Perhaps meeting with Pope Francis did help iPhone sales

The visit from the Pope might have paid off for Tim Cook as Apple is the only top five smartphone brand that retailers are calling up to order more stock. The scores for calendar Q1 are on the doors and, globally, shipments of smartphones into the channel fell 13 percent year-on-year to 269.8 million units, according to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Batteries

Said it before and I'll say it again.

We've got to a point with consumer tech where what you had 2, 3, 4 years ago from a technological perspective is perfectly adequate. I have a new iPhone 14 but it's not as though it's light years ahead of the iPhone XR I had 4 years ago in terms of its capabilities. Not in any meaningful way for sure.

Pretty much the only reason I've upgraded iPhones is because of the batteries not holding their charge, and the frankly dubious options for replacing them.

Consider a company that could provide

1. A high lifespan, very long lasting battery for their devices (whatever they may be)

2. The ability to easily (end consumer can do it themselves) swap out the battery with a replacement, if necessary.

Same goes for electric cars. The majority of the car is absolutely fine. It's _the battery_ that's going to be the hassle.

To me the next line of highly succesful tech will be whoever gets power sorted in some way which isn't currently being addressed. I don't know what that may involve but I'm guessing if it became an issue consumers didn't need to care about whoever tackles that will do very nicely indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Batteries

I can tell you one thing, though, the batteries that Apple used for its forced replacement during the iPhone 6 days were spectacular - I have one here that's now more than 8 years old and it was still perfectly fine when I gave it away a few days ago.

From a tech perspective I do notice changes in speed with upgrades but I agree that we've pretty much reached the end of what you can stick in a device to prompt me to buy the upgrade, but that's also because I just need it for calls (remember those?), email and then all the secure video stuff via secure messaging apps (and no, I don't number WhatsApp amongst those, that wil never get on any device I own), I don't surf on my phone or use social media (the benefit of aging eyesight is that it makes doing that on a phone so much less tempting anyway).

I may just pay Apple to stick a new battery in mine.

[tip pc]

Re: Batteries

i'm on my 5th insurance replacement iphone x.

the recent ones have had truly iffy batteries, to the extent the phone would power off even though the battery health manager reported 85% capacity which sucks considering I only got the handset a few months before.

The current one i got at xmas and is still showing 100% capacity but at times is slow as.......

the recent experience is such that I'm considering going with a cheaper android despite being an apple user since ~1991.

[Tim99]

Sadly; the way the markets are constructed; whilst the equipment could last, the company wouldn't...