5G offers little more than faster battery drain and often the requirement to pay extra for mobile service, whether that 5G service is consistently available and capable of delivering noticeably better, real-world mobile data speeds than the best 4G LTE or not.
This is the part I’m curious about. Will I be able to purchase a non-5G iPhone 12? Could I get a 5G iPhone 12 but stay on a plan that won’t allow me to connect to 5G? Where I live and travel the most has not had any “real” 5G roll-out. It’s likely iPhone 12 will have other new features I’m interested in but being forced to pay for cellular service I can’t receive doesn’t make much sense.
More likely. You can either use 3/4G mobile plan or you can disable them in settings. The same option available in Settings>Mobile Data>Data & Voice: 2G/3G/4G
And at a starting price of $399, the iPhone SE is yet again a threat to Android ASPs in their typical $250-$400 range. Many Android users are aspirational, only using their (non-flagship) Android phones because of their commodity prices. A super fast $400 iPhone can help them attain their dreams.
If that were true then Android users would have used iPhones back when most carriers - basically all but T-Mobile - would give you the phone for free in return for a two year contract. They definitely would have switched when the iPhone SE came out. Look, everything that iPhone advocates have claimed would cause legions of Android owners to abandon the platform have come and gone.
The end of AT&T exclusivity.
The adoption of 4G.
The switch to 64 bit.
The switch to biometrics.
Apple Pay.
Privacy/security/malware issues.
Apple going bigger than 4' screens.
The iPhone SE.
None of that has changed. Android OEMs - save HTC and Sony - haven't exited the business because for them Android devices are as profitable as anything else they make. Asus, Acer, ZTE etc. weren't rolling in billions before Android so not making iPhone profits is no reason for them to stop. (Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus and others weren't selling consumer products - or literally didn't exist at all - before Android.) They won't until Android has a significant drop in marketshare. It hasn't. Despite DED's quarterly column for the past 12 years claiming that it would - which included various claims such as Google giving up on Android, OEMs abandoning Android for another OS, Microsoft crushing Android etc. - Android has maintained about 50% marketshare in the U.S. and 70% worldwide since breakthrough devices like the Samsung Galaxy S2 and Note, the LG G2 and the HTC One came about in 2011.
People who want a cheap iPhone have always been able to get them. You can get an iPhone 7 cheaper than an iPhone SE 2 right now on major carriers and an iPhone 8 for the same price. So it is not aspirational. The Android advantages that DED dismissed above ... people like. Lots of them. That is why for the past several years study after study has shown Android users to be more loyal than their iPhone counterparts. They may switch from brand to brand. But they like what Android offers. People just like different things. No problem with that.
You would expect Apple fans to understand this. Apple TV has a 13% market share. Macs have a 7 percent global market share. HomePods have a 3% market share. It has always been this way. The only products where Apple has ever enjoyed bigger than a 25% market share are the iPod, iPad (35%) and iPhone. So why is it that Apple fans insist on trying to justify the fact that 50% of the American population and 70% of the world population likes something else?
People. Like. Android. Companies. Make. Money. Making. And. Selling. Android. Devices. It isn't going to change. If it does, the change will come from Google deciding to replace Android with Fuchsia. Google is expected to launch the first Fucshia device in 2021. Even if Fuchsia takes off it will just replace one Google platform that Apple fans irrationality hate with another.
Good. Whatever. I hope this gets Qualcomm on the fast track to develop SOCs to beat Apple and then another leapfrog turn will commence. I'm not an Apple fan but I do know that their ability to push chipsets faster should, in theory, push the entire market forward.
Honestly though, until a major development comes along to actually utilize this power, they're all just phones basically running the same apps and games (for the majority of users).
There was once a time when I was jealous of the iPhone's ability to play Angry Birds smoother than Android, but the gap has now been closed and I don't care if one chip opens my Twitter app a half second faster.
We can all brag about the power we hold on our hands and the speed at which it operates as compared to others but who is really maxing out their phone's full potential and benefiting from the milliseconds we gain?
And at a starting price of $399, the iPhone SE is yet again a threat to Android ASPs in their typical $250-$400 range. Many Android users are aspirational, only using their (non-flagship) Android phones because of their commodity prices. A super fast $400 iPhone can help them attain their dreams.
If that were true then Android users would have used iPhones back when most carriers - basically all but T-Mobile - would give you the phone for free in return for a two year contract. They definitely would have switched when the iPhone SE came out. Look, everything that iPhone advocates have claimed would cause legions of Android owners to abandon the platform have come and gone.
The end of AT&T exclusivity.
The adoption of 4G.
The switch to 64 bit.
The switch to biometrics.
Apple Pay.
Privacy/security/malware issues.
Apple going bigger than 4' screens.
The iPhone SE.
None of that has changed. Android OEMs - save HTC and Sony - haven't exited the business because for them Android devices are as profitable as anything else they make. Asus, Acer, ZTE etc. weren't rolling in billions before Android so not making iPhone profits is no reason for them to stop. (Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus and others weren't selling consumer products - or literally didn't exist at all - before Android.) They won't until Android has a significant drop in marketshare. It hasn't. Despite DED's quarterly column for the past 12 years claiming that it would - which included various claims such as Google giving up on Android, OEMs abandoning Android for another OS, Microsoft crushing Android etc. - Android has maintained about 50% marketshare in the U.S. and 70% worldwide since breakthrough devices like the Samsung Galaxy S2 and Note, the LG G2 and the HTC One came about in 2011.
People who want a cheap iPhone have always been able to get them. You can get an iPhone 7 cheaper than an iPhone SE 2 right now on major carriers and an iPhone 8 for the same price. So it is not aspirational. The Android advantages that DED dismissed above ... people like. Lots of them. That is why for the past several years study after study has shown Android users to be more loyal than their iPhone counterparts. They may switch from brand to brand. But they like what Android offers. People just like different things. No problem with that.
You would expect Apple fans to understand this. Apple TV has a 13% market share. Macs have a 7 percent global market share. HomePods have a 3% market share. It has always been this way. The only products where Apple has ever enjoyed bigger than a 25% market share are the iPod, iPad (35%) and iPhone. So why is it that Apple fans insist on trying to justify the fact that 50% of the American population and 70% of the world population likes something else?
People. Like. Android. Companies. Make. Money. Making. And. Selling. Android. Devices. It isn't going to change. If it does, the change will come from Google deciding to replace Android with Fuchsia. Google is expected to launch the first Fucshia device in 2021. Even if Fuchsia takes off it will just replace one Google platform that Apple fans irrationality hate with another.
Your arguments would sell better if you used fucking paragraphs for readability.
Yeah, ain’t no way I’m reading all of that crap. Dudes need to learn to organize their thoughts.
And at a starting price of $399, the iPhone SE is yet again a threat to Android ASPs in their typical $250-$400 range. Many Android users are aspirational, only using their (non-flagship) Android phones because of their commodity prices. A super fast $400 iPhone can help them attain their dreams.
If that were true then Android users would have used iPhones back when most carriers - basically all but T-Mobile - would give you the phone for free in return for a two year contract. They definitely would have switched when the iPhone SE came out. Look, everything that iPhone advocates have claimed would cause legions of Android owners to abandon the platform have come and gone.
The end of AT&T exclusivity.
The adoption of 4G.
The switch to 64 bit.
The switch to biometrics.
Apple Pay.
Privacy/security/malware issues.
Apple going bigger than 4' screens.
The iPhone SE.
None of that has changed. Android OEMs - save HTC and Sony - haven't exited the business because for them Android devices are as profitable as anything else they make. Asus, Acer, ZTE etc. weren't rolling in billions before Android so not making iPhone profits is no reason for them to stop. (Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus and others weren't selling consumer products - or literally didn't exist at all - before Android.) They won't until Android has a significant drop in marketshare. It hasn't. Despite DED's quarterly column for the past 12 years claiming that it would - which included various claims such as Google giving up on Android, OEMs abandoning Android for another OS, Microsoft crushing Android etc. - Android has maintained about 50% marketshare in the U.S. and 70% worldwide since breakthrough devices like the Samsung Galaxy S2 and Note, the LG G2 and the HTC One came about in 2011.
People who want a cheap iPhone have always been able to get them. You can get an iPhone 7 cheaper than an iPhone SE 2 right now on major carriers and an iPhone 8 for the same price. So it is not aspirational. The Android advantages that DED dismissed above ... people like. Lots of them. That is why for the past several years study after study has shown Android users to be more loyal than their iPhone counterparts. They may switch from brand to brand. But they like what Android offers. People just like different things. No problem with that.
You would expect Apple fans to understand this. Apple TV has a 13% market share. Macs have a 7 percent global market share. HomePods have a 3% market share. It has always been this way. The only products where Apple has ever enjoyed bigger than a 25% market share are the iPod, iPad (35%) and iPhone. So why is it that Apple fans insist on trying to justify the fact that 50% of the American population and 70% of the world population likes something else?
People. Like. Android. Companies. Make. Money. Making. And. Selling. Android. Devices. It isn't going to change. If it does, the change will come from Google deciding to replace Android with Fuchsia. Google is expected to launch the first Fucshia device in 2021. Even if Fuchsia takes off it will just replace one Google platform that Apple fans irrationality hate with another.
"everything that iPhone advocates have claimed would cause legions of Android owners to abandon the platform have come and gone" oh really? "iPhone advocates" weren't saying legions of Android owners would come to iOS. You're getting it backward: it was Android enthusiasts who were harping (and still are) that there is going to be a straw that breaks Apple's back and causes a global one world under Android utopia. iPhone users just wanted Apple to stay in business to advance the state of the art.
Nobody predicted that iOS would become half of the US market, or the top-selling models of Japan, or would effectively take the entire market for premium phones. That just happened because people bought iPhones for various reasons and didn't similarly buy Android. Google and its fans constantly predicted that apps, phones, tablets and wearables would all somebody be running Google maps without anyone checking the company's surveillance.
You repeat a lot of things that aren't true and falsely claim I predicted them. Yet Google did give up on Android with its tablets and netbooks, and has wound down its focus on Android repeatedly. It barely announces copies of what Apple did the previous year these days.
"study after study has shown Android users to be more loyal than their iPhone counterparts" [citation needed] I don't irrationally hate Google or its knockoff phone platform, I just point out that Android predictions were wrong and that consumers in a free market are not doing what Google and its employees and fans claimed it would do.
Why are you peddling your tripe on AppleInsider comments? Who are you trying to convince that Android is wildly successful, you or somebody reading my articles?
Apples prices are still too high to overcome a new wave of DIY and opensource hardware/software designs hitting the market/home. Industrie in the future will be totally distributed, and as such non existent.
Aside from on tech forums I, personally, never hear people clamoring for DIY smartphones. It’s been possible to build your own computer for a long time. The majority of people I know still go out and buy a “pre-made” computer that they take home, plug in and turn on. I know a few people that build their own computers, and most of them also own a name brand computer as well.
DIY smartphones is just recently a viable possibility. It is vastly different from building your own home computer, that is something people did before any ‘brand’ home computer existed. Opensource design hardware and software make it possible to produce your own hardware without the need of BIG corp. It can be done by a relatively small group of people working together via the internet. The next step will be grabbing a design from thingiverse (for example), print it on your 3D printer, plug it in and turn it on. It is even possible to print your own fully functional chips, it won't be with a feature size of 5nm, but more than enough to be as powerful as a computer from the eighties which is sufficient for most embedded applications. I dont expect people to clamor for that, I expect them to just buy a 3d printer (like a normal printer) and print it.
I can't imagine Android manufacturers releasing a $400 with a Snapdragon 865 in it. Chip pricing is in Qualcomm's hands.
I feel sorry for OnePlus: the day right after launching their first premium phone, Apple releases a budget-friendly and powerful phone (especially at a time of an uncertain economy). Ouch.
It also means that mid-range Android phones have been put on notice: the eagle has landed in their territory.
Well, I don't think you are correct on the bolded part. Realme X50 Pro entry level model (6 GB RAM, 128 GB internal memory) is available for Rs. 40,000/- in India, equivalent of about $525. But here is the catch. That retail price is inclusive of all the taxes. We don't have the price of iPhone SE 2020 in India yet, but I would expect it to be around the same Rs.40,000 range. So, it is incorrect to say that Android phones with Snapdragon 865 won't exist at an equivalent price to iPhone SE.
Few more points - When was the last time when anyone decided to upgrade their $400+ android phone with performance in mind as the 1st and foremost reason??? May be about 5-6 years ago??? While improved performance is always visible to the end users whenever they upgrade after 2-3 years, performance has stopped being the 1st criteria for deciding on the upgrades, at least for last 4-5 years. It is silly to think that a significant % of Android users owning a 2-3 year old $400 smartphone would consider the performance of iPhone SE as the 1st and foremost priority and ignore ALL other aspects (design, display size/resolution, camera versatility, battery life etc) involved in decision making and go ahead and buy an iPhone SE simply because it far exceeds the performance of majority of the Android phones available in that price range.
Having said all of that, iPhone SE is a solid phone for the iPhone buyers who are looking to buy a new one at the cheapest price possible and planning to keep it for more than 3 years.
Your arguments would sell better if you used fucking paragraphs for readability.
Just for the heck of it, I reformatted all that for myself last night, just to see if it made any more sense if it were prettified. In Pages, Times Roman 12-point, standard margins, it filled well over a printed page. As DED pointed out already, tripe is still tripe.
The SE is a great bargain. I think the big factor that will hinder it is the screen size. People have gotten used to larger, all-screen phones, so next to an Xr (or a cheap Android phone, for that matter) the SE screen will seem quite small. Outside of forums like this, many consumers don’t think about things like processor longevity and OS upgrades, so the screen size will end up winning out.
Apple could easily make an SE+ with a bigger screen and battery for not a lot more, but then no one would buy the 11
Apples prices are still too high to overcome a new wave of DIY and opensource hardware/software designs hitting the market/home. Industrie in the future will be totally distributed, and as such non existent.
Oh yes, any year now the DIY neckbeards will inherit the earth. Hasn't happened in the past twenty years of Linux, but it's comin'! Riiight.
Isn’t it amazing how some people live in a different reality than the rest of us? Can these savants see the future?
"Now, even Apple's $399 iPhone SE uses a more powerful brain than even the most advanced Android flagships with prices above $1,000. How is this possible?"
Apple sacrificed practically everything else to reach that price point. That's how it was possible. Other brands of course could do exactly the same if they wanted to. The difference is that they have no need to do so.
"The A13 is a stronger chip than the Snapdragon 865 for daily use in every category," Hildenbrand noted."
Perhaps Hildenbrand was just plain wrong. Most important catagories also include Wi-Fi and Modem. Is the iPhone stronger in those areas? Ok, I know that Apple has yet to put a modem in its SoC. That is a disadvantage IMO. And how is he even comparing DSPs and ISPs? And are we now brushing aside years of subpar intel modems?
On a wider note, the Apple graphic says 'fastest' CPU, 'fastest' GPU, but only 'faster' NPU. They are not comparing the NPU to Android SoCs, just other iPhones.
It seems the whole point only boils down to CPU/GPU performance but we have long seen far beyond that, as all flagships now fly and have done for years.
We also know that CPU/GPU performance is definitely not the only key metric involved. If it were, there would literally be no Android flagship market. 'Fastest' CPU/GPU lost their key selling factors long ago. Now though, we are focused, among many other non-CPU aspects, on their perceived performance chops with elements like screen refresh rates and the claimed silky smooth enhancements in UI response (although once again, few if any flagship users were even seeing a 'problem' in the first place).
"Apple's A13 Bionic isn't just faster, it's deployed wider than any high-end Android chip"
What's the takeaway here? I can see zero relevance to anything. Android phones use varying SoCs at varying price points to offer wider value points - by design. And I'm not limiting this to just 'older' SoCs but new SoCs too.
That means for a so called 'lesser' SoC the consumer gains options in other areas. The SE sacrifices most of that for its price point and the A13.
Neither approach is right or wrong. They are simply options. No doubt some SE users would have preferred a 'lesser' SoC in exchange for other features. Either way, more choice for iPhone users can only be a good thing.
Seeing as Android manufacturers have a far wider choice of SoCs available to them, obviously 'deployment' of each one isn't t as wide as it could be. Not that it is even remotely relevant.
"However, 2020 is turning out to be a bad year to be pushing 5G as your only strength. It will be some time before 5G becomes broadly available outside of a few leading markets such as South Korea and specific urban markets. For budget phone buyers, 5G offers little more than faster battery drain and often the requirement to pay extra for mobile service, whether that 5G service is consistently available and capable of delivering noticeably better, real-world mobile data speeds than the best 4G LTE or not."
No one foresaw (or can foresee) the Covid-19 pandemic. The 5G roll out may have been hampered for few months in 2020 but that is completely and utterly irrelevant. The situation is exactly the same for potential purchasers as it was before the pandemic. The roll out continues and in some places (China for example, will be accelerated more - again). In fact, the roll out never even stopped as ICT is considered an 'essential' industry and Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei have been working around the clock on increasing network capacity to meet confinement demands. COVID-19 has served to spur industrial use of 5G too.
As a smartphone purchaser in 2020 (budget or not) , if you have 5G in your area you should have 5G on your phone wishlist. Even if you don't have 5G in your area yet, it should be on your list of features all the same if 5G is scheduled for your area. As a result, 5G remains a vital strength to have and many budget purchasers will simply put off purchases altogether to futureproof the phone purchase when it does happen, depending on their personal 5G circumstances or buy now. For example, some may choose to only bite on an on-SoC modem, NSA and SA support etc. Whichever way you look at it, not having 5G support for your phones is not a comfortable place to be.
As for the reference to 4G LTE and 5G speeds, yesterday I was checking out UK 5G speeds against 4G LTE in a range of different cities. None of the sites checked had 4G in the same ball park as 5G.
You might say that 'fast 4G' is sufficiently fast to make 'faster' 5G an unimportant aspect in the real world but in pure performance terms that would be as futile as trying to claim the A13 is faster than Android SoCs while ignoring reality, where Android SoCs 'perform' better in other key areas like WiFi, modem, photography, battery, biometrics etc.
That is, 5G towers and phone hardware can offer benefits that go beyond the speed of just downloads and uploads. Obviously latency being one of those.
Or that certain vendors are using proprietary enhancements to existing standards to improve their hardware's performance.
Huawei claims its late 2018 WiFi 5 is faster than Apple's WiFi 6 and Huawei has just rolled out its 'WiFi 6+' on phones (there was already an entire suite of WiFi 6+ products on the market) which draw on its 5G technology to improve baseline WiFi 6 performance.
Like Huawei is offering 40Wwireless charging too.
Is there anything stopping Samsung, Huawei et al from stripping most of their phones' features away and plunking in a high end chipset? No. Nothing.
In fact the high end chipsets are not reserved for the high end at all. In 2018, Huawei launched the Mate 20 Pro with the Kirin 980. A month later it appeared on Honor phones (Huawei's sub brand). Last year it was the same with the Kirin 990/Kirin 9905G.
The difference is they didn't strip most of the bells and whistles away just to reach the lower end. That makes a lot of sense in their markets because they also have new SoCs for other price bands which allow them to add desired features like, you guessed it, 5G, along with full screens and tri-cameras.
Apple needed the new SE, as stripped down as it may be, but do you really think Apple was all in on the idea or that it felt that market conditions simply made it something they had to do?
For the iPhone SE, the performance of the processor is probably less important than the knowledge it will still (likely) receive OS and security updates for 6 years. That’s three times the life of most Android phones.
Most Androids? That's best case scenario. Some androids get a solid 6 months of support while some never get an update.
I can go into details like how Samsung intentionally skips security updates just because and how some manufacturers push out so many versions of knockoffs that they see their phones as disposables. When the new version comes out 6 months later they don't bother with the last one. We can even go into the fact some androids will never be patched and how there's absolutely no requirement to offer updates to them. Androids are the new disposable cameras.
And at a starting price of $399, the iPhone SE is yet again a threat to Android ASPs in their typical $250-$400 range. Many Android users are aspirational, only using their (non-flagship) Android phones because of their commodity prices. A super fast $400 iPhone can help them attain their dreams.
If that were true then Android users would have used iPhones back when most carriers - basically all but T-Mobile - would give you the phone for free in return for a two year contract. They definitely would have switched when the iPhone SE came out. Look, everything that iPhone advocates have claimed would cause legions of Android owners to abandon the platform have come and gone.
The end of AT&T exclusivity.
The adoption of 4G.
The switch to 64 bit.
The switch to biometrics.
Apple Pay.
Privacy/security/malware issues.
Apple going bigger than 4' screens.
The iPhone SE.
None of that has changed. Android OEMs - save HTC and Sony - haven't exited the business because for them Android devices are as profitable as anything else they make. Asus, Acer, ZTE etc. weren't rolling in billions before Android so not making iPhone profits is no reason for them to stop. (Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus and others weren't selling consumer products - or literally didn't exist at all - before Android.) They won't until Android has a significant drop in marketshare. It hasn't. Despite DED's quarterly column for the past 12 years claiming that it would - which included various claims such as Google giving up on Android, OEMs abandoning Android for another OS, Microsoft crushing Android etc. - Android has maintained about 50% marketshare in the U.S. and 70% worldwide since breakthrough devices like the Samsung Galaxy S2 and Note, the LG G2 and the HTC One came about in 2011.
People who want a cheap iPhone have always been able to get them. You can get an iPhone 7 cheaper than an iPhone SE 2 right now on major carriers and an iPhone 8 for the same price. So it is not aspirational. The Android advantages that DED dismissed above ... people like. Lots of them. That is why for the past several years study after study has shown Android users to be more loyal than their iPhone counterparts. They may switch from brand to brand. But they like what Android offers. People just like different things. No problem with that.
You would expect Apple fans to understand this. Apple TV has a 13% market share. Macs have a 7 percent global market share. HomePods have a 3% market share. It has always been this way. The only products where Apple has ever enjoyed bigger than a 25% market share are the iPod, iPad (35%) and iPhone. So why is it that Apple fans insist on trying to justify the fact that 50% of the American population and 70% of the world population likes something else?
People. Like. Android. Companies. Make. Money. Making. And. Selling. Android. Devices. It isn't going to change. If it does, the change will come from Google deciding to replace Android with Fuchsia. Google is expected to launch the first Fucshia device in 2021. Even if Fuchsia takes off it will just replace one Google platform that Apple fans irrationality hate with another.
You do know most iKnockoff users have been fooled into thinking they are using iPhones?
Apples prices are still too high to overcome a new wave of DIY and opensource hardware/software designs hitting the market/home. Industrie in the future will be totally distributed, and as such non existent.
Oh yes, any year now the DIY neckbeards will inherit the earth. Hasn't happened in the past twenty years of Linux, but it's comin'! Riiight.
Isn’t it amazing how some people live in a different reality than the rest of us? Can these savants see the future?
THIS describes that Avon B7 guy to the bone. He insists Apple gives a crap about knockoffs and they are somehow "catching up" with them. I kinda feel bad for him and want to teach him but ignorant people hate learning. Oh well...
You do know most iKnockoff users have been fooled into thinking they are using iPhones?
Where's common sense when you need it?
What does that mean? Are you saying the majority of Android users actually believe they are using an iPhone? Interesting....
Are they using an iPhone modeled multi-touch device that violates Apples patents and uses iGestures, Apple software like visual voicemail and an "App Store"?
Yes.
This is where the "it's the same sh**" argument comes from. Where people buy 50 buck knockoffs and call iPhones "overpriced" because "it can do the same thing". This has costed Apple over 1 billion in sales. So to compare knockoffs to iPhone sales is just plain stupid. I mean it can't get any more stupid than that.
Also millions of people think they own an iPhone. I work with older people who call their Samsungs "iPhones". Why wouldn't they? They function 99% like an iPhone.
You do know most iKnockoff users have been fooled into thinking they are using iPhones?
Where's common sense when you need it?
What does that mean? Are you saying the majority of Android users actually believe they are using an iPhone? Interesting....
Are they using an iPhone modeled multi-touch device that violates Apples patents and uses iGestures, Apple software like visual voicemail and an "App Store"?
Yes.
This is where the "it's the same sh**" argument comes from. Where people buy 50 buck knockoffs and call iPhones "overpriced" because "it can do the same thing". This has costed Apple over 1 billion in sales. So to compare knockoffs to iPhone sales is just plain stupid. I mean it can't get any more stupid than that.
Also millions of people think they own an iPhone. I work with older people who call their Samsungs "iPhones". Why wouldn't they? They function 99% like an iPhone.
IIRC, all Apple multi touch patents were invalidated a long time ago.
"iGestures"?
The App Store was original in any way?
Don't you remember Kagi? Do you realise how hard payment processing was in the late 90s? The App store is more modern, it handles distribution but there is not anything original in the concept.
"Now, even Apple's $399 iPhone SE uses a more powerful brain than even the most advanced Android flagships with prices above $1,000. How is this possible?"
Apple sacrificed practically everything else to reach that price point. That's how it was possible. Other brands of course could do exactly the same if they wanted to. The difference is that they have no need to do so.
"The A13 is a stronger chip than the Snapdragon 865 for daily use in every category," Hildenbrand noted."
Perhaps Hildenbrand was just plain wrong. Most important catagories also include Wi-Fi and Modem. Is the iPhone stronger in those areas? Ok, I know that Apple has yet to put a modem in its SoC. That is a disadvantage IMO. And how is he even comparing DSPs and ISPs? And are we now brushing aside years of subpar intel modems?
On a wider note, the Apple graphic says 'fastest' CPU, 'fastest' GPU, but only 'faster' NPU. They are not comparing the NPU to Android SoCs, just other iPhones.
It seems the whole point only boils down to CPU/GPU performance but we have long seen far beyond that, as all flagships now fly and have done for years.
We also know that CPU/GPU performance is definitely not the only key metric involved. If it were, there would literally be no Android flagship market. 'Fastest' CPU/GPU lost their key selling factors long ago. Now though, we are focused, among many other non-CPU aspects, on their perceived performance chops with elements like screen refresh rates and the claimed silky smooth enhancements in UI response (although once again, few if any flagship users were even seeing a 'problem' in the first place).
"Apple's A13 Bionic isn't just faster, it's deployed wider than any high-end Android chip"
What's the takeaway here? I can see zero relevance to anything. Android phones use varying SoCs at varying price points to offer wider value points - by design. And I'm not limiting this to just 'older' SoCs but new SoCs too.
That means for a so called 'lesser' SoC the consumer gains options in other areas. The SE sacrifices most of that for its price point and the A13.
Neither approach is right or wrong. They are simply options. No doubt some SE users would have preferred a 'lesser' SoC in exchange for other features. Either way, more choice for iPhone users can only be a good thing.
Seeing as Android manufacturers have a far wider choice of SoCs available to them, obviously 'deployment' of each one isn't t as wide as it could be. Not that it is even remotely relevant.
"However, 2020 is turning out to be a bad year to be pushing 5G as your only strength. It will be some time before 5G becomes broadly available outside of a few leading markets such as South Korea and specific urban markets. For budget phone buyers, 5G offers little more than faster battery drain and often the requirement to pay extra for mobile service, whether that 5G service is consistently available and capable of delivering noticeably better, real-world mobile data speeds than the best 4G LTE or not."
No one foresaw (or can foresee) the Covid-19 pandemic. The 5G roll out may have been hampered for few months in 2020 but that is completely and utterly irrelevant. The situation is exactly the same for potential purchasers as it was before the pandemic. The roll out continues and in some places (China for example, will be accelerated more - again). In fact, the roll out never even stopped as ICT is considered an 'essential' industry and Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei have been working around the clock on increasing network capacity to meet confinement demands. COVID-19 has served to spur industrial use of 5G too.
As a smartphone purchaser in 2020 (budget or not) , if you have 5G in your area you should have 5G on your phone wishlist. Even if you don't have 5G in your area yet, it should be on your list of features all the same if 5G is scheduled for your area. As a result, 5G remains a vital strength to have and many budget purchasers will simply put off purchases altogether to futureproof the phone purchase when it does happen, depending on their personal 5G circumstances or buy now. For example, some may choose to only bite on an on-SoC modem, NSA and SA support etc. Whichever way you look at it, not having 5G support for your phones is not a comfortable place to be.
As for the reference to 4G LTE and 5G speeds, yesterday I was checking out UK 5G speeds against 4G LTE in a range of different cities. None of the sites checked had 4G in the same ball park as 5G.
You might say that 'fast 4G' is sufficiently fast to make 'faster' 5G an unimportant aspect in the real world but in pure performance terms that would be as futile as trying to claim the A13 is faster than Android SoCs while ignoring reality, where Android SoCs 'perform' better in other key areas like WiFi, modem, photography, battery, biometrics etc.
That is, 5G towers and phone hardware can offer benefits that go beyond the speed of just downloads and uploads. Obviously latency being one of those.
Or that certain vendors are using proprietary enhancements to existing standards to improve their hardware's performance.
Huawei claims its late 2018 WiFi 5 is faster than Apple's WiFi 6 and Huawei has just rolled out its 'WiFi 6+' on phones (there was already an entire suite of WiFi 6+ products on the market) which draw on its 5G technology to improve baseline WiFi 6 performance.
Like Huawei is offering 40Wwireless charging too.
Is there anything stopping Samsung, Huawei et al from stripping most of their phones' features away and plunking in a high end chipset? No. Nothing.
In fact the high end chipsets are not reserved for the high end at all. In 2018, Huawei launched the Mate 20 Pro with the Kirin 980. A month later it appeared on Honor phones (Huawei's sub brand). Last year it was the same with the Kirin 990/Kirin 9905G.
The difference is they didn't strip most of the bells and whistles away just to reach the lower end. That makes a lot of sense in their markets because they also have new SoCs for other price bands which allow them to add desired features like, you guessed it, 5G, along with full screens and tri-cameras.
Apple needed the new SE, as stripped down as it may be, but do you really think Apple was all in on the idea or that it felt that market conditions simply made it something they had to do?
While you’re going on and on, do I have time to grab a beer?
Here’s a quick fact: A survey conducted recently by Piper-Sandler of 5,200 'Gen Z' teens revealed that 85% of them own an iPhone and that 88% plan on having an iPhone as their next device. Yes, this makes the iPhone an aspirational purchase among the next generation of tech purchasers. The affordably-priced iPhone SE will accelerate that trend. I am a classroom high school teacher and can attest to that reality. And I have never seen any of my students (or colleagues) purchase an Android device after having owned an iPhone, but I constantly see the reverse.
"Now, even Apple's $399 iPhone SE uses a more powerful brain than even the most advanced Android flagships with prices above $1,000. How is this possible?"
Apple sacrificed practically everything else to reach that price point. That's how it was possible. Other brands of course could do exactly the same if they wanted to. The difference is that they have no need to do so.
"The A13 is a stronger chip than the Snapdragon 865 for daily use in every category," Hildenbrand noted."
Perhaps Hildenbrand was just plain wrong. Most important catagories also include Wi-Fi and Modem. Is the iPhone stronger in those areas? Ok, I know that Apple has yet to put a modem in its SoC. That is a disadvantage IMO. And how is he even comparing DSPs and ISPs? And are we now brushing aside years of subpar intel modems?
On a wider note, the Apple graphic says 'fastest' CPU, 'fastest' GPU, but only 'faster' NPU. They are not comparing the NPU to Android SoCs, just other iPhones.
It seems the whole point only boils down to CPU/GPU performance but we have long seen far beyond that, as all flagships now fly and have done for years.
We also know that CPU/GPU performance is definitely not the only key metric involved. If it were, there would literally be no Android flagship market. 'Fastest' CPU/GPU lost their key selling factors long ago. Now though, we are focused, among many other non-CPU aspects, on their perceived performance chops with elements like screen refresh rates and the claimed silky smooth enhancements in UI response (although once again, few if any flagship users were even seeing a 'problem' in the first place).
"Apple's A13 Bionic isn't just faster, it's deployed wider than any high-end Android chip"
What's the takeaway here? I can see zero relevance to anything. Android phones use varying SoCs at varying price points to offer wider value points - by design. And I'm not limiting this to just 'older' SoCs but new SoCs too.
That means for a so called 'lesser' SoC the consumer gains options in other areas. The SE sacrifices most of that for its price point and the A13.
Neither approach is right or wrong. They are simply options. No doubt some SE users would have preferred a 'lesser' SoC in exchange for other features. Either way, more choice for iPhone users can only be a good thing.
Seeing as Android manufacturers have a far wider choice of SoCs available to them, obviously 'deployment' of each one isn't t as wide as it could be. Not that it is even remotely relevant.
"However, 2020 is turning out to be a bad year to be pushing 5G as your only strength. It will be some time before 5G becomes broadly available outside of a few leading markets such as South Korea and specific urban markets. For budget phone buyers, 5G offers little more than faster battery drain and often the requirement to pay extra for mobile service, whether that 5G service is consistently available and capable of delivering noticeably better, real-world mobile data speeds than the best 4G LTE or not."
No one foresaw (or can foresee) the Covid-19 pandemic. The 5G roll out may have been hampered for few months in 2020 but that is completely and utterly irrelevant. The situation is exactly the same for potential purchasers as it was before the pandemic. The roll out continues and in some places (China for example, will be accelerated more - again). In fact, the roll out never even stopped as ICT is considered an 'essential' industry and Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei have been working around the clock on increasing network capacity to meet confinement demands. COVID-19 has served to spur industrial use of 5G too.
As a smartphone purchaser in 2020 (budget or not) , if you have 5G in your area you should have 5G on your phone wishlist. Even if you don't have 5G in your area yet, it should be on your list of features all the same if 5G is scheduled for your area. As a result, 5G remains a vital strength to have and many budget purchasers will simply put off purchases altogether to futureproof the phone purchase when it does happen, depending on their personal 5G circumstances or buy now. For example, some may choose to only bite on an on-SoC modem, NSA and SA support etc. Whichever way you look at it, not having 5G support for your phones is not a comfortable place to be.
As for the reference to 4G LTE and 5G speeds, yesterday I was checking out UK 5G speeds against 4G LTE in a range of different cities. None of the sites checked had 4G in the same ball park as 5G.
You might say that 'fast 4G' is sufficiently fast to make 'faster' 5G an unimportant aspect in the real world but in pure performance terms that would be as futile as trying to claim the A13 is faster than Android SoCs while ignoring reality, where Android SoCs 'perform' better in other key areas like WiFi, modem, photography, battery, biometrics etc.
That is, 5G towers and phone hardware can offer benefits that go beyond the speed of just downloads and uploads. Obviously latency being one of those.
Or that certain vendors are using proprietary enhancements to existing standards to improve their hardware's performance.
Huawei claims its late 2018 WiFi 5 is faster than Apple's WiFi 6 and Huawei has just rolled out its 'WiFi 6+' on phones (there was already an entire suite of WiFi 6+ products on the market) which draw on its 5G technology to improve baseline WiFi 6 performance.
Like Huawei is offering 40Wwireless charging too.
Is there anything stopping Samsung, Huawei et al from stripping most of their phones' features away and plunking in a high end chipset? No. Nothing.
In fact the high end chipsets are not reserved for the high end at all. In 2018, Huawei launched the Mate 20 Pro with the Kirin 980. A month later it appeared on Honor phones (Huawei's sub brand). Last year it was the same with the Kirin 990/Kirin 9905G.
The difference is they didn't strip most of the bells and whistles away just to reach the lower end. That makes a lot of sense in their markets because they also have new SoCs for other price bands which allow them to add desired features like, you guessed it, 5G, along with full screens and tri-cameras.
Apple needed the new SE, as stripped down as it may be, but do you really think Apple was all in on the idea or that it felt that market conditions simply made it something they had to do?
While you’re going on and on, do I have time to grab a beer?
Here’s a quick fact: A survey conducted recently by Piper-Sandler of 5,200 'Gen Z' teens revealed that 85% of them own an iPhone and that 88% plan on having an iPhone as their next device. Yes, this makes the iPhone an aspirational purchase among the next generation of tech purchasers. The affordably-priced iPhone SE will accelerate that trend. I am a classroom high school teacher and can attest to that reality. And I have never seen any of my students (or colleagues) purchase an Android device after having owned an iPhone, but I constantly see the reverse.
Another fact is that iPhone sales have been flat for four years and the survey you mention is not the first of its kind with that result (of course, limited to the U.S). Sales were still flat.
This SE move (which I support BTW as a valid move) is a reaction to those stalled sales. An ageing user base (phone age) means a lot of devices dropping off the services mill.
Apple now needs bums on seats and knows it can't entice them in with higher priced phones. The SE is there to try to achieve that goal.
You do know most iKnockoff users have been fooled into thinking they are using iPhones?
Where's common sense when you need it?
What does that mean? Are you saying the majority of Android users actually believe they are using an iPhone? Interesting....
Are they using an iPhone modeled multi-touch device that violates Apples patents and uses iGestures, Apple software like visual voicemail and an "App Store"?
Yes.
This is where the "it's the same sh**" argument comes from. Where people buy 50 buck knockoffs and call iPhones "overpriced" because "it can do the same thing". This has costed Apple over 1 billion in sales. So to compare knockoffs to iPhone sales is just plain stupid. I mean it can't get any more stupid than that.
Also millions of people think they own an iPhone. I work with older people who call their Samsungs "iPhones". Why wouldn't they? They function 99% like an iPhone.
IIRC, all Apple multi touch patents were invalidated a long time ago.
"iGestures"?
The App Store was original in any way?
Don't you remember Kagi? Do you realise how hard payment processing was in the late 90s? The App store is more modern, it handles distribution but there is not anything original in the concept.
"IIRC, all Apple multi touch patents were invalidated a long time ago. "
Right. So this invalidates the fact Apple invented iPhones!
iGestures are the way you control your knockoff iPhone. Steve and team invented these.
The App Store wasn't original. Which is why Google made a replica... oh wait.
But of course Apple invented nothing and knockoff iPhones are copying something else.
"Now, even Apple's $399 iPhone SE uses a more powerful brain than even the most advanced Android flagships with prices above $1,000. How is this possible?"
Apple sacrificed practically everything else to reach that price point. That's how it was possible. Other brands of course could do exactly the same if they wanted to. The difference is that they have no need to do so.
"The A13 is a stronger chip than the Snapdragon 865 for daily use in every category," Hildenbrand noted."
Perhaps Hildenbrand was just plain wrong. Most important catagories also include Wi-Fi and Modem. Is the iPhone stronger in those areas? Ok, I know that Apple has yet to put a modem in its SoC. That is a disadvantage IMO. And how is he even comparing DSPs and ISPs? And are we now brushing aside years of subpar intel modems?
On a wider note, the Apple graphic says 'fastest' CPU, 'fastest' GPU, but only 'faster' NPU. They are not comparing the NPU to Android SoCs, just other iPhones.
It seems the whole point only boils down to CPU/GPU performance but we have long seen far beyond that, as all flagships now fly and have done for years.
We also know that CPU/GPU performance is definitely not the only key metric involved. If it were, there would literally be no Android flagship market. 'Fastest' CPU/GPU lost their key selling factors long ago. Now though, we are focused, among many other non-CPU aspects, on their perceived performance chops with elements like screen refresh rates and the claimed silky smooth enhancements in UI response (although once again, few if any flagship users were even seeing a 'problem' in the first place).
"Apple's A13 Bionic isn't just faster, it's deployed wider than any high-end Android chip"
What's the takeaway here? I can see zero relevance to anything. Android phones use varying SoCs at varying price points to offer wider value points - by design. And I'm not limiting this to just 'older' SoCs but new SoCs too.
That means for a so called 'lesser' SoC the consumer gains options in other areas. The SE sacrifices most of that for its price point and the A13.
Neither approach is right or wrong. They are simply options. No doubt some SE users would have preferred a 'lesser' SoC in exchange for other features. Either way, more choice for iPhone users can only be a good thing.
Seeing as Android manufacturers have a far wider choice of SoCs available to them, obviously 'deployment' of each one isn't t as wide as it could be. Not that it is even remotely relevant.
"However, 2020 is turning out to be a bad year to be pushing 5G as your only strength. It will be some time before 5G becomes broadly available outside of a few leading markets such as South Korea and specific urban markets. For budget phone buyers, 5G offers little more than faster battery drain and often the requirement to pay extra for mobile service, whether that 5G service is consistently available and capable of delivering noticeably better, real-world mobile data speeds than the best 4G LTE or not."
No one foresaw (or can foresee) the Covid-19 pandemic. The 5G roll out may have been hampered for few months in 2020 but that is completely and utterly irrelevant. The situation is exactly the same for potential purchasers as it was before the pandemic. The roll out continues and in some places (China for example, will be accelerated more - again). In fact, the roll out never even stopped as ICT is considered an 'essential' industry and Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei have been working around the clock on increasing network capacity to meet confinement demands. COVID-19 has served to spur industrial use of 5G too.
As a smartphone purchaser in 2020 (budget or not) , if you have 5G in your area you should have 5G on your phone wishlist. Even if you don't have 5G in your area yet, it should be on your list of features all the same if 5G is scheduled for your area. As a result, 5G remains a vital strength to have and many budget purchasers will simply put off purchases altogether to futureproof the phone purchase when it does happen, depending on their personal 5G circumstances or buy now. For example, some may choose to only bite on an on-SoC modem, NSA and SA support etc. Whichever way you look at it, not having 5G support for your phones is not a comfortable place to be.
As for the reference to 4G LTE and 5G speeds, yesterday I was checking out UK 5G speeds against 4G LTE in a range of different cities. None of the sites checked had 4G in the same ball park as 5G.
You might say that 'fast 4G' is sufficiently fast to make 'faster' 5G an unimportant aspect in the real world but in pure performance terms that would be as futile as trying to claim the A13 is faster than Android SoCs while ignoring reality, where Android SoCs 'perform' better in other key areas like WiFi, modem, photography, battery, biometrics etc.
That is, 5G towers and phone hardware can offer benefits that go beyond the speed of just downloads and uploads. Obviously latency being one of those.
Or that certain vendors are using proprietary enhancements to existing standards to improve their hardware's performance.
Huawei claims its late 2018 WiFi 5 is faster than Apple's WiFi 6 and Huawei has just rolled out its 'WiFi 6+' on phones (there was already an entire suite of WiFi 6+ products on the market) which draw on its 5G technology to improve baseline WiFi 6 performance.
Like Huawei is offering 40Wwireless charging too.
Is there anything stopping Samsung, Huawei et al from stripping most of their phones' features away and plunking in a high end chipset? No. Nothing.
In fact the high end chipsets are not reserved for the high end at all. In 2018, Huawei launched the Mate 20 Pro with the Kirin 980. A month later it appeared on Honor phones (Huawei's sub brand). Last year it was the same with the Kirin 990/Kirin 9905G.
The difference is they didn't strip most of the bells and whistles away just to reach the lower end. That makes a lot of sense in their markets because they also have new SoCs for other price bands which allow them to add desired features like, you guessed it, 5G, along with full screens and tri-cameras.
Apple needed the new SE, as stripped down as it may be, but do you really think Apple was all in on the idea or that it felt that market conditions simply made it something they had to do?
While you’re going on and on, do I have time to grab a beer?
Here’s a quick fact: A survey conducted recently by Piper-Sandler of 5,200 'Gen Z' teens revealed that 85% of them own an iPhone and that 88% plan on having an iPhone as their next device. Yes, this makes the iPhone an aspirational purchase among the next generation of tech purchasers. The affordably-priced iPhone SE will accelerate that trend. I am a classroom high school teacher and can attest to that reality. And I have never seen any of my students (or colleagues) purchase an Android device after having owned an iPhone, but I constantly see the reverse.
Another fact is that iPhone sales have been flat for four years and the survey you mention is not the first of its kind with that result (of course, limited to the U.S). Sales were still flat.
This SE move (which I support BTW as a valid move) is a reaction to those stalled sales. An ageing user base (phone age) means a lot of devices dropping off the services mill.
Apple now needs bums on seats and knows it can't entice them in with higher priced phones. The SE is there to try to achieve that goal.
Poor Apple. Flat sales of 150 million+. What are they to do?!
"Apple now needs bums on seats and knows it can't entice them in with higher priced phones."
Comments
Honestly though, until a major development comes along to actually utilize this power, they're all just phones basically running the same apps and games (for the majority of users).
There was once a time when I was jealous of the iPhone's ability to play Angry Birds smoother than Android, but the gap has now been closed and I don't care if one chip opens my Twitter app a half second faster.
We can all brag about the power we hold on our hands and the speed at which it operates as compared to others but who is really maxing out their phone's full potential and benefiting from the milliseconds we gain?
Nobody predicted that iOS would become half of the US market, or the top-selling models of Japan, or would effectively take the entire market for premium phones. That just happened because people bought iPhones for various reasons and didn't similarly buy Android. Google and its fans constantly predicted that apps, phones, tablets and wearables would all somebody be running Google maps without anyone checking the company's surveillance.
You repeat a lot of things that aren't true and falsely claim I predicted them. Yet Google did give up on Android with its tablets and netbooks, and has wound down its focus on Android repeatedly. It barely announces copies of what Apple did the previous year these days.
"study after study has shown Android users to be more loyal than their iPhone counterparts" [citation needed]
I don't irrationally hate Google or its knockoff phone platform, I just point out that Android predictions were wrong and that consumers in a free market are not doing what Google and its employees and fans claimed it would do.
Why are you peddling your tripe on AppleInsider comments? Who are you trying to convince that Android is wildly successful, you or somebody reading my articles?
It is vastly different from building your own home computer, that is something people did before any ‘brand’ home computer existed.
Opensource design hardware and software make it possible to produce your own hardware without the need of BIG corp. It can be done by a relatively small group of people working together via the internet.
The next step will be grabbing a design from thingiverse (for example), print it on your 3D printer, plug it in and turn it on.
It is even possible to print your own fully functional chips, it won't be with a feature size of 5nm, but more than enough to be as powerful as a computer from the eighties which is sufficient for most embedded applications.
I dont expect people to clamor for that, I expect them to just buy a 3d printer (like a normal printer) and print it.
Well, I don't think you are correct on the bolded part. Realme X50 Pro entry level model (6 GB RAM, 128 GB internal memory) is available for Rs. 40,000/- in India, equivalent of about $525. But here is the catch. That retail price is inclusive of all the taxes. We don't have the price of iPhone SE 2020 in India yet, but I would expect it to be around the same Rs.40,000 range. So, it is incorrect to say that Android phones with Snapdragon 865 won't exist at an equivalent price to iPhone SE.
Few more points - When was the last time when anyone decided to upgrade their $400+ android phone with performance in mind as the 1st and foremost reason??? May be about 5-6 years ago??? While improved performance is always visible to the end users whenever they upgrade after 2-3 years, performance has stopped being the 1st criteria for deciding on the upgrades, at least for last 4-5 years. It is silly to think that a significant % of Android users owning a 2-3 year old $400 smartphone would consider the performance of iPhone SE as the 1st and foremost priority and ignore ALL other aspects (design, display size/resolution, camera versatility, battery life etc) involved in decision making and go ahead and buy an iPhone SE simply because it far exceeds the performance of majority of the Android phones available in that price range.
Having said all of that, iPhone SE is a solid phone for the iPhone buyers who are looking to buy a new one at the cheapest price possible and planning to keep it for more than 3 years.
"Now, even Apple's $399 iPhone SE uses a more powerful brain than even the most advanced Android flagships with prices above $1,000. How is this possible?"
Apple sacrificed practically everything else to reach that price point. That's how it was possible. Other brands of course could do exactly the same if they wanted to. The difference is that they have no need to do so.
"The A13 is a stronger chip than the Snapdragon 865 for daily use in every category," Hildenbrand noted."
Perhaps Hildenbrand was just plain wrong. Most important catagories also include Wi-Fi and Modem. Is the iPhone stronger in those areas? Ok, I know that Apple has yet to put a modem in its SoC. That is a disadvantage IMO. And how is he even comparing DSPs and ISPs? And are we now brushing aside years of subpar intel modems?
On a wider note, the Apple graphic says 'fastest' CPU, 'fastest' GPU, but only 'faster' NPU. They are not comparing the NPU to Android SoCs, just other iPhones.
It seems the whole point only boils down to CPU/GPU performance but we have long seen far beyond that, as all flagships now fly and have done for years.
We also know that CPU/GPU performance is definitely not the only key metric involved. If it were, there would literally be no Android flagship market. 'Fastest' CPU/GPU lost their key selling factors long ago. Now though, we are focused, among many other non-CPU aspects, on their perceived performance chops with elements like screen refresh rates and the claimed silky smooth enhancements in UI response (although once again, few if any flagship users were even seeing a 'problem' in the first place).
"Apple's A13 Bionic isn't just faster, it's deployed wider than any high-end Android chip"
What's the takeaway here? I can see zero relevance to anything. Android phones use varying SoCs at varying price points to offer wider value points - by design. And I'm not limiting this to just 'older' SoCs but new SoCs too.
That means for a so called 'lesser' SoC the consumer gains options in other areas. The SE sacrifices most of that for its price point and the A13.
Neither approach is right or wrong. They are simply options. No doubt some SE users would have preferred a 'lesser' SoC in exchange for other features. Either way, more choice for iPhone users can only be a good thing.
Seeing as Android manufacturers have a far wider choice of SoCs available to them, obviously 'deployment' of each one isn't t as wide as it could be. Not that it is even remotely relevant.
"However, 2020 is turning out to be a bad year to be pushing 5G as your only strength. It will be some time before 5G becomes broadly available outside of a few leading markets such as South Korea and specific urban markets. For budget phone buyers, 5G offers little more than faster battery drain and often the requirement to pay extra for mobile service, whether that 5G service is consistently available and capable of delivering noticeably better, real-world mobile data speeds than the best 4G LTE or not."
No one foresaw (or can foresee) the Covid-19 pandemic. The 5G roll out may have been hampered for few months in 2020 but that is completely and utterly irrelevant. The situation is exactly the same for potential purchasers as it was before the pandemic. The roll out continues and in some places (China for example, will be accelerated more - again). In fact, the roll out never even stopped as ICT is considered an 'essential' industry and Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei have been working around the clock on increasing network capacity to meet confinement demands. COVID-19 has served to spur industrial use of 5G too.
As a smartphone purchaser in 2020 (budget or not) , if you have 5G in your area you should have 5G on your phone wishlist. Even if you don't have 5G in your area yet, it should be on your list of features all the same if 5G is scheduled for your area. As a result, 5G remains a vital strength to have and many budget purchasers will simply put off purchases altogether to futureproof the phone purchase when it does happen, depending on their personal 5G circumstances or buy now. For example, some may choose to only bite on an on-SoC modem, NSA and SA support etc. Whichever way you look at it, not having 5G support for your phones is not a comfortable place to be.
As for the reference to 4G LTE and 5G speeds, yesterday I was checking out UK 5G speeds against 4G LTE in a range of different cities. None of the sites checked had 4G in the same ball park as 5G.
You might say that 'fast 4G' is sufficiently fast to make 'faster' 5G an unimportant aspect in the real world but in pure performance terms that would be as futile as trying to claim the A13 is faster than Android SoCs while ignoring reality, where Android SoCs 'perform' better in other key areas like WiFi, modem, photography, battery, biometrics etc.
That is, 5G towers and phone hardware can offer benefits that go beyond the speed of just downloads and uploads. Obviously latency being one of those.
Or that certain vendors are using proprietary enhancements to existing standards to improve their hardware's performance.
Huawei claims its late 2018 WiFi 5 is faster than Apple's WiFi 6 and Huawei has just rolled out its 'WiFi 6+' on phones (there was already an entire suite of WiFi 6+ products on the market) which draw on its 5G technology to improve baseline WiFi 6 performance.
Like Huawei is offering 40W wireless charging too.
Is there anything stopping Samsung, Huawei et al from stripping most of their phones' features away and plunking in a high end chipset? No. Nothing.
In fact the high end chipsets are not reserved for the high end at all. In 2018, Huawei launched the Mate 20 Pro with the Kirin 980. A month later it appeared on Honor phones (Huawei's sub brand). Last year it was the same with the Kirin 990/Kirin 9905G.
The difference is they didn't strip most of the bells and whistles away just to reach the lower end. That makes a lot of sense in their markets because they also have new SoCs for other price bands which allow them to add desired features like, you guessed it, 5G, along with full screens and tri-cameras.
Apple needed the new SE, as stripped down as it may be, but do you really think Apple was all in on the idea or that it felt that market conditions simply made it something they had to do?
Most Androids? That's best case scenario. Some androids get a solid 6 months of support while some never get an update.
I can go into details like how Samsung intentionally skips security updates just because and how some manufacturers push out so many versions of knockoffs that they see their phones as disposables. When the new version comes out 6 months later they don't bother with the last one. We can even go into the fact some androids will never be patched and how there's absolutely no requirement to offer updates to them. Androids are the new disposable cameras.
^Tip of the iceberg^
You do know most iKnockoff users have been fooled into thinking they are using iPhones?
Where's common sense when you need it?
THIS describes that Avon B7 guy to the bone. He insists Apple gives a crap about knockoffs and they are somehow "catching up" with them.
I kinda feel bad for him and want to teach him but ignorant people hate learning. Oh well...
Are they using an iPhone modeled multi-touch device that violates Apples patents and uses iGestures, Apple software like visual voicemail and an "App Store"?
Yes.
This is where the "it's the same sh**" argument comes from. Where people buy 50 buck knockoffs and call iPhones "overpriced" because "it can do the same thing". This has costed Apple over 1 billion in sales. So to compare knockoffs to iPhone sales is just plain stupid. I mean it can't get any more stupid than that.
Also millions of people think they own an iPhone. I work with older people who call their Samsungs "iPhones". Why wouldn't they? They function 99% like an iPhone.
"iGestures"?
The App Store was original in any way?
Don't you remember Kagi? Do you realise how hard payment processing was in the late 90s? The App store is more modern, it handles distribution but there is not anything original in the concept.
Here’s a quick fact: A survey conducted recently by Piper-Sandler of 5,200 'Gen Z' teens revealed that 85% of them own an iPhone and that 88% plan on having an iPhone as their next device. Yes, this makes the iPhone an aspirational purchase among the next generation of tech purchasers. The affordably-priced iPhone SE will accelerate that trend. I am a classroom high school teacher and can attest to that reality. And I have never seen any of my students (or colleagues) purchase an Android device after having owned an iPhone, but I constantly see the reverse.
#truf
This SE move (which I support BTW as a valid move) is a reaction to those stalled sales. An ageing user base (phone age) means a lot of devices dropping off the services mill.
Apple now needs bums on seats and knows it can't entice them in with higher priced phones. The SE is there to try to achieve that goal.
Right. So this invalidates the fact Apple invented iPhones!
iGestures are the way you control your knockoff iPhone. Steve and team invented these.
The App Store wasn't original. Which is why Google made a replica... oh wait.
But of course Apple invented nothing and knockoff iPhones are copying something else.
Poor Apple. Flat sales of 150 million+. What are they to do?!
"Apple now needs bums on seats and knows it can't entice them in with higher priced phones."
Where would Tim Cook be without you!