For example, any improvements Apple made to wireless networking would by necessity be available to competitors - and they actually do it anyway! Apple are a major contributor to wireless standards, kickstarted Wifi in the first place and are major contributors on connector standards too including USB-C. But as I say, these are standards so not inherently differentiating features.
We're at the point with handsets that one person's differentiation is another person's feature bloat. Take the people replying to me saying they prefer touch ID. Fair enough, I can understand why, but the corollary to that isn't that therefore face ID is worthless and not an innovation. That's just crass and why I phrased my post in a 'what have you done for me recently' framework. When a company is dressing a market of billions, 'I don't like new feature X that's popular with hundreds of millions, therefore Apple isn't innovative' comes across as whiny self obsession.
On top of that, iPhones have suffered negative press about battery life and slowdowns from new OS updates -- iOS 12 fixes this but a lot of people may have been soured by the iOS 11 experience.
How so?
> No finger print scanner.
It’s not like they didn’t replace this with something else…
> Falling behind in photography.
By what metric? iPhone is still competitive with leading Android flagships, as it always has been.
> Poor OS.
“Poor” is not a very descriptive word.
Nope, for the first time it is isn't even close to Huawei phones, let alone the Pixel 3 in both low-light performance and zoom performance.