Well that's nice...
...now people can feel that their iPhone is ultra-premium instead of merely premium. Let's see their market share collapse when those that could only just afford that subsidized fee now decide that the extra $100 is just a little more than they really can afford.
I used to pay their premium. Switched to Google's Nexus 5 last november and it does everything the iPhone does except...
...it transfers pictures across to my Mac faster than Apple and 'iCloud' ever did. No 15 minute wait for 5 or 6 pictures to even start showing up and it doesn't go through that god awful photo app they have on the mac.
Not only that, the pictures are available on my PC at the same time and I don't have an iCloud app in the system bar on the PC that crashes the OS every few minutes.
Either way, they have to increase profit margins on their devices to offset the cost of the perpetual legal proceedings they spend their time in chasing every tom dick and harry over patents. Maybe they should just lease their patents to "Rockstar Consortium" their majority stake in it would be advantageous and they could use them to do all the donkey work in that area and get a nice income from people that previously didn't breach the patents over other little things.
Just think the slide to unlock could allow them to chase any maker of sliding locks used in garden gates....tee hee hee (shouldn't give them ideas)... as they shoehorn patents to every possible case.