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iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

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Re: iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

#571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse. Battery replacement costs at Apple are $69-99 and offered all the way back to the iPhone SE 1st Generation. That's the all-in cost where you bring it in, they open it up, swap it out, and give your phone back to you. An OEM battery for an Android phone is like $50. Budgeting $69-99 once every 3-4 years hardly seems like it's goin…

> iPhone SE 1st Generation To note, that's a regional thing. It seems to stop at gen2 for Asian countries for ex. > Budgeting $69-99 once every 3-4 years iPhone batteries become subpar way faster than that, especially the older models who get more strained as they bear the heavier OS. Once every year and a half looks more realistic to me.

FWIW I got a launch iPhone X I gave to my dad with original battery now at 73% health, OLED screen burn in, and a broken charging port (wireless charging still works), and he’s still using it as a daily driver lol.

So while batteries certainly can go subpar faster, they can and do last much longer sometimes.

I also babied it and rarely charged above 80 or fell below 25, which may have played a part but who knows.

Re: iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

#572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the iPhone would have true user-swappable batteries, their business would collapse. Battery replacement costs at Apple are $69-99 and offered all the way back to the iPhone SE 1st Generation. That's the all-in cost where you bring it in, they open it up, swap it out, and give your phone back to you. An OEM battery for an Android phone is like $50. Budgeting $69-99 once every 3-4 years hardly seems like it's goin…

You missed the user bit of what you're replying to. There are android phones that have this ability, I have one. New batteries are ~20 bucks, and they take about 5 minutes to swap, most of which is shutdown/boot time. I can take my phone out innawoods and use offline GPS all day, and as a flashlight at night, by just bringing a pocketfull of batteries. When a battery goes bad, I toss it in the recycle bucket, and buy…

> When a battery goes bad, I toss it in the recycle bucket, and buy a new one. I currently have 10 of them and they're on rotation.

not to pick on you but it’s baffling the way some people clothe themselves in right to repair and then bust out some shit like this. this is absolutely insane from an e-waste and frankly just regular-waste perspective.

I’m sure it’s very convenient and granted everyone needs batteries, but still, “they fail and I throw them away and buy new ones, I currently have 10” is objectively insane and I have to think that buying shitty non-oem batteries is a major part of why you churn batteries so much.

“I said it sounds like he’s just feeding e-waste to landfills and hackernews started crying”

maybe think about buying some 18650 batteries and a power bank or something, idk. You can get cold-weather 18650 cells which improve outdoors performance a lot, and good quality 18650s last a half decade or more.

Really disappointing how right to repair just turned out to be a fashion accessory for most people, and the actual boots-on-the-ground aspects like oem parts availability and not using disposable junk batteries didn’t sink in, people are literally happy to have a backpack full of 10 Amazon batteries they change out every 6 months if it means they get to bash apple and feel smug about it. The discussion around usb-c vs lightning went much the same way - people were exuberant at the prospect of filling the landfills full of discarded cables (on a port that's been around for a decade), as long as they were the right cables. People bashed the self-service/OEM parts availability for being some kind of plot or conspiracy. People bashed it because the OEM factory repair tools apple will rent or sell you are too big and clunky.

There really, really ought to be a real attempt to account and attribute some of these total lifecycles, independently of some of the fandom and some of the actors involved with R2R with their own personal foibles and financial interests. Specifically thinking of component-level repair as not being in the interest of certain major backers of R2R, for example. There should be an accounting of what the actual cost is for that decision, vs the aspects of R2R increasing the churn on these essentially-disposable amazon batteries and other junk and so on. Those things need to be attributed in the total lifecycle cost too, if bunches of people keep doing the same thing you are that's a real social problem. Ten batteries, and I just swap them out when they fail and buy new ones to throw away. One of the most polluting and dangerous and toxic parts of the phone. Good lord.

I hope you are at least sending them for proper disposal, but even that is not currently even close to full recycling efficiency iirc.

Re: iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

#573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only when the battery runs bad. That can be renewed (sometimes, my 1st gen SE from the last batch runs the second battery pack, probably the last batch of batteries available). Also when you are forced by apps you need that want the newest hardware by some reason. I mean when most of them, because some could be missed for a while, but when most you use are just refuse to work, then it is time to get a new one. No…

5G is rapidly becoming this. I'm still using a phone that's only a few years old and maxes out at 4G. Lately it's started sporadically losing connection entirely in locations where it previously worked perfectly... meanwhile everyone around me has a five bar 5G signal on their newer models. They've started to do to 4G what they did to E, H and 3G, complete bandwidth reduction to fuckin zero so the latest protocol can…

Doesn’t 5G piggyback on 4G though?

Re: iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

#574
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people have to "upgrade" constantly? Shouldn't the iPhone get at least a little bit better every year, even if no one "upgrades"? I often use my devices for years until they break in some way, and then I get a new one... is it really so wrong that the 2024 model is only better in ways you don't care about from the 2023 model?

Exactly. Them releasing a new model every year with small, incremental updates is not for people to upgrade from the latest model (although it is obvious Apple tries to frame the newer models as large upgrades, they haven’t been that for the past 5 or so years), but rather for people who have been wanting to upgrade for a while from their 3-4-5 year old iPhones, and whenever they do they get the latest and greatest.…

>although it is obvious Apple tries to frame the newer models as large upgrades, they haven’t been that for the past 5 or so years

It does feel like there's a small degree of "they can't win" here though. They caught a bit of flack last release cycle for comparing the M3 and M4 chips to the M1s and M2s. Either they can compare to the old ones and people gripe about them hiding the fact that the new releases are incremental, or they compare to the current models and people complain that the releases are incremental.

>Would the new models feel bigger upgrades if Apple only released one every 2-3 year? Sure. Would that be better for the average consumer looking to upgrade from whatever iPhone they have? Not sure. Incremental updates are nice IMO, stop caring about them if your iPhone is less than 3 year old…

I do find it funny that the industry that gave us "rolling release linux" and "dependabot" is full of so many people that hate incremental hardware release cycles.

Re: iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

#575

I'm conflicted. It's absolutely stunning what smartphones can do these days and Apple makes an excellent product. It feels ungrateful and cynical to keep calling new models "boring". The reality though is that normie needs were accomplished several generations ago. I'll use my girlfriend as a sample of such user. She can't tell the difference between LCD and OLED nor would she notice Pro-motion. You can add a million…

I don't really see these upgrades as being for iPhone 15 users. If you smash your phone or whatever, you get this years model and it's mostly like last year's model except it's not samashed.

I upgraded from the X to the 15 Pro Max and it was a nice improvement. Much better camera. Much speedier. Better wireless charging. USB-C. I wouldn't upgrade to the 16, though; looking at the comparison chart, pretty much nothing changes. It can charge faster and record better 4K video. I have no complaints about charging speed and don't know what Dolby Pro Motion even is.

When the iPhone 20 comes out, I'm sure I'll be tempted to upgrade. Every 5 years is a totally reasonable upgrade cycle, and enough stuff changes that it feels worthwhile. So for that reason, I don't view the yearly announcements as being anything relevant unless you need a new phone today for some reason. (Though I was in the Apple Store last weekend and saw people happily buying full-price 15s, not knowing Apple's release schedule. That's a shame for them.)

Re: iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

#577
post #82

Smaller notch? Touch ID? Better battery life? Faster charging? Larger default storage? Nope, let's skip all that and spend most of the event talking about video recording. Is anyone here actually excited about the features they just announced? Or are people simply upgrading because they get the latest iPhone every year or two by default?

We're probably at least a decade away, but what happens when Apple _cant_ make a better iPhone?

Re: iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

#578
post #123
post #111

More buttons? Since I lost my power button on Pixel 5, I'm using it only with gestures: touch the fingerprint sensor to unlock, swipe down on home screen to lock it. I think a slider on the notification area can be used for volume up and down for a true buttonless experience something Steve Jobs would have loved.

Ironic, isn’t it? when the iPhone first came the most different thing about it was that it had a very few buttons. they were telling stories about how Steve Jobs wanted to remove all the buttons. Now we have more and more buttons.

The original iPhone had four buttons: home, power, up and down volume.

The iPhone 16 Pro has four buttons: power, up, down, camera.

Plus a switch for mute. Both models.

Re: iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

#579

It seemed like smartphone has reached its peak

smartphone plataeu happened like 8 years ago. at this point, even in our wildest dreams, what else could you possibly want a phone to do? all that is left for this form factor is incremental QoL improvements until some crazy new technology which we can't yet fathom drops, and god help us when it does lol.

Well, what about foldable phones? The current iPhone is too long to fit in my pocket comfortably. I would upgrade to a foldable iPhone.

Another idea: support hover gestures as seen in this article: https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/5/11595564/microsoft-3d-touc...

In software, get rid of flat UI. No need to bring back skeuomorphism, but find a middle ground.

Re: iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

#580

It seemed like smartphone has reached its peak

smartphone plataeu happened like 8 years ago. at this point, even in our wildest dreams, what else could you possibly want a phone to do? all that is left for this form factor is incremental QoL improvements until some crazy new technology which we can't yet fathom drops, and god help us when it does lol.

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