Qualcomm planned carefully to release X60 right after Apple's iPhone 12 design schedule was locked in and changing that could delay iPhone 12 release into 2021. Well played Qualcomm!!
This isn't correct. The X60 roll out was planned long before Apple even signed on with them.
Qualcomm stated that the X60 would be available 'at the very earliest' by the end of this year. That has never changed.
There was an extremely slim chance that Apple would get some kind of prererential access to it as part of the 'kiss and make up' deal, which itself was part of a race against the clock effort to get any kind of 5G modem into an iPhone this year because Intel failed at delivering the goods.
It is supremely unfortunate, but not unexpected, that Apple may have ended up with last year's hardware on this year's phone's. Especially as the X60 will be shipping on competing phones within weeks.
But from Apple's perspective, having 5G now is a win.
And it's is perhaps ironic that this news appears on the very same day that Huawei is likely to launch the world's first 5nm on-SoC 5G modem.
Qualcomm was never going to get any TMSC 5nm production ahead of Apple, so Apple would have been quite aware that the X60 wouldn't be in production prior to the release of the A14 and the iPhones 12.
My recent readings on Huawei's 5nm Kirin 9000, is that they will only get 8.8 million units, not the 15 million units that they wanted from TMSC. Being first isn't going to be all that meaningful this time around as I'd surmise that many of those SOC's will see be sold internally into the market in China. That leaves world wide opportunities for Qualcomm, and OPPO, Xiaomi, and Samsung to replace Huawei in the marketplace.
The Mate 40 will use the Kirin 9000, but it doesn't sell anywhere close to the volumes of iPhones.
Apple will need a production of something on the order of 175 million A14 / A14X processors alone for FY21(iPhones and iPads), not to mention the Apple Silicon that is coming at the end of the year for the new Mac's.
I don't know why you are so sure of Qualcomm's impossibility of getting 5nm before Apple.
After all TSMC was manufacturing for Apple and Huawei at the same time and you seem to be forgetting the Samsung fabs.
And just last week you claimed the iPhone 12 would ship with an X60 (and did you say it was on SoC too?)
The possibility was there but it would have been touch and go and probably mean a delay in release times. It seems it hasn't played out that way.
How many Kirin 9000s are produced has nothing to do with anything. That is a geopolitical issue.
And you seem to ignore the fact that Apple always had the option to include the X60 but in a different model released at a later date.
As it turns out, I was wrong about the X60, but as it stands, it isn't going to be a big issue, ie, battery life, per reviews, as most people aren't going to be using mmwave consistently through the day. And no, I didn't believe that Apple would delay the iPhone 12 beyond what it was; a few weeks.
Do you have evidence that Apple and Huawei were in process at TMSC at the same time? Because, it is common knowledge that Apple is the largest source of revenue by far at TMSC, and they do seem to have stuffed the competition with early orders. Some analysts are expecting 80 million iPhones sold during this quarter,
The available Kirin 9000's, and any other Kirin SOC, has everything to do with what Huawei can ship. There isn't TMSC production available anymore at leading nodes, and there are restrictions on Silicon manufacturing equipment, and as well software for silicon design, exports to China. That leaves Huawei with having to purchase off the self SOC's from other sources.
Given the number of very positive reviews and early preorders of the two available iPhone 12 models, it looks like Apple has not been affected at all by releasing a 5G model after Android OS device competitors, and there's an expectation of sales in the 200 million to 220 million unit range for FY21.
My recollection is you posted a number of "doom" scenarios for Apple that never occurred. This might be a good time to retract those.
You are now asking me to retract things I never said?
Doom?
You must be confusing me with someone else. I've given my opinion on why I think Apple stalled and fell behind competing flagships in key areas. On the iPhone business model too.
The iPhone 12 is not a major jump in any of those key areas when pitted against competing phones.
Apple has pretty much reacted with moves that line up very well with those opinions.
Apple seemingly made a big deal about the 5G speed side of 5G. I didn't expect anything else! Reason to celebrate for sure.
But there is also reason to be realistic. The hardware looks to be last year's X55 and Huawei (just 3 hours ago) revealed its latest 5nm part. An on-SoC 5G modem which it claims is fives times faster than the X55 at uploads and twice as fast for downloads. Those apparently are field tested numbers. We will see.
As for production, you will find numerous articles out there (I've provided some of them to you in the past) on Huawei chipsets entering production before or in parallel to Apple's. However, the point you miss is that Huawei's SoCs are normally released before Apple's. Even this year's SoC was scheduled for the end of August but delayed due to geopolitics.
How exactly were they able to do this befote Apple?
FFS,
Huawei isn't going to be able to build more than 8 million flagship devices, and Qualcomm will probably ship a ton of X60 to competitors of Huawei. Next year, Apple will get the X60, or better, and Huawei will not be delivering any of its Kirin's. Who knows where they will get any leading edge SOC's, other than Samsung or Qualcomm. At some point, data bandwidth isn't a customer priority anymore, so who cares about theoretical modem performance.
Meanwhile, Apple will probably ship 150 to 160 million iPhone 12's in FY21. How are those "key areas" actually working out "as a business model" for Huawei. All I see is the "national champion" of China getting a beatdown in the near future.
As for the iPhone, come back to me when Huawei gets into striking distance of Apple's ASP and margins, because Apple's iPhone business model is class leading. I might live another 30 years, so, they better hurry up.
So you move the goalposts again!
So iPhone 12 isn't even really in users hands and you already jump to next year's iPhones!
So, do you now accept what I said about Huawei's TSMC process node fabrication timings?
Numbers have little to do with anything in this, we are talking technology and you forget that Huawei and Qualcomm sell to each other and have been doing so for years.
I don't accept anything that you state about Huawei's TSMC fab timing. Please provide links to indicate that, because the link that I posted, stated that Huawei wanted 15 million, and they only received 8 million. Apple, on the other hand, is expected to ship 50 to 60 million of the new iPhones by the end of the year. That's is an indication that Huawei didn't get what they wanted, and not when they wanted it either.
EDIT;
I actually remember that conversation about the announcement of the Kirin 970 before Apple released it's iPhone X with the A11 Bionic SOC. Funny how you could never convince me that Huawei actually had earlier production, but released their flagship P20 series weeks after Apple had shipped something on the order of its first 10 Million. You seem to confuse the SOC's that Huawei received from tapeout with production, and you make that mistake every year. If Huawei is always first in line, how come they can never deliver its P series before Apple delivers its iPhones?
So iPhone 12 isn't even really in users hands and you already jump to next year's iPhones!
Uhm, that's not what I implied or stated, which was that a year from now, Apple would again get the latest Qualcomm modem available, and Huawei would have to buy an off the shelf SOC, from either Qualcomm or Samsung. In the meantime, there is very little issue with the X55 other than battery life while used for mmwave.
For the record, this is exactly about numbers. Huawei is constrained, and competitors are lined up to exploit this opening.
"Absent a U.S. backtrack, a huge Huawei-shaped hole will open up in next year’s global smartphone sector, a sales game-changer for the industry. A blacklist-induced shortage of chipsets looks set to send Huawei sales plummeting when current stockpiles run down. While this appears to be a stunning opportunity for Apple and Samsung, that’s under threat. China inc. is confident that Huawei’s recipe for success can be replicated and is moving quickly to do so.
First out of the blocks to rinse and repeat Huawei’s “premium smartphones for less” strategy has been the much smaller Xiaomi, which beat Huawei in Europe for the first time in the second quarter this year, its revenues soared 65% as Huawei shrunk. Xiaomi moved into third place, behind Samsung and Apple. More notably, Xiaomi saw exports of premium devices (€300 plus) up more than 99% year-on-year.
Xiaomi has positioned itself as Huawei’s likely Chinese export successor, but that’s about to change. China’s Oppo is only just behind Xiaomi for overall global sales, but much larger in China itself. Counterpoint highlights Oppo as the other Chinese brand to watch. “Geopolitical policies and political affairs among nations are affecting the smartphone market in many ways—we see players like Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi and Oppo benefiting the most.” Oppo is part of BBK, which also has Vivo in its stable, and is a serious competitor to Apple and Samsung globally."
I would point out that I completely disagree that Xiaomi and Oppo are competition for Apple as Apple's iPhone is its own market, and sees little competition from Android OS device makers.
Of course you implied the problem of having last year's 5G modem in this year's iPhone is not an issue because next year's phone would have the X60.
That is the only reason you mentioned it!
Your point is irrevelant but you've been doing the same for years. Last year you did exactly the same with 5G in general. "lack of 5G will be a non issue because the iPhone 12 will have it" . You did exactly the same with tri cameras. "lack of tri cameras will be a non issue because the iPhone 11 will have it".
Etc.
Just agree with me because what I am saying is self evident. Don't run to next year's phones!
And think about it! Apple could find itself in the same situation next year too! Releasing a phone with the X60 when Qualcomm releases the X65!
Accept it!
The only way out of this conundrum is what I have already mentioned. Or Apple gets early dibs on the X65 next year (skipping the X60 altogether or using it in the lower end models) or it delays release until the X65 actually ships.
That is it. Don't come back next year with some line about how the X65 will appear on the following year's iPhone 14.
Just accept the situation. It is what it is. It would have been far, far worse had Apple not shipped 5G this year! Celebrate that but accept reality.
It is using last year's technology and off SoC.
Your insistence on numbers doesn't make it any more relevant. They are completely irrelevant and I can guarantee you that when China gets its fab technology up to date (do you doubt that will happen?) HiSilicon will be back and blowing holes into the US semi conductor industry if it sells its mobile chipsets to other Chinese brands.
Just think about that for a moment because the damage has already been done. Trump fired a shot that will backfire into someone else's face! I'm supposing here that he has just a couple of weeks left in the presidency.
Do you really think the US will continue with the failed trade war tactics if it has failed under Trump?
Before jumping to conclusions and presenting them as if they were already here, why not wait a few weeks and see how things really play out?
Huawei might not have any of the insane extraterritorial issues it has now, in just a few months (not that that will save the US semiconductor industry from the impact of Trump's ill thought out policies) .
Apple's new 5G-equipped iPhone 12 models appear to sport Qualcomm's Snapdragon X55 modem, according to early teardowns of the devices.
Credit: Weibo
Although the iPhone 12 doesn't officially start arriving on customer doorsteps until Oct. 23, teardown videos and internal photos of the new models have surface on Chinese social media.
One particular clip posted to Weibo appears to show an L-shaped iPhone logic board equipped with the Qualcomm 5G modem. Although the video doesn't show the iPhone being torn down, the logic boards appear identical to those seen in other confirmed teardowns.
That lines up with predictions that Apple would use the second-generation Qualcomm 5G chip in its 2020 iPhone devices. Although Qualcomm has a newer X60 chip available, that product debuted too late to be included in Apple's iPhone 12 lineup.
All four iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro models support both sub-6GHz 5G and mmWave in the U.S., with models in other countries supporting only low-band 5G connectivity.
Apple settled a long-running legal dispute with Qualcomm to gain access to its 5G chip technology in 2019. Although Apple opted for Intel chips in the iPhone 11 lineup, it became clear that Intel wasn't going to be able to deliver 5G chips.
Next year's "iPhone 13" models are likely to come equipped with the X60 modems, however. That'll bring significant improvements to battery performance, chip size, and connectivity.
Apple, for its part, has already signaled that it plans to use upcoming Qualcomm chips in future iPhones until at least 2024. That's according to text within the Apple and Qualcomm settlement filing that specifically mentions the as-of-yet unannounced X65 and X70 modems.
That, for me, might be a good reason to hold off buying an iPhone till next year:
By mid 2021 Apple and Qualcomm will have far more experience in 5G and how it operates in a real world environment -- so the chip, antennas and software could all be greatly improved providing better connectivity for less power.
Plus, 5G (in the U.S.) should be greatly expanded and matured over the next 12 months making a 5G phone more valuable than it is now.
Plus, I don't really need a new iPhone and was mostly interested because of all the significant enhancements of the iPhone 12 over the 11 or the X series.
Wait.. you've spent the last year screaming how "5G is here now!" and "any phone without 5G is obsolete!" but suddenly you're totally ok waiting another year? How are you going to survive with an obsolete phone? More importantly, how are you going to survive without 5G and all the wonderful things it does?
Yes, 5G IS here now.
And also, buying any phone without 5G should be regarded as foolish (Unless you only want to keep it about a year).
But, it doesn't mean that you HAVE to buy one immediately.
Qualcomm planned carefully to release X60 right after Apple's iPhone 12 design schedule was locked in and changing that could delay iPhone 12 release into 2021. Well played Qualcomm!!
This isn't correct. The X60 roll out was planned long before Apple even signed on with them.
Qualcomm stated that the X60 would be available 'at the very earliest' by the end of this year. That has never changed.
There was an extremely slim chance that Apple would get some kind of prererential access to it as part of the 'kiss and make up' deal, which itself was part of a race against the clock effort to get any kind of 5G modem into an iPhone this year because Intel failed at delivering the goods.
It is supremely unfortunate, but not unexpected, that Apple may have ended up with last year's hardware on this year's phone's. Especially as the X60 will be shipping on competing phones within weeks.
But from Apple's perspective, having 5G now is a win.
And it's is perhaps ironic that this news appears on the very same day that Huawei is likely to launch the world's first 5nm on-SoC 5G modem.
Qualcomm was never going to get any TMSC 5nm production ahead of Apple, so Apple would have been quite aware that the X60 wouldn't be in production prior to the release of the A14 and the iPhones 12.
My recent readings on Huawei's 5nm Kirin 9000, is that they will only get 8.8 million units, not the 15 million units that they wanted from TMSC. Being first isn't going to be all that meaningful this time around as I'd surmise that many of those SOC's will see be sold internally into the market in China. That leaves world wide opportunities for Qualcomm, and OPPO, Xiaomi, and Samsung to replace Huawei in the marketplace.
The Mate 40 will use the Kirin 9000, but it doesn't sell anywhere close to the volumes of iPhones.
Apple will need a production of something on the order of 175 million A14 / A14X processors alone for FY21(iPhones and iPads), not to mention the Apple Silicon that is coming at the end of the year for the new Mac's.
I don't know why you are so sure of Qualcomm's impossibility of getting 5nm before Apple.
After all TSMC was manufacturing for Apple and Huawei at the same time and you seem to be forgetting the Samsung fabs.
And just last week you claimed the iPhone 12 would ship with an X60 (and did you say it was on SoC too?)
The possibility was there but it would have been touch and go and probably mean a delay in release times. It seems it hasn't played out that way.
How many Kirin 9000s are produced has nothing to do with anything. That is a geopolitical issue.
And you seem to ignore the fact that Apple always had the option to include the X60 but in a different model released at a later date.
As it turns out, I was wrong about the X60, but as it stands, it isn't going to be a big issue, ie, battery life, per reviews, as most people aren't going to be using mmwave consistently through the day. And no, I didn't believe that Apple would delay the iPhone 12 beyond what it was; a few weeks.
Do you have evidence that Apple and Huawei were in process at TMSC at the same time? Because, it is common knowledge that Apple is the largest source of revenue by far at TMSC, and they do seem to have stuffed the competition with early orders. Some analysts are expecting 80 million iPhones sold during this quarter,
The available Kirin 9000's, and any other Kirin SOC, has everything to do with what Huawei can ship. There isn't TMSC production available anymore at leading nodes, and there are restrictions on Silicon manufacturing equipment, and as well software for silicon design, exports to China. That leaves Huawei with having to purchase off the self SOC's from other sources.
Given the number of very positive reviews and early preorders of the two available iPhone 12 models, it looks like Apple has not been affected at all by releasing a 5G model after Android OS device competitors, and there's an expectation of sales in the 200 million to 220 million unit range for FY21.
My recollection is you posted a number of "doom" scenarios for Apple that never occurred. This might be a good time to retract those.
You are now asking me to retract things I never said?
Doom?
You must be confusing me with someone else. I've given my opinion on why I think Apple stalled and fell behind competing flagships in key areas. On the iPhone business model too.
The iPhone 12 is not a major jump in any of those key areas when pitted against competing phones.
Apple has pretty much reacted with moves that line up very well with those opinions.
Apple seemingly made a big deal about the 5G speed side of 5G. I didn't expect anything else! Reason to celebrate for sure.
But there is also reason to be realistic. The hardware looks to be last year's X55 and Huawei (just 3 hours ago) revealed its latest 5nm part. An on-SoC 5G modem which it claims is fives times faster than the X55 at uploads and twice as fast for downloads. Those apparently are field tested numbers. We will see.
As for production, you will find numerous articles out there (I've provided some of them to you in the past) on Huawei chipsets entering production before or in parallel to Apple's. However, the point you miss is that Huawei's SoCs are normally released before Apple's. Even this year's SoC was scheduled for the end of August but delayed due to geopolitics.
How exactly were they able to do this befote Apple?
FFS,
Huawei isn't going to be able to build more than 8 million flagship devices, and Qualcomm will probably ship a ton of X60 to competitors of Huawei. Next year, Apple will get the X60, or better, and Huawei will not be delivering any of its Kirin's. Who knows where they will get any leading edge SOC's, other than Samsung or Qualcomm. At some point, data bandwidth isn't a customer priority anymore, so who cares about theoretical modem performance.
Meanwhile, Apple will probably ship 150 to 160 million iPhone 12's in FY21. How are those "key areas" actually working out "as a business model" for Huawei. All I see is the "national champion" of China getting a beatdown in the near future.
As for the iPhone, come back to me when Huawei gets into striking distance of Apple's ASP and margins, because Apple's iPhone business model is class leading. I might live another 30 years, so, they better hurry up.
So you move the goalposts again!
So iPhone 12 isn't even really in users hands and you already jump to next year's iPhones!
So, do you now accept what I said about Huawei's TSMC process node fabrication timings?
Numbers have little to do with anything in this, we are talking technology and you forget that Huawei and Qualcomm sell to each other and have been doing so for years.
I don't accept anything that you state about Huawei's TSMC fab timing. Please provide links to indicate that, because the link that I posted, stated that Huawei wanted 15 million, and they only received 8 million. Apple, on the other hand, is expected to ship 50 to 60 million of the new iPhones by the end of the year. That's is an indication that Huawei didn't get what they wanted, and not when they wanted it either.
EDIT;
I actually remember that conversation about the announcement of the Kirin 970 before Apple released it's iPhone X with the A11 Bionic SOC. Funny how you could never convince me that Huawei actually had earlier production, but released their flagship P20 series weeks after Apple had shipped something on the order of its first 10 Million. You seem to confuse the SOC's that Huawei received from tapeout with production, and you make that mistake every year. If Huawei is always first in line, how come they can never deliver its P series before Apple delivers its iPhones?
So iPhone 12 isn't even really in users hands and you already jump to next year's iPhones!
Uhm, that's not what I implied or stated, which was that a year from now, Apple would again get the latest Qualcomm modem available, and Huawei would have to buy an off the shelf SOC, from either Qualcomm or Samsung. In the meantime, there is very little issue with the X55 other than battery life while used for mmwave.
For the record, this is exactly about numbers. Huawei is constrained, and competitors are lined up to exploit this opening.
"Absent a U.S. backtrack, a huge Huawei-shaped hole will open up in next year’s global smartphone sector, a sales game-changer for the industry. A blacklist-induced shortage of chipsets looks set to send Huawei sales plummeting when current stockpiles run down. While this appears to be a stunning opportunity for Apple and Samsung, that’s under threat. China inc. is confident that Huawei’s recipe for success can be replicated and is moving quickly to do so.
First out of the blocks to rinse and repeat Huawei’s “premium smartphones for less” strategy has been the much smaller Xiaomi, which beat Huawei in Europe for the first time in the second quarter this year, its revenues soared 65% as Huawei shrunk. Xiaomi moved into third place, behind Samsung and Apple. More notably, Xiaomi saw exports of premium devices (€300 plus) up more than 99% year-on-year.
Xiaomi has positioned itself as Huawei’s likely Chinese export successor, but that’s about to change. China’s Oppo is only just behind Xiaomi for overall global sales, but much larger in China itself. Counterpoint highlights Oppo as the other Chinese brand to watch. “Geopolitical policies and political affairs among nations are affecting the smartphone market in many ways—we see players like Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi and Oppo benefiting the most.” Oppo is part of BBK, which also has Vivo in its stable, and is a serious competitor to Apple and Samsung globally."
I would point out that I completely disagree that Xiaomi and Oppo are competition for Apple as Apple's iPhone is its own market, and sees little competition from Android OS device makers.
Of course you implied the problem of having last year's 5G modem in this year's iPhone is not an issue because next year's phone would have the X60.
That is the only reason you mentioned it!
Your point is irrevelant but you've been doing the same for years. Last year you did exactly the same with 5G in general. "lack of 5G will be a non issue because the iPhone 12 will have it" . You did exactly the same with tri cameras. "lack of tri cameras will be a non issue because the iPhone 11 will have it".
Etc.
Just agree with me because what I am saying is self evident. Don't run to next year's phones!
And think about it! Apple could find itself in the same situation next year too! Releasing a phone with the X60 when Qualcomm releases the X65!
Accept it!
The only way out of this conundrum is what I have already mentioned. Or Apple gets early dibs on the X65 next year (skipping the X60 altogether or using it in the lower end models) or it delays release until the X65 actually ships.
That is it. Don't come back next year with some line about how the X65 will appear on the following year's iPhone 14.
Just accept the situation. It is what it is. It would have been far, far worse had Apple not shipped 5G this year! Celebrate that but accept reality.
It is using last year's technology and off SoC.
Your insistence on numbers doesn't make it any more relevant. They are completely irrelevant and I can guarantee you that when China gets its fab technology up to date (do you doubt that will happen?) HiSilicon will be back and blowing holes into the US semi conductor industry if it sells its mobile chipsets to other Chinese brands.
Just think about that for a moment because the damage has already been done. Trump fired a shot that will backfire into someone else's face! I'm supposing here that he has just a couple of weeks left in the presidency.
Do you really think the US will continue with the failed trade war tactics if it has failed under Trump?
Before jumping to conclusions and presenting them as if they were already here, why not wait a few weeks and see how things really play out?
Huawei might not have any of the insane extraterritorial issues it has now, in just a few months (not that that will save the US semiconductor industry from the impact of Trump's ill thought out policies) .
You're flailing, but I'm too lazy to comment about that, so I'll post this.
If you are smart, you would realize that Apple has designed itself to be successful.
example;
"The development of the iPhone’s portrait mode illustrates a fanatical attention to detail at the leadership level, intense collaborative debate among teams, and the power of a shared purpose to shape and ultimately resolve debates. In 2009 Hubel had the idea of developing an iPhone feature that would allow people to take portrait photos with bokeh—a Japanese term that refers to the pleasing blurring of a background—which photography experts generally consider to be of the highest quality. At that time only expensive single-lens reflex cameras could take such photos, but Hubel thought that with a dual-lens design and advanced computational-photography techniques, Apple could add the capability in the iPhone. His idea aligned well with the camera team’s stated purpose: “More people taking better images more of the time.”
As the team worked to turn this idea into reality, several challenges emerged. The first attempts produced some amazing portrait pictures but also a number of “failure cases” in which the algorithm was unable to distinguish between the central object in sharp relief (a face, for instance) and the background being blurred. For example, if a person’s face was to be photographed from behind chicken wire, it was not possible to construct an algorithm that would capture the chicken wire to the side of the face with the same sharpness as the chicken wire in front of it. The wire to the side would be as blurred as the background.
One might say, “Who cares about the chicken wire case? That’s exceedingly rare.” But for the team, sidestepping rare or extreme situations—what engineers call corner cases—would violate Apple’s strict engineering standard of zero “artifacts,” meaning “any undesired or unintended alteration in data introduced in a digital process by an involved technique and/or technology.” Corner cases sparked “many tough discussions” between the camera team and other teams involved, recalls Myra Haggerty, the VP of sensor software and UX prototyping, who oversaw the firmware and algorithm teams. Sebastien Marineau-Mes, the VP to whom the camera software team ultimately reported, decided to defer the release of the feature until the following year to give the team time to better address failure cases—“a hard pill to swallow,” Hubel admits.
To get some agreement on quality standards, the engineering teams invited senior design and marketing leaders to meet, figuring that they would offer a new perspective. The design leaders brought an additional artistic sensibility to the debate, asking, “What makes a beautiful portrait?” To help reassess the zero-artifacts standard, they collected images from great portrait photographers. They noted, among other things, that these photos often had blurring at the edges of a face but sharpness on the eyes. So they charged the algorithm teams with achieving the same effect. When the teams succeeded, they knew they had an acceptable standard.
Another issue that emerged was the ability to preview a portrait photo with a blurred background. The camera team had designed the feature so that users could see its effect on their photos only after they had been taken, but the human interface (HI) design team pushed back, insisting that users should be able to see a “live preview” and get some guidance about how to make adjustments before taking the photo. Johnnie Manzari, a member of the HI team, gave the camera team a demo. “When we saw the demo, we realized that this is what we needed to do,” Townsend told us. The members of his camera hardware team weren’t sure they could do it, but difficulty was not an acceptable excuse for failing to deliver what would clearly be a superior user experience. After months of engineering effort, a key stakeholder, the video engineering team (responsible for the low-level software that controls sensor and camera operations) found a way, and the collaboration paid off. Portrait mode was central to Apple’s marketing of the iPhone 7 Plus. It proved a major reason for users’ choosing to buy and delighting in the use of the phone.
As this example shows, Apple’s collaborative debate involves people from various functions who disagree, push back, promote or reject ideas, and build on one another’s ideas to come up with the best solutions. It requires open-mindedness from senior leaders. It also requires those leaders to inspire, prod, or influence colleagues in other areas to contribute toward achieving their goals.
While Townsend is accountable for how great the camera is, he needed dozens of other teams—each of which had a long list of its own commitments—to contribute their time and effort to the portrait mode project. At Apple that’s known as accountability without control: You’re accountable for making the project succeed even though you don’t control all the other teams. This process can be messy yet produce great results. “Good mess” happens when various teams work with a shared purpose, as in the case of the portrait mode project. “Bad mess” occurs when teams push their own agendas ahead of common goals. Those who become associated with bad mess and don’t or can’t change their behavior are removed from leadership positions, if not from Apple altogether."
What do you think happens when Apple integrates its own modem into a future iPhone? It isn't just going to be just about more speed and performance, but about features that use that speed to delight the user with new capabilities.
Qualcomm planned carefully to release X60 right after Apple's iPhone 12 design schedule was locked in and changing that could delay iPhone 12 release into 2021. Well played Qualcomm!!
This isn't correct. The X60 roll out was planned long before Apple even signed on with them.
Qualcomm stated that the X60 would be available 'at the very earliest' by the end of this year. That has never changed.
There was an extremely slim chance that Apple would get some kind of prererential access to it as part of the 'kiss and make up' deal, which itself was part of a race against the clock effort to get any kind of 5G modem into an iPhone this year because Intel failed at delivering the goods.
It is supremely unfortunate, but not unexpected, that Apple may have ended up with last year's hardware on this year's phone's. Especially as the X60 will be shipping on competing phones within weeks.
But from Apple's perspective, having 5G now is a win.
And it's is perhaps ironic that this news appears on the very same day that Huawei is likely to launch the world's first 5nm on-SoC 5G modem.
Qualcomm was never going to get any TMSC 5nm production ahead of Apple, so Apple would have been quite aware that the X60 wouldn't be in production prior to the release of the A14 and the iPhones 12.
My recent readings on Huawei's 5nm Kirin 9000, is that they will only get 8.8 million units, not the 15 million units that they wanted from TMSC. Being first isn't going to be all that meaningful this time around as I'd surmise that many of those SOC's will see be sold internally into the market in China. That leaves world wide opportunities for Qualcomm, and OPPO, Xiaomi, and Samsung to replace Huawei in the marketplace.
The Mate 40 will use the Kirin 9000, but it doesn't sell anywhere close to the volumes of iPhones.
Apple will need a production of something on the order of 175 million A14 / A14X processors alone for FY21(iPhones and iPads), not to mention the Apple Silicon that is coming at the end of the year for the new Mac's.
I don't know why you are so sure of Qualcomm's impossibility of getting 5nm before Apple.
After all TSMC was manufacturing for Apple and Huawei at the same time and you seem to be forgetting the Samsung fabs.
And just last week you claimed the iPhone 12 would ship with an X60 (and did you say it was on SoC too?)
The possibility was there but it would have been touch and go and probably mean a delay in release times. It seems it hasn't played out that way.
How many Kirin 9000s are produced has nothing to do with anything. That is a geopolitical issue.
And you seem to ignore the fact that Apple always had the option to include the X60 but in a different model released at a later date.
As it turns out, I was wrong about the X60, but as it stands, it isn't going to be a big issue, ie, battery life, per reviews, as most people aren't going to be using mmwave consistently through the day. And no, I didn't believe that Apple would delay the iPhone 12 beyond what it was; a few weeks.
Do you have evidence that Apple and Huawei were in process at TMSC at the same time? Because, it is common knowledge that Apple is the largest source of revenue by far at TMSC, and they do seem to have stuffed the competition with early orders. Some analysts are expecting 80 million iPhones sold during this quarter,
The available Kirin 9000's, and any other Kirin SOC, has everything to do with what Huawei can ship. There isn't TMSC production available anymore at leading nodes, and there are restrictions on Silicon manufacturing equipment, and as well software for silicon design, exports to China. That leaves Huawei with having to purchase off the self SOC's from other sources.
Given the number of very positive reviews and early preorders of the two available iPhone 12 models, it looks like Apple has not been affected at all by releasing a 5G model after Android OS device competitors, and there's an expectation of sales in the 200 million to 220 million unit range for FY21.
My recollection is you posted a number of "doom" scenarios for Apple that never occurred. This might be a good time to retract those.
You are now asking me to retract things I never said?
Doom?
You must be confusing me with someone else. I've given my opinion on why I think Apple stalled and fell behind competing flagships in key areas. On the iPhone business model too.
The iPhone 12 is not a major jump in any of those key areas when pitted against competing phones.
Apple has pretty much reacted with moves that line up very well with those opinions.
Apple seemingly made a big deal about the 5G speed side of 5G. I didn't expect anything else! Reason to celebrate for sure.
But there is also reason to be realistic. The hardware looks to be last year's X55 and Huawei (just 3 hours ago) revealed its latest 5nm part. An on-SoC 5G modem which it claims is fives times faster than the X55 at uploads and twice as fast for downloads. Those apparently are field tested numbers. We will see.
As for production, you will find numerous articles out there (I've provided some of them to you in the past) on Huawei chipsets entering production before or in parallel to Apple's. However, the point you miss is that Huawei's SoCs are normally released before Apple's. Even this year's SoC was scheduled for the end of August but delayed due to geopolitics.
How exactly were they able to do this befote Apple?
FFS,
Huawei isn't going to be able to build more than 8 million flagship devices, and Qualcomm will probably ship a ton of X60 to competitors of Huawei. Next year, Apple will get the X60, or better, and Huawei will not be delivering any of its Kirin's. Who knows where they will get any leading edge SOC's, other than Samsung or Qualcomm. At some point, data bandwidth isn't a customer priority anymore, so who cares about theoretical modem performance.
Meanwhile, Apple will probably ship 150 to 160 million iPhone 12's in FY21. How are those "key areas" actually working out "as a business model" for Huawei. All I see is the "national champion" of China getting a beatdown in the near future.
As for the iPhone, come back to me when Huawei gets into striking distance of Apple's ASP and margins, because Apple's iPhone business model is class leading. I might live another 30 years, so, they better hurry up.
So you move the goalposts again!
So iPhone 12 isn't even really in users hands and you already jump to next year's iPhones!
So, do you now accept what I said about Huawei's TSMC process node fabrication timings?
Numbers have little to do with anything in this, we are talking technology and you forget that Huawei and Qualcomm sell to each other and have been doing so for years.
I don't accept anything that you state about Huawei's TSMC fab timing. Please provide links to indicate that, because the link that I posted, stated that Huawei wanted 15 million, and they only received 8 million. Apple, on the other hand, is expected to ship 50 to 60 million of the new iPhones by the end of the year. That's is an indication that Huawei didn't get what they wanted, and not when they wanted it either.
EDIT;
I actually remember that conversation about the announcement of the Kirin 970 before Apple released it's iPhone X with the A11 Bionic SOC. Funny how you could never convince me that Huawei actually had earlier production, but released their flagship P20 series weeks after Apple had shipped something on the order of its first 10 Million. You seem to confuse the SOC's that Huawei received from tapeout with production, and you make that mistake every year. If Huawei is always first in line, how come they can never deliver its P series before Apple delivers its iPhones?
So iPhone 12 isn't even really in users hands and you already jump to next year's iPhones!
Uhm, that's not what I implied or stated, which was that a year from now, Apple would again get the latest Qualcomm modem available, and Huawei would have to buy an off the shelf SOC, from either Qualcomm or Samsung. In the meantime, there is very little issue with the X55 other than battery life while used for mmwave.
For the record, this is exactly about numbers. Huawei is constrained, and competitors are lined up to exploit this opening.
"Absent a U.S. backtrack, a huge Huawei-shaped hole will open up in next year’s global smartphone sector, a sales game-changer for the industry. A blacklist-induced shortage of chipsets looks set to send Huawei sales plummeting when current stockpiles run down. While this appears to be a stunning opportunity for Apple and Samsung, that’s under threat. China inc. is confident that Huawei’s recipe for success can be replicated and is moving quickly to do so.
First out of the blocks to rinse and repeat Huawei’s “premium smartphones for less” strategy has been the much smaller Xiaomi, which beat Huawei in Europe for the first time in the second quarter this year, its revenues soared 65% as Huawei shrunk. Xiaomi moved into third place, behind Samsung and Apple. More notably, Xiaomi saw exports of premium devices (€300 plus) up more than 99% year-on-year.
Xiaomi has positioned itself as Huawei’s likely Chinese export successor, but that’s about to change. China’s Oppo is only just behind Xiaomi for overall global sales, but much larger in China itself. Counterpoint highlights Oppo as the other Chinese brand to watch. “Geopolitical policies and political affairs among nations are affecting the smartphone market in many ways—we see players like Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi and Oppo benefiting the most.” Oppo is part of BBK, which also has Vivo in its stable, and is a serious competitor to Apple and Samsung globally."
I would point out that I completely disagree that Xiaomi and Oppo are competition for Apple as Apple's iPhone is its own market, and sees little competition from Android OS device makers.
Of course you implied the problem of having last year's 5G modem in this year's iPhone is not an issue because next year's phone would have the X60.
That is the only reason you mentioned it!
Your point is irrevelant but you've been doing the same for years. Last year you did exactly the same with 5G in general. "lack of 5G will be a non issue because the iPhone 12 will have it" . You did exactly the same with tri cameras. "lack of tri cameras will be a non issue because the iPhone 11 will have it".
Etc.
Just agree with me because what I am saying is self evident. Don't run to next year's phones!
And think about it! Apple could find itself in the same situation next year too! Releasing a phone with the X60 when Qualcomm releases the X65!
Accept it!
The only way out of this conundrum is what I have already mentioned. Or Apple gets early dibs on the X65 next year (skipping the X60 altogether or using it in the lower end models) or it delays release until the X65 actually ships.
That is it. Don't come back next year with some line about how the X65 will appear on the following year's iPhone 14.
Just accept the situation. It is what it is. It would have been far, far worse had Apple not shipped 5G this year! Celebrate that but accept reality.
It is using last year's technology and off SoC.
Your insistence on numbers doesn't make it any more relevant. They are completely irrelevant and I can guarantee you that when China gets its fab technology up to date (do you doubt that will happen?) HiSilicon will be back and blowing holes into the US semi conductor industry if it sells its mobile chipsets to other Chinese brands.
Just think about that for a moment because the damage has already been done. Trump fired a shot that will backfire into someone else's face! I'm supposing here that he has just a couple of weeks left in the presidency.
Do you really think the US will continue with the failed trade war tactics if it has failed under Trump?
Before jumping to conclusions and presenting them as if they were already here, why not wait a few weeks and see how things really play out?
Huawei might not have any of the insane extraterritorial issues it has now, in just a few months (not that that will save the US semiconductor industry from the impact of Trump's ill thought out policies) .
You're flailing, but I'm too lazy to comment about that, so I'll post this.
If you are smart, you would realize that Apple has designed itself to be successful.
example;
"The development of the iPhone’s portrait mode illustrates a fanatical attention to detail at the leadership level, intense collaborative debate among teams, and the power of a shared purpose to shape and ultimately resolve debates. In 2009 Hubel had the idea of developing an iPhone feature that would allow people to take portrait photos with bokeh—a Japanese term that refers to the pleasing blurring of a background—which photography experts generally consider to be of the highest quality. At that time only expensive single-lens reflex cameras could take such photos, but Hubel thought that with a dual-lens design and advanced computational-photography techniques, Apple could add the capability in the iPhone. His idea aligned well with the camera team’s stated purpose: “More people taking better images more of the time.”
As the team worked to turn this idea into reality, several challenges emerged. The first attempts produced some amazing portrait pictures but also a number of “failure cases” in which the algorithm was unable to distinguish between the central object in sharp relief (a face, for instance) and the background being blurred. For example, if a person’s face was to be photographed from behind chicken wire, it was not possible to construct an algorithm that would capture the chicken wire to the side of the face with the same sharpness as the chicken wire in front of it. The wire to the side would be as blurred as the background.
One might say, “Who cares about the chicken wire case? That’s exceedingly rare.” But for the team, sidestepping rare or extreme situations—what engineers call corner cases—would violate Apple’s strict engineering standard of zero “artifacts,” meaning “any undesired or unintended alteration in data introduced in a digital process by an involved technique and/or technology.” Corner cases sparked “many tough discussions” between the camera team and other teams involved, recalls Myra Haggerty, the VP of sensor software and UX prototyping, who oversaw the firmware and algorithm teams. Sebastien Marineau-Mes, the VP to whom the camera software team ultimately reported, decided to defer the release of the feature until the following year to give the team time to better address failure cases—“a hard pill to swallow,” Hubel admits.
To get some agreement on quality standards, the engineering teams invited senior design and marketing leaders to meet, figuring that they would offer a new perspective. The design leaders brought an additional artistic sensibility to the debate, asking, “What makes a beautiful portrait?” To help reassess the zero-artifacts standard, they collected images from great portrait photographers. They noted, among other things, that these photos often had blurring at the edges of a face but sharpness on the eyes. So they charged the algorithm teams with achieving the same effect. When the teams succeeded, they knew they had an acceptable standard.
Another issue that emerged was the ability to preview a portrait photo with a blurred background. The camera team had designed the feature so that users could see its effect on their photos only after they had been taken, but the human interface (HI) design team pushed back, insisting that users should be able to see a “live preview” and get some guidance about how to make adjustments before taking the photo. Johnnie Manzari, a member of the HI team, gave the camera team a demo. “When we saw the demo, we realized that this is what we needed to do,” Townsend told us. The members of his camera hardware team weren’t sure they could do it, but difficulty was not an acceptable excuse for failing to deliver what would clearly be a superior user experience. After months of engineering effort, a key stakeholder, the video engineering team (responsible for the low-level software that controls sensor and camera operations) found a way, and the collaboration paid off. Portrait mode was central to Apple’s marketing of the iPhone 7 Plus. It proved a major reason for users’ choosing to buy and delighting in the use of the phone.
As this example shows, Apple’s collaborative debate involves people from various functions who disagree, push back, promote or reject ideas, and build on one another’s ideas to come up with the best solutions. It requires open-mindedness from senior leaders. It also requires those leaders to inspire, prod, or influence colleagues in other areas to contribute toward achieving their goals.
While Townsend is accountable for how great the camera is, he needed dozens of other teams—each of which had a long list of its own commitments—to contribute their time and effort to the portrait mode project. At Apple that’s known as accountability without control: You’re accountable for making the project succeed even though you don’t control all the other teams. This process can be messy yet produce great results. “Good mess” happens when various teams work with a shared purpose, as in the case of the portrait mode project. “Bad mess” occurs when teams push their own agendas ahead of common goals. Those who become associated with bad mess and don’t or can’t change their behavior are removed from leadership positions, if not from Apple altogether."
What do you think happens when Apple integrates its own modem into a future iPhone? It isn't just going to be just about more speed and performance, but about features that use that speed to delight the user with new capabilities.
Kind of like MagSafe just did.
Laziness has nothing to do with anything.
Flailing you say!?
I've given you the cold, hard facts of the matter. You can accept them or do what you just did, fly off on some weird tangent that has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this thread. I mean nothing.
What counts is what reaches customers' hands and how it performs in their hands. There may be many different approaches to reach the same goal.
Ironically Huawei had its dual camera system, aperture mode et al, before Apple and when Apple 'released' Portrait mode, it remained in beta for ages.
Huawei has had far more happening with its 3D sensing and continues to bring new ideas to the table (the EOD for example).
Stick with your squircles if that is what rocks your boat but take a look at any Huawei flagship phone and you will see the same attention to detail in many areas. And while disasters like the Apple butterfly keyboard were universally panned for being unreliable by design!, Huawei keyboards were praised, functional and spillproof! While Apple's bezels look positively huge today and the notch looks ever more dated, alternative solutions have come to market.
Not that any of this has anything to with the discussion.
Apple's new 5G-equipped iPhone 12 models appear to sport Qualcomm's Snapdragon X55 modem, according to early teardowns of the devices.
Credit: Weibo
Although the iPhone 12 doesn't officially start arriving on customer doorsteps until Oct. 23, teardown videos and internal photos of the new models have surface on Chinese social media.
One particular clip posted to Weibo appears to show an L-shaped iPhone logic board equipped with the Qualcomm 5G modem. Although the video doesn't show the iPhone being torn down, the logic boards appear identical to those seen in other confirmed teardowns.
That lines up with predictions that Apple would use the second-generation Qualcomm 5G chip in its 2020 iPhone devices. Although Qualcomm has a newer X60 chip available, that product debuted too late to be included in Apple's iPhone 12 lineup.
All four iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro models support both sub-6GHz 5G and mmWave in the U.S., with models in other countries supporting only low-band 5G connectivity.
Apple settled a long-running legal dispute with Qualcomm to gain access to its 5G chip technology in 2019. Although Apple opted for Intel chips in the iPhone 11 lineup, it became clear that Intel wasn't going to be able to deliver 5G chips.
Next year's "iPhone 13" models are likely to come equipped with the X60 modems, however. That'll bring significant improvements to battery performance, chip size, and connectivity.
Apple, for its part, has already signaled that it plans to use upcoming Qualcomm chips in future iPhones until at least 2024. That's according to text within the Apple and Qualcomm settlement filing that specifically mentions the as-of-yet unannounced X65 and X70 modems.
That, for me, might be a good reason to hold off buying an iPhone till next year:
By mid 2021 Apple and Qualcomm will have far more experience in 5G and how it operates in a real world environment -- so the chip, antennas and software could all be greatly improved providing better connectivity for less power.
Plus, 5G (in the U.S.) should be greatly expanded and matured over the next 12 months making a 5G phone more valuable than it is now.
Plus, I don't really need a new iPhone and was mostly interested because of all the significant enhancements of the iPhone 12 over the 11 or the X series.
Wait.. you've spent the last year screaming how "5G is here now!" and "any phone without 5G is obsolete!" but suddenly you're totally ok waiting another year? How are you going to survive with an obsolete phone? More importantly, how are you going to survive without 5G and all the wonderful things it does?
Yes, 5G IS here now.
And also, buying any phone without 5G should be regarded as foolish (Unless you only want to keep it about a year).
But, it doesn't mean that you HAVE to buy one immediately.
Why does that confuse you?
5G doesn't confuse me at all - your erratic and inconsistent responses however....
Qualcomm planned carefully to release X60 right after Apple's iPhone 12 design schedule was locked in and changing that could delay iPhone 12 release into 2021. Well played Qualcomm!!
This isn't correct. The X60 roll out was planned long before Apple even signed on with them.
Qualcomm stated that the X60 would be available 'at the very earliest' by the end of this year. That has never changed.
There was an extremely slim chance that Apple would get some kind of prererential access to it as part of the 'kiss and make up' deal, which itself was part of a race against the clock effort to get any kind of 5G modem into an iPhone this year because Intel failed at delivering the goods.
It is supremely unfortunate, but not unexpected, that Apple may have ended up with last year's hardware on this year's phone's. Especially as the X60 will be shipping on competing phones within weeks.
But from Apple's perspective, having 5G now is a win.
And it's is perhaps ironic that this news appears on the very same day that Huawei is likely to launch the world's first 5nm on-SoC 5G modem.
Qualcomm was never going to get any TMSC 5nm production ahead of Apple, so Apple would have been quite aware that the X60 wouldn't be in production prior to the release of the A14 and the iPhones 12.
My recent readings on Huawei's 5nm Kirin 9000, is that they will only get 8.8 million units, not the 15 million units that they wanted from TMSC. Being first isn't going to be all that meaningful this time around as I'd surmise that many of those SOC's will see be sold internally into the market in China. That leaves world wide opportunities for Qualcomm, and OPPO, Xiaomi, and Samsung to replace Huawei in the marketplace.
The Mate 40 will use the Kirin 9000, but it doesn't sell anywhere close to the volumes of iPhones.
Apple will need a production of something on the order of 175 million A14 / A14X processors alone for FY21(iPhones and iPads), not to mention the Apple Silicon that is coming at the end of the year for the new Mac's.
I don't know why you are so sure of Qualcomm's impossibility of getting 5nm before Apple.
After all TSMC was manufacturing for Apple and Huawei at the same time and you seem to be forgetting the Samsung fabs.
And just last week you claimed the iPhone 12 would ship with an X60 (and did you say it was on SoC too?)
The possibility was there but it would have been touch and go and probably mean a delay in release times. It seems it hasn't played out that way.
How many Kirin 9000s are produced has nothing to do with anything. That is a geopolitical issue.
And you seem to ignore the fact that Apple always had the option to include the X60 but in a different model released at a later date.
As it turns out, I was wrong about the X60, but as it stands, it isn't going to be a big issue, ie, battery life, per reviews, as most people aren't going to be using mmwave consistently through the day. And no, I didn't believe that Apple would delay the iPhone 12 beyond what it was; a few weeks.
Do you have evidence that Apple and Huawei were in process at TMSC at the same time? Because, it is common knowledge that Apple is the largest source of revenue by far at TMSC, and they do seem to have stuffed the competition with early orders. Some analysts are expecting 80 million iPhones sold during this quarter,
The available Kirin 9000's, and any other Kirin SOC, has everything to do with what Huawei can ship. There isn't TMSC production available anymore at leading nodes, and there are restrictions on Silicon manufacturing equipment, and as well software for silicon design, exports to China. That leaves Huawei with having to purchase off the self SOC's from other sources.
Given the number of very positive reviews and early preorders of the two available iPhone 12 models, it looks like Apple has not been affected at all by releasing a 5G model after Android OS device competitors, and there's an expectation of sales in the 200 million to 220 million unit range for FY21.
My recollection is you posted a number of "doom" scenarios for Apple that never occurred. This might be a good time to retract those.
You are now asking me to retract things I never said?
Doom?
You must be confusing me with someone else. I've given my opinion on why I think Apple stalled and fell behind competing flagships in key areas. On the iPhone business model too.
The iPhone 12 is not a major jump in any of those key areas when pitted against competing phones.
Apple has pretty much reacted with moves that line up very well with those opinions.
Apple seemingly made a big deal about the 5G speed side of 5G. I didn't expect anything else! Reason to celebrate for sure.
But there is also reason to be realistic. The hardware looks to be last year's X55 and Huawei (just 3 hours ago) revealed its latest 5nm part. An on-SoC 5G modem which it claims is fives times faster than the X55 at uploads and twice as fast for downloads. Those apparently are field tested numbers. We will see.
As for production, you will find numerous articles out there (I've provided some of them to you in the past) on Huawei chipsets entering production before or in parallel to Apple's. However, the point you miss is that Huawei's SoCs are normally released before Apple's. Even this year's SoC was scheduled for the end of August but delayed due to geopolitics.
How exactly were they able to do this befote Apple?
FFS,
Huawei isn't going to be able to build more than 8 million flagship devices, and Qualcomm will probably ship a ton of X60 to competitors of Huawei. Next year, Apple will get the X60, or better, and Huawei will not be delivering any of its Kirin's. Who knows where they will get any leading edge SOC's, other than Samsung or Qualcomm. At some point, data bandwidth isn't a customer priority anymore, so who cares about theoretical modem performance.
Meanwhile, Apple will probably ship 150 to 160 million iPhone 12's in FY21. How are those "key areas" actually working out "as a business model" for Huawei. All I see is the "national champion" of China getting a beatdown in the near future.
As for the iPhone, come back to me when Huawei gets into striking distance of Apple's ASP and margins, because Apple's iPhone business model is class leading. I might live another 30 years, so, they better hurry up.
So you move the goalposts again!
So iPhone 12 isn't even really in users hands and you already jump to next year's iPhones!
So, do you now accept what I said about Huawei's TSMC process node fabrication timings?
Numbers have little to do with anything in this, we are talking technology and you forget that Huawei and Qualcomm sell to each other and have been doing so for years.
I don't accept anything that you state about Huawei's TSMC fab timing. Please provide links to indicate that, because the link that I posted, stated that Huawei wanted 15 million, and they only received 8 million. Apple, on the other hand, is expected to ship 50 to 60 million of the new iPhones by the end of the year. That's is an indication that Huawei didn't get what they wanted, and not when they wanted it either.
EDIT;
I actually remember that conversation about the announcement of the Kirin 970 before Apple released it's iPhone X with the A11 Bionic SOC. Funny how you could never convince me that Huawei actually had earlier production, but released their flagship P20 series weeks after Apple had shipped something on the order of its first 10 Million. You seem to confuse the SOC's that Huawei received from tapeout with production, and you make that mistake every year. If Huawei is always first in line, how come they can never deliver its P series before Apple delivers its iPhones?
So iPhone 12 isn't even really in users hands and you already jump to next year's iPhones!
Uhm, that's not what I implied or stated, which was that a year from now, Apple would again get the latest Qualcomm modem available, and Huawei would have to buy an off the shelf SOC, from either Qualcomm or Samsung. In the meantime, there is very little issue with the X55 other than battery life while used for mmwave.
For the record, this is exactly about numbers. Huawei is constrained, and competitors are lined up to exploit this opening.
"Absent a U.S. backtrack, a huge Huawei-shaped hole will open up in next year’s global smartphone sector, a sales game-changer for the industry. A blacklist-induced shortage of chipsets looks set to send Huawei sales plummeting when current stockpiles run down. While this appears to be a stunning opportunity for Apple and Samsung, that’s under threat. China inc. is confident that Huawei’s recipe for success can be replicated and is moving quickly to do so.
First out of the blocks to rinse and repeat Huawei’s “premium smartphones for less” strategy has been the much smaller Xiaomi, which beat Huawei in Europe for the first time in the second quarter this year, its revenues soared 65% as Huawei shrunk. Xiaomi moved into third place, behind Samsung and Apple. More notably, Xiaomi saw exports of premium devices (€300 plus) up more than 99% year-on-year.
Xiaomi has positioned itself as Huawei’s likely Chinese export successor, but that’s about to change. China’s Oppo is only just behind Xiaomi for overall global sales, but much larger in China itself. Counterpoint highlights Oppo as the other Chinese brand to watch. “Geopolitical policies and political affairs among nations are affecting the smartphone market in many ways—we see players like Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi and Oppo benefiting the most.” Oppo is part of BBK, which also has Vivo in its stable, and is a serious competitor to Apple and Samsung globally."
I would point out that I completely disagree that Xiaomi and Oppo are competition for Apple as Apple's iPhone is its own market, and sees little competition from Android OS device makers.
Of course you implied the problem of having last year's 5G modem in this year's iPhone is not an issue because next year's phone would have the X60.
That is the only reason you mentioned it!
Your point is irrevelant but you've been doing the same for years. Last year you did exactly the same with 5G in general. "lack of 5G will be a non issue because the iPhone 12 will have it" . You did exactly the same with tri cameras. "lack of tri cameras will be a non issue because the iPhone 11 will have it".
Etc.
Just agree with me because what I am saying is self evident. Don't run to next year's phones!
And think about it! Apple could find itself in the same situation next year too! Releasing a phone with the X60 when Qualcomm releases the X65!
Accept it!
The only way out of this conundrum is what I have already mentioned. Or Apple gets early dibs on the X65 next year (skipping the X60 altogether or using it in the lower end models) or it delays release until the X65 actually ships.
That is it. Don't come back next year with some line about how the X65 will appear on the following year's iPhone 14.
Just accept the situation. It is what it is. It would have been far, far worse had Apple not shipped 5G this year! Celebrate that but accept reality.
It is using last year's technology and off SoC.
Your insistence on numbers doesn't make it any more relevant. They are completely irrelevant and I can guarantee you that when China gets its fab technology up to date (do you doubt that will happen?) HiSilicon will be back and blowing holes into the US semi conductor industry if it sells its mobile chipsets to other Chinese brands.
Just think about that for a moment because the damage has already been done. Trump fired a shot that will backfire into someone else's face! I'm supposing here that he has just a couple of weeks left in the presidency.
Do you really think the US will continue with the failed trade war tactics if it has failed under Trump?
Before jumping to conclusions and presenting them as if they were already here, why not wait a few weeks and see how things really play out?
Huawei might not have any of the insane extraterritorial issues it has now, in just a few months (not that that will save the US semiconductor industry from the impact of Trump's ill thought out policies) .
You're flailing, but I'm too lazy to comment about that, so I'll post this.
If you are smart, you would realize that Apple has designed itself to be successful.
example;
"The development of the iPhone’s portrait mode illustrates a fanatical attention to detail at the leadership level, intense collaborative debate among teams, and the power of a shared purpose to shape and ultimately resolve debates. In 2009 Hubel had the idea of developing an iPhone feature that would allow people to take portrait photos with bokeh—a Japanese term that refers to the pleasing blurring of a background—which photography experts generally consider to be of the highest quality. At that time only expensive single-lens reflex cameras could take such photos, but Hubel thought that with a dual-lens design and advanced computational-photography techniques, Apple could add the capability in the iPhone. His idea aligned well with the camera team’s stated purpose: “More people taking better images more of the time.”
As the team worked to turn this idea into reality, several challenges emerged. The first attempts produced some amazing portrait pictures but also a number of “failure cases” in which the algorithm was unable to distinguish between the central object in sharp relief (a face, for instance) and the background being blurred. For example, if a person’s face was to be photographed from behind chicken wire, it was not possible to construct an algorithm that would capture the chicken wire to the side of the face with the same sharpness as the chicken wire in front of it. The wire to the side would be as blurred as the background.
One might say, “Who cares about the chicken wire case? That’s exceedingly rare.” But for the team, sidestepping rare or extreme situations—what engineers call corner cases—would violate Apple’s strict engineering standard of zero “artifacts,” meaning “any undesired or unintended alteration in data introduced in a digital process by an involved technique and/or technology.” Corner cases sparked “many tough discussions” between the camera team and other teams involved, recalls Myra Haggerty, the VP of sensor software and UX prototyping, who oversaw the firmware and algorithm teams. Sebastien Marineau-Mes, the VP to whom the camera software team ultimately reported, decided to defer the release of the feature until the following year to give the team time to better address failure cases—“a hard pill to swallow,” Hubel admits.
To get some agreement on quality standards, the engineering teams invited senior design and marketing leaders to meet, figuring that they would offer a new perspective. The design leaders brought an additional artistic sensibility to the debate, asking, “What makes a beautiful portrait?” To help reassess the zero-artifacts standard, they collected images from great portrait photographers. They noted, among other things, that these photos often had blurring at the edges of a face but sharpness on the eyes. So they charged the algorithm teams with achieving the same effect. When the teams succeeded, they knew they had an acceptable standard.
Another issue that emerged was the ability to preview a portrait photo with a blurred background. The camera team had designed the feature so that users could see its effect on their photos only after they had been taken, but the human interface (HI) design team pushed back, insisting that users should be able to see a “live preview” and get some guidance about how to make adjustments before taking the photo. Johnnie Manzari, a member of the HI team, gave the camera team a demo. “When we saw the demo, we realized that this is what we needed to do,” Townsend told us. The members of his camera hardware team weren’t sure they could do it, but difficulty was not an acceptable excuse for failing to deliver what would clearly be a superior user experience. After months of engineering effort, a key stakeholder, the video engineering team (responsible for the low-level software that controls sensor and camera operations) found a way, and the collaboration paid off. Portrait mode was central to Apple’s marketing of the iPhone 7 Plus. It proved a major reason for users’ choosing to buy and delighting in the use of the phone.
As this example shows, Apple’s collaborative debate involves people from various functions who disagree, push back, promote or reject ideas, and build on one another’s ideas to come up with the best solutions. It requires open-mindedness from senior leaders. It also requires those leaders to inspire, prod, or influence colleagues in other areas to contribute toward achieving their goals.
While Townsend is accountable for how great the camera is, he needed dozens of other teams—each of which had a long list of its own commitments—to contribute their time and effort to the portrait mode project. At Apple that’s known as accountability without control: You’re accountable for making the project succeed even though you don’t control all the other teams. This process can be messy yet produce great results. “Good mess” happens when various teams work with a shared purpose, as in the case of the portrait mode project. “Bad mess” occurs when teams push their own agendas ahead of common goals. Those who become associated with bad mess and don’t or can’t change their behavior are removed from leadership positions, if not from Apple altogether."
What do you think happens when Apple integrates its own modem into a future iPhone? It isn't just going to be just about more speed and performance, but about features that use that speed to delight the user with new capabilities.
Kind of like MagSafe just did.
Laziness has nothing to do with anything.
Flailing you say!?
I've given you the cold, hard facts of the matter. You can accept them or do what you just did, fly off on some weird tangent that has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this thread. I mean nothing.
What counts is what reaches customers' hands and how it performs in their hands. There may be many different approaches to reach the same goal.
Ironically Huawei had its dual camera system, aperture mode et al, before Apple and when Apple 'released' Portrait mode, it remained in beta for ages.
Huawei has had far more happening with its 3D sensing and continues to bring new ideas to the table (the EOD for example).
Stick with your squircles if that is what rocks your boat but take a look at any Huawei flagship phone and you will see the same attention to detail in many areas. And while disasters like the Apple butterfly keyboard were universally panned for being unreliable by design!, Huawei keyboards were praised, functional and spillproof! While Apple's bezels look positively huge today and the notch looks ever more dated, alternative solutions have come to market.
Not that any of this has anything to with the discussion.
Meanwhile, Apple just keeps killing it with a handful of models. More revenue, higher margins, higher ASP, better customer service and customer satisfaction, better and broader ecosystem, and more importantly, much, much higher profits.
That's why I posted that link, so that you and Huawei have a better cheat sheet to work off of. Oh, and as a reprise, iPhone is a market unto itself, so very separate from the Android OS device market.
Apple's new 5G-equipped iPhone 12 models appear to sport Qualcomm's Snapdragon X55 modem, according to early teardowns of the devices.
Credit: Weibo
Although the iPhone 12 doesn't officially start arriving on customer doorsteps until Oct. 23, teardown videos and internal photos of the new models have surface on Chinese social media.
One particular clip posted to Weibo appears to show an L-shaped iPhone logic board equipped with the Qualcomm 5G modem. Although the video doesn't show the iPhone being torn down, the logic boards appear identical to those seen in other confirmed teardowns.
That lines up with predictions that Apple would use the second-generation Qualcomm 5G chip in its 2020 iPhone devices. Although Qualcomm has a newer X60 chip available, that product debuted too late to be included in Apple's iPhone 12 lineup.
All four iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro models support both sub-6GHz 5G and mmWave in the U.S., with models in other countries supporting only low-band 5G connectivity.
Apple settled a long-running legal dispute with Qualcomm to gain access to its 5G chip technology in 2019. Although Apple opted for Intel chips in the iPhone 11 lineup, it became clear that Intel wasn't going to be able to deliver 5G chips.
Next year's "iPhone 13" models are likely to come equipped with the X60 modems, however. That'll bring significant improvements to battery performance, chip size, and connectivity.
Apple, for its part, has already signaled that it plans to use upcoming Qualcomm chips in future iPhones until at least 2024. That's according to text within the Apple and Qualcomm settlement filing that specifically mentions the as-of-yet unannounced X65 and X70 modems.
That, for me, might be a good reason to hold off buying an iPhone till next year:
By mid 2021 Apple and Qualcomm will have far more experience in 5G and how it operates in a real world environment -- so the chip, antennas and software could all be greatly improved providing better connectivity for less power.
Plus, 5G (in the U.S.) should be greatly expanded and matured over the next 12 months making a 5G phone more valuable than it is now.
Plus, I don't really need a new iPhone and was mostly interested because of all the significant enhancements of the iPhone 12 over the 11 or the X series.
Wait.. you've spent the last year screaming how "5G is here now!" and "any phone without 5G is obsolete!" but suddenly you're totally ok waiting another year? How are you going to survive with an obsolete phone? More importantly, how are you going to survive without 5G and all the wonderful things it does?
Yes, 5G IS here now.
And also, buying any phone without 5G should be regarded as foolish (Unless you only want to keep it about a year).
But, it doesn't mean that you HAVE to buy one immediately.
Why does that confuse you?
5G doesn't confuse me at all - your erratic and inconsistent responses however....
Again:
Yes, 5G IS here now.
And also, buying any phone without 5G should be regarded as foolish (Unless you only want to keep it about a year).
But, it doesn't mean that you HAVE to buy one immediately.
Qualcomm planned carefully to release X60 right after Apple's iPhone 12 design schedule was locked in and changing that could delay iPhone 12 release into 2021. Well played Qualcomm!!
This isn't correct. The X60 roll out was planned long before Apple even signed on with them.
Qualcomm stated that the X60 would be available 'at the very earliest' by the end of this year. That has never changed.
There was an extremely slim chance that Apple would get some kind of prererential access to it as part of the 'kiss and make up' deal, which itself was part of a race against the clock effort to get any kind of 5G modem into an iPhone this year because Intel failed at delivering the goods.
It is supremely unfortunate, but not unexpected, that Apple may have ended up with last year's hardware on this year's phone's. Especially as the X60 will be shipping on competing phones within weeks.
But from Apple's perspective, having 5G now is a win.
And it's is perhaps ironic that this news appears on the very same day that Huawei is likely to launch the world's first 5nm on-SoC 5G modem.
Qualcomm was never going to get any TMSC 5nm production ahead of Apple, so Apple would have been quite aware that the X60 wouldn't be in production prior to the release of the A14 and the iPhones 12.
My recent readings on Huawei's 5nm Kirin 9000, is that they will only get 8.8 million units, not the 15 million units that they wanted from TMSC. Being first isn't going to be all that meaningful this time around as I'd surmise that many of those SOC's will see be sold internally into the market in China. That leaves world wide opportunities for Qualcomm, and OPPO, Xiaomi, and Samsung to replace Huawei in the marketplace.
The Mate 40 will use the Kirin 9000, but it doesn't sell anywhere close to the volumes of iPhones.
Apple will need a production of something on the order of 175 million A14 / A14X processors alone for FY21(iPhones and iPads), not to mention the Apple Silicon that is coming at the end of the year for the new Mac's.
I don't know why you are so sure of Qualcomm's impossibility of getting 5nm before Apple.
After all TSMC was manufacturing for Apple and Huawei at the same time and you seem to be forgetting the Samsung fabs.
And just last week you claimed the iPhone 12 would ship with an X60 (and did you say it was on SoC too?)
The possibility was there but it would have been touch and go and probably mean a delay in release times. It seems it hasn't played out that way.
How many Kirin 9000s are produced has nothing to do with anything. That is a geopolitical issue.
And you seem to ignore the fact that Apple always had the option to include the X60 but in a different model released at a later date.
As it turns out, I was wrong about the X60, but as it stands, it isn't going to be a big issue, ie, battery life, per reviews, as most people aren't going to be using mmwave consistently through the day. And no, I didn't believe that Apple would delay the iPhone 12 beyond what it was; a few weeks.
Do you have evidence that Apple and Huawei were in process at TMSC at the same time? Because, it is common knowledge that Apple is the largest source of revenue by far at TMSC, and they do seem to have stuffed the competition with early orders. Some analysts are expecting 80 million iPhones sold during this quarter,
The available Kirin 9000's, and any other Kirin SOC, has everything to do with what Huawei can ship. There isn't TMSC production available anymore at leading nodes, and there are restrictions on Silicon manufacturing equipment, and as well software for silicon design, exports to China. That leaves Huawei with having to purchase off the self SOC's from other sources.
Given the number of very positive reviews and early preorders of the two available iPhone 12 models, it looks like Apple has not been affected at all by releasing a 5G model after Android OS device competitors, and there's an expectation of sales in the 200 million to 220 million unit range for FY21.
My recollection is you posted a number of "doom" scenarios for Apple that never occurred. This might be a good time to retract those.
You are now asking me to retract things I never said?
Doom?
You must be confusing me with someone else. I've given my opinion on why I think Apple stalled and fell behind competing flagships in key areas. On the iPhone business model too.
The iPhone 12 is not a major jump in any of those key areas when pitted against competing phones.
Apple has pretty much reacted with moves that line up very well with those opinions.
Apple seemingly made a big deal about the 5G speed side of 5G. I didn't expect anything else! Reason to celebrate for sure.
But there is also reason to be realistic. The hardware looks to be last year's X55 and Huawei (just 3 hours ago) revealed its latest 5nm part. An on-SoC 5G modem which it claims is fives times faster than the X55 at uploads and twice as fast for downloads. Those apparently are field tested numbers. We will see.
As for production, you will find numerous articles out there (I've provided some of them to you in the past) on Huawei chipsets entering production before or in parallel to Apple's. However, the point you miss is that Huawei's SoCs are normally released before Apple's. Even this year's SoC was scheduled for the end of August but delayed due to geopolitics.
How exactly were they able to do this befote Apple?
FFS,
Huawei isn't going to be able to build more than 8 million flagship devices, and Qualcomm will probably ship a ton of X60 to competitors of Huawei. Next year, Apple will get the X60, or better, and Huawei will not be delivering any of its Kirin's. Who knows where they will get any leading edge SOC's, other than Samsung or Qualcomm. At some point, data bandwidth isn't a customer priority anymore, so who cares about theoretical modem performance.
Meanwhile, Apple will probably ship 150 to 160 million iPhone 12's in FY21. How are those "key areas" actually working out "as a business model" for Huawei. All I see is the "national champion" of China getting a beatdown in the near future.
As for the iPhone, come back to me when Huawei gets into striking distance of Apple's ASP and margins, because Apple's iPhone business model is class leading. I might live another 30 years, so, they better hurry up.
So you move the goalposts again!
So iPhone 12 isn't even really in users hands and you already jump to next year's iPhones!
So, do you now accept what I said about Huawei's TSMC process node fabrication timings?
Numbers have little to do with anything in this, we are talking technology and you forget that Huawei and Qualcomm sell to each other and have been doing so for years.
I don't accept anything that you state about Huawei's TSMC fab timing. Please provide links to indicate that, because the link that I posted, stated that Huawei wanted 15 million, and they only received 8 million. Apple, on the other hand, is expected to ship 50 to 60 million of the new iPhones by the end of the year. That's is an indication that Huawei didn't get what they wanted, and not when they wanted it either.
EDIT;
I actually remember that conversation about the announcement of the Kirin 970 before Apple released it's iPhone X with the A11 Bionic SOC. Funny how you could never convince me that Huawei actually had earlier production, but released their flagship P20 series weeks after Apple had shipped something on the order of its first 10 Million. You seem to confuse the SOC's that Huawei received from tapeout with production, and you make that mistake every year. If Huawei is always first in line, how come they can never deliver its P series before Apple delivers its iPhones?
So iPhone 12 isn't even really in users hands and you already jump to next year's iPhones!
Uhm, that's not what I implied or stated, which was that a year from now, Apple would again get the latest Qualcomm modem available, and Huawei would have to buy an off the shelf SOC, from either Qualcomm or Samsung. In the meantime, there is very little issue with the X55 other than battery life while used for mmwave.
For the record, this is exactly about numbers. Huawei is constrained, and competitors are lined up to exploit this opening.
"Absent a U.S. backtrack, a huge Huawei-shaped hole will open up in next year’s global smartphone sector, a sales game-changer for the industry. A blacklist-induced shortage of chipsets looks set to send Huawei sales plummeting when current stockpiles run down. While this appears to be a stunning opportunity for Apple and Samsung, that’s under threat. China inc. is confident that Huawei’s recipe for success can be replicated and is moving quickly to do so.
First out of the blocks to rinse and repeat Huawei’s “premium smartphones for less” strategy has been the much smaller Xiaomi, which beat Huawei in Europe for the first time in the second quarter this year, its revenues soared 65% as Huawei shrunk. Xiaomi moved into third place, behind Samsung and Apple. More notably, Xiaomi saw exports of premium devices (€300 plus) up more than 99% year-on-year.
Xiaomi has positioned itself as Huawei’s likely Chinese export successor, but that’s about to change. China’s Oppo is only just behind Xiaomi for overall global sales, but much larger in China itself. Counterpoint highlights Oppo as the other Chinese brand to watch. “Geopolitical policies and political affairs among nations are affecting the smartphone market in many ways—we see players like Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi and Oppo benefiting the most.” Oppo is part of BBK, which also has Vivo in its stable, and is a serious competitor to Apple and Samsung globally."
I would point out that I completely disagree that Xiaomi and Oppo are competition for Apple as Apple's iPhone is its own market, and sees little competition from Android OS device makers.
Of course you implied the problem of having last year's 5G modem in this year's iPhone is not an issue because next year's phone would have the X60.
That is the only reason you mentioned it!
Your point is irrevelant but you've been doing the same for years. Last year you did exactly the same with 5G in general. "lack of 5G will be a non issue because the iPhone 12 will have it" . You did exactly the same with tri cameras. "lack of tri cameras will be a non issue because the iPhone 11 will have it".
Etc.
Just agree with me because what I am saying is self evident. Don't run to next year's phones!
And think about it! Apple could find itself in the same situation next year too! Releasing a phone with the X60 when Qualcomm releases the X65!
Accept it!
The only way out of this conundrum is what I have already mentioned. Or Apple gets early dibs on the X65 next year (skipping the X60 altogether or using it in the lower end models) or it delays release until the X65 actually ships.
That is it. Don't come back next year with some line about how the X65 will appear on the following year's iPhone 14.
Just accept the situation. It is what it is. It would have been far, far worse had Apple not shipped 5G this year! Celebrate that but accept reality.
It is using last year's technology and off SoC.
Your insistence on numbers doesn't make it any more relevant. They are completely irrelevant and I can guarantee you that when China gets its fab technology up to date (do you doubt that will happen?) HiSilicon will be back and blowing holes into the US semi conductor industry if it sells its mobile chipsets to other Chinese brands.
Just think about that for a moment because the damage has already been done. Trump fired a shot that will backfire into someone else's face! I'm supposing here that he has just a couple of weeks left in the presidency.
Do you really think the US will continue with the failed trade war tactics if it has failed under Trump?
Before jumping to conclusions and presenting them as if they were already here, why not wait a few weeks and see how things really play out?
Huawei might not have any of the insane extraterritorial issues it has now, in just a few months (not that that will save the US semiconductor industry from the impact of Trump's ill thought out policies) .
You're flailing, but I'm too lazy to comment about that, so I'll post this.
If you are smart, you would realize that Apple has designed itself to be successful.
example;
"The development of the iPhone’s portrait mode illustrates a fanatical attention to detail at the leadership level, intense collaborative debate among teams, and the power of a shared purpose to shape and ultimately resolve debates. In 2009 Hubel had the idea of developing an iPhone feature that would allow people to take portrait photos with bokeh—a Japanese term that refers to the pleasing blurring of a background—which photography experts generally consider to be of the highest quality. At that time only expensive single-lens reflex cameras could take such photos, but Hubel thought that with a dual-lens design and advanced computational-photography techniques, Apple could add the capability in the iPhone. His idea aligned well with the camera team’s stated purpose: “More people taking better images more of the time.”
As the team worked to turn this idea into reality, several challenges emerged. The first attempts produced some amazing portrait pictures but also a number of “failure cases” in which the algorithm was unable to distinguish between the central object in sharp relief (a face, for instance) and the background being blurred. For example, if a person’s face was to be photographed from behind chicken wire, it was not possible to construct an algorithm that would capture the chicken wire to the side of the face with the same sharpness as the chicken wire in front of it. The wire to the side would be as blurred as the background.
One might say, “Who cares about the chicken wire case? That’s exceedingly rare.” But for the team, sidestepping rare or extreme situations—what engineers call corner cases—would violate Apple’s strict engineering standard of zero “artifacts,” meaning “any undesired or unintended alteration in data introduced in a digital process by an involved technique and/or technology.” Corner cases sparked “many tough discussions” between the camera team and other teams involved, recalls Myra Haggerty, the VP of sensor software and UX prototyping, who oversaw the firmware and algorithm teams. Sebastien Marineau-Mes, the VP to whom the camera software team ultimately reported, decided to defer the release of the feature until the following year to give the team time to better address failure cases—“a hard pill to swallow,” Hubel admits.
To get some agreement on quality standards, the engineering teams invited senior design and marketing leaders to meet, figuring that they would offer a new perspective. The design leaders brought an additional artistic sensibility to the debate, asking, “What makes a beautiful portrait?” To help reassess the zero-artifacts standard, they collected images from great portrait photographers. They noted, among other things, that these photos often had blurring at the edges of a face but sharpness on the eyes. So they charged the algorithm teams with achieving the same effect. When the teams succeeded, they knew they had an acceptable standard.
Another issue that emerged was the ability to preview a portrait photo with a blurred background. The camera team had designed the feature so that users could see its effect on their photos only after they had been taken, but the human interface (HI) design team pushed back, insisting that users should be able to see a “live preview” and get some guidance about how to make adjustments before taking the photo. Johnnie Manzari, a member of the HI team, gave the camera team a demo. “When we saw the demo, we realized that this is what we needed to do,” Townsend told us. The members of his camera hardware team weren’t sure they could do it, but difficulty was not an acceptable excuse for failing to deliver what would clearly be a superior user experience. After months of engineering effort, a key stakeholder, the video engineering team (responsible for the low-level software that controls sensor and camera operations) found a way, and the collaboration paid off. Portrait mode was central to Apple’s marketing of the iPhone 7 Plus. It proved a major reason for users’ choosing to buy and delighting in the use of the phone.
As this example shows, Apple’s collaborative debate involves people from various functions who disagree, push back, promote or reject ideas, and build on one another’s ideas to come up with the best solutions. It requires open-mindedness from senior leaders. It also requires those leaders to inspire, prod, or influence colleagues in other areas to contribute toward achieving their goals.
While Townsend is accountable for how great the camera is, he needed dozens of other teams—each of which had a long list of its own commitments—to contribute their time and effort to the portrait mode project. At Apple that’s known as accountability without control: You’re accountable for making the project succeed even though you don’t control all the other teams. This process can be messy yet produce great results. “Good mess” happens when various teams work with a shared purpose, as in the case of the portrait mode project. “Bad mess” occurs when teams push their own agendas ahead of common goals. Those who become associated with bad mess and don’t or can’t change their behavior are removed from leadership positions, if not from Apple altogether."
What do you think happens when Apple integrates its own modem into a future iPhone? It isn't just going to be just about more speed and performance, but about features that use that speed to delight the user with new capabilities.
Kind of like MagSafe just did.
Laziness has nothing to do with anything.
Flailing you say!?
I've given you the cold, hard facts of the matter. You can accept them or do what you just did, fly off on some weird tangent that has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this thread. I mean nothing.
What counts is what reaches customers' hands and how it performs in their hands. There may be many different approaches to reach the same goal.
Ironically Huawei had its dual camera system, aperture mode et al, before Apple and when Apple 'released' Portrait mode, it remained in beta for ages.
Huawei has had far more happening with its 3D sensing and continues to bring new ideas to the table (the EOD for example).
Stick with your squircles if that is what rocks your boat but take a look at any Huawei flagship phone and you will see the same attention to detail in many areas. And while disasters like the Apple butterfly keyboard were universally panned for being unreliable by design!, Huawei keyboards were praised, functional and spillproof! While Apple's bezels look positively huge today and the notch looks ever more dated, alternative solutions have come to market.
Not that any of this has anything to with the discussion.
Meanwhile, Apple just keeps killing it with a handful of models. More revenue, higher margins, higher ASP, better customer service and customer satisfaction, better and broader ecosystem, and more importantly, much, much higher profits.
That's why I posted that link, so that you and Huawei have a better cheat sheet to work off of. Oh, and as a reprise, iPhone is a market unto itself, so very separate from the Android OS device market.
There you go again. Nothing to do with the original point I raised. You obviously cannot distort reality and it is staring you in the face. No amount of weird tangents will change that.
As for cheat sheets, that is pretty much laughable seeing as almost ALL the major mobile camera advances have appeared on Huawei phones for the last few years.
The Mate 40 Pro is simply continuing the trend. And why stop at cameras? Charging (fast, wired, wireless, reverse, battery chemistry ...), 3D depth sensing use (did you take a look at EOD?), nano coatings, AI, wireless connectivity (WiFi /Bluetooth/5G).
Don't you think they've brought enough to the table already?
That's why competition is good. It's good for everyone. We should be celebrating that but you try to imply that the industry simply copies Apple. The industry copies everyone all the time.
Comments
That is the only reason you mentioned it!
Your point is irrevelant but you've been doing the same for years. Last year you did exactly the same with 5G in general. "lack of 5G will be a non issue because the iPhone 12 will have it" . You did exactly the same with tri cameras. "lack of tri cameras will be a non issue because the iPhone 11 will have it".
Etc.
Just agree with me because what I am saying is self evident. Don't run to next year's phones!
And think about it! Apple could find itself in the same situation next year too! Releasing a phone with the X60 when Qualcomm releases the X65!
Accept it!
The only way out of this conundrum is what I have already mentioned. Or Apple gets early dibs on the X65 next year (skipping the X60 altogether or using it in the lower end models) or it delays release until the X65 actually ships.
That is it. Don't come back next year with some line about how the X65 will appear on the following year's iPhone 14.
Just accept the situation. It is what it is. It would have been far, far worse had Apple not shipped 5G this year! Celebrate that but accept reality.
It is using last year's technology and off SoC.
Your insistence on numbers doesn't make it any more relevant. They are completely irrelevant and I can guarantee you that when China gets its fab technology up to date (do you doubt that will happen?) HiSilicon will be back and blowing holes into the US semi conductor industry if it sells its mobile chipsets to other Chinese brands.
Just think about that for a moment because the damage has already been done. Trump fired a shot that will backfire into someone else's face! I'm supposing here that he has just a couple of weeks left in the presidency.
Do you really think the US will continue with the failed trade war tactics if it has failed under Trump?
Before jumping to conclusions and presenting them as if they were already here, why not wait a few weeks and see how things really play out?
Huawei might not have any of the insane extraterritorial issues it has now, in just a few months (not that that will save the US semiconductor industry from the impact of Trump's ill thought out policies) .
https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovation?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr
If you are smart, you would realize that Apple has designed itself to be successful.
example;
"The development of the iPhone’s portrait mode illustrates a fanatical attention to detail at the leadership level, intense collaborative debate among teams, and the power of a shared purpose to shape and ultimately resolve debates. In 2009 Hubel had the idea of developing an iPhone feature that would allow people to take portrait photos with bokeh—a Japanese term that refers to the pleasing blurring of a background—which photography experts generally consider to be of the highest quality. At that time only expensive single-lens reflex cameras could take such photos, but Hubel thought that with a dual-lens design and advanced computational-photography techniques, Apple could add the capability in the iPhone. His idea aligned well with the camera team’s stated purpose: “More people taking better images more of the time.”
As the team worked to turn this idea into reality, several challenges emerged. The first attempts produced some amazing portrait pictures but also a number of “failure cases” in which the algorithm was unable to distinguish between the central object in sharp relief (a face, for instance) and the background being blurred. For example, if a person’s face was to be photographed from behind chicken wire, it was not possible to construct an algorithm that would capture the chicken wire to the side of the face with the same sharpness as the chicken wire in front of it. The wire to the side would be as blurred as the background.
One might say, “Who cares about the chicken wire case? That’s exceedingly rare.” But for the team, sidestepping rare or extreme situations—what engineers call corner cases—would violate Apple’s strict engineering standard of zero “artifacts,” meaning “any undesired or unintended alteration in data introduced in a digital process by an involved technique and/or technology.” Corner cases sparked “many tough discussions” between the camera team and other teams involved, recalls Myra Haggerty, the VP of sensor software and UX prototyping, who oversaw the firmware and algorithm teams. Sebastien Marineau-Mes, the VP to whom the camera software team ultimately reported, decided to defer the release of the feature until the following year to give the team time to better address failure cases—“a hard pill to swallow,” Hubel admits.
To get some agreement on quality standards, the engineering teams invited senior design and marketing leaders to meet, figuring that they would offer a new perspective. The design leaders brought an additional artistic sensibility to the debate, asking, “What makes a beautiful portrait?” To help reassess the zero-artifacts standard, they collected images from great portrait photographers. They noted, among other things, that these photos often had blurring at the edges of a face but sharpness on the eyes. So they charged the algorithm teams with achieving the same effect. When the teams succeeded, they knew they had an acceptable standard.
Another issue that emerged was the ability to preview a portrait photo with a blurred background. The camera team had designed the feature so that users could see its effect on their photos only after they had been taken, but the human interface (HI) design team pushed back, insisting that users should be able to see a “live preview” and get some guidance about how to make adjustments before taking the photo. Johnnie Manzari, a member of the HI team, gave the camera team a demo. “When we saw the demo, we realized that this is what we needed to do,” Townsend told us. The members of his camera hardware team weren’t sure they could do it, but difficulty was not an acceptable excuse for failing to deliver what would clearly be a superior user experience. After months of engineering effort, a key stakeholder, the video engineering team (responsible for the low-level software that controls sensor and camera operations) found a way, and the collaboration paid off. Portrait mode was central to Apple’s marketing of the iPhone 7 Plus. It proved a major reason for users’ choosing to buy and delighting in the use of the phone.
As this example shows, Apple’s collaborative debate involves people from various functions who disagree, push back, promote or reject ideas, and build on one another’s ideas to come up with the best solutions. It requires open-mindedness from senior leaders. It also requires those leaders to inspire, prod, or influence colleagues in other areas to contribute toward achieving their goals.
While Townsend is accountable for how great the camera is, he needed dozens of other teams—each of which had a long list of its own commitments—to contribute their time and effort to the portrait mode project. At Apple that’s known as accountability without control: You’re accountable for making the project succeed even though you don’t control all the other teams. This process can be messy yet produce great results. “Good mess” happens when various teams work with a shared purpose, as in the case of the portrait mode project. “Bad mess” occurs when teams push their own agendas ahead of common goals. Those who become associated with bad mess and don’t or can’t change their behavior are removed from leadership positions, if not from Apple altogether."
What do you think happens when Apple integrates its own modem into a future iPhone? It isn't just going to be just about more speed and performance, but about features that use that speed to delight the user with new capabilities.
Kind of like MagSafe just did.
Flailing you say!?
I've given you the cold, hard facts of the matter. You can accept them or do what you just did, fly off on some weird tangent that has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this thread. I mean nothing.
What counts is what reaches customers' hands and how it performs in their hands. There may be many different approaches to reach the same goal.
Ironically Huawei had its dual camera system, aperture mode et al, before Apple and when Apple 'released' Portrait mode, it remained in beta for ages.
Huawei has had far more happening with its 3D sensing and continues to bring new ideas to the table (the EOD for example).
Stick with your squircles if that is what rocks your boat but take a look at any Huawei flagship phone and you will see the same attention to detail in many areas. And while disasters like the Apple butterfly keyboard were universally panned for being unreliable by design!, Huawei keyboards were praised, functional and spillproof! While Apple's bezels look positively huge today and the notch looks ever more dated, alternative solutions have come to market.
Not that any of this has anything to with the discussion.
That's why I posted that link, so that you and Huawei have a better cheat sheet to work off of. Oh, and as a reprise, iPhone is a market unto itself, so very separate from the Android OS device market.
Again:
As for cheat sheets, that is pretty much laughable seeing as almost ALL the major mobile camera advances have appeared on Huawei phones for the last few years.
The Mate 40 Pro is simply continuing the trend. And why stop at cameras? Charging (fast, wired, wireless, reverse, battery chemistry ...), 3D depth sensing use (did you take a look at EOD?), nano coatings, AI, wireless connectivity (WiFi /Bluetooth/5G).
Don't you think they've brought enough to the table already?
That's why competition is good. It's good for everyone. We should be celebrating that but you try to imply that the industry simply copies Apple. The industry copies everyone all the time.