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Comment by jdprgm | Hacker News Reader

I can think of quite a few things to fix just they are extraordinarily difficult engineering problems versus 10-20% improvements on existing features or random tweaks:

- novel approach to camera optics that can completely flatten them into the phone - front camera hidden behind the screen removing the island or inset - dramatically better battery tech density leading to like week long usage - way more ram (100gb+) and processing power for powerful local llm and other ai - significant reduction in thickness and weight. like this air with no bump but also under 100 grams - maybe some stuff with projectors

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They could fix the camera bump and improve the battery life, just by making the phone thicker.

With the introduction of the iPhone Air, it would have been a great opportunity to do this on the normal model.

Those who care about phone thickness could buy the Air, and the rest of us could have our large battery flat phones.

This. I don't want a very thin phone — I want one that fits in my pocket smoothly, and the bump ruins that. Give me a thicker phone, with a bigger battery and rounded edges like the original iPhone.

it's like that Mach 20 razor. keep adding more!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m6GpIOhbqRo

You know, I forgot my razor and was on vacation in a very touristy place which only had expensive, "luxury" brands of everything just to pump up the price. So I got stuck buying one of those Mach 4's. I have to say, it was actually a very nice shave. I'm usually a total skeptic and this is obviously Mad did a great job with this commercial, but there is something to be said for that product. I haven't bothered paying the higher price for it in general, but I do kinda miss it.

First time I'm seeing an ad on hacker news, well disguised.

https://theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-...

Interesting! I hadn’t seen that Mad TV ad before. It’s quite reminiscent of this one from The Late Show on Australian TV in 1992. I can totally see people having a similar idea from the same blade escalation process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gStI9ysPrhs

They put the new battery into the other iphones. +6-7 hours battery life over prev. generation.

You can do that easily. You just have to give more money to apple to buy the case and attachable battery pack.

This is not true. None of the Apple cases (or third party cases) give a flush finish to the entire phone. They just add a new, bigger, larger bump below the camera bump which lets the phone basically lie flat. It does not make it easier to smoothly fit into a pocket or anything like that, and the phone is still wobbly while placed face-up on a surface.

No one would buy it (by Apple standards) because no one is asking for an over half pound phone. I bet a 17 Pro with a flat back that was all battery would approach a pound.

Note that hidden front cameras have been available for a while - for example, the Samsung Z Fold 3 (2021). There are some engineering tradeoffs involved with light transmission and image quality that maybe Apple doesn't find favorable.

Interestingly Chinese manufacturers seem to be the main adopters of this tech. For example, the article below has Samsung, Xiaomi, ZTE, Oppo, Vivo (actually, this may just be due to there being many more large Chinese phone manufacturers in general.) https://www.smartprix.com/bytes/under-display-camera-phones/

Samsung is not Chinese.

Samsung is Korean.

Basically nobody cares about front camera performance since its never stellar and always over-ironed digital meh, especially compared to look of display that's constantly in-your-face. The photos taken with it are never taken for highest picture quality, rather just catching a person being somewhere.

The motivations of Apple to keep things as they are for so long, despite strong criticism from all over is one of business mysteries. A little middle finger to its user one may say, not big enough to stir things too much, just a bit.

> The motivations of Apple to keep things as they are for so long, despite strong criticism from all over

The only relevant criticism is their sales figures and revenue numbers. Everything else is just noise.

At some point you run into physics limitations with the camera though. Cameras are a weird bit of tech. In almost all other areas of tech, as we get more advanced, things get smaller - the opposite is true of camera sensors, they get better the larger they are. More light, less noise, better/more pleasing bokeh, etc. Same is true for lenses as well, and as the sensors get bigger, the lenses also must get bigger.

I love the idea behind the pro phone and going all out on cameras, but practically I want the air more. I wish it had an ultrawide, but it is what it is - I have and frequently carry around an actual camera with me most places I go where I'd want to take photos.

We had flush cameras the last time in the iPhone SE 2016. That camera was good enough for my modest needs. It's just that Apple has a different opinion.

You’re both unusual and unprofitable.

Unless you're a pro photographer who really cares about the camera improvements in the last couple of years?

People who routinely take photos in social situations. Camera phones don't have features that appeal to professionals, they do things that appeal to casual photographers.

Seconded.

Pictures of my dog are the main reason I upgraded from a 13 mini to a 16 Pro.

The difference was noticeable and I wouldn't go back.

Anyone who has a good desktop monitor to watch photos on?

A pro photographer is unlikely to care about their phone camera. Or at least those that are also hobby photographers and bring a camera regularly.

They say the best camera is the one you have with you, and your phone is usually with you. In any case, some professional photographers actually prefer shooting on their phone even for planned, high-profile shoots—perhaps they like its convenience, or that its unassuming nature puts subjects at ease. Or perhaps they find it creatively freeing to be burdened down by only minimal gear.

For example: https://www.gadgetmatch.com/time-covers-shot-iphones/

Yeah, idk. That seems like an awful idea to me. I’m not sure why she would shoot with an iPhone for such a job unless she got paid by Apple. Some practical reasons:

- Such an important moment is something you often wanna blow up in a large/hi-res print.

- An ultrawide lens is suboptimal for portraits and usually makes the face look puffy from the perspective.

- Unless you know the exact color & aesthetic for the cover you want to preserve the raw capture for changes in post to match the vibe.

While I can certainly appreciate the casual and intimate vibe she’s going for, as a pro she could have brought any decent camera with a portrait lens and keeping the shoots equally short without compromising quality and adding risk for the poor layout person who has to work with it later.

I consider myself a hobby photographer, and I love having a phone camera. I can then have the tele glass on for entire hike/session, and do landscapes on the phone. Currently, 2 weeks in, I didn't even touch the landscape glass in it's case.

My wife really likes the cameras on the Pro. The macro for insects and flowers and things mostly - which are useful for her work.

Pro photographer are probably the only one that do not care about this, as they have another option (their very expensive and capable pro camera).

Everyone else takes photos with their phone and yes, everyone wants to take better photos

Pro photographers aren't professionals because they have expensive cameras, it's because they get paid to deliver professional results. A phone camera can be the most usable camera for a result because it's smaller and fits in more places.

Though the camera isn't even the most important equipment, that's lenses/lighting (plus stabilizers, studio backdrops, etc.)

> novel approach to camera optics that can completely flatten them into the phone - front camera hidden behind the screen removing the island or inset - dramatically better battery tech density leading to like week long usage

The thing you are looking for is meta lenses, not the company. They could cover the entire back-face of the phone and provide some pretty incredible capabilities. We are not there yet, but I'd expect to see them in the next 20 years.

While we're at it, here's my smartphone wishlist:

- Novel radios that enable true Starlink connection in your pocket for gigabit internet globally

- multi-spectrum imaging for spectroscopy and FLIR-like cameras to get temperature info in images

- Light field camera system for true 3D imaging and synthetic refocusing

- Air quality sensor that can also act as breath analyzer

I, also, would like a Star Trek tricorder.

I was going to come in with a set of reasons why these wouldn't sell, but... I think they could! Air quality fits neatly into Apple's health push, though I could see them making that a Watch feature rather than a phone feature (since your phone lives in your pocket, and quality sensors need time for the readings to stabilize). 3D imaging and synthetic refocusing both have a wow factor that would be easy to get people excited about. The only one I'm unsure of is multi-spectrum imaging; while I suspect pretty much anyone on this forum would jump at that, I don't have a good idea of whether the general population would get excited about temperature data. At the very least, it'd be handy for some kitchen tasks where you need a surface temperature.

The Google Pixel phones have a temperature sensor (1x1 though, not a full camera). I use it a couple times a month...

We also have a Seek phone attachment camera. It's cool but again, don't use it in daily life that much.

Man, the Oneplus 8 I believe had an 'xray' camera that was super cool, until people realized you could use it to 'see through clothes', and so it was disabled. I have to imagine cool camera tech is being held back to some degree by that still today.

Why do you need a gigabit connectivity on the phone? Aside question: can you tell the difference between 4K and 8K video on the phone without actually checking?

> Novel radios that enable true Starlink connection in your pocket for gigabit internet globally

Satellite comms gets very close to face melting tech quite quickly, so I would prefer not to have that in a mobile device....

I would like a light field camera. I've seen some research about using and array of 1mm2 cameras (basically the smallest omnivision module) and one decent module to make a synthetic high res camera. Takes a huge amount of GPU power to get not very interesting results though.

I just want one that will not break when dropped, run all day, and actually be fast on the 5G we've paid for over and over again.

> - multi-spectrum imaging for spectroscopy and FLIR-like cameras to get temperature info in images

Restricted by ITAR. You can buy lowres attachments for it on Aliexpress though.

Also, expand existing capabilities for NFC/RFID/Sub-Ghz/Infrared and add new. I want to use my phone to control my TV, door, office badge, etc.

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