I'd take asymmetric borders over having a large notch anyday. See S10+ next to an iphone XS Max [0].
It's subjective of course, but strictly looking at display & bezels the "which is more aesthetically pleasing" question is not even close
It's subjective of course, but strictly looking at display & bezels the "which is more aesthetically pleasing" question is not even close
It's very weird to call it an issue as well.
I remember what kind of phones we had until 2007. I've used infuriating devices from Android vendors as well.
The notch is not even a first world problem....
What we are trying to solve is: We need more than just screen on the front of the phone, how do we solve this?
"We need more than just screen but don't want to have it visible" is an annoyance at best, not a problem we should be focusing on.
Even design wise, there are several more severe problems with iPhones they could concentrate on...
Issue is not a weird word in development.
There are a lot of actual big problems with your reasoning, but there are more productive things for me to concentrate on.
Actually using it and I don’t mind it a single bit, and that’s all that matters. I bet most people hating on it have not used it more than minutes.
Going wider than 2:1 doesn’t seem to be adding useful screen space, really
On the left, you've got the name of the carrier you are currently using, whos text is scrolling. If it's unlocked, it shows the current time and if GPS is enabled.
That's it.
Huh?
iOS 12, iPhone X, swipe from top-right to reveal:
Carrier, VPN status, Battery life as a numeric %
... none of which appear in the notch-level "ears". Which is fine (tho were it up to me, I'd prefer VPN status somehow integrated w/ signal strength indicators for cell & wifi).
https://i.redd.it/1es9glox9t601.jpg
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you?
edit: that was a genuine question
None of those are in your screenshot.
I'm not facetious at all when I say: Thank you for this quote. I'll save it and use it all the discussions I'll have on the subject from now on. It has really added a key-puzzle-piece to my understanding of the Apple-mindset.
The "notch" (Who came up with the term anyway? I don't believe Apple actually identifies it with a name.) is most definitely meant to be a notch: when applications are full-screen the notch will actually "eat" a part from your screen. This was shown since day 1 of the introduction where a phone was on display with the Wonder Woman movie full-screened and HDR activated. This is Apple's intended and expected behavior. It's Apple's choice to put the "notch" front and center, not to hide it with software and even set up guidelines to ignore it in application development.
Personally, I have an issue with notches and I will never own a device that has one. I find it a lazy, ugly and uninteresting way to increase the screen to body ratio of phones. But I'm somewhat glad with the current experimental designs that are being released by other manufacturers. It's refreshing to see different takes on the issue wether by popping up camera's, flipping over camera's or now even hiding camera's under the screen. Now that is innovation, that is design, that is actually looking for a solution for a very difficult problem. Instead Apple chose to put the "notch" front and center and to ignore it even going so far as to almost market it as a feature. Because look at all the high-tech stuff you get because of it. Sorry, I'm not buying it.
And this shows the incidious marketing that Apple partakes in. It redefines words and ideas on an active basis:
- A motherboard isn't a motherboard, it's a logic-board. It does exactly the same thing, it is exactly the same thing and even is produced in exactly the same way as motherboards. But somehow the brand on the shell makes it different.
- A Mac is different from a Personal Computer and as Louis Rossman has indicated a Mac can "regress" into becoming a PC. How is this possible, it does the exact same thing, is build in the same manner, uses the same technology and serves the exact same purpose.
- An "App" is basically a term that collects all the things that are software-y. A deamon? That's an app that runs in the background. A service? That's an app. A compiler? That's an app. A game? That's an app. A script? That's an app. A shell? That's an app. Etc...
- A repository with a gui suddely is an app-store. No, it's a software repo with included DRM for free.
- Durcing the introduction of the then new "earpod" design of the corded headphones that statement was made that they were engineered to guide audiowaves into your ears. Gee wiz Batman, what are all the other headphones doing then?
- The CE Iphones were "unapologetically plastic". So they are just plain and simple plastic. Just like all the other manufacturers out there.
- The famous "I'm a mac and I'm a PC" commercial is so obvious that it almost hurts. No, they both are PC's; they just look a little different.
This repackaging of words and ideas is a very worrisome trend. It muddies the water when it comes to definitions of words and it eventually will lead to the muddying of the truth. Not only that, but if we accept this sort of repackaging with our PC and phone hardware; why should we not accept it in other aspects of our lives? Why should there not be alternative-facts, when there are alternative PC's? It's a mechanism in our psyche that is prone to abuse and therefore we should not partake in it, even if it maximises profits.
It's all actually pretty simple, look at the definition of the word and if all of it applies; it sticks. How you feel about that does not matter.
> but if we accept this sort of repackaging with our PC and phone hardware; why should we not accept it in other aspects of our lives?
But most of us already do - in politics this redefinition of words is common. "Oil companies" become "energy companies", etc etc.
> It's a mechanism in our psyche that is prone to abuse
The hardest thing to change in an person is their identity. If someone's identity is tied to a particular belief (the earth is flat, my deity can throw bolts of lightning, etc) then anything that contradicts that belief is either ignored or else spun to fit the existing belief system of that person.
anyway even with most manufacturer producing notch design, I still find no benefit that entices me to move to a notch model for a feature that adds a total of 44 pixels rows at twice the selling cost to maintain visual border symmetry, but I understand there are people obsessed with aesthetics that are willing to part a sizeable amount of money for a symmetrical bezel.
It appears I'm just not the target audience of apple anymore.
phone calls
internet browsing
apps
heck, I can use firefox and ublock on android, so iphones look even worse feature wise from here. they look good and cost a lot and that's it.
even the app quality argument holds little value today as there's not many app today that aren't just cross-compiled
plus, a billion of little cuts, like not being able to download an mp3 and use it as alarm or ringtone, having to use safari for sites that use webgl, having skype etc to open link into safari forcing every time a copy paste etc etc.
iphones aren't bad experience as long as you commit to every single defalut they pick for you. outside that, they're pretty and they're expensive.
three years ago the tech gap in the hardware itself was enough to justify the price, with even high end androids having wholly inadequate performances, and I had iphones all the way up to the 5s, but that's irrelevant now, with even the midrange android beefy enough to go trough every application you can throw at them with ease.
Both of you think Android > Apple.
I'm conflicted on this topic. on one hand carriers are acting like total trash about android security. on the other hand people aren't forced into a lease and can get a vanilla android one device from a lot of different vendors and enjoy faster upgrades from the vendor and extended upgrades from projects like lineageos.
I think the root cause is the general populace voting with their wallet in a way that doesn't align with the best practices as seen from a more security conscious mindset.
however this issue intersects weirdly with budgeting and upgrading frequency. bar consideration on used market depreciation, one iphone purchase can get you 3 midrange android phones, so for the same budget you'd be more or less on the same os "freshness" for a comparable period of time, so to say, with increasingly better hardware and fresher batteries (because if you take 5 years as a iOS device lifetime you'll be hit by battery and subsequent performance degradation, likely twice), and of course if one has the budget to change device every year the issue disappears regardless of the platform.
as long as one can avoid carriers devices, I guess.
So ballpark math, a $900 iPhone XR would be covered by either Apple or American Express for 36 months and cost me $25/month to maintain. I effectively run a leasing program for myself inside my small business budget.
People care of iOS mostly because they're forced to interact with iOS bundled apps daily and well, if you compare those bundled app with the mess that's on non Android One devices Apple comes on top, but there are other choices.