It's that time of the year when Apple convinces you last year's iPhones weren't quite magical enough, so buy this new 5G iPhone 12 instead Apple on Tuesday wheeled out its iPhone 12 range featuring a more powerful system-on-chip, harder glass, sharper displays, and 5G. The latest additions are split in two: the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini, and the iPhone Pro and iPhone Max. The iPhone 12 Mini reverses the trend of ever-larger phones and heads back toward iPhone …
Does anyone really need a new mobile now we're all sat at home with access to our larger electronic devices (tablets, laptops, computers, smart tv's/projectors etc..).
I got the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G Wonderpants and I really don't know why, my Note 8's battery was worn a bit I guess but I sit at home all day next to a charger, why, why do I need a new phone? It has 5G, but, I can already stream video at a high enough quality on 4G? And that's the biggest bandwidth usage.
By the sounds of things, by the time they let us back out in to the daylight we might as well get the 13..
Many people are still working in logistics, food production, healthcare etc.
Others have been furloughed, and have more time for hobbies than might include taking long walks and snapping pictures.
But for sure - there's been no 'must have' new feature for a few years now; improvements are largely incremental. Still, for those who are in the market for a new iPhone at least these new models are placing an emphasis on durability (improved water and dust resistance on the iPhone Mini, new ceramic-infused glass screens) so should see a few good years service.
I assume you are quite old @Sampler, because people don't use those things even when at home... they'll sit in front of their 60" TV using their 6" phone for email, social media, web browsing, shopping and gaming, and typically its their only music device too.
People stuck at home might even be using the phones more?
Three sizes, good screen, excellent CPU, excellent global cell radios, good cameras, strong body, weak screen, no headphone jack, not enough RAM, barely any storage, expensive and barely used sensors, software lock-down, and that Lightning connector is still there. OK, it got faster, it has 5G, and it can probably do AR stuff better if anyone did AR stuff.
You'd think Apple could mix it up every now and then. Apple's stuck at 14% market share because they essentially only make only one phone model.
Apple's 14% market share doesn't bother them because they have a majority share of the profits in the sector.
On the sensor thing: nobody will use the sensor fully untill a third party dev creates a killer app for it. No dev will do so untill the hardware is available. Because iPhone buyers are less price sensitive, they are more tolerant of buying hardware they might not use - but should a useful application be developed they know they can use it. Additionally, by taking a punt on a specific sensor, the cost per unit comes down.
I'm on record here for being excited about LiDAR / Laser Time of Flight / Whatever the Hell that Qualcomm Reference Design Was A Few Years Back ( real time 3D mapping of a pianist's fingers). But I'm a weirdo. The idea of using a phone as an accurate 3D scanner so that I can svan a room and then have timber cut by my local timber merchant's CNC router is exciting - more so than any plastic 3D printer.
> You'd think Apple could mix it up every now and then.
What would you like to see? :)
Samsung and others are breaking the mold with foldable phones, but all reviews suggest they're not ready for mass adoption yet. Novelty for novelty's sake.
LG have a twin-screened twisty phone - but the market has punished their weirdness ( such as modular phones) ever since their G2.
Motorola's Mod system looked genuinely useful, but they didn't have the market share to sell it on their own - Apple do, and indeed have implemented a similar concept on iPads. However, the main use of the Moto Mod system - a battery 'back pack' - Apple have achieved with the Lightening connector. Indeed, there's a healthy 3rd party market in Lightening accessories for iPhones from high end microphones to Leica laser scanners.
I'd like a small phone - the 12 mini might be suitable - with the ability to attach it to another device (iPad being obvious, but also PC, Mac or Android tablet) so as to have the option of a larger screen, keyboard, etc.
I can easily imagine carrying anything from an iPad mini through to an iPad Pro in may bag and using the new MagSafe to snap the phone onto the back of the tablet when needed. Automatic detection, of course, and automatic connection. Even new-style Touch ID if the iPad has it! With the iPhone/iPad combo then being like a huge phone. Why, the much bigger iPad could even act as a powerpack.
It might also make sense to then produce iPads without cameras.
@Screwed
Those aren't insane ideas. I had similar ideas when the iPad was first released - 'why the hell didn't they make it work as a secondary monitor / graphics tablet for a Mac straight out of the box?!'*
But if I'm understanding you correctly, your talking more about a dumb big screen than an iPad. Or rather, an iPad that acts as a big dumb screen for an iPhone. With seen similar devices in android world - tablets into which a phone docks. The trouble with that approach is trust - the user might end up with a useless big dumb screen if no future phones adopt the system. Apple might end up having to support the system or else face backlash for leaving users with an obsekeye big dumb screen.
If you're talking about using an iPad to do your phone things - that's largely with cloud accounts and software these days - emails started in the phone can be completed on the iPad or Mac.
Two fully capable and discrete devices keeps things simple for the user and more profitable for Apple.
* I guess the answer is messaging: if Apple had pitched the original iPad at a small niche of graphic artists, it might have caused mainstream punters to think it was *only* for graphic artists. As it happened, software allowed some useful features - Adobe made an app that mirrored a Mac's Photoshop tool palettes to an iPad.
Apple might end up having to support the system or else face backlash for leaving users with an obsekeye big dumb screen.
Well, it'd be like apple to insist on selling it's users a big dumb screen that only connects with apple products they've ordained for the purpose.
Ideally, a big dumb screen should outlive a fair bit of more transient kit, provided the connectors are still in use.
I've often thought, even though we have lots more screens around us than a couple of years ago, mostly they're not helpful. Sitting on the sofa in front of a 'smart' telly with a 'smart' phone in hand, it's not smart enough to allow you to cast what you are doing on the phone onto the nice convenient big screen, or when at a desk or table with a laptop or desktop, utilise the smartphone as an additional control, input device or monitor.
>> "You'd think Apple could mix it up every now and then."
> "What would you like to see? :)"
a desktop use: now that these phones are powerful enough to be used in laptops, having a dock where an external display and keyboard and mouse and stylus and joystick are connected, and plugging in the phone I have a real desktop experience. Or a game-console. Or connected to a large TV, or projector ... but easy plug'n-play: you get home, put your phone on a stand, and is is connected to the TV and HiFi and you can play music instantly. Without needing a charger and set-up a screen-cast, bluetooth to the speaker ...
What Samsung has actually developed. Or the Nintendo Switch.
THAT would be innovation.
> What would you like to see? :)
1 - Headphone jack. Bluetooth is great for phone calls or video conferencing but it still can't manage high music fidelity, especially with a lot of nearby 2.4GHz devices.
2 - More storage or expandable storage. Not everyone needs it but there are uses for it. It can be used for offline maps, FLAC files, and backing up cameras, laptops, etc.
3 - Desktop mode is gaining support in more Android phones. Sometimes it's easier to get vacation approval when any hotel TV can turn your cellphone into an emergency laptop computer. It's actually not bad.
Right now I have an LG Velvet 5G. It's loaded with nuisance problems but it gets the job done. An iPhone may have better design but it would be a downgrade in usefulness.
For high fidelity music, you'd want to choose a phone with a good DAC and amp... LG are famous for including such goodies, but oddly not the LG Velvet
The DAC and amp in the Apple Lightening > 3.5mm adaptor is said to be very good (and it's cheap) but others are available ranging from cheap to audiophile. So you don't have to take a hit on audio quality if you don't want to.
Yeah, using a dongle can be inconvenient if you want to charge the phone at the same time as using wired headphones and you don't have a wireless charger to hand.
I use a micro SD card in my Galaxy phone, but one can only really use it for storing music and app data (put it in phone and leave it there) or for juggling data between phone and cameras (often swap it in and out) - but not both. Attempting to do so confuses apps and music music data bases. For importing data from a camera, a USB C > SD card reader is a safer option, and full size SD cards are harder to fumble and lose. Carry such a dongle in a laptop or camera back is no hardship.
I can see someone using using a phone as a data repository - because though we carry them with us everywhere, we do tend to be mindful of them so are less likely to misplace them than we would an SD card.... but if redundancy is key then copying to two SD cards and keeping one in wallet and one in suitcase is also an option.
I'm not saying your way of doing things is the wrong way, just that there are other ways of achieving the same end results - with perhaps different pros and cons.
They care about the market share in countries where they can make big money - they know they don't need a lineup of forty different models so they can even save on development, production and logistics.
It works - as with any fashion goods - and they keep on. I would blame them for their monopolistic attitudes, not for their lineup.
I see the advantages of a streamlined product range (in terms of design, manufacture, warehousing and logistics), but I don't associate it specifically with fashion goods. Indeed, it's often fashion brands (clothes, bags, watches) that tend to have sprawling, ever-changing product ranges.
RAW files are a different beast in this age of multi-sensor computational photography. Of course RAW files always varied by vendor (eg, Nikon, Canon, etc) and would require different plugins on your desktop software. Apple's new RAW files are in the same vein, including raw camera sensor data as well as depth data from the LiDAR chip and processing results from its SoC.
I’d like to replace my old Xeon server with a modern multi chip arm system with a shed load of ram and ssd.
There's an outfit "MINIS FORUM" on Amazon which sells mini PCs based on ARM. Their prices are not outrageous. Otherwise, go build your own. Plenty of boards and ARM CPUs to choose from by now.
Of course, if you want something officially Apple you'll have to wait for a bit more. The ARM dev kits are being sent out, but I reckon it may take another year before Apple makes the switch because they have to take care of the migration path too, like they did from PowerPC to Intel.
Apple aren't 'switching' immediately - there's a roadmap of two years in which both ARM and Intel Macs will be sold - starting with an ARM Macbook Pro in 2021.
The choice of using a MacBook Pro to demonstrate MacOS on ARM could be to distinguish Apple's efforts from the bad smell of Microsoft's Windows on Arm efforts ( which were seen as being slow, with poor compatibility and poor software availability, and confusing). It's also possible that they will release a Mac Mini type ARM machine as a lower cost option for MacOS software developers to test on (just as lots of cross-platform developers once used iPod Touchs as a low cost way to test iOS software).
Yeah, the AirTags were notable by their absence, as were the Apple over-ear headphones.
I've recently taken a punt on a TrackR Pixel tag to attach to my keys and I've found it to be handy on a few occasions. The core functionality - use my phone to page my keys if they're within range - appears to work well. The extended function - cloud based, using other TrackR users to locate my keys should they walk past them - depends upon there being enough other TrackR users, and I suspect it is their small market share compared to Tile that led to me picking up a packet of three for five quid in TK Maxx. Definitely worth a punt at that price!
Of course Apple have enough critical density of iPhone users that they could make a distributed find-my-keys service work.
Also, I tend to keep my (Android) location services turned down in order to preserve ailing battery life - though I should look at that again because the Serco Track and Trace app won't work without it (which is weird, because its built upon a Google / Apple Bluetooth token system that shouldn't require location info to work)
I turned my location services down to the lesser accuracy one to preserve battery life and I only put the bluetooth bit on when actually needed for the same reason.. If I get contacted by the ScotGov track and trace bods because of a customer in Costa I can tell them I was across the thin alley in the BHF charity shop on the till behind a barrage of perspex screens and wearing a face shield.
I think one or two percent of iPhone owners ever update from last years phone. So the title is quite incorrect. This phone isn't aimed at people who have an iPhone 11. They just produce a better phone every year, so depending on your patience, the point of replacing your old phone comes after two years, or three years, or 5 years.
In large families, say mom, dad and two kids each having an iPhone, they may buy one phone every year and move all the old phones one down the line. So paying one brand new phones gives you a one year improvement for four phones in the family.
Same here. Or I may wait until next year and get a 13. Apple says my SE is worth $30 as a trade-in, so I expect that it'll just be my spare phone.
The battery is at 87% of full capacity nd at this point I don't think that it's cost-effective to replace the battery, so I may get a replacement before the 13 comes out. If I do, it may be a X, the price just came down. I'll probably go with the mini, though. Not for the 5H, I couldn't care less about that,
not with the alleged 5G coverage locally, but because of the smaller form factor.
We;ll see come December or January.
Battery replacement is cheap to do as long as you are reasonably competent. iFixit have all the instructions / videos, tools and spare parts.
I've done about 5 devices over the last couple of months and its time consuming since its detailed work and one false move can break things (ask me how I know) , but on balance, no other need to replace the devices as old iPhones and iPad's are still more than capable for the required purposes much like older PC's remain viable for many years.
I used to replace my iPhone every year - back when AT&T would give me a free upgrade to the new one and I could sell last year's for a big wad of cash that paid a good chunk of that expensive AT&T plan.
Now I upgrade every other year, which I feel provides a nice balance between "enough has changed to make it worthwhile" and "my old phone still has a big trade in / sale value". I use my phone about 3 hours a day (not including calls, which are rarer and rarer these days) which is about 1000 hours a year. If after trade in I spend $500 ish every two years that's around 25 cents per hour. If only other forms of entertainment like TV, movies, eating out, etc. were so cheap!
I upgraded last year even though I knew 5G was coming, because 5G just isn't that big of a deal. If I go to an area where 5G is built out with my non-5G phone, LTE will be faster because all the people who have 5G phones will be using it instead of LTE... When I upgrade in a year, there's a slight chance there might even be some 5G within 30 miles of where I live, but I'm probably dreaming!
Well, you could read the title a few ways. What they offered last year wasn't compelling enough to get you to upgrade so they come up with new models and marketing to try to convince you it is worth it to buy the this year's model. You could buy last year's model today but they'd of course rather you buy the latest and greatest hence the marketing event.
I think the the gist of the title is really that it is 2020 and for most people the latest wizbang smartphones just aren't that exciting anymore.
I watched the event and was wowed by what I saw, Dolby vision, sensor shift, stronger screen glass, new mag connector, a14, 128gb base storage.
All really useful features but rememberibg the iphone 6 and that the 6s is still supportd while the 6 isnt im thinking the 12s would be the smart buy.
Maybe, but the iPhone 6 only had 1GB of RAM whereas as the 6S had 2. The 6S, whilst looking near identical to its predecessor, had a significantly faster processor. I think these factors might explain why support for the 6 has been dropped.
It's hard to imagine the iPhone 12 S boasting such a leap in specs over the 12 that it will have a significantly longer period of support.
Obligatory previous marketing spoofs
iPhone 5 Laser keyboard and holographic displays
I'm not even going to mention the gullible user "microwave charging software update" - seriously don't try this at home, it just cooks your phone -- Vids on YouTube.
I'm with you on that. I never have a problem finding a Lightning cable, despite my habit of immediately binning a cable if it's less than perfect, but I have yet to get enough USB-C cables to make them ubiquitous, also because there are as yet no USB-C hubs (as in "a box with multiple USB-C ports").
The latter means I still need ye olde USB format (although not that old, most of what I have is USB 3).
Or if you just have a religious objection to proprietary cables, charge it wirelessly and you don't need a cable at all. I charge my 11 Pro Max every other day and it usually has 30%+ when I plug it in, so I have yet to need to scramble for a way to charge it in a bar or whatever. Not that I've actually been in a bar for about six months now, but that's a totally different issue...
Why? I have never used a case on any of my iPhones. And have never (knock on wood) broken any of them despite a few drops onto concrete or wood floors here and there.
People who put a case on a phone are going to do so regardless of how thin or thick it is, unless it is one of those "ruggedized" phones designed for tradespeople like the ones CAT makes.
My friend had a birthday in a pub the other evening, her friends sat on two adjoining tables. She brought some paper cups and string with her, but she couldn't persuede anyone on the next table to adopt the new communications protocol.
> It already happens - I've seen someone at the airport spend an hour and a half on his mobile to a colleague who was sitting in the same lounge area.
There are different forms of restriction. An Apple user might feel restricted at not being able to run software not obtained through the App Store. This was especially evident before Apple allowed 3rd party keyboards on the App Store. An Android user - as I am - might feel restricted because some of the better third-party productivity software is only made for iOS and not Android. Similarly, some third party hardware is only made to work with iPhones / iPads. After several years, I might feel that my supply of software updates has been restricted as well.
I think its important to look at restriction as a principal, vs how it impacts a workflow in practice. I suspect a great many people's actual workflows aren't impeeded by Apple's artificial restrictions.
What restrictions affect the normal user? They can make calls to people on other phones, they can use 3rd-party messenging and video call apps as well as Apple's own, they can stream and download music and video from non-apple sources...
Sure they can't easily download the app you wrote and put on your web-site, but they don't want to.
Might as well ask why anyone buys a PS4 rather than a PC... 'cos they want to use it not piss about with it.
One restriction I find particularly annoying is the block on taking a screen shot from an iTunes movie. I'm quite a keen sci-fi movie fan, and I've often posted screen grabs of certain scenes on forums, to illustrate a point. How do I do it? I run up a Windows 10 virtual machine on my MacBook. The VM has iTunes installed. I run that up, play the movie from there and make a screen grab. I get nothing if I do it on an iGadget or macOS directly.
> One restriction I find particularly annoying is the block on taking a screen shot from an iTunes movie.
Not just an iOS thing.
I surprised the other day when a website in Chrome Android prevented me from taking a screenshot. Didn't know it could. Searched for solutions, but they involved rooting or some other hassle.
Well, be baffled, but many would say it's a feature, not a drawback. It's a phone, not a computer, it's pretty damn secure and has all the apps you need, and blocks a lot of apps you definitely don't
iOS is also very good as a development platform (If you're not one to reflexively gag at the word of apple mentioned). I think this is partly the reason many apps come first on iOS, it's very quick to develop for, and swift (which i used to dislike) makes it pretty hard to write in dumb bugs.
Along with ehe new iPhone 12, prices on the 11, SE and XR have been slashed. You can get the 11 for £599 which is comparable with OnePlus, which bills itself as a mid-range phone.
SE for £399... has Apple ever had a phone that cheap?
If you're on an older model, these are attractive prices.
Talking about a 5nm chip (TSMC) highlights the issues that Intel have had with their sub 10nm processes. Apple would be missing a trick if they didn't use this announcement to build the groundwork for their upcoming 5nm ARM Macs (as indeed the snappy performance of current iPhones and iPads helps the public perception of the upcoming Macs). Apple rarely miss tricks - they pay very competent people good money for this reason.
The iPhone 12 pro really does seem like a remarkable, almost magical, piece of kit: the new camera, 5nm silicon (gone very quiet have we, Intel?), speed increases, display quality increases, much better glass, 5G, and a nice if a little lazy throwback design to the iconic iPhone 4. And iOS 14 isn’t too shabby either.
And when we get some decent reviews - which require people to actually have the phone for a while - this will all be borne out.
But is it really worth upgrading? No, of course not. Everything we have right now is way more than good enough.
And do I want one? Hmmm... (see title).
I'm kinda wedded to touch ID for Apple Pay in shops - "just works" - and since we need contactless and face ID means dropping the mask, you're back to a PIN? Plus the various complaints I see about use at night, in bed, etc.
Also magnets - have they tested it in a bag full of stuff (Hand bags/Kids Rucksacks/Man Bags)...
Indeed - process for Touch ID: Hold finger over button, hold phone over card reader - reader activates Apple Pay and scans finger print.. Is like holding a normal contactless card. Practically a one-step process.
Process for Face ID: Double click power button, hold phone up to face (possibly lower mask), hold phone over card reader. A 3-step process plus now the need to lower your face mask. Brilliant.
The last thing techies want is a phone that has a powerful magnet in the back, because they're forever putting the phone down on a bench next to spinning hard disks, external storage drives, on top of rack mount devices or microservers. How many techies use their phones to take apart laptops/PCs etc, take telephoto shots of product numbers on integrated circuits?
Apple really should have just produced an iPhone case with a magnet, not the iPhone itself, or at least have a model of iPhone 12, that doesn't have the magnet in the back. How hard is it to plug in a lightning cable, I really don't get the obsession with slower wireless charging, not least because it's so wasteful in terms of transferring energy.
It's almost like Apple are going out of the way to destroy bank cards, so people switch to ApplePay and external storage drives, so they use to iCloud backup. There are going to be a lot of people, suddenly finding their WD/Seagate external storage drive has been wiped after leaving their new iPhone 12 on top of it.
Remember, don't carry your new iPhone 12 against the underside of an older laptop, don't set your iPhone down on an external storage device, microserver.
Outdoors, take care too, not to put in a rucksack with a conventional compass if out walking.
"It's almost like Apple are going out of the way to destroy bank cards"
When did you last use the magstripe on the back of your bank card? Every use case I've had is either chip and pin, or contactless.
I'd also be surprised if it was a particularly strong magnet, in fact every change it's an electromagnet that's powered when the phone detects a charger, given magnets in the actual phone will play havoc with the phone's own magnetometer and wireless gubbins.
From the images, it's a convention magnet that acts as the guide for positioning the mount and it's strong enough to attach the phone to a car mount, so it's strong enough to wipe an external conventional hard disk.
I would have upgraded to this if it didn't have the magnet in the back of the device and had touch ID in the power button (same as the iPad Pro).
I'll wait till next year.
"Most of the value of that will be in slightly better photos, thanks to improved cameras and more processing power, with Apple claiming low-light photos should be significantly better."
It's really just like the old washing powder adverts isn't it. So they tried to sell us last year on how great their low light photos were and now they're telling us that their low light photos last year were actually pretty crappy. Remember the advertising that showed low light photos that looked like they were shot is daylight? So how can the new phone take "significantly better" photos than that? Sure those previous adverts weren't misleading were they? Or to put it another way surely the adverts weren't fake?
Well of course like Boris Johnson Apple have a long history of lying in their advertising and press releases. And just like Boris Johnson the faithful will forgive them every time.
Apple products are increasingly unserviceable as not even their authorised dealers can get spares.
After market repair magicians like Louis of www.rossmanngroup.com (NYC) has difficulty in locating spares especially now Apple is using their own private label chips. Plus Apple glues their stuff together, although the techs in ShangHai use gas to dissolve the glue.
Apple products are fast becoming burner phones AND YOU CAN'T RECOVER YOUR DATA!
"Apple products are fast becoming burner phones AND YOU CAN'T RECOVER YOUR DATA!"
Strange. Once in a while I get a new phone, or the wife gets a new phone, I activate it, enter my WiFi password, and some time later I have an exact copy of the old phone.
It's that time of year
"...now that Spring is in the air,
When those two wet gits with their girly curly hair
Make another song for Moronic Holidays
That nauseates-ates-ates
In a million different ways..."
If you too now have this stuck in your head... you're welcome.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2026
