IPhone 5: Apple’s 16:9 compromise
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
The writer says the phone can be summed up by an extra row of home icons; there are in fact improvements to many hardware and software facets of the device. One may not think the improvements are major, but denying their existence temporarily to make an argument is silliness.
He then gripes for two paragraphs about his own personal impressions about how Apple presents products, including one paragraph griping about a guy who is now dead, and thus presumably not responsible for the presentation in question, i.e., the iPhone 5 presentation.
In the next paragraph, more whining about presentation, plus a blatant lie, saying "Apple tried to convince us that it had stolen a 16:9 display from the gods". Apple did no such thing. I watched the entire 2-hour event. There is not a single boast about Apple magically creating 16:9, originating 16:9, or any other such nonsense. In fact, 16:9 was barely mentioned. At all. The writer is simply making it up.
Then griping about a Jony Ive video.
Then silliness about how "Thin and light smartphones were an exciting concept a couple of years ago"; perhaps the writer hasn't noticed, but thin and light has ALWAYS been a driving concept in smartphones and basically every other kind of portable (and even non-portable) tech design. It has always been an issue and will always be an issue. So when someone makes something circa 20% thinner and lighter, yes, that is noteworthy. It will not change the course of planetary history single-handedly, but it is notable.
He then lies about the hardware, saying that "you would be hard stretched to find any new features except for the single-chip GSM/CDMA/LTE radio". But that's not true either. The CPU is reported to use A15 cores, which would make Apple first to market, but all the writer can do about that is boast of some vaporware product using the A15. The writer ignores the camera upgrades, the speaker upgrade, addition of an extra mic, etc., etc.
Later in the article, he gets the software wrong too, talking about how iOS will use the additional screen space: "Rather than do something interesting with this space, though, Apple will simply letterbox all 3:2 apps". That's already untrue; Apple has already redesigned the OS and its own apps to do interesting things with that space, and third parties who make major apps will of course do full redesigns in most cases too.
The author then makes a hilariously bad statement about why Apple made the phone thinner: "It seems like Apple felt compelled to increase the iPhone’s screen size, but at the same time it couldn’t summon up the marketing cojones to introduce a phone that was both larger and heavier than the iPhone 4S."
Yeah, that's right. The author is actually saying that the phone is lighter and thinner because of Apple's lack of "marketing cojones".
It's just hilariously bad writing and control of the facts, all the way through.
People are allowed to gripe. Some people don't think this iPhone is a significant improvement over the last. That's fine. You probably can't convince those people otherwise.
> ...a blatant lie, saying "Apple tried to convince us that it had stolen a 16:9 display from the gods".
This is clearly an opinion. It's weird to call an opinion a lie.
> He then lies about the hardware, saying that "you would be hard stretched to find any new features except for the single-chip GSM/CDMA/LTE radio".
Again I wouldn't call this a lie. It's the author's opinion that the most significant new feature is the radio. You could (and OP does) make the argument that the author is willfully ignoring the other feature updates. I still wouldn't call it a lie.
> Later in the article, he gets the software wrong too, talking about how iOS will use the additional screen space: "Rather than do something interesting with this space, though, Apple will simply letterbox all 3:2 apps". That's already untrue;
I think OP is stretching here. It is true that iOS will letterbox 3:2 apps right? Just because Apple and some developers will update their apps before launch doesn't make it untrue.
To my reading those are the only places where OP complains about incorrect facts. As outlined above I don't find the complaints very compelling.
As for the new features, the author didn't say the single-chip radio was the most significant new feature. The author said it would be hard to find any other new features. Now, I think he's trying to say that you'd have a hard time finding iPhone 5 features that don't already exist on other smartphones, in which case I believe that's accurate. But it's very easy to read it as saying you'd have a hard time finding new features on the 5 that weren't in the 4S, which is obviously wrong.
The letterboxing is misleading and I think I can make the case that it's outright false. First, it says that all 700,000 apps in the App Store will be letterboxed. This is simply false, as at least some third-party apps will be available in 16:9 on launch day. It goes on to say that Apple has been "very quiet" on the question of what happens if you try to use a 16:9 app on a 3:2 device, and whether developers will have to maintain multiple versions. that's simply wrong: the natural way of developing apps will be to use a flexible layout that supports both aspect ratios, developers won't need multiple versions, and it's not difficult to discover this information.
I've been struggling with the right word to describe this update and "reactionary" hits the nail on the head. Almost everything this phone has, the competition has had for quite some time. It doesn't quite feel like catchup, with typical panache Apple has built a best-in-class phone design. But it just doesn't feel like something anybody wants to be chasing any more.
Bigger picture, I'm not sure what this means for the smartphone ecosystem as a whole w.r.t. innovation. The heat of competition feels like it's finally let off.
The tech press does the same thing every time a new iPhone is released. They look at it on paper and say dumb things like:
> Don’t get me wrong: the iPhone 5 is a beautiful phone, and in true Apple fashion its design and construction are probably second to none… but is that really enough?
So, there is no other phone that can beat its design and construction, but "is it enough"? Is being the best enough?
That has to go down as one of the dumbest, most contradictory rhetorical questions in history.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Consumers don't care about implementation details. They care about the experience, and year after year, Apple delivers the best experience (proved by JD Power's smartphone satisfaction results).
I was speaking about industrial design.
In most markets and in most segments it isn't enough.
The Toyota Camry is the best selling car in America but it doesn't compare design-wise to a Porsche or a BMW...hell the best selling vehicle in the U.S. in a pickup truck.
Design is a very important differentiation point, and it certainly adds to sales, but it doesn't appear to be enough to dominate an entire market in the general sense.
Sales figures in the mobile space seem to indicate that while consumers like and appreciate top-notch industrial design, there are other factors that come into play. I don't think the iPhone 5 is dominant in those other factors to makeup for a ho-hum design update.
I don't think that your average consumer needs a "big update". When a consumer buys a new Apple device, they're buying a couple of things that we (techies) don't connect with. They're buying:
* A device that they feel confident they'll be happy with (high user satisfaction rates support this)
* Peace of mind that they've got the latest, greatest device from a company they appreciate (Apple grand rating and a simple line up support this)
Neither of these factors show up in a feature comparison.
Customer satisfaction ratings for the iPhone are great. Why? I don't know. It's probably really, really hard to quantify, but I'm not sure it matters. What matters is that consumers are satisfied, and that they stay satisfied. Figuring out how to achieve that is Apple's job. I'm just calling it as I see it.
I believe the latter factor is more important than many people recognize. When you go to buy an Android phone, you're given a choice of many different models with some absolutely insane naming conventions. Have a look at the Verizon Shop page for smartphones:
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=pho...
On the first page, there are 7 iPhones, but only 3 appear at the top, so the choices appear much simpler. In-store, there are only one or two iPhone models on display. There are 40 (maybe more) Android options in the online store. In-store, the models line shelves.
Which one is the newest? Which ones can get updates? Many consumers are aware that they might not be able to get "updates" with Android phones. Which ones come with "Ice cream sunday [sic]? My nephew says I should ask for that."
The rep in the store can guide you, but do you trust them? After all, he's telling me this one is the best, but how can he know that this is the best one out of the 39 other choices I'm staring at?
It's much easier to feel confident in your iPhone purchase. All you need to ask is "Am I getting the new one?" Apple holds a huge press event that makes headlines in the paper that my mom actually reads. She occasionally hears about a new Android phone release, but I guarantee you she can't tell me the name. Just that "it's some new droid phone." She doesn't know there's a difference between a Droid (the phone) and Android (the operating system).
I think certainty has a lot of value to consumers.
But I think your salient point is this "Peace of mind that they've got the latest, greatest device"
There is a risk, I can't say how strong, that the iPhone 5 might actually not be sufficient to provide that peace of mind. It might feel like a 3 or 4 year old phone model when the competition is constantly frothing up with newer and even more latest and greatest models.
We'll see over the coming year how this will play out. My prediction (and I'll be glad to be wrong) is that it won't play out well for Apple.
The Nokia N9, Lumia 800, 900 and 920 are pretty well built and designed too. If you haven't, try going to a store and playing with one.
Coming to the design itself, it's tied in with fashion and at this point the design has not changed(except for the new back) since the iPhone 4 over 2 years ago. Design and fashion do age. The iPhone 4's design was a leap over the 3GS and combined with other features warranted a new version number, while this iteration feels that it should've been named iPhone 4X, X for extra long. Why get a new iPhone 5 when you already have an iPhone 4 or 4S and can add a Galaxy or Lumia and keep the old phone around as a iPod Touch music player?
Also, even if the design is superlative and timeless, for many consumers it is just one factor. The other factors are raw power, technical specs, camera quality and features(which the Lumia 920 is going to have a head start on). If the iPhone 5 cannot compete on specs with this years phones, what chance does it have with the Android phones of the next year?
However, there's another bigger factor that I previously commented on:
I think their problem right now is that users' choice is overwhelming them and the one-size-fits-all approach of the iPhone has diminishing returns after a point. The variety, choice of screen sizes and price ranges of the competition is only getting better by the day.
A new iPhone is released only once a year, so it better be very good with a lot of new technologies, features, new designs etc. for sales to last all through the next year. iPhone 4S sales started lagging in the 3Q itself this year, compared to the 4th quarter for the iPhone 4. This is because people start waiting for the next version or switch to the competition because they have better specced devices with more features. I think Samsung timed their Galaxy S3 launch perfectly to coincide with the iPhone 4S getting old enough to beat, and they beat it in monthly sales for the first time, which is a noteworthy thing in itself.
The whole situation is reminding me of the PC wars in the 80s, where Apple had a seemingly unassailable innovation lead, and then squandered it away by offering limited choice and higher prices, while Microsoft very smartly licensed DOS to Compaq and others like Dell and HP, and the rest is history. Apple's marketshare is now 17% vs. Android's 67% which is about 4 times more. No wonder Apple is going crazy with the patent war against Android. That's probably their only weapon against the equivalent of the attack of the hordes of beige boxes' that previously took them down.
The iPhone 5 is good enough to get great sales and beat all sales records ever, but the key is how well it does starting about 6 months from now.
This totally ignores the fact that Apple later took on those beige boxes, with the same general strategy they're using in the phone market, and carved out a perfectly nice, massively profitable niche in it that I imagine they're quite happy with.
Probably companies go into a pattern alternating cycles of leapfrogging innovations and then to milking cash cows and then back again to innovation as the cash cows go dry. But it does feel like Apple is transitioning into milking cash cows w.r.t. to the iPhone (while perhaps concentrating on things like iTV).
So, is it enough is all about upgrades. And phone sales in the US are strongly linked to upgrade cycles which tend to be 18-24 month range. The percentage of people that upgrade mid cycle without breaking their old phone is tiny. So, is it worth the 800$ upgrade no, is it worth the 200$ upgrade on a 2 year old phone with some scratches and diminished battery life? probably, and that's what apple is going for.
You're right to some extent, but I wouldn't say "basically nobody", or the S3, Nexus etc. would be dead by now instead of selling tens of millions.
Taking an extremely wild guess based on personal interactions, I would say 40% don't care, 20% care, and the other 40% ask the pople who care about their opinion.
>So, is it worth the 800$ upgrade no, is it worth the 200$ upgrade on a 2 year old phone with some scratches and diminished battery life? probably, and that's what apple is going for.
The only issue is that the iPhone 5 design is pretty similar to the iPhone 4, except longer. So looks wise, it's like getting a new iPhone 4 or 4S that you see in almost everyone's hands, except taller. That might steer some of those people onto other devices. How many? I don't know, it's not going to be 90% but I think it won't be just 5% either.
Regarding this, my question is why? Year to year non-computer products have fairly mundane upgrades. Cars get a bit more efficient, a bit safer, a bit roomier. Appliances get a bit more efficient, a new chrome, etc.
Apple's computers aren't major upgrades every year. Every once in a while, sure with the Intel switch, the retina display, the Macbook Air. In general though, once it's released it's a mundane upgrade: better CPU; better GPU; more RAM.
What is making phones so special that they need this high rate of change? 2G -> 3G -> 3GS were all major upgrades. That's a reflection of their time. 3G tech was just getting serious when the 2G came out, so the 3G upgrade was significant. The 3GS offered much better graphics/CPU performance as a reflection of new developments in the mobile CPU/GPU space. Much like how PCs have reached a stable point with their CPUs the same is happening to the mobile space. Why does it need to be so revolutionary every single year?
> iPhone 4S sales started lagging in the 3Q itself this year, compared to the 4th quarter for the iPhone 4. This is because people start waiting for the next version or switch to the competition because they have better specced devices with more features.
I think one of the major differences between the 4S release and the 5 release was the expectation. The 4S was not expected to be a major leap from the 4 so people kept buying it, also the 4S release date was months later than originally anticipated.
There aren't any current truly game-changing features out there. Heck, despite missing free turn-by-turn navigation for years (and there being much complaining about this from iPhone users) iPhones still sold in ever-increasing numbers. Even if the geek crowd is feeling like the iPhone is increasingly just more of the same, I think it'll take a long to for that feeling to permeate the masses. And it would probably take some serious marketing/design failures on Apple's part for it to happen any time quickly. So while Android's carving out a ton of sales in the cheaper/free-smartphone area, Apple still has a ton of mindshare as the premium smartphone for heavy users, which further drives development of the latest apps to be targeted for iOS first, etc. (And that's without mentioning the iPad sales beast.)
But unless someone figures out something truly novel to do with NFC or whatever other new features introduced, people aren't going to care much. Right now those features look promising to people in the know, but they're still far from essential.
Apple gets some more help in the US with the subsidy situation—for instance, on AT&T, the new-customer unsubsidized price of the 16GB S3 is $100 less than the 16GB iPhone 5, but the two year contract one is the same price. The One X is $200 less unsubsidized, but only $100 less with a two year contract. Some quick searching makes it appear that the S3 was only $50 less than the current iPhone 5 price unsubsidized at initial launch, but that's still a nice little trick on Apple's part to have AT&T sell a pricier phone for the same price.
A reasonable speculation. Of course the best data will take a while to become available.
The one data point (showing in headlines this morning) is that, judging that it took only 1 hour for iP5 shipping time to move back from 1 week to 2 weeks, this phone is selling several times as fast as any iPhone predecessor.
Apparently some body is "chasing it."
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240080531/Windows-Vista-...
What? I've been an Android developer for years and never had to do this. I'm pretty sure it will be the same way on iOS as it is on Android - provide another layout (a different xib in this case) for the larger and smaller screens. Done.
The point here is that you have to create a new layout for the iPhone 5 (if you don't want your app letterboxed) and this adds an extra layer of complexity to the development. Seeing that there are also rumors about a different form factor iPad you would then have to maintain 6 different layouts (standard/retina/16:9 for iPhone, standard/retina/new layout iPad). Well or 12 if you have specific landscape layouts.
Designing UI on Android apps can be a pain since you don't have the "pixel perfect" paradigm, which is a common criticism on Android from iPhone developers, but if you manage to get them right you can get away with a single xml layout (of course, you can able to make things more complicated).
It seems to me that Apple are getting themselves in a bit of a mess with this. The tradeoffs with the "pixel perfect" method haven't really materialized until now.
Maybe I'm just being over pessimistic with this and it will be a non-issue, I really can't tell at this point, but I see this as the greatest issue with the iPhone 5 (which in turn is probably the reason they didn't increase the screen size earlier).
Just as developers slowly phase out support for older iOS versions (and by extension older devices), within a year or two it'll be possible to maintain only two layouts for the iPhone (retina 3.5" and 4"), two for the iPad (standard, retina) and one for the presumed iPad mini.
In time they'll be able to abandon both the 3.5" retina and standard iPad layouts and revert back to just one iPhone layout, one iPad layout and one iPad mini layout (assuming that's a real product) as the older models become obsolete.
It's not ideal, but it's still a relatively simple set of layouts that allow the 'pixel-perfect' method to continue working well.
Now, many apps didn't handle this, but this is really "more of stuff you should have been doing", not really "tons more work for iOS devs.
In the interim, users have to put up with ugly artifacts like black bars and up-sampled graphics.
--
PS. The Android team's decision to provide from early on a resolution-independent GUI framework that automatically uses all screen real estate, regardless of resolution or aspect ratio, is looking smarter by the day.
Which is why Apple introduced Auto layout in the iOS 6 SDK.
I don't really see this as a problem. Old apps still work just as will as they always did, and now you can also support a single larger screen size. If they wre goign to proliferate further. 3, 4 or more screen dimensions (in pixels) yes I'd say that's a problem, but two, especialy since one dimension is still exactly the same?. No, not a problem.
What I do wonder is how apps that support the larger screen size work on an iPad. Presumably they only run in small/older screen mode, scaled?
For apps that use a lot of UI graphics in the form of images, yes they have work to do. But the same would be true on Android.
As for android team, Google's YouTube app on Google's Nexus 7 device with Google's Android OS, when launched in portrait, goes to landscape _automatically_ and takes button controls like back button from the bottom of the screen to the side. I truly believe that technology is there, but apparently nobody gives a flying fuck about it.
All iPhone apps already have to resize vertically. The status bar changes height when you're in a call.
Second you can make multiple versions of these layouts that'll swap in given some device parameters. So if the flexible layouts didn't suit your need you could make (for example) one for tablets, one for phones. You can do the same for bitmaps so you can have different versions of each for different DPIs.
For bitmap aspect ratio issues there are also 9patch bitmaps which specify which portions of the image can be stretched and which can't. That works pretty well for small adjustments and background images.
Different people are going to prefer different phone sizes.
Sorry couldn't resist
Oh right. Silly me thought is was the SDK, the link with iTunes, paid Apps, the link with Credit Cards, the high quality designs and what not.
When iOS developers talk about fragmentation they generally mean that it is hard to predict the target size (buttons and other UI elements), the layout of the screen, and the PPI in terms of generating screen elements.
The iPhone 5's new screen does add another row to the matrix of iOS combinations, but Apple worked to minimize the impact on developers since they only added vertical pixels without changing the PPI or the target size relative to the iPhone 4/4s.
So if you target the iPhone 5, the cell for screen size and number of pixels is different, but the PPI is the same as the iPhone 4/4s (and double the older iPhones) and target size is the exact same as all iPhones before it.
If you want to build a Universal App (for both iPad and iPhones) you now need to think of 2 target sizes (for iPads and iPhones), 4 PPI (2x iPhone and 2x iPad), and 5 screen resolutions (iPhone 5, iPhone 4/4s, older iPhones, iPad1/2, new iPad). Before the iPhone 5, it was 2 target sizes, 4 PPI, and 4 screen resolutions. Before the Retina iPad, it was 2 target sizes, 3 PPI, and 3 screen resolutions. Before the iPhone 4/4s, it was 2 target sizes, 2 PPI, and 2 screen resolutions. And so on.
Effectively developers who want to add iPhone 5 support only need to consider the extra vertical space without worrying that buttons are suddenly going to get too small or the balance of items on the layout will get stretched or squashed or oddly distributed (if you do some sort of auto-layout).
If the iPad Mini comes along, it's widely believed that the resolution will likely match the iPad 2 but the target sizes will be the size matching the iPhone and PPI matching older iPhones. Again, keeping things relatively predictable by only changing some factors.
The matrix of combinations is still manageable even when adding two different devices, whereas if you tried to create a similar matrix of combinations for Android, it would be gigantic.
An Android developer might reply, well once the combinations get complicated enough, you just accept that nothing will stay consistent and just target some commonalities. And that may be perfectly fine.
Is the Apple approach worth it? Not worrying about the combination matrix gives Android phone makers far more flexibility in form factors than Apple has.
Apple has effectively entered into a contract with iOS developers that changes will be limited and Android developers are already used to having little control over target size, screen ratio, or resolution.
When you think about it, the whole thing is a fascinating controlled experiment in different approaches to hardware and software development philosophies.
Indeed. I'm really curious to see how this pans out. The iOS approach is clearly easier for everyone in the short term, but it remains to be seen whether the Android's approach will give them a significant longer-term advantage.
Pixel perfect fitting vs. Wide range of options, and ability for manufacturers to "mess with the formula"
But, really, iOS has survived far bigger transitions.
I owned the first retina iPhone (4) at launch and apps were upgraded so quickly that I can barely remember using non-retina apps on it.
Many early iPad adopters ran at least some upscaled iPhone apps on it for months while developers caught up to a vastly different medium - a hideous compromise compared to letterboxing. Was that even a speedbump on the iPad's rise to blockbuster status?
So this strikes me as completely academic.
That being said it is very easy to support the new iPhone the old way.
I really should have stuck to my guns and ignored all the articles until 2 or 3 weeks pass by and we're dealing more with hard facts, less with tea-leaves and parsing every sentence that Apple staff said (or failed to say).
But come on, it's not that bad, this article is hyperbolic.
Please. What else would you do besides letterboxing? Stretch the content in the y direction? That would look terrible. Implement some cool new feature that lives inside the new screen real estate? Then devs wouldn't want to upgrade their apps to support the iPhone 5 ratio. Letterboxing is for backwards-compatibility, but the author makes it sound like Apple can't think of anything creative to fill that space. And because the screen dimension change is only in one direction, developers will have an easier time modifying their app layouts.
Show ads :-)
The only slightly useful thing I can think of is that they could permanently show the app switcher, but I am not even sure that is a good idea. It probably would make it too easy to jump out of an app.
What was under delivered on? Are people really this upset about NFC?
I think the phoned in industrial design is the problem. "Let's make it a bit taller and take the glass off the back" is simply not the improvement in industrial design from one generation to the next that might be expected:
bezel-less - http://static.droidblog.net/dgstorm/df/bezel-free-folded-sam...
flexible screens - http://homeklondike.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1-concept...
pixel-qi style display
1ms touchscreen response
full color touch sensitive display projector - http://gadgetsin.com/uploads/2012/03/ufo_smartphone_concept_...
any one of these things (done in the typically well designed Apple way) would have been worth a full number update on the phone.
Here's an entire gallery of ideas https://www.google.com/search?q=smart+phone+design+concepts&...
but what was launched just feels like refinement and not imagination
Fortunately, we live in a time where smartphones are developing at a very rapid pace. And we as consumers have some really great options. You might have to make some compromises, but not many.