Here’s an original iPhone (3.5″ display) next to my iPhone 12 (6.1″ display). And keep in mind, the Plus/Max phones are 6.7″ displays:
My phone does have a case, which makes it look slightly bigger
If you look, you can see that the display is even tinier, thanks to the chonky bezels on the top and bottom. I still kind of miss the home button though (or more to the point, Touch ID, which was later added to it). And when I hold the original iPhone in my hand, my thumb can easily cover the entire screen without any straining, which is nice. I can more or less do the same on my iPhone 12, but it involves stretching and the phone shifts somewhat precariously as I move my thumb around the display. It’s not really meant to be a one-handed device.
While the original is definitely not as wide as the 12, the change in height is far more dramatic. This makes sense, since we have not evolved wider hands in the last decade.
It was fun to hold an original iPhone (I had an iPhone 4 in 2010 and while it had flat sides, its dimensions were pretty much the same), now I just need to find my one surviving 30-pin cable to see if it will power up (I do not have huge hopes for this).
The Verge1Not singling them out, since every tech site will have the same vapid article had an article on what to expect at Apple’s next event, revealed today to be on September 12, 2023. They said there would be a new iPhone announced. You know, like what Apple has done every year for the past million years. The new phone will have stuff and blah blah blah.
I mean, I’m not expecting dramatic innovations in smartphones, especially from Apple, a company that gets more conservative and convinced of its own brilliance the richer it gets, so I suppose my complaint (because let’s face it, complaining is what I am doing here) is how the announcement of a slightly improved iPhone is still an “event” at all. I know, the hype machine must be fed. Everyone does it. But it just feels so tired and late stage capitalism-y. Look at the new shiny! Buy it even though you don’t need it! Watch Tim Cook continue to show the fire and emotion of a bucket of water! You’re going to love it, it’s their best iPhone ever! And so on.
I have an iPhone 12 and I think the only thing that would make me upgrade to something newer is a super fantastic camera. It can’t be just super, or fantastic, it must be BOTH! And then I may consider getting a new phone.
Will people care what’s inside this slab? Photo by Martin Sanchez on Pexels.com
Mark Gurman on Apple re-using the A15 chip in the base model iPhone 14 this year:
Giving the 14 Pro a speedier chip also adds another bullet point to the list of reasons consumers might choose the $1,000 model over a $700 one. An extra camera lens, ProMotion and a stainless-steel frame instead of aluminum probably aren’t actually worth an extra $300 to a lot of people.
I agree with his take regarding ProMotion (I’d bet most people don’t even know what it is) and the stainless steel frame (it’s a fingerprint magnet, so it never looks nice and if you have a case, you’ll never see it, and it also adds even more weight to an already heavier phone), but I think the better/extra cameras are one of two main reasons people buy the “Pro” models, with the other being that if you want the biggest phone, you have to get the Pro model, there is no other alternative (rumor also has it that Apple will feature a “regular” iPhone model in the larger size this year, so this may change).
But I disagree that making the A16 exclusive to Pro models will move the needle on sales in any measurable way, save for tech nerds who can’t fathom not having the best of the best with their tech, and the reason is that all iPhones have SoCs that are already fast enough with room to spare. The A16 might offer a better specs page than the A15, but in actual use, I would bet virtually no one would be able to tell which is which when using an iPhone.
This is just another way for Apple to save money without passing it onto the consumer–one of the key ways the company has grown so massively big. I submit it will also be a factor in its downfall, though that will happen much more slowly than its near-collapse in the 1990s–but it will happen. I may scratch out some more thoughts on this later.
On the one hand, I think most people won’t care if Apple re-uses the A15 in their base iPhone 14 (they should lose the numbers to describe the phones, too, but that’s another discussion). On the other hand, if the phone has the same design, same A15 and little else in the way of hardware changes, is it even an iPhone 14 at all? Why would someone buy one over the iPhone 13? (Apple will likely take care of this by discontinuing the iPhone 13, so there is no choice to be made). I suspect what Apple will do is present the base model as kind of an “oh, and we still have the great iPhone 14” while quickly glossing over its mostly not-new specs, then spend most of their presentation time lavishing praise on everything the “Pro” models have, and you should totes buy one, or you’re missing out!
And yes, I am putting “Pro” in quotes because of the reason addressed in The Verge article–it’s a meaningless term for a smartphone. It’s just the more expensive, feature-laden model. There’s no “pro” way to use a phone.
Anyway, that’s my long, rambling warm take on the possibility of the iPhone 14 re-using the A15 chip. Why ramble on this at all? I’ve decided if I have thoughts on these things, I’m just going to throw them out there. It keeps me writing and my keyboard makes a pleasant clack when I type.
