iPhone 6
apple.com
apple.com
- iPhone 6 is 1334x750: CSS pixel width is likely 375px (pixel ratio = 2)
- iPhone 6 Plus is 1920x1080: CSS pixel width is likely either 432px (pixel ratio = 2.5) or 360px (pixel ratio = 3). It would make sense to implement a ratio of 2.5 as it would be 15.2% more CSS pixels for a screen 17.0% wider. But on the other hand (1) Apple designers are perfectionists and a fractional ratio means an image slightly less sharp, and (2) maybe with the Plus model Apple wants to attract smartphone buyers who dislike tiny text on a tiny display so it would make sense to provide fewer CSS pixels on a bigger screen... I am really curious to know which way they went.
This all needs to be confirmed with a device in hands...
http://daringfireball.net/2014/08/larger_iphone_display_conj...
Spot on for the 6, off for the 6+. So what does this mean for 6+ users and developers?
Wasn't the original Retina display touted close to the limit of human perception ?
Regardless of marketingspeak, higher resolution displays have unclear benefits, since possibly people won't notice difference in sharpness, and clear drawbacks, as increased battery consumption:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/lg-g3-review-a-great-...
https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/50943816728054988...
I would have thought that Apple understood they have customers that actually prefer the 4" size, or else they wouldn't have had any sales the last years. Let's hope for a iPhone 6S mini next year.
Or an iPhone 6S Minus. Am I the only one who thinks "iPhone Plus" sounds oddly un-Apple-ish?
Overall this whole event was odd. It was more Apple reacting to trends rather than setting them...
Apple knows their iPhones are (to some extent) status symbols, and just like the 5c failed because it was perceived as the "cheap model", they had to come up with a value neutral modifier for "big". And given both 6 models are larger than all previous ones, they could hardly have the 6 and 6 mini.
Apple II+, Apple III+, Macintosh Plus, Apple IIc Plus, Laserwriter Plus, ...
And then there's this ad from the original iPhone 5 release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY4c2mh15Yk
No iPhone 6 option at 4" is in direct contradiction to what they said before. It's a reason the Apple Watch is released in two different faces, people are different!
http://www.phonearena.com/phones/size#/phones/size/Apple-iPh...
I wouldn't describe the change as "negligible." It actually looks quite a bit larger than the 5S and MUCH larger than the 4.
PS - I actually like large phones. But I also have big hands. I just disagree with your characterisation of it.
I'm starting to think this was a move for Apple to not lose Asia as small phones are really out of style there. Apple lives in fear of only becoming an "American" company.
As a phone, messenger, and audio player, the main functions for me, I cannot see any benefit.
As a game console, gps/maps client, e-mail client I can see some marginal benefits from the larger screen, but not to justify the increased bulkiness.
I usually do not use my phone for web browsing, as a video player and e-book reader, due to the small screen, and I cannot see the .7 increase being big enough to change that.
I'd be quite happy with an iPhone 5 form factor Android device.
> Paired with iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, or iPhone 6 Plus. In-store purchases only.
I don't get this trend. I just want a phone that does calls/texts, maps, alarms, music, and occasionally browses the web. Why does it need to be enormous?
Biggest question: Can we access it to read raw atmospheric pressure? There seems to be no documented API.
Humanity ought to have a much better weather forecast than we have now, as we're nearing 1B+ internet-connected barometers. Hopefully Apple's sensors can add to this network!
Reminded me of this dialogue from The Social Network:
Sean Parker: Well, I founded an internet company that
let folks download and share music for free.
Amy: Kind of like Napster?
Sean Parker: Exactly like Napster.
Amy: What do you mean?
Sean Parker: I founded Napster.
Amy: Sean Parker founded Napster.
Sean Parker: Nice to meet you.https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.platypii.b...
Having a barometer was a key feature I looked for in a phone.
I hope the sampling of data is fast enough to use in skydiving. Maybe an integrated log book/flysight.
My home DZ is Arizona, but I occasionally get over to Perris. I'm a boring belly flier :)
Medical science can't, for obvious reasons, do a lot of controlled experiments with people. The next best thing is using "big data" collection over millions of people over many dimensions. Knowledge will benefit immeasurable.
The protruding camera is also really weird. I wonder if Jobs would have signed off on that...
Who knows though. Maybe once I hold one personally I'll end up liking it more than the 5s. But I would be surprised :)
I have small-person sized hands and often struggle even with the normal iPhone5 and the trend for making phones bigger and bigger makes me angry and sad at the same time. I hate it and always, always, when my friends would ask why I prefer Apple over cheaper and better speced devices, my answer was "Because Apple is the only phone that doesn't compete on screen size".
This throws that out the window. Great.
But I feel betrayed. They were the only phones out there that understood a phone isn't magically better just because it's got higher numbers. Now it seems they aren't anymore.
At this rate next time I buy a phone I'm gonna have to get one of those stupid watches and forego a phone completely.
N5 is workable particularly if you install a launcher that lets you open notifications other than swiping from top. I also like its keyboard better than N1's - bigger keys do make a difference (though 4.4's keyboard software might also play a role).
You definitely hold and use the bigger phones slightly differently but I've found it's not a huge dealbreaker. And well, N5 screen is beautiful coming from N1.
Don't know about buying an N5 today, though, it's been out for a while. I haven't tracked refresh rumours but I'd expect there to be some.
YMMV of course!
Versus the N5, you lose your removable storage and battery, the N5 will feel a bit too big and, though not as bad as Samsungs or the N4 (also LG), a bit plasticky. And for whatever reason they put the headphone jack up top which is irritating. It doesn't come with that nice sleeve nor headphones.
Google does not offer personal engraving on back of the Nexus 5, so no "hello world" for you. No Google-sanctioned car mount or desk dock either, you have to make up your own mind, which is frustrating.
But the screen is excellent, makes you feel on top of the world to have all those pixels. Thin. Plenty of horsepower, plenty of XDA attention, the battery is not horrible but you may end up investing in a cheap portable charger, particularly if you're accustomed to carrying spares with that N1.
It feels powerful enough to really do computer stuff, kind of. Makes you wonder if phones have peaked. Goes nicely with a Chromecast, screen casting and beaming 1080 movies you acquired somehow to your television.
That, and a table of specs you can find elsewhere, is basically it..
What I don't miss:
- "Do I have enough memory to install this? Nope."
- Apps that need new Android versions
- That annoying touch screen bug
- 3G speeds
- all the hacks and mods to get around memory limitations
What I miss:
- the huge notification light... loved that
- being able to use my thumb across the whole screen width
- removable storage (and USB flash drive mode)
- battery life.. my Nexus One could go 2 solid days
I'll update this as I think of more. Of course the N5 is much faster, incredible screen, etc. The above is more personal notes. I haven't regretted the Nexus 5 buy at all... but I do get nostalgic sometimes. Especially when I'm looking for a charger.. like the people I used to laugh at. :)
iPhone 6's exterior just looks a bit strange (now we are going back to the original iPhone?) - it feels off in a way that I can't fully explain. But who knows, maybe it would be just fantastic to hold and use. [Like how the quick reports coming out from people who have held the Watch saying that it feel really nice]
I miss when phones used to have easily accessible microSD slots.
Phones still do. Just not iPhone.
Storage space is far from the biggest problem with the iPhone replacing DSLRs ("camcorders" are perhaps a different story, if only because "camcorders" is a broader category that includes the equivalent of "point and shoot" devices as well as higher-end, replaceable-lens, analogs of what DSLRs are for still photography.)
I would imagine many people are the same way.
I suspect this has a lot to do with my not having any giant apps and 0 music.
Most people are out of space. The number of people I heard complaining when iOS 7 was released and they didn't have enough space to install it shocked me. I also know a tonne of people (especially younger people) who can't backup to iCloud because they have filled their device with photos and they would have to pay for more backup space. When most new games are over 500mb and even things like Facebook require nearly 200mb of space it's very easy to run out of 16GB.
Different people have different needs?
Both.
Everyone's uses are different, but think of resale as well - 2 years from now, what will you get for a 16g device vs a 32 or 64?
It's important to Apple's business to maintain margins. Taking down margins would be punished heavily by investors. So this move seems calculated to me to, yes, push more people to the $299 model. And to do that to offset the cost of more expensive components elsewhere in the device. We'll have to wait for a teardown to be sure, but that's my hypothesis.
I'm sure they do the research on storage usage... From my personal experience, I have never even heard a complaint about storage space. That doesn't mean I wouldn't appreciate a buffer but definitely not a deciding factor for most. And heh, they give you options
Besides almost half the population already carries a purse
http://thetechblock.com/samsungs-galaxy-note-changed-my-life... and linked to by Gruber http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/02/15/techblock-galaxy...
I assume the iPhone 6 is lighter than the equivalently sized Galaxy phones.
I wish people didn't feel the need to "gotcha" Gruber at every possible opportunity. He's generally a very reasonable fellow, if aggressive at times.
His habit of trawling for people's reaction to the very first iPhone ( the glorified feature phone with a 2G connection, no ability to do voice-and-data and no ability to write apps for it who's sales figures were basically a rounding error) and present them as if they are talking abut the latest juggernaut selling release of the iPhone with the justification that they should have seen what 10 iterations and 7 years of development was going to bring makes him an easy and satisfying target to skewer when he so grossly fucks up with his own opinions.
Apple fixing Safari's bad behavior and letting it sleep its state to flash would work too, but 6 iOS versions later it looks like they're incapable of that.
Funny, I'd say the same thing about the people who've been repeating the "overpriced/underpowered" trope ever since it stopped being true over a decade ago.
They also pointed out that iOS already artificially limits the amount of RAM a single process can use, so adding RAM wouldn't even really do anything besides make it take longer for background apps to be evicted.
Personally, I want a MicroSD slot because that way we both win.
It is pretty silly but also annoying as the iPhone has a strong following due to its "it just works" design. Girls in particular love it for the camera but 16gb just isn't enough space to get my SO and her friends past a few months of photo-frenzy.
The 128GB internal option is the one which'd make me actually consider an iphone 6.
Not starting with 32 gigs seems like a bean counter somewhere trying to be clever and force more people to opt for the higher storage (read: more expensive) versions. Might just be my tinfoil hat talking.
Why does this matter? Apps run great as is. If the phone was slow I could understand but it isn't.
>> base storage still at 16 gigs really annoys me.
They pay a little extra for the larger models... It would have been nice to have a 32gb base model and it's a little strange they didn't do it but it's not like they don't offer larger storage versions.
Safari doesn't play well at all with multitasking. I have to cross my fingers whenever I want to copy something into a form from another app because chances are the page will reload when I come back to Safari since it ran out of RAM. I also often get into the situation where I can't even tab between just 2 pages since Safari runs out of RAM and reloads each page.
Apple fixing Safari's bad behavior and letting it sleep its state to flash would work too, but 6 iOS versions later it looks like they're incapable of that.
Exactly. It smacks of someone at Apple saying "Hey, if we keep the base at 16 gigs it will make more people upgrade to the 64, which will be more money".
RAM matters a lot more on an Android, and even with more cores, running faster, with more RAM, it will be objectively slower at most things than an iPhone 5C (and that much slower than an iPhone 6 I'm sure). Plus actually using it will eat through battery quicker (it wasn't a 36-hour device for me like the iPhone 5C was, despite similar usage) and (this one surprised me) eats more data.
Not to mention if you have kids, the lack of iMessage and the inability to forward an HD video over to your spouse of the kids is almost a deal-breaker all by itself.
Anecdotal, my 2c, etc. But I owned a Nexus One, every iPhone except the 3GS and 5S, a Samsung Galaxy S2, Moto X, Palm Pre, Palm Veer (loved that little guy, just too buggy) and most recently an LG G2.
Discounting Apple on the basis of hardware and perceived performance would be a big mistake IMO. They're head and shoulders above everything else on those counts IME, and age so much better.
I got so tired of the quirky G2 (I swear there was a 1 in 3 chance that just unlocking the phone would launch the Alarms app for no reason, and that forced Menu button... GRRRR) I swapped my SIM into an old iPhone 4S I had lying around yesterday. It's not quite as snappy. But it's not half bad either. From a perceived performance perspective (say that three times fast!), the G2, a flag-ship Android phone released only 12 months ago, is slower in every way than an iPhone 5, a phone twice it's age (and yup, the G2 has 2GB of RAM, the iPhone 5 had 1GB).
If you prefer Android more power to ya. But if you're a long time iPhone user... Maybe I'll convince you to save some heart-ache (and $$$). ;-)
Among Android devices I did like the Moto X the best...
It's as if they're in denial.
I'm still getting the 6 Plus instead of the Note 4 though.. simply because it's three fewer weeks to wait ;-P
With movies you're SOL, but Google Play literally let me just upload my iTunes music folder, and aside from a couple of metadata glitches, it just worked.
Step 1. Install Google's Music Manager on a PA which also has you iTunes library. Step 2. Let the automatic sync run.
Not exactly painful. Potentially time consuming with a large library, but virtually none of it is active time.
If you "bought" your music with Apple DRM, you can pay another fee to actually own it and be able to play it on a non-Apple devices.
If you "bought" your videos with Apple DRM, consider it a lesson learned.
There's no "lesson" when I have made the conscious decision to stick with Apple all these years. I may have paid a premium paying for iPods and iPhones, but I feel my time is valuable enough to not have to mess around with my media files in any way you describe. Nor do I feel the urge to spend money on music I have already purchased, but I don't see that as being a mistake from which to learn a lesson. Nothing has happened to me with Apple or its products so egregious to feel compelled to take on anything like you describe.
Most people make the mistake to think they 'bought' a movie or DRMed music file when they really just rent/lease it long term.. And then they realize they're screwed when they want to the freedom to buy whatever device they want and have 'their' music they 'bought' on it. After all, most people didn't grow up buying a CD from Best Buy and having it work on their Best Buy CD player but not on their Sony CD player.
You may have realized what you bought into and consciously made the decision that you accepted the limitation in rights/etc in exchange for convenience/etc, but most average consumers do not.
I run a flip phone and the battery lasts a week and change. So does my iPod. Friends with iPhones are constantly pulling out their phones with dead batteries.
The thinness obsession has always irked me. Apparently it's what the market wants, but I wish they would use the space and weight savings for more battery. Were it not for battery life I would purchase an iPhone and just run it with T-Mobile prepaid and no data.
I'm a pretty die-hard Android fan, but the iPhone 4 through 5s were damn attractive pieces of hardware.
For reference, I literally cannot use his phone one-handed; I can't hold it and reach all the way across the screen with my thumb. I'm a small dude and he's a big one, and some devices are just designed for the opposite extreme.
I have a friend with the note who actually uses a stylus with it. I don't get it but he really loves that phone.
I wouldn't buy it, can't carry it around - forget cycling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Note_Edge
151.3 mm (5.96 in) H 82.4 mm (3.24 in) W 8.3 mm (0.33 in) D
vs
iPhone 6 Plus
158.1 mm (6.22 in) H 77.8 mm (3.06 in) W 7.1 mm (0.28 in) D
Not only it is implied apps should develop a specific layout just for it, but IIRC it also has a different viewport size which is not a multiple.
On top of that, the 6 already reports a new viewport width in the browser, which I guess it can't be helped though.
Android's much more fragmented and yet hasn't had any trouble making gains. As much as Apple and Apple-boosters have made of fragmentation as some great cost, actual market experience hasn't really born that out in terms of selling handsets.
It does make things more difficult for developers, sure.
After years of hearing that the "current" iphone size is just perfect for the size of the human hand, neither of the current phones are that size. It's unbelievably annoying to listen to all the bizarre justification that goes on about Apple products, and I'm sure this size shift and abandonment of their previous sizes completely will get some kind of fence moving justification. [1]
But I applaud Apple for just doing it and catching up with where the market has moved to. I've been in too many phone stores where I've heard people think the iPhones for sale are the old crappy smartphones from last generation and run over to where the larger phones are.
It took a couple years, but Apple finally listened and the new phones look really nice.
1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY4c2mh15Yk
edit I'm also reminded that the "c" model has been dropped. Sales figures didn't seem to be very high and I think the experiment has been deemed a failure. It wasn't what anybody really expected or wanted anyways but it was a curious and weird diversion.
edit2 Here's gruber's take on the phone sizes the notorious Apple shill finally admits that it's time for bigger phones, but hasn't come up with the justification framework yet
http://daringfireball.net/2014/09/prelude
Some people want to buy them. It doesn’t matter why. For some it might be games. For others, being able to carry one device as a hybrid phone/tablet. For others, it might be about reading — making the iPhone more usable as an e-book reader. It doesn’t matter what the reasons are. The simple fact is that many people want huge phones — not just bigger ones, but huge ones — and they’re willing to pay a premium for them. Apple has played a one-size-fits-all game for seven iPhone generations. The market shows that one size does not fit all. I don’t know that they should have done it sooner, but it certainly feels like the time for multiple iPhone sizes has come.
Let's also see what he has to say about this
I’ll be very disappointed if this is just a device that shows a fake analog watch face, displays notifications from a tethered iPhone, and tracks your footsteps and heart rate.
Because there it is on record. Gruber's already disappointed in the iWatch. I'm not. I'm glad it's out there, improving the market for all consumers, iWatch wearers or not. There's some nice ideas and design there.
Just like Apple let Creative Labs foot the bill on R&D and market building with the Nomad before the iPod was introduced?
But yeah I guess in some way that's true, portable mp3 players of some kind were a rapidly growing market being developed by dozens of companies when the iPod came out. I had an entire series of CD-R/mp3 capable portable CD players back then for example. So the market was open and proven, but Apple provided real innovation in both technology and in digital distribution that wasn't there at all before the iPod. Combined, those were game changers and set Apple ascendant to the point it is today.
Getting most of the major record companies to sign on the dotted line is something I think only Apple could have done.
I think they've been a little bit slow to follow shifts in the smartphone market though. They should've had a larger iPhone quite some time ago, and they were unfashionably late on notifications and 4G.
Still, this latest release will sell briskly per usual. Jury's out on the Apple Watch. Especially since battery life was conspicuously absent from the unveil.
There's other weird uneven things going on though in the internals. 64-bit CPUs and 1GB of RAM? 16GB base models near the end of 2014?
I'm sure there's strategy behind it, but as a consumer it's just weird.
The important thing is that it doesn't really matter. When people like my mom go into the phone store, they'll see nice big, and in their minds competitive, iPhones for sale and will now give them a second look.
In the end what it counts is user experience, and if the average user see sharp, quick, responsive UI and fast applications he/she couldn't care less about how much RAM the phone has.
Storage is a different issue, but Apple got away until now offering more storage as a premium, so why change ?
This all sounds like feature talk, but here's my use-case at least: being able to listen to music, get directions in the background and switch between a game, the web, and a book in the foreground without worrying about any of the apps getting killed due to low memory is really empowering and enjoyable.
My old phone would kill one or two of those apps outright and it was nothing more than memory getting cleared up.
If the rumor is true, 1GB of RAM is really a full phone generation behind. Even weirder, I would have expected Apple to be using their 64bit CPU tech to push the boundaries of memory on phones.
Could it be, given that iPhone 6 apps are native code and Android apps are bytecode, that iPhone 6 apps have less memory overhead than Android apps?
Another year down the line when there's an iPhone 6S and the 5C has been dropped, that's when I'd start expecting something like a 6C, though perhaps it would just be a 5SC. Not necessarily those names, exactly, but something following the pattern of "Drop the bottom-end phone, replace the 2nd-from-bottom with a plastic version."
First, there's not much (if anything) they have gotten off of Samsung about these devices, except maybe how not to do some things.
First, if you have seen the prototype iPads and iPhones tested, they've actually built all kinds of prototypes in different sizes half a decade or more ago. And obviously the same thing holds for the Watch and the bigger iPhone: they were in development for at least a couple of years, iterating and refining them.
Unlike the iPad, which at least also had a redesigned GUI library (and thought behind it) to take advantage of the larger screen, a slightly larger iPhone is not something not obvious. Apple could have made the iPhone 5 a 6" model if they liked to rush things, it's not that they missed some key insight. What they actually did was wait for several things to fall into place, like baterry capacity, CPU/GPU power to provide a smooth experience with the bigger screen, etc.
If Samsung provided anything is just some early "market research" in the feasibility of selling a large phone. There's nothing technical or UI-wise here that was copied, or needed to be copied, from a Samsung phone.
Second, Samsung only started on their watches when rumours of an iWatch pending had already surfaced (and it shows, since theirs was mostly a hack job of mashing existing stuff and rushed decisions). Apple was building the thing for a long time, and I'd say has put far more thought and polish on the whole thing that anything we've previously seen from competitors (including Peeble).
>I'm also reminded that the "c" model has been dropped. Sales figures didn't seem to be very high and I think the experiment has been deemed a failure.
Actually, it sold very well. "From the constant harping about the supposed "failure" of Apple's iPhone 5c, you'd think the phone is selling poorly. The reality is that middle tier model, while dramatically less popular than Apple's top of the line iPhone 5s, still managed to outsell every Blackberry, every Windows Phone and every Android flagship in the winter quarter, including Samsung's Galaxy S4.". http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/03/22/apples-iphone-5c-f...
In general it was constantly in the top-3 to 5 best selling phones for all US carriers. Most phone companies (including Samsung) would kill for a "flop" like this.
Second, it wasn't dropped. It's still available, and just rolled on the $0 with contract tier.
I have a black Samsung Galaxy S3. I held it up against the image of the iPhone 6, and they're barely different. The s3 has slightly bowed sides, and the two phones have a home button with a different shape. Oh, and the Apple phone doesn't have 'Samsung' written on the front (I haven't seen an image of the back, so you never know...)
I'd love for Samsung to turn around and sue them back on this design issue.
Was talking about the watches.
But since you mentioned it, I had a look: http://www.hitechmobiles.co.nz/uploads/images/Samsung_Galaxy...
This is like iPhone 6 in the sense that Times New Roman is like Helvetica. They are both fonts after all.
Different buttons, different curves, different materials, different home button, different back design, different colors...
Where exactly do you see the similarity?
Not to mention the whole "huge touch screen, minimal buttons smartphone" thing was pioneared by Apple already since the first iPhone, when Samsung did keyboard smartphones that looked nothing like this?
Not to mention the whole "huge touch screen, minimal buttons smartphone" thing was pioneared by Apple already
So? It's irrelevant to my point: Apple took Samsung to the cleaners over a visual design patent (amongst others), and I'm saying that this phone looks a hell of a lot like the S3.
Yes, if you look at the screen, it's android vs ios and doesn't look similar, but the hardware lines, button placement, curled edges, earpiece are all very similar. The home button is a little different - but again, these kinds of difference are the same in magnitude as S2 v iPhone. For example, the home button on the S2 was an oblong ringed with metal, wheras the home button on the iPhone is a circle. Apparently that's visual-design-patent-infringing for Samsung, but a marker of innovative distinction for Apple?
Was talking about the watches.
Then make that clearer, because you sound diversionary in saying this. The article is about the iPhone. The parent comment mentions watches in passing, but is primarily about the iPhone. You spent half your comment talking about ipads and iphones right after the bit I quoted.
S2 doesn't look like iPhone enough for Samsung to get sued (my opinion as an Android user that loves iOS as well), but.. earpiece? Really? The curled edges I'd agree with. But that's about it.
Sources or guessing?
I think the similarity of how the iWatch and the Android watches work is too similar to be a coincidence. There's some cool software work on Apple's watch, and I believe it'll generally be a better product overall. But it looks just like something somebody would make after seeing the competition and iterating an improvement on it. That's my assertion and I'm going to stick with it until somebody proves me wrong.
> Second, Samsung only started on their watches when rumours of an iWatch pending had already surfaced
IIR that's correct. iWatch rumors started and Samsung tossed together the Gear to get it out the door first. Apple didn't ship and now we're on Gen 2 of Android watches while Apple releases a nearly identical product...even down to some fairly small use-case details. I'm not poo pooing the device, with Apple's polish and tight integration I'd call it a Gen 2.5 smartwatch. It looks good, and going old-school Blackberry with the knob as an input device is a good idea. It's probably a full half-to-full generation ahead of the current Android devices for very Apple-y reasons.
But there's very little new here, and more important it's not all that different. It doesn't look like an independently developed device. It looks like a particularly well thought out Android smart watch. Apple could have...should have...gone a completely different direction with the watch, but they didn't.
Basically your story doesn't make any sense. The public story is that all Samsung knew was "Apple is working on a watch", and with that information, completely independently tossed together (with a little help from Google) a device that, in the Gen 2 version of Android Smartwatches, just so happens to work almost exactly like the iWatch minus the nub. From needing to tether, to use-cases, to display turn-on when raised, etc. There's a million different directions each watch development effort could have gone, yet both efforts coincidentally independently arrived at the same conclusion...with both teams operating in secret, probably on opposite sides of the planet.
The probably of that happen are only slightly less than throwing a bunch of parts into a dryer and at the end of the cycle getting a clock.
If Samsung developed the smartwatch based on nothing more than a rumor and just slapped it together, then they did one hell of a job because that's the template all new smart watches are currently following and they deserve a little more credit. If they copied Apple outright, then there's some serious leaks in Apple's R&D department.
But neither of those cases fits Occam's razor -- there are no coincidences...the similarities are too strong. It's more likely Apple has been mulling around a watch for a while. Samsung slapped together a watch based on a rumor, the gen 2 devices were pretty good and Apple simply went the direction with the idea that Samsung had pioneered. The only other conclusion is that Samsung committed one of the greatest acts of industrial espionage since the Soviets stole the designs for the atom bomb.
Note: I don't know why you're getting downvoted, we're just having a civil discussion. People get so emotional around Apple's stuff.
Neither. For one, it's obvious that any such products needs at least 1-2 years to design, manufacture prototypes, etc. Second, we've seen several previous exposes of how Apple developed new stuff (iPad was in the labs for 7-8 years, the iPhone the same, etc, and there have been galleries of the tons of prototypes they checked published). So, I was basically just stating the obvious.
>I think the similarity of how the iWatch and the Android watches work is too similar to be a coincidence
Well, people already had a uncanillity similar experience to Android watches 5 or so years ago, by strapping an iPod mini to a wrist strap. It's a watch that talks to a smartphone and has a computer screen, so of course its similar in that, but that's inevitable. The kind of interface, the controls, the fashion styles for the straps and everything, and the internal design / sensors / etc are unique.
>Basically your story doesn't make any sense. The public story is that all Samsung knew was "Apple is working on a watch", and with that information, completely independently tossed together (with a little help from Google) a device that, in the Gen 2 version of Android Smartwatches, just so happens to work almost exactly like the iWatch minus the nub. The probably of that happen are only slightly less than throwing a bunch of parts into a dryer and at the end of the cycle getting a clock.
For one, the "almost exactly" is only in the sense that one car and another car do mostly the same things. The design, controls, software and everything is different, from the "nub" to the style choices to the sensors to the charging, to the e-payments, to the app selection UI etc. The Samsung version is sub par in every way.
>If Samsung developed the smartwatch based on nothing more than a rumor and just slapped it together, then they did one hell of a job because that's the template all new smart watches are currently following and they deserve a little more credit. (...) Samsung slapped together a watch based on a rumor, the gen 2 devices were pretty good and Apple simply went the direction with the idea that Samsung had pioneered.
What are those ideas again? Can you name one thing Samsung did that was a) non obvious part of a smartwatch, b) better?
Good, so then you must agree that Samsung couldn't possibly have just slapped together a design and manufactured hundreds of thousands of watches in a few months. Even Samsung must take time to bring a product to market. If you truly believe Samsung just craps out devices, then you're also claiming they're among the most efficient design, production and marketing organizations on the planet. Nobody would even come close.
> Well, people already had a uncanillity similar experience to Android watches 5 or so years ago, by strapping an iPod mini to a wrist strap.
Can you link to what you're talking about?
> It's a watch that talks to a smartphone and has a computer screen, so of course its similar in that, but that's inevitable.
I don't think it's inevitable or obvious at all. Given the instructions "go make a smart watch" I can think of half a dozen completely different ideas right off the bat, none of which are what smart watches look like or how they work -- I never would have required tethering at all for example. I personally think cramming down the pinch and swipe smartphone metaphor into a device that size is not a good solution, I think all of the competitors (except pebble) failed in that respect.
It's like if somebody told you to "make me a device that will transport me distances using an engine". While you could have come up with anything from a boat to a train to rocket propelled rollerskates, instead you and your competitor both "independently" arrive at solutions which are basically different trim levels of this year's Toyota Camry, except one has a stick shift.
Odds of that happening are close enough to zero to be effectively the same. So either Samsung has the best industrial espionage team on the planet (doubtful) or Apple just waited for the competition to jump first and then just followed the trendlines and produced a really polished as hell version of what they were fumbling around with (likely).
In fact, Apple could have copied and refined the Pebble instead and knocked it out of the park. By so blatantly copying what's going on in Android land, it leads to too many unfavorable comparisons. They could have completely broken away from that path Samsung has set and gone with a smaller, sleeker, more elegant device. By refining the Samsung template, Apple just leads itself to comparisons, even if the final product is super polished. Basically, if Apple was going to make a car, they needed to make a Tesla or an Ariel Atom, not a top spec Camry (with a stick shift).
> The Samsung version is sub par in every way.
On this we can completely agree. I'm not impressed with the Android smart watches at all. I don't see a good use for them, they're overpriced, underspec'd and don't provide me with anything I wouldn't rather just do with my phone (and in fact require my phone to be nearby anyway).
That's why I'm so disappointed with Apple's offering, even though it's just the Android watch polished to the n-th degree. In the end the whole direction is just a "meh" idea to me.
Imagine instead an Apple polish to a pebble style watch, no tethering required, all the watch faces and notifications and canned responses, week-long battery life, none of this swipe and nub nonsense, beautiful Apple design (Pebble watches all look like something I would have loved when I was 12, but not 40) and flawless execution.
Apple's refinement of Samsung's ideas aren't even particularly tasteful. Imagine if the interface looked like this instead http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/7/5477768/gabor-balogh-circul... or this https://dribbble.com/shots/1197072-My-iWatch-Concept-Overvie...
Or used a pixel qi display so you could use it equally well indoors or outdoors.
Or a long thin screen http://www.tuvie.com/wp-content/uploads/nissan-nismo-smartwa...
Or hell like the Samsung Gear Fit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro1sRmxu4BM
What you're failing to understand is that I'm not saying Apple copying Samsung is bad because they copied Samsung (who gets credit isn't important), it's bad because, given a possible universe of ideas they could have followed instead, they copied a crappy design idea and then polished that turd until it shined. But it's still just a ball of poo.
>Good, so then you must agree that Samsung couldn't possibly have just slapped together a design and manufactured hundreds of thousands of watches in a few months
The "hundreds of thousands" is not an issue time-wise given their manufacturing expertise. It's the design, programming etc stage that takes time. I'd say they've spend a year or so. The first one (Gear) was using Android, and was mostly like a shrank phone, with not much thought. That the Gear 2 switched to Tizen shows that at the time they released the first they didn't have a long term plan nor had settled their basics, like OS choice.
>Apple's refinement of Samsung's ideas aren't even particularly tasteful. Imagine if the interface looked like this instead http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/7/5477768/gabor-balogh-circul.... or this https://dribbble.com/shots/1197072-My-iWatch-Concept-Overvie...
There's nothing particularly tasteful or well thought out in either mockup. The circular display, for one, is limiting and too watch-inspired for use with apps. That's why both mockups just show a few basic functions.
But, really what "refinement of Samsung's ideas" or "copying"?
Most everything we've seen on the Watch (and Gear) were already out there in the rumors for the iWatch, years ago. Some pressumably leaked from Apple's tests too.
Samsung rushed ahead and did a (ho-hum) implementation of them, Apple did a more mature one. It's not like there's anything in Gear 1/2 that either Apple didn't already have in the iPhone or everybody was not already expecting in the iWatch rumors years before either watch was released.
Apple reserving sapphire screens for watches makes perfect sense to me.
That's my guess anyways.
I thought it was interesting that the "Watch Sport" actually comes with the glass display. Which seems like they put some thought into it?
I'm hoping that it keeps the aspect ratio, even if that means black bars for now, because otherwise there will be undefined side-effects in many apps.
Up till now all of the new iphones seemed to get nicer and nicer design-wise, but this seems like a big step back to iphone 3. Perhaps it's just my taste.
https://pentest.com/ios_backdoors_attack_points_surveillance...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/upshot/hold-the-phone-a-bi...
Yes the article from the Times has a different opinion, but I wanted to share the slides mostly, as I cant find the original paper by Laura Trucco. His theory is that its the ios release that slows the phone, no denying that they are slowed. But leaving the phone functional should be the first priority. Any developer who tested ios 6 on the iphone 4 and approved it should have been shot.
> They were caught out slowing the older versions of their phones right before the release of the new ones by analyzing google search data
Where did you even get this from? That's 100% made-up. But it's also oddly specific in a way I've never heard before. What site is pushing this particular brand of garbage?
Here is the PRISM slide showing the timing of Apples participation, exactly one year after SJ passed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-...
It's not FUD I'm stating a set of facts here. It is what it is.
And provides some possible reasons related to consumer psychology.
Apple has been accused of planned obsolescence before, and the claims have always proven to be complete bullshit. There's a very simple explanation for why people complain about their phones being slow around the time new devices come out, and that's the fact that a new OS is released at the same time (as your link even states), and it's very common for new OS's to not perform as well on old hardware as the previous OS. This is partially because the new OS typically adds more functionality, which takes computing resources to use, and partially because the new OS is predominately only tested on new and current-gen hardware, and not tested much on older hardware. This is very well-known, and it affects pretty much every computing product ever. The only reason you're not really seeing this with Android phones is because a) new Android phone releases don't correlate with OS upgrades, and b) most Android phone users either don't or can't upgrade to the latest OS anyway.
I agree Apple does some crappy things; but every large company, government and organisation does. Does that make it right? No. Is there any point in complaining about it in an iPhone 6 release thread? Not really.
Let's talk hardware and new features instead of grabbing our pitchforks.
People buy brands and aesthetics, not function.
And people don't care about privacy or security, not yet anyway. I'm a hobbyist pen-tester, I've reported breaches which would allow full identity theft - and what happens? Nothing.
I swear I'm getting more and more pessimistic by the day, time to go camp in the woods.
Not that this says anything about the sensor used in the iPhone, but it's not unreasonable to expect that it could be used as some form of motion input.
The barometer makes calculating your position via GPS much quicker, as it has an additional piece of data to simplify some of the maths it does.
Edit: here's a source which may confirm - http://pocketnow.com/android/google-confirms-barometer-inten...
Over longer periods of time (hours/days) the atmosphere pressure is going to change whether you change altitude or not. Over short periods, the barometer can give a relative change. Without a known starting point, it can't give you absolute altitude/elevation.
It has nothing to do with getting a gps lock.
I'd be pretty surprised if the phones didn't pull down the satellite constellation data over the network vs waiting on the nav message broadcast from the satellites.
The main bottleneck to a GPS fix these days is simply downloading the satellite positions. This is done over a 1970s-era protocol that operates at 50bps and takes about 30 seconds to transmit all of the data.
Smartphones bypass this by downloading the positions over their local data connection, which cuts that down to a fraction of a second.
Fixing your altitude to +/- 2000ft doesn't really help the process to any significant degree. If you have the satellite positions or can get them quickly, the rest comes fast. If you don't, you're doomed to be slow.
I'm actually rather more excited about the Lumia 730. Value for money, not status is a killer feature for me.
Edit - plus my experience:
Possibly going aganist the grain here, but I've owned TOO MANY Apple products not to explode here. I'm sitting on a 2011 MacBook Pro with a big dark spot on the screen where it is starting to fail for example. Bring on the ThinkPad X230 that is replacing it next week.
Having used iOS extensively and written software for it, I find very few things more objectional, inflexible and tiresome. The OS is totally frustrating and just about everything hangs or crashes randomly (Safari being a fine example of horrible as it won't even render half a PNG image, leaving blank 60% at the bottom). Oh plus deleting every damn email in my exchange box on several occasions. Apple have a policy of silence and mysticism on all issues as well.
The build quality of Apple's mobile products is awful. Design over substance, completely irrepairable, poor engineering and materials decisions. Nickel alloys used everywhere resulting in dermatitis, glass on the edges (impact points) and terribly difficult to use connectors (lightning). As for repair, glue and proprietary screws. Enough said. I can still repair a Nokia with a T4 Torx and no heat gun.
The app ecosystem is horrible as well, consisting of vast swathes of mainly pay-per-addon traps for children, popularist crap and hyped overpriced junk.
Then there's the opaqueness of the devices. For example, it took me 5 fucking hours to get my wife's bookmarks off her iPad resulting in me having to write a script to convert the SQLite database (which was a bastard to get off the thing) into an HTML file so she could import it into Chrome. And why can't I just download an mp3 file onto the device like I can with Android, Windows Phone, Windows, MacOS etc.
So no; just experience.
Sync with Chrome on Windows using iCloud extension
Export
iMac = TRS-80
Mac OS X = FreeBSD munged with NeXT.
The iPod = Diamond Rio
Original iPhone = every damn windows mobile phone for at least 5 years before hand.
The innovation was the style, the marketing and the packaging, nothing more.