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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

#231

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…

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.

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

#232

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 it do blue bubbles? If not, then you should've went with a regular android.

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

#233
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?

Oh wow, the best unlock mechanism. What a feature!

[deleted]

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

#234

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…

> 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.

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

#235

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 because your earbuds are too loud, and everyone on the bus starts looking at you funny.

Not to mention the idiotic shortcut for screenshots (press sleep + volume simultaneously), which means that half the time I want my device to sleep it just makes a screenshot instead.

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

#236

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…

Honestly I'm shocked that my phone could disallow me tethering just because some third-party operator told him so, without any technical reasons. I paid my money to Apple, they got their salary from my money, yet they don't respect my freedom. The same with recording the calls. It's an extremely basic feature which is present in almost any Android phone AFAIK. That's what I don't like about iPhones, they have no resp…

just a quick note regarding speed limiter on cars (which most cars have), this is typically a safety feature to prevent you from exceeding the limit of the factory tires (imagine your tires blowing out at 160mph). Many performance cars can be reprogrammed to remove the speed limit (just do it once you've installed higher performance tires!)

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=...

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

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone made the point that Apples margins are quite consistent and have been for years. But a larger proportion of their revenue comes from services which are normally very high margin. Which implies that they are actually cutting their margins on hardware - in other words the phones are expensive because they cost more to build, not because Apple are getting greedy.

> because they cost more to build Then they should offer models that are cheaper to manufacture, like the 5c. I'm surprised not to see a successor to the 5c. Maybe they are worried it would be too popular and gouge sales of flagship models negating some of their premium branding. I'm currently on a 6s and see no update path for myself, I would happily sacrifice faceID and some of the higher-end phone materials for a…

> I'm surprised not to see a successor to the 5c. Maybe they are worried it would be too popular...

The 5C was a sales flop. In Australia, the 5S was outselling the 5C by eleven times [1]. Even in China, people were buying the more expensive iPhone rather than the plastic 5C one [2].

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/technology/australian-telcos-struggle...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/24/apples-iphone-5c-sales-sto...

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

#238
post #207

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…

>- Improve cellular reception. We are now heavily reliant on our cell phones, yet half the time our cell phones don't work because we are inside a building or not close to a tower and so on. This needs to be fixed ASAP. Everyone wants to buy the cheapest cellphone plan, then they complain when it doesn't work in buildings. Your location matters here, but at least in the more enclosed bars in san jose, AT&T and T-mobi…

Both Android and iPhone have put lots of effort into the 'broken WiFi network" problem. Apple has done MPTCP (allowing data to be split over WiFi and mobile), and Google has led on captive portal detection and disconnecting from non-working WiFi networks.

Despite that, results both sides of the fence are lackluster. User experience wandering through a city with WiFi hotspots is still terrible.

I want to be able to start a video call on Skype and go for a jog through the city and have it dynamically switch from WiFi to 4g every few paces while not dropping any frames. We're far from that world.

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

#239
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>- Improve cellular reception. We are now heavily reliant on our cell phones, yet half the time our cell phones don't work because we are inside a building or not close to a tower and so on. This needs to be fixed ASAP. Everyone wants to buy the cheapest cellphone plan, then they complain when it doesn't work in buildings. Your location matters here, but at least in the more enclosed bars in san jose, AT&T and T-mobi…

Both Android and iPhone have put lots of effort into the 'broken WiFi network" problem. Apple has done MPTCP (allowing data to be split over WiFi and mobile), and Google has led on captive portal detection and disconnecting from non-working WiFi networks. Despite that, results both sides of the fence are lackluster. User experience wandering through a city with WiFi hotspots is still terrible. I want to be able to st…

To achieve my proposed connectivity, platforms would need:

* Ability to connect to multiple WiFi networks at once (already possible with firmware mods).

* A worldwide shift to MPTCP or QUIC to handle IP address changes without disrupting user traffic.

* A VPN/gateway to tunnel legacy traffic which isn't QUIC or MPTCP. Google already does this for Project Fi

* Preferably the ability to subscribe to multiple phone networks/cells at once to avoid the few hundred millisecond gap in data connectivity when switching cells. Mediatek devices can already do this with firmware mods.

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

#240

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…

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…

Locally recorded voicemail only makes sense for landlines; there’s a good reason it doesn’t exist in phones.

Visual voicemail is implemented if your carrier supports it.

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