All Things iOS - Apps, iPhones, iPods, iPads - Discussion

The iPhone 5C isn't 'high end', neither is the 5S, they're just expensive.
For what you're paying, you don't get much for your money and increasingly customers are realising that.

It wasn't too bad with the iPhone 5, it was at least a tangible step forward from the 4S and kept Apple vaguely close to the competition spec-wise but the 5S hasn't even caught up with last year's flagships from other companies and, whilst it may offer some improvements, they're not the sort of things that your average customer will be concerned about - Jason may be excited that the A7 SoC is x64 but I'd wager 99%+ of iPhone owners have no idea what that means and don't care either.

Which misses the point that releasing the handsets on China Mobile is no help if they're priced beyond the means of the bulk of those 700m customers, which is exactly what Apple have done.
There's a reason why the likes of Huawei, ZTE, Xiaomi etc are closing the gap on Samsung in China and it's not because they charge through the nose for their handsets.

Apple have shown they are completely out-of-touch with what emerging markets want and need and that's why the analysts are unhappy, because it has a massive impact on Apple's ability to grow their customer-base which, outside the US at least, looks like it's only going to contract.

 

I guess I don't understand why Apple is so concerned about emerging markets and China anyways.

Have they decided to make a low-cost MBA for those markets? It just doesn't make sense. I know they want to increase saturation but to what end? Just worry about the markets you know and let everyone else worry about lower margins.

Or is there some agreement we don't know about where Apple has to create a certain product because their production facilities are in China? Yes... I am wearing my tinfoil hat.

 

Cool! Is it purely a radio function (it chooses music for you based on genre or parameters you set), or does it have a music-on-demand feature like Xbox Music and Spotify?

 

That does excite me, yes... and you're right, most people will have no clue what that means. BUT, the 5S will perform equal to, if not better than, S800. I'm going with better than. I don't know about Exynos 5420, because Samsung finally fixed 5410, and I just don't know how much damage 4 Cortex A15's can do when properly setup. I'm thinking quite a bit. Plus Mali T658.

Right now, it's just radio since I'm not sure the service is ready to go live. I'm thinking around the 16th it'll be fleshed out, in preparation for the 18th.

 

It depends on what big.LITTLE features are active on the A7, if it is capable of heterogeneous multi-processing, it can be as fast as a Snapdragon 800 but if it is only cluster migration or IKS, it wouldn't be much faster than the Exynos 5250. iOS is heavily GPU driven anyways, so the PowerVR 6 GPU is the more intriguing piece for hardware junkies than the CPU.

 

A7 isn't standard ARM design... big.LITTLE doesn't apply. Now, 5420, it features HMP. That's why I'm saying it could do some serious damage in the benches. I'm interested in the PowerVR 6 series, but I'm actually more interested to see what Apple has done with their Swift cores. They're sticking to the dual-core setup and I want to see if they can truly show everyone else why they don't need quad or octa-core configurations. The two little Swift cores in A6 did QUITE a good job. We have an increase in registers all around, plus new instructions. I'd be shocked if A7 doesn't keep up with 5420.

 

The iPhone 5S is the Audi TT of smartphones. Is it "high end" in terms of spec-sheet comparisons? No, not remotely. Is it high-end in terms of polish, refinement, materials, etc? Absolutely. My mother's iPhone 5 comes off as a much more luxurious experience than my Galaxy S3 both in terms of hardware and software, even though my phone kicks hers in the nuts in terms of most objective measurements.

 

This is the first iPhone I've actually gotten excited for and I'm looking forward to replacing my Galaxy Nexus with it on the 21st (overnight shipping, hooooooo)

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 4

 

Adunno I never think much of the slight refreshes, the fingerprint thing is meh. If it got significantly better battery life, then I'd be okay, but my iPhone 5 already lasts me all day and then some. I guess I'll be waiting for the next generation..

 

The main improvements IMO are not the fingerprint scanner, but the camera. Both the hardware (natural flash) and the software (slow-motion capture).

 

What measure of performance are we talking about?

Not a comparison that adds weight to your argument.
The TT is a hairdresser's car.

 

again whats the deal? whats the profit? what niche? what happens to the image? there are tons more questions. apple won't do a low budget phone, it doesn't need, or actually they can't do.

its simple, Brazil is an emerging market, we love smartphones, and for the first time last month smartphones have outsold regular ones. Android takes around 95% of the market here, the rest is divided between the iPhone and windows phone from nokia.

so what you do to sell more iPhones?

the price range of an android phone here is between R$300 to R$3,000, the conversion ratio is around 2.4 against the dollar, so U$125 and U$1,041. Those are unlocked phones prices, a lot of our telcos don't sell phones with a plan

the price range of an iPhone is R$2,500 to R$3,500

so in terms of pricing it falls very competitively against the phones that you are going to fight, which are the higher end android phones. The main problem here is the release ratio of the android phones, its around 6 months if not less. So when the new phones come, the old ones get more discounts as time goes by. So you can find a top of the line android phone for R$1,500-2,000 after 2 months of the new model

Actually my main problem here is how come people pay with straight faces that absurd amount of money on a freaking phone, for the exact price of the iPhone 5 now I paid less on a new mbp, how come is that possible?

What you simply don't understand and that moron from credit suisse is that what android sells a LOT in those emerging countries ain't the freaking newest and greatest its the bargain bin android phone with specs so low that even my obese cat is faster, yes its the R$300-500 phones that comes FREE in a basic plan

Another thing you guys don't understand is the mentality that when they are better off in terms of money they want to "upgrade" to an iPhone, ALL of my friends (except some from college) think exactly that way. Its simple, you don't sell icons cheap.

The 5c fills the purpose of an actual cheaper iPhone, thats its purpose. I actually like the 5s, just because of the finger print reader, now I have to see if it has the security features that are enough for me

btw that finger print reader is the proof of concept for the enterprise market, because its simple to lose a phone with access to tons of classified info, and breaking those security codes is quite easy

 

Javascript, Browsermark, Geekbench, 3DMark... you know, the usual cross platform ones. Though, unless GeekBench updates their app to 64-bit, we most likely won't see any improvement from the new registers (ARMv8 ISA).

 

Where in this thread did anyone state that Android's dominance in emerging markets is due to flagship handsets?
In fact I think you'll find I said the exact opposite.

You don't sell them cheap, you don't sell them full stop.
It's all well and good talking about what people want but that doesn't trump what they can afford. And if you allow your competitors free reign to cater for those customers, you risk losing them completely.

Ok.
I must be missing something because I don't see why the A7 would out-perform SoCs which have far more raw power.

 

free reign? desire to buy something is truly the most interesting thing and the most important thing, out of my friends, around 100 people, 10 had iPhones 3 years ago, now over 30 have iPhones, why? because we started making money. people that buy smartphones now is the class C, B and A already have have smartphones, and are mostly iPhones.

in the end, you want a cheaper iPhone for the emerging market, the smartphones that sell are the ones costing between 300-500, when you go higher, the tier of prices is 700-1k, 1.5k-2k, 2k-3k

smartphones that have the iPhone 5 guts are costing between 2k-3k

700-1k - they offer entry level specs, the only one that doesn't are the nokia lumia phones, that are barely mid tier

1.5k-2k - older top of the line phones, they are around 1-2 year(s) old of shelf life and the middle tier phones, that even compared to the old flagships are still worse, so who buys them middle tier phones? no one.

2k-3k - top of the line

there was a research pool about what price tiers people buy smartphones, 300-500, 90% of the customers. the others are too small to actually have statistical significance.

aside that, the middle tier phones in terms of specs have almost the price for a top of the line phones, again the problem is not only marketing position, marketing strategy, product insertion, product allocation, brand name dilution, product positioning, return rates, customer fidelization....

so you want to lower the cost to where? to what tier? I can find the iPhone 4s for 1.5k, so its filled, and that price actually only got to that around the middle of this year, because we knew that the new model was coming and it was going to be discontinued. at the apple store its 1400, the 5 now costs 2300

in the end the 5c is perfect to fill that niche of a lower cost iPhone, its going right to the 1.5k tier

 

Apple's Swift cores are more like what Qualcomm is doing with their Krait cores. They're not following a standard ARM design, but are adding in A15 features. Plus Apple always has MASSIVE amounts of bus bandwidth, but that's not something that's usually lacking on Samsung SoC's. A6X has the same bus width as Intel's IVB.

But where Android aimed SoC's are usually CPU heavy, Apple designs GPU heavy SoC's. Apple spanks everybody, every time, at GPU benchmarks.

 

Surely adding A15 features isn't going to give you the same leap in performance as simply switching to the A15 architecture, will it?

Have you seen the benchmarks GSMArena pubished, it's basically on a par with what's available in competing flagships, hardly a spanking.

 

The iPhone is priced at the high end, is viewed by consumers as high end, and they perform at the high end. Their specs don't look as good as many android phones, but Apple's i-products perform a lot better than it would seem on paper.

A big problem in China is that Apple could never compete in the low to mid end. Their products are a lot more expensive than their Chinese counterparts. The Chinese manufacturers have slim profit margins, and the "foreign" phones have very high taxes added into their prices. For example, the 64GB 5S is listed for $849 on the US website, and $1120 on the Chinese website. Not to mention, most phones are bought outright, not subsidized with a plan. And even those phones that are plan subsidized are subsidized very little, because in China phone plans aren't the complete scam they are in the US.

Also you think that Chinese people are too poor to buy iPhones, but you would be surprised. I see so many "middle class" people with iPhones that cost as much or more than a month's paycheck for them. Apple does offer pretty decent monthly payment plans though.

China Mobile has been hurting. Before they were the undisputed leaders in the Chinese market, but they are now neck and neck with China Unicom in 3G subscribers. Why? Because iPhones and iPads are incompatible with their 3G network.

 

I know that China is becoming a more affluent country but I'm sure you can agree that even the iPhone 5C is well outside the price range of a lot of people.
This new 'cheap' iPhone is still going to be far too expensive for a huge number of Chinese customers.

Somehow I doubt that the ~80% of China Mobile's customers who are still 2G-only are yet to switch simply because of the iPhone.
I'm sure it'll have some impact but it's not going to be anything like as big as it could and should have been if they'd produced a genuinely 'budget' handset.


There is no arguing that the price of the 5C is going to limit it's impact - and I'm not talking purely about emerging markets, it will restrict sales here too ( you can get the Galaxy S4 for less than the 5C).
But it will be felt most keenly in countries where disposable income is lower.

 

I've decided to update to iOS 7 on my iPhone 5. First thing that happens, permissions issue. Had to turn off Microsoft Security Essentials. I guess that's a telltale sign.

 

This is more along the lines of what I'm talking about...





GPU performance, I'm still waiting on... since most of those apps haven't been recompiled as 64-bit binaries.

 

I don't know about you guys, but I love the new iOS. I love the way it looks and I'm really liking the shortcuts that slide up from the button. That should've been added a long time ago...

 

Good to hear it's a step in the right direction. It'll make it easier to convince my aunt and cousin to update their iPhones and iPad.:thumbsup:

 

It's certainly no worse. Though it still reeks of last-gen-feeling-OS X commonality with a sometimes comical coat of paint.

 

Sometimes a fancy new coat of paint can turn an old car back into a great pre-owned ready for sale. So what if the engine sounds like a 200 year old man suffering from emphysema. It's looks a neat and shiny!@!

 

Adunno if it's my case, but my 5 won't scroll up from the bottom all the time. But other than that, it seems alright.

 

So yeah...battery life sucks for the 5. Like noticeably worse, I woke up this morning, went from like 73 when I went to sleep down to like 55...normally I watch like an episode of Kitchen Nightmares before I go to bed.

 

Those shortcuts are great. Yeah, they're not original--my Galaxy S3 has nearly-identical toggles in its notification shade--but they're darned useful. I'd say the same about the new aesthetic. Not necessarily original--Microsoft has been using that design language since the 2007 Zune HD--but Apple sure did a brilliant job of executing the look.

In short, I see iOS 7 as derivative but superbly executed. And in the long-term user experience, the latter matters more than the former, right?

 

Having had a JB'ed iPhone for a while with its own "setting" center, it's nice to see iOS7 do this.

I'm not really concerned about originality, just functionality.

Now if I can just order a 5s (at least Apple sticks to their originality of having "short" supply of a new phone).

 

Most painless new iPhone acquisition ever.

For some reason, Best Buy opened their ordering an hour early so just a bit after 11pm last night I was able to order a grey 32GB iPhone 5s for in-store pick-up today.

I thought it was a lark, but I got confirmation emails, called BB this morning to confirm pick-up and that they had my phone, made an appointment, went to BB, skipped the people waiting and got my iPhone without having to stay up past midnight, waiting in line or having to wait for it to get shipped.

Got lucky I guess.

 

HOORAY for logic, patience, and pre-planning!

 

I went to the Apple flagship store in Boston after work and there was a minimal line but all they had left was Sprint phones. I walked a block down the street to the Verizon store and within a half hour I was walking out with a brand new Space Grey 32gb. Glorious.

 

The latest video review of iOS 7

 

I love the new functionality but hate the new childish icons. The older icon look looked just mature...

 

Blame Microsoft. Apparently Metro is like a virulent fungus that has infected all other OS developers into thinking it's OK for GUIs to look that crappy.

Like a 4 year old knows what he wants. Send the little brat to bed without dessert. We'll see what's worse then.

 

Your grasp of modern mobile UI... it's just not there is it?

 

It's there. Just hard as stone. Layout and execution is OK. But when you design your icons and pngs to look like rejects from the Metro UI drawing board, you've got a problem.

 

Oh, in all fairness, not ALL of iOS 7's aesthetic design came straight from Windows Phone. I mean, there's always phase beam on the lock screen!

Man, I just thought it was cute and funny, didn't anticipate anyone would get mad at the kid...

 

It's more annoyed at the stupidity. A 4 year old isn't gonna understand what iOS 7 means. So why would one get upset over the OS? Because their parent coached them into it.

 

It's like that video of the 3-year-old girl crying over Justin Bieber. It is cute, though

I know there's a home video of me crying about something stupid that I didn't understand either; little kids seem to do that sometimes

 

I just thought it was cute becuase the UI is DIFFERENT THAN YESTERDAY and he CAN'T HANDLE IT and THE WORLD IS ENDING. Maybe you have to have kids to find it funny. I've got a seven-year-old and a four-year-old and I thought it was hi-larious.

 

Oh don't mind radji, Mitlov. He's just jelly, because it isn't about his nephew .

 

iOS 5: not worth a 14 year old crying over. iOS 6: worth a 15 year old crying over (being forced to use Apple maps would make me cry too).

I jsut don't like people crying about something asinine. I hate it even worse when they involve their kids in it. "Oh, no son! The paparazzi won't leave Britney alone. Cry about it so I can make a video and post it on the interwebz and make you look like a whiner." Anyone can have kids, not everyone can raise them right.

Darn. You figured me out...

 

Holy cow. If you think the mere fact that a four-year-old cried about something means that the parent is not raising the child right, then you know very, very little about kids and child development.

Valuable reading: Dear parents, you need to control your kids. Sincerely, non-parents | The Matt Walsh Blog

 

It takes a psychopath to know a psychopath.
Muhahahaha.

 

We'll have to take this to PM since I don't want to get our posts erased. I'll send you one.

 

iOS7 is giving my mom fits... and she only has 2 screens. I thought I erased all her apps when I updated it and then she told me she doesn't have any. She can't even remember what her Apple ID is.

Aging is not fun.

 

Apparently the iPad 4 is the only iPad that will render all of iOS 7's visual effects. Even the iPad 3 has things missing, like the translucency on the quick settings pull-up.

You'd think the iPad 3 would run iOS 7 just like the iPad 4. I guess that just shows how much of an "update" Apple thought the iPad 4 was.

 

I played with it on a iPhone 4...man it's a bit painful. Hopefully the usual performance updates will come with a quickness.

 

iOS 7 DEFINITELY has some kinks to iron out, and a TON of optimization needs done. It's ok right now, but it's got a ton of hiccups all over the UI that is very un-Apple-like. I mean, there's enough time from just setting a different wallpaper in iOS 7 that I thought another new iPhone would come out... it's that slow at setting a damn wallpaper.