Nearly all of the things you describe there aside from the camera are software/services based and don’t require improved hardware year-on-year at all. This is a problem for a company that makes its money selling expensive hardware.
Although my understanding is that the new cameras are incredible, so while you could get a "decent" photo on an old phone, unlike the other features it would be noticeably worse than the new phone.
The HUGE L by Apple is their shitty Photo App. It’s great if you have under 1Gb of photos, but over 100Gb - forget it - it is fucking. God. Aweful. PAINFUL!
And then they have the nerve of once in a while having a non-compatible Photo database format and so your WHOLE photo collection has to be converted… over 4 days wtf!
I specifically learned Rust so I could make a better Photo app. Sadly, time has shelved that project like many others, but man I would like be for someone to solve the iPhone -> Laptop photo management problem.
… and no, cloud backups? Not for > 400Gb thanks. All it takes is for Apple to kill your account and then ALL your family photos are gone. F that.
I rarely relate to issues people paint about Apple products. The Photos app is great, and moving stuff around between my MacBook and iPhone is seamless.
Could it be user error?
How many hundreds of gigs is your Apple Photo library? And have you used it long enough that you’ve had to bare the pain of an Apple Photo database upgrade?
And no, it’s not user error.
Sorry, but this is the one feature I hate (not being able to turn off) on today's phones. All the wannabe HDR, noise reduction, upscaling, color corrections that make the pictures look plasticky and overly colorful and just plain kitsch when compared to the same scene taken with a 10-15yo pocket camera.
New hardware would not be needed for most of it, but then Apple would have to make every iOS user a fixed yearly fee for a generic package of "some services at our disclosure". And that's quite impossible to achieve and stay competitive...
People love the seamless integration of hardware, software, and services that Apple provides, but introducing a mandatory yearly fee would erode that goodwill pretty much instantly.
It would be more or less impossible to pull off.
Imagine the effect of a TV spot touting a new OS feature on the new iPhone. Do I need the new phone to get that feature? As soon as you've asked the question, you're at the doorstep of "I wasn't thinking about it, but I will need to replace the battery soon ($$) and it's been getting slower …"
You may learn the feature is available in an OS update, but it's inconsequential: you've already rolled the idea of a new phone around and remember how nice it is to start fresh. This one may not get you, but next year's definitely will.
Some confusion around hardware -vs- software is key to draw people in.
I’d say this works exactly once - Apple will get a one time hit out of customers upgrading to an AI enabled phone, which will have a SOC capable of running AI (customers don’t need to know what a SOC is).
For anything beyond that, the media will likely pick up that it’s not strictly necessary and you’ll already have pocketed a lot of the benefit from having your first AI integrated phone.