iPhone 5S and lower-cost sibling coming this summer? The next iteration of the iPhone – likely called the iPhone 5S, according to rumor-mongers – will be released this summer and will include a fingerprint sensor, improved camera, and more-powerful processor. It will also be joined by a lower-cost, less spiffy sibling. That's the take-away from a pair of reports on Tuesday, one …
And even if any of this happens, the new phones will still have a clunky user interface, six years old and five years out of date, partly because the fanboiz think it's perfect but mainly because Apple have patented themselves into such a corner that they can't and daren't change things.
Why sure, having observed the wild success of Windows 8, Windows Phone 7.x and 8, they could drop in an entirely new interface (or two for good measure) and also go from about 20+ % of the phone market, making billions to about 2%. But hey, there user interface won't be five years out of date like other OS's.
</sarcasm>
I agree that they are painted into a corner to some extent - like Microsoft with Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, people are pretty happy with a basic, predictable app launcher interface that does not change widely. Personally, I am pretty happy with that as well.
I liked buying a new bike last year and finding the clutch on left handbar, gear-shift on left foot, accelerator on the right handbar etc. Quite glad that vehicle manufacturers don't change there minds on controls every model year.
I use a Nexus 7 tablet (Android 4.2.2) and an iOS iPod Touch/iPad Gen 3 (iOS 6.x) on a regular basis. Both operating systems have little things that I would like to see change - iOS to allow live updating on widgets/icons (which it already does to some extent) and a swype style keyboard like the Nexus.
Android to figure out what the return button actually does and make it consistent, and opening HTTP links from emails to actually open more than one link in Chrome. Also Android 4.2 is good enough now - please no more overlays from Samsung, HTC etc.
In both cases however, I would like them to tweak the little things and make it better but NOT to throw out the current interface and create a new unpolished UI that reflects whatever is fashionable in UI design today. Yes, I am thinking of Ubuntu/Unity, Gnome and of course Microsoft that has to push tiles and things like all upper case letters on menus everywhere.
If UI fashion de jour continues on the current minimalism path, pretty sure we will end up with black writing on black buttons on a blackground and nobody will actually be able to use a computer. But they will look styley .
Apple makes stuff which doesn't do much but does it consistently and reliably. Android manufacturers make stuff which does a lot but does it inconsistently and unreliably (though the latter is a getting better). All I want is a device which combines the power of Android with the reliability of Apple.
Why sure, having observed the wild success of Windows 8, Windows Phone 7.x and 8, they could drop in an entirely new interface (or two for good measure) and also go from about 20+ % of the phone market, making billions to about 2%.
That 20% of the smartphone market having been, of course, 80% or 90% a couple of years ago. Windows is not the competition, by the way. Yet.
"80% or 90%" of the market?
Reference please.
From what I recall, Symbian was the market leader in Smartphones until set alight by Mr Elop.
Before the iPhone, Windows Mobile held a significant market share percentage, and then RIM.
The key point in any analysis is that Apple created and hold a large percentage of the very profitable top end of phone sales, and that 20% of 2013 market would be in absolute numbers probably more than 50% of the market in 2007. They seem to be growing sales, if not marketshare, by retaining that the old interface.
Competitors that replace their OS during the same time period (RIM, Nokia, MS) don't seem to be doing so well.
This post has been deleted by its author
I think I'm going to stay with my iPhone 4 and get a new battery. Since the discontinuation of the 30-way connector and the demise of SJ, I'm quite happy to sit on the fence for a year and see what transpires at Apple. I'm not a happy fruity punter at the moment as I don't think that the products offer the stability they once did.
I'm still running iOS5.1.1 based on the reviews and tales of woe I've read about subsequent "upgrades" and I'll be really quite annoyed to scrap my clock radio charging dock and I'm not bastardising it with a huge great crappy adaptor.
I find it REALLY hard to believe that Apple would release even the "low cost" version completely free with a 2-year contract. I think $50 or even $100 would be more likely.
One of the big ideas that Apple has toted over the years is the "value" of their product. They don't want to undermine that value by pricing things really cheap, regardless of their actual cost ($100 premium to go from 32GB to 64GB?). That's why you don't see them on sale like other products (although they seem to have relaxed this a little bit over the recent years).
I find it quite amusing watching them squirm around in the corner they've painted themselves into with this. One the one hand (ho ho) there is the famous "one size fits all so why change?" approach, and on the other there's the "gosh, the world really does want a bigger form factor - look at Samsungs' sales" but they can't because their software is totally unprepared for fragmentation, unlike a certain well known competitors who has been dealing with it for so long it has perfected it.
And no, I don't mean just adding another row of icons to a homescreen and letterboxing all the existing apps when needed.
Not to take anything from the joy of the squirming but the assertion that Apple's software is totally unprepared for fragmentation is inaccurate. iOS 6 introduced auto layout — which amounts to setting a bunch of arbitrary constraints on view size and placement relative to anything else you like — thereby fully preparing iOS for fragmentation.
@ThomH
Surely not? Adopting the way Android has worked for years?
Well I never.
Maybe now the Apple faithful*, having learned how Android avoids 'stretched phone apps', will stop bleating this whenever Android screen variance is mentioned?
*Disclosure: iPhone 5 owner, although not a very happy one
Not everyone wants a big pratt phone to go with their big pratt car (4x4).
The Nokia 920 I have it just about as big as they should go. 1080 HD screens are a complete waste of time too. If your laptop doesn't have one then why would a phone need one?
"Not everyone wants a big pratt phone to go with their big pratt car (4x4).
The Nokia 920 I have it just about as big as they should go. 1080 HD screens are a complete waste of time too. If your laptop doesn't have one then why would a phone need one?"
All Big Pratt 4x4 owners carry iPhones!
iSheeple love their HD screens and tout it as being superior to all other devices ever created.
Listen matey, I've got a white 4x4 Beamer, I run Micro$oft's finest on my Nokia of choice, and I need 1080hd to properly see my share portfolio returns - all tobacco, arms companies, Serco and Accenture for me. I outsource by day, party hard by night. And no-one has ever called me a prat.
In terms of points-per-inch* Apple currently supports exactly two sizes — 163 and 132. The iPad Mini is the old iPad resolution at the iPod/iPhone density. So I guess it'd be within the established parameters for a larger iPhone to go the other way; take the current 163 and turn it into a 132 for an almost 25% increase in size, going from a 4" screen to a 5".
There's an argument that'd be no further fragmentation as Apple already mostly recommends the same point size of widgets for both devices.
* given that Apple maintain a distinction between points and pixels, so that retina and non-retina code looks identical.
Bob is trolling here, but by 'them' squirming around, you mean Apple, and by "...their software is totally unprepared for fragmentation" you mean iOS?
Forgetting about future versions of iOS, right now the OS runs on 3.5", 4", 8" and 10" screens in a couple of resolutions and a number of different CPU generations. Apparently the AppleTV also runs it, presumably at whatever resolution your TV runs at.
I very much doubt that Apply could not up the screen-size to 5" or similar just as easily as Samsung. Of course Apple, being Apple, they may not choose so but iOS support of different screen sizes/resolutions is not the problem.
But when did fragmentation become not an issue?. I still see new Android phones shipping with 2.3, and Samsung sticking the Galaxy brand on everything which can't be good for fragmentation over the long run.
B..b..b..b..but Steve Jobs (pbuh) told us all repeatedly that it was impossible to do useful work on a screen larger than 3.5" or smaller than 10" (sic), and the fanboiz repeated this faithfully for years. How can they bear to contemplate the sacrilege of a 4" iPhone (too big!) and an 8" iPad (too small!)?
Looked at Samsung's sales to verify the validity of your argument.
Hmmm, it appears the SIII has been outsold by the iPhone 5.
Well well, it also appears the SIII is also being outsold by the iPhone 4S.
So we can only conclude the argument is bullshit.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/20/apple-samsung-smartphone-sales/
Sadly for your "argument", Samsung currently has two, not one, flagship phones (that whole "choice" thing, see?): the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note 2. Want to hazard a guess what including the Note 2 figures with the S III ones does to the ranking? Thought not.
Also unfortunate for your position is that once the iPhone 5 launched, the iPhone 4 became the cheaper option, so rational people would expect it sell very well; what seems to be missing (surprise!) is an analysis of which phones sell best in that price segment, including the older Samsung products (S II, for example).
Kuo, by the way, correctly predicted the demise of the 17-inch MacBook Pro and the introduction of the Retina Display MacBooks, that the iPhone 5 would be the slimmest iPhone ever, a spate of MacBook Air upgrades, the ship date of the white iPhone 4, and other Cupertinian moves, so we'll grant his speculations a bit more credence than those of your garden-variety gadget gossip.
Ah, but is that all they predicted? Maybe they're like the MIT Media Lab, predicting absolutely everything and then claiming the credit for the small proportion of guesses predictions which turn out to be sort-of right.
.. sorry Apple, I'd love to come back to your 'world' but at those prices and still stuck at that small 4" screen, I'll stick with Android (Sony Xperia T) for quite some time to come.
Oh one of the many reasons why I want to return? Wife, son and I all have Xpeira T's, they've got jelly bean update some two weeks ago, and I haven't! Asked Sony and they said 'we do not release it to every handset all at once' so not quite the 'same day for all' as for iOS releases, maybe Samsung manage updates on a single phone model on the same day like Apple?
"...still stuck at that small 4" screen, I'll stick with Android..."
You do that. Meanwhile, those of us who want phones that are phone sized instead of vast tablet wannabe sized will stick with the only remaining phone manufacturer that puts top of the range processing power into something of a reasonable size.
""...still stuck at that small 4" screen, I'll stick with Android..."
You do that. Meanwhile, those of us who want phones that are phone sized instead of vast tablet wannabe sized will stick with the only remaining phone manufacturer that puts top of the range processing power into something of a reasonable size."
And you can stay in the 00's while the rest of us are miles ahead. What a stupid comment to make, and always from cowards.
FFS...more rumours...
I'm surprised nobody has gone the whole hog and come up with "Apple rumour trifecta". eg:
"Apple's new 5S will automagically syncronise music and apps with iwatch via bluetooth 5, and enable you to take facetime and skype calls using your Apple TV, while simultanously streaming 2K content from your iTV gen 5."
There. Now *that's* a rumour.
Releasing a cheaper model is counter-intuitive.
Shiny Shiny Sheep have stated, in no uncertain words, that their choice was based on the phone being expensive. Which of these flaky "people" would choose a cheaper phone? They need their (in their minds) expensive piece of tech, to give their pathetic existence some value.
Erm... from just the last 5 or so posts I think you should probably go and find some professional help.
It's perfectly normal to like/dislike something, but seeing the complete contempt spouting from you over something as silly as a mobile phone choice is quite scary.
Either you're being paid to come up with this (not likely) or you're just messed-up in the head.
Seriously - go find some help?
Jason - these posts are nothing new. He has been at it for ages with the same diatribe. Anyone that doesn't conform to his personal view of what phone to own is a moron or i <insert you own insult here>
There will never be a reasoned agreement, simply "I'm right. You're wrong". Probably because he can't put a well thought out and reasoned argument together. I just wonder is he can get a mobile signal from under the bridge where he lives.
I'm on a pretty hefty contract which just expired. Couldn't really get excited about the iPhone 5 but was kind of resigned to it as I run Macs at home so iPhones have always made sense. When I discovered that even on my contract I would have to pay £150 for anything but the 16GB iPhone I thought screw this and took the plunge with Android. Now rocking a rather lovely Xperia Z and the switch from iOS has been easy-peasy! Virtually painless... I feel refreshed!
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
