Apple inadvertently leaks images of new 'iPhone XS'

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  • Reply 121 of 139
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,311member
    spheric said:
    Hi. The P20 is selling well and has probably the best camera on any smartphone. 

    Can you please take your penises off the table and put them away? You’re scaring the children, and they’re really just here because they’re excited over the new iPhone they’ve heard is coming next Wednesday. 
    I'm not "scaring the children". 

    The data that Avon B7 has been pushing me makes me skeptical of its validity, due to it being with/without the P20 Lite, but if it's 10 million in five months, and 15 million a year, of the P20 and P20 Pro, and 5 million of the P20 Lite, then I'll accept that as accurate.

    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    Hi. The P20 is selling well and has probably the best camera on any smartphone. 

    Can you please take your penises off the table and put them away? You’re scaring the children, and they’re really just here because they’re excited over the new iPhone they’ve heard is coming next Wednesday. 
    Ha! Well count me in on the excitement. My wife needs a new iPhone but I'm excited by the 'affordable' rumour. Anything they announce will be a major upgrade for her from a 6.
    The "affordable" rumor is the LCD model X
  • Reply 122 of 139
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:

    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    10, X and XS are all fine with me.

    They play nicely visually (and phonetically when pronounced incorrectly).

    There are plenty of products with XS in the name and no one usually thinks of 'excess' when they read or here it.

    I'm not convinced on the gold colour but I detest the rose and champagne variants so, depending on how it actually looks it might be ok if it isn't bling style. It would be amazing if the etched a colour mix like the one in the image on the screen onto the glass back. Especially as multi coloured gradient are so popular now.
    That sounds like the script you have written to convince your wife to purchase the gold LCD X model as a replacement for her iPhone 6.
    I have a dilemma with this actually. Last year she could have upgraded but chose to replace the battery. That gave her another year with the 6. The X was not on the table basically due to price. That left the 8 series or 7 series as candidates but they look 'old'.

    When she saw my Honor 10 she said 'that's gorgeous!' so now I'm waiting to see pricing and sizes for iPhones without foreheads and chins in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping the rumours of an 'affordable' new phone prove to be true.

    We can argue that a phone is just a phone but she is style conscious and in 2018, high screen to body ratios are the norm and as the phone will have to last her around three years, I wouldn't like her stuck with a big forehead and chin in 2020.
    The LCD iPhone X model will be much more expensive than the Honor 10.
    For sure. I'm just hoping the rumours prove true and one of the new phones is 'affordable' (even if it an Apple style definition of affordable).

    Our family and social circle is dominated by Huawei/Honor phones. The sole iPhone is my wife's and there are a couple of oldish Samsungs.

    She wants an iPhone and it would be nice for her to have one but we have been putting a lot of resources elsewhere and have plans for the next couple of years that make us think twice about certain things and one of them is phones.

    If the Apple carrot is not close enough she could decide to hold out for another year or consider an Android.

    She saw the Honor Magic 2 teaser from IFA today and commented favourably on the design.
    She should buy an Android; she obviously doesn't care about Apple's ecosystem, and since the iPad Mini isn't going to be replaced by Apple, you should make a clean break.

    Then all you have to do is get rid of your Mac, and the iPad, and you are entirely free of Apple's ecosystem.

    That' really what you've been angling for, right?
    How about competitively priced new products? Give me an iPad Mini 5 and new iPhone at an attractive price and we're onboard. Our iPads were competitive. No reason why new iPhones can't be either. Rumours are even pointing to exactly that. As for ecosystem. Nope. We are 'bad' Apple users as we do not subscribe to ANY Apple services.
    The ecosystem does not refer to apple services, which they didn’t even have before not too long ago. 

    The iPhone is priced well, as even the highest models are best sellers. The market feels they’re fair, despite you wanting cheapies. 
    Meanings progress. The ecosystem today is hardware + OS + apps + services.

    If the market felt that iPhone prices were fair I say Apple would have a far higher market share than it does.

    It could also be that the ecosystem creates a need to be within Apple and people pay to continue having access to it. After all, I have seen a lot of people imply that the ecosystem itself is a kind of holding system, designed to reduce migration from it.

    Anyway, if they lower pricing, the market will still consider it fair by your logic.

     https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/warren-buffett-says-he-bought-just-a-little-more-apple-recently.html

    "Buffett explained that he loves Apple as an investment due to the power of its brand and ecosystem, not its short-term financial results.

    "I do not focus on the sales in the next quarter or the next year," he said. "I focus on the ... hundreds, hundreds, hundreds millions of people who practically live their lives by it [iPhone]."

    He also called the iPhone "enormously underpriced," saying that it's worth far more than the $1,000 Apple charges.

    "I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something of the sort. If I used the iPhone -- I use an iPad a lot -- if I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up the plane," he said. 

    "Now it's got competition so you can't push the price, but in terms of its utility to people and what they get for a thousand dollars...you can have a dinner party that would cost that, and here this is, and what it does for you, it's incredible."

    From a man that seems to have little contact with or understanding of the real world.

    At least even he is admitting that competition is working. Someone should point him to a P20 Pro to see what he's missing. ;-)
    I think he understands the real world just fine. He’s not saying that Apple can charge much more, or even that they should. He’s saying that from the use of the phone, you get much more than a $thousand worth out of it.
    Which is a purely subjective and unquantifiable claim. By the same token I could claim that my sub €400 phone also gives me $1,000 worth but for $600 less. Of course, the longer you actually have the phone, that also changes its perceived value. Etc.

    From an investment point of view of course, a 1,000 dollar phone means very little at this stage in the game. IMO, we are already in 'post iPhone' territory for revenues in the current business model.

    Seeing as iPhone (as a hardware product) represented so much for the company, three consecutive flat years of unit sales means you accept that market realities are obstacles to unit growth and accept it, or you manoeuvre within those realities. Apple appears to be doing just that.

    Apple's user base cannot sustain $1,000+ phones even for revenue growth. Gartner claimed last week that demand for the iPhone X had actually fallen off far sooner than for other Apple flagships of the past. That, IMO is normal as there are simply not that many customers who are able and/or willing to pay that amount. Of course being in the run up to a refresh has a negative impact too.

    Another point is competition. Apple has faced fierce competition but not only on price. There are arguably better phones out there than the iPhone X that cost far less and even look better but I don't know if this refresh is really going to move the ball that much. We'll see in a couple of weeks, though. I'm very open.

    But even with iPhone X, unit sales across the board once again seem to be flat, up to this point anyway. I think Apple will this year make another move to stimulate unit growth. Just as it did last year. Unit growth is necessary to widen its services base.

    $1,000 phones existed before iPhone X and have a place in the lineup (even double the price) but I doubt a $1,000+ iPhone would see the same demand so soon after the first wave. If the rumours of price drops are true, unit sales might see some growth and revenues can be compensated via Services. I doubt we are far away from seeing Apple's home grown media content reaching users.
    I basically disagree on much of what you’re saying. First, I never regard what Gardner, IDC, or others have to say. They are almost always wrong. There were predicting that Windows PCs sales would be rising again 5 years ago, and they were wrong then, and have been predicting it since then, and have been wrong each time. So their statements are not statements of fact, but statements of what they wish were the case.

     It’s if everything else you feel said here is meh. The iPhone X has been the most popular model of phone around the world since it came out, and still is. I’d also like to see some proof about all those “better” phones. That’s a real joke.
    Yeah, we disagree. I wouldn't be surprised if there were differing opinions within Apple too on all of these points, just as there are here and among analysts.

    That said, that there are "better" phones out there is far from a joke. So far in facttmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    10, X and XS are all fine with me.

    They play nicely visually (and phonetically when pronounced incorrectly).

    There are plenty of products with XS in the name and no one usually thinks of 'excess' when they read or here it.

    I'm not convinced on the gold colour but I detest the rose and champagne variants so, depending on how it actually looks it might be ok if it isn't bling style. It would be amazing if the etched a colour mix like the one in the image on the screen onto the glass back. Especially as multi coloured gradient are so popular now.
    That sounds like the script you have written to convince your wife to purchase the gold LCD X model as a replacement for her iPhone 6.
    I have a dilemma with this actually. Last year she could have upgraded but chose to replace the battery. That gave her another year with the 6. The X was not on the table basically due to price. That left the 8 series or 7 series as candidates but they look 'old'.

    When she saw my Honor 10 she said 'that's gorgeous!' so now I'm waiting to see pricing and sizes for iPhones without foreheads and chins in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping the rumours of an 'affordable' new phone prove to be true.

    We can argue that a phone is just a phone but she is style conscious and in 2018, high screen to body ratios are the norm and as the phone will have to last her around three years, I wouldn't like her stuck with a big forehead and chin in 2020.
    The LCD iPhone X model will be much more expensive than the Honor 10.
    For sure. I'm just hoping the rumours prove true and one of the new phones is 'affordable' (even if it an Apple style definition of affordable).

    Our family and social circle is dominated by Huawei/Honor phones. The sole iPhone is my wife's and there are a couple of oldish Samsungs.

    She wants an iPhone and it would be nice for her to have one but we have been putting a lot of resources elsewhere and have plans for the next couple of years that make us think twice about certain things and one of them is phones.

    If the Apple carrot is not close enough she could decide to hold out for another year or consider an Android.

    She saw the Honor Magic 2 teaser from IFA today and commented favourably on the design.
    She should buy an Android; she obviously doesn't care about Apple's ecosystem, and since the iPad Mini isn't going to be replaced by Apple, you should make a clean break.

    Then all you have to do is get rid of your Mac, and the iPad, and you are entirely free of Apple's ecosystem.

    That' really what you've been angling for, right?
    How about competitively priced new products? Give me an iPad Mini 5 and new iPhone at an attractive price and we're onboard. Our iPads were competitive. No reason why new iPhones can't be either. Rumours are even pointing to exactly that. As for ecosystem. Nope. We are 'bad' Apple users as we do not subscribe to ANY Apple services.
    The ecosystem does not refer to apple services, which they didn’t even have before not too long ago. 

    The iPhone is priced well, as even the highest models are best sellers. The market feels they’re fair, despite you wanting cheapies. 
    Meanings progress. The ecosystem today is hardware + OS + apps + services.

    If the market felt that iPhone prices were fair I say Apple would have a far higher market share than it does.

    It could also be that the ecosystem creates a need to be within Apple and people pay to continue having access to it. After all, I have seen a lot of people imply that the ecosystem itself is a kind of holding system, designed to reduce migration from it.

    Anyway, if they lower pricing, the market will still consider it fair by your logic.

     https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/warren-buffett-says-he-bought-just-a-little-more-apple-recently.html

    "Buffett explained that he loves Apple as an investment due to the power of its brand and ecosystem, not its short-term financial results.

    "I do not focus on the sales in the next quarter or the next year," he said. "I focus on the ... hundreds, hundreds, hundreds millions of people who practically live their lives by it [iPhone]."

    He also called the iPhone "enormously underpriced," saying that it's worth far more than the $1,000 Apple charges.

    "I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something of the sort. If I used the iPhone -- I use an iPad a lot -- if I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up the plane," he said. 

    "Now it's got competition so you can't push the price, but in terms of its utility to people and what they get for a thousand dollars...you can have a dinner party that would cost that, and here this is, and what it does for you, it's incredible."

    From a man that seems to have little contact with or understanding of the real world.

    At least even he is admitting that competition is working. Someone should point him to a P20 Pro to see what he's missing. ;-)
    I think he understands the real world just fine. He’s not saying that Apple can charge much more, or even that they should. He’s saying that from the use of the phone, you get much more than a $thousand worth out of it.
    Which is a purely subjective and unquantifiable claim. By the same token I could claim that my sub €400 phone also gives me $1,000 worth but for $600 less. Of course, the longer you actually have the phone, that also changes its perceived value. Etc.

    From an investment point of view of course, a 1,000 dollar phone means very little at this stage in the game. IMO, we are already in 'post iPhone' territory for revenues in the current business model.

    Seeing as iPhone (as a hardware product) represented so much for the company, three consecutive flat years of unit sales means you accept that market realities are obstacles to unit growth and accept it, or you manoeuvre within those realities. Apple appears to be doing just that.

    Apple's user base cannot sustain $1,000+ phones even for revenue growth. Gartner claimed last week that demand for the iPhone X had actually fallen off far sooner than for other Apple flagships of the past. That, IMO is normal as there are simply not that many customers who are able and/or willing to pay that amount. Of course being in the run up to a refresh has a negative impact too.

    Another point is competition. Apple has faced fierce competition but not only on price. There are arguably better phones out there than the iPhone X that cost far less and even look better but I don't know if this refresh is really going to move the ball that much. We'll see in a couple of weeks, though. I'm very open.

    But even with iPhone X, unit sales across the board once again seem to be flat, up to this point anyway. I think Apple will this year make another move to stimulate unit growth. Just as it did last year. Unit growth is necessary to widen its services base.

    $1,000 phones existed before iPhone X and have a place in the lineup (even double the price) but I doubt a $1,000+ iPhone would see the same demand so soon after the first wave. If the rumours of price drops are true, unit sales might see some growth and revenues can be compensated via Services. I doubt we are far away from seeing Apple's home grown media content reaching users.
    Warren Buffett owns something on the order of 5% of Apple, from my reading anyway, and he votes with his wallet. He doesn't see, nor do most investors, a downside of a mature iPhone market that still ships something on the order of 150 million flagships a year, plus 65 million other iPhones, at an ASP roughly 3X the nearest competition, from a iPhone user base numbering on the order of 750 million.

    In only a single metric, quarterly unit sales, has Huawei even exceeded Apple's sales, and on a yearly basis, there's a good chance that Huawei won't do that in 2019 either, simply because they have stiff competition from BKK, Xiaomi, and Samsung in the Android OS market, and because there is a likely that Apple with see a growth spurt in sales this year; a super cycle you would call it. I would note that the smartphone market, worldwide, is seeing long term stagnation. Huawei's run for the goal seems a desperate grab for the few remaining growth opportunities, but it is taking share mostly from Samsung, who will certainly fight back.

    Your "feature enhanced" Huawei phones are wonderful, from your perspective, but as I stated before, they don't compete directly with Apple's ecosystem which is broad and vertical, and those same features are diffused rapidly throughout the competition. If anything, I could point out that most of those features are "halo" for only a short time and while they drive the Huawei brand, they aren't really driving the kind of flagship sales that Apple has every, single, year. and more to the point, aren't going to be able continue the pace of a features only race.

    Your arguments will continue to fail simply because you have attempted to simply the competition to devices and features and unit sales, discounting all of the other reasons that buyers purchase a particular model and brand.


    Bums on seats. You estimate the user base at 750 million. With that base Apple has the services revenues it has. If it really wants to pump that side of the business up - within the ecosystem - it will need to shift units to unique users.

    Meanwhile, it seems the smartphone business in developing nations is picking up, taking Android share with it. You will counter that those areas aren't of interest to Apple and those users aren't ideal Services customers either, to which I will say you are mistaken on the first count as Apple has been virtually insistent in its attempts to squeeze the iPhone 6 into places like India.

    'Bums on seats' or as the analyst I quoted to you recently said: "Apple needs volume" (that, in the context of services).

    BTW, wasn't it Buffet that didn't even own a smartphone?

    As for Huawei and competition. The more the better! The Honor Magic 2 probably wouldn't ship with the Kirin 980 if it weren't for competition. Think about it. Huawei's sub brand getting the latest SoC.

    That puts it above the iPhone 8, X series SoC for a fraction of the price without taking into account everything that makes the Magic brand special in the first place.

    Normally, the A12 phones would cost a penny or two (historically, Apple's latest SoCs have). I'm hoping (in line with rumours) the new lineup will include an 'affordable' model. If it does, thank Huawei for being at least part of the reason behind it. If it doesn't, I hope there is something compelling in the new lineup that justifies the price.


    You keep attributing products that Apple enters into the market as responses to Huawei, but that's both simplistic and incorrect. You keep comparing device features, a limited set that favors your Huawei brand, I might add, and unit pricing without comparing the ecosystems. 

    Apple knows that some people wanted the iPhone X last year, but were put off by the prices. A de-featured model with an LCD rather than the more expensive, and frankly, still production limited OLED, lacking a dual rear camera, is the rumored response. There aren't any replacements for the SE price point, because they just aren't great sellers.

    All of the new models will be getting the A12, and based on recent sales data, Apple expects over 70% of sales to be just those three new models.

    215m units x 70 percent , is a conservative 150 million units with A12 processors for this next year, but FY Q1 is going to be a blowout quarter for Apple for that model lineup.

    All flagships.

    Lots of expectation that Apple will blow through $100B revenue this next quarter; but I'm expecting even more than that, as I have posted.

    I'm not against "bums on seats", but I, and Apple, don't see a process requiring high acquisition costs to counter an effort by Huawei, Samsung, or any other Android OS OEM, as a winning strategy, even in emerging countries. 

    As for the Kirin 980, I'm not seeing enough of an overall performance gain over an Apple A11 to be much of a threat to iPhone 8/8 Plus sales, and the rumors around the A12 are both that the "GPU is a beast", and that it will easily stave off any challengers, including the Kirin 980, and Exynos, and Snapdragon, processors coming out early next year.

    Such is the nature of "competition".

    , that phones like the P20 Pro have not stopped receiving recognition of the fact. I've posted a lot of links here on that particular subject.

    The fact that the iPhone X has (or hasn't) been the most popular model around the world says nothing at all. Apple released just three phones last year. Samsung probably released over thirty. Obviously, the less phones a top player releases, the more 'popular' they could prove.

    What really counts is whether Apple feels that three years of flat unit growth is where it wants to be and how it plans to tackle that issue.

    Obviously we are focusing on the handset side of the business here but that obviously overlaps with other areas. 

    We will see how things play out in two weeks but I feel they need to improve in four key areas where they have been lacking:

    Battery
    Modem
    Camera
    Design

    I think if you gave people the option of 'slow' wireless charging or a high capacity fast charging solution they would opt for the latter.

    Apple modems haven't really been a tent pole feature. In fact the Kirin 970 was compared directly to Apple's flagship 2017 phones in several scenarios (including real world download speeds in San Francisco - at that time the Mate 10 was scheduled for a US rollout).

    Cameras that take good photos are important but Apple is facing many competitors capable of taking good photos. Good enough by far for most consumers so something more is needed. The P20 Pro goes places no iPhone can. Things like x3 optical zoom, x5 hybrid zoom, AIIS, Night Mode).

    This is with regards to real phones on the market today.

    Those same phones are also experimenting with design, finish and colour and claiming some big wins in that area too. 'Twilight' is probably the one many seem to be following at this point in time. The iPhone range (chins and foreheads included) has suffered here. The exception being the iPhone X which isn't particularly head turning when placed alongside something like P20 Pro. Apple has found itself for the better part of 2018 with two very dated looking 'new' flagship phones.

    There are other issues too. Why can't the 8 series use face unlock as a convenience option? Why can I be laying in bed, on the sofa or reclining in a chair with my 'cheap' phone and have it override screen rotation to keep things readable while no iPhone does this?

    I hope Apple catches up in these areas this month even if prices don't get adjusted down.

    One last point. Last year Honor presented and demoed its own take on 3D depth sensing including 10 times the precision, submillimetre scanning, 3D small object modelling with background, hand and palm removal, avatar creation based on facial data etc. Apple really should be implementing everything Honor revealed last year in its own second generation FaceID setup. Honor has yet to deploy its solution due to hardware cost reasons (it doesn't make $1,000 dollar phones) but prices are falling and by its own desire, Apple gets just one shot per year to 'deliver' and only on three phones. Anything not included in the refresh won't be dealt with until this time next year and there is a chance Honor might roll it out during 2019.






    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    10, X and XS are all fine with me.

    They play nicely visually (and phonetically when pronounced incorrectly).

    There are plenty of products with XS in the name and no one usually thinks of 'excess' when they read or here it.

    I'm not convinced on the gold colour but I detest the rose and champagne variants so, depending on how it actually looks it might be ok if it isn't bling style. It would be amazing if the etched a colour mix like the one in the image on the screen onto the glass back. Especially as multi coloured gradient are so popular now.
    That sounds like the script you have written to convince your wife to purchase the gold LCD X model as a replacement for her iPhone 6.
    I have a dilemma with this actually. Last year she could have upgraded but chose to replace the battery. That gave her another year with the 6. The X was not on the table basically due to price. That left the 8 series or 7 series as candidates but they look 'old'.

    When she saw my Honor 10 she said 'that's gorgeous!' so now I'm waiting to see pricing and sizes for iPhones without foreheads and chins in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping the rumours of an 'affordable' new phone prove to be true.

    We can argue that a phone is just a phone but she is style conscious and in 2018, high screen to body ratios are the norm and as the phone will have to last her around three years, I wouldn't like her stuck with a big forehead and chin in 2020.
    The LCD iPhone X model will be much more expensive than the Honor 10.
    For sure. I'm just hoping the rumours prove true and one of the new phones is 'affordable' (even if it an Apple style definition of affordable).

    Our family and social circle is dominated by Huawei/Honor phones. The sole iPhone is my wife's and there are a couple of oldish Samsungs.

    She wants an iPhone and it would be nice for her to have one but we have been putting a lot of resources elsewhere and have plans for the next couple of years that make us think twice about certain things and one of them is phones.

    If the Apple carrot is not close enough she could decide to hold out for another year or consider an Android.

    She saw the Honor Magic 2 teaser from IFA today and commented favourably on the design.
    She should buy an Android; she obviously doesn't care about Apple's ecosystem, and since the iPad Mini isn't going to be replaced by Apple, you should make a clean break.

    Then all you have to do is get rid of your Mac, and the iPad, and you are entirely free of Apple's ecosystem.

    That' really what you've been angling for, right?
    How about competitively priced new products? Give me an iPad Mini 5 and new iPhone at an attractive price and we're onboard. Our iPads were competitive. No reason why new iPhones can't be either. Rumours are even pointing to exactly that. As for ecosystem. Nope. We are 'bad' Apple users as we do not subscribe to ANY Apple services.
    The ecosystem does not refer to apple services, which they didn’t even have before not too long ago. 

    The iPhone is priced well, as even the highest models are best sellers. The market feels they’re fair, despite you wanting cheapies. 
    Meanings progress. The ecosystem today is hardware + OS + apps + services.

    If the market felt that iPhone prices were fair I say Apple would have a far higher market share than it does.

    It could also be that the ecosystem creates a need to be within Apple and people pay to continue having access to it. After all, I have seen a lot of people imply that the ecosystem itself is a kind of holding system, designed to reduce migration from it.

    Anyway, if they lower pricing, the market will still consider it fair by your logic.

     https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/warren-buffett-says-he-bought-just-a-little-more-apple-recently.html

    "Buffett explained that he loves Apple as an investment due to the power of its brand and ecosystem, not its short-term financial results.

    "I do not focus on the sales in the next quarter or the next year," he said. "I focus on the ... hundreds, hundreds, hundreds millions of people who practically live their lives by it [iPhone]."

    He also called the iPhone "enormously underpriced," saying that it's worth far more than the $1,000 Apple charges.

    "I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something of the sort. If I used the iPhone -- I use an iPad a lot -- if I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up the plane," he said. 

    "Now it's got competition so you can't push the price, but in terms of its utility to people and what they get for a thousand dollars...you can have a dinner party that would cost that, and here this is, and what it does for you, it's incredible."

    From a man that seems to have little contact with or understanding of the real world.

    At least even he is admitting that competition is working. Someone should point him to a P20 Pro to see what he's missing. ;-)
    I think he understands the real world just fine. He’s not saying that Apple can charge much more, or even that they should. He’s saying that from the use of the phone, you get much more than a $thousand worth out of it.
    Which is a purely subjective and unquantifiable claim. By the same token I could claim that my sub €400 phone also gives me $1,000 worth but for $600 less. Of course, the longer you actually have the phone, that also changes its perceived value. Etc.

    From an investment point of view of course, a 1,000 dollar phone means very little at this stage in the game. IMO, we are already in 'post iPhone' territory for revenues in the current business model.

    Seeing as iPhone (as a hardware product) represented so much for the company, three consecutive flat years of unit sales means you accept that market realities are obstacles to unit growth and accept it, or you manoeuvre within those realities. Apple appears to be doing just that.

    Apple's user base cannot sustain $1,000+ phones even for revenue growth. Gartner claimed last week that demand for the iPhone X had actually fallen off far sooner than for other Apple flagships of the past. That, IMO is normal as there are simply not that many customers who are able and/or willing to pay that amount. Of course being in the run up to a refresh has a negative impact too.

    Another point is competition. Apple has faced fierce competition but not only on price. There are arguably better phones out there than the iPhone X that cost far less and even look better but I don't know if this refresh is really going to move the ball that much. We'll see in a couple of weeks, though. I'm very open.

    But even with iPhone X, unit sales across the board once again seem to be flat, up to this point anyway. I think Apple will this year make another move to stimulate unit growth. Just as it did last year. Unit growth is necessary to widen its services base.

    $1,000 phones existed before iPhone X and have a place in the lineup (even double the price) but I doubt a $1,000+ iPhone would see the same demand so soon after the first wave. If the rumours of price drops are true, unit sales might see some growth and revenues can be compensated via Services. I doubt we are far away from seeing Apple's home grown media content reaching users.
    I basically disagree on much of what you’re saying. First, I never regard what Gardner, IDC, or others have to say. They are almost always wrong. There were predicting that Windows PCs sales would be rising again 5 years ago, and they were wrong then, and have been predicting it since then, and have been wrong each time. So their statements are not statements of fact, but statements of what they wish were the case.

     It’s if everything else you feel said here is meh. The iPhone X has been the most popular model of phone around the world since it came out, and still is. I’d also like to see some proof about all those “better” phones. That’s a real joke.
    Yeah, we disagree. I wouldn't be surprised if there were differing opinions within Apple too on all of these points, just as there are here and among analysts.

    That said, that there are "better" phones out there is far from a joke. So far in fact that phones like the P20 Pro have not stopped receiving recognition of the fact. I've posted a lot of links here on that particular subject.

    The fact that the iPhone X has (or hasn't) been the most popular model around the world says nothing at all. Apple released just three phones last year. Samsung probably released over thirty. Obviously, the less phones a top player releases, the more 'popular' they could prove.

    What really counts is whether Apple feels that three years of flat unit growth is where it wants to be and how it plans to tackle that issue.

    Obviously we are focusing on the handset side of the business here but that obviously overlaps with other areas. 

    We will see how things play out in two weeks but I feel they need to improve in four key areas where they have been lacking:

    Battery
    Modem
    Camera
    Design

    I think if you gave people the option of 'slow' wireless charging or a high capacity fast charging solution they would opt for the latter.

    Apple modems haven't really been a tent pole feature. In fact the Kirin 970 was compared directly to Apple's flagship 2017 phones in several scenarios (including real world download speeds in San Francisco - at that time the Mate 10 was scheduled for a US rollout).

    Cameras that take good photos are important but Apple is facing many competitors capable of taking good photos. Good enough by far for most consumers so something more is needed. The P20 Pro goes places no iPhone can. Things like x3 optical zoom, x5 hybrid zoom, AIIS, Night Mode).

    This is with regards to real phones on the market today.

    Those same phones are also experimenting with design, finish and colour and claiming some big wins in that area too. 'Twilight' is probably the one many seem to be following at this point in time. The iPhone range (chins and foreheads included) has suffered here. The exception being the iPhone X which isn't particularly head turning when placed alongside something like P20 Pro. Apple has found itself for the better part of 2018 with two very dated looking 'new' flagship phones.

    There are other issues too. Why can't the 8 series use face unlock as a convenience option? Why can I be laying in bed, on the sofa or reclining in a chair with my 'cheap' phone and have it override screen rotation to keep things readable while no iPhone does this?

    I hope Apple catches up in these areas this month even if prices don't get adjusted down.

    One last point. Last year Honor presented and demoed its own take on 3D depth sensing including 10 times the precision, submillimetre scanning, 3D small object modelling with background, hand and palm removal, avatar creation based on facial data etc. Apple really should be implementing everything Honor revealed last year in its own second generation FaceID setup. Honor has yet to deploy its solution due to hardware cost reasons (it doesn't make $1,000 dollar phones) but prices are falling and by its own desire, Apple gets just one shot per year to 'deliver' and only on three phones. Anything not included in the refresh won't be dealt with until this time next year and there is a chance Honor might roll it out during 2019.


    So, it's okay if Huawei doesn't implement a feature because of cost, but you consider it a problem for Apple, likely not for cost reasons, in my opinion, but because there isn't enough production capacity to actually produce the components that would be required for 150 million devices.

    I remember when the iPhone X was released and you spend considerable effort stating that Huawei had the same access to Face ID components because they used them in telecom, but in truth, they weren't the right components for Huawei's equivalent of Face ID. Hence nothing comparable in Huawei's product lineup to date, and pretty much nothing at all for the rest of the Android OS device makers. Not rumored to arrive at all until component prices drop. 

    Going back to Apple's iPhone X release, those same shortages likely impacted the FY Q1 revenues for Apple, even though those revenues were a record at $88 Billion. Given that the only noted shortages this go round are the screens for the LCD model, delaying its release slightly, I'm expecting those blowout revenues to happen.

    Apple would obviously love to implement those same functionalities on the backside for AR, in which Apple is fully ahead of Android OS devices, if those components were available in volume today. They aren't.

    As for cameras, specifically the triple lens models, those models are selling in such small numbers for the few Android OS device makers that have them, that it is hardly imperiling Apple to skip that this year, and launch in 2019.

    I'm always shocked, shocked, I say, when I confront person's as yourself pushing the high end models as "halo" devices, but not actually purchasing them. It's called eating your own dog food.

    Apple doesn't seem to have that problem with the iPhone X; people seem to be voting with their wallets.

    The problem is that Avon, and others would rather believe the hype, and regard minor features as more important that actual functionality and value.

    im also a,aged at how he defends Chinese manufacturers who hac]ve R&D and manufacturing’s costs that are exactly the same as anyone else’s, yet charge hundreds less. There’s a reason for that, yet, he refuses, as do other supporters of cheaper devices, to understand why these companies can do that, and it’s not due to their expertise. It’s called dumping, and it’s something that allowed the Japanese to get their industry used around the world. 
    How is Huawei dumping when it has increased handset prices in recent years and moved into higher and higher premium bands?

    There R&D costs are not the same as everyone else's. They are historically higher.
    As they go into more premium branding, the phone cost more to produce, but are still priced well under other established, non-Chinese brands. It’s not just Huawei. They’re R&D isn’t higher either. 
  • Reply 123 of 139
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member

    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    You mean to say that Apple really needs to implement all the tech demoed by a competitor who hasn’t figured out how to bring it to market? 

    O-kayyyyyy
    In January, Honor said cost was the only reason, not 'figuring it out'. Costs are coming down, that's why I mentioned it.
    You and I have very different definitions of “bringing something to the market”. 

    Not being able to produce it at acceptable cost is by definition “not having figured out how to bring it to market”. 

    But you are right: Apple is the company that figures out how to sell utopian stuff — by both figuring out how to make it useful, and by figuring how how to build it so that they can actually sell it. 
    Ever wondered why Apple could be so far behind in the triple camera stakes? For the same reasons.

    They couldn't figure it out I suppose.

    People claim Apple's triple camera won't ship until late 2019. I'm not so sure myself, but consensus says it's coming all the same.

    There is no magic involved in a workable triple camera setup. No component issues. 

    Size isn't an issue. Nor thickness.

    So why is such a major selling point - one that has literally pulled the rug out from under Samsung's and Apple's feet in terms of limelight - being left so late with all the benefits it could bring?

    It could be cost, it could be planning, it could be something else but, according to your logic, they couldn't figure it out!
    Either that, or they decide that the trade-offs are not (yet) worth the benefit and don’t implement it. (Whatever combination of factors that may be - space constraints, volume constraints in manufacturing - no other model approaches the volumes of a single iPhone line, which allows Tim Cook to negotiate prices no other manufacturer can, but also limits technology to that which can be supplied at volume -, cost, still having lots of room for improvement remaining in dual-camera tech, or just biding time until a completely different technology they’re working on is ready for the market...we don’t know.)

    Remember how they simply abandoned research into Touch ID under the display, because it didn’t offer enough of an advantage over Face ID? They probably could have worked it out, but hadn’t no interest in doing so. 
    In the meantime, others have implemented it — but primarily because they don’t have access to the technology needed *at volume* for Face ID-equivalent functionality. 

    Contrast with Huawei telling us explicitly that the technology they demonstrated is cost-prohibitive. 

    Oh, btw: the first true dual-camera phones came out in 2015. Apple didn’t follow suit until late 2016. 
    Which just happens to be exactly what I indicated.

    The resulting price would have been too high for them - at that time. 


    Cost prohibitive means - “We can’t do it.”
    Can't do it - yet
    Vaporware. Can’t do it. Why do they bother announcing features they can’t afford to make? What’s the point to that? They should wait until they’re ready, unless they just want to talk about R&D and a possible road forwards. But that’s not what they’re doing. If Apple opened their labs and showed everything they were riding, we would see a lot of future features and products, including those that don’t make it to market.

    what would be the point?
    tmay
  • Reply 124 of 139
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member

    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    You mean to say that Apple really needs to implement all the tech demoed by a competitor who hasn’t figured out how to bring it to market? 
    "
    O-kayyyyyy
    In January, Honor said cost was the only reason, not 'figuring it out'. Costs are coming down, that's why I mentioned it.
    Also, because they very likely can’t get it to work as well as they claim. It won’t be the first time that companies make claims they can’t pull off, and it won’t be the last.
    Very likely?

    A few weeks after Apple released FaceID they revealed their own take and gave a lot of details. An engineer from Honor even demoed a 3D face scan in real time while casually walking around a show floor. All prototype stuff and pretty ugly hardware but totally normal becsuse they obviously weren't going to release it on an unreleased phone.

    What makes things 'very likely'?

    We know 3D depth sensing is expensive. We know that cost is the reason they gave. Shouldn't we give them the benefit of the doubt at least?


    No, not really. It’s because they act as though they’ve got the tech wrapped up. The truth is that I could do the same thing. I still remember enough of my professional electronics and photo technology, where I designed equipment for my own company. I could also bone up on my development skills, something Imhavent done for a while. The point is that this is doable for many people and companies. But that doesn’t t mean they can do a smartphone technology, because that involved a much more sophisticated bit of work. I certainly couldn’t go that far. There’s no guarantee that what they showed could be translated into what Apple has done in less than at least, a couple more years, and likely wouldn’t work as well in the beginning. Meanwhile, apple would have significantly advanced theirs.

    its not that they can’t do it at all. It’s that they are nowhere near a real product. 
  • Reply 125 of 139
    spheric said:
    Hi. The P20 is selling well and has probably the best camera on any smartphone. 

    Can you please take your penises off the table and put them away? You’re scaring the children, and they’re really just here because they’re excited over the new iPhone they’ve heard is coming next Wednesday. 
    so...no1 got the pun here, after several posts? As I mentioned in the Huawei thread, all bunch of spec's masserbaters, don't mean a RA to me, color me old fart, no longer impressed by these. I.e. iPhone XS, is because of all the 'bigguss dickuss' ranting on Android/iphone forums...iPhone Extra Small, bc Apple is so LGBTQRST...xyz, must be 'gender neutral', ip XS is not well endowed, will not cause the fems to bolt (can't say female, bc that's not gender neutral, it has the "man" pronoun in it, can't say 'woman/women' for same reason)

    @ spheric, &A7, it's not the best camera nore the idea leader in it's class. Go buy one, use it for a week, after you have used ipX or Pixel 3(which btw, is also not well endowed, as it only has 'shreeks' one, u read that corectly, only one camera.

    Actually for camera fans, we can debate with the higher-end enthusiast ametuer/faux pro camera users. 

    Do you all rely on AI for your decisions on which headphone/earphones to buy...if so, then just ignorantnlemons/sheep. Ken Rockwell says the ipX is the next best thing to Swiss cheese, that it will get him better images than a both current high-end Canon DSLR's. LOL, he knows the limitations, go find me someone that can easily replicate his success. Then again, both Rockwell & this guy doing a hyperkenetic, way too fast to even see any real differences...bc that's what Android/iP users consider 'top notch' imagery...ya know the snapchat/IG/twitter social media crowd which Apple caters to, emoji heaven for teenagers & 20's something mellinials .


    Rockwell cannot overcome lighting, no matter how hard he try's to 'sell' the ipX:

    https://fstoppers.com/education/scrim-it-and-light-it-how-photograph-hard-direct-sunlight-58570

    LG v30 does 10bit & camera log, good, now move aside 'pro'; lemmy show ya a real camera made exclusively to do a good job at what it is soley designed for, low price of $1300. Blackmagic pocket cam 4k, real deal 12bit, real useable 13 stops dynamic range...that no cell phone is going to come close to for probably another decade, if ever.

    https://www.cinema5d.com/lgs-v30-smartphone-10-bit-color-lg-cine-log-video-in-a-phone/

    ^At the end of the youtube vid by this guy, he says he's a Apple fanboy...but Iphone cannot do this yet, 10bit is nice, 12bit much, much better
    "Sergio October 14, 2017

    Aside from the excessively color saturated and overexposed highlights (clouds) in this demo video, its just ok imho. Nice spec’s but lets see what Cinema5d conclude.

    Richard LackeyReply
    Richard Lackey October 14, 2017
    Yep, I also wasn’t overly impressed with how they tried to match the cameras, the highlights are probably lost in the grade, not necessarily because the information wasn’t captured."

    ^I concur, judging by that comparison, the excessive/exaggerated post 'grading', which this guy thinks makes for better looking images...he's a Rockwell devotee...just a lousy comparison by a young 'pro' hack, imho.

    https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicpocketcinemacamera


    Soderber did an iphone movie, how nice, he's not an oscar winning DP, he's just a director who has limited knowledge in this area of movie capture, and you still need full on crew using scrim lighting to get results you could show in a movie theatre, let alone via streaming in 4k, lol. Lighting is *everything* in movies, and real-deal 'pro' capture.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/23/17156978/unsane-movie-review-iphone-7-steven-soderbergh-claire-foy

    Oh wait, here's a pro that both uses a Macbook Pro & a 2014 Mac mini...how can that be possible according to the armchair experts on AI & other ignorant Apple centric forums?

    Any ametuer photographer who's at minimum level of knowledge, knows all these cell phone claims of 3x or 2x 'Zoom' is blatant 'Faux News', even the dying off pocket pointNshot camera's have stepped zoom lens that actuall are capable of 'zooming', DSLR lens are infinitely adjustable(many times vis physical zoom rings) because you get pro-level adjustability to capture exactly what you artistically want to capture without resorting to craptastic faux 'digital zoom'.

    at very bottom of this TLDNR(too long, did not read) article, you click on details for the full list(which doesn't list his pictured MBP seen in image after image of his editing suites)

    http://www.onerivermedia.com/blog/the-hybrid-suite-revealed/


    What's so great about 12bit recording, that the $1299 BM pocket 4k cam can do, with included full Davinici Resolve?> watch Marco's tutorial and learn.

    http://www.onerivermedia.com/blog/comparing-the-blackmagic-design-cinema-camera-part-2/ <watch the linked vimeo 10min vid, it is excellent!

    "more depth about how 12-bit RAW can aid in pulling shadow and highlight detail, and in relation to what is “perceived dynamic range” and “available dynamic range”.

    I also go into examples of day-for-night, how working with higher dynamic range can be an advantage, even when deployed to web formats, detail versus sharpness, and much more.

    Hopefully this garnishes more insight into the advantages of high dynamic range, as well as higher bit-depth flexibility, and how both aspects work hand-in-hand to achieve results that surpass some of the boundaries that 8-bit camera formats provide."

    FYI, gay former Apple Final Cut Pro pro manager for FCP3-7 (and regular speaker at local FCP user group monthly meetings in Los Angeles, which I used to attend) is with Blackmagic now as more or less an Davinci Resolve evangilist...man what ever happened to Guy Kawasaki...the old Apple days when Steve Jobs was alive are sorely missed...current board should drop every1 except Ive.

    https://www.provideocoalition.com/pauls/


    speakin of extra small, the old Macbook 12" with it's truly enemic CPU, can still do limited 8k...seems that with UFS3.0 & LPDDR5 we now are getting to bandwidth for 8k recording in cell phones, how insane is that?

    https://www.4kshooters.net/2017/06/26/smooth-8k-video-editing-on-a-mid-2017-12-macbook/

    getting back to topic at hand:

    Apple to revolutionize the phone interface, again, and Androids may follow (air gestures, AR camera)

    https://www.phonearena.com/news/Apple-2019-iPhone-3D-rear-camera-air-gestures-interface_id108168

    because, unlike Macrumors.com (go do an internet search on keywords "China" "Tariffs", you will see plenty of threads that are banned here on AI, so AI is doing the same as big tech in suppressing 'unwanted' traffic. (aka censorship at best)

    Google Will Not Renew Pentagon Contract That Upset Employees

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentagon-project-maven.html



    Do'nt u love it, Google emplyees are butt hurt about big bad Pentagon using AI for lethal weapons research...and yet according to NYtimes(trump calls them fake news, so search for another link if you don't like them), but are find with transferring the most advanced AI tech to Bejiing, China home of the world's most repressive country that puts 1mil + muslims in **** style concentrations camps...while here in the USA, the hypocritical parochial mindset that only cares about self-serving intests in the USA bashing a few hundred detainee's that have illegally crossed the boarder...China is bad/evil in the way Google is supposed to be against, yet they conspire with the enemy to the detriment of the free world. US gov should crack down on Google very, very hard. & Jeff Bezo in the next 5-10yrs will be worth more than Apple is now, 1Trillion. Under Steve, I'll bet Apple would have passed the 2Tril cap buy now...or it would have gone out of business :)


    https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/03/11/apple-iphone-x-speed-performance-upgrade-galaxy-s9-plus/#2d26c65e34d0

    "Love or hate Apple AAPL +1.55%’s iPhone X, there’s one thing you can’t dispute. The world’s most expensive mass market smartphone has the fastest hardware and delivers the smoothest, most optimised software experience on the planet. Right? Wrong…

    Tests by high profile YouTubers like XeeTechCareSuperSaf TV and EverythingApplePro (7M subscribers combined) have reached a consensus: the iPhone X can’t live with the real world performance of the new Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus.

    As such Apple needs to do the following:

    Add More RAM - 4GB must be the minimum for the next iPhone (6GB ideally). Modules are cheap and Apple has the profit margin to afford it. 

    Increase Battery Capacity - Samsung has had 3,500 mAh capacity batteries in its flagship smartphones since 2015. There’s no reason Apple couldn’t match this.

    Reduce iOS Updates - If the iPhone keyword has a bug, iOS needs an update. If the calendar glitches, iOS needs an update. Problem with Email? iOS needs an update. Safari? Maps? Clock? Calculator? You get the picture"

    IMHO, all Apple products should ship with 32GB RAM minimum, if they have the ability to connect to the internet. Internet with 1Gbps via fiOS, cable, 5G next yr or 2020 is going to be intolerable for anyone that has more than a few open tabs. 

    of course Huawei P20 Pro hit "107" on dxomark, which means something to specs masserbaters, but no one else. drpreview hasn't done a full review yet. but you don't even need that:

    https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/this-is-not-an-iphone-killer/news-story/b80d3abc5a0da755371a4ed5421f4e68

    no iphone "killer' here, Things that make you go hmm. A12 is rumored and constantely repeated via social as Ice Universe calls it A12 will be a "beast" a  monster, etc...why is it all these ppl, seems predominantly young males, use these terms like they are creepy beastiality pervs? I'm thinking the next leak from Russian blog/socail media bots, will have the 2020 HiSilcon Kirin "8888" or "2001:A Space Odessy" going to drop the big one, it's a "Godzilla of a monster®".

    "Enter the Huawei P20 Pro. It’s meant to be the device that takes Huawei into the same level as Apple, Samsung and Google. But every day I use it, I find a new reason to be frustrated by it.

    Now Huawei has nailed the five-minute impression. The design is undoubtedly premium, the screen is gorgeous and it has a very intuitive night mode on the camera (which has three lenses) allowing you take pictures in light you didn’t think was possible — handy, but also mostly just a sales gimmick.

    Huawei has tried too hard to get everything in for that initial experience, for the money people want to pay — at the expense of the overall experience.

    My first 48 hours with the device I found utterly infuriating, before I was able to disable certain things that improved it a bit. For example, by default, there’s a setting on the device that will automatically turn off your mobile data when you connect to Wi-Fi, so when you leave that Wi-Fi network you find your phone suddenly stops loading anything before realising you need to turn that option off.

    It’s only a little thing, but it’s not a pain you suffer with Apple, Google or Samsung.

    It’s the same with the camera that is constantly shouted about. Huawei obviously has some great sensors in the device, but it then over-processes every photo. This means that all your pictures look a little bit like you’ve painted it like an oil painting. Check out the photos below."

    wouldn't it be nice if all Android phones were released in the month of Sept to match Apple, and u think Apple's Sept announcement being just about 6mo off of the usual March cell phone biggy in Spain, where the next gen of Samsung (no, the Note 9 doesn't count) will be hitting the review circuit, with a foldable, all kinds of rumored new tech that make the 10th anniv a "beast", 'game changer', etc??? we can expect Team AI to repeat & wash, the same multi-articles about the Note 10, to bump up web traffic leading into the multiple iphone rumors for Sept release, it's all about $$$ for Team AI, you can bet on that... "Sad!"

    I'm not upgrading, if ever, my iphone 6 & 6+ until they are about 10yrs old, so that comes out to about $200/yr, it's all I can afford...stlll think that utility is too expensive, as I rarely use much of the promoted functionality of such devices...emoji, I'm Tim Cooks age, not a teenager, do not give a RA about that. But what will impress me if the 32 core GPU in the A14 5nm process SOC does AI/AR what a $50k Nvidia workstation with multi telsa v100's can do with Huawei, iPhone, etc's excessive MP count (market realitizes of ignorant consumers that by into hype) for such microscopic small sensors, get rid off all the noise, would be great for Pentax KI DSLR's massively pixelated iso 409000:


    https://news.developer.nvidia.com/ai-can-now-fix-your-grainy-photos-by-only-looking-at-grainy-photos/
    Noise_2.png

    ^this is game changing tech, if the costs & needed performance can ever be reduced to tiny footprint. Hope Apple R&D billions are keeping up with Nvidia.

    Different ppl have different standards of what is a 'good camera'...like Slick Willy said, depends on what you define "is" as is.

    All well and good, but unlike the game changing S10 coming soon(6mo is an eternity for 20's, talk to a senior like T Cook & me, it's a very short period of time)...Apple has a huge exposure risk, it's the 800lb Gorilla (yet another monster/beast) in the room that should not 'monkey up things' (checks to see if there are any 'blacks' or social overly sensitive paranoid types around) when the 'tech war between China & USA' heats up "soon", listen to what Gordon Chang says about how Apple is the most risk exposed company of all US companies due to the nearly 100% dependency on China supply chains...yeah, Timmy C is so progressively politically active for the USA where in San Francisco IIRC annual income of $110,000 (more than a Registered Nurse in that area makes) qualifies for EBT/food stamps/goverment assistance/welfare, Bezo worth $150bil and 1/3 of Amazon employees in Arizona qualify for food stamps/gov assistance, he doesn't give a RA about China's massive human rights abuses...all about maintiainly stock holders huge 30% profit margins that drive Apple's stock. I'd like to see what would happen if Apple went to 5% margins, would have a wonderfully still expensive cell phone, problably *only* $500-700 ea, which is crazy expensive. Ppl were being killed for Air Jordan's that cost 1/3 that. 2023, I may just buy the cheapest $99-199 Android there is, which will have all the capabilities I really need(not want).

    800lb Gorilla is coming soon:

    Gordon Chang: We've got to stop China's theft

    http://video.foxnews.com/v/5829935169001/gordon-chang-weve-got-to-stop-chinas-theft#sp=show-clips

    if $200bil in tariffs doesn't put a dent into China's IP theft/restrictive investment policies (that is just the tip of the iceberg, if you read about how so many of the tech R&D ppl being used in China, are obtaining advanced knowledge while working/studying in US institutions...yep, paid by the Chinese gov, actively seeking to 'acquire' all US IP...and almost unstoppeable, if we don't act now, juggxrnaught that will see China's influence and power overtake the USA/western allies in short order, just a few decades before Pelosi's ammegadon arrives...and she's as clueless as most in the us gov/politics)

    ...impeach, impeach...Chang says we need to ban ****all**** Chinese imports to the USA. Would cause a massive hurt on us consumers/loss of jobs,  as we are dependent on cheap Chinese goods like the opiod crisis in the USA,etc, but our economy is much stronger currently than China's...they have more to lose, would cry uncle 1st.

     Lastly, the things Apple's IOS copied(Apple apologists will say, improved on) from other OS's. as imitation is the sincerest form of blatant copycatting, correct?:

    10 iPhone Features Apple 'Shamelessly Copied' from Android Phones


    do internet search on "samsung""beast"   ...i'll be waiting with baited breath (or maybe die of old age by then) for the "Godzilla" SoC coming soon from Huawei, that we won't be able to buy in the USA due to IP tech wars. Meanwhile, Amazon & M$ have no prob making $$$$ off of DOD cloud services contracts& AI research. China's prob well ahead of us already, you can thank 'evil' Google's AI Bejiing center for their help with that.

    That upcoming S10, if rumors are correct with all the new features, if the A12 iphones have not advanced noticeably, is going to be a best seller...might even outsell the ipX A12...we'll see, we'll see. 
  • Reply 126 of 139
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    Er...holy shit.  :o

    I didn’t make it too far into that.
    mbenz1962
  • Reply 127 of 139
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,311member
    spheric said:
    Er...holy shit.  :o

    I didn’t make it too far into that.
    Turgid comes to mind.
    spheric
  • Reply 128 of 139
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    tmay said:
    spheric said:
    Er...holy shit.  :o

    I didn’t make it too far into that.
    Turgid comes to mind.
    In the context of...genitalia...scaring the childr...urrgh 







     :D  :D :D :D
  • Reply 129 of 139
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    spheric said:
    Er...holy shit.  :o

    I didn’t make it too far into that.
    LOL. I made it to the end but it seemed Mr Angry got out of the wrong side of the bed today.

    The linked rant on the P20 Pro didn't make a lot of sense, apart from being factually wrong. Basically, it was a guy who spent 48 hours and couldn't figure out the simplest of tasks.

    A lot of the AI enhancements are actually done on purpose because Huawei's biggest market is China and they like that kind of stuff. Every photo I take on my phone with AI enhancements appears with a coloured AI label on the photo in the gallery. Tapping that label removes the enhancements instantly. There is a global setting for AI too.

    No pro photographer would shoot jpeg for best output anyway and Huawei phones come with a very complete Pro Mode and RAW output.

    But it's like I said, no device is perfect. There will always be a few who will slam something on a device. As long as its not representative of general consensus, the complaints are often questionable.
  • Reply 130 of 139
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    melgross said:

    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    You mean to say that Apple really needs to implement all the tech demoed by a competitor who hasn’t figured out how to bring it to market? 
    "
    O-kayyyyyy
    In January, Honor said cost was the only reason, not 'figuring it out'. Costs are coming down, that's why I mentioned it.
    Also, because they very likely can’t get it to work as well as they claim. It won’t be the first time that companies make claims they can’t pull off, and it won’t be the last.
    Very likely?

    A few weeks after Apple released FaceID they revealed their own take and gave a lot of details. An engineer from Honor even demoed a 3D face scan in real time while casually walking around a show floor. All prototype stuff and pretty ugly hardware but totally normal becsuse they obviously weren't going to release it on an unreleased phone.

    What makes things 'very likely'?

    We know 3D depth sensing is expensive. We know that cost is the reason they gave. Shouldn't we give them the benefit of the doubt at least?


    No, not really. It’s because they act as though they’ve got the tech wrapped up. The truth is that I could do the same thing. I still remember enough of my professional electronics and photo technology, where I designed equipment for my own company. I could also bone up on my development skills, something Imhavent done for a while. The point is that this is doable for many people and companies. But that doesn’t t mean they can do a smartphone technology, because that involved a much more sophisticated bit of work. I certainly couldn’t go that far. There’s no guarantee that what they showed could be translated into what Apple has done in less than at least, a couple more years, and likely wouldn’t work as well in the beginning. Meanwhile, apple would have significantly advanced theirs.

    its not that they can’t do it at all. It’s that they are nowhere near a real product. 
    You have gone from a direct 'very likely' to 'there is no guarantee' which is much more reasonable IMO. 

    But you are missing the point here. It is more probable that they didn't plan to reveal any information in the first place but Apple's announcement left them with two options: say nothing or reveal what was coming.

    The second option is definitely the best one as users get to see what is one the cards and no one can throw the 'copy' claim at them later. The opposite is true in fact. It's a win, win for Honor. In some regards, very similar to what Apple has done recently with products like HomePod.

    The fact they gave a raft of details on their solution and actually demoed stuff, shows that their solution is well advanced.  That they said cost was the reason they hadn't rolled it out also clarifies things. From there, you can speculate all you want but I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt first, especially as a couple of major Honor phones are on the horizon.
    spheric
  • Reply 131 of 139
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:

    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    10, X and XS are all fine with me.

    They play nicely visually (and phonetically when pronounced incorrectly).

    There are plenty of products with XS in the name and no one usually thinks of 'excess' when they read or here it.

    I'm not convinced on the gold colour but I detest the rose and champagne variants so, depending on how it actually looks it might be ok if it isn't bling style. It would be amazing if the etched a colour mix like the one in the image on the screen onto the glass back. Especially as multi coloured gradient are so popular now.
    That sounds like the script you have written to convince your wife to purchase the gold LCD X model as a replacement for her iPhone 6.
    I have a dilemma with this actually. Last year she could have upgraded but chose to replace the battery. That gave her another year with the 6. The X was not on the table basically due to price. That left the 8 series or 7 series as candidates but they look 'old'.

    When she saw my Honor 10 she said 'that's gorgeous!' so now I'm waiting to see pricing and sizes for iPhones without foreheads and chins in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping the rumours of an 'affordable' new phone prove to be true.

    We can argue that a phone is just a phone but she is style conscious and in 2018, high screen to body ratios are the norm and as the phone will have to last her around three years, I wouldn't like her stuck with a big forehead and chin in 2020.
    The LCD iPhone X model will be much more expensive than the Honor 10.
    For sure. I'm just hoping the rumours prove true and one of the new phones is 'affordable' (even if it an Apple style definition of affordable).

    Our family and social circle is dominated by Huawei/Honor phones. The sole iPhone is my wife's and there are a couple of oldish Samsungs.

    She wants an iPhone and it would be nice for her to have one but we have been putting a lot of resources elsewhere and have plans for the next couple of years that make us think twice about certain things and one of them is phones.

    If the Apple carrot is not close enough she could decide to hold out for another year or consider an Android.

    She saw the Honor Magic 2 teaser from IFA today and commented favourably on the design.
    She should buy an Android; she obviously doesn't care about Apple's ecosystem, and since the iPad Mini isn't going to be replaced by Apple, you should make a clean break.

    Then all you have to do is get rid of your Mac, and the iPad, and you are entirely free of Apple's ecosystem.

    That' really what you've been angling for, right?
    How about competitively priced new products? Give me an iPad Mini 5 and new iPhone at an attractive price and we're onboard. Our iPads were competitive. No reason why new iPhones can't be either. Rumours are even pointing to exactly that. As for ecosystem. Nope. We are 'bad' Apple users as we do not subscribe to ANY Apple services.
    The ecosystem does not refer to apple services, which they didn’t even have before not too long ago. 

    The iPhone is priced well, as even the highest models are best sellers. The market feels they’re fair, despite you wanting cheapies. 
    Meanings progress. The ecosystem today is hardware + OS + apps + services.

    If the market felt that iPhone prices were fair I say Apple would have a far higher market share than it does.

    It could also be that the ecosystem creates a need to be within Apple and people pay to continue having access to it. After all, I have seen a lot of people imply that the ecosystem itself is a kind of holding system, designed to reduce migration from it.

    Anyway, if they lower pricing, the market will still consider it fair by your logic.

     https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/warren-buffett-says-he-bought-just-a-little-more-apple-recently.html

    "Buffett explained that he loves Apple as an investment due to the power of its brand and ecosystem, not its short-term financial results.

    "I do not focus on the sales in the next quarter or the next year," he said. "I focus on the ... hundreds, hundreds, hundreds millions of people who practically live their lives by it [iPhone]."

    He also called the iPhone "enormously underpriced," saying that it's worth far more than the $1,000 Apple charges.

    "I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something of the sort. If I used the iPhone -- I use an iPad a lot -- if I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up the plane," he said. 

    "Now it's got competition so you can't push the price, but in terms of its utility to people and what they get for a thousand dollars...you can have a dinner party that would cost that, and here this is, and what it does for you, it's incredible."

    From a man that seems to have little contact with or understanding of the real world.

    At least even he is admitting that competition is working. Someone should point him to a P20 Pro to see what he's missing. ;-)
    I think he understands the real world just fine. He’s not saying that Apple can charge much more, or even that they should. He’s saying that from the use of the phone, you get much more than a $thousand worth out of it.
    Which is a purely subjective and unquantifiable claim. By the same token I could claim that my sub €400 phone also gives me $1,000 worth but for $600 less. Of course, the longer you actually have the phone, that also changes its perceived value. Etc.

    From an investment point of view of course, a 1,000 dollar phone means very little at this stage in the game. IMO, we are already in 'post iPhone' territory for revenues in the current business model.

    Seeing as iPhone (as a hardware product) represented so much for the company, three consecutive flat years of unit sales means you accept that market realities are obstacles to unit growth and accept it, or you manoeuvre within those realities. Apple appears to be doing just that.

    Apple's user base cannot sustain $1,000+ phones even for revenue growth. Gartner claimed last week that demand for the iPhone X had actually fallen off far sooner than for other Apple flagships of the past. That, IMO is normal as there are simply not that many customers who are able and/or willing to pay that amount. Of course being in the run up to a refresh has a negative impact too.

    Another point is competition. Apple has faced fierce competition but not only on price. There are arguably better phones out there than the iPhone X that cost far less and even look better but I don't know if this refresh is really going to move the ball that much. We'll see in a couple of weeks, though. I'm very open.

    But even with iPhone X, unit sales across the board once again seem to be flat, up to this point anyway. I think Apple will this year make another move to stimulate unit growth. Just as it did last year. Unit growth is necessary to widen its services base.

    $1,000 phones existed before iPhone X and have a place in the lineup (even double the price) but I doubt a $1,000+ iPhone would see the same demand so soon after the first wave. If the rumours of price drops are true, unit sales might see some growth and revenues can be compensated via Services. I doubt we are far away from seeing Apple's home grown media content reaching users.
    I basically disagree on much of what you’re saying. First, I never regard what Gardner, IDC, or others have to say. They are almost always wrong. There were predicting that Windows PCs sales would be rising again 5 years ago, and they were wrong then, and have been predicting it since then, and have been wrong each time. So their statements are not statements of fact, but statements of what they wish were the case.

     It’s if everything else you feel said here is meh. The iPhone X has been the most popular model of phone around the world since it came out, and still is. I’d also like to see some proof about all those “better” phones. That’s a real joke.
    Yeah, we disagree. I wouldn't be surprised if there were differing opinions within Apple too on all of these points, just as there are here and among analysts.

    That said, that there are "better" phones out there is far from a joke. So far in facttmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    10, X and XS are all fine with me.

    They play nicely visually (and phonetically when pronounced incorrectly).

    There are plenty of products with XS in the name and no one usually thinks of 'excess' when they read or here it.

    I'm not convinced on the gold colour but I detest the rose and champagne variants so, depending on how it actually looks it might be ok if it isn't bling style. It would be amazing if the etched a colour mix like the one in the image on the screen onto the glass back. Especially as multi coloured gradient are so popular now.
    That sounds like the script you have written to convince your wife to purchase the gold LCD X model as a replacement for her iPhone 6.
    I have a dilemma with this actually. Last year she could have upgraded but chose to replace the battery. That gave her another year with the 6. The X was not on the table basically due to price. That left the 8 series or 7 series as candidates but they look 'old'.

    When she saw my Honor 10 she said 'that's gorgeous!' so now I'm waiting to see pricing and sizes for iPhones without foreheads and chins in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping the rumours of an 'affordable' new phone prove to be true.

    We can argue that a phone is just a phone but she is style conscious and in 2018, high screen to body ratios are the norm and as the phone will have to last her around three years, I wouldn't like her stuck with a big forehead and chin in 2020.
    The LCD iPhone X model will be much more expensive than the Honor 10.
    For sure. I'm just hoping the rumours prove true and one of the new phones is 'affordable' (even if it an Apple style definition of affordable).

    Our family and social circle is dominated by Huawei/Honor phones. The sole iPhone is my wife's and there are a couple of oldish Samsungs.

    She wants an iPhone and it would be nice for her to have one but we have been putting a lot of resources elsewhere and have plans for the next couple of years that make us think twice about certain things and one of them is phones.

    If the Apple carrot is not close enough she could decide to hold out for another year or consider an Android.

    She saw the Honor Magic 2 teaser from IFA today and commented favourably on the design.
    She should buy an Android; she obviously doesn't care about Apple's ecosystem, and since the iPad Mini isn't going to be replaced by Apple, you should make a clean break.

    Then all you have to do is get rid of your Mac, and the iPad, and you are entirely free of Apple's ecosystem.

    That' really what you've been angling for, right?
    How about competitively priced new products? Give me an iPad Mini 5 and new iPhone at an attractive price and we're onboard. Our iPads were competitive. No reason why new iPhones can't be either. Rumours are even pointing to exactly that. As for ecosystem. Nope. We are 'bad' Apple users as we do not subscribe to ANY Apple services.
    The ecosystem does not refer to apple services, which they didn’t even have before not too long ago. 

    The iPhone is priced well, as even the highest models are best sellers. The market feels they’re fair, despite you wanting cheapies. 
    Meanings progress. The ecosystem today is hardware + OS + apps + services.

    If the market felt that iPhone prices were fair I say Apple would have a far higher market share than it does.

    It could also be that the ecosystem creates a need to be within Apple and people pay to continue having access to it. After all, I have seen a lot of people imply that the ecosystem itself is a kind of holding system, designed to reduce migration from it.

    Anyway, if they lower pricing, the market will still consider it fair by your logic.

     https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/warren-buffett-says-he-bought-just-a-little-more-apple-recently.html

    "Buffett explained that he loves Apple as an investment due to the power of its brand and ecosystem, not its short-term financial results.

    "I do not focus on the sales in the next quarter or the next year," he said. "I focus on the ... hundreds, hundreds, hundreds millions of people who practically live their lives by it [iPhone]."

    He also called the iPhone "enormously underpriced," saying that it's worth far more than the $1,000 Apple charges.

    "I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something of the sort. If I used the iPhone -- I use an iPad a lot -- if I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up the plane," he said. 

    "Now it's got competition so you can't push the price, but in terms of its utility to people and what they get for a thousand dollars...you can have a dinner party that would cost that, and here this is, and what it does for you, it's incredible."

    From a man that seems to have little contact with or understanding of the real world.

    At least even he is admitting that competition is working. Someone should point him to a P20 Pro to see what he's missing. ;-)
    I think he understands the real world just fine. He’s not saying that Apple can charge much more, or even that they should. He’s saying that from the use of the phone, you get much more than a $thousand worth out of it.
    Which is a purely subjective and unquantifiable claim. By the same token I could claim that my sub €400 phone also gives me $1,000 worth but for $600 less. Of course, the longer you actually have the phone, that also changes its perceived value. Etc.

    From an investment point of view of course, a 1,000 dollar phone means very little at this stage in the game. IMO, we are already in 'post iPhone' territory for revenues in the current business model.

    Seeing as iPhone (as a hardware product) represented so much for the company, three consecutive flat years of unit sales means you accept that market realities are obstacles to unit growth and accept it, or you manoeuvre within those realities. Apple appears to be doing just that.

    Apple's user base cannot sustain $1,000+ phones even for revenue growth. Gartner claimed last week that demand for the iPhone X had actually fallen off far sooner than for other Apple flagships of the past. That, IMO is normal as there are simply not that many customers who are able and/or willing to pay that amount. Of course being in the run up to a refresh has a negative impact too.

    Another point is competition. Apple has faced fierce competition but not only on price. There are arguably better phones out there than the iPhone X that cost far less and even look better but I don't know if this refresh is really going to move the ball that much. We'll see in a couple of weeks, though. I'm very open.

    But even with iPhone X, unit sales across the board once again seem to be flat, up to this point anyway. I think Apple will this year make another move to stimulate unit growth. Just as it did last year. Unit growth is necessary to widen its services base.

    $1,000 phones existed before iPhone X and have a place in the lineup (even double the price) but I doubt a $1,000+ iPhone would see the same demand so soon after the first wave. If the rumours of price drops are true, unit sales might see some growth and revenues can be compensated via Services. I doubt we are far away from seeing Apple's home grown media content reaching users.
    Warren Buffett owns something on the order of 5% of Apple, from my reading anyway, and he votes with his wallet. He doesn't see, nor do most investors, a downside of a mature iPhone market that still ships something on the order of 150 million flagships a year, plus 65 million other iPhones, at an ASP roughly 3X the nearest competition, from a iPhone user base numbering on the order of 750 million.

    In only a single metric, quarterly unit sales, has Huawei even exceeded Apple's sales, and on a yearly basis, there's a good chance that Huawei won't do that in 2019 either, simply because they have stiff competition from BKK, Xiaomi, and Samsung in the Android OS market, and because there is a likely that Apple with see a growth spurt in sales this year; a super cycle you would call it. I would note that the smartphone market, worldwide, is seeing long term stagnation. Huawei's run for the goal seems a desperate grab for the few remaining growth opportunities, but it is taking share mostly from Samsung, who will certainly fight back.

    Your "feature enhanced" Huawei phones are wonderful, from your perspective, but as I stated before, they don't compete directly with Apple's ecosystem which is broad and vertical, and those same features are diffused rapidly throughout the competition. If anything, I could point out that most of those features are "halo" for only a short time and while they drive the Huawei brand, they aren't really driving the kind of flagship sales that Apple has every, single, year. and more to the point, aren't going to be able continue the pace of a features only race.

    Your arguments will continue to fail simply because you have attempted to simply the competition to devices and features and unit sales, discounting all of the other reasons that buyers purchase a particular model and brand.


    Bums on seats. You estimate the user base at 750 million. With that base Apple has the services revenues it has. If it really wants to pump that side of the business up - within the ecosystem - it will need to shift units to unique users.

    Meanwhile, it seems the smartphone business in developing nations is picking up, taking Android share with it. You will counter that those areas aren't of interest to Apple and those users aren't ideal Services customers either, to which I will say you are mistaken on the first count as Apple has been virtually insistent in its attempts to squeeze the iPhone 6 into places like India.

    'Bums on seats' or as the analyst I quoted to you recently said: "Apple needs volume" (that, in the context of services).

    BTW, wasn't it Buffet that didn't even own a smartphone?

    As for Huawei and competition. The more the better! The Honor Magic 2 probably wouldn't ship with the Kirin 980 if it weren't for competition. Think about it. Huawei's sub brand getting the latest SoC.

    That puts it above the iPhone 8, X series SoC for a fraction of the price without taking into account everything that makes the Magic brand special in the first place.

    Normally, the A12 phones would cost a penny or two (historically, Apple's latest SoCs have). I'm hoping (in line with rumours) the new lineup will include an 'affordable' model. If it does, thank Huawei for being at least part of the reason behind it. If it doesn't, I hope there is something compelling in the new lineup that justifies the price.


    You keep attributing products that Apple enters into the market as responses to Huawei, but that's both simplistic and incorrect. You keep comparing device features, a limited set that favors your Huawei brand, I might add, and unit pricing without comparing the ecosystems. 

    Apple knows that some people wanted the iPhone X last year, but were put off by the prices. A de-featured model with an LCD rather than the more expensive, and frankly, still production limited OLED, lacking a dual rear camera, is the rumored response. There aren't any replacements for the SE price point, because they just aren't great sellers.

    All of the new models will be getting the A12, and based on recent sales data, Apple expects over 70% of sales to be just those three new models.

    215m units x 70 percent , is a conservative 150 million units with A12 processors for this next year, but FY Q1 is going to be a blowout quarter for Apple for that model lineup.

    All flagships.

    Lots of expectation that Apple will blow through $100B revenue this next quarter; but I'm expecting even more than that, as I have posted.

    I'm not against "bums on seats", but I, and Apple, don't see a process requiring high acquisition costs to counter an effort by Huawei, Samsung, or any other Android OS OEM, as a winning strategy, even in emerging countries. 

    As for the Kirin 980, I'm not seeing enough of an overall performance gain over an Apple A11 to be much of a threat to iPhone 8/8 Plus sales, and the rumors around the A12 are both that the "GPU is a beast", and that it will easily stave off any challengers, including the Kirin 980, and Exynos, and Snapdragon, processors coming out early next year.

    Such is the nature of "competition".

    , that phones like the P20 Pro have not stopped receiving recognition of the fact. I've posted a lot of links here on that particular subject.

    The fact that the iPhone X has (or hasn't) been the most popular model around the world says nothing at all. Apple released just three phones last year. Samsung probably released over thirty. Obviously, the less phones a top player releases, the more 'popular' they could prove.

    What really counts is whether Apple feels that three years of flat unit growth is where it wants to be and how it plans to tackle that issue.

    Obviously we are focusing on the handset side of the business here but that obviously overlaps with other areas. 

    We will see how things play out in two weeks but I feel they need to improve in four key areas where they have been lacking:

    Battery
    Modem
    Camera
    Design

    I think if you gave people the option of 'slow' wireless charging or a high capacity fast charging solution they would opt for the latter.

    Apple modems haven't really been a tent pole feature. In fact the Kirin 970 was compared directly to Apple's flagship 2017 phones in several scenarios (including real world download speeds in San Francisco - at that time the Mate 10 was scheduled for a US rollout).

    Cameras that take good photos are important but Apple is facing many competitors capable of taking good photos. Good enough by far for most consumers so something more is needed. The P20 Pro goes places no iPhone can. Things like x3 optical zoom, x5 hybrid zoom, AIIS, Night Mode).

    This is with regards to real phones on the market today.

    Those same phones are also experimenting with design, finish and colour and claiming some big wins in that area too. 'Twilight' is probably the one many seem to be following at this point in time. The iPhone range (chins and foreheads included) has suffered here. The exception being the iPhone X which isn't particularly head turning when placed alongside something like P20 Pro. Apple has found itself for the better part of 2018 with two very dated looking 'new' flagship phones.

    There are other issues too. Why can't the 8 series use face unlock as a convenience option? Why can I be laying in bed, on the sofa or reclining in a chair with my 'cheap' phone and have it override screen rotation to keep things readable while no iPhone does this?

    I hope Apple catches up in these areas this month even if prices don't get adjusted down.

    One last point. Last year Honor presented and demoed its own take on 3D depth sensing including 10 times the precision, submillimetre scanning, 3D small object modelling with background, hand and palm removal, avatar creation based on facial data etc. Apple really should be implementing everything Honor revealed last year in its own second generation FaceID setup. Honor has yet to deploy its solution due to hardware cost reasons (it doesn't make $1,000 dollar phones) but prices are falling and by its own desire, Apple gets just one shot per year to 'deliver' and only on three phones. Anything not included in the refresh won't be dealt with until this time next year and there is a chance Honor might roll it out during 2019.






    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    10, X and XS are all fine with me.

    They play nicely visually (and phonetically when pronounced incorrectly).

    There are plenty of products with XS in the name and no one usually thinks of 'excess' when they read or here it.

    I'm not convinced on the gold colour but I detest the rose and champagne variants so, depending on how it actually looks it might be ok if it isn't bling style. It would be amazing if the etched a colour mix like the one in the image on the screen onto the glass back. Especially as multi coloured gradient are so popular now.
    That sounds like the script you have written to convince your wife to purchase the gold LCD X model as a replacement for her iPhone 6.
    I have a dilemma with this actually. Last year she could have upgraded but chose to replace the battery. That gave her another year with the 6. The X was not on the table basically due to price. That left the 8 series or 7 series as candidates but they look 'old'.

    When she saw my Honor 10 she said 'that's gorgeous!' so now I'm waiting to see pricing and sizes for iPhones without foreheads and chins in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping the rumours of an 'affordable' new phone prove to be true.

    We can argue that a phone is just a phone but she is style conscious and in 2018, high screen to body ratios are the norm and as the phone will have to last her around three years, I wouldn't like her stuck with a big forehead and chin in 2020.
    The LCD iPhone X model will be much more expensive than the Honor 10.
    For sure. I'm just hoping the rumours prove true and one of the new phones is 'affordable' (even if it an Apple style definition of affordable).

    Our family and social circle is dominated by Huawei/Honor phones. The sole iPhone is my wife's and there are a couple of oldish Samsungs.

    She wants an iPhone and it would be nice for her to have one but we have been putting a lot of resources elsewhere and have plans for the next couple of years that make us think twice about certain things and one of them is phones.

    If the Apple carrot is not close enough she could decide to hold out for another year or consider an Android.

    She saw the Honor Magic 2 teaser from IFA today and commented favourably on the design.
    She should buy an Android; she obviously doesn't care about Apple's ecosystem, and since the iPad Mini isn't going to be replaced by Apple, you should make a clean break.

    Then all you have to do is get rid of your Mac, and the iPad, and you are entirely free of Apple's ecosystem.

    That' really what you've been angling for, right?
    How about competitively priced new products? Give me an iPad Mini 5 and new iPhone at an attractive price and we're onboard. Our iPads were competitive. No reason why new iPhones can't be either. Rumours are even pointing to exactly that. As for ecosystem. Nope. We are 'bad' Apple users as we do not subscribe to ANY Apple services.
    The ecosystem does not refer to apple services, which they didn’t even have before not too long ago. 

    The iPhone is priced well, as even the highest models are best sellers. The market feels they’re fair, despite you wanting cheapies. 
    Meanings progress. The ecosystem today is hardware + OS + apps + services.

    If the market felt that iPhone prices were fair I say Apple would have a far higher market share than it does.

    It could also be that the ecosystem creates a need to be within Apple and people pay to continue having access to it. After all, I have seen a lot of people imply that the ecosystem itself is a kind of holding system, designed to reduce migration from it.

    Anyway, if they lower pricing, the market will still consider it fair by your logic.

     https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/warren-buffett-says-he-bought-just-a-little-more-apple-recently.html

    "Buffett explained that he loves Apple as an investment due to the power of its brand and ecosystem, not its short-term financial results.

    "I do not focus on the sales in the next quarter or the next year," he said. "I focus on the ... hundreds, hundreds, hundreds millions of people who practically live their lives by it [iPhone]."

    He also called the iPhone "enormously underpriced," saying that it's worth far more than the $1,000 Apple charges.

    "I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something of the sort. If I used the iPhone -- I use an iPad a lot -- if I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up the plane," he said. 

    "Now it's got competition so you can't push the price, but in terms of its utility to people and what they get for a thousand dollars...you can have a dinner party that would cost that, and here this is, and what it does for you, it's incredible."

    From a man that seems to have little contact with or understanding of the real world.

    At least even he is admitting that competition is working. Someone should point him to a P20 Pro to see what he's missing. ;-)
    I think he understands the real world just fine. He’s not saying that Apple can charge much more, or even that they should. He’s saying that from the use of the phone, you get much more than a $thousand worth out of it.
    Which is a purely subjective and unquantifiable claim. By the same token I could claim that my sub €400 phone also gives me $1,000 worth but for $600 less. Of course, the longer you actually have the phone, that also changes its perceived value. Etc.

    From an investment point of view of course, a 1,000 dollar phone means very little at this stage in the game. IMO, we are already in 'post iPhone' territory for revenues in the current business model.

    Seeing as iPhone (as a hardware product) represented so much for the company, three consecutive flat years of unit sales means you accept that market realities are obstacles to unit growth and accept it, or you manoeuvre within those realities. Apple appears to be doing just that.

    Apple's user base cannot sustain $1,000+ phones even for revenue growth. Gartner claimed last week that demand for the iPhone X had actually fallen off far sooner than for other Apple flagships of the past. That, IMO is normal as there are simply not that many customers who are able and/or willing to pay that amount. Of course being in the run up to a refresh has a negative impact too.

    Another point is competition. Apple has faced fierce competition but not only on price. There are arguably better phones out there than the iPhone X that cost far less and even look better but I don't know if this refresh is really going to move the ball that much. We'll see in a couple of weeks, though. I'm very open.

    But even with iPhone X, unit sales across the board once again seem to be flat, up to this point anyway. I think Apple will this year make another move to stimulate unit growth. Just as it did last year. Unit growth is necessary to widen its services base.

    $1,000 phones existed before iPhone X and have a place in the lineup (even double the price) but I doubt a $1,000+ iPhone would see the same demand so soon after the first wave. If the rumours of price drops are true, unit sales might see some growth and revenues can be compensated via Services. I doubt we are far away from seeing Apple's home grown media content reaching users.
    I basically disagree on much of what you’re saying. First, I never regard what Gardner, IDC, or others have to say. They are almost always wrong. There were predicting that Windows PCs sales would be rising again 5 years ago, and they were wrong then, and have been predicting it since then, and have been wrong each time. So their statements are not statements of fact, but statements of what they wish were the case.

     It’s if everything else you feel said here is meh. The iPhone X has been the most popular model of phone around the world since it came out, and still is. I’d also like to see some proof about all those “better” phones. That’s a real joke.
    Yeah, we disagree. I wouldn't be surprised if there were differing opinions within Apple too on all of these points, just as there are here and among analysts.

    That said, that there are "better" phones out there is far from a joke. So far in fact that phones like the P20 Pro have not stopped receiving recognition of the fact. I've posted a lot of links here on that particular subject.

    The fact that the iPhone X has (or hasn't) been the most popular model around the world says nothing at all. Apple released just three phones last year. Samsung probably released over thirty. Obviously, the less phones a top player releases, the more 'popular' they could prove.

    What really counts is whether Apple feels that three years of flat unit growth is where it wants to be and how it plans to tackle that issue.

    Obviously we are focusing on the handset side of the business here but that obviously overlaps with other areas. 

    We will see how things play out in two weeks but I feel they need to improve in four key areas where they have been lacking:

    Battery
    Modem
    Camera
    Design

    I think if you gave people the option of 'slow' wireless charging or a high capacity fast charging solution they would opt for the latter.

    Apple modems haven't really been a tent pole feature. In fact the Kirin 970 was compared directly to Apple's flagship 2017 phones in several scenarios (including real world download speeds in San Francisco - at that time the Mate 10 was scheduled for a US rollout).

    Cameras that take good photos are important but Apple is facing many competitors capable of taking good photos. Good enough by far for most consumers so something more is needed. The P20 Pro goes places no iPhone can. Things like x3 optical zoom, x5 hybrid zoom, AIIS, Night Mode).

    This is with regards to real phones on the market today.

    Those same phones are also experimenting with design, finish and colour and claiming some big wins in that area too. 'Twilight' is probably the one many seem to be following at this point in time. The iPhone range (chins and foreheads included) has suffered here. The exception being the iPhone X which isn't particularly head turning when placed alongside something like P20 Pro. Apple has found itself for the better part of 2018 with two very dated looking 'new' flagship phones.

    There are other issues too. Why can't the 8 series use face unlock as a convenience option? Why can I be laying in bed, on the sofa or reclining in a chair with my 'cheap' phone and have it override screen rotation to keep things readable while no iPhone does this?

    I hope Apple catches up in these areas this month even if prices don't get adjusted down.

    One last point. Last year Honor presented and demoed its own take on 3D depth sensing including 10 times the precision, submillimetre scanning, 3D small object modelling with background, hand and palm removal, avatar creation based on facial data etc. Apple really should be implementing everything Honor revealed last year in its own second generation FaceID setup. Honor has yet to deploy its solution due to hardware cost reasons (it doesn't make $1,000 dollar phones) but prices are falling and by its own desire, Apple gets just one shot per year to 'deliver' and only on three phones. Anything not included in the refresh won't be dealt with until this time next year and there is a chance Honor might roll it out during 2019.


    So, it's okay if Huawei doesn't implement a feature because of cost, but you consider it a problem for Apple, likely not for cost reasons, in my opinion, but because there isn't enough production capacity to actually produce the components that would be required for 150 million devices.

    I remember when the iPhone X was released and you spend considerable effort stating that Huawei had the same access to Face ID components because they used them in telecom, but in truth, they weren't the right components for Huawei's equivalent of Face ID. Hence nothing comparable in Huawei's product lineup to date, and pretty much nothing at all for the rest of the Android OS device makers. Not rumored to arrive at all until component prices drop. 

    Going back to Apple's iPhone X release, those same shortages likely impacted the FY Q1 revenues for Apple, even though those revenues were a record at $88 Billion. Given that the only noted shortages this go round are the screens for the LCD model, delaying its release slightly, I'm expecting those blowout revenues to happen.

    Apple would obviously love to implement those same functionalities on the backside for AR, in which Apple is fully ahead of Android OS devices, if those components were available in volume today. They aren't.

    As for cameras, specifically the triple lens models, those models are selling in such small numbers for the few Android OS device makers that have them, that it is hardly imperiling Apple to skip that this year, and launch in 2019.

    I'm always shocked, shocked, I say, when I confront person's as yourself pushing the high end models as "halo" devices, but not actually purchasing them. It's called eating your own dog food.

    Apple doesn't seem to have that problem with the iPhone X; people seem to be voting with their wallets.

    The problem is that Avon, and others would rather believe the hype, and regard minor features as more important that actual functionality and value.

    im also a,aged at how he defends Chinese manufacturers who hac]ve R&D and manufacturing’s costs that are exactly the same as anyone else’s, yet charge hundreds less. There’s a reason for that, yet, he refuses, as do other supporters of cheaper devices, to understand why these companies can do that, and it’s not due to their expertise. It’s called dumping, and it’s something that allowed the Japanese to get their industry used around the world. 
    How is Huawei dumping when it has increased handset prices in recent years and moved into higher and higher premium bands?

    There R&D costs are not the same as everyone else's. They are historically higher.
    As they go into more premium branding, the phone cost more to produce, but are still priced well under other established, non-Chinese brands. It’s not just Huawei. They’re R&D isn’t higher either. 
    This conclusion is incorrect.

    Yes, premium branding went up, but just like I said, so did prices, and not only on the premium phones. Even Honor (the sub brand) hiked prices on average by almost $100 dollars a couple of years ago.

    Huawei has detailed exactly how it increased profits: by bolting down costs.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-results/chinas-huawei-posts-28-percent-rise-in-2017-net-profit-idUSKBN1H609Q

    As one of the most vertically integrated manufacturers on the smartphone planet and selling tens of millions more phones than even two years ago, it is well suited to push component prices and costs down.

    http://fortune.com/2015/10/28/huawei-chinese-smartphone-maker/

    The unsubstantiated claim that it is dumping is absurd. If it were true, Trump would have had the perfect excuse to slap tarrifs on Chinese phones and Huawei wouldn't have the sustained revenues to be one of the world's top R&D companies, which it has been for many years.

    In fact, it recently announced an absolutely gigantic increase in R&D spending, on top of what is already a huge outlay in R&D.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-r-d/chinas-huawei-to-raise-annual-rd-budget-to-at-least-15-billion-idUSKBN1KG169

    Apple is like the tap on a plumbing system. It is really at the end stage of communication infrastructure. Huawei had infrastructure at every single point of communication systems, bar one: the phones (taps) themselves. For the last few years they have been making taps too. It also has key IP on global communications standards (4G/5G).

    Logically that brings some advantages. It is logical they have decent modems for instance and the new Kirin 980 contains an ultrafast homebrew wifi chip, as you know.

    But those advantages extend into the corporate side. Huawei gives 'credits' to carriers if they use Huawei backbone infrastructure. The credits can then be used to purchase Huawei phones which are then sold on to consumers (subsidised or not). The phones in question are flagships as carriers seek to have the best experience available (higher margins too) to pass onto clients as it relects favourably on the carrier (this is not unlike the original iPhone and the deal between Apple and AT&T). That is why you only see the highest-end phones in the store windows of carriers.


  • Reply 132 of 139
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    tmay said:
    melgross said:

    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    10, X and XS are all fine with me.

    They play nicely visually (and phonetically when pronounced incorrectly).

    There are plenty of products with XS in the name and no one usually thinks of 'excess' when they read or here it.

    I'm not convinced on the gold colour but I detest the rose and champagne variants so, depending on how it actually looks it might be ok if it isn't bling style. It would be amazing if the etched a colour mix like the one in the image on the screen onto the glass back. Especially as multi coloured gradient are so popular now.
    That sounds like the script you have written to convince your wife to purchase the gold LCD X model as a replacement for her iPhone 6.
    I have a dilemma with this actually. Last year she could have upgraded but chose to replace the battery. That gave her another year with the 6. The X was not on the table basically due to price. That left the 8 series or 7 series as candidates but they look 'old'.

    When she saw my Honor 10 she said 'that's gorgeous!' so now I'm waiting to see pricing and sizes for iPhones without foreheads and chins in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping the rumours of an 'affordable' new phone prove to be true.

    We can argue that a phone is just a phone but she is style conscious and in 2018, high screen to body ratios are the norm and as the phone will have to last her around three years, I wouldn't like her stuck with a big forehead and chin in 2020.
    The LCD iPhone X model will be much more expensive than the Honor 10.
    For sure. I'm just hoping the rumours prove true and one of the new phones is 'affordable' (even if it an Apple style definition of affordable).

    Our family and social circle is dominated by Huawei/Honor phones. The sole iPhone is my wife's and there are a couple of oldish Samsungs.

    She wants an iPhone and it would be nice for her to have one but we have been putting a lot of resources elsewhere and have plans for the next couple of years that make us think twice about certain things and one of them is phones.

    If the Apple carrot is not close enough she could decide to hold out for another year or consider an Android.

    She saw the Honor Magic 2 teaser from IFA today and commented favourably on the design.
    She should buy an Android; she obviously doesn't care about Apple's ecosystem, and since the iPad Mini isn't going to be replaced by Apple, you should make a clean break.

    Then all you have to do is get rid of your Mac, and the iPad, and you are entirely free of Apple's ecosystem.

    That' really what you've been angling for, right?
    How about competitively priced new products? Give me an iPad Mini 5 and new iPhone at an attractive price and we're onboard. Our iPads were competitive. No reason why new iPhones can't be either. Rumours are even pointing to exactly that. As for ecosystem. Nope. We are 'bad' Apple users as we do not subscribe to ANY Apple services.
    The ecosystem does not refer to apple services, which they didn’t even have before not too long ago. 

    The iPhone is priced well, as even the highest models are best sellers. The market feels they’re fair, despite you wanting cheapies. 
    Meanings progress. The ecosystem today is hardware + OS + apps + services.

    If the market felt that iPhone prices were fair I say Apple would have a far higher market share than it does.

    It could also be that the ecosystem creates a need to be within Apple and people pay to continue having access to it. After all, I have seen a lot of people imply that the ecosystem itself is a kind of holding system, designed to reduce migration from it.

    Anyway, if they lower pricing, the market will still consider it fair by your logic.

     https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/warren-buffett-says-he-bought-just-a-little-more-apple-recently.html

    "Buffett explained that he loves Apple as an investment due to the power of its brand and ecosystem, not its short-term financial results.

    "I do not focus on the sales in the next quarter or the next year," he said. "I focus on the ... hundreds, hundreds, hundreds millions of people who practically live their lives by it [iPhone]."

    He also called the iPhone "enormously underpriced," saying that it's worth far more than the $1,000 Apple charges.

    "I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something of the sort. If I used the iPhone -- I use an iPad a lot -- if I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up the plane," he said. 

    "Now it's got competition so you can't push the price, but in terms of its utility to people and what they get for a thousand dollars...you can have a dinner party that would cost that, and here this is, and what it does for you, it's incredible."

    From a man that seems to have little contact with or understanding of the real world.

    At least even he is admitting that competition is working. Someone should point him to a P20 Pro to see what he's missing. ;-)
    I think he understands the real world just fine. He’s not saying that Apple can charge much more, or even that they should. He’s saying that from the use of the phone, you get much more than a $thousand worth out of it.
    Which is a purely subjective and unquantifiable claim. By the same token I could claim that my sub €400 phone also gives me $1,000 worth but for $600 less. Of course, the longer you actually have the phone, that also changes its perceived value. Etc.

    From an investment point of view of course, a 1,000 dollar phone means very little at this stage in the game. IMO, we are already in 'post iPhone' territory for revenues in the current business model.

    Seeing as iPhone (as a hardware product) represented so much for the company, three consecutive flat years of unit sales means you accept that market realities are obstacles to unit growth and accept it, or you manoeuvre within those realities. Apple appears to be doing just that.

    Apple's user base cannot sustain $1,000+ phones even for revenue growth. Gartner claimed last week that demand for the iPhone X had actually fallen off far sooner than for other Apple flagships of the past. That, IMO is normal as there are simply not that many customers who are able and/or willing to pay that amount. Of course being in the run up to a refresh has a negative impact too.

    Another point is competition. Apple has faced fierce competition but not only on price. There are arguably better phones out there than the iPhone X that cost far less and even look better but I don't know if this refresh is really going to move the ball that much. We'll see in a couple of weeks, though. I'm very open.

    But even with iPhone X, unit sales across the board once again seem to be flat, up to this point anyway. I think Apple will this year make another move to stimulate unit growth. Just as it did last year. Unit growth is necessary to widen its services base.

    $1,000 phones existed before iPhone X and have a place in the lineup (even double the price) but I doubt a $1,000+ iPhone would see the same demand so soon after the first wave. If the rumours of price drops are true, unit sales might see some growth and revenues can be compensated via Services. I doubt we are far away from seeing Apple's home grown media content reaching users.
    I basically disagree on much of what you’re saying. First, I never regard what Gardner, IDC, or others have to say. They are almost always wrong. There were predicting that Windows PCs sales would be rising again 5 years ago, and they were wrong then, and have been predicting it since then, and have been wrong each time. So their statements are not statements of fact, but statements of what they wish were the case.

     It’s if everything else you feel said here is meh. The iPhone X has been the most popular model of phone around the world since it came out, and still is. I’d also like to see some proof about all those “better” phones. That’s a real joke.
    Yeah, we disagree. I wouldn't be surprised if there were differing opinions within Apple too on all of these points, just as there are here and among analysts.

    That said, that there are "better" phones out there is far from a joke. So far in facttmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    10, X and XS are all fine with me.

    They play nicely visually (and phonetically when pronounced incorrectly).

    There are plenty of products with XS in the name and no one usually thinks of 'excess' when they read or here it.

    I'm not convinced on the gold colour but I detest the rose and champagne variants so, depending on how it actually looks it might be ok if it isn't bling style. It would be amazing if the etched a colour mix like the one in the image on the screen onto the glass back. Especially as multi coloured gradient are so popular now.
    That sounds like the script you have written to convince your wife to purchase the gold LCD X model as a replacement for her iPhone 6.
    I have a dilemma with this actually. Last year she could have upgraded but chose to replace the battery. That gave her another year with the 6. The X was not on the table basically due to price. That left the 8 series or 7 series as candidates but they look 'old'.

    When she saw my Honor 10 she said 'that's gorgeous!' so now I'm waiting to see pricing and sizes for iPhones without foreheads and chins in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping the rumours of an 'affordable' new phone prove to be true.

    We can argue that a phone is just a phone but she is style conscious and in 2018, high screen to body ratios are the norm and as the phone will have to last her around three years, I wouldn't like her stuck with a big forehead and chin in 2020.
    The LCD iPhone X model will be much more expensive than the Honor 10.
    For sure. I'm just hoping the rumours prove true and one of the new phones is 'affordable' (even if it an Apple style definition of affordable).

    Our family and social circle is dominated by Huawei/Honor phones. The sole iPhone is my wife's and there are a couple of oldish Samsungs.

    She wants an iPhone and it would be nice for her to have one but we have been putting a lot of resources elsewhere and have plans for the next couple of years that make us think twice about certain things and one of them is phones.

    If the Apple carrot is not close enough she could decide to hold out for another year or consider an Android.

    She saw the Honor Magic 2 teaser from IFA today and commented favourably on the design.
    She should buy an Android; she obviously doesn't care about Apple's ecosystem, and since the iPad Mini isn't going to be replaced by Apple, you should make a clean break.

    Then all you have to do is get rid of your Mac, and the iPad, and you are entirely free of Apple's ecosystem.

    That' really what you've been angling for, right?
    How about competitively priced new products? Give me an iPad Mini 5 and new iPhone at an attractive price and we're onboard. Our iPads were competitive. No reason why new iPhones can't be either. Rumours are even pointing to exactly that. As for ecosystem. Nope. We are 'bad' Apple users as we do not subscribe to ANY Apple services.
    The ecosystem does not refer to apple services, which they didn’t even have before not too long ago. 

    The iPhone is priced well, as even the highest models are best sellers. The market feels they’re fair, despite you wanting cheapies. 
    Meanings progress. The ecosystem today is hardware + OS + apps + services.

    If the market felt that iPhone prices were fair I say Apple would have a far higher market share than it does.

    It could also be that the ecosystem creates a need to be within Apple and people pay to continue having access to it. After all, I have seen a lot of people imply that the ecosystem itself is a kind of holding system, designed to reduce migration from it.

    Anyway, if they lower pricing, the market will still consider it fair by your logic.

     https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/warren-buffett-says-he-bought-just-a-little-more-apple-recently.html

    "Buffett explained that he loves Apple as an investment due to the power of its brand and ecosystem, not its short-term financial results.

    "I do not focus on the sales in the next quarter or the next year," he said. "I focus on the ... hundreds, hundreds, hundreds millions of people who practically live their lives by it [iPhone]."

    He also called the iPhone "enormously underpriced," saying that it's worth far more than the $1,000 Apple charges.

    "I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something of the sort. If I used the iPhone -- I use an iPad a lot -- if I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up the plane," he said. 

    "Now it's got competition so you can't push the price, but in terms of its utility to people and what they get for a thousand dollars...you can have a dinner party that would cost that, and here this is, and what it does for you, it's incredible."

    From a man that seems to have little contact with or understanding of the real world.

    At least even he is admitting that competition is working. Someone should point him to a P20 Pro to see what he's missing. ;-)
    I think he understands the real world just fine. He’s not saying that Apple can charge much more, or even that they should. He’s saying that from the use of the phone, you get much more than a $thousand worth out of it.
    Which is a purely subjective and unquantifiable claim. By the same token I could claim that my sub €400 phone also gives me $1,000 worth but for $600 less. Of course, the longer you actually have the phone, that also changes its perceived value. Etc.

    From an investment point of view of course, a 1,000 dollar phone means very little at this stage in the game. IMO, we are already in 'post iPhone' territory for revenues in the current business model.

    Seeing as iPhone (as a hardware product) represented so much for the company, three consecutive flat years of unit sales means you accept that market realities are obstacles to unit growth and accept it, or you manoeuvre within those realities. Apple appears to be doing just that.

    Apple's user base cannot sustain $1,000+ phones even for revenue growth. Gartner claimed last week that demand for the iPhone X had actually fallen off far sooner than for other Apple flagships of the past. That, IMO is normal as there are simply not that many customers who are able and/or willing to pay that amount. Of course being in the run up to a refresh has a negative impact too.

    Another point is competition. Apple has faced fierce competition but not only on price. There are arguably better phones out there than the iPhone X that cost far less and even look better but I don't know if this refresh is really going to move the ball that much. We'll see in a couple of weeks, though. I'm very open.

    But even with iPhone X, unit sales across the board once again seem to be flat, up to this point anyway. I think Apple will this year make another move to stimulate unit growth. Just as it did last year. Unit growth is necessary to widen its services base.

    $1,000 phones existed before iPhone X and have a place in the lineup (even double the price) but I doubt a $1,000+ iPhone would see the same demand so soon after the first wave. If the rumours of price drops are true, unit sales might see some growth and revenues can be compensated via Services. I doubt we are far away from seeing Apple's home grown media content reaching users.
    Warren Buffett owns something on the order of 5% of Apple, from my reading anyway, and he votes with his wallet. He doesn't see, nor do most investors, a downside of a mature iPhone market that still ships something on the order of 150 million flagships a year, plus 65 million other iPhones, at an ASP roughly 3X the nearest competition, from a iPhone user base numbering on the order of 750 million.

    In only a single metric, quarterly unit sales, has Huawei even exceeded Apple's sales, and on a yearly basis, there's a good chance that Huawei won't do that in 2019 either, simply because they have stiff competition from BKK, Xiaomi, and Samsung in the Android OS market, and because there is a likely that Apple with see a growth spurt in sales this year; a super cycle you would call it. I would note that the smartphone market, worldwide, is seeing long term stagnation. Huawei's run for the goal seems a desperate grab for the few remaining growth opportunities, but it is taking share mostly from Samsung, who will certainly fight back.

    Your "feature enhanced" Huawei phones are wonderful, from your perspective, but as I stated before, they don't compete directly with Apple's ecosystem which is broad and vertical, and those same features are diffused rapidly throughout the competition. If anything, I could point out that most of those features are "halo" for only a short time and while they drive the Huawei brand, they aren't really driving the kind of flagship sales that Apple has every, single, year. and more to the point, aren't going to be able continue the pace of a features only race.

    Your arguments will continue to fail simply because you have attempted to simply the competition to devices and features and unit sales, discounting all of the other reasons that buyers purchase a particular model and brand.


    Bums on seats. You estimate the user base at 750 million. With that base Apple has the services revenues it has. If it really wants to pump that side of the business up - within the ecosystem - it will need to shift units to unique users.

    Meanwhile, it seems the smartphone business in developing nations is picking up, taking Android share with it. You will counter that those areas aren't of interest to Apple and those users aren't ideal Services customers either, to which I will say you are mistaken on the first count as Apple has been virtually insistent in its attempts to squeeze the iPhone 6 into places like India.

    'Bums on seats' or as the analyst I quoted to you recently said: "Apple needs volume" (that, in the context of services).

    BTW, wasn't it Buffet that didn't even own a smartphone?

    As for Huawei and competition. The more the better! The Honor Magic 2 probably wouldn't ship with the Kirin 980 if it weren't for competition. Think about it. Huawei's sub brand getting the latest SoC.

    That puts it above the iPhone 8, X series SoC for a fraction of the price without taking into account everything that makes the Magic brand special in the first place.

    Normally, the A12 phones would cost a penny or two (historically, Apple's latest SoCs have). I'm hoping (in line with rumours) the new lineup will include an 'affordable' model. If it does, thank Huawei for being at least part of the reason behind it. If it doesn't, I hope there is something compelling in the new lineup that justifies the price.


    You keep attributing products that Apple enters into the market as responses to Huawei, but that's both simplistic and incorrect. You keep comparing device features, a limited set that favors your Huawei brand, I might add, and unit pricing without comparing the ecosystems. 

    Apple knows that some people wanted the iPhone X last year, but were put off by the prices. A de-featured model with an LCD rather than the more expensive, and frankly, still production limited OLED, lacking a dual rear camera, is the rumored response. There aren't any replacements for the SE price point, because they just aren't great sellers.

    All of the new models will be getting the A12, and based on recent sales data, Apple expects over 70% of sales to be just those three new models.

    215m units x 70 percent , is a conservative 150 million units with A12 processors for this next year, but FY Q1 is going to be a blowout quarter for Apple for that model lineup.

    All flagships.

    Lots of expectation that Apple will blow through $100B revenue this next quarter; but I'm expecting even more than that, as I have posted.

    I'm not against "bums on seats", but I, and Apple, don't see a process requiring high acquisition costs to counter an effort by Huawei, Samsung, or any other Android OS OEM, as a winning strategy, even in emerging countries. 

    As for the Kirin 980, I'm not seeing enough of an overall performance gain over an Apple A11 to be much of a threat to iPhone 8/8 Plus sales, and the rumors around the A12 are both that the "GPU is a beast", and that it will easily stave off any challengers, including the Kirin 980, and Exynos, and Snapdragon, processors coming out early next year.

    Such is the nature of "competition".

    , that phones like the P20 Pro have not stopped receiving recognition of the fact. I've posted a lot of links here on that particular subject.

    The fact that the iPhone X has (or hasn't) been the most popular model around the world says nothing at all. Apple released just three phones last year. Samsung probably released over thirty. Obviously, the less phones a top player releases, the more 'popular' they could prove.

    What really counts is whether Apple feels that three years of flat unit growth is where it wants to be and how it plans to tackle that issue.

    Obviously we are focusing on the handset side of the business here but that obviously overlaps with other areas. 

    We will see how things play out in two weeks but I feel they need to improve in four key areas where they have been lacking:

    Battery
    Modem
    Camera
    Design

    I think if you gave people the option of 'slow' wireless charging or a high capacity fast charging solution they would opt for the latter.

    Apple modems haven't really been a tent pole feature. In fact the Kirin 970 was compared directly to Apple's flagship 2017 phones in several scenarios (including real world download speeds in San Francisco - at that time the Mate 10 was scheduled for a US rollout).

    Cameras that take good photos are important but Apple is facing many competitors capable of taking good photos. Good enough by far for most consumers so something more is needed. The P20 Pro goes places no iPhone can. Things like x3 optical zoom, x5 hybrid zoom, AIIS, Night Mode).

    This is with regards to real phones on the market today.

    Those same phones are also experimenting with design, finish and colour and claiming some big wins in that area too. 'Twilight' is probably the one many seem to be following at this point in time. The iPhone range (chins and foreheads included) has suffered here. The exception being the iPhone X which isn't particularly head turning when placed alongside something like P20 Pro. Apple has found itself for the better part of 2018 with two very dated looking 'new' flagship phones.

    There are other issues too. Why can't the 8 series use face unlock as a convenience option? Why can I be laying in bed, on the sofa or reclining in a chair with my 'cheap' phone and have it override screen rotation to keep things readable while no iPhone does this?

    I hope Apple catches up in these areas this month even if prices don't get adjusted down.

    One last point. Last year Honor presented and demoed its own take on 3D depth sensing including 10 times the precision, submillimetre scanning, 3D small object modelling with background, hand and palm removal, avatar creation based on facial data etc. Apple really should be implementing everything Honor revealed last year in its own second generation FaceID setup. Honor has yet to deploy its solution due to hardware cost reasons (it doesn't make $1,000 dollar phones) but prices are falling and by its own desire, Apple gets just one shot per year to 'deliver' and only on three phones. Anything not included in the refresh won't be dealt with until this time next year and there is a chance Honor might roll it out during 2019.






    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    10, X and XS are all fine with me.

    They play nicely visually (and phonetically when pronounced incorrectly).

    There are plenty of products with XS in the name and no one usually thinks of 'excess' when they read or here it.

    I'm not convinced on the gold colour but I detest the rose and champagne variants so, depending on how it actually looks it might be ok if it isn't bling style. It would be amazing if the etched a colour mix like the one in the image on the screen onto the glass back. Especially as multi coloured gradient are so popular now.
    That sounds like the script you have written to convince your wife to purchase the gold LCD X model as a replacement for her iPhone 6.
    I have a dilemma with this actually. Last year she could have upgraded but chose to replace the battery. That gave her another year with the 6. The X was not on the table basically due to price. That left the 8 series or 7 series as candidates but they look 'old'.

    When she saw my Honor 10 she said 'that's gorgeous!' so now I'm waiting to see pricing and sizes for iPhones without foreheads and chins in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping the rumours of an 'affordable' new phone prove to be true.

    We can argue that a phone is just a phone but she is style conscious and in 2018, high screen to body ratios are the norm and as the phone will have to last her around three years, I wouldn't like her stuck with a big forehead and chin in 2020.
    The LCD iPhone X model will be much more expensive than the Honor 10.
    For sure. I'm just hoping the rumours prove true and one of the new phones is 'affordable' (even if it an Apple style definition of affordable).

    Our family and social circle is dominated by Huawei/Honor phones. The sole iPhone is my wife's and there are a couple of oldish Samsungs.

    She wants an iPhone and it would be nice for her to have one but we have been putting a lot of resources elsewhere and have plans for the next couple of years that make us think twice about certain things and one of them is phones.

    If the Apple carrot is not close enough she could decide to hold out for another year or consider an Android.

    She saw the Honor Magic 2 teaser from IFA today and commented favourably on the design.
    She should buy an Android; she obviously doesn't care about Apple's ecosystem, and since the iPad Mini isn't going to be replaced by Apple, you should make a clean break.

    Then all you have to do is get rid of your Mac, and the iPad, and you are entirely free of Apple's ecosystem.

    That' really what you've been angling for, right?
    How about competitively priced new products? Give me an iPad Mini 5 and new iPhone at an attractive price and we're onboard. Our iPads were competitive. No reason why new iPhones can't be either. Rumours are even pointing to exactly that. As for ecosystem. Nope. We are 'bad' Apple users as we do not subscribe to ANY Apple services.
    The ecosystem does not refer to apple services, which they didn’t even have before not too long ago. 

    The iPhone is priced well, as even the highest models are best sellers. The market feels they’re fair, despite you wanting cheapies. 
    Meanings progress. The ecosystem today is hardware + OS + apps + services.

    If the market felt that iPhone prices were fair I say Apple would have a far higher market share than it does.

    It could also be that the ecosystem creates a need to be within Apple and people pay to continue having access to it. After all, I have seen a lot of people imply that the ecosystem itself is a kind of holding system, designed to reduce migration from it.

    Anyway, if they lower pricing, the market will still consider it fair by your logic.

     https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/warren-buffett-says-he-bought-just-a-little-more-apple-recently.html

    "Buffett explained that he loves Apple as an investment due to the power of its brand and ecosystem, not its short-term financial results.

    "I do not focus on the sales in the next quarter or the next year," he said. "I focus on the ... hundreds, hundreds, hundreds millions of people who practically live their lives by it [iPhone]."

    He also called the iPhone "enormously underpriced," saying that it's worth far more than the $1,000 Apple charges.

    "I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something of the sort. If I used the iPhone -- I use an iPad a lot -- if I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up the plane," he said. 

    "Now it's got competition so you can't push the price, but in terms of its utility to people and what they get for a thousand dollars...you can have a dinner party that would cost that, and here this is, and what it does for you, it's incredible."

    From a man that seems to have little contact with or understanding of the real world.

    At least even he is admitting that competition is working. Someone should point him to a P20 Pro to see what he's missing. ;-)
    I think he understands the real world just fine. He’s not saying that Apple can charge much more, or even that they should. He’s saying that from the use of the phone, you get much more than a $thousand worth out of it.
    Which is a purely subjective and unquantifiable claim. By the same token I could claim that my sub €400 phone also gives me $1,000 worth but for $600 less. Of course, the longer you actually have the phone, that also changes its perceived value. Etc.

    From an investment point of view of course, a 1,000 dollar phone means very little at this stage in the game. IMO, we are already in 'post iPhone' territory for revenues in the current business model.

    Seeing as iPhone (as a hardware product) represented so much for the company, three consecutive flat years of unit sales means you accept that market realities are obstacles to unit growth and accept it, or you manoeuvre within those realities. Apple appears to be doing just that.

    Apple's user base cannot sustain $1,000+ phones even for revenue growth. Gartner claimed last week that demand for the iPhone X had actually fallen off far sooner than for other Apple flagships of the past. That, IMO is normal as there are simply not that many customers who are able and/or willing to pay that amount. Of course being in the run up to a refresh has a negative impact too.

    Another point is competition. Apple has faced fierce competition but not only on price. There are arguably better phones out there than the iPhone X that cost far less and even look better but I don't know if this refresh is really going to move the ball that much. We'll see in a couple of weeks, though. I'm very open.

    But even with iPhone X, unit sales across the board once again seem to be flat, up to this point anyway. I think Apple will this year make another move to stimulate unit growth. Just as it did last year. Unit growth is necessary to widen its services base.

    $1,000 phones existed before iPhone X and have a place in the lineup (even double the price) but I doubt a $1,000+ iPhone would see the same demand so soon after the first wave. If the rumours of price drops are true, unit sales might see some growth and revenues can be compensated via Services. I doubt we are far away from seeing Apple's home grown media content reaching users.
    I basically disagree on much of what you’re saying. First, I never regard what Gardner, IDC, or others have to say. They are almost always wrong. There were predicting that Windows PCs sales would be rising again 5 years ago, and they were wrong then, and have been predicting it since then, and have been wrong each time. So their statements are not statements of fact, but statements of what they wish were the case.

     It’s if everything else you feel said here is meh. The iPhone X has been the most popular model of phone around the world since it came out, and still is. I’d also like to see some proof about all those “better” phones. That’s a real joke.
    Yeah, we disagree. I wouldn't be surprised if there were differing opinions within Apple too on all of these points, just as there are here and among analysts.

    That said, that there are "better" phones out there is far from a joke. So far in fact that phones like the P20 Pro have not stopped receiving recognition of the fact. I've posted a lot of links here on that particular subject.

    The fact that the iPhone X has (or hasn't) been the most popular model around the world says nothing at all. Apple released just three phones last year. Samsung probably released over thirty. Obviously, the less phones a top player releases, the more 'popular' they could prove.

    What really counts is whether Apple feels that three years of flat unit growth is where it wants to be and how it plans to tackle that issue.

    Obviously we are focusing on the handset side of the business here but that obviously overlaps with other areas. 

    We will see how things play out in two weeks but I feel they need to improve in four key areas where they have been lacking:

    Battery
    Modem
    Camera
    Design

    I think if you gave people the option of 'slow' wireless charging or a high capacity fast charging solution they would opt for the latter.

    Apple modems haven't really been a tent pole feature. In fact the Kirin 970 was compared directly to Apple's flagship 2017 phones in several scenarios (including real world download speeds in San Francisco - at that time the Mate 10 was scheduled for a US rollout).

    Cameras that take good photos are important but Apple is facing many competitors capable of taking good photos. Good enough by far for most consumers so something more is needed. The P20 Pro goes places no iPhone can. Things like x3 optical zoom, x5 hybrid zoom, AIIS, Night Mode).

    This is with regards to real phones on the market today.

    Those same phones are also experimenting with design, finish and colour and claiming some big wins in that area too. 'Twilight' is probably the one many seem to be following at this point in time. The iPhone range (chins and foreheads included) has suffered here. The exception being the iPhone X which isn't particularly head turning when placed alongside something like P20 Pro. Apple has found itself for the better part of 2018 with two very dated looking 'new' flagship phones.

    There are other issues too. Why can't the 8 series use face unlock as a convenience option? Why can I be laying in bed, on the sofa or reclining in a chair with my 'cheap' phone and have it override screen rotation to keep things readable while no iPhone does this?

    I hope Apple catches up in these areas this month even if prices don't get adjusted down.

    One last point. Last year Honor presented and demoed its own take on 3D depth sensing including 10 times the precision, submillimetre scanning, 3D small object modelling with background, hand and palm removal, avatar creation based on facial data etc. Apple really should be implementing everything Honor revealed last year in its own second generation FaceID setup. Honor has yet to deploy its solution due to hardware cost reasons (it doesn't make $1,000 dollar phones) but prices are falling and by its own desire, Apple gets just one shot per year to 'deliver' and only on three phones. Anything not included in the refresh won't be dealt with until this time next year and there is a chance Honor might roll it out during 2019.


    So, it's okay if Huawei doesn't implement a feature because of cost, but you consider it a problem for Apple, likely not for cost reasons, in my opinion, but because there isn't enough production capacity to actually produce the components that would be required for 150 million devices.

    I remember when the iPhone X was released and you spend considerable effort stating that Huawei had the same access to Face ID components because they used them in telecom, but in truth, they weren't the right components for Huawei's equivalent of Face ID. Hence nothing comparable in Huawei's product lineup to date, and pretty much nothing at all for the rest of the Android OS device makers. Not rumored to arrive at all until component prices drop. 

    Going back to Apple's iPhone X release, those same shortages likely impacted the FY Q1 revenues for Apple, even though those revenues were a record at $88 Billion. Given that the only noted shortages this go round are the screens for the LCD model, delaying its release slightly, I'm expecting those blowout revenues to happen.

    Apple would obviously love to implement those same functionalities on the backside for AR, in which Apple is fully ahead of Android OS devices, if those components were available in volume today. They aren't.

    As for cameras, specifically the triple lens models, those models are selling in such small numbers for the few Android OS device makers that have them, that it is hardly imperiling Apple to skip that this year, and launch in 2019.

    I'm always shocked, shocked, I say, when I confront person's as yourself pushing the high end models as "halo" devices, but not actually purchasing them. It's called eating your own dog food.

    Apple doesn't seem to have that problem with the iPhone X; people seem to be voting with their wallets.

    The problem is that Avon, and others would rather believe the hype, and regard minor features as more important that actual functionality and value.

    im also a,aged at how he defends Chinese manufacturers who hac]ve R&D and manufacturing’s costs that are exactly the same as anyone else’s, yet charge hundreds less. There’s a reason for that, yet, he refuses, as do other supporters of cheaper devices, to understand why these companies can do that, and it’s not due to their expertise. It’s called dumping, and it’s something that allowed the Japanese to get their industry used around the world. 
    It's not often that companies find stability, and high value, in a mature market. Apple appears to have done that, and I would certainly put that down to their history of innovation, brand, and especially, ecosystem.

    Avon's error is how Android OS devices compete with Apple, not just with the iPhone. It isn't much, and is almost certainly due to price, and that nebulous "open", more so that the bragging rights of a few "halo" features of limited real world utility.

    I'm more than happy to watch Huawei sell (dump) product into an Android OS marketplace that has little growth other than a few emerging markets. It's a zero sum game with high acquisition costs and low brand loyalty. Aspiration users, will still trend towards Apple; if not today, then tomorrow or the next year.

    5G is certainly another technology that is overhyped in the device market, today anyway. Model's hyping it as "future proofing" are really going to best serve the narrow group of people that are willing to put up with the lengthy implementation problems. That isn't the general public.
    It’s been often said, and it’s true, that most Android OEMs don’t compete against Apple, they compete amongst themselves. Samsung is the only smartphone vendor that believes it’s important to directly compete against Apple. But their flagship sales are just a fraction of Apple’s. Other Android OEMs sales of flagship product, are fractions of Samsung’s.
  • Reply 133 of 139
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member

    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:

    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    You mean to say that Apple really needs to implement all the tech demoed by a competitor who hasn’t figured out how to bring it to market? 

    O-kayyyyyy
    In January, Honor said cost was the only reason, not 'figuring it out'. Costs are coming down, that's why I mentioned it.
    You and I have very different definitions of “bringing something to the market”. 

    Not being able to produce it at acceptable cost is by definition “not having figured out how to bring it to market”. 

    But you are right: Apple is the company that figures out how to sell utopian stuff — by both figuring out how to make it useful, and by figuring how how to build it so that they can actually sell it. 
    Ever wondered why Apple could be so far behind in the triple camera stakes? For the same reasons.

    They couldn't figure it out I suppose.

    People claim Apple's triple camera won't ship until late 2019. I'm not so sure myself, but consensus says it's coming all the same.

    There is no magic involved in a workable triple camera setup. No component issues. 

    Size isn't an issue. Nor thickness.

    So why is such a major selling point - one that has literally pulled the rug out from under Samsung's and Apple's feet in terms of limelight - being left so late with all the benefits it could bring?

    It could be cost, it could be planning, it could be something else but, according to your logic, they couldn't figure it out!
    Sure! So far, there’s no evidence that these systems are any better. That’s more hype. Can’t do two really good cameras, then put three lessor ones in. It’s amazing what some people will believe. When Samsung announced, this year, that they were going to have an aperture on a lens, I read a half dozen articles at how this would change everything with smartphone cameras. The phone comes out, and the cameras are tested, and what? The pictures are good, but no improvement with the aperture. Another phone came out a year or two ago with one B/W camera for resolution, and the other just for color indo. Well, that’s was going to be far better, all the fawning web sits stated, including a couple of the photo sites. What happened there? Surprisingly crappy pictures! There are other examples. Until a company can get something out the door, it’s vaporware. It’s why Apple doesn’t announce new features until they produce them.

    another interesting this is that whenever there’s a rumor of Apple wanting to do something, other manufacturers jump on it quickly, hoping to get it out before Apple does, if possible. Adding another camera is fairly easy, so they can jump on it. So maybe Apple is working on this, on their own schedule, and will come out with it when they are ready, in such case, it will serve a purpose, and actually do something useful. Or, and this is just as likely, it’s just another rumor with no substance. I remember pretty well that Samsung, and others came out with 16NP cameras just a few years ago. Apple just came out with 12. Wow! 16MP will be so sharp! Except it was only under a few very well lit conditions, and only in the brighter portions of the image. Otherwise, the pictures were pretty bad. So what happened? While Apple was being tied to the rails for not having 16MP in their own camera, the others, very quietly, without the hype they used when going to 16MP, went back to 12MP.

    so stop being so gullible and believing everything that these companies claim, just because, for whatever reason, you want to see Apple bashed.
    There is no evidence these systems are any better?

    Wow!

    What exactly are you looking for?

    When I said there things no other phone could do I wasn't making it up. Here are some of those, plus others.

    X3 optical zoom is real.
    AIAS is real
    Night Mode is real.
    Monochrome sensor is real (if B/W is your thing)
    TüV Rheinland Battery Cert is real
    Reverse charging is real
    Supercharge is real
    Dual SIM and Dual simultaneous VoLTE are real
    Cat 18 (now 19) modem is real
    Ultra low temp operating conditions are real
    Huawei had its own take on portrait mode before it appeared on any iPhone (only to spend a year in beta when it did arrive).
    Etc.

    A lot of this makes sense given Huawei's pedigree in areas like batteries, networking and imaging. Some of it might not be of use to you but it is very real, nonetheless.

    For example, train travel might not be typical in the US but in Europe and China and Japan, high speed train travel is very common and brings its own set of problems. That's why things like call stability and cell tower handover were given so much attention in Huawei modems/phones with testing over thousands of kilometres. It's why Huawei is rolling out fibre optic systems for rail networks, etc

    It has also made significant breakthroughs in battery technology, the last publicly announced breakthrough was increasing the operating temperature of lithium batteries by 10ºC while doubling the lifespan of the battery itself. That wasn't some PR claim. It was presented at a world battery symposium. Whatever the origin of a development, it will filter down to different divisions of the company if applicable. That is why my 'cheap' phone performs so well out of the box, when it comes to anything battery related. No extra chargers needed. In fact it has sensors in every link of the charging chain, cable included, plus a whole raft of safety gates for safe functioning.

    If the iPhone can only go to x2 optical zoom but the P20 Pro can go to x3, in my book the P20 Pro is better.

    Have you read about Night Mode and why people are raving about it?

    I don't know why you say there is no 'evidence'.

    If you hunt around you will see someone putting down the P20 Pro. There always is. However, for every one of those, you will find many, many more with a completely different viewpoint. Without being perfect (nothing is), in terms of doing many things (and in key areas) that other phones simply cannot do, means the evidence is there

    "In terms of actual light capture, the P20 Pro’s massive sensor is just without competition. Both the hardware and the software processing make this easily the most competitive smartphone in low-light scenarios. At high ISO settings, we’re seeing astounding and never-before-seen results from a smartphone that really pushes the envelope of what can be done in a mobile device."

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/12676/the-huawei-p20-p20-pro-review/8






    A lot of this is still just claims. Not impressed by the battery example, as I’ve seen many of those over the years that never worked in production. As far as the camera goes, there are reviews that say the camera is good, but nothing surprising.
  • Reply 134 of 139
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:

    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    You mean to say that Apple really needs to implement all the tech demoed by a competitor who hasn’t figured out how to bring it to market? 

    O-kayyyyyy
    In January, Honor said cost was the only reason, not 'figuring it out'. Costs are coming down, that's why I mentioned it.
    You and I have very different definitions of “bringing something to the market”. 

    Not being able to produce it at acceptable cost is by definition “not having figured out how to bring it to market”. 

    But you are right: Apple is the company that figures out how to sell utopian stuff — by both figuring out how to make it useful, and by figuring how how to build it so that they can actually sell it. 
    Ever wondered why Apple could be so far behind in the triple camera stakes? For the same reasons.

    They couldn't figure it out I suppose.

    People claim Apple's triple camera won't ship until late 2019. I'm not so sure myself, but consensus says it's coming all the same.

    There is no magic involved in a workable triple camera setup. No component issues. 

    Size isn't an issue. Nor thickness.

    So why is such a major selling point - one that has literally pulled the rug out from under Samsung's and Apple's feet in terms of limelight - being left so late with all the benefits it could bring?

    It could be cost, it could be planning, it could be something else but, according to your logic, they couldn't figure it out!
    Sure! So far, there’s no evidence that these systems are any better. That’s more hype. Can’t do two really good cameras, then put three lessor ones in. It’s amazing what some people will believe. When Samsung announced, this year, that they were going to have an aperture on a lens, I read a half dozen articles at how this would change everything with smartphone cameras. The phone comes out, and the cameras are tested, and what? The pictures are good, but no improvement with the aperture. Another phone came out a year or two ago with one B/W camera for resolution, and the other just for color indo. Well, that’s was going to be far better, all the fawning web sits stated, including a couple of the photo sites. What happened there? Surprisingly crappy pictures! There are other examples. Until a company can get something out the door, it’s vaporware. It’s why Apple doesn’t announce new features until they produce them.

    another interesting this is that whenever there’s a rumor of Apple wanting to do something, other manufacturers jump on it quickly, hoping to get it out before Apple does, if possible. Adding another camera is fairly easy, so they can jump on it. So maybe Apple is working on this, on their own schedule, and will come out with it when they are ready, in such case, it will serve a purpose, and actually do something useful. Or, and this is just as likely, it’s just another rumor with no substance. I remember pretty well that Samsung, and others came out with 16NP cameras just a few years ago. Apple just came out with 12. Wow! 16MP will be so sharp! Except it was only under a few very well lit conditions, and only in the brighter portions of the image. Otherwise, the pictures were pretty bad. So what happened? While Apple was being tied to the rails for not having 16MP in their own camera, the others, very quietly, without the hype they used when going to 16MP, went back to 12MP.

    so stop being so gullible and believing everything that these companies claim, just because, for whatever reason, you want to see Apple bashed.
    There is no evidence these systems are any better?

    Wow!

    What exactly are you looking for?

    When I said there things no other phone could do I wasn't making it up. Here are some of those, plus others.

    X3 optical zoom is real.
    AIAS is real
    Night Mode is real.
    Monochrome sensor is real (if B/W is your thing)
    TüV Rheinland Battery Cert is real
    Reverse charging is real
    Supercharge is real
    Dual SIM and Dual simultaneous VoLTE are real
    Cat 18 (now 19) modem is real
    Ultra low temp operating conditions are real
    Huawei had its own take on portrait mode before it appeared on any iPhone (only to spend a year in beta when it did arrive).
    Etc.

    A lot of this makes sense given Huawei's pedigree in areas like batteries, networking and imaging. Some of it might not be of use to you but it is very real, nonetheless.

    For example, train travel might not be typical in the US but in Europe and China and Japan, high speed train travel is very common and brings its own set of problems. That's why things like call stability and cell tower handover were given so much attention in Huawei modems/phones with testing over thousands of kilometres. It's why Huawei is rolling out fibre optic systems for rail networks, etc

    It has also made significant breakthroughs in battery technology, the last publicly announced breakthrough was increasing the operating temperature of lithium batteries by 10ºC while doubling the lifespan of the battery itself. That wasn't some PR claim. It was presented at a world battery symposium. Whatever the origin of a development, it will filter down to different divisions of the company if applicable. That is why my 'cheap' phone performs so well out of the box, when it comes to anything battery related. No extra chargers needed. In fact it has sensors in every link of the charging chain, cable included, plus a whole raft of safety gates for safe functioning.

    If the iPhone can only go to x2 optical zoom but the P20 Pro can go to x3, in my book the P20 Pro is better.

    Have you read about Night Mode and why people are raving about it?

    I don't know why you say there is no 'evidence'.

    If you hunt around you will see someone putting down the P20 Pro. There always is. However, for every one of those, you will find many, many more with a completely different viewpoint. Without being perfect (nothing is), in terms of doing many things (and in key areas) that other phones simply cannot do, means the evidence is there

    "In terms of actual light capture, the P20 Pro’s massive sensor is just without competition. Both the hardware and the software processing make this easily the most competitive smartphone in low-light scenarios. At high ISO settings, we’re seeing astounding and never-before-seen results from a smartphone that really pushes the envelope of what can be done in a mobile device."

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/12676/the-huawei-p20-p20-pro-review/8






    As I've said before; nice "Halo" product, but Apple will sell 100 million and more dual imager systems this year, and another 50 million and more of the single imager, just for the new models. Very few people buy "Halo" products, but people sure like talking about them, right?

    Apple knows it's markets, so isn't worried about being "late" to triple lenses, or most of the other features that you have listed.

    I'll be happy to say "Huawei wins" when they actually win, but, I'm not seeing those features as "winning", and I told you why many times;

    Diffusion.
    Fine. We can disagree on what it 'represents' (that's just our opinions and each to their own, as they say) but the 'evidence' of being 'better' is basically something that we shouldn't be doubting the P20 Pro on (at least on the tangible aspects like battery, modem and optical zoom etc). And we're talking about key areas of modern day smartphones (the real bread and butter of phone use), not secondary elements.

    The P20 series (excluding Lite) is now over 10,000,000 units in just five months. Some halo! Same with Mate 10 series and let's not forget that with the exception of the third camera, much of those key advantages were actually available last year on that series. They have been improved on the P20 Pro but the improvements were backported to the Mate 10 series. Even my 'cheap' phone got Night Mode through an update (they share the same SoC) and although the camera hardware isn't the same as that on the P20 series, it's still very nice to have.

    It's good that people will be comparing the new iPhones to the P20 Pro as an established 'phone to beat' because it means competition is working. Although the new iPhones will also face the Mate 20 a just a few weeks after they are presented so the competition will be hot.
    Id like to know how verified those sales are. We see examples of Samsung’s sales as well, but Samsung doesn’t release sales, so we really have no idea as to what they are. Chinese companies finagle their finances all the time, which is why they’re a risky investment.
  • Reply 135 of 139
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member

    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:

    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    You mean to say that Apple really needs to implement all the tech demoed by a competitor who hasn’t figured out how to bring it to market? 

    O-kayyyyyy
    In January, Honor said cost was the only reason, not 'figuring it out'. Costs are coming down, that's why I mentioned it.
    You and I have very different definitions of “bringing something to the market”. 

    Not being able to produce it at acceptable cost is by definition “not having figured out how to bring it to market”. 

    But you are right: Apple is the company that figures out how to sell utopian stuff — by both figuring out how to make it useful, and by figuring how how to build it so that they can actually sell it. 
    Ever wondered why Apple could be so far behind in the triple camera stakes? For the same reasons.

    They couldn't figure it out I suppose.

    People claim Apple's triple camera won't ship until late 2019. I'm not so sure myself, but consensus says it's coming all the same.

    There is no magic involved in a workable triple camera setup. No component issues. 

    Size isn't an issue. Nor thickness.

    So why is such a major selling point - one that has literally pulled the rug out from under Samsung's and Apple's feet in terms of limelight - being left so late with all the benefits it could bring?

    It could be cost, it could be planning, it could be something else but, according to your logic, they couldn't figure it out!
    Sure! So far, there’s no evidence that these systems are any better. That’s more hype. Can’t do two really good cameras, then put three lessor ones in. It’s amazing what some people will believe. When Samsung announced, this year, that they were going to have an aperture on a lens, I read a half dozen articles at how this would change everything with smartphone cameras. The phone comes out, and the cameras are tested, and what? The pictures are good, but no improvement with the aperture. Another phone came out a year or two ago with one B/W camera for resolution, and the other just for color indo. Well, that’s was going to be far better, all the fawning web sits stated, including a couple of the photo sites. What happened there? Surprisingly crappy pictures! There are other examples. Until a company can get something out the door, it’s vaporware. It’s why Apple doesn’t announce new features until they produce them.

    another interesting this is that whenever there’s a rumor of Apple wanting to do something, other manufacturers jump on it quickly, hoping to get it out before Apple does, if possible. Adding another camera is fairly easy, so they can jump on it. So maybe Apple is working on this, on their own schedule, and will come out with it when they are ready, in such case, it will serve a purpose, and actually do something useful. Or, and this is just as likely, it’s just another rumor with no substance. I remember pretty well that Samsung, and others came out with 16NP cameras just a few years ago. Apple just came out with 12. Wow! 16MP will be so sharp! Except it was only under a few very well lit conditions, and only in the brighter portions of the image. Otherwise, the pictures were pretty bad. So what happened? While Apple was being tied to the rails for not having 16MP in their own camera, the others, very quietly, without the hype they used when going to 16MP, went back to 12MP.

    so stop being so gullible and believing everything that these companies claim, just because, for whatever reason, you want to see Apple bashed.
    There is no evidence these systems are any better?

    Wow!

    What exactly are you looking for?

    When I said there things no other phone could do I wasn't making it up. Here are some of those, plus others.

    X3 optical zoom is real.
    AIAS is real
    Night Mode is real.
    Monochrome sensor is real (if B/W is your thing)
    TüV Rheinland Battery Cert is real
    Reverse charging is real
    Supercharge is real
    Dual SIM and Dual simultaneous VoLTE are real
    Cat 18 (now 19) modem is real
    Ultra low temp operating conditions are real
    Huawei had its own take on portrait mode before it appeared on any iPhone (only to spend a year in beta when it did arrive).
    Etc.

    A lot of this makes sense given Huawei's pedigree in areas like batteries, networking and imaging. Some of it might not be of use to you but it is very real, nonetheless.

    For example, train travel might not be typical in the US but in Europe and China and Japan, high speed train travel is very common and brings its own set of problems. That's why things like call stability and cell tower handover were given so much attention in Huawei modems/phones with testing over thousands of kilometres. It's why Huawei is rolling out fibre optic systems for rail networks, etc

    It has also made significant breakthroughs in battery technology, the last publicly announced breakthrough was increasing the operating temperature of lithium batteries by 10ºC while doubling the lifespan of the battery itself. That wasn't some PR claim. It was presented at a world battery symposium. Whatever the origin of a development, it will filter down to different divisions of the company if applicable. That is why my 'cheap' phone performs so well out of the box, when it comes to anything battery related. No extra chargers needed. In fact it has sensors in every link of the charging chain, cable included, plus a whole raft of safety gates for safe functioning.

    If the iPhone can only go to x2 optical zoom but the P20 Pro can go to x3, in my book the P20 Pro is better.

    Have you read about Night Mode and why people are raving about it?

    I don't know why you say there is no 'evidence'.

    If you hunt around you will see someone putting down the P20 Pro. There always is. However, for every one of those, you will find many, many more with a completely different viewpoint. Without being perfect (nothing is), in terms of doing many things (and in key areas) that other phones simply cannot do, means the evidence is there

    "In terms of actual light capture, the P20 Pro’s massive sensor is just without competition. Both the hardware and the software processing make this easily the most competitive smartphone in low-light scenarios. At high ISO settings, we’re seeing astounding and never-before-seen results from a smartphone that really pushes the envelope of what can be done in a mobile device."

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/12676/the-huawei-p20-p20-pro-review/8






    As I've said before; nice "Halo" product, but Apple will sell 100 million and more dual imager systems this year, and another 50 million and more of the single imager, just for the new models. Very few people buy "Halo" products, but people sure like talking about them, right?

    Apple knows it's markets, so isn't worried about being "late" to triple lenses, or most of the other features that you have listed.

    I'll be happy to say "Huawei wins" when they actually win, but, I'm not seeing those features as "winning", and I told you why many times;

    Diffusion.
    Fine. We can disagree on what it 'represents' (that's just our opinions and each to their own, as they say) but the 'evidence' of being 'better' is basically something that we shouldn't be doubting the P20 Pro on (at least on the tangible aspects like battery, modem and optical zoom etc). And we're talking about key areas of modern day smartphones (the real bread and butter of phone use), not secondary elements.

    The P20 series (excluding Lite) is now over 10,000,000 units in just five months. Some halo! Same with Mate 10 series and let's not forget that with the exception of the third camera, much of those key advantages were actually available last year on that series. They have been improved on the P20 Pro but the improvements were backported to the Mate 10 series. Even my 'cheap' phone got Night Mode through an update (they share the same SoC) and although the camera hardware isn't the same as that on the P20 series, it's still very nice to have.

    It's good that people will be comparing the new iPhones to the P20 Pro as an established 'phone to beat' because it means competition is working. Although the new iPhones will also face the Mate 20 a just a few weeks after they are presented so the competition will be hot.
    So here's my response to that "9M" from a previous thread on Huawei becoming number two in unit sales for the quarter;

    Okay, the following link that you just gave me states the 9 million, which includes P20 Lite, P20, and P20 Pro:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/bensin/2018/08/03/huaweis-consumer-business-chief-talks-market-share-sales-kirin-980-and-mate-20/#207febe26117

    "Yu did announce shipment numbers, and the company's last two flagships each saw significant growth compared to previous generations: Huawei's flagship P20 series shipped a total of 9 million units so far in four months of release, while the Mate 10 series, which is close to a year old, has shipped a total of 10 million devices. Yu said the Mate 10 should finish at around the 11 million mark".

    That's from the link that you gave me, Are you now disavowing its accuracy?
    Oh dear. Your obsession again. LOL.

    I have answered you every single time with the data I've had to hand. Including the other thread.

    They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe you'll let it go now:

    https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13302/1535718707050594758994.jpg

    In an after show media briefing Yu confirmed the 10,000,000 + figure and put expected P20 and P20 Pro sales at 15,000,000 for the year and over 20,000,000 including the Lite version.
    Youre talking about someone else’s obsession? That’s a real laugh!
  • Reply 136 of 139
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    melgross said:

    avon b7 said:
    melgross said:

    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    avon b7 said:
    spheric said:
    You mean to say that Apple really needs to implement all the tech demoed by a competitor who hasn’t figured out how to bring it to market? 

    O-kayyyyyy
    In January, Honor said cost was the only reason, not 'figuring it out'. Costs are coming down, that's why I mentioned it.
    You and I have very different definitions of “bringing something to the market”. 

    Not being able to produce it at acceptable cost is by definition “not having figured out how to bring it to market”. 

    But you are right: Apple is the company that figures out how to sell utopian stuff — by both figuring out how to make it useful, and by figuring how how to build it so that they can actually sell it. 
    Ever wondered why Apple could be so far behind in the triple camera stakes? For the same reasons.

    They couldn't figure it out I suppose.

    People claim Apple's triple camera won't ship until late 2019. I'm not so sure myself, but consensus says it's coming all the same.

    There is no magic involved in a workable triple camera setup. No component issues. 

    Size isn't an issue. Nor thickness.

    So why is such a major selling point - one that has literally pulled the rug out from under Samsung's and Apple's feet in terms of limelight - being left so late with all the benefits it could bring?

    It could be cost, it could be planning, it could be something else but, according to your logic, they couldn't figure it out!
    Sure! So far, there’s no evidence that these systems are any better. That’s more hype. Can’t do two really good cameras, then put three lessor ones in. It’s amazing what some people will believe. When Samsung announced, this year, that they were going to have an aperture on a lens, I read a half dozen articles at how this would change everything with smartphone cameras. The phone comes out, and the cameras are tested, and what? The pictures are good, but no improvement with the aperture. Another phone came out a year or two ago with one B/W camera for resolution, and the other just for color indo. Well, that’s was going to be far better, all the fawning web sits stated, including a couple of the photo sites. What happened there? Surprisingly crappy pictures! There are other examples. Until a company can get something out the door, it’s vaporware. It’s why Apple doesn’t announce new features until they produce them.

    another interesting this is that whenever there’s a rumor of Apple wanting to do something, other manufacturers jump on it quickly, hoping to get it out before Apple does, if possible. Adding another camera is fairly easy, so they can jump on it. So maybe Apple is working on this, on their own schedule, and will come out with it when they are ready, in such case, it will serve a purpose, and actually do something useful. Or, and this is just as likely, it’s just another rumor with no substance. I remember pretty well that Samsung, and others came out with 16NP cameras just a few years ago. Apple just came out with 12. Wow! 16MP will be so sharp! Except it was only under a few very well lit conditions, and only in the brighter portions of the image. Otherwise, the pictures were pretty bad. So what happened? While Apple was being tied to the rails for not having 16MP in their own camera, the others, very quietly, without the hype they used when going to 16MP, went back to 12MP.

    so stop being so gullible and believing everything that these companies claim, just because, for whatever reason, you want to see Apple bashed.
    There is no evidence these systems are any better?

    Wow!

    What exactly are you looking for?

    When I said there things no other phone could do I wasn't making it up. Here are some of those, plus others.

    X3 optical zoom is real.
    AIAS is real
    Night Mode is real.
    Monochrome sensor is real (if B/W is your thing)
    TüV Rheinland Battery Cert is real
    Reverse charging is real
    Supercharge is real
    Dual SIM and Dual simultaneous VoLTE are real
    Cat 18 (now 19) modem is real
    Ultra low temp operating conditions are real
    Huawei had its own take on portrait mode before it appeared on any iPhone (only to spend a year in beta when it did arrive).
    Etc.

    A lot of this makes sense given Huawei's pedigree in areas like batteries, networking and imaging. Some of it might not be of use to you but it is very real, nonetheless.

    For example, train travel might not be typical in the US but in Europe and China and Japan, high speed train travel is very common and brings its own set of problems. That's why things like call stability and cell tower handover were given so much attention in Huawei modems/phones with testing over thousands of kilometres. It's why Huawei is rolling out fibre optic systems for rail networks, etc

    It has also made significant breakthroughs in battery technology, the last publicly announced breakthrough was increasing the operating temperature of lithium batteries by 10ºC while doubling the lifespan of the battery itself. That wasn't some PR claim. It was presented at a world battery symposium. Whatever the origin of a development, it will filter down to different divisions of the company if applicable. That is why my 'cheap' phone performs so well out of the box, when it comes to anything battery related. No extra chargers needed. In fact it has sensors in every link of the charging chain, cable included, plus a whole raft of safety gates for safe functioning.

    If the iPhone can only go to x2 optical zoom but the P20 Pro can go to x3, in my book the P20 Pro is better.

    Have you read about Night Mode and why people are raving about it?

    I don't know why you say there is no 'evidence'.

    If you hunt around you will see someone putting down the P20 Pro. There always is. However, for every one of those, you will find many, many more with a completely different viewpoint. Without being perfect (nothing is), in terms of doing many things (and in key areas) that other phones simply cannot do, means the evidence is there

    "In terms of actual light capture, the P20 Pro’s massive sensor is just without competition. Both the hardware and the software processing make this easily the most competitive smartphone in low-light scenarios. At high ISO settings, we’re seeing astounding and never-before-seen results from a smartphone that really pushes the envelope of what can be done in a mobile device."

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/12676/the-huawei-p20-p20-pro-review/8






    A lot of this is still just claims. Not impressed by the battery example, as I’ve seen many of those over the years that never worked in production. As far as the camera goes, there are reviews that say the camera is good, but nothing surprising.
    Just claims?

    No. Pick up a P20 Pro and zoom to x3. Then move on to x5. The drop in quality is minimal for general consumers who simply want to get in closer. Take the phone out at night and take a four second - handheld - exposure and compare the results to any iPhone. Try reverse charging you friend's phone. Hit plane mode and try the translator. 

    They are not 'just claims' you have the entire internet at your disposal of people checking the claims.

    Huawei claims it tested the Kirin 970 on over 400,000 km of rail networks in Germany, China and Japan. Should we really be doubting the claim.

    'As far as the camera goes' you will see all kinds of reviews. It's the internet after all, but I bet the vast majority are overwhelmingly positive. Wasn't the Anandtech snippet a good enough source?

    https://petapixel.com/2018/04/20/huawei-p20-pro-vs-canon-5ds-r-im-stunned/
    edited September 2018
  • Reply 137 of 139
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    Please note that, as Samsung proved years ago when they bullshitted their way into smartphone relevance with (IIRC) tenfold-inflated numbers, "shipments" does NOT equal "sales". 
  • Reply 138 of 139
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    spheric said:
    Please note that, as Samsung proved years ago when they bullshitted their way into smartphone relevance with (IIRC) tenfold-inflated numbers, "shipments" does NOT equal "sales". 
    True, but Huawei produces almost in line with demand. That's why for example, the Honor 10 was almost perpetually sold out as no sooner had a batch arrived, it was sold and new orders were put on back order. The stream is constant and normally adapts well to demand. The vMall official store used to give actual stock numbers. It makes sense as they offer a lot of colour/spec options. Two new P20 Pro variants were announced just last week.
    edited September 2018
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