Apple's Kaiann Drance promotes 5G speeds in iPhone 12 interview

AppleInsider

Vice President of iPhone Marketing, Kaiann Drance, has given an extended interview discussing the new iPhone 12, and iPhone 12 Pro, dealing principally with 5G, battery life, and MagSafe.

Kaiann Drance, Apple's Vice President of iPhone Marketing.

As the new iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro arrive in stores, Apple's Kaiann Drance has addressed user questions about the new devices. Speaking on the Rich on Tech Podcast, she broadly repeated the talking points from Apple's "Hi, Speed" event, but did speak more about Apple's process for getting the new phones to customers.

"If you do show up as a walk-in," said Drance on the podcast, "we may give you an appointment to come back at a later time. But certainly you may expect to wait a little longer because of occupancy in the stores and physical distancing. We may not be able to get everyone in as quickly as possible."

Regarding the concerns over battery life being considerably reduced when using 5G, she insisted that the new phones will adapt to balance battery charge and speed.

"We're able to make a bunch of software optimizations throughout the entire system to make battery life even better," she said, "and on top of that we added a new feature called 'Smart Data mode' that will allow you to manage your 5G usage and battery life a bit better, so you can use 5G speeds when it really matters, and then for places where maybe it doesn't matter as much it will revert to 4G LTE speeds to save your battery life."

As well as Apple's own optimization, she added that it is "really important" to know that the company has worked with carriers. "They're also optimizing their settings together with iPhone to optimize for battery life," she said.

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Drance also addressed the issue that Apple has dropped the power adapter from the iPhone box -- and included a Lightning to USB-C cable instead of the previous Lightning one.

"You can still use your old Lightning cables and any of those power adapters [that you have] will still work," she said. "In fact, we encourage you to still use those as well. If you're an Apple user and you happen to have a Mac or an iPad, we've also included those USB-C power adapters in recent years... and the computer ports themselves include USB-C, so those are other options for you."

While Drance was interviewed in time for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro becoming available, her comments also apply to the forthcoming iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max. These will be available to pre-order from November 6.

avon b7

Even so, and in spite of the optimisations in software and hardware, a bigger battery capacity would have been welcome for purchasers of the larger phones. Time will tell if users end up getting through more cycles faster and needing replacements earlier as a result.

Battery size is one of the key usage pillars in modern phones. I can't help but think that they skimped a bit in this case. At least on the face of it. 

edited October 2020

elijahg

I still don't see the point in 5G. Seems very much like a marketing fad to push phone upgrades. 4G speeds are plenty fast enough for a phone, no one needs gigabit speeds to a phone.

rayz2016

She’s got her work cut out for her. I’m sure the phone’s great; I’m just not convinced people care that much about 5G

davesmall

elijahg said:

I still don't see the point in 5G. Seems very much like a marketing fad to push phone upgrades. 4G speeds are plenty fast enough for a phone, no one needs gigabit speeds to a phone.

Depends on your usage and setup. For example, Apple has recently made it much easier to use your iPhone as a personal WiFi Hotspot. This means you can quickly and effortlessly get online with a computer, iPad, Apple watch, or other WiFi enabled device. 5G speeds are very helpful. This also means that it may not be nearly so important to pay the added cost to purchase cellular connectivity for all those other devices.

elijahg

davesmall said:

elijahg said:

I still don't see the point in 5G. Seems very much like a marketing fad to push phone upgrades. 4G speeds are plenty fast enough for a phone, no one needs gigabit speeds to a phone.

Depends on your usage and setup. For example, Apple has recently made it much easier to use your iPhone as a personal WiFi Hotspot. This means you can quickly and effortlessly get online with a computer, iPad, Apple watch, or other WiFi enabled device. 5G speeds are very helpful. This also means that it may not be nearly so important to pay the added cost to purchase cellular connectivity for all those other devices.

I've been tethering my phone since the iPhone 3G, and if we were talking about 3G speeds, I'd agree we need better. 3G was slow with 150ms+ latency, but 4G is plenty quick enough for tethering. If you need to download a big file at high speed, use wifi. In any case, at least to my iPhone X, tethering only works over 2.4Ghz and maxes out at about 50Mbps. Until I got fibre, 4G was much faster than my ADSL connection. Most people are happy with a 50Mbps home connection often with multiple people sharing, so 1000Mbps to the phone really seems premature for the foreseeable future.

Analysts seemed to think 5G would be a driving factor behind iPhone 12 upgrades, but personally, I think not. 

edited October 2020

georgebmac

avon b7 said:

Even so, and in spite of the optimisations in software and hardware, a bigger battery capacity would have been welcome for purchasers of the larger phones. Time will tell if users end up getting through more cycles faster and needing replacements earlier as a result.

Battery size is one of the key usage pillars in modern phones. I can't help but think that they skimped a bit in this case. At least on the face of it. 

With Applecare+ -- especially now that it can be extended indefinitely through the life of a phone -- battery replacements are much less of an issue than what they once were.   Actually, with AppleCare+ the only issue is time to drop off or mail a phone for repair because the replacement battery is free.

georgebmac

elijahg said:

I still don't see the point in 5G. Seems very much like a marketing fad to push phone upgrades. 4G speeds are plenty fast enough for a phone, no one needs gigabit speeds to a phone.

Yeh, they said the same thing about 4G and horseless carriages.

The part you are missing is that major advances in communications have always been game changers.   It doesn't happen immediately but evolves because the advance changes the equation, the rules of the game.

Will you need it today or even benefit from it much?  Nah!  Probably not.  Will you need it for the future.   You betcha!   Because the rules of the game have been changed.   We are now operating under a different equation.

georgebmac

Rayz2016 said:

She’s got her work cut out for her. I’m sure the phone’s great; I’m just not convinced people care that much about 5G right now, today.

Finished that for you.

xed

It wish Apple would've waited another year to include 5G. Touch ID in the sleep/wake button, like with the new iPad Air would've been a more compelling feature for the masses

georgebmac

Xed said:

It wish Apple would've waited another year to include 5G. Touch ID in the sleep/wake button, like with the new iPad Air would've been a more compelling feature for the masses

It's the same situation as with electric cars:   Why build the car if the charging system isn't fully in place?   But then why build a charging system if there are no electric cars to use it?

5G works the same way:  we need both the receivers (mostly phones) and the transmitters.   They go together.   As in other things, other countries are surging ahead in modern technology while we play the chicken vs egg game.  

elijahg

GeorgeBMac said:

elijahg said:

I still don't see the point in 5G. Seems very much like a marketing fad to push phone upgrades. 4G speeds are plenty fast enough for a phone, no one needs gigabit speeds to a phone.

Yeh, they said the same thing about 4G and horseless carriages.

The part you are missing is that major advances in communications have always been game changers.   It doesn't happen immediately but evolves because the advance changes the equation, the rules of the game.

Will you need it today or even benefit from it much?  Nah!  Probably not.  Will you need it for the future.   You betcha!   Because the rules of the game have been changed.   We are now operating under a different equation.

Well no, they didn't. 4G improved latency by an order of magnitude, greatly improved speeds in congested areas like cities, and also significantly increased the coverage over 3G. 5G's latency is slightly better than 4G, but not much. The speeds in congested areas with mmWave should be better than 4G, but mmWave coverage is non-existent anywhere other than a couple of places in the US (and is unlikely to improve much as it's so short range). General coverage is no better than 4G and for ultra-high speed it's much, much worse as the frequency is so high. Plus 5G drains battery too.

The improvements of 4G over 3G were wide ranging and significant, but 5G's improvements over 4G are little in comparison. The volume of traffic to phones isn't going to suddenly balloon to require gigabit to the phone speeds. No doubt in 20 years time we will need to regularly exceed 4G speeds, but the desperation to get 5G into everything right now is pretty premature, causing lots of compromises for nothing more than a marketing gimmick that isn't really taking off. Even analysts seem to realise the "supercycle" caused by 5G probably isn't going to happen. And why would it? When's the last time you thought 4G was too slow?

edited October 2020

elijahg

GeorgeBMac said:

avon b7 said:

Even so, and in spite of the optimisations in software and hardware, a bigger battery capacity would have been welcome for purchasers of the larger phones. Time will tell if users end up getting through more cycles faster and needing replacements earlier as a result.

Battery size is one of the key usage pillars in modern phones. I can't help but think that they skimped a bit in this case. At least on the face of it. 

With Applecare+ -- especially now that it can be extended indefinitely through the life of a phone -- battery replacements are much less of an issue than what they once were.   Actually, with AppleCare+ the only issue is time to drop off or mail a phone for repair because the replacement battery is free.

Not sure why you think paying for AppleCare+ makes battery replacements free, when you're paying more than the cost of a replacement battery for AppleCare+ itself. At $9.99 per month it would be cheaper to just pay for a new battery every year, and have $40 left over.