret as "important new features that will change how most people use phones in a radical way".
It would in fact be a really big deal if Apple included those - NFC is a fantastic idea that the Iphone could really launch into big-time use. It would in fact be a really big deal if they had wireless charging. Both those would more or less require all the other phones did it too, drastically changing the landscape for a lot of things.
>Sorry, false dilemma and totally disingenuous. Just because no one promised it doesn't mean that one couldn't hope for it or be disappointed at its absence. Similarly, having big deal features like those are reasonable expectations for comparison to the original Iphone for "bigness" which I interpret as "important new features that will change how most people use phones in a radical way".
And I'm disappointed that Apple isn't giving everyone a pony. They never promised it, but I'm disappointed that it's not there. I was going to call mine Bob.
I fail to see how being disappointed when features that were never promised aren't delivered is valid disappointment. Apple never promised it because they aren't doing it for this device. It could be coming in the future, or it might not. If, for example, Apple had made official statements about including NFC or wireless charging(not the "rumors" that seem to be the replacement for actual journalism in tech), then disappointment would be warranted. But Apple hasn't done that at all. Would it be nice if they included it? Sure. But they didn't.
This happens just about every time a new piece of tech is announced by everyone, and, quite frankly, it's getting annoying. People complaining about how Samsung isn't doing retina-style displays on their midrange tablets. Or complaining that Nokia is making Windows phones. Or that Apple hasn't included everything that everyone has ever wanted in a phone. With a cherry on top.
There are valid complaints about the new phone and news today: I'm skeptical of the reported battery life, considering all the new tech in the device, and that they made it that much smaller. Or that the majority of the iOS6 features won't be available to the pre-4S iPhones. Or that iTunes is still going to be a resource hog. Or that there's a new connector.
So you think it is stupid of people to want manufacturers to make good technology. Got it. In the mean time, I am going to go ahead and keep hoping that tech gets better, and that manufacturers put good things in new devices - because you know what, they are my dollars, and I get to say what I want in a device before I spend them.
You know what is equally tiring, companies saying "you want existing tech in the products we build? Too bad, you will take what we give you and like it", instead of you know, building things people want to spend money on.
No, I don't think it's stupid of people to expect that manufacturers make good technology. As a matter of fact, I expect manufacturers to make good products. I expect manufacturers to produce what they promise to produce. I don't expect companies to deliver on things they don't talk about, though. If they produce something new, that's great!
What I think is stupid is people(mostly tech "journalists") that go "I'm disappointed that this device doesn't have this thing that isn't on the spec sheet and was never announced by the company that makes it as a feature". That's the rough equivalent of being disappointed that you don't get everything you wanted for Christmas as a kid. It's silly.
It's not stupid. When people are vested in an ecosystem, they want devices in that ecosystem to be able to satisfy their specific use cases. This is why I wanted a waterproof iPhone: I play a lot of water sports, and it would be awesome to not have to rely on a second device to take photos/videos. So, as a dedicated Apple user, I started imagining how I would use such a device. When it didn't come, I was disappointed.
Seriously, it's appalling that you are having trouble understanding this, and are strawmanning it down to "wanting a pony."
Do you have any idea how hard it is to waterproof electronics? Not only do you need to keep water out of the device, but you also need to make sure that it can't collect anywhere and corrode away parts. There's a reason that hardened waterproof electronics are the way they are: big and heavy.
On the weekends, I go fly fishing. Full waders and everything. And I take my phone with me. In a plastic sandwich bag, which has kept the phone completely dry even after I accidentally submerged my bag. I could invest in a case if my phone spent more time in the water, but I don't feel the need to.
So yes, I understand your entire point, and yes, it IS pretty much down to wanting a pony.
You are raging about some random person on the internet being disappointed that reasonable (and existing in other phone) features not being available in the new IPhone, not about some tech journalist. Scope matters.
Further, you are comparing someone who hoped to see NFC and wireless recharge in his phone to a kid not getting everything he wanted. It could very well be that the kid asked for a dog, got an ant farm was disappointed. You're the father shouting "it's a pet dammit" when sure, it is, but missed the point that the features really wanted aren't fulfilled by the ants.
Samsung Galaxy S3, of course. And has for about four months now. NFC, wireless charging, quadcore processor, and a 4.8" screen all in a lighter, thinner package than the iPhone 5. EDIT I meant iPhone 4
Depends on your definition of bulky. Considering it has a larger screen and all the other features mentioned, your argument is invalid. The GIIS has a larger, wider screen, three times the battery, and a microSD slot weighs only .7 oz more and will be getting jelly bean soon...dude, you're rationalizing. It's sad. I know, it hurts. But you have to grow up and realize that Apple is not a God. You can leave the cult. Dear Leader is dead.
> Considering it has a larger screen and all the other features mentioned, your argument is invalid.
I'm not going to "leave the cult" if you're going to use the exact same kind of logic. From an objective (i.e. comparing sizes and weights) standpoint, the Galaxy is bulkier. From a "features important to wahsd / unit area" standpoint, it's much more space efficient. Neither of those points make his argument invalid.
Honestly, as an adult male (with adult male sized hands), a difference of 1 oz and 1mm seems insignificant to me. I suspect those measures are well within the variations caused by different cases. I suppose it could make a difference when the thing is in your pocket all day, but I'm not even sure about that.
The iP5 is clearly thinner and lighter, but does it matter? I don't know, not really to me. Maybe to women and kids.
Sure when you look at the mm and g it seems ridiculous but 20% lighter, 33% slimmer and stronger hardware and battery? I don't think this is SO insignificant in terms of miniaturization. They are already extremely thin and light, then managed to reduce if yet again by a fifth and a third. And the variations for their parts are below tenth of 1mm.
It's only my observations of the few people I have seen interact with the S3. I haven't seen anyone operate it successfully or elegantly with one hand. Often I see people set it down on a surface and use it like a small tablet. Just observation. I have only seen a few people actually using the device.
I definitely fumble my Galaxy Nexus on a regular basis. I can't quite accept I am unable to reach the top of the phone from my normal bottom grip so I stretch and stretch and try to balance it on my palm.
Why are people clamouring for NFC? What are people doing with it that I don't know about! Is there some magical dimension I'm not privy to where NFC is everywhere?
Yes, the magical dimension is short way forward along the 't' axis. There are a whole bunch of big NFC programmes being lined up in various countries, many backed by multiple mobile networks. In the US Isis is looking interesting and in the UK there is Project Oscar. France has Cityzi.
NFC is set to permeate many aspects of our lives, including payments, access control, transportation ticketing. It also enables some neat new marketing possibilities.
Right now the industry is solving the much talked about 'chicken and egg' situation by getting NFC handsets out there. High end phones shipping without NFC are now a rarity (which is why I'm disappointed tonight) and things are getting into position for the technology being revealed with a splash and folks finding that their existing handsets already have the right hardware that allows them to be part of the big new thing.
In short, you should be looking for NFC in your next handset not because it will be useful today or tomorrow, but because you'll be wanting it during the 18-24 month lifetime of the phone.
There is no guarantee that what's being put in phones today is going to be necessary or compatible with what ends up "winning" mobile payments. Notably last month a group of major retailers (walmart/target/711/sears/best buy...) announced they are going to push what sounds like a non-chip solution.
The MCX solution doesn't yet sound like anything and I believe it is simply a gun that is being brought along in case there is a fight over merchant fees.
There is a huge amount of work going on all over the world on putting NFC into place. It's not very visible yet, but it is happening. Notably, hardware is being quietly rolled out on both the user and merchant side. It's always possible something else might 'win' in the end, but I'd say it is increasingly unlikely...
How do I pay for something with NFC when I'm actually on the phone? And how do I pay for something if I don't have my phone. Or if my phone is out of charge. Genuine questions by the way.
If anything, it makes more sense to have NFC in a card. I'm not sure how convenient it is to have a method of payment that can run out of battery.
NFC, as it was originally envisioned, was supposed to allow for use even when the phone was without power just as the cards today are without power. In traditional RFID technology, from which NFC was derived, there was a powered transceiver (aka reader) and non-powered transponder (aka card). The promise of NFC was to be able to have a transceiver and transponder in one, where the power is derived from the inductive coupling of the antennae. You can see this by reviewing the ISO documents for ISO 14443 (RFID) and ISO 18092/ 21481 (NFC).
Check out Nokia's accessories for Lumia 920. All of them pair with NFC and some of them even charge the phone. Without cables or connectors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4zx2xy6VjE
"David Lindberg, Executive General Manager at Commonweath Bank, shared his vision of what the future may look like and the very probably demise of ‘cash’. Already more than 50% of transactions at 7-Elevens use contactless payment methods. Only three years ago, less than one percent of financial transactions were done via a mobile phone, yet this month in Australia there will be more financial transactions completed via mobile phone than on the internet." https://innovation.govspace.gov.au/2012/09/12/an-optimistic-...
Neither credit card nor ATM-cards managed to get rid of cash. Honest question: why should NFC-paying and what does it have to offer more when compared to just using your CC or ATM card?
Which chipset does 802.11 and NFC? And even if there is a chipset that does both, NFC requires a flat antenna about the size of a contactless card somewhere near the surface of the phone.
There's a new chipset that does 802.11, NFC and Bluetooth. According to the date of the press release below, this chip was released sometime in June 2012, so obviously not enough time for Apple to integrate in the new iPhone.
Correct, but NXP, TI (w/ WiLink[1]), Broadcom, Qualcom, Intel,... are shipping similar products.
As someone working in the 'Internet of Things' space, I wasn't so much disappointed with the lack of NFC - as Zigbee/802.15.4. Again, thanks to integrated radios, NFC and Zigbee can be done on the same chip.
The (mass adopted) future will have to wait for another product/hype cycle.
Historically, this is not something Apple has ever done. It doesn't even make sense, since their main money maker is selling new devices - not software-activating features on older models...
While I accept the premise of your comment (that Apple won't do this), I have to note that they released a software update to enable 802.11n, costing $1.99.
Of course it's marketing, and Apple certainly isn't alone in selling stuff with hyperbole.
What I think the grandparent was getting to isn't pointing out the silliness of the ad copy, but that the actual device being advertised is an underwhelming incremental improvement. This is less of an improvement on the 4S than the 4S was over the 4, and the 4S was uniformly dinged for being a disappointing (most of the best new stuff was software) iteration.
Really, this isn't even to ding Apple: smartphones are becoming commdities. The years of rapid evolution are behind us. The Android market is seeing similar pressure, as the most recent phones all more or less look and work identically.
I'm deeply underwhelmed. I was half-expecting something revolutionary, maybe haptics. Something that would make the iPhone stand out from Android. But I don't see anything new that would make me give up my existing Galaxy Nexus. It's just a big load of meh.
Sure, there was some rapid change as things like Android and WinCE dumped their old-style geek-centric interfaces and moved toward a more iPhone-ish consumer-centric approach. But after "the big switch" each one has had a similarly deliberate schedule of updates.
The original iPhone was a clear discontinuity: doubled the screen size, relied solely on a capacitive touchscreen and on-screen keyboard. The iOS market that arrived with the iPhone 3G was the first of its kind and a huge hit. The arrival of a serious GPU in the iPhone 3GS likewise changed the game for slick native UIs and all smartphones since have had one. The 800x480 resolution on the Nexus One enabled new kinds of apps (for the first time matching the anglular pixel size available to a person sitting very closet to a monitor) and the Retina display in the iPhone 4 completed that process. Most recently the dual core A9 SoCs in phones like the Atrix and 4S have become requirements.
Note that all of those features are required for a modern smartphone, and almost all of them were driven first by an iPhone release.
The iPhone 5 just isn't like that. There's nothing "new" here that we'll expect to see later on in other phones. It's just more of the same, but slightly better.
Since the iPhone 5 has neither of those features, it's both possible for this iPhone update to be the "biggest thing to happen to iPhone" and for future updates to also be the "biggest thing to happen to iPhone".
It's a comparison to the state of previous iPhones, not a comparison to the state of all phones on the market.
Apple made major updates to the core features that people use every day: brand new maps app, redesigned itunes, updated camera.
Apple understands that hardware is less important than software in the day to day experience of using the phone, they continue to focus on improving the experience of using the device, not the spec sheet. Thats why major hardware changes tend to be battery, screen, and camera: those are the features that most affect the day-to-day experience of the user.
Consumers outside HN aren't going to base a purchase decision on specs, so shiny toys like NFC or wireless charging end up compromising battery life or size, it's probably a pretty easy call for the company to make given the focus on the core experience.
I haven't used the new version, so can't comment on quality. My point was just that the "biggest thing" part of the announcement was probably based on the software updates. In terms of impact to user, the addition of turn-by-turn directions is a pretty big deal.
really !! NFC..who care about that. No body uses it even with existing phones. future of payment is going to be without plastic cards , NFC etc. Check square's new feature of paying it wifi
I use it for everything from my morning beverage to putting gas in the car. If it isn't important to you then that's cool but don't assume your opinion extends to all of us.
The only reason nobody uses NFC is because the iPhone doesn't have it. Seriously the entire payments industry is ready to deploy something but they are all holding back waiting to see what Apple will do in case they zig and Apple zags. I guarantee that if Apple had announced NFC today the entire payments industry would be different in 12 months time. As it is, the internecine warfare in the payments industry will just continue.
Can you help me understand why NFC matters? It is not like using my credit-cards or ATM-cards or just plain-old-cash didn't work just fine and comfortable and reliable enough...? I honestly don't understand it, especially from the "payment industry"'s point of view - why would they care? It is just costs to them and they wouldn't be able to replace existing payment terminals either because people will still use cards or just cash.
> It is not like using my credit-cards or ATM-cards or just plain-old-cash didn't work just fine and comfortable and reliable enough...?
From an industry point of view, I think it makes small transactions extremely secure - with the secure element in the NFC chip, tapping it to the payment terminal provides complete physical proof of the presence of the card. That's way better than even having a sales person sight the card or magnetic stripe etc. which be easily forged.
Once the transactions themselves are very secure there's no longer a need for things like signatures or PINs or other layers of security. That means you as a consumer can just walk into a store, take some things, tap your card / phone and leave. It's a bit hard to describe, but once you've done this you realize (at least I did) how much anxiety the barrier of payment at the end was detracting from your shopping experience. It's not rational, but my personal experience is that there's a strong level of anxiety about being challenged as to your identity and this removes it and makes the whole experience really easy and pleasant.
I can see the experience benefit but what you described, there is a HUGE problem: if anyone steals your phone then they too can just place it there and tap on it. I doubt everyone locks their phone and there is nothing verifying that it is actually the real owner tapping. That's exactly why CCs and ATMs require you to have your card AND a PIN or at least require a signature.
The biggest disappointment to me is the tiresome and childish war between Fanboys and Fandroids, not just on Engadget and the like, but also here on HN.
You know what? Just like any startup that posts here, Apple is filled with real people who take real pride in what they do, and I can imagine that for any of the thousands of folks who worked really hard on designing this product and manufactured to absurdly low variances, the sentiment you just expressed was deeply hurtful, and, in fact, wrong. There's a lot to be impressed by here. Lots of tiny details that aren't captured on a feature checklist.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. Don't sling shit publicly on their announcement day because your pet features weren't included (1).
Sorry, but they're being judged by their own marketing, not by objective qualities. This really isn't "the biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone", it's more of an iPhone 4SS. That doesn't mean that it's not a fine phone, but their marketing invites judgement on a scale their product can't live up to.
I thought the "the biggest thing to happen to iPhone" tagline is a pretty cute pun referring to the increased physical height until I read this thread. Seems like I'm the only one thinking that. Oh well, tagline done terribly, I guess.
I thought so too, then I saw that the marketing department decided to then prattle on about reductions in height and weight. They also show the phone side-on and there's no physical comparison to the earlier model showing the larger screen. The message wasn't very clear, and seemed to contradict itself.
In fact, it seems to be a play on words that the 'biggest change is the fact that it's so thin' and not the 'biggest change is the biggest screen'.
This is a good example of the Apple cultist. Other products get panned all the time as only being incremental but nobody waxes lyrically about the "real people who take real pride in what they do" and how saying that "the sentiment you just expressed was deeply hurtful, and, in fact wrong". Deeply hurtful? Are you serious? It's a luxury product from a corporation which will do anything from driving manufacturing workers in China into suicide to suing people over bogus patents, get over yourself and your devotion to a legal entity.
Actually the comment about shit slinging falls outside of the logical point I was trying to make, which is that there are indeed things here to be impressed with that he omitted from his list. No moral high ground.
Just about every single component was changed or upgraded. So that's pretty big. In previous generations of iPhones they only focused on one or two parts. 3G/cellular improvement, 4/screen & design, 4S/speed & camera, 5/LTE cellular improvement, screen, design, cameras, dock connector. Definitely the biggest iPhone upgrade they've ever done.
I don't know if wireless charging has improved since the Palm Pre days or not but it wasn't really setting the world on fire back then. NFC is pretty neat but my guess is Apple is looking at their own system they can control and profit from. If NFC becomes a big deal before they do their own system it may turn out to be a bad gamble.
Phil Schiller said that it’s not clear that NFC is the solution to any current problem, Passbook does the kinds of things customers need today.
“As for wireless charging, Schiller notes that the wireless charging systems still have to be plugged into the wall, so it’s not clear how much convenience they add."
Yeaah, the Palm Pre's wireless charging sure set the world on fire...
This collective "meh" has been said over and over again in techie forums about every iteration of the iPhone (including the first one), as Apple's marched from a bit player to the most profitable company in the world on the iPhone's success. Actually, this was pretty much the response to every iPod, too.
And that's not dedicated, so you have to launch the app any time you want to take a picture, so you miss photo opportunities doing that. Dedicated is like Windows Phone where pressing the button takes a picture, regardless of the app you're in.
I guess he misspoke. Regardless of which app you're in or even if the screen is switched off, pressing the camera button for a couple of seconds opens the camera app. Whether you take a picture or video is up to you. It's much faster than fiddling around for the power button and then tap the camera button on screen.
There is no phone which has everything you need. Everyone has different aspects of things. Maybe the iPhone doesn't fit you. Why don't you buy an WP7/8 if it has those features?
I don't understand what this discussing is helping. It doesn't have one and I'm pretty sure it will never have a dedicated button. I can understand why Apple is not going the way others are going. This is a phone not a dedicated camera, so why would you mix these things? I know the camera these days are pretty good and a lot of people are using only their phones to point-and-shot but I think it would and it is (on different phones) feels wrong to have dedicated button for camera.
This is all my opinion. Others do different views but this mine. I respect every other view.
In android, at least on my phone, dedicated camera buttons will take you to the camera application whenever you press them. It is quite nice, honestly I never bothered figuring out how to take a picture with it otherwise. In iOS I assume the UI is sufficiently less dreadful that this is not as necessary.
I recently got a Galaxy Nexus and I remember reading here a while ago about your app that crowd sources barometer readings from phones that have it but I couldn't remember what it was called when I got the GNex.
I'll go sign up. Thanks.
But why on Earth does any phone ship with a barometer? Weather is the only application I can think of, and surely it's easier just to pull weather conditions from the network.
How accurate are they for relative altimetry indoors? I could imagine climate control throwing in a decent margin of error if all the inputs/outputs (vents and blowers?) aren't balanced correctly.
Edit: They probably carry barometers already, but AC installer people could make use of phones with this hardware.
I don't think HVAC systems will do much damage there. I have a gadget on my airplane that gives altitude accurate to the foot, and that's while moving 60MPH or more through potentially turbulent air.
I am thinking more about actual differences in atmospheric pressure between indoors and outdoors, or even between rooms in a building. If the ventilation system is installed correctly this shouldn't happen, but if it is not then you can cause either an overpressure or underpressure in the building.
I don't think buildings will sustain much of a pressure difference. For example, a 10ft-equivalent pressure difference will exert a roughly 16 pound force on a standard residential door, which would be highly noticeable, and it's probably tough to seal a building well enough to contain that kind of pressure.
That makes no sense. My iPhone takes two seconds to get a solid GPS lock and it doesn't have a barometer. My stand-alone TomTom car GPS takes about 30 seconds to get a lock from a cold start, which is entirely attributable to the time required to download the satellite positions over the extremely slow 70s-era channel that they're broadcast over. Actually solving the equations takes no appreciable time on anything resembling modern hardware.
As far as I know, aGPS as found on modern devices is all about getting that almanac faster (which is why my iPhone only requires two seconds), not about using a rough fix to then get a better fix.
I realize that isn't your post, but it seemed appropriate to reply here since you posted the link.
A-GPS is about downloading the almanac over the fast ground data link. Solving the equations for partial signals is DIFFICULT and is where most innovation is these days.
Your phone takes two seconds (and so does mine) probably because you have WiFi on and you live in the States. Try living in the middle of nowhere in, say, Serbia, and see how fast you get a lock, regardless of WiFi.
Except that my years-old TomTom can figure out my location as fast as it can download the almanac. Clearly the equation-solving part is not a limiting factor there.
Many android devices support actual GPS, not just aGPS, so you can use them in places where you have no cell signal (say, while hiking).
Your iPhone takes 2 seconds because it's never a cold start. You're always connected to at least one cell tower you know the location of, you have several nearby wifi access points, etc. It might not be a feature you need for your limited use case. Cool. Then you won't miss it.
There are actually two different kinds of A-GPS as best I understand it.
One is the bad kind where GPS only works when you have a cell signal. It offloads a lot of the processing to the cell tower. This is used by cheap phones to comply with FCC requirements for location reporting for 911 calls, and isn't found much elsewhere.
The other is the good kind where it grabs the almanac off the network when possible for faster cold start times. This kind still works fine when you have no connection, it just takes longer to figure out your location when you turn it on, because it has to download the almanac the slow way.
They're basically unrelated except for the name, which is confusing.
You are misinformed. Assisted GPS is simply a feature that reduces the time-to-first-fix of GPS. Triangulation from cell towers exists, but nobody calls it A-GPS.
I've used the iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4, and 4S extensively in the wilderness. Every version since GPS was introduced has been "real" GPS.
You don't need cell signal for the GPS to work - in fact, you don't even need to have a SIM inserted or the WiFi to be on... It just locates you faster (that's why it's called "Assisted")
Actually the 4S is much faster at a fix than the 4 because it has more satellites to look at (GLONASS). More satellites means a faster, more accurate location fix.
It can't be assumed you'll always have a data connection to grab aGPS data, or that your particular nearby WAPs and cell towers are properly mapped out. Having extra data poins is rarely a bad thing.
As I pointed out, my completely isolated GPS still gets a lock pretty much immediately, once it has the almanac. That is the limiting factor. It's hard to see how a barometer would help much, especially since it could be off by 1000ft or more when not calibrated (i.e. always.)
but a properly calibrated barometer is WAY more accurate than GPS. 10 years ago I could track a two meters offset (that's the difference between your head and your feet!).
Indeed, but I can't think of any way to calibrate the thing other than looking up your location and pulling down weather data, or simply forcing the user to put in an altimeter setting.
Looks pretty cool to me. As for specs some people love: I don't care much, provided everything works smoothly and seamlessly. (Fine tuning Apache and MySQL has saved me tons of cash by doing a lot more with the same hardware.)
I like that their new cables are reversible. I hate how the micro-usb connectors can only fit one way, and it's not obvious which way the connector is when viewing from a distance. I always have to squint at the hole & cable every time I charge my phone (I have a nexus s)... it's too bad I'll never find an android phone with this kind of connector.
To me, "Lightning to USB cable" means something to connect it to a charge brick or your Mac/PC, just like the 30-pin to USB cables they used to include.
Yeah. I was thinking for a second there that it was Lightning to Thunderbolt and that I would have to pay extra just to buy the USB adapter to charge the new iPhone. Glad that's not the case.
I remember when the 4 was 'The' phone to have, and two iterations later, Apple are now seemingly playing me-too with Android/WP7-based handsets.
Especially the odd approach they're taking with NFC & Passbook in iOS 6. Why make a product perfectly suited for NFC, then just not use it in your newest products?
I was holding off on a new handset until the iPhone 5, but the Nokia's Lumina series seems to do more.
> Why make a product perfectly suited for NFC, then just not use it in your newest products?
The hardware's not ready yet? After all, the original iPhone was arguably "perfectly suited" for 3G and GPS, though the hardware for those things wasn't ready until the iPhone 3G. Maybe NFC is on the roadmap for iPhone 5S?
"Apple are now seemingly playing me-too with Android/WP7-based handsets"
This seems like it must be a joke, but I read a lot of people saying things like this. The sum of a phone are the features that come with it right out of the box, like little checkboxes to look for, without regard for the quality of their implementations or their usefulness in general. And here of all places, Hacker News, to show such complete disregard for the 3rd party app market (and the quality of their apps). iOS has much, much higher quality apps available in general than either Android or WP7. And while iPhone may not yet have NFC capabilities that the average user probably has little or no use for right now anyway, it does have things like a very nice music player that stomps on Android's. A fucking music player, that's like the first app that both iPhone and Android had, and the one in iOS has always been superior. But somehow iOS is the one playing catch-up.
I just don't understand this new mindset that iOS has fallen behind Android, much less WP7.
I would've completely agreed with you even a year ago, but it's just not true anymore. Any "useful" app on iOS has an equally useful equivalent on Android. Hell, one of my favorite "elegant" apps, Any.DO, originally launched on Android.
As for the music player? What are you talking about? Not only is the Google Play Music app great, it supports 20,000 songs in the cloud for free, it autoconverts FLAC to 320 kbps, and you don't have to use some bloated music suite to upload it all. Plus, it's not like there isn't a ton of viable replacements out there (Apollo, PowerAmp, Winamp, GoneMad, VLC).
Android played catch-up since the G1 launched. It caught up with Ice Cream Sandwich, and it got in front with Jelly Bean. No, it's not in every Android phone, but it's unfair to compare the Android ecosystem to the iPhone. Nexus vs. iPhone? I think it's pretty clear now...
iOS has visually slicker apps, but they are less functional, because iOS is more locked down. With Android, I use a custom home screen and a whole bunch of widgets that make the device far more useful to me than iOS devices which seem like toys in comparison. For example, the 3G Watchdog's widget showing quota usage, and calendar and weather displays. The fact I can use rsync to sync folders between my phone, tablet and home NAS without storing my files in the cloud somewhere or having the files siloed in a specific application or generic "photos, movies or music" buckets is a game changer for me.
The only time I use my iPad these days is on transatlantic flights when I want to watch my own movies or play some slick games. But that's even being transplanted by my Nexus 7, which is much nicer to use owing to lower weight - and bonus, I get most of the apps that also work on my phone.
iOS reminds me a little of DOS circa 1993, while Android feels a bit like Windows 3.1 of the same era. DOS apps were typically silos using custom graphics libraries, while Windows apps were drab but more consistent and had some pretense at integration (early OLE).
In photography, the general population probably just wants to take decent photos quickly. A DSLR, much like rsync, is a an awesome, powerful tool ... but probably not the right tool for non-enthusiasts. It might appeal to shutterbugs but that doesn't mean everyone needs or would use a DSLR.
You and I might use a niche feature like rsync, but the people that constantly complain that company X didn't include niche feature Y in product Z is, frankly, ridiculous.
rsync isn't a feature of android. Rather, the OS permitting something like rsync's functionality to run on it, and not in a silo or standard bucket basis - that makes all the difference.
That is, it's not this particular niche. It's the enabling of the existence of such niches in the first place.
Nobody in the population is average (this mythical "general population"). Everyone is odd in their own way. A product narrowly targeted at the average will lose to something more open. I believe this to be an almost natural law, like how free markets are better than the planned alternatives.
With such strange definitions (e.g. open, lose, narrowly targeted, etc) ... I don't think we'll be able to communicate with each other; we don't seem to have even vaugely similar definitions (in this context, at least).
Maybe you're right, maybe 'open' will win. But if it does, I'm fairly certain it won't be your definition of 'open'. At the very least, it's not the case right now. The most successful systems/devices are most certainly not 'open' and are trending towards being 'less open' aka designed for that 'general population' that you so actively deny exists.
Thanks for explaining that rsync isn't an Android feature. That explains why I've been using it for the last decade on Linux and FreeBSD.
This is why I said it wasn't a feature; what you wrote implied it was. Stock Android has no rsync. It doesn't even have cp.
More importantly, I was trying to describe the structural strategic advantage I think Android has which will lead to it winning out in the longer term, in a similar way to how the PC beat the Mac.
Okay, point taken. But I guess I spend so much time around a computer, I carry my laptop with me most places, that I honestly don't ever find myself with a desire to do things like rsync files and folders.
For me, a mobile phone is not a replacement for a computer. There are a number of things that I can do on a phone now that I couldn't do 10 years ago.. but there are a ton more things that I hope I never have to do on a phone. There are already plenty of things that phones do now, in their race to out-feature one another, that I think are just plain retarded as fuck. Do I want to watch a movie on a 4" screen? Fuck no. That sounds like the most awful cinematic experience imaginable.
I own a Galaxy Nexus right now, and I think it's a really nice phone except for a few things that drive me nuts (like the music player being awful). I used to use an iPhone 3GS, and everyone at work has iPhone 4 or 4S, and I think the iPhones just feel like nicer phones. Better quality cameras, generally nicer apps with it (with the obvious exception of maps.. Android's navigation feature has been the one thing I loved better about it for years), nicer designs in general, etc.
It's all about what you get out of the phone though. The two apps that I use the most are music and maps/navigation. That's been kind of an issue for me since Android has had the nicer maps app, but iPhone had the nicer music app.
Re movie watching, I used to watch movies on my 3rd gen iPod Nano - beat sitting in an aircraft for 11 hours with nothing else to do. On a phone, way nicer. You have to consider the visual angle rather than absolute screen size. My Galaxy Nexus has a 12cm diagonal; at 30cm from my eyes, that's over 22 degrees of viewing angle measured diagonally. At a distance of 9 feet, that's around a 42 inch screen. It's better than the setup I use to watch movies with my girlfriend (we don't own a TV) - and that works fine, it's a lot better than the 13-odd inch TV my family had in the 80s.
I'd love to own an iPhone - but only the hardware. I'd want to run Android on it.
Holding a 12cm phone 30cm from my eyes sounds like an awful cinematic experience. On a plane. Holding a device up. Focusing your eyes on this little thing right in front of you. None of this sounds like the way to watch a movie.
But maybe I just put too much value in the experience of watching a movie. I love live concerts, but I don't refuse to listen to pre-recorded albums so maybe I'm just being absurd about demanding to watch a movie under certain conditions.
You don't hold the device up. You prop it on the fold-down table and look down at it at a fairly comfortable angle. BTW, around 30cm distance is pretty normal for lots of things - e.g. books, in use for centuries.
On planes with seat rear screens are probably even closer than 30cm to your eyes when the guy in front is leaned back and you're not.
(Not a fan of live concerts; sound is much better on studio recorded albums in any case.)
Lack of NFC makes me sad, but I've been screwing around with Bluetooth 4.0 LE recently, and I think I can do basically all the things I want (in a closed ecosystem -- access control, digital leash, etc.) using 4.0 LE, and then use 2d barcodes on screen for interfacing to existing systems. It fails to mass transit, but I have a car.
The main things I would have liked:
* "geofencing" in some security-strong way to let a phone use a 4-digit pin when in home/office, and a longer PIN when outside the home/office. Could ninja this on Android I think (you'd do some kind of low-latency challenge-response on a LAN -- depending on the threat model, even 802.1X might be ok, but wouldn't resist an RF relay over a long tunnel...)
* Biometric authentication on the device
* Integrated credential management ("Passbook for Websites") where SSL client certs, passwords, or something got managed inside the secure element of the phone
And, a real stretch, but a 128 or 256GB "pro" version of the phone, even if it cost 2x as much. Kill the iPod Classic.
Why is Verizon so popular in the U.S.? I see no (absolutely no) reason why someone should choose Verizon over Sprint... Verizon plans are about a hundred times more expensive.
The agreement is technology agnostic. I had to escalate up a few times and after some persistance, got a call back from someone who was engineering level.
There is a significant difference in network coverage and bandwidth speeds. Also, until recently Sprint device selection severely lagged both AT&T and Verizon as the iPhone and many top Android models were missing.
There are many factors for choosing your carrier outside of price.
Sprint has almost no LTE coverage currently. They bet heavily on WiMax, which flopped. They're working to rapidly fix that, but they're way behind for now.
hm. is this the first time that Verizon and AT&T are basing their plans solely on data allowances alone? Text & voice are both unlimited under each and every plan.
If you're talking about the Mobile Share plans, its because they are (1) for entire families and (2) include unlimited voice and text along with them. Essentially you'd pick out a plan and that would be your monthly bill each month. Everyone would draw from the same data cap though. Given that, those prices don't seem particularly outrageous compared to what a typical family of 4-5 might pay now.
Surprisingly, there are quite a few prepaid data plans from major carriers in the US. For example, I'm using T-Mobile's 4G Monthly plan which provides me with 5GB of data for $30 a month, no contract.
You can actually get a nano sim from T-Mobile, all you need is the IMEI number from the sim in order to register for their 4G prepaid plan.
There are other carriers too, like boostmobile, cricket, virgin, etc.
Nano SIM is a new SIM size for iPhone 5, I doubt you can get it anywhere right now since iPhone 5 hasn't shipped yet. You probably were referring to Micro SIM which was introduced for iPhone 4.
This announcement plays into my theory that Apple will miss Steve Jobs a lot. It was very much a 'gradual improvement' -- and 'routine' announcement.
A few missteps, from my perspective:
* Apple Maps -- while this may prove good for mapping technology in the long run, I think the iPhone users will miss Google Maps quite a bit, for now.
* Seemingly no fundamental improvement to Siri. "Conversational Searching" is the best way for Apple to bring the fight to Google, because this is the natural evolution of search. Why type queries into a search engine, when you can have a conversation with an AI instead? Google sees this danger and is developing Google Now, leaping ahead quickly.
* No signs of trying to get into the emerging mobile payments battle.
All in all I didn't get the feeling of a large vision being played out or of an arc of forward advance, but rather a feeling of slowing momentum.
is the screen still made of glass that will shatter if you drop it to the ground? If glass, I hope they have managed to hardend it. Also I dont want those silly bands/rubber rings around the phone.
Apple held back calling last year the iPhone 4S, the 5 because it wasn't good enough to bare the name, but this time there are hardly any core feature upgrades, and you get pulled further away from good google services.
the iphone 5 is more about flashy hardware and dumping google than it is about wowing customers.
the iphone 4s had a focusing lens, siri and was twice as fast as the iphone4.
How are the kindle products innovative? I guess the "white" page book reader is innovative in the sense of licensing a new generation of the e-ink tech (and I have to say it make the readers more attractive to me; I never liked the gray one gray displays), and the front-lighting is new and useful. Aside from that they're tablets with literally zero features we haven't seen before, indeed nothing over the iPad 3. Apple just needs to cut the iPad 3 price by 25% and they're not even compellingly cheap.
The iPhone 5 may not wow you, but what does that matter? In general each iPhone generation has only really been compelling to owners of two year old iPhones. I thought the iPhone 4S was nice enough but hung onto my iPhone 4. I thought the 3GS looked nice, but held onto my 3G.
(For contrast, I have an original Kindle Fire and the new Kindles do nothing for me. Indeed, having bought a Kindle Fire I probably won't buy another Amazon tablet because they're far more crippled than anything Apple has ever done. E.g. I can't read epubs on it.)
The iPod Touch is a huge upgrade. It's literally an iPhone without the cellular plan (it has a 4S CPU, but an iPhone 5 screen).
One of the things that impressed me (we'll see how well it works) is the panorama function. Plenty of cameras have a automatic panoramas but you'd be surprised how cruddy the results tend to be (often very low resolution). It looks like the panorama function generates very high resolution output.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 219 ms ] threadI'm sure we can all remember the time when the cpu & gpu were separate chips.
> GSM model A1428: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 4 and 17)
> CDMA model A1429: CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz); UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, 25)
> GSM model A1429: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5)
[0] https://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
[1] https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/
iWork (for Mac and iPad) are both amazing. So sad iWork for Mac is still called "iWork '09".
Jobs/Apple was never about bundling tons of irrelevant features together (wireless charging? Please...), and winning by ticking feature checkboxes.
Jobs used to introduce a new iPod model every year or so. And he also got to introduce 4 iPhone models. Lots of times the changes were incremental (3G -> 3GS for example).
Heck, back in the day, a new color or some more storage was considered a huge improvement over the previous iPod model. People literally went bezerk in the possibility that the next iPod could also play video (imagine that!).
And now you have a mature phone, in it's 6th version, fast as hell, with a GPU that you would have killed for to have in your laptop half a decade ago, camera, gyro, retina, bigger screen, thin, new extremely featured iOS, some 500.000+ apps etc. What exactly do you want with that? Magic sprinkle dust?
I would be satisfied even if Apple had only sticked to making computers/OS. They have far surpassed that. Nobody even asked them to make mp3 players, phones, or tablets in the first place. Since we will be using all of the above for the next 20 years, I think they will be fine, even if they dont pull another market/device out of their hats...
It's trivial for the phone to be better than 5+ year old tech. But that's a completely irrelevant comparison.
IMHO, it's better than any Android phone out there, bar none. From the construction, to the display, to the weight and size, to the cpu/gpu combo, and more importantly to the huge app ecosystem that makes use of standard gizmos inside it, and ties it all together. Plus the media ecosystem. Plus the third-party peripheral ecosystem.
>It's trivial for the phone to be better than 5+ year old tech. But that's a completely irrelevant comparison.
Yes, completely irrelevant, since it's also better than any 1 month old tech, or the previous iPhone itself.
What's the competition? Some Android phone that will be left without an update to the next Android version and which has the subpar Android app ecosystem and subpar construction/design? Or the Lumia that doesn't even have an OS out of beta yet and is "due to arrive later this year"?
As if Apple had invented all of those things. They didn't. Far, far from it.
What matters is who made them popular and got them in our collective hands en masse.
That's when the revolution starts, when people start buying them so you have improvements and cheaper price due to economies of scale, and you also get an ecosystem of apps, etc.
Tablets pre-iPad might as well have been non-existing. Same for smartphones pre iPhone. I had several (Nokia, Sony Erricson etc. After the iPhone you couldn't stand this crap for a moment).
I also had 2-3 mp3 players pre iPod. Including some bizarro Sony's own format players. Not even close to what we expect post-iPod.
And they did the same with the tablet, they created a market that did not exist before - from existing technologies.
Apple stands on the shoulders of giants like Nokia, Palm and Blackberry (aka Crackberry).
There's no doubt that they packaged things very nicely and have been very successful, but it's not as if they created this market out of thin air. They surely did not invent the general concept that they've been so successful implementing.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/06/jobs-focus-is-about-saying-...
I imagine AAPL are not worried about turning off the hyper-literal critics amongst the crowd.
Good lord, what am I doing debating/discussing a marketing headline... Anyway.
NFC and wireless charging? Who promised you that? And who delivers those at the moment?
You might want to see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
This isn't to say it's a bad device, just infinite hype for zero payoff.
LTE
As an android (GS3) user I would have liked the iPhone to get NFC (and NFC based mobile payments) for the simple reason that the more phones capable of NFC payments the more merchants are likely to support it which benefits all of us (or at least all of us interested in paying for things with our phones).
The same argument would hold true for wireless charging, but it would probably be unlikely for Apple to adopt the emerging "Qi" wireless charging standard and instead roll it's own.
I know I'm going to take down votes for this, but for 90% of the population NFC is a solution in search of a problem. For most people cash, credit, or debit work just fine. NFC isn't a 10X better payment solution. Most people have to carry something on them to carry cards, drivers licenses, etc in which they will place their payment card. Instead of fiddling with your wallet, now you're fiddling with your phone.
NFC is as silly as using bump for payments.
Phones worked just fine for most people in 2006. Phones' screens were just fine in 2009...
Paypass and Paywave are a considerable improvement over chip and PIN or singing a slip of paper. Faster, less fumbling. Necessary, no; an improvement, yes.
The iPhone was a 10X improvement over what was out there, if you upgraded your whole phone experience got better.
Retina was a 4X improvement (4X as many pixels) after looking at retina the 3GS looked ugly, if you upgraded your entire phone experience got better.
Now lets take a look at what happens if you get an NFC phone, you still have to take your wallet, and then you have to ask everyone whether their payment system supports NFC. 95% of the time you're going to be taking out your wallet. It's not a 10X improvement therefore adoption will be slow.
And it still doesn't work when the power is out unlike cash. I'm actually starting to go away from any payment system that isn't cash, because cash is universally accepted, even the Olympics takes cash.
If NFC was on par with the aforementioned features it would be in the new phone.
Have you ever used Paypass? The readers are pretty conspicuous, large pad above the chip card reader, no need to ask just like you don't need to ask if someone takes cards when you see the reader.
> And it still doesn't work when the power is out unlike cash.
Sure, and phones don't work when the cellular network is down, unlike shouting. But the last time I was unable to pay with a card because power or network were down was in 2010 and that's the only instance I can actually remember since, like, 2005.
Let's not get into the parts where POSes will probably go down too if power goes out...
I'm sure any day now Apple will come out with NFC in the iPhone 5S as they realize they've missed out on a huge opportunity.
Please pay no attention to the ticketing app of which they will probably take a 30% cut. NFC is where the money's at which is why people have stopped buying iPhones and are instead only buying phones with NFC.
I just tossed my wallet, 4S, debit/credit cards, and cash into the garbage, now I just carry around my Galaxy Nexus looking for someone who wants to me to beam them bitcoins. I'm looking forward to walking 5 KM to get to a grocery store to buy food now that I can't drive (my drivers license just got revoked because the police won't accept a picture of it) and theres no where to sell me food in < 5KM (they don't support NFC).
NFC really does change everything, it's a whole new way of living.
As a point of interest I can buy food with NFC within a 12 minute walk, and I don't even have an NFC phone.
The reason why the iPhone was revolutionary wasn't because it had a touch screen it was because it didn't suck. When NFC stops sucking I'll stop saying it sucks.
I thought bump was awesome too, then I realized how inconvenient it was. I could hand you a business card, or I could fiddle with my phone, show you how to download the app, etc. NFC is bump with out the bumping. It's still too fiddly.
The iPaq, Newtown, Palm Pilot, and the Android G1 were solutions in search of a problem just like the current incantation of NFC is.
Have you used a mainstream credit card NFC payment system such as Paypass or Paywave? What did you think sucked about it?
Have you used a mobile device NFC payment system such as Google Wallet? What did you think sucked about it?
I think their decision to go with PassBook will backfire (like Thunderbolt did - It's even more niche than Mac itself!) and they'll add NFC in iPhone 6 like they added USB3 support.
That said, I'm not in a market that either of these technologies are likely to be used in the foreseeable future (5-10 years), so I personally don't care one way or another :) NFC/PassBook catching on just make me more jealous!
OK, then NFC is just a slightly improved Wifi+Bonjour.
That's not to say incremental improvements to existing features, such as LTE, can't be reason enough to sell a device (note that wasn't the question, though). As others have pointed out, though, Edge to 3G felt like a more significant step than 3G to LTE, though, just as 56k to 1 Mbit DSL felt like a more significant step than 1 MBit to 16 Mbit or 16 Mbit to 50 Mbit.
If you want to see "infinite hype", check the Microsoft Courier and other hypeware, in which videos were made, the press touted it for months, it was announced to be "the future" and nothing came of it.
"Zero payoff"? Really? It's an amazing device to upgrade to, after your 2-year contract ends, even if it doesn't have magic unicorn powers. It's the best iPhone YET made, period, I don't think someone can argue against that (and no, it's not a guarantee with any product update to be better than the last one).
Your response amounts to the proverbial: "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame".
>Name for me one brand new feature
"Brand new" is used here to preempt any mention of the tons of incremental improvements?
Other then that copy and paste and enough memory to keep more then 2 tabs open in safari were what I remember.
The 5 seems like a solid step. I don't see the need to upgrade every year but if you compare back to the 4 rather than the 4S the performance should be a massive jump. Support for 5GHz wifi could mean a real speed boost too and the bigger screen should be nice.
Looking at the construction, the 3G was never something to write home about. The technology forced Apple's hand and they had to make that plastic monster. Acceptable, not great. Like the 5, the 3G improved every aspect of its predecessor and it added 3G.
The 5 is just like the 3G – only that this time around the construction is at least on par or better (likely, looking at first hand ons, still, only speculation at this point) than that of the predecessor. It’s also, quite obviously, less fragile. So Apple has done much more on the construction front, but the jump from 3G to LTE is also arguably not as important than the jump from Edge to 3G.
Looking at the specs and comparing them with other phones you get the same picture you always got. It’s a wash. Those kinds of comparisons never mattered.
In conclusion: no 3GS to 4 jump, but certainly a 1 to 3G jump.
Also a familiar sight since the 3G, geeks are disappointed, the phone sells faster than Apple can make it.
This phone is no surprise. It’s Apple doing what they have always done.
But what really irks me is the way Apple marketing team is hyping it up - "This is the best <insert iDevice> we have ever made!", "This is revolutionary!", "This will change everything you were doing before!"... A slathering of these so often during the entire event and then on with their advertisements makes me cringe and shake my head with disappointment. This iPhone and the iPod[x] are pretty much an iteration and minor upgrade, not what the actual 'revolutionary' things were - iTouch, iPhone, iPad, retina display, etc.
I don't expect 'revolutionary' every year or any time, I just expect some sincerity announcing.
Are you an idiot?
And it is the best iPhone they've ever made. And the iPhone is arguably the best phone out there, so they sort of have a fair bit of credibility when they say that stuff.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Unless they're going the linux kernel route and changing their version numbering ;)
A few years ago, yes the iPhone was the best in specs and had the most innovative and unique features. I don't think it holds true any more.
Yeah, some people will always wait for the next iPhone. But for others, who have a more "neutral" point of view, this iPhone might look very bad in 10 months.
But as to why I think it's the best phone? The Eco system, it looks good and it's works seamlessly with all my other stuff.
1) Construction (machining, materials, fitting them inside the case, industrial design). Unparalleled.
2) Screen. Top notch (high dpi, improved saturation).
3) Camera. One of the best in the business. Tons of apps for it, even photo books and indie movies videos done with it.
4) Apps ecosystem. Unparalleled in number and quality.
5) OS. Mature, not laggy, full featured, designed with far more coherence than Android and far more functionality in mind than just modernist design compared to Metro.
6) OS Upgrades. You do not even get any with most Android phones. And don't happen to the new Windows mobile os version.
7) Peripherals ecosystem: from health tracking devices, to tripods, to MIDI, unparalleled.
8) No carrier branded bullshit (apps, look etc): priceless.
9) Support ecosystem: Applestores etc. Top notch.
10) Resale value: high.
Did they say this?
I think what is pissing most people off is that up until iphone 4 (not 4s), the iphone was arguably the best smart phone around. 4s and 5 have been improvements to the iphone but have not added anything over its competitors. Most of the competitors can do what the iphone 5 does and more (such as NFC and / or wireless charging).
Bottom line: There is no reason to stick with the iphone 5 other than "I am stuck in the eco system", or "I love apple" or "It is good enough". The "better than the others" argument doesn't fly anymore.
Navigation App
But Apple has a habit of making it seem like everything they do is revolutionary. It's very good marketing.
Again, I agree with you. But what I'm getting at is that Apple's brand of marketing creates a lot of hype and I'm sure they like it that way.[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20070113215301/http://apple.com
Every marketing team ever has created hype. Ever.
I don't understand why so many people blame Apple for this.
- Slightly larger screen - Faster CPU - Improved camera - Added LTE - Faster Wifi - Added NFC - Added a couple of sensors - Better battery life - Heavier
Not a whole lot different from the iPhone changelist, and I bet it's not a whole lot different from any other phone maker's changelist between generations either.
Last time the iPhone had such a changelist was in june 2010. The S2 came out 12 months prior to the S3.
When you only release one phone every 24 months people are right to expect more.
That, or you could compare the S2 with S3 against the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S...
So what is left then? What COULD they have added to floor people? Nuclear reactor? Drones? I cannot think of anything.
Larger screen. It's a BFD for some people, for they have been tearing their hearts out at forums for ages how Android has that and the iPhone doesn't.
And 3G -> 3GS didn't bring anything to the table. Or 4 to 4S for that matter, considering that Siri was already available as an app.
If you look at the changes between previous models it really is. Just about every single component has been upgraded. There have never been this many changes at once in an iPhone. The 3GS->4 upgrade comes close but when you get into the sort of second tier of features the 4S->5 list is quite a bit longer. If you're judging it by significance of the upgrades that may be a little different. I think the 3GS->4 still wins out there. On the raw numbers though the 4S->5 simply has more changes.
I don't understand all the negative reactions - name one brand new and truly "wowing" feature the new Galaxy brought to the table? Pretty much all modern smartphones are at the technological cutting-edge and I cannot think of much they could possible squeeze into those things. You already have all sorts of sensors and pretty much all connectivity options you could possibly want and it can do frakking 3D games in the palm of your hand too and play music and videos and etc.
NFC could be interesting but I am happy enough with paying with my CCs or directly playing with my ATM card in a LOT of stores here in Europe. I don't see what paying-over-NFC could do for me. And wireless charging? Sounds incredible and very "sexy" for the average user but really, very "meh" for me. You still going to have to plug something in somewhere... I could not care less.
I can understand people feel a little disappointed but really, what was everyone expecting??? ALL current smartphones were just relatively small updates to existing models. Everyone is doing the "xx% slimmer/lighter/longer/bigger" increments and has been for some time now. There was no "paradigm shift" in ANY one of them. What were people hoping Apple would do... add a nuclear reactor or some drones or what?
How is "new connector" a good thing? It's still not USB.
Looks like iPhone is playing catchup. How times change!
Well, it's smaller enabling the phone to be thinner, more durable design, can go in either side up, and it's faster.
>Looks like iPhone is playing catchup. How times change!
Catchup to what? Phones with USB chargers?
There are several the S3 has that aren't there on an iPhone.
Even just counting hardware, a giant battery and a much better processor enable a lot of use cases. Does the S3 have three mics, equivalent WIFI speed, as good a camera?
I like to keep it simple. Larger screen, faster processor, expandable storage, Flash, Google Navigation, freedom to from Apple's draconian grip...take my money Samsung!
It's no wonder Apple is suing. They know they're playing catch-up.
And I'm far from alone. Over a half million people downloaded it from Google's app store and I'm sure that just as many have put it onto their phone without going through the store. - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adobe.flas...
1) iOS apps vs. Android apps is subjective
2) My Android has seamless integration to my Samsung TV and home media as well as laptop and PC via OSS apps and software. Again, we're debating branding at this point whether you want to say your AppleTV is better than my media solution, subjective.
Objectively your points about speed and camera are true though. I'm wont deny its a quick phone but I have to agree with others saying it didn't bring anything innovative or new.
True but saying The Dark Knight is better then Clooney Batman is also a subjective judgement. Despite being a subjective judgement, if an overwhelming number of reasonable people agree with something you can comfortably assert it.
"didn't bring anything innovative or new"
Well console quality graphics will certainly be new if they deliver on this.
Wideband audio + beamforming promises superior telephone performance which the iphone has always been sort of meh at. I'm only aware of one phone each that brings either of those (latest evo has HD audio and HTC one has beamforming) and none that have both
So you're saying even if the majority is wrong, they're always right?
"always right" =/= "comfortably assert"
Nice demonstration of how to construct a straw man though.
It's all subjective. Even if you have an objective, measurable difference (processor speed), that only matters if I value the difference (subjective) -- which I don't. The iPhone 4S is fast enough for me -- I can't make use of an improvement in speed.
I can make use of new iOS apps (and do on almost a daily basis). If there were apps I wanted that needed the iPhone 5 to run, that might persuade me. If a Samsung phone could run iOS apps, then I would choose based on price (probably).
If you don't agree, then of course, the iPhone isn't interesting. It's just a glass box with components without the apps. I wouldn't even have a smart phone at all without the App Store.
The Nokia 920 announced last week has all of that too, plus wireless charging, and a genuine leap forward in camera technology for phones.
Apple is under no obligation to match anyone feature for feature, but for people who follow phones of various types, it seems bizarre and somewhat frustrating the way new iPhones get vastly outsized publicity for devices that are increasingly becoming trailing indicators of where the mobile industry is going.
They are however very good implementations of where the industry currently is.
It does take a little more circuitry to detect orientation, but it seems like it would be worth it for a connector that gets used a lot.
Making it something completely new and unstandard and charge 30$ for an adaptor to everything up to your car that supported the old connector does not seem to be that much of an improvement. I see a lot of trouble in adopting the new iPhone and not many gains other than its faster lighter and lasts longer.
Which increases the price of small peripherals by a considerable amount.
Where was the innovation in the S2, S3 or the Nokia 920? And no, nfc nor wireless-charging don't really floor me. These are pretty small.
I believe the new Lumia 920 by Nokia has both NFC and wireless charging. Not that those alone make one better than the other but just pointing out that they do exist.
All the webOS devices had wireless charging (although with the earlier ones you had to buy a replacement back cover)
But no NFC
Sorry, false dilemma and totally disingenuous. Just because no one promised it doesn't mean that one couldn't hope for it or be disappointed at its absence. Similarly, having big deal features like those are reasonable expectations for comparison to the original Iphone for "bigness" which I interpret as "important new features that will change how most people use phones in a radical way".
It would in fact be a really big deal if Apple included those - NFC is a fantastic idea that the Iphone could really launch into big-time use. It would in fact be a really big deal if they had wireless charging. Both those would more or less require all the other phones did it too, drastically changing the landscape for a lot of things.
And I'm disappointed that Apple isn't giving everyone a pony. They never promised it, but I'm disappointed that it's not there. I was going to call mine Bob.
I fail to see how being disappointed when features that were never promised aren't delivered is valid disappointment. Apple never promised it because they aren't doing it for this device. It could be coming in the future, or it might not. If, for example, Apple had made official statements about including NFC or wireless charging(not the "rumors" that seem to be the replacement for actual journalism in tech), then disappointment would be warranted. But Apple hasn't done that at all. Would it be nice if they included it? Sure. But they didn't.
This happens just about every time a new piece of tech is announced by everyone, and, quite frankly, it's getting annoying. People complaining about how Samsung isn't doing retina-style displays on their midrange tablets. Or complaining that Nokia is making Windows phones. Or that Apple hasn't included everything that everyone has ever wanted in a phone. With a cherry on top.
There are valid complaints about the new phone and news today: I'm skeptical of the reported battery life, considering all the new tech in the device, and that they made it that much smaller. Or that the majority of the iOS6 features won't be available to the pre-4S iPhones. Or that iTunes is still going to be a resource hog. Or that there's a new connector.
You know what is equally tiring, companies saying "you want existing tech in the products we build? Too bad, you will take what we give you and like it", instead of you know, building things people want to spend money on.
What I think is stupid is people(mostly tech "journalists") that go "I'm disappointed that this device doesn't have this thing that isn't on the spec sheet and was never announced by the company that makes it as a feature". That's the rough equivalent of being disappointed that you don't get everything you wanted for Christmas as a kid. It's silly.
Seriously, it's appalling that you are having trouble understanding this, and are strawmanning it down to "wanting a pony."
On the weekends, I go fly fishing. Full waders and everything. And I take my phone with me. In a plastic sandwich bag, which has kept the phone completely dry even after I accidentally submerged my bag. I could invest in a case if my phone spent more time in the water, but I don't feel the need to.
So yes, I understand your entire point, and yes, it IS pretty much down to wanting a pony.
It is hard, but Apple has $117 billion in cash. They could make an elegant and waterproof smartphone if they wanted.
If you seriously thought that was even a miniscule possibility with the iPhone 5, then you are in for a lot of disappointment.
Further, you are comparing someone who hoped to see NFC and wireless recharge in his phone to a kid not getting everything he wanted. It could very well be that the kid asked for a dog, got an ant farm was disappointed. You're the father shouting "it's a pet dammit" when sure, it is, but missed the point that the features really wanted aren't fulfilled by the ants.
http://mashable.com/2012/09/12/iphone-5-compared/
I'm not going to "leave the cult" if you're going to use the exact same kind of logic. From an objective (i.e. comparing sizes and weights) standpoint, the Galaxy is bulkier. From a "features important to wahsd / unit area" standpoint, it's much more space efficient. Neither of those points make his argument invalid.
The iPhone 5 is 3.9oz and is 7.6mm thick.
The iPhone 5 is around 18% lighter and 12% thinner than the S3.
I often see people fumble with the S3, especially one-handed, so I'm not sure the size is a good thing.
The iP5 is clearly thinner and lighter, but does it matter? I don't know, not really to me. Maybe to women and kids.
I think confirmation bias may be affecting your anecdotal evidence.
http://www.nfcworld.com/nfc-phones-list/
NFC is set to permeate many aspects of our lives, including payments, access control, transportation ticketing. It also enables some neat new marketing possibilities.
Right now the industry is solving the much talked about 'chicken and egg' situation by getting NFC handsets out there. High end phones shipping without NFC are now a rarity (which is why I'm disappointed tonight) and things are getting into position for the technology being revealed with a splash and folks finding that their existing handsets already have the right hardware that allows them to be part of the big new thing.
In short, you should be looking for NFC in your next handset not because it will be useful today or tomorrow, but because you'll be wanting it during the 18-24 month lifetime of the phone.
There is a huge amount of work going on all over the world on putting NFC into place. It's not very visible yet, but it is happening. Notably, hardware is being quietly rolled out on both the user and merchant side. It's always possible something else might 'win' in the end, but I'd say it is increasingly unlikely...
If anything, it makes more sense to have NFC in a card. I'm not sure how convenient it is to have a method of payment that can run out of battery.
So that's not such a great set of features for me. In fact, it's actually worse.
A number of chipsets do 802.11ac + NFC/RFID + (wifi,etc) in the same package. I suppose we won't know until teardowns begin appearing...
http://www.marvell.com/company/news/pressDetail.do?releaseID...
As someone working in the 'Internet of Things' space, I wasn't so much disappointed with the lack of NFC - as Zigbee/802.15.4. Again, thanks to integrated radios, NFC and Zigbee can be done on the same chip.
The (mass adopted) future will have to wait for another product/hype cycle.
[1] Feb. 2012 - http://www.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?t...
It's marketing, sheesh.
What I think the grandparent was getting to isn't pointing out the silliness of the ad copy, but that the actual device being advertised is an underwhelming incremental improvement. This is less of an improvement on the 4S than the 4S was over the 4, and the 4S was uniformly dinged for being a disappointing (most of the best new stuff was software) iteration.
Really, this isn't even to ding Apple: smartphones are becoming commdities. The years of rapid evolution are behind us. The Android market is seeing similar pressure, as the most recent phones all more or less look and work identically.
Sure, there was some rapid change as things like Android and WinCE dumped their old-style geek-centric interfaces and moved toward a more iPhone-ish consumer-centric approach. But after "the big switch" each one has had a similarly deliberate schedule of updates.
Note that all of those features are required for a modern smartphone, and almost all of them were driven first by an iPhone release.
The iPhone 5 just isn't like that. There's nothing "new" here that we'll expect to see later on in other phones. It's just more of the same, but slightly better.
That part is quite clever and will perfectly communicate to people what's new about the iPhone.
It's a comparison to the state of previous iPhones, not a comparison to the state of all phones on the market.
</pedantic>
Apple understands that hardware is less important than software in the day to day experience of using the phone, they continue to focus on improving the experience of using the device, not the spec sheet. Thats why major hardware changes tend to be battery, screen, and camera: those are the features that most affect the day-to-day experience of the user.
Consumers outside HN aren't going to base a purchase decision on specs, so shiny toys like NFC or wireless charging end up compromising battery life or size, it's probably a pretty easy call for the company to make given the focus on the core experience.
From an industry point of view, I think it makes small transactions extremely secure - with the secure element in the NFC chip, tapping it to the payment terminal provides complete physical proof of the presence of the card. That's way better than even having a sales person sight the card or magnetic stripe etc. which be easily forged.
Once the transactions themselves are very secure there's no longer a need for things like signatures or PINs or other layers of security. That means you as a consumer can just walk into a store, take some things, tap your card / phone and leave. It's a bit hard to describe, but once you've done this you realize (at least I did) how much anxiety the barrier of payment at the end was detracting from your shopping experience. It's not rational, but my personal experience is that there's a strong level of anxiety about being challenged as to your identity and this removes it and makes the whole experience really easy and pleasant.
You know what? Just like any startup that posts here, Apple is filled with real people who take real pride in what they do, and I can imagine that for any of the thousands of folks who worked really hard on designing this product and manufactured to absurdly low variances, the sentiment you just expressed was deeply hurtful, and, in fact, wrong. There's a lot to be impressed by here. Lots of tiny details that aren't captured on a feature checklist.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. Don't sling shit publicly on their announcement day because your pet features weren't included (1).
1) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4357133
In fact, it seems to be a play on words that the 'biggest change is the fact that it's so thin' and not the 'biggest change is the biggest screen'.
The implication being that employees who work at corporations that make luxury goods don't have feelings worth considering?
I don't know if wireless charging has improved since the Palm Pre days or not but it wasn't really setting the world on fire back then. NFC is pretty neat but my guess is Apple is looking at their own system they can control and profit from. If NFC becomes a big deal before they do their own system it may turn out to be a bad gamble.
“As for wireless charging, Schiller notes that the wireless charging systems still have to be plugged into the wall, so it’s not clear how much convenience they add."
http://dthin.gs/SFngTb
This collective "meh" has been said over and over again in techie forums about every iteration of the iPhone (including the first one), as Apple's marched from a bit player to the most profitable company in the world on the iPhone's success. Actually, this was pretty much the response to every iPod, too.
I don't understand what this discussing is helping. It doesn't have one and I'm pretty sure it will never have a dedicated button. I can understand why Apple is not going the way others are going. This is a phone not a dedicated camera, so why would you mix these things? I know the camera these days are pretty good and a lot of people are using only their phones to point-and-shot but I think it would and it is (on different phones) feels wrong to have dedicated button for camera.
This is all my opinion. Others do different views but this mine. I respect every other view.
I recently got a Galaxy Nexus and I remember reading here a while ago about your app that crowd sources barometer readings from phones that have it but I couldn't remember what it was called when I got the GNex. I'll go sign up. Thanks.
But why on Earth does any phone ship with a barometer? Weather is the only application I can think of, and surely it's easier just to pull weather conditions from the network.
Edit: They probably carry barometers already, but AC installer people could make use of phones with this hardware.
[0] https://plus.google.com/112413860260589530492/posts/jVJhPyou...
EDIT: relevant thread
As far as I know, aGPS as found on modern devices is all about getting that almanac faster (which is why my iPhone only requires two seconds), not about using a rough fix to then get a better fix.
I realize that isn't your post, but it seemed appropriate to reply here since you posted the link.
Your phone takes two seconds (and so does mine) probably because you have WiFi on and you live in the States. Try living in the middle of nowhere in, say, Serbia, and see how fast you get a lock, regardless of WiFi.
Your iPhone takes 2 seconds because it's never a cold start. You're always connected to at least one cell tower you know the location of, you have several nearby wifi access points, etc. It might not be a feature you need for your limited use case. Cool. Then you won't miss it.
Every phone with A-GPS support actual GPS. A-GPS is additional feature on top of regular GPS.
One is the bad kind where GPS only works when you have a cell signal. It offloads a lot of the processing to the cell tower. This is used by cheap phones to comply with FCC requirements for location reporting for 911 calls, and isn't found much elsewhere.
The other is the good kind where it grabs the almanac off the network when possible for faster cold start times. This kind still works fine when you have no connection, it just takes longer to figure out your location when you turn it on, because it has to download the almanac the slow way.
They're basically unrelated except for the name, which is confusing.
I've used the iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4, and 4S extensively in the wilderness. Every version since GPS was introduced has been "real" GPS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS#Modes_of_operation
I can't find anything about chipsets that only do that, but I'd be surprised if nobody had ever done it.
It's sad but that just shows little hype there are around this new iphone. =\",
Who's we? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_statistics
Personally I use it on a separate browser but wanted to point out that you (and me) are in the minority.
Now replace Redmond with ...http://farm1.staticflickr.com/29/43356340_36deb98522.jpg :)
Doesn't say if it's USB 3, and doesn't say if in the future, it could be Lightning to Thunderbolt.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/34865/Screenshots/Screen%20Shot%202...
Especially the odd approach they're taking with NFC & Passbook in iOS 6. Why make a product perfectly suited for NFC, then just not use it in your newest products?
I was holding off on a new handset until the iPhone 5, but the Nokia's Lumina series seems to do more.
The hardware's not ready yet? After all, the original iPhone was arguably "perfectly suited" for 3G and GPS, though the hardware for those things wasn't ready until the iPhone 3G. Maybe NFC is on the roadmap for iPhone 5S?
This seems like it must be a joke, but I read a lot of people saying things like this. The sum of a phone are the features that come with it right out of the box, like little checkboxes to look for, without regard for the quality of their implementations or their usefulness in general. And here of all places, Hacker News, to show such complete disregard for the 3rd party app market (and the quality of their apps). iOS has much, much higher quality apps available in general than either Android or WP7. And while iPhone may not yet have NFC capabilities that the average user probably has little or no use for right now anyway, it does have things like a very nice music player that stomps on Android's. A fucking music player, that's like the first app that both iPhone and Android had, and the one in iOS has always been superior. But somehow iOS is the one playing catch-up.
I just don't understand this new mindset that iOS has fallen behind Android, much less WP7.
As for the music player? What are you talking about? Not only is the Google Play Music app great, it supports 20,000 songs in the cloud for free, it autoconverts FLAC to 320 kbps, and you don't have to use some bloated music suite to upload it all. Plus, it's not like there isn't a ton of viable replacements out there (Apollo, PowerAmp, Winamp, GoneMad, VLC).
Android played catch-up since the G1 launched. It caught up with Ice Cream Sandwich, and it got in front with Jelly Bean. No, it's not in every Android phone, but it's unfair to compare the Android ecosystem to the iPhone. Nexus vs. iPhone? I think it's pretty clear now...
iOS has visually slicker apps, but they are less functional, because iOS is more locked down. With Android, I use a custom home screen and a whole bunch of widgets that make the device far more useful to me than iOS devices which seem like toys in comparison. For example, the 3G Watchdog's widget showing quota usage, and calendar and weather displays. The fact I can use rsync to sync folders between my phone, tablet and home NAS without storing my files in the cloud somewhere or having the files siloed in a specific application or generic "photos, movies or music" buckets is a game changer for me.
The only time I use my iPad these days is on transatlantic flights when I want to watch my own movies or play some slick games. But that's even being transplanted by my Nexus 7, which is much nicer to use owing to lower weight - and bonus, I get most of the apps that also work on my phone.
iOS reminds me a little of DOS circa 1993, while Android feels a bit like Windows 3.1 of the same era. DOS apps were typically silos using custom graphics libraries, while Windows apps were drab but more consistent and had some pretense at integration (early OLE).
Just because you don't use a niche feature doesn't mean others don't.
There's a saying in photography how everyone only uses 80% of their DSLR's capability, but it's a different 80% for everyone.
You and I might use a niche feature like rsync, but the people that constantly complain that company X didn't include niche feature Y in product Z is, frankly, ridiculous.
That is, it's not this particular niche. It's the enabling of the existence of such niches in the first place.
Nobody in the population is average (this mythical "general population"). Everyone is odd in their own way. A product narrowly targeted at the average will lose to something more open. I believe this to be an almost natural law, like how free markets are better than the planned alternatives.
Maybe you're right, maybe 'open' will win. But if it does, I'm fairly certain it won't be your definition of 'open'. At the very least, it's not the case right now. The most successful systems/devices are most certainly not 'open' and are trending towards being 'less open' aka designed for that 'general population' that you so actively deny exists.
Thanks for explaining that rsync isn't an Android feature. That explains why I've been using it for the last decade on Linux and FreeBSD.
This is why I said it wasn't a feature; what you wrote implied it was. Stock Android has no rsync. It doesn't even have cp.
More importantly, I was trying to describe the structural strategic advantage I think Android has which will lead to it winning out in the longer term, in a similar way to how the PC beat the Mac.
For me, a mobile phone is not a replacement for a computer. There are a number of things that I can do on a phone now that I couldn't do 10 years ago.. but there are a ton more things that I hope I never have to do on a phone. There are already plenty of things that phones do now, in their race to out-feature one another, that I think are just plain retarded as fuck. Do I want to watch a movie on a 4" screen? Fuck no. That sounds like the most awful cinematic experience imaginable.
I own a Galaxy Nexus right now, and I think it's a really nice phone except for a few things that drive me nuts (like the music player being awful). I used to use an iPhone 3GS, and everyone at work has iPhone 4 or 4S, and I think the iPhones just feel like nicer phones. Better quality cameras, generally nicer apps with it (with the obvious exception of maps.. Android's navigation feature has been the one thing I loved better about it for years), nicer designs in general, etc.
It's all about what you get out of the phone though. The two apps that I use the most are music and maps/navigation. That's been kind of an issue for me since Android has had the nicer maps app, but iPhone had the nicer music app.
I'd love to own an iPhone - but only the hardware. I'd want to run Android on it.
But maybe I just put too much value in the experience of watching a movie. I love live concerts, but I don't refuse to listen to pre-recorded albums so maybe I'm just being absurd about demanding to watch a movie under certain conditions.
On planes with seat rear screens are probably even closer than 30cm to your eyes when the guy in front is leaned back and you're not.
(Not a fan of live concerts; sound is much better on studio recorded albums in any case.)
The main things I would have liked: * "geofencing" in some security-strong way to let a phone use a 4-digit pin when in home/office, and a longer PIN when outside the home/office. Could ninja this on Android I think (you'd do some kind of low-latency challenge-response on a LAN -- depending on the threat model, even 802.1X might be ok, but wouldn't resist an RF relay over a long tunnel...)
* Biometric authentication on the device
* Integrated credential management ("Passbook for Websites") where SSL client certs, passwords, or something got managed inside the secure element of the phone
And, a real stretch, but a 128 or 256GB "pro" version of the phone, even if it cost 2x as much. Kill the iPod Classic.
Look specifically at the data plans
Why is Verizon so popular in the U.S.? I see no (absolutely no) reason why someone should choose Verizon over Sprint... Verizon plans are about a hundred times more expensive.
There are many factors for choosing your carrier outside of price.
http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iph...
Is there even such thing in US? Also, most likely they are not going to sell nano-SIMs for pre paid plans.
You can actually get a nano sim from T-Mobile, all you need is the IMEI number from the sim in order to register for their 4G prepaid plan.
There are other carriers too, like boostmobile, cricket, virgin, etc.
A few missteps, from my perspective: * Apple Maps -- while this may prove good for mapping technology in the long run, I think the iPhone users will miss Google Maps quite a bit, for now. * Seemingly no fundamental improvement to Siri. "Conversational Searching" is the best way for Apple to bring the fight to Google, because this is the natural evolution of search. Why type queries into a search engine, when you can have a conversation with an AI instead? Google sees this danger and is developing Google Now, leaping ahead quickly. * No signs of trying to get into the emerging mobile payments battle.
All in all I didn't get the feeling of a large vision being played out or of an arc of forward advance, but rather a feeling of slowing momentum.
Kindle x-ray is an amazing feature, and the front lit display is really an achievement.
I guess apple doesn't have the same fire to innovate that it used to. This might be proof that Patents don't spur innovation.
Apple held back calling last year the iPhone 4S, the 5 because it wasn't good enough to bare the name, but this time there are hardly any core feature upgrades, and you get pulled further away from good google services.
the iphone 5 is more about flashy hardware and dumping google than it is about wowing customers.
the iphone 4s had a focusing lens, siri and was twice as fast as the iphone4.
this phone really doesn't wow me at all.
The iPhone 5 may not wow you, but what does that matter? In general each iPhone generation has only really been compelling to owners of two year old iPhones. I thought the iPhone 4S was nice enough but hung onto my iPhone 4. I thought the 3GS looked nice, but held onto my 3G.
(For contrast, I have an original Kindle Fire and the new Kindles do nothing for me. Indeed, having bought a Kindle Fire I probably won't buy another Amazon tablet because they're far more crippled than anything Apple has ever done. E.g. I can't read epubs on it.)
The iPod Touch is a huge upgrade. It's literally an iPhone without the cellular plan (it has a 4S CPU, but an iPhone 5 screen).