It's notches all the way down.
iFixit engineers have an L of a time pulling apart Apple's iPhone XS
The screwdriver fiddlers at iFixit have inflicted their usual brand of affection upon Apple’s pricey new phones and found a battery of a most unusual shape. Having taken a few short seconds to admire the oh-so-shiny Gorilla Glass cover of the XS and XS Max, the iFixit engineers went at the unfortunate devices with an array of …
COMMENTS
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Friday 21st September 2018 21:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Actually getting slightly worse, they used to be 7/10
All but the first few models were 7/10, until the X went to 6/10. People like to slag on Apple for doing stuff like using weird screws, but drivers for them are available on eBay for a few bucks (and come with every battery/screen replacement you buy as well) so it isn't really a barrier unless "I want to be able to use only the tools I already own" is your benchmark.
Samsung used to have 6s and 7s too, but in recent years their flagships have all been 4/10.
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Monday 24th September 2018 16:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Actually getting slightly worse, they used to be 7/10
The iFixit ratings are mainly concerned with replacement of the battery and display as those are pretty much the only serviceable parts in any modern smartphone. The Xs has a glass back which is very expensive to repair because you have to take apart the whole phone to do so - so expensive that I can't imagine anyone actually doing it. If I dropped my X and broke the back glass, I'd just get a case to hide the damage and call it good...
Sounds like the Xs glass stands up a lot better to drops, at least based on the two drop tests I've seen where it failed to break even when dropped a couple times from 10 feet in one test. Presumably they used Gorilla Glass 6, but I'd be surprised if that made much difference given that previous iterations of GG have been pretty minor. Maybe Apple tweaked some other elements of the design to reduce stress on corner drops etc. (it is very hard to reliably get a phone to land exactly flat so drop tests are basically corner impact tests, but if your phone lands exactly flat face first on concrete you are pretty hosed no matter who makes it)
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Wednesday 26th September 2018 15:33 GMT Jeffrey Nonken
Re: Actually getting slightly worse, they used to be 7/10
"If I dropped my X and broke the back glass, I'd just get a case to hide the damage and call it good..."
That's where we differ. I buy a case for my phone on day 1. I prefer a simple slip-on TPU case (today I own this one https://goo.gl/images/ijQPSp). If it falls on flat concrete, I just pick it up with a "tut tut" and keep on reading.
And I also buy a Naztech Gladiator holster to carry it in. Those work well for me. YMMV. There's a matte screen protector as well.
It's a shame I don't get to show off the aesthetic beauty of the original case, but it's not why I bought the phone.
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Friday 21st September 2018 19:50 GMT 89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921
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Saturday 22nd September 2018 22:37 GMT John Brown (no body)
"Every time I call anyone who answers using an iPhone I hear "The connection here isn't great", then they garble up intermittently, which results in a short and confusing, less useful conversation."
Well, obviously they are holding it wrong!
(Sorry, but no one else said it yet and someone had to)
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Wednesday 26th September 2018 15:42 GMT Jeffrey Nonken
Re: THey are probably trying to be clever
"THey are probably trying to be clever
and take the call over a local café wifi connection to save cash instead of actually using it as a phone... Do people with iPhones do that any more?"
Of course they do. Once they've slavishly bought the latest Jesus Phone they can't afford phone service!
Rimshot! That's right folks, we're here all week!
(I kid! I'm just affectionately poking fun. I... OMG you've broken the downvote counter! Gah!)
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Monday 24th September 2018 09:58 GMT Steve the Cynic
Well, obviously they are holding it wrong!
As I noted in response to one of Dabbsy's columns, round where I live, a lot of them probably *are* holding it wrong. The number of people I see with an ordinary slab-sized smartphone of any brand, alternating between speaking to the loudspeaker and listening to the microphone(1) just defies belief.
(1) No, I don't have that backwards. They hold the phone horizontally in front of their mouths with the mic end pointing away from them, then switch to horizontally at the side of their head with the mic pointing toward them and the speaker pointing directly away.
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Monday 24th September 2018 10:13 GMT Lee D
It is a running joke that the only person I knew who had to have "the latest iPhone" ALWAYS - and I mean, statistically ALWAYS - cut out about 20 seconds into the conversation and had to call back.
Once or twice, or if we were always taking their calls at home, I could understand that possibly there could be other factors. Literally the only difference was the iPhone.
Maybe they had Wifi-calling or something, maybe, I don't know, I refuse to help people with Apple devices (isn't that what you pay the premium for - to get "better support" and "more intuitive" devices?). But it became a running joke and I used to countdown when they were phoning us.
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Monday 24th September 2018 13:00 GMT Lee D
They changed their network twice (so three networks in total).
It still cut out every single time they ever called. They changed their handset with every upgrade possible. They lived in London, same as me, in fact they were closer.
Whenever I heard "Hello, hello? Are you still there?" I would just ask "How is XXXX?".
Sure, it's one datapoint, not something to hinge a national telecommunications strategy on, but it *literally* happened to the point that all parties concerned saw the same pattern and joked about it - to this day.
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Monday 24th September 2018 16:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: You've been notched!
I just had my iPhone 6 battery replaced (by Apple). I was bracing myself for the awful decision that spending £200 or something to keep the thing alive for another year was still cheaper than £700 for an 8, however bad it made me feel.
It was £25. I don't remember how much decent replacement batteries used to cost when I had phones with replaceable batteries, but I bet it was ... about £25.
So oddly, Apple seem to be not ripping people off for batteries.
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Monday 24th September 2018 08:00 GMT Giovani Tapini
Re: Never heard of a 'spludger'
No, its just a tool to use instead of a kitchen knife to open small things...
It probably sounds better than a little Jeremy, er jemmy, or prying tool. I only heard this word a few years ago though, I don't know if there was a "spudger" before small electronic devices were a "thing".
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Monday 24th September 2018 17:06 GMT Ivan Headache
Re: Never heard of a 'spludger'
I've always thought it was a small flat ended hand tool used for spreading heat-transfer paste, generally made of a hard plastic
However, I was at my brother's house recently and he and a mate were working a a Ducati Motorbike.
During a difficult moment while they were trying to line up some bolt holes one of them asked "Where's the spudger?"
Turns out that this spudger was a tapered round steel tool about the same size a a cold-chisel, pushed into one hole to line up the receiving hole.
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Sunday 23rd September 2018 23:53 GMT Ian Joyner
Slavish followers
"It can only be a matter of time before certain Android phone makers slavishly follow suit."
That sentence neatly sums up the problems in this industry. Apple does research and develops products. Others see the success greedily want to grab those profits so just copy, instead of doing things their own way. Their business model is "put Apple out of business so we can grab ALL the profits". That is not a good business model and it even killed IBM (the ridiculous PC was IBM's attempt at killing Apple, and they almost succeeded, Microsoft tried the same with the cheap Windows knock off which even stole Apple code).
Perhaps when anyone criticises Apple customers for being Apple 'fanboys', they should really consider that it is the other manufacturers who are the real Apple fanboys, and any of their customers demanding a product because it looks like Apple are also Apple fanboys.
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Monday 24th September 2018 09:25 GMT Charlie Clark
Re: Slavish followers
Apple does research and develops products.
Apple has developed 4G standards, OLED and touch screens, Lithium batteries, Blueooth, wireless LAN, HDR imaging, near field communications, etc? Wow, that is impressive!
Nearly all Apple's plagiarism suits have been about design aspects: rounded corners and the positioning of buttons. It does employ a great deal of talented engineers and developers who've done a great job on chip and phone design and software development but all within a competitive environment. It buys components (memory, screens, etc) from its competitors and this is how it should be. Compared with other industries the mobile phone industry has developed incredibly over the last thirty years.
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Monday 24th September 2018 11:00 GMT WallMeerkat
Re: Slavish followers
What nonsense.
The IBM PC was aimed at a different market to anything Apple was putting out. The PC was a OTS component based business machine, as per IBMs original name.
Microsoft stealing Apple code? Eh? They were targeting different architectures for starters. Windows 95 did look vaguely Mac-like, but under the hood was totally different, and MS settled with Apple by promising Office support for a while.
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Monday 24th September 2018 23:33 GMT Ian Joyner
Re: Slavish followers
The original PC might have been aimed at businesses. But it was still IBM's attempt at regaining the PC market and killing Apple. They only did it to do that. IBM did not want to cannibalise its own profitable market, but did not want to leave it to another company to do that.
"OTS component based business machine"
The business observation has some truth. Windows smacks of being an office machine where a worker just comes in and does a small set of tasks directed by the machine.
"Microsoft stealing Apple code?"
Absolutely. Sounds like you don't know the story (or are denying it). Gates and Microsoft did steal Apple's code. Gates wanted access to the Macintosh source code to develop Word. That code then turned up in Windows, was done without any agreement from Apple, and heavily used Jef Raskin's QuickDraw which was not part of Xerox's work.
Now Gates put around that Apple had stolen from Xerox. That was not true, but many anti-Apple people perpetuate this myth.
https://www.mac-history.net/computer-history/2012-03-22/apple-and-xerox-parc/2
Windows 95? We are talking about the early 1980s.
"under the hood was totally different" that proves nothing. Similar software can run on very different hardware. It's the basic theory of computer science.
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Tuesday 25th September 2018 09:55 GMT Martin an gof
Re: Slavish followers
Windows 95 did look vaguely Mac-like
I remember at the time that W95 came out with its fancy bar along the bottom of the screen, the rumour was that Microsoft UK had a room full of Acorn machines and were copying (badly) RiscOS's "taskbar". At the time Apple was still on OS 6 or something which looked a lot more like Windows 3, so the "dock" was nowhere in sight.
I'm not aware of anyone putting such a thing on a desktop GUI before Acorn, but I'm willing to be corrected. The original OS for the Archimedes had a very rudimentary bar in 1987, but the full functionality only appeared with OS2 in 1989.
M.
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Monday 24th September 2018 12:11 GMT not.known@this.address
Re: Slavish followers
Um, I wonder if Apple ever heard of the De Havilland Comet jet airliner?
Rounding corners to relieve stress is NOT a new innovation and as an apprentice I was taught to drill small holes before cutting material to prevent stress building up in sharp corners.
I also like the revisionist history of the PC as well - although my colleagues didn't really appreciate my splorting coffee all over the desk...
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Monday 24th September 2018 23:40 GMT Ian Joyner
Re: Slavish followers
"revisionist history of the PC as well"
What 'revisionist' history are you talking about.
The history is that IBM wanted to put Apple out of business like many other companies they had put out of business.
Read Richard DeLamarter's "Big Blue: IBM's Use and Abuse of Power".
It is a fact that Microsoft stole source code off Apple.
Nothing revisionist about what I said.
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Monday 24th September 2018 23:45 GMT Ian Joyner
Re: Slavish followers
"How'd you work that out?"
To what comment are you referring.
It is undeniable that Samsung have copied most of the stuff from Apple via Android. A few things Apple does later. But usually when Apple does something after another company, it is that the other company has rushed a half-baked product to market. This started with Windows I, rushed out to beat Apple, but it was pathetic compared to Mac when it came out.
Lately it has been face recognition. Samsung had a form first, but it could be beaten with a photograph. Apple spent extra time to get face id right.
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Monday 24th September 2018 07:05 GMT Mike 137
Real dunking ratings
"IP67 machinery should be able to stand a dunking for 30 minutes in one metre of water, whereas IP68 devices can go down to two metres."
Not quite correct. IP68 protection must equal or exceed IP67 but to what extent depends on passing a manufacturer specified test. For example Bulgin Buccaneer Standard electrical connectors are rated IP68 and certified by the manufacturer to withstand 10m depth for 2 weeks and 100m depth for 12 hours.
A lot of consumer kit that is listed as IP68 only just exceeds IP67 and is thus effectively hype.