At least here in Brazil, I've never heard such arguments.
Seems even more unlikely for non technical users.
It's just their latest market campaign, as far as I can tell. The vast majority of people buy iPhones because of the status it gives.
Seems even more unlikely for non technical users.
It's just their latest market campaign, as far as I can tell. The vast majority of people buy iPhones because of the status it gives.
Theres no “status” to a brand of phone when the cheapest point of entry is comparable and the flagship is cheaper than the alternative flagship.
Marketing in most of europe is chiefly not the same as the US though so maybe its a perspective thing.
I just find it hard to really argue “status” when the last 4 iPhone generations are largely the same and cheaper than the Samsung flagships.
At Elgiganten a Samsung S24 Ultra is 19,490 SEK[0].
The most expensive iPhone 15 pro max is 18,784 SEK at the same store[1].
[0]: https://nya.elgiganten.se/product/mobiler-tablets-smartklock...
[1]: https://nya.elgiganten.se/product/mobiler-tablets-smartklock...
Rich people ask for the latest most expensive iPhone even if they're only going to use WhatsApp and Instagram on it. It's not because of privacy or functionality, it's simply to show off to everyone they can purchase it. Also to not stand out within their peers as the only one without it.
As another content said: it's not an argument, it's a fact here.
There's obviously tons of people who see iPhone as a status item. They're right, because iPhone is expensive and only the rich can buy them. This doesn't mean iPhone is not the best option out there for a person who doesn't want to extensively customize his phone and just use it.
It’s not about if you’ve used android, it’s about if you’ve beeen poor-ish or stingy
To some people those are luxuries- the most expensive phone they buy is a mid-range Motorola for $300 with snapdragon 750g or whatever. They run all the same apps after all, they take photos.
iPhones are simply outside of your budget.
Sure, some people pick up the iPhone because they like the specs, or the apps, or whatever else. That's why I said the majority picks it up for status, not all. But keep in mind nobody's judging the iPhone's specs or capabilities here. We're talking about why people buy it.
Ask any teenager why they want an iPhone. I'd be very surprised if even one said it's because of privacy. It's because of the stupid blue bubble, which is a proxy for status.
I'm pretty sure if Apple released the same phone again with a new name and design, people would still buy it. For the majority, it's not because of features, ease of use, specs, etc: it's status.
It’s like how people who don’t like US and want nothing to do with US still discuss US politics, because it has so much effect everywhere.
(Ironically no enough people discuss China in any coherent level of understanding)
Apple doesn't release new products, they wait until the actual brave and innovating companies have done the exploration and then capitalize on all of their learnings. Because they are never the first movers and they have mountains of cash, they're able to enter the market without the baggage of early adopters. They don't have to worry about maintaining their early prototypes.
Apple doesn't innovate or show leadership, they wait until the innovators have proven that the market is big enough to handle Apple, then they swoop in with a product that combines the visions of the companies that were competing.
Apple is great at what they do, don't get me wrong. And swooping in when the market is right is just good business. Just don't mistake that for innovation or leadership.
Granted, you may have been leaning very heavily on the dictionary definition of "comparable", in that the two numbers are able to be compared. However, when the conclusion of that comparison is "More than twice the price", I think you should lead with that.
Keep in mind, the iPhone SE is using a 3 year old processor, the Samsung A15 was released 5 months ago with a brand new processor.
According to various sites, the Mediatek Dimensity 6100+ is a 6nm update to a core that was released 3 years ago (Dimensity 700 on a 7nm). It's 5-10% faster, likely due to the update from 7 to 6nm, as the cores are the same and run at the same speed. It contains an updated bluetooth chipset (from 5.1 to 5.2) and supports a larger max camera. The camera on the A15 is well below the max size of the previous chipset, however, the increased camera bandwidth should ensure that the camera feels snappier (a common complaint on low-end phones). The process improvement should increase efficiency as well, however, there are not benchmarks that are able to test this.
Marketing aside, all indications point to the iOS platform being the most secure mobile option (imo).
But not only that, Apple CPUs are objectively leagues ahead of their competition in the mobile space. I am still using a IPhone released in 2020 with absolutely no appreciable slow down or losses in perceived performance. Because even a 4 years old IPhone still has specs that don't lag behind by much the equivalent Android phones, I still receive the latest OS updates, and because frankly, Android OS is mess.
If I cared about status, I would have changed my phone already for a new one.
This is a lie. The latest Android SoCs are just as powerful as the A series.
>Because even a 4 years old IPhone still has specs that don't lag behind by much the equivalent Android phones, I still receive the latest OS updates, and because frankly, Android OS is mess.
Samsung and Google offer 7 years of OS and security updates. I believe that beats the Apple policy.
Or am I mistaken here?
On the second part:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPadOS_version_history
The last iPads to stop getting OS updates (including security, to be consistent with what Samsung and Google are pledging) got 7 and 9 years of updates each (5th gen iPad and 1st gen iPad Pro). The last iPhones to lose support got about 7 years each (iPhone 8 and X). 6S, SE (1st), and 7 got 9 and 8 years of OS support with security updates. The 5S (released in 2013) last got a security update in early 2023, so also about 9 years, the 6 (2014) ended at the same time so let's call it 8 years. The 4S, 2011, got 8 years of OS support. 5 and 5C got 7 and 6 years of support (5C was 5 in a new case, so was always going to get a year less in support).
Apple has not, that I've seen at least, ever established a long term support policy on iPhones and iPads, but the numbers show they're doing at least as well as what Samsung and Google are promising to do, but have not yet done. And they've been doing this for more than a decade now.
EDIT:
Reworked the iOS numbers a bit, down to the month (I was looking at years above and rounding, so this is more accurate). iOS support time by device for devices that cannot use the current iOS 17 (so the XS and above are not counted here) in months:
1st - 32
3G - 37
3GS - 56
4 - 48
4S - 93
5 - 81
5C - 69
5S - 112
6 - 100
6S - 102
SE - 96
7 - 90
8 - 78
X - 76
The 8 and X look like regressions, but their last updates were just 2 months ago (March 21, 2024) so still a good chance their support period will increase and exceed the 7 year mark like every model since the 5S. We'll have to see if they get any more updates in November 2024 or later to see if they can hit the 7 year mark.
These are very disingenuous numbers that don't tell the complete story. An iPhone 7 getting a single critical security patch does not take into account the hundreds of security patches it did not receive when it stopped receiving support. It received that special update because Apple likely was told or discovered it was being exploited in the wild.
Google and Samsung now offer 7 years of OS upgrades and 84 months of full security patches. Selectively patching a phone that is out of the support window with a single security patch does not automatically increase its EOL support date.
What we can do today is note that Apple never made a promise, but did provide very long security support for their devices despite that. They've already met or come close to the Samsung/Google pledge (for one device) on almost half their devices, and those are all the recent ones (so it's not a downward trend of good support then bad support, but rather mediocre/bad support to improving and increasingly good support).
Another fun one:
iPhone XS was released in September 2018, it is on the current iOS 17 release. In the absolute worst case of it losing iOS 18 support in September, it will have received 6 full years of support in both security and OS updates. It'll still hit 7 years (comfortably) of security updates. If it does get iOS 18 support in September, then Apple will hit the Samsung/Google pledge 5 years before Samsung/Google can even demonstrate their ability to follow through (Samsung has a chance, but Google has no history of commitment).
I have time to kill before training for a century ride:
Let's ignore everything before iPhone 4S, they had short support periods that's just a fact and hardly worth investigating. This is an analysis of devices released in 2011 and later, when the phones had, mostly, matured as a device so we should be expecting longer support periods. These are the support periods when the phones were able to run the still-current iOS versions, not counting later security updates or minor updates but after the major iOS version had been deprecated. As an example, for the iPhone 4S it had support from 2011-2016. In 2016 its OS, iOS 9, was replaced by iOS 10. Here are the numbers:
4S - 5 years
5 - 5 years
5C - 4 years (decreased, 5 hardware but released a year later in a different case)
5S - 6 years
6 - 5 years (decreased, not sure why)
6S - 7 years (hey, Apple did it! 2015 release, lost iOS upgrades in 2022)
SE(1st) - 5 years (like 5C, 6S hardware but released later)
7 - 6 years (decreased over 6S, not sure why)
8 - 6 years
X - 6 years
BTW, my daily driver is an iPhone 13 and I was coming from an iPhone X. So I'm well aware of the incredible support Apple provides its phones. Although, I would still like to see an 8+ year promise from them.
Neither of these hopes retroactively invalidates the fact that Apple has had a much better track record of supporting old phone models up to this point. Even if you do split hairs about the level of patching some models got in their later years, they still got full iOS updates for years longer than most Android phones got any patches at all, regardless of severity.
This is not an argument that somehow puts Android on top, at best it adds nuance to just how much better iOS support has been up to this point.
Let's also not forget that if Apple wasn't putting this kind of pressure on Google, they wouldn't have even made the promise to begin with, because it's clear how long they actually care to support products with no outside pressure.
My Pixel 4a here is also going strong, only the battery is slowly getting worse. I mean, it's 2024, do phones really still get slow? The 4a is now past android updates, but that was promised after 3 years. But at 350 bucks, it was like 40% less than the cheapest iPhone mini at that time.
Hardware is pretty beefed up but bloat keeps on growing, that is slowing things down considerably.
Only because Apple lost a lawsuit otherwise they'd have kept intentionally slowing it down.
Apple says it made these changes for other reasons, honestly, truly. And if it happened to have the same effect, then that was unfortunate, and unintended.
Only Apple really knows. But there was a slew of changes and reversals following the drama. "Oh, we'll implement notifications now", "Oh, we'll change the peak performance behavior", and "we will change and add additional diagnostics to make sure issues are battery related" certainly has a feel for a bunch of ex post facto rationalization of several things that seem, to me, that if it was truly a battery thing all along, would have been functional requirements.
iPhones are not ubiquitous here, and they're way more expensive than other options.