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The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

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Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#241

Post by gmac »

freediver wrote: post #42
lettergram wrote: post #40

My wife and I bought an XS (for her) and XR (for me). We both had Nexus 6p and they were at end of life and wanted to get her a nicer phone for Christmas. Well, after playing with both the XR takes better photos, generally. In addition, the XR gets probably 30% more life on a single charge. Nothing else on the XS is really much better (outside of a couple nice to haves). So now she has the XR and I have the XS. ID re…

Would have bought XR if it was smaller. Currently using 7 and even XR is just too large to be called a phone anymore. XS is a monstrosity from my point of view.

Absolutely agree. I was hoping the XR would work for me, but I went to the Apple Store to try it and it's just far too big for my (reasonably big) hands. So now I have to pay lots more for a phone whose main feature is that it's smaller? No thanks.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#242

Post by shanghaiaway »

simonh wrote: post #181
interlocutor wrote: post #173

Apple's problem is that their rate of innovation has slowed down. iPhone generates over a 100 Billion dollars in revenue. Per year. If any company has the resources to innovate it is Apple. Apple, here are some free ideas. Some of these ideas go beyond the phone and into cell networks. If Google can do that ( https://fi.google.com ) why can't Apple? - Improve cellular reception. We are now heavily reliant on our cell…

Yep, apart from the latest iPhones having the best screens ever, the quickest most convenient and most secure unlock mechanism ever, the best computational photography ever, the fastest mobile CPUs ever released and overall being 2+ years ahead of their nearest competition, that was all a few months ago. Old news. What have Apple done for us just now?

They skimped on RAM. No finger print scanner. Falling behind in photography. Poor OS.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#243

Post by tapland »

londons_explore wrote: post #234
tapland wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Google can do that ( https://fi.google.com ) why can't Apple? I think Apple planned (still is?) to become a carrier as part of their eSIM rollout, but the carriers who sell a lot of their phones are not so welcoming to carrying a competing carriers products. If Apple can move iDevice sales to their own stores to a higher degree this is more likely to happen.

I feel like Apple can just have a popup that says "Verizon has no service here. AppleNet has 4 bars service. Do you want to connect to AppleNet instead($35 per month)?". Click 'Yes' and you're subscribed, billed to your Apple account just like any other in-app subscription, and only used when your main provider has no service or you have no SIM inserted.

Yep. But with that functionality it could also be: Turn iPhone on, get asked the same, never worry about a separate carrier, ever.

Carriers don't want that.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#244

Post by walrus01 »

londons_explore wrote: post #228

I recently got a Umidigi A3 Pro [1] as my main phone. It's an iPhone X clone for $85. Is it as good? No. But it's nearly as good, and has the flexibility of Android (tethering when the carrier doesn't allow it, side loading 'dodgy' apps, multi-sim so I can always get coverage even indoors, hackable headphone volume, call recording without hassle). Overall, I'd value the iPhone and fake iPhone the same for my uses. An…

Beware of super cheap phones you find on AliExpress, in many cases the mediatek chipset ones, as a part of the "manufacturer" creating a rooted Android build for them, come with gaping security holes or outright backdoors.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/chinese-smartphone-might-serio...

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#245

Post by pwg »

andromeduck wrote: post #213
headsoup wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the issue with the notch, it serves no particular purpose other than allowing 'more screen.' Does losing 5mm at the top the screen to bezel really affect user experience when the phones are huge anyway? If not, why make it break the display uniformity and separate notification icons...

Have you ever tried reading the economist? Lots of sites have stupid amounts of banners. Having more vertical space also makes it easier to scan my emails or akik an article. It is absolutely worth it.

Those are fixed via a small bookmarklet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookmarklet):

javascript:(function () { var i,elements=document.querySelectorAll('body *'); for (i=0;iPut that in a bookmark (it will be all one long line in the bookmark URL field), run it on the page with the banners, the banners disappear (at least in Firefox on Android). YMMV on iOS/Safari.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#246

Post by saurik »

jakobegger wrote: post #235
londons_explore wrote: post #228

I recently got a Umidigi A3 Pro [1] as my main phone. It's an iPhone X clone for $85. Is it as good? No. But it's nearly as good, and has the flexibility of Android (tethering when the carrier doesn't allow it, side loading 'dodgy' apps, multi-sim so I can always get coverage even indoors, hackable headphone volume, call recording without hassle). Overall, I'd value the iPhone and fake iPhone the same for my uses. An…

And they even fixed the biggest UX blunder of the iPhone, which is placing the volume buttons and sleep button on opposite sides of the device, just to make it look symmetrical. Symmetry is the worst for user experience. It's a bit embarrassing when you are trying to turn the volume of your headphones down, and accidentally trigger the "emergency SOS" feature which makes a loud claxon sound, which you can't hear beca…

I find this confusing, as to me having the buttons on different sides of the device ensures that I never make a mistake as the buttons are nowhere near each other.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#247

Post by saagarjha »

londons_explore wrote: post #231
tabs_masterrace wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about some more sensors. No phone can tell me the temperature, without checking weather online. What if I want to know the room temperature. Could put humidity, atmospheric pressure sensors in there too, IR cameras, all kinds of cool stuff. Think of the software applications, right know my "smart" phone has no way of knowing if I'm outside or inside. Then, voice mail. Why doesn't this still not work locally? Ther…

Most phones already have a bunch of temperature sensors, air pressure sensor, magnetic field sensors, humidity sensors etc. I'm pretty sure the iPhone has them too, but perhaps they don't make them available to app developers.

Off the top of my head, iPhone’s barometer and magnetometer are accessible via public API.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#248

Post by coredog64 »

londons_explore wrote: post #228

I recently got a Umidigi A3 Pro [1] as my main phone. It's an iPhone X clone for $85. Is it as good? No. But it's nearly as good, and has the flexibility of Android (tethering when the carrier doesn't allow it, side loading 'dodgy' apps, multi-sim so I can always get coverage even indoors, hackable headphone volume, call recording without hassle). Overall, I'd value the iPhone and fake iPhone the same for my uses. An…

Can you use cases made for the Apple as well, or did you have to find ones specific to that phone?

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#249

Post by saagarjha »

dan-robertson wrote: post #210
pdpi wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their SoCs are a massive differentiator. Unfortunately I don’t think the iPhone is in a good position to leverage that.

Having much better single core performance means the chips tend to be better at running (JS) websites. However most mobile websites are awful and full of “download our app” type popups/dark patterns that means “good at websites” isn’t really the advantage it ought to be. I suppose this also lets webview and JavaScript type “apps” work better.

There are very few workloads on mobile that can take advantage of more than a handful of cores.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#250

Post by simonh »

jpatokal wrote: post #185
simonh wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, apart from the latest iPhones having the best screens ever, the quickest most convenient and most secure unlock mechanism ever, the best computational photography ever, the fastest mobile CPUs ever released and overall being 2+ years ahead of their nearest competition, that was all a few months ago. Old news. What have Apple done for us just now?

Those are all incremental improvements. Nobody's saying Apple's phones are bad, just that they lack compelling differentiators to other phones, including older iPhones.

Of course it's arguable, my tongue was firmly in me cheek when writing that. It's just that the post I was replying to was so over the top, including half of it's points being entirely out of Apple's hands, it deserved an over the top retort.

For example, any improvements Apple made to wireless networking would by necessity be available to competitors - and they actually do it anyway! Apple are a major contributor to wireless standards, kickstarted Wifi in the first place and are major contributors on connector standards too including USB-C. But as I say, these are standards so not inherently differentiating features.

We're at the point with handsets that one person's differentiation is another person's feature bloat. Take the people replying to me saying they prefer touch ID. Fair enough, I can understand why, but the corollary to that isn't that therefore face ID is worthless and not an innovation. That's just crass and why I phrased my post in a 'what have you done for me recently' framework. When a company is dressing a market of billions, 'I don't like new feature X that's popular with hundreds of millions, therefore Apple isn't innovative' comes across as whiny self obsession.

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