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The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

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Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#61

Post by microtonal »

nextos wrote: post #52
DavidWanjiru wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I quit Apple precisely when the iPhone 1 was released..." Just so I understand, since the iPhone was the first phone Apple made, are you saying you stopped using their PCs (and music players?) because they'd made a phone? If you were happy with their other products up to that point, how does the phone change the grand scheme of things? I'd want to hear what your ideology is.

I expected iPhone to be like Newton. But it ended up being a walled garden. I realised trading a bit of my freedom for convenient user interfaces was not a good plan in the long run, so I gave up on Mac and went back to Linux. I thought Macs would become less open and less important for Apple in the future, with their marked shift to mobile. I think it was the right decision. Almost a decade later, Macs still lack co…

For example, they don't ship with a package manager.

Strictly speaking they are. Of course, it doesn't help that they put most of the system in one package :) (com.apple.pkg.Essentials).

At any rate, Homebrew and MacPorts are only five minutes away. Even after 22 years of experience with various Linux distributions, I still prefer Homebrew as my package manager. (Mostly because adding your own custom formulae is so easy and new packages are in more quickly than in e.g. Debian.)

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#62

Post by wtallis »

quickben wrote: post #51
wtallis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the past actions, one just doesn't know what the pricing will be in future, There's no reason to worry that Apple will resume charging for OS X updates after so many years of giving them away and after shifting to more frequent but less substantial releases.

Probably, but his point was about that ecosystem (iPhone or all?) becoming a wallet garden, and it did become one (sounds like he was referring to the phone one)

None of Apple's platforms became a walled garden. iOS is more open than it was at first release when there was no SDK and the only sanctioned development method was web apps. OS X/macOS has acquired an optional walled garden app store but has otherwise only become more restricted for security reasons, and those restrictions can be disabled by the user.

None of the predictions of doom have come to pass. Users have come to accept new mobile computing platforms that are less open than the PC platform, but there is no "whole ecosystem" that has transitioned to being a walled garden.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#63

Post by JeanMeche »

ak217 wrote: post #54
WhitneyLand wrote: post #14

Is anyone making different decisions based on the headphone jack? After a steady upgrade cadence since iPhone 1, this is the first time I've postponed my decision, still deciding how to proceed. Google is making the right moves but I'm not sure how much it can help them. Pixel is an excellent product, but you need a crowbar to pry people out of a well worn and comfortable habits.

In my opinion Pixel is a disappointment. iPhone 7 brought two features that I really like (waterproofing and a faster CPU) but screwed it up by removing the headphone jack. So I was really looking forward to the Pixel. But it has no water resistance, no wireless charging, a poor backplate design, and an uncompetitive starting price. So at this point I'm disappointed in both flagship launches of the year. I don't know…

Am I the only who thinks wireless charging is a terrible idea ?

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#64

Post by davidf18 »

Hardware feature table mentions WiFi, but not the LTE modem and radio which is far more important as LTE has to deal with skyscrapers and buildings with stone and steel which conveniently block LTE signals, population density, and spectrum consumption has been dramatically increasing year to year. The unit has the Qualcomm X12 modem but that modem doesn't cover AWS-3 (Band 66) which is a very large swath of spectrum, making the phone already obsolete for dense markets (e.g., large cities).

So, it would be very helpful to see 1) signal improvement, 2) download speed improvement, 3) improvement in voice quality when listening, 4) improvement on voice quality when speaking including background cancellation.

For example, something I rarely saw in iPhone 6s(+) reviews was the addition of a 4th microphone for noise cancellation. I also rarely saw any talk of the H.265 compression (2 x H.264) for FaceTime Video over cell networks in the 6s.

Last Sat, I was in a Starbucks speaking with a friend who was in a different Starbucks. I was on the 7+ he on the 5S. I could hear annoying background noise, he could hear no background noise. These things are critically important, but it seems as if the reviewers are not using these units in real world situations.

I think this is because the people doing the reviews don't really have technical backgrounds. Otherwise, they'd be testing this issues.

EDIT: The modem specs (for Verizon/Sprint). AT&T, T-mobile use a lesser Intel Modem. https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/modems/x12

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#66

Post by WildUtah »

quickben wrote: post #44
Angostura wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I quit Apple precisely when the iPhone 1 was released due to ideological reasons, as I realised the whole ecosystem would become a walled garden. And yet the Mac really hasn't. So why quit Apple?

Probably for the same reasons my current company is migrating away from anything Microsoft. Given the past actions, one just doesn't know what the pricing will be in future, and it makes sense to spend money to move to Linux now, instead in x years under deadlines. I realize this is unrelated to the main topic, but it illustrates human foresight.

The principal problem with abandoning Apple at this point being that you can't get developer grade desktop hardware anywhere outside Apple at a reasonable price.

And if Apple ever goes back to making new laptops, those will probably be head and shoulders better than the competition at the same price, too. We don't know for certain, of course, since it's been two years since Apple has made new MacBook Pros with more than cosmetic adjustments and they may never make new ones ever again. None have been announced, anyway. The price of the two year old version, of course, is the same as it was on original release.

But there's no matching quality and features of the retina iMac for creative work, including software development, even at double or triple the price.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#67

Post by matwood »

Shivetya wrote: post #46
op00to wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the $200 phone bursts into flames, are you able to sue the Chinese manufacturer for damages? When your $200 phone breaks, do you have to simply buy a new one rather than get it replaced? When there are security holes in your $200 phone, will the cheap skin over Android get patched? I buy Apple phones for one reason, and that's the fact that my business lives and dies through communication. With my $800 phone, I…

that is a large amount of FUD and baseless too. the majority of the world gets by not having eight hundred dollar phones just fine. Apple marketing simply has succeeded in convincing you and others that there is no viable alternative which in turn keeps you from accepting such a possibility

> Apple marketing simply has succeeded in convincing you and others that there is no viable alternative which in turn keeps you from accepting such a possibility

Speaking of FUD. Marketing only gets you so far, and at some point you have to have a product. I have tried to switch to Android. First with an HTC One and another time with the Nexus 5 (I also have a Nexus 7). Android definitely wins on open and customization, but on overall system it continually failed. My Nexus 5 would randomly get system processes spinning out of control and if I didn't notice, I would have a dead battery in ~10 minutes. I don't remember which, but there was an Android update that made my Nexus 7 completely unusable.

I went back to the iPhone, and only then fully realized Apple's advantage of controlling the hardware AND software. I think Google is finally recognizing this, and attempting to replicate it with the Pixel.

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#68

Post by grecy »

throwaway_45 wrote: post #13

I am surprised cell phones are still selling for 650 bucks. You can get a Chinese cell phone for 200 dollars which will do 90% of what latest apple or Samsung will do. Maybe it will be a little bit slower, but not 450 dollars slower.

I'm in West Africa and just bought a fully-functional phone for $20 - that was new price, in the box, no haggling. For another $10 I could have got a much bigger screen and better specs.

It does absolutely everything I can think of a cell phone can do, even has dual sims. I'm tethering to it off 3G right now.

It's running Android 5.1, and to be honest I have not even tried to upgrade it because it just doesn't matter. It does everything as it is.

It's this http://www.naijainformation.com/2016/06/itel-it1355-price-fu...

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#69

Post by neolefty »

JeanMeche wrote: post #63
ak217 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion Pixel is a disappointment. iPhone 7 brought two features that I really like (waterproofing and a faster CPU) but screwed it up by removing the headphone jack. So I was really looking forward to the Pixel. But it has no water resistance, no wireless charging, a poor backplate design, and an uncompetitive starting price. So at this point I'm disappointed in both flagship launches of the year. I don't know…

Am I the only who thinks wireless charging is a terrible idea ?

Have you tried it?

Re: The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Review: Iterating on a Flagship

#70

Post by paublyrne »

ak217 wrote: post #54
WhitneyLand wrote: post #14

Is anyone making different decisions based on the headphone jack? After a steady upgrade cadence since iPhone 1, this is the first time I've postponed my decision, still deciding how to proceed. Google is making the right moves but I'm not sure how much it can help them. Pixel is an excellent product, but you need a crowbar to pry people out of a well worn and comfortable habits.

In my opinion Pixel is a disappointment. iPhone 7 brought two features that I really like (waterproofing and a faster CPU) but screwed it up by removing the headphone jack. So I was really looking forward to the Pixel. But it has no water resistance, no wireless charging, a poor backplate design, and an uncompetitive starting price. So at this point I'm disappointed in both flagship launches of the year. I don't know…

When you can mostly charge your phone in half an hour, wireless charging becomes a little irrelevant.
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