iPhone X Teardown
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Axiom in the tech world is that "Apple is a software company that builds hardware". Above is ample evidence of Apple being a hardware-heavy innovation machine.
A software company building hardware is Google, and it's Pixel phones show
I'm wondering when Apple will start making their own camera sensors.
I don't know how true this is, but I've heard that the Samsung OLED screen on the iPhone X is significantly better than the ones Samsung puts on it's flagship phones, in color fidelity especially. Partly because of Apple's attention to detail, but also because Samsung's flagship phones ship in much higher volume than the X is expected to.
(Speaking as the owner of the Plus, who has his first replaced and the second is somewhat better but not perfect. Wife's S8 is also affected but she doesn't see it or doesn't care. I would still take that slight imperfection over the horrid notch though).
I can't believe that. I just can't.
All iPhone X reviews mention the screen tech difference, all of them say how they don't notice a difference.
It's not about "appreciating". It's that it doesn't matter. Everyone talked about retina resolution, then about "true colors".
Today we have Samsung making all the screens.
The point is, nobody except professionals care.
The colour reproduction on Samsung phones is just awful after spending so much time on MacBooks and iPhones. Over saturated and as you increase brightness it washes everything out.
What makes the screen different is that the colours aren't oversaturated like Android phones. It was identical to the iPhone 8 screen (LED) only significantly brighter.
From what I've read what makes it better are things like the reduced blue-shift that occurs when moving the phone and the significant reduction in burn-in effect. But what most people will think is that it is the colours that make it better. Even though that could largely be software.
Samsung makes 5 processors and puts them on the open market.
The another part of Samsung buys those chips off the shelf and used them in their phones.
My understanding is the two units don’t work together hand in hand like Apples teams do, they work together the way Samsung and HTC do.
1. Samsung was a semiconductor maker, that successfully moved up to make phones. Apple was a integrator of third party chips that successfully went down to own many of the chips.
2. Apple's chips are significantly better than the competition. Partly because the chip division has a captive customer whose requirements are more apparent, plus no middlemen thanks to the vertical integration
3. Samsung's components need to serve multiple segments of the phone market, and other external customers. Apple only builds for Apple's specs
4. Every new breakthrough on the iPhone has been because of a chip that Apple alone had. From the very first iPhone's capacitive touch sensors to the new IR sensor system, no one else has the access for a couple phone cycles. Apple put out a 64 bit ARM processor even before arm had finalized the instruction set
Capacitive touch screen:
iPhone: June 29, 2007
HTC Dream/G1: October 20, 2008 (479 days later)
iPhone 5s: September 20, 2013
Galaxy S5: April 11, 2014 (203 days later)
iPhone 5s: September 10, 2013
Galaxy Note 4: October 17, 2014 (402 days later)
Galaxy S6 Edge: April 10, 2015
iPhone X: November 3, 2017 (938 days later)
Samsung Galaxy: June 29, 2009
iPhone X: November 3, 2017 (3049 days later)For instance, from the NY Times review of the Galaxy Note 8:
>Some of the biometrics, including the ability to unlock your phone by scanning your face or irises, are so poorly executed that they feel like marketing gimmicks as opposed to actual security features.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/technology/personaltech/s...
What does Apple have to do to impress people? Do all this then give the phones away for free?
The low end doesn’t understand why people pay so much more for fit and finish.
Except automobiles. Everyone seems to accept and even approve of the high end for cars.
The dashes split apart, all the clear coat on the carbon elements falls off, the paint oxidizes.
Park a 2003 Murcielago next to a 98 Lexus or Toyota (of any kind). You'll be real surprised which one weathered better.
Anyway, I digress, but I can agree with the point that 'high end car' is a lot different than 'high quality car' or 'long lasting car'.
Edit: That was overly sarcastic but it went from talking about italian cars, to Ferrari specifically, to implying that the Italian brand is fine as long as it has Italian owners. Discussions are pointless if everyone's going to be arguing different points
It seemed like either you knew what the other poster meant by Italian high end cars, the Ferrari brand, and chose to defend it despite knowing that it was bad for other reasons. Or you thought he was discussing Italian owned Italian brands when it turns out some famous Italian brands are not Italian owned.
Either way that looks like you two were using different definitions for the same words to my third party view
As for FaceID, I am not convinced yet. I would be more impressed with an under the screen fingerprint sensor.
But I guess I will try it in a couple of weeks, when I get mine, and form a better opinion.
IMHO component costs are not the reason Apple increased the price; they increased it because they could.
You haven’t used faceid yet are not convinced... Maybe wait until you’ve used it? I am using it right now, and so far there are very few times I’ve missed touchid, and I’ve been reminded of all the times that Touch ID would fail, like getting out of the shower etc...
I don’t understand the longing for an underscreen finger print scanner, does the computer in Star Trek require thumb print? Does the UI in minority report? If you imagine futuristic computer interfaces the computers just know who is using them, this is one of the first steps along that road...
As to the price, Apple price there phones where they want to price them to make sure they have high profit margins. I’m not sure why people complain about this. If they don’t do this they don’t make as much money. I do believe this phone costs significantly more to make than others, and the price fairly reflects that, though it is only £200 premium over the 8+...
How do you think Apple should price there products? A lower overall cost?
That was happening every year and marginal at best.
The Phone feels like it is from the future.
FaceID is a huge leap and affects how people use their phones. The phone can behave differently if you are looking at it. For example: showing sensitive info only if you're looking at it, and not playing notification sounds as loud (or at all) if you see the notification as it comes in.
https://www.wired.com/story/tried-to-beat-face-id-and-failed...
I'm sold. I'll take it.
Do you mean you think that the same people within Apple are working on both hardware and software, and are focusing more on hardware? Or that you think many people who write software have been re-educated, re-assigned, and are now working on hardware?
I assume that the size of Apple's teams working on iPhone are limited by more than resources, and the recruitment pools are totally separate, so it's not like they're spending too much on hardware engineers and can't afford enough software engineers, right?
I just don't really know how you can conceive of such a massive company as having an obviously zero-sum "focus" like a person has.
IMO it’s less “focus” and more having to rely on third party manufacturers who will push back due to liability.
iOS 11 is a beta quality product. One org that I’m familiar with has a 5x increase in help desk calls and replacements, mostly around the voice phone components failing.
But the fact is, you can ship glitchy software and fix it later, so they do. Hardware is much more expensive to do that with, so they don’t.
You really think that with unlimited money they couldn't have better software? They could, but they don't because it does not have enough of a return on investment. They 'focus' their resources on areas that will return them profit.
Ascribing the bugs to malice or carelessness rather than the fact that this shit is difficult is very unkind. Source: know many people who have spent last few months feverishly working nights and weekends.
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/24/nodejs_forks_ayo_co...
I am a developer on a team, too, and I know that sometimes you can't do everything you want because you simply don't have enough time, money, and developers to get it done.
I know it is hard, that is why I was saying it is a company resource issue, not a 'bad developers' issue. Even the best developer in the world can't complete a huge project by themselves in a short amount of time. You need company support, which means ample developers, QA, support, and time.
Not sure where you ever got 'malice' or 'carelessness' from.
It felt insulting because people I know personally do deeply care, and do spend a lot of effort for things that do not necessarily have a lot of return on investment (just for one example, iOS accessibility features for visually and hearing impaired are designed deep into the system and still have no equal). Aside from that, fixing bugs and improving stability does offer return on investment by building customer loyalty (case in point, after each major release I still see people mentioning Snow Leopard, an OS release dedicated exclusively to stability and performance improvements).
I’m not saying that things couldn’t be better, they always could, but I don’t think that all problems are as easily solved as you think. To take a classic counter example, Microsoft employs at conservative estimate twice the number of engineers compared to Apple, but still has not yet made a product twice as good or with half the bugs, imho. At a certain point, the system complexity just gets too great, and we need better architectures, tools and processes to get beyond that level.
Again, I am not saying you were intending to insult anyone, and apologies if I misunderstood something in your post. It’s just how it came across to me.
This bug has been annoying me, my family and friends for several days now. Nearly everyone I️ know with an iPhone. And the suggestion is to break predictive text to fix it. I️ really wish I️ would have bought an Android.
But yes I'd agree with that this is what iOS 11.0 should've been.
I buy Apple products because they run Apple software. I like the Apple hardware I have, but if it ran easily and bug free on other hardware, I suspect I’d end up with cheaper knock offs for the hardware itself.
Have you seen the tear down of the old MacBook power bricks? Check it out if you haven’t. There’s a lot of tech in there to improve efficiency (ie keep that tiny brick from melting)
They're awful. There are a LOT of teardowns of those. It's scary.
Don't assume that because 90% of the charger is well designed, the rest of the 10% is.
There is no or insufficient inrush protection in the charger. This results in a hefty current flowing the charge the primary DC cap in the switching power supply when you plug it into the wall (step response of a capacitor at DC is high instantaneous current if the source impedance is low such as rectified AC - derived from I=C(dV/dt), dv=350, dt -> 0, C~10mF, I->infinity in an idea model ignoring parasitics and series resistance of capacitor). This damages the pins and stresses the diodes terribly reducing the time to failure. Google inrush current protection.
You do NOT get this on decent industrial switching power supplies that actually cost less. They either have NTCs or pre-charge.
The Chinese ones are a whole different story. Some of those are absolutely abysmal and are in no way even comparable to the Apple ones.
The Apple ones certainly don't rank that high really in the scale of things, regardless of all the love spread over the Internet. If you're comparing them to a lowest bidding turd from China, then of course they're going to look good.
Here's a picture of the burn marks on the pins: https://i.imgur.com/aaHV1kX.jpg
I'm not going to even go into the three left IO boards I've replaced on MBP's where the magsafe connector has burned out.
It did sound a lot like you were describing the common issues with the knock offs though - however with the extra detail it really cleared it up, thanks for that.
There's at least a PFC chopper and fuse. I'd be surprised if there were no series inductors, though I can't spot them on http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr...
It's a reasonably complex pre-rectification stage for a consumer device. It's certainly not AC->rectifier->DC cap.
I can't explain the burn marks in the image -- stunning for a British plug. None of mine with Australian or European plugs show any significant burns. I see sparking when I plug it in, but that's standard for pretty much any SMPS.
There’s sparking when you plug it in and there’s this which is like a small explosion. Either way the sparking is entirely avoidable as well with a trivial. Little startup circuit or a couple of NTCs.
I’ve tried it on a sample of three chargers now (we have three MBPs in the house of differing ages and original chargers) and they all have it.
I’ve got a Lamba 12v 5A unit here as well which isn’t much bigger with a chopped off IEC lead on it. Nothing when you plug it in at all.
Dell's three year failure rate is almost 20%. Apple's is 10.
fwiw, I use Dell XPS boxes.
Now, maybe that bear needed killin. Who am I to judge? But maybe there are better tools for the job.
The main issue with Apple's power brick is that people wind the cord too tightly and don't leave slack. HP/Dell's main problem is that the female power adapter inside the laptop takes a lot of stress. In college, I had two roommates that broke their laptops due to the power connector.
Is that really a common belief? I know many people who think the opposite - apple is a hardware company.
In fact Tim Cook went out of his way several times to remind people that apple isn't a hardware company.
But many of us don't buy Apple for the hardware, but because we want to stay in their software ecosystem. I'd rather use a Nexus running iOS than an iPhone X running Android, and I'm even more invested in macOS. That Apple builds nice hardware is a bonus for me (but I'd honestly prefer better software right now).
I mean, on paper Apple is making more money from hardware than from software, but how do you measure hardware sales that only happened because of the software?
Linux on the other hand is exclusively Bluez which works fine... but god forbid you want to do something like BLE communications or more complex sound stuff, the docs are horrid.
The OS X BT stack is... well I dont have any issues with it per se but it, too, lacks features like a file explorer or an easy way to send files via BT.
Windows has a ton of problems.
If I turn the key in my car, get the electricity running though the circuit, then the phone gets connected to the car. If I turn the key one more time to ignite the engine the car system lose the bt connection and I have to manually force the connection with the phone.
I just ignite the car as soon as I sit in now.
It was either Apple or the clones, and so the clones got axed.
That's because the clones were cannibalizing Apple's own hardware offerings - the clones were gradually putting Apple out of its own business.
This NYT article from 1996 talked about how the Mac clone strategy was playing out for Apple [0].
[0] https://partners.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/1230macs.htm...
I'll never buy a non-Apple laptop anymore after dealing with flaky PC laptops for years, and the only reason I haven't bailed on Android is because of how bought into the ecosystem I am... but I'd buy an iPhone in a heartbeat if I could reliably run Android on it.
Afraid I'm completely different. I have an iphone but my computer runs linux. The reason I have an iphone is because the hardware is top-notch, and the OS is rather constricting -- I would much rather have an iphone running android than one running ios.
But I despise Android--I want a real Unix. I feel like Android was architected by complete idiots. Oh how I wish WebOS won instead of Android.
I'd prob still use it on and off if HP didn't take the store down.
I'll always miss webOS.
Anyway, not sure who said what exaclty, but Steve Jobs repeatedly said that Apple is great because of the tight interconnection between sw and hw. So Apple is not a hw company. It is not a sw company either. They do both and the result is greater than just a combination of the two.
I see Apple, and the way they present their products supports it, as an appliance company. It's harder and harder to repair their devices and the software is more and more integrated with the hardware – examples: force touch and feedback, Touch/Face ID, all the camera magic, Apple Pay, MBP Touch Bar etc. So basically the sw and hw are more and more inseparable unless you lose "half" the features.
It was in the pre-iphone era.
product: (String, String) = (Hardware, Software)
And yet Android dominates the market share. I don't think iOS is the best mobile OS, let alone the best by far.
Someone above concluded they are a product company and I was thinking 'appliance.' That's not a negative, they make devices fit for function and they, Apple, are remarkably good at it.
I can't think of an Apple product, and I type this on an iPad, that is truly the best in every aspect. However, they surely aren't the worst and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, I think.
Apple targets only the top end of the market. I’m a mobile developer and that’s why native apps are almost always iOS first. We know our iOS sales will be higher, and these are proprietary apps, not system features.
Android O is light years ahead of iOS.
You can quit e easily watch Plex (can’t remember if Netflix bothered) in the background while doing other shut with the PIP.
> you can’t watch a YouTube video either.
Which is YouTube’s fault ENTITELY. They are pushing YouTube red to allow for this (which isn’t even available in a lot of countries they advertise it in....)
PIP is not available on an iPhone.
This is a feature, not a bug.
They're intrusive, they're obnoxious, they cause performance hiccups on occasion. They're not a superior version of anything.
2) It is Google's fault that you can't watch YouTube whilst doing something else. Apple provided an API which third party YouTube clients already support.
You can debate whether Android O is better or not. But I would hardly call iOS a toy just because it doesn't allow for rich notifications.
I'm talking about an iPhone obviously.
Notification aggregation and priority is table stakes for serious office work.
Apple zealots are the fucking worst. Your phone makers are too incompetent to implement notifications properly, so your solution is to find a new job.
At least I wasn't enough of an idiot to use iMessage and get locked into the Apple ecosystem.
It's not that hard, I'm sure somebody's done this on video, do the test yourself if you're not convinced, I don't have an iPhone 7 Plus and 20 hours of time on my hands.
iOS is a hog, and the A series chips are clearly not competitive in idle power consumption as configured by iOS.
We have confirmed reports that Pixel 2's build quality is... questionable:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/google-is-investigat...
edit: keep downvoting. You can't change the facts :)
The regular Pixel 2 does seem pretty solid.
I disagree with both.
Apple is a design company that builds hardware and software together so the design works as intended.
FWIW Google has put a lot of effort in the hardware of their datacenters, and in that sense they're a hardware giant as well. Compared to their datacenter projects, Pixel is a funny hobbby for Google.
hell, the IS-IS implementation in Quagga is usable because of Google :)
There are also a bunch of papers on the network architecture, https://research.google.com/pubs/Networking.html .
But yes, a lot is closed for the obvious reason that this is really core to the business Google is running.
(I'm a datacenter engineer at Google)
We actually release a decent amount of information, see [0]. I particularly recommend "Jupiter Rising: A Decade of Clos Topologies and Centralized Control in Google's Datacenter Network" [1].
[0] https://research.google.com/pubs/Networking.html [1] https://research.google.com/pubs/archive/46286.pdf
Thanks!
- hardware has gotten a lot faster, which helps the second reason.
- Google giving away free GGC nodes to ISPs (if you meet their requirements). The distribution of these nodes has gotten a lot wider since container days.
- Google is building more smaller scale (a dozen racks or so) traditional data centers closer to ISPs.
I don't think shipping container design was never a very good idea, to begin with - it was an interesting experiment that didn't scale as well as they thought it would.
Seems like it but unfortunately it is their product and they are selling it.
On the other hand Google seems to be more of a software company, which reflects in their general culture and hiring practices.
That's just word redefining. And I have an old iMac 20 that has all its USB ports on the back and every time I have to twist my wrist to plug something I am reminded how Apple isn't that good at functional design. The thing is pretty though.
Clean internal layout, relatively serviceable, structured light 3D scanning built in. You can debate whether or not Apple have made good UI decisions, but the hardware design execution here is superb.
Then I realize, the only reason this is remotely possible is due to volume. So it almost says less about technical progress and performance per cubic inch per dollar coming down, and more about how volume makes the above possible.
Check out all their in-depth guides.
Props to the Fairphone 2 for receiving a 10/10 for repairability.
Their service is pretty good too by the way. I had a broken bottom module and when I contacted them was sent a new one the same day. Took a week to get here because international shipping but that's hardly their fault. Repairs really was just power down, open phone, unscrew component, put in new one, fasten screws, boot up phone. Took me fifteen minutes, which felt awesome.
I'm not going to deny that the newest iPhone is both more advanced technology wide and just gorgeously designed, but in all honesty, smartphones hit a level of "good enough" a few years ago and it will take quite a fundamental leap in features for me to really want and upgrade.
The only issue is that the camera in this thing is still frustratingly sluggish to the point where it feels like a downgrade compared to my iPhone 5s. Maybe the software is partially to blame, I've been looking on fdroid for replacement apps but none seem faster.
I hope they sell a shedload, Purism also.
I will admit that the iPhone is a good phone though!
Though most impressive ever for me was a Panasonic cassette player (walkman style) in the 90's. The thing was barely larger than a cassette itself. My young mind was blown out.
I'm sure they investigated designing simply L-shaped battery but for some reason they decided to go with two batteries instead.
I wonder if its because one is supplying power to some critical circuits while other one isn't, or since display and battery are #1s replacement on these phones, they simply run some stats and decided that splitting cells into two separate battery boxes will help them cut the costs down the line when it will come to battery replacement.
My take is that still less expensive that constant replacement (warranty, recalls) that they do on daily basis.
Ten years ago, Apple totally nailed the design. Same buttons, same speaker design, same full panel display. Even design work by a company as talented as Apple, you might expect that a new model ten years into the future may look quite different, but it looks the same.
There might be a button or two missing…
http://www.mobilephonehistory.co.uk/lists/by_year.html
Huge change. But after Apple nailed the modern smartphone design on the first try, ten years later it is remarkably unchanged.
What?
http://www.techpavan.com/wp-content/uploads/mobile-phone-mar...
Devoting the majority of the vertical dimension of the profile of the phone to display was definitely not a priority of the market at the time.
The problem was they all used a stylus
And really, how similar every non-notebook/desktop Apple product has been to each other one. Design-wise, the iPhone was just an iPod with a bigger screen; iPod touch/nano/other variations are obviously just an iPhone in different sizes; the watch is just the iPod nano on a wristband; iPad is a bigger iPhone. Apple hasn't released a fundamentally new design idea in over a decade.
On the one hand, the consistency of physical design is its own type of branding and creates solid brand recognition. On the other hand, the UI/UX that transformed interacting in the digital world from using keyboards and mice to using our fingers on touch screens is already old. Apple really has no need to be creative since they are still profiting from their slight modifications. But the next big, real revolution in personal computing design and usage will need to be more than a glass rectangle with slightly better curved edges.
I much prefer Apple’s iterative and proven designs than other manufacturers’ products that are seemingly designed without experience from previous generations.
Not intending to start a design-related flamewar..
The pencil is already old too. So?
It's not clear to me that for things to be usable the way they get used has to change at some particular rate. On the contrary, the most usable user experiences (UXs) seem to be quite stable.
That's revisionist at it's best, and ridiculously untrue at it's worst. iPods in 2007 were about 1/3rd screen, and 2/3rds clickwheel. They were shaped like, and as thick as, a pack pf playing cards, made of plastic and metal (not glass), and basically shared nothing with the iPhone's design. When that device was released, we'd never seen anything like it.
It makes the original iphone seem impressive, perhaps, but now ten years on we see that there has been no real innovation in the phone form factor since then.
They're all just (iphones).
I personally always liked the qwerty slate form factor of the Moto Q / Nokia E71 / Blackberry Classic. But there were many other different and interesting form factors (Nokia communicator, Helio Ocean, that square phone from Motorola that opened out a keyboard like a knife...).
It's interesting and fun to browse through this nice visual history:
https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/the-evolution-of-ce...
... and it makes me wish there were some new form-factor innovation in mobile phones.
Performance is a feature, and I don't see a compelling reason why I should upgrade my 6S. I have a suspicion that Apple will keep the '6' chassis they've stuck with since the release of the 6 (6/6S/7/8) at 2GB of memory, and will continue to do so with the 9 next year. Pixel 2 performance with 4GB of memory is impressive. And I will not pay $1000 for a phone, that's absurd.
Features I focus on when evaluating a phone - how quickly does the device unlock? Does it have a fingerprint reader? How quickly can I open the camera app? How are the photos? (I really hope Android device makers diverge from Apple and pursue a under the front glass fingerprint reader instead of facial recognition). I could care less about AI assistants/animojis. Get the basics down.
Google _still_ has significant QA issues nearly six years after designing their first phone (Nexus 4) for OEM manufacturing.
RCS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services) still needs to get off the ground. Until then, iMessage will still rule. My family is familiar with the built in messaging app, and I'm not asking my parents to use a separate app for texting. RCS will be able to replace iMessage for us.
Apple is a $875 billion dollar company because they figured out how to do customer service/QA/hardware and designed an easy to use OS.
I'm not asking Google to focus on ease of use for the OS, just get QA/service/hardware correct, at a $650 price point.
Apple does the QA/service well because of their focus on usability. Usability has been a focus since their founding.
They spend more money on design, which is why their hardware can cost more than the PC/Android equivalent.
There’s quite a few threads on reddit.
A high jump in resolution/PPI will do that.
It really should have shipped with 4GB of memory.
Why? The iPhone 8 doesn't even have the 3GB that the X has and it's been deemed the fastest smartphone ever tested. That sounds like a case of valuing specs more than the actual usage.
Face ID unlock is waaaay faster than touch ID every was for me. Especially considering how often touch ID failed due to sweat / grease.
Touch ID authentication misses are rare in my experience with the devices I've owned since the 5S.
I have some complaints about the device, but this feature rocks as far as i'm concerned
Reminds me of the attributed quote from Ford saying "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse"
Fingerprint reader is just a mean to an end to provide secure login. How quickly people forget that a few years back people were asking Apple to introduce gesture-based pin entry like on Android phone. Fingerprint reader made that requirement obsolete.
Also, there are new workflow that are enabled by FaceId. For example, it is completely reasonable to require authentication before popping out the keyboard, before sending any message, change any option, or switch to another application, ...
That's huge. There was no way back to pin code to me once fingerprint allowed me to remove the grace period for no authentication on the lock screen. The workflows I mentioned above (if practical in reality) similarly would change the game and remove any interest to fingerprints reader. (well assuming FaceId works as Apple demoed - that's a big if in the first gen of the technology)
edit: side note - fingerprint working on the whole screen would allow the same workflows that I mentioned. That would be a competing technology worth looking at.
Such archaic things need to evolve or disappear. What's the status on electronic SIM? We don't need a piece of plastic that holds a numeric key and takes up EXPENSIVE real-estate in one of the most densely packed electronic devices in the world.
Apple doesn't have the leverage to sway the standards?
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/12/the-cellular-enabled-apple...
Yes you can buy roaming packs, but local SIM cards are as low as 5$ for unlimited LTE.
I mean it won't be that hard to make it so that you can easily load a different esim when traveling. It will have many slots, since it can just emulate more and more. But is that in everybody's interest?
The issue is that getting phone providers to co-operate is basically impossible. Not just politics, but everyone has their own way of doing things, so you need a custom implementation for each provider.
(Source: I used to work at an company who ran an SMS gateway)
They probably anticipate this future where virtual phones will be exported to west.
> don't need a piece of plastic that holds a numeric key
In addition, wouldn't having an apple designed electronic SIM reduce what 3rd party firmware (hardware SIM card) is running on their devices? Seems like a good deal to me.
ref#1: https://www.slideshare.net/c.enrique.ortiz/sim-card-overview
But getting carriers to support the interchange is hard. Device manufacturers would love to remove the SIM card and make eSIM proprietary to lock their phones into a walled garden - “Pay to add your IMSI to this device.” Carrier do not love. Also carriers are telcos, not tech companies.
One exception : IoT. Distributed sensors that have 10 year lifespan need flexibility; and eSIM is a bigger push there.
Citation : Run an MVNO that is wary of the future of eSIM.
https://www.cnet.com/news/sim-card-maker-apples-design-won-s...
Since then, Apple has been pushing for carriers to support a new standard for an embedded chip in the device to hold the data currently stored on one or more removable SIM cards.
>The Apple SIM supports wireless services across multiple supported carriers, which can be selected from a user interface within their operating systems, removing the need to install a SIM provided by the carrier itself.
sims are used for more than just phones. the chip on your credit card is a Secure Element. the chip in your passport is too. these are some of the most physically and technically secure pieces of hardware ever made
Most SIMs I know are black boxes, with 0 public documentation. Taking into account that they are issued by telecom companies I don't trust them at all.
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This was fascinating, but I am not very knowledgable when it comes to hardware and I have a burning question.
Everybody here seems to think this was a great feat of engineering. I am looking also at the teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S8. Where is Apple doing a better work than Samsung? Is it just the fact that Apple are "doing it themselves" that is impressive? (not implying it isn't.)
The only thing I can see is that the iPhone X seems to devote much more space to battery, by cramming up all of the components tighter together. Does this mean the iPhone X will have a better battery life?
I truly have no dog in the fight, and have no interest in starting a flame war. I'm just curious.
PD: Yeah, the A* CPUs are fantastic, no doubt. But that doesn't show in this teardown.
> and the OLED is well supported by a frame, unlike some displays we know.
"Some displays" linked to the S8 tear down, and "we know" to the Note 4.
I too wish they had taken a stronger tack and clearly compared against other flagships. (Including the iPhone 8 too)
Aside: I'm excited to see how far technology advances in my lifetime. The general consensus seems to be that we are approaching some supposed limit. I'm hoping this turns out to be wrong, and that our technology continues to experience "horse => car" types of leaps. All I've been reading is that we only have "faster horses" in our future. With any luck, this kind of narrative is short-sighted and naive, and we have some incredible technological advances to look forward to.
Biological brains are much more energy efficient (up to 100,000x depending on who you ask) than our current offerings, and beyond that one can make an entropic argument as to how much energy information processing should require, to which the answer is "not much".
What makes you believe that we are only destined for incremental improvements?
Just like when you use it.
Many, many people have pointed out that looking directly at the phone (as needed by Face ID), is NOT the only way to use a phone. Sometimes one just wants to glance down at the screen to see a notification. Watch Nilay's review and you'll see what I mean.
Actually, by default they don't display the content of notifications until it recognises your face. But you may be able to turn this off.
I pick it up off my desk with my thumb on the home button and it's unlocked long before I start using the phone.
I also frequently use my phone laying flat on the desk, reaching over and just pressing the home button.
So far feels pretty natural, 70-80% time the phone is unlocked before I think ‘is the phone unlocked’ the rest of the time I forget I need to glance (literally glance with your eyes) at the phone, which I think comes from muscle memory of from unlocking with touchid and not looking at the phone while it unlocks...
Passive security, will become standard across screen based interfaces in the next 5-10yrs...
It periodically scans for attention, not battery intensive, and can actually be battery positive as it aggressively dims the screen and then turns it off if it finds it is not being looked at.
I've also found, with it sitting on my desk on a stack of cables I brought in to ensure I could sync and power everything during the transition (lightning to USB, lightning to usb-c, apple watch magnetic charger, you get the idea), that it would unlock just from a swipe, without even having to tilt it towards me.
After I've played with it a bit, I find you can be off by far more than you expect -- maybe 20-30 degrees from 'face to face' with the phone. And you don't have to be close.
It doesn't work in the lying-flat-on-my-desk use case, but if i pick it up and swipe up, it's unlocked. Period. I don't even have to think about how it's angled, or if i I'm looking at it, or what the angle is, or what the light is.
I'm VERY impressed. I thought the #1 thing I'd miss would be pressing the home button while it lies on my desk, but it hasn't been an issue yet. and the transition to swipe up instead of home button press took 0 minutes. I thought it would take me days or weeks.
But this hardware is absolutely incredible. I wish there was a clear casing to the phone. Apple has always done a great job design the internals and clearly this is no exception.
That's a big surprise to me!
Because with your method you are doubling the power.
Imagine you have one charger with a fixed output of 10W (2A @ 5V). Now you have a USB splitter cable which allows you to plug two devices into the same charger.
What happens? Most likely both devices will charge at 1A (5W) instead of a single device charging at 2A (10W). The power output of the charger doesn't magically increase to 4A (20W) because you plugged in a USB splitter cable.
Increasing the number of battery cells is equivalent to adding more splitter cables to the charger. The input power doesn't change, but the power to each cell (device) is decreased proportionally to the number of cells (devices) drawing power.
Explanation as to why this isn't the case:
TL;DR - putting the cells in parallel without changing their C-rating does nothing for charging them faster. You're limited by the C-rating of the cells, which is usually determined by the quality of components and the anode/cathode design.
Putting batteries in parallel maintains the voltage of one cell but multiplies the current by the number of cells in the pack.
E.g. if you have two Lithium Polymer cells in parallel, the nominal voltage will be 3.8V. At 5W, the current would be ~1.3A
Putting batteries in series adds the cell voltages while keeping current the same for the pack.
e.g. if you have two Lithium Polymer cells in series, the nominal voltage of the pack would be 7.6V and at 5W the current would be ~0.66A. Notice compared to the parallel example: voltage is doubled, current is halved.
What you need to compare here is the so-called "C-rating" (capacity rating) of the cell. All the C-rating means is that if you provide this much current, the cell is full in an hour. A C.10 rating would be the current over 10 hours. C.20 current over 20 hours, etc.
e.g. you have a 3.8V LiPo cell that's 2000mAh. A C-rating of 1 means you charge or discharge at 2A and it's full/dead in an hour.
So, putting batteries in parallel keeps their voltage the same but "doubles" the current.
However this entire time we've been talking about current, when we should be talking about power.
If your 2000mAh battery has a C-rating of 1, meaning you can charge it at maximum at the capacity of the battery, then in parallel you have 4000mAh (2x2000mAh) at 3.8V, meaning you can safely charge it at 4000mAx3.8V = ~15W
Put the same two cells in series. Now you have 2000mAh at 7.6V. How fast can you charge it? 2000mAx7.6V = ~15W.
Consumer electronics don't need a high C-rating because the cells don't need to charge/discharge at extremely high rates (as they would in a quadcopter, for example).
The main benefit of putting cells in series is that you raise the voltage, which lowers the current and thus means you can use smaller (and cheaper) wires to carry the same power.
Putting the cells in parallel would increase the current for the same power, but it does not change the C-rating and thus the amount of power you can safely put into the cells.
Imagine a list of paper which you need to fold into compact form. It would be really hard to fold it into "L".
Batteries made of long sheets folded then into rectangle
http://images.indianexpress.com/2017/01/galaxynote7_info_1.j...
Another guess is with an L shaped battery, thermal expansion makes it tricky because the L shaped compartment has a sharp inner corner which runs this risk of stressing the battery when it expands. A square compartment does not have that issue.
In any event, Apple knows how to produce weird shaped batteries. Just look at the Macbook. But it's in a nicely shape space.
Irregular in 3 dimensions (terraced).
- Cheaper to produce / higher yields than an L shape?
- LiIon batteries have a power density <-> energy density tradeoff. Perhaps the batteries have different chemistries so as to get the best of both worlds.
oof, sounds like this is in part because of the "camera nub". I know a number of people who have had the back glass panel replaced on their iPhones, almost as many as the front. Sounds like X owners may want to opt for a case or some extra protection for the back glass and chassis to save the pain of getting this replaced/repaired, it sure isn't likely to be a DIY project for most.
Edit: Adding source
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
"You will."
(Oscar Wilde, if memory serves)
That seems a bit exaggerated.
Original
3G
3GS
4
4S
5 and 5C
5S
6 and 6 Plus
6S, 6S Plus, SE
7 and 7 Plus
8, 8 Plus, X
to them they have to consider each as it's own iteration because they're picking the device completely apart.
It does need to be plugged in once and then enabled, but after that you're off to the races. We're actually pretty close. It wouldn't surprise me if the next iPhone had no ports, although they'll probably save that for a non-S year.
It’ll get better but I’d be very surprised to see a popular phone go totally port-less in the next 5 years.
Sounds a lot like the headphone jack now that I type it out, but I guess ‘if you want to listen to music, buy Bluetooth headphones if you haven’t already, or use the adapter’ is easier on the consumer than ‘if you want to keep using carplay, buy a BMW.’