Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Debuts iPhone 16e

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 857 posts

Re: Apple Debuts iPhone 16e

#511

Post by throwaway4731 »

ksec wrote: post #413
insane_dreamer wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple managed to design its own state-of-the-art CPUs. I wouldn't have imagined that designing its own modem would be such a difficult challenge?

Except making a decent modem is indeed harder than start of art CPU. People loves to shit on Qualcomm but dont appreciate that amount of work involved.

The hard part is not the modem design per se.

The hard part is designing a good modem while also unambiguously working around all the Qualcomm patents in all the jurisdictions that have iPhone, which is all of them.

Because if you don’t do that, you’re still paying Qualcomm which defeats an important purpose of making your own modem.

Re: Apple Debuts iPhone 16e

#512

Post by ryandrake »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #390
robin_reala wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then replace the battery and carry on using it?

May end up doing that. We'll see. I also write software for these beasties, and it may well be that I won't be able to justify avoiding getting one that has Apple Intelligence.

Eventually, Apple (and 3p developers) will abandon you, and you'll need to throw away a perfectly good phone and take another step on the treadmill.

I'm still hanging on to my perfectly working iPhone 7, while app developers tell me to fuck off left and right. It does everything I want a phone to do, but developers consider "old phones" to be icky and stop supporting them.

Re: Apple Debuts iPhone 16e

#513

Post by seec »

asdff wrote: post #425
SunlitCat wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price hike is the major turn off point. Even as a non Apple person I was on the verge of getting the new "SE" if it's in the price range of the old SE line up. But not for 600 USD, that's a bit too much.

The market for a cheaper iphone like this has always been just buying a 4 year old phone for like $0-small few hundred from your carrier. Makes no sense for apple to push a new product in this segment when their own supply eats it. And all they really offer in the se is a new old iphone anyhow making use of old components they have spare inventory available or on order from their vendors remaining supply lines.

You are missing the point.

These types of "budget" phones that Apple does are for people who can't/won't buy the flagship (because too expensive) but wouldn't buy something second-hand either.

There are a LOT of people like that. It is not rational at all; they would rather buy something shittier for their money than get more value. My grandparents are like that.

To buy in the second-hand market you need to have some knowledge about how phones compare in the first place, even if you use a platform that minimizes the risks.

So, it's not the same market at all, and Apple is pushing their luck even more with a pricing way too high for what is essentially a 3 years old phones at best (the chip makes little difference to the typical user of these phones).

Re: Apple Debuts iPhone 16e

#514

Post by schmidtleonard »

DCH3416 wrote: post #495
vessenes wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original M-series chip team left years ago, or at least the major drivers. Also: radios are hard, super hard.

I wouldn't expect these initial baseband implementations to be fantastic software wise.

That's probably why it's in a weird release between 16 and 17.

Re: Apple Debuts iPhone 16e

#515

Post by adamsb6 »

> iPhone 16e will be available in white and black in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB storage capacities, starting at $599 (U.S.) or $24.95 (U.S.) per month for 24 months.

Wait a sec. 24 * 24.95 = $598.80

They'll pay you twenty cents to take the financing?

Re: Apple Debuts iPhone 16e

#516

Post by IshKebab »

uticus wrote: post #504
ksec wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except making a decent modem is indeed harder than start of art CPU. People loves to shit on Qualcomm but dont appreciate that amount of work involved.

I would buy that a decent modem is harder than many CPU designs, maybe even most. But harder than state-of-the-art? Surely not, have you seen the complexity? And even CPUs (esp state of art) have to worry about radio effects, as in avoiding internally and across chipset.

State of the art CPUs aren't fundamentally different to more basic CPUs. They just have fancier microarchitectures, better branch predictors, more cache, etc.

Easy to believe radios would be an order of magnitude harder, what with the ancient proprietary standards and actual physical radio stuff. (The closest CPUs get is serdes and in my experience those are bought in from Synopsys et al.)

Re: Apple Debuts iPhone 16e

#519

Post by red369 »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #233
deergomoo wrote: post #176

At this point there’s only really one thing I want from an iPhone and that’s an option for a 12/13 mini sized device again. Surely those phones didn’t sell so few that it’s not worth doing at all?

The best part about my 12 mini is that it's such a pain to use sometimes on the modern web that it discourages unnecessary browsing. Alas, the battery was already subpar on it and now is quite bad, so I'll probably pick up this SE.

In the reviews I read, the 13 mini was a significant upgrade in battery life, compared with the 12 mini. Since your 12 mini is now old, even a used 13 mini (with good battery health) would probably be a significant upgrade. Apple battery replacements for these are not crazy prices either. A used but pristine 13 mini with battery replaced by Apple would probably be much, much cheaper than a 16e.

If I sound like I'm trying to influence you're decision, my apologies! I really disliked the size of the SE 2022, which I bought to replace the last really good Apple phone (SE 2016), and that was much smaller than the 16e. I should have gone straight to the 13 mini - I was put off by no bezels, Face ID, and I guess like a sucker I wanted to buy another SE because I liked the one I had so much. :)

Re: Apple Debuts iPhone 16e

#520

Post by makeitdouble »

asdff wrote: post #425
SunlitCat wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price hike is the major turn off point. Even as a non Apple person I was on the verge of getting the new "SE" if it's in the price range of the old SE line up. But not for 600 USD, that's a bit too much.

The market for a cheaper iphone like this has always been just buying a 4 year old phone for like $0-small few hundred from your carrier. Makes no sense for apple to push a new product in this segment when their own supply eats it. And all they really offer in the se is a new old iphone anyhow making use of old components they have spare inventory available or on order from their vendors remaining supply lines.

The Pixel 'a' line has been very good at this, the current 8a is the best value of the whole Pixel lineup, and it's way cheaper than this 16e.
Post reply on HN