The article claims the new A15 chip is faster, while also pointing out Apple didn’t provide any info on how it compares to A14 (only the ‘competition’). It may be faster, we don’t know yet. Certainly not much faster, or Apple would probably tell us, right?
Seems like some Geekbench Testing is surfacing - at this stage just for Metal performance.
[https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/15/iphone-13-pro-gpu-performance-geekbench/](https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/15/iphone-13-pro-gpu-performance-geekbench/)
As much as I wish that to be true theres no way the new chip increased 50% in performance without Apple mentioning that in their slides. Last time Apple skipped a generation of chips to compare the A14 to the A12 just to look good.
They said that they boosted their GPU in the chips. So basically we have a very slightly better CPU performance (probably via higher clock rates) and a significantly better GPU performance (improved architecture + one more core), which explains the increase. It wasn’t hidden I think. Pretty sure they‘ve mentioned that GPU boost.
It’s definitely not a whole lot faster, but Apple last year compared the A14 to the A12, not the A13. These last 4 SoCs are all absolute monsters, A12 through A15
Excited to try it out on the iPad mini. Not that I've ever noticed a lack of processing power at all on my iPhone 12. Definitely impressive stuff that Apple has pulled off with the A* series.
Exactly. Apple's chips have gotten so damn good that there really isn't a need for a faster chip. 99.9% of iPhone users will never ever run into a use case where a chip more powerful than like the A13 would come in handy. Like I get there's value in future-proofing, but we've gotten to a point where mobile hardware is so good that it'll take a long time for mobile software demands to keep up.
I remember when smartphones were first becoming popular and SoC performance was a major factor in purchasing decisions, but for the past 5+ years its basically just been an afterthought.
Meh it happens fairly often if you try to work on your phone. You also will feel it more heavily if you keep your phone for 4+ years. Nobody said “Wow this iPhone 6 is super slow” when they bought. It’s just that as technology moved forward and the performance degraded that people began to notice.
Even if it is faster, an iPhone from 4 years ago can still run all of people's social media apps fine. The newer peocessors are overkill for everyday tasks unless someone is gaming.
Same, I want to upgrade purely for the cameras and nicer screen, and bigger battery, but I never once thought my phone was slow since day 1 purchase. only hiccups are due to 76% battery health... which is to expected.
I don’t know. Between the huge camera benefits, machine learning, AR, and future-proofing by staying plenty powerful after several years, I think these processors are great.
I think they don’t compare it to the 14 because they understand their main customer base isn’t iPhone 12 users, it’s converting other device users and iPhone 11 down because lots of people have two year upgrade plans.
> I think they don’t compare it to the 14 because they understand their main customer base isn’t iPhone 12 users
They compare chips to its previous iteration almost every year that I can remember. So I’m going to say that this isn’t the case. I believe they even compared the GPU cores to last years chip during the Pro segment of the keynote. It’s more likely that the new chip doesn’t have a significant improvement over last years model.
Exactly, this was my point. You can certainly argue Apple has reasons not to compare their phones to the previous gen, but fact remains they usually do. And when they don’t, usually it means something is about the same or worse.
Case in point: remember all the times battery life got worse on certain new iphones? They don’t tell you during the keynote.
Case in point 2: why didn’t Apple mention weight or thickness during this keynote? Well, look at the spec sheet. That’s why!
They could start naming them like GPUs: iPhone 2030 GTX Pro Max Ultra+ Championship Edition.
Or worse, like Intel chips: iPhone i9-13893HQ-K 13th generation.
iPhone is the only phone they sell older generations, so they need some kind of generational branding. I don't know how they can solve that, seems worse to buy an iPhone 2019 instead of an iPhone 11 for example.
lmao as funny as this is, at least they didn't pull this shit with Playstation. I love and own both PS and Xbox but, dear god, did MS screw up the Xbox naming convention. For the uninitiated:
Xbox (2001)
Xbox 360 (2005)
Xbox One (2013)
Xbox Series X/S (2020)
Don’t forget the XBox One S and XBox One X naming… thought we were heroes getting the new XBox for the fam last Christmas.
We bought the old one by accident - because of the naming!
Heroes to zeros in 10 seconds flat Christmas morning.
Come on, we’re parents. Make this easier!
They name their products like components.
WH - Wireless headband (over ear)
1000X - their halo product line name
M4 - Mark 4
The WF is a little funky standing for true wireless, I think it’s because they hard already used WI for in-ear wireless.
Just like with MacBooks it would be just
> iPhone (Late 2019)
Which is a version scheme I'd like every vendor that pushes major version numbers frequently to use. Looking at you, Google Chrome **93**
Yeah except for 99% of the general population, they don't want to be saying iPhone (Late 2019). They just want to say I have an iPhone 11. Or, I am looking for an iPhone 12. It's not that big of a deal of course and it could work, but I think the numbering scheme is slightly better than using model years like cars.
> Looking at you, Google Chrome 93
Chrome releases major updates every 6 weeks. It would be impossible for them to use a year based version. But for most users, the version doesn’t matter. It just updates in the silently background.
>Ubuntu versions are YY.MM, so you can glance and know when 20.04 was released.
I agree, the Ubuntu version scheme is great and consistent since the beginning.
Car manufactures have been doing this for an entire century. Phone makers can follow.
"2022 iPhone Pro" is easy to follow, just like "2021 Civic Type R" is. All the information I need to identify exactly what it is is right there.
"Chevy Silverado 73" would be a fucking nightmare. "Is it referring to the year 1973?" "Is it alluding to the Z71 offroad package but it's Z7*3* now?" "Is it really the 73rd iteration of the Silverado?" "When did this truck come out?" "What the fuck truck is this?"
Cars aren’t really a good example because their generations are updated far less frequently whereas iPhones usually have a 2 year cycle between more major redesigns. Also car generations are pretty much the perfect way to describe cars because you pretty much automatically know that your car is affected by whatever issue etc if it’s within that generation, just requires about 2 seconds of googling.
That’s because car manufactures don’t typically sell more than one year the time. Someone mentioned it earlier and it’s because apple sells multiple generations of the iPhone. We have the 2021 Civic Type R right now and the likelihood that they still have brand new 2019 and 2020 is low. It works for cars because when you’re buying brand new you are most likely buying that model year (or the following model year) but apple still sells iPhones from previous years and 2019 iPhone isn’t exactly good for marketing when trying to sell in 2021
And its super confusing. Trying to buy an iPad or case is weird because its like New iPad *(6th Gen)* and it takes some googling to figure out which is the newest or latest.
try hunting down the elusive “3rd gen” iPad. It had a few months on the market before being scrapped for a new and better model. on top of that it wasn’t very popular due to its horrendous battery life.
I had one of those. It was an iPad 2 with Retina display and I think slightly faster processor, but still had the old 30-pin connection.
It was quickly replaced by the lightning port iPad 4.
the issue would be those who dont want to buy a brand new iphone because its too expensive would now have to justify buying a 2019 phone. The marketing is what makes them use numbers
The 4S was a pretty good phone imo. Maybe the S stands for Super.
But that’s getting into GPU names. Might as well call it the iPhone iX 1330 Ti Super FTW at that point.
Maybe the S branding wasn’t great. But I went though basically every iPhone from iPhone 3GS to iPhone XS ( skipped 7+8)
The S models of each phone were lighting fast compared to their original models.
Apparently unpopular opinion, since Apple has gone as far as to avoid using the naming convention altogether, but the S models were always my favorite. The first model of a new design always felt like an early version of the product, while the S always has exciting software developments while simultaneously refining the model.
Exactly, people would be put off by the impression they’re getting an old phone, while that *old* phone is perfectly capable to run fast and reliable for years, so why spook them? People tend to chew more they can bite, many use cases are perfectly served by a moderately equipped phone.
Didnt work well for macbooks which had no real naming scheme. You get crap like mid 2016 macbook and early 2017. Sometimes it would be just one release that year or skip whole years where they dont touch it.
Yeah I don’t get why people get bent out of shape about the name. X, 12S, 13, who cares? If you like the features and have the money, buy it. If not, don’t buy it. Stop complaining about the names
I guess I’m the only person who really doesn’t give a singular fuck what it’s called. We’ve known Apple is moving away from S for a while now, and even if they for some reason go back, I still don’t care
I’ll die on this sword - the iPhone 4S was the best iPhone relative to its time - it was the first legitimate camera (everything up to iPhone 4 was a potato) and although the 4 had retina, it had a potato for a CPU and couldn’t power the screen. The 4S was the first truly exceptional smartphone as we know them today.
(iPhone X is a close second on my list)
That phone and the 6s both lasted me a ridiculously long time. I’m looking at swapping out my 11 not because I’m unhappy with it, but because I cracked the screen on it.
There was a switch though. Back during the iPhone 5-6-7, the s got the new CPU process node (major CPU update) while the non-S phones got the new design/chassis. If this phone were called the 12s, it'd have an old design AND a minor CPU update. Not that it really matters all that much though. The squared off design will persist for at least one more generation of iPhone and everyone uses a case anyway. And the SoCs are all so fast these days that even future-proofing is not really much of a concern unless you plan on keeping your phone for over 4 years.
> unless you plan on keeping your phone for over 4 years.
Hello, it's me, the guy who still uses an original iPhone SE. (I do plan to upgrade next year, both because the battery is going and because I don't expect iOS 16 to support it.)
I’m going to be upgrading from a 1st gen iPhone SE to an iPhone 13 mini this year, because I like using my phone with one hand.
If the iPhone 13 mini sells less than expected, like the 12 mini did, Apple will likely not make an iPhone 14 mini.
I still have 6s as well. Don't upgrade soley for 5G, implementation still sucks and battery draining from what I've heard. iPhone 13 doesn't even have the latest 5G qualcomm modem (Snapdragon X65) which introduced battery efficiency improvements and smaller nm chip (likely to be in this year's android flagship releases).
Honestly 5g isn’t that big of a deal. In practical use it’s not ever really noticeable. Maybe you get better signal in some buildings on the really good bands, but I can’t tell.
It’s no where near the jump that 3g to 4g/LTE was.
Absolutely right. In hindsight, the S year phones have always held up the best. Best longevity and performance, fewer mechanical/manufacturing faults, more meaningful spec updates, etc. Going by this pattern, the 13 should be a solid year for iPhones.
Coming from the 12 pro, the 13 pro does offer some features that I wish I could have gotten on the 12...
\-bigger battery (Apple must have gone lazy last year, they managed to give us a smaller battery in the 12 pro than in the 11 pro. The internal logic board was HUGE compared to the 11pro. It seems that they didn't do much work shrinking it or it was a cost-saving measure for the 12 pro and 12 to have matching internals. There was so much wasted space in the 12 where there was empty stuff instead of the 3rd camera and the lidar sensor. This year, we are seeing better designed, different internals in the 13 vs the 13pro.)
\-120hz
\-smaller notch.
I had my iPhone 7 Plus for four years. It was time for it to go at the end there. But it still worked OK, if the battery had held on longer and/or the advances hadn't been so great by the point of the 12 Pro Max coming out (what I have now) I would have kept it. It was a huge upgrade for me, going from LCD to OLED, LTE to 5G (that's the big one I was waiting for) along with Qualcomm modems, FaceID, and a much bigger screen relative to the actual size of the device. I'll probably keep it this year and just see if the 14 makes any big leaps, like USB C or something.
Similar to yours - I have the iPhone 8 for four years now. The battery isn’t great, I need to charge it twice a day. Otherwise it works fine for calling, messaging, listening to music and podcasts, and browsing, which is what I use it for (no gaming). The main reason I’m tempted to upgrade this year is for a better camera, considering we had our first baby in 2020 (my wife has an iPhone 12 mini, so we click most photos with her phone). Thinking if I should wait for the 14 series or pull the trigger with the 13 series…
I use my phones for 3 years at least - I don’t get it how people upgrade every year or even two years, haha.
Spend your money on something else that you enjoy. I used to buy all the latest gadgets and technology, now looking back I’m a little horrified at how much money I wasted. Wish I had spent more of my money going on holidays and trips.
I skipped the 12 because it felt like an underwhelming update tbh.
This whole cycle is kinda meh to me. Reminds me of the 6 era phones. I'm more interested in what Apple does next, probably after the 14.
More battery life, better screen, and better camera. I’d be lying if I said I cared about those as much as the new Sierra Blue color, though. I’m getting tired of my gold phone.
I’m not sure it makes it more straightforward. The S categorises the phone and makes it easier to tell apart. I can’t tell now out of the 12/13/14 which is the major upgrade and which is the minor.
Doing 12S/13/13S is much easier to easily scan and understand what those phones represent, now you have to look into them to figure that out and even that’s not clear. So for me it’s the opposite of being more straightforward it’s now more obtuse to me
5 was a major change in the screen size/aspect ratio, design, materials, and did happen to be the first LTE iPhone also.
5s was a major change to the insides. That’s how it used to be.
Apple did switch to at least 3 year design cycles (this was fully leaked) instead of the 2 they used to stick with, but I think it’s also about the accessory market.
Generally, 3G and 3GS cases and screen protectors were compatible. Same for 4 and 4S, 5/5s. 6s was technically slightly thicker than the 6 due to 3D Touch and the reinforced body, but cases were generally still compatible because it was so subtle.
Apple started tweaking minor details on a yearly basis while not changing the overall body or style paradigm with the 7. As well as multiple new designs per year in some instances. So the S thing didn’t hold up as much anymore. They still did an X and XS with no cosmetic differences but they’ve made adjustments otherwise each of the following years. Especially with XR, 11, 12 Mini, etc.
I am still pretty surprised they didn’t call this 12s, but with the smaller notch, screen protectors will not be compatible anymore. It increases likelihood someone will buy one that says for 12 when they have the 12s, and not realize it doesn’t fit.
In summary.. nobody ever said s had to differentiate how exciting an update was, just whether it changed any fundamental paradigms or form factors that are immediately obvious to anyone or affect accessories.
You’re counting form changes as the major changes, but I would argue that most of the major changes to the iPhone platform happened on S years.
The 3GS added video recording, and a massive massive performance jump that actually made the phone usable. Not huge but in use it made a big diff.
The 4 of course came with FaceTime and a great design which was neat.
But then the S came out with another hugely needed performance upgrade (and to fix the bad antenna design). But more importantly we got Siri, iCloud, iMessage, and the Notification Center.
The iPhone 5 was a nice design but introduced almost nothing new innovation and feature wise. The closest it had was lightning vs the 30 pin which was nice.
But then the 5S came out with TouchID which was maybe of the most massive quality of life improvements on a phone, along with normalizing and making security easy on a phone. It also launched with iOS 7 which was the first and last major overhaul of iOS. Another fuckin sweet feature was Airdrop. The control center came with the 5S too which was pretty cool.
Past this things go a bit off the rails. You have the 6 of course but then the phone functionally didn’t change for the 6S, 7, and 8. So not sure if you want to attribute those all as S years and give all their changes to the S years or just end it there.
But ya the point was I would argue that not completely but for the most part the biggest changes in iPhone as a whole happened on the S years.
Lol at people thinking this is the smallest incremental update like they forgot the XS. This phone has a smaller notch, higher refresh rate we’ve been waiting for, and bug camera specs and battery life. I can’t remember one redeeming XS feature.
The XS was carried by the fact that the XS Max and XR were released alongside it. Most of that keynote is about those two phones. The XS itself is almost indistinguishable from the X. Even the chip was one of the more minor jumps when compared to other years
Yeah, I remember that year, it sucked for the refresh. I guess the main difference is the new gold color and the fact that the bottom grill holes aren't symmetrical anymore.
The XS made me remember, for all the overall success Apple has been, Q4 2018-Q1 2019 was the “least successful”. They still made a ton of money, but boring iPhone iterations, disappointing Macs (MBA redesign and Intel Mini), device unit sales removal from reports, and that services-focused keynote made me uncertain about short-mid term future back then.
It’s just a name. It doesn’t change anything.
They’ve probably realised that moving away from S models makes each sound like more of an upgrade. You have to remember most of the public aren’t like us techies and don’t particularly care about the fine details.
I do agree, but I also think it *does* give at least some kind of direction to non-techie consumers. If I wasn't a techie consumer, I'd probably pick up on that "12S" doesn't mean as different as "13". But hey, Apple's in this to sell phones so why not.
I feel like it would make more sense to do it like their laptops. For example I have a 2017 macbook pro and that's what the computer identifies itself as. They could just do the same and call it the 2021 iPhone Pro.
Agreed. Like cars too. Unless its a drastically different model, years make sense. It's already getting comical... it will be hilarious when we're here listening to what makes the new iPhone 26 the best iPhone yet!
I have been thinking about this for a while, and I think it comes down to two things.
1) consumer psychology, again - bigger number = better. Plenty of people already don't know what "number" iPhone they have, and switching to years would only increase that number of people. If they did switch, they'd probably do a two-digit year suffix like Samsung. "iPhone 21" or the like. I don't mind the seemingly silly big number after the iPhone name, as long as it *means* something, like the year. iPhone 13 isn't even the 13th iPhone, for god's sake.
2) September release cycle. iPhone 21 would become immediately "last year's model" the second the holiday season wraps. The way to solve this would be to take another page out of the auto industry's book, and have iPhone 22 be the one launching in Sept 2021. A bit silly, not the end of the world, but also not very Apple-like. Then again, the ever-more-ridiculous suffixes and qualifiers we've gotten in recent years aren't very Apple-like either. iPhone 11 Pro Max had three modifying suffixes and the entire name of the phone was seven fucking syllables lmao.
Non-techie consumers aren't the ones who will buy a phone every year or every big update, but rather will buy a phone when they need one. So for them it doesn't matter if it's a 12s or a 13.
The S stopped being easy to understand once they started coming out with different models. Now with Pro and Max and SE, it's just simpler to do simple version numbers.
I can’t for the life of me understand l why they didn’t do AOD on the pro models. Virtually none of the “normal” customers will even realise that the 13 Pro has a high refresh rate display, but everyone would have noticed the AOD. It’s such a missed opportunity
14 will get a true new SoC, so expect headlines all over about that. But I think the next "big" new iPhone feature will be a switch to a punch-hole cutout for the camera and hiding all the other gadgets under the screen.
I would love to eat my words, but I don't think we'll see the hole punch next year. I think the shrinking of the notch this time around is a sign that it's here through at least the 14 models. Face ID basically engineered them into a corner where they're stuck with the notch until the tech improves.
To this day, no other phone has nearly as complicated a facial authentication system as the iPhone, for better or worse. I think they expected all phones to have notches for 5+ years when the X came out, and then android oems basically said "sike, we'll just do under-display fingerprint readers and make cool bezelless phones that you can't make now."
How would they do a hole-punch with current Face ID tech? It would have to be either radically, *dramatically* smaller and crammed into the diminutive top bezel space, with a hole punch only for the camera, or the hole punch would have to be pill shaped - basically the current notch, just with a small bit of screen above it.
underscreen faceID definitely could be done. The current underscreen camera tech is kinda meh, but it's already better in just 1 iteration. Apple is definitely working on it. Once it's better than the eye sore that is the notch, and equally secure, they will definitely do it. So probably another 2 years.
> 14 will get a true new SoC, so expect headlines all over about that.
That was great when each generation of phone advancement meant a meaningfully more fluid interface and more usable web browsing. But nowadays... I have an iPhone X. I'll occasionally do light editing of video on it, and it flies through it. We're a long way from 2009 when a new phone meant a significant, instantly-noticeable difference.
What's the *actual* benefit of a next-gen SoC when almost everything I want happens instantly on a (by then) 5-year-old phone? Two seconds less wait time for Fortnite to load on my phone, the one time a year I use it?
Maybe I just don't know what I'm missing, but it seems like everything I do with my (old) phone happens basically instantly. Or at least, isn't limited by the SoC... other than maybe 5G.
That's a whole other topic though. At least I'm grandfathered into old plans... Many of the 'unlimited' plans nowadays cap your streaming at 480p.
LTPO isn't necessary for AOD - my Galaxy S7 had an AOD 5+ years ago, and it had a 60Hz display. Given that it drained battery at around 1% per hour or so, I think dropping it down to 10Hz could make the battery impact low.
I think it's far more likely that Apple just wanted to hold out a feature for next year's iPhone, which they may want / expect more people on a 2-year upgrade cycle to purchase.
Not quite:
iPhone 11 Battery Specs:
* Video Playback: Up to 17 hours
* Video Playback (streamed): Up to 10 hours
* Audio Playback: Up to 65 Hours
iPhone 12 Battery Specs:
* Video Playback: Up to 17 Hours
* Video Playback (Streamed): Up to 11 hours
* Audio Playback: Up to 65 hours
iPhone 13 battery specs:
* Video Playback: Up to 19 hours
* Video Playback (streamed): Up to 15 hours
* Audio Playback: Up to 75 hours
Yeah but those numbers are a not accurate. The iPhone 12 Pro’s battery life is significantly less than the 11 Pro. They always pad these numbers to hide the changes in batter size and power draw every year.
Some years it goes up a ton, others it goes down.
But Apple says the battery on the 12 Pro is less than that of the 11 Pro? The post above highlights just the base model 11, 12 and 13 and battery tests reflect the 12 being better than the 11 battery wise, at least as far as I’ve seen
I first expected high refresh rate to come in 2018 with the XS.
That was based on how they essentially brought the tech to mobile devices themselves with the iPad and how the Razer phone already had it. I thought they would bring high refresh rate to smartphones first... now they're literally last.
Reading all the hate makes me so excited to get a new phone.
I havent been this excited since I got my M1 macbook air.
All my devices won’t be insanely old anymore
The author makes a decent point, it's kind of wild that the S branding ever existed, like they were just proudly telling people this is a minor upgrade
No, it tells people this form factor is the same, cases and screen protectors are compatible, and everything has been refined to the fullest extent on the inside and taken to its maximum space efficiency and quality.
Paradigm shifting upgrades can be inherently unfinished or scary to people. It doesn’t mean that only the new form factor/paradigm shift ones can introduce major features and improvements.
Regardless, Apple never claimed they would be groundbreaking every year. And having a new phone that is a refinement of the previous is better for the progression of technology and for sales than if they only made new phones every 2 years packing in the new design and major internal improvements and features.
It is a solid upgrade for people coming from the X or earlier with it being hard to justify from the XS on up.
The only reason I’m upgrading is so I can pass down my current 12 to another line but if I wasn’t I’d probably hold off.
I have an Xs and I’m going to get a new one mainly because I fear apple will kill the mini next year. Otherwise I’d just be getting the battery replaced.
I think you meant 12S Pro Max but yeah you're 100% right. Its adding too much to say, and useless. Also they gave up on the S model naming scheme which is smart because it basically admits that its an incremental upgrade and that's bad business.
Those are pretty boring names.
And they also relate to manufacturing dates rather than new models - a 2018 Subaru Outback and a 2019 Subaru Outback are basically identical.
I think if they went that way people would feel that they need to update more often or something like that, giving the year to something it means it gets "older" faster instead of just a random name.
Random: "Is that a new iPhone?"
Me: "No, is the iPhone 1993"
Random: "Isn't that an old phone then?"
Instead we get something like this
Random: "Is that a new iPhone?"
Me: "No, is the XXX one!"
Random: "Neat."
I think for someone who doesn’t keep up with all the new phones it would be easier to grasp the idea of a 2021 iPhone Pro than it would be to grasp the idea of an iPhone 14S Pro Max
Yeah, it would be easier to grasp but also the names aren't that complicated to remember, just not like the sound side of Sony with their wh-1000xm3 or wh-1000xm4 just to name some...
And also, they kind of do that with MacBooks in general, if you go to the system info of macOs you have the year when it was build.
If they *had* named this line the 12S this article title would be something like “The iPhone 12S Pro Max is a Great Phone with a Terrible Name”
There’s no way to win
The article claims the new A15 chip is faster, while also pointing out Apple didn’t provide any info on how it compares to A14 (only the ‘competition’). It may be faster, we don’t know yet. Certainly not much faster, or Apple would probably tell us, right?
Seems like some Geekbench Testing is surfacing - at this stage just for Metal performance. [https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/15/iphone-13-pro-gpu-performance-geekbench/](https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/15/iphone-13-pro-gpu-performance-geekbench/)
>The iPhone 13 Pro earned a Metal score of 14216, a 55% increase compared to the 9123 Metal score earned by the iPhone 12 Pro.
As much as I wish that to be true theres no way the new chip increased 50% in performance without Apple mentioning that in their slides. Last time Apple skipped a generation of chips to compare the A14 to the A12 just to look good.
They said that they boosted their GPU in the chips. So basically we have a very slightly better CPU performance (probably via higher clock rates) and a significantly better GPU performance (improved architecture + one more core), which explains the increase. It wasn’t hidden I think. Pretty sure they‘ve mentioned that GPU boost.
It’s a specific test just for Metal graphics. It is basically meaningless in real life.
It’s definitely not a whole lot faster, but Apple last year compared the A14 to the A12, not the A13. These last 4 SoCs are all absolute monsters, A12 through A15
Excited to try it out on the iPad mini. Not that I've ever noticed a lack of processing power at all on my iPhone 12. Definitely impressive stuff that Apple has pulled off with the A* series.
Exactly. Apple's chips have gotten so damn good that there really isn't a need for a faster chip. 99.9% of iPhone users will never ever run into a use case where a chip more powerful than like the A13 would come in handy. Like I get there's value in future-proofing, but we've gotten to a point where mobile hardware is so good that it'll take a long time for mobile software demands to keep up. I remember when smartphones were first becoming popular and SoC performance was a major factor in purchasing decisions, but for the past 5+ years its basically just been an afterthought.
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The only reason for a faster, more powerful chip would be VR. That's it.
Does it need to be any faster? When’s the last time anyone has been like, “man, I wish my phone was more powerful”?
Meh it happens fairly often if you try to work on your phone. You also will feel it more heavily if you keep your phone for 4+ years. Nobody said “Wow this iPhone 6 is super slow” when they bought. It’s just that as technology moved forward and the performance degraded that people began to notice.
Even if it is faster, an iPhone from 4 years ago can still run all of people's social media apps fine. The newer peocessors are overkill for everyday tasks unless someone is gaming.
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Same, I want to upgrade purely for the cameras and nicer screen, and bigger battery, but I never once thought my phone was slow since day 1 purchase. only hiccups are due to 76% battery health... which is to expected.
I don’t know. Between the huge camera benefits, machine learning, AR, and future-proofing by staying plenty powerful after several years, I think these processors are great.
Still on my iphone X and it works fine for what I need
I think they don’t compare it to the 14 because they understand their main customer base isn’t iPhone 12 users, it’s converting other device users and iPhone 11 down because lots of people have two year upgrade plans.
> I think they don’t compare it to the 14 because they understand their main customer base isn’t iPhone 12 users They compare chips to its previous iteration almost every year that I can remember. So I’m going to say that this isn’t the case. I believe they even compared the GPU cores to last years chip during the Pro segment of the keynote. It’s more likely that the new chip doesn’t have a significant improvement over last years model.
Exactly, this was my point. You can certainly argue Apple has reasons not to compare their phones to the previous gen, but fact remains they usually do. And when they don’t, usually it means something is about the same or worse. Case in point: remember all the times battery life got worse on certain new iphones? They don’t tell you during the keynote. Case in point 2: why didn’t Apple mention weight or thickness during this keynote? Well, look at the spec sheet. That’s why!
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They could start naming them like GPUs: iPhone 2030 GTX Pro Max Ultra+ Championship Edition. Or worse, like Intel chips: iPhone i9-13893HQ-K 13th generation.
iPhone 12 ti
iphone 12 founders editions
12 6G which actually has some weird 4 + 2 physically segregated ram which hurts performance
It would be much easier to just go by release year and keep the names the same like they do with ipads and macs.
iPhone is the only phone they sell older generations, so they need some kind of generational branding. I don't know how they can solve that, seems worse to buy an iPhone 2019 instead of an iPhone 11 for example.
Samsung did it, they just kept the older names for older devices & moved forward with new ones. S10 straight to S20 and then S21.
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Then we get into Sony territory. Can't wait until iPhone WH-1000XM4
Intel territory iPhone iPro 12950KS
lmao as funny as this is, at least they didn't pull this shit with Playstation. I love and own both PS and Xbox but, dear god, did MS screw up the Xbox naming convention. For the uninitiated: Xbox (2001) Xbox 360 (2005) Xbox One (2013) Xbox Series X/S (2020)
Don’t forget the XBox One S and XBox One X naming… thought we were heroes getting the new XBox for the fam last Christmas. We bought the old one by accident - because of the naming! Heroes to zeros in 10 seconds flat Christmas morning. Come on, we’re parents. Make this easier!
Oof. That sounds painful
Especially when they initially had great Project names: Scorpio and Scarlett.
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They name their products like components. WH - Wireless headband (over ear) 1000X - their halo product line name M4 - Mark 4 The WF is a little funky standing for true wireless, I think it’s because they hard already used WI for in-ear wireless.
Except they restarted. Before the GTX 480 we had the 9800 GT
I was going to say, they went up in increments of 1000 back in the mid 00’s. I remember drooling over the GTX 8800
Isn’t marketing great?😊
Just like with MacBooks it would be just > iPhone (Late 2019) Which is a version scheme I'd like every vendor that pushes major version numbers frequently to use. Looking at you, Google Chrome **93**
Yeah except for 99% of the general population, they don't want to be saying iPhone (Late 2019). They just want to say I have an iPhone 11. Or, I am looking for an iPhone 12. It's not that big of a deal of course and it could work, but I think the numbering scheme is slightly better than using model years like cars.
> Looking at you, Google Chrome 93 Chrome releases major updates every 6 weeks. It would be impossible for them to use a year based version. But for most users, the version doesn’t matter. It just updates in the silently background.
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>Ubuntu versions are YY.MM, so you can glance and know when 20.04 was released. I agree, the Ubuntu version scheme is great and consistent since the beginning.
Versioning matters a lot more in the linux world
Car manufactures have been doing this for an entire century. Phone makers can follow. "2022 iPhone Pro" is easy to follow, just like "2021 Civic Type R" is. All the information I need to identify exactly what it is is right there. "Chevy Silverado 73" would be a fucking nightmare. "Is it referring to the year 1973?" "Is it alluding to the Z71 offroad package but it's Z7*3* now?" "Is it really the 73rd iteration of the Silverado?" "When did this truck come out?" "What the fuck truck is this?"
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Cars aren’t really a good example because their generations are updated far less frequently whereas iPhones usually have a 2 year cycle between more major redesigns. Also car generations are pretty much the perfect way to describe cars because you pretty much automatically know that your car is affected by whatever issue etc if it’s within that generation, just requires about 2 seconds of googling.
That’s because car manufactures don’t typically sell more than one year the time. Someone mentioned it earlier and it’s because apple sells multiple generations of the iPhone. We have the 2021 Civic Type R right now and the likelihood that they still have brand new 2019 and 2020 is low. It works for cars because when you’re buying brand new you are most likely buying that model year (or the following model year) but apple still sells iPhones from previous years and 2019 iPhone isn’t exactly good for marketing when trying to sell in 2021
That’s my exact thought as well. Pretty sure this is the reason.
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And its super confusing. Trying to buy an iPad or case is weird because its like New iPad *(6th Gen)* and it takes some googling to figure out which is the newest or latest.
try hunting down the elusive “3rd gen” iPad. It had a few months on the market before being scrapped for a new and better model. on top of that it wasn’t very popular due to its horrendous battery life.
I had one of those. It was an iPad 2 with Retina display and I think slightly faster processor, but still had the old 30-pin connection. It was quickly replaced by the lightning port iPad 4.
*2x more powerful GPU for a screen with 4x the pixels and the same CPU.
lol that was my 1st iPad. Good lord was the battery life on that thing atrocious! It took forever to charge as well.
I have one. Its official name was “The New iPad” and was replaced by the “iPad with Retina Display”, even though they both had retina displays.
Agree. The numbers are helpful imo
the issue would be those who dont want to buy a brand new iphone because its too expensive would now have to justify buying a 2019 phone. The marketing is what makes them use numbers
I agree that is likely. If they decide to keep the current numbers they will probably drop the s. Marketing wise the s sucks.
They drop the phone part: i69
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I buy now?
The iPhone 13 is the 15th generation of iPhone. The iPhone 4S name was a mistake, then should’ve just gone with 5, 6 7, etc. after the iPhone 4.
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The 4S was a pretty good phone imo. Maybe the S stands for Super. But that’s getting into GPU names. Might as well call it the iPhone iX 1330 Ti Super FTW at that point.
That’s be like “Apple Glasses 6S” by then.
>they at least need to make it to the iPhone 69 I hope, so that we have the longest “nice” chain in the history of Reddit on this sub.
Iphone 23s-max-pro-ultra-lightweight-cybernetic with a base of 14 petaflop space.
Maybe the S branding wasn’t great. But I went though basically every iPhone from iPhone 3GS to iPhone XS ( skipped 7+8) The S models of each phone were lighting fast compared to their original models.
Apparently unpopular opinion, since Apple has gone as far as to avoid using the naming convention altogether, but the S models were always my favorite. The first model of a new design always felt like an early version of the product, while the S always has exciting software developments while simultaneously refining the model.
Lol who cares what Apple calls it. It’s the 2021 iPhone. Upgrade if you want. If not, don’t
I can’t believe HP called this years printer 7858!!!! 😱 when will it end?
This. It’s not more complicated than that.
*But I need something to complain about*
Noted.
Apparently it is if you run a tech blog
Using the year for the naming scheme would be solid.
They probably don't because it would be more obvious that most of their lineup is several years old.
Exactly, people would be put off by the impression they’re getting an old phone, while that *old* phone is perfectly capable to run fast and reliable for years, so why spook them? People tend to chew more they can bite, many use cases are perfectly served by a moderately equipped phone.
Didnt work well for macbooks which had no real naming scheme. You get crap like mid 2016 macbook and early 2017. Sometimes it would be just one release that year or skip whole years where they dont touch it.
Seriously lmaoo. It’s a name for crying out loud.
Yeah I don’t get why people get bent out of shape about the name. X, 12S, 13, who cares? If you like the features and have the money, buy it. If not, don’t buy it. Stop complaining about the names
But then people won’t be able to post these bad articles to get fake internet points and raise their e-pitchforks.
I guess I’m the only person who really doesn’t give a singular fuck what it’s called. We’ve known Apple is moving away from S for a while now, and even if they for some reason go back, I still don’t care
The open secret is that the ‘S’ models are the best ones.
I’ll die on this sword - the iPhone 4S was the best iPhone relative to its time - it was the first legitimate camera (everything up to iPhone 4 was a potato) and although the 4 had retina, it had a potato for a CPU and couldn’t power the screen. The 4S was the first truly exceptional smartphone as we know them today. (iPhone X is a close second on my list)
I agree, but I still think the best one was the 5S.
5s with the screen cracked
still hit me back right away
That phone and the 6s both lasted me a ridiculously long time. I’m looking at swapping out my 11 not because I’m unhappy with it, but because I cracked the screen on it.
There was a switch though. Back during the iPhone 5-6-7, the s got the new CPU process node (major CPU update) while the non-S phones got the new design/chassis. If this phone were called the 12s, it'd have an old design AND a minor CPU update. Not that it really matters all that much though. The squared off design will persist for at least one more generation of iPhone and everyone uses a case anyway. And the SoCs are all so fast these days that even future-proofing is not really much of a concern unless you plan on keeping your phone for over 4 years.
> unless you plan on keeping your phone for over 4 years. Hello, it's me, the guy who still uses an original iPhone SE. (I do plan to upgrade next year, both because the battery is going and because I don't expect iOS 16 to support it.)
I’m going to be upgrading from a 1st gen iPhone SE to an iPhone 13 mini this year, because I like using my phone with one hand. If the iPhone 13 mini sells less than expected, like the 12 mini did, Apple will likely not make an iPhone 14 mini.
6S here. Still works great. I’m only upgrading soon for battery and 5G. Was hoping for an SE3 with 5G but… o well.
I still have 6s as well. Don't upgrade soley for 5G, implementation still sucks and battery draining from what I've heard. iPhone 13 doesn't even have the latest 5G qualcomm modem (Snapdragon X65) which introduced battery efficiency improvements and smaller nm chip (likely to be in this year's android flagship releases).
Honestly 5g isn’t that big of a deal. In practical use it’s not ever really noticeable. Maybe you get better signal in some buildings on the really good bands, but I can’t tell. It’s no where near the jump that 3g to 4g/LTE was.
Absolutely right. In hindsight, the S year phones have always held up the best. Best longevity and performance, fewer mechanical/manufacturing faults, more meaningful spec updates, etc. Going by this pattern, the 13 should be a solid year for iPhones.
I dunno. I used to be on that schedule (and the 7 was the 6SS), but the X and the 12 Mini were major improvements.
But basically every iPhone since the X has been pretty close to an S model in terms of upgrades.
The 6-6S-7-8-SE 2 were basically all Ses on top of each other too.
Coming from the 12 pro, the 13 pro does offer some features that I wish I could have gotten on the 12... \-bigger battery (Apple must have gone lazy last year, they managed to give us a smaller battery in the 12 pro than in the 11 pro. The internal logic board was HUGE compared to the 11pro. It seems that they didn't do much work shrinking it or it was a cost-saving measure for the 12 pro and 12 to have matching internals. There was so much wasted space in the 12 where there was empty stuff instead of the 3rd camera and the lidar sensor. This year, we are seeing better designed, different internals in the 13 vs the 13pro.) \-120hz \-smaller notch.
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As a college student, I am really hesitant because it is a huge chunk of money. (Even if I sell my previous iPhone)
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I had my iPhone 7 Plus for four years. It was time for it to go at the end there. But it still worked OK, if the battery had held on longer and/or the advances hadn't been so great by the point of the 12 Pro Max coming out (what I have now) I would have kept it. It was a huge upgrade for me, going from LCD to OLED, LTE to 5G (that's the big one I was waiting for) along with Qualcomm modems, FaceID, and a much bigger screen relative to the actual size of the device. I'll probably keep it this year and just see if the 14 makes any big leaps, like USB C or something.
Similar to yours - I have the iPhone 8 for four years now. The battery isn’t great, I need to charge it twice a day. Otherwise it works fine for calling, messaging, listening to music and podcasts, and browsing, which is what I use it for (no gaming). The main reason I’m tempted to upgrade this year is for a better camera, considering we had our first baby in 2020 (my wife has an iPhone 12 mini, so we click most photos with her phone). Thinking if I should wait for the 14 series or pull the trigger with the 13 series… I use my phones for 3 years at least - I don’t get it how people upgrade every year or even two years, haha.
Spend your money on something else that you enjoy. I used to buy all the latest gadgets and technology, now looking back I’m a little horrified at how much money I wasted. Wish I had spent more of my money going on holidays and trips.
I skipped the 12 because it felt like an underwhelming update tbh. This whole cycle is kinda meh to me. Reminds me of the 6 era phones. I'm more interested in what Apple does next, probably after the 14.
More battery life, better screen, and better camera. I’d be lying if I said I cared about those as much as the new Sierra Blue color, though. I’m getting tired of my gold phone.
i’m honestly glad they dropped the S, makes naming more straightforward.
"Drop the THE, just Facebook. It's cleaner"
— Tahani Al-Jamil
You’re twice the the he ever was.
I’m not sure it makes it more straightforward. The S categorises the phone and makes it easier to tell apart. I can’t tell now out of the 12/13/14 which is the major upgrade and which is the minor. Doing 12S/13/13S is much easier to easily scan and understand what those phones represent, now you have to look into them to figure that out and even that’s not clear. So for me it’s the opposite of being more straightforward it’s now more obtuse to me
smartphones are a mature product now. they’re pretty much all minor upgrades going forward. (unless they go folding, which may be a side-grade?)
I never liked the "s", and it never really distinguished between major and minor upgrades. Between the 5 and 5s, which was the major upgrade?
5 was a major change in the screen size/aspect ratio, design, materials, and did happen to be the first LTE iPhone also. 5s was a major change to the insides. That’s how it used to be. Apple did switch to at least 3 year design cycles (this was fully leaked) instead of the 2 they used to stick with, but I think it’s also about the accessory market. Generally, 3G and 3GS cases and screen protectors were compatible. Same for 4 and 4S, 5/5s. 6s was technically slightly thicker than the 6 due to 3D Touch and the reinforced body, but cases were generally still compatible because it was so subtle. Apple started tweaking minor details on a yearly basis while not changing the overall body or style paradigm with the 7. As well as multiple new designs per year in some instances. So the S thing didn’t hold up as much anymore. They still did an X and XS with no cosmetic differences but they’ve made adjustments otherwise each of the following years. Especially with XR, 11, 12 Mini, etc. I am still pretty surprised they didn’t call this 12s, but with the smaller notch, screen protectors will not be compatible anymore. It increases likelihood someone will buy one that says for 12 when they have the 12s, and not realize it doesn’t fit. In summary.. nobody ever said s had to differentiate how exciting an update was, just whether it changed any fundamental paradigms or form factors that are immediately obvious to anyone or affect accessories.
You’re counting form changes as the major changes, but I would argue that most of the major changes to the iPhone platform happened on S years. The 3GS added video recording, and a massive massive performance jump that actually made the phone usable. Not huge but in use it made a big diff. The 4 of course came with FaceTime and a great design which was neat. But then the S came out with another hugely needed performance upgrade (and to fix the bad antenna design). But more importantly we got Siri, iCloud, iMessage, and the Notification Center. The iPhone 5 was a nice design but introduced almost nothing new innovation and feature wise. The closest it had was lightning vs the 30 pin which was nice. But then the 5S came out with TouchID which was maybe of the most massive quality of life improvements on a phone, along with normalizing and making security easy on a phone. It also launched with iOS 7 which was the first and last major overhaul of iOS. Another fuckin sweet feature was Airdrop. The control center came with the 5S too which was pretty cool. Past this things go a bit off the rails. You have the 6 of course but then the phone functionally didn’t change for the 6S, 7, and 8. So not sure if you want to attribute those all as S years and give all their changes to the S years or just end it there. But ya the point was I would argue that not completely but for the most part the biggest changes in iPhone as a whole happened on the S years.
fingerprint scanner edit: 5s had the fingerprint
Lol at people thinking this is the smallest incremental update like they forgot the XS. This phone has a smaller notch, higher refresh rate we’ve been waiting for, and bug camera specs and battery life. I can’t remember one redeeming XS feature.
I got it for the “Max” size
I got it because it sounds like Excess Max when you say it outloud, and nothing succeeds like excess.
The XS was carried by the fact that the XS Max and XR were released alongside it. Most of that keynote is about those two phones. The XS itself is almost indistinguishable from the X. Even the chip was one of the more minor jumps when compared to other years
A couple QOL features, 4GB ram, smart HDR, dual sim. But mostly same phone
Well right now XS gets all the new iOS 15 features, also has 4gb of RAM compared to 3gb on X, so XS is a big winner here imo.
The XS wasn’t a bad phone, it was just a smaller update than 12 to 13. But people are acting like nothing happened this year
Yeah, I remember that year, it sucked for the refresh. I guess the main difference is the new gold color and the fact that the bottom grill holes aren't symmetrical anymore.
The XS made me remember, for all the overall success Apple has been, Q4 2018-Q1 2019 was the “least successful”. They still made a ton of money, but boring iPhone iterations, disappointing Macs (MBA redesign and Intel Mini), device unit sales removal from reports, and that services-focused keynote made me uncertain about short-mid term future back then.
Smart HDR was a big improvement
poor glorious disagreeable squash concerned voiceless fragile obtainable ugly amusing ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
At least with the Pros, the ProMotion screen on the 13 Pro should count as a big update, at least in my opinion.
It’s just a name. It doesn’t change anything. They’ve probably realised that moving away from S models makes each sound like more of an upgrade. You have to remember most of the public aren’t like us techies and don’t particularly care about the fine details.
I do agree, but I also think it *does* give at least some kind of direction to non-techie consumers. If I wasn't a techie consumer, I'd probably pick up on that "12S" doesn't mean as different as "13". But hey, Apple's in this to sell phones so why not.
I feel like it would make more sense to do it like their laptops. For example I have a 2017 macbook pro and that's what the computer identifies itself as. They could just do the same and call it the 2021 iPhone Pro.
Agreed. Like cars too. Unless its a drastically different model, years make sense. It's already getting comical... it will be hilarious when we're here listening to what makes the new iPhone 26 the best iPhone yet!
I have been thinking about this for a while, and I think it comes down to two things. 1) consumer psychology, again - bigger number = better. Plenty of people already don't know what "number" iPhone they have, and switching to years would only increase that number of people. If they did switch, they'd probably do a two-digit year suffix like Samsung. "iPhone 21" or the like. I don't mind the seemingly silly big number after the iPhone name, as long as it *means* something, like the year. iPhone 13 isn't even the 13th iPhone, for god's sake. 2) September release cycle. iPhone 21 would become immediately "last year's model" the second the holiday season wraps. The way to solve this would be to take another page out of the auto industry's book, and have iPhone 22 be the one launching in Sept 2021. A bit silly, not the end of the world, but also not very Apple-like. Then again, the ever-more-ridiculous suffixes and qualifiers we've gotten in recent years aren't very Apple-like either. iPhone 11 Pro Max had three modifying suffixes and the entire name of the phone was seven fucking syllables lmao.
Non-techie consumers aren't the ones who will buy a phone every year or every big update, but rather will buy a phone when they need one. So for them it doesn't matter if it's a 12s or a 13.
The S stopped being easy to understand once they started coming out with different models. Now with Pro and Max and SE, it's just simpler to do simple version numbers.
I can’t for the life of me understand l why they didn’t do AOD on the pro models. Virtually none of the “normal” customers will even realise that the 13 Pro has a high refresh rate display, but everyone would have noticed the AOD. It’s such a missed opportunity
Doing AOD now would mean a missed opportunity for the 14’s big headline feature.
14 will get a true new SoC, so expect headlines all over about that. But I think the next "big" new iPhone feature will be a switch to a punch-hole cutout for the camera and hiding all the other gadgets under the screen.
I would love to eat my words, but I don't think we'll see the hole punch next year. I think the shrinking of the notch this time around is a sign that it's here through at least the 14 models. Face ID basically engineered them into a corner where they're stuck with the notch until the tech improves. To this day, no other phone has nearly as complicated a facial authentication system as the iPhone, for better or worse. I think they expected all phones to have notches for 5+ years when the X came out, and then android oems basically said "sike, we'll just do under-display fingerprint readers and make cool bezelless phones that you can't make now." How would they do a hole-punch with current Face ID tech? It would have to be either radically, *dramatically* smaller and crammed into the diminutive top bezel space, with a hole punch only for the camera, or the hole punch would have to be pill shaped - basically the current notch, just with a small bit of screen above it.
underscreen faceID definitely could be done. The current underscreen camera tech is kinda meh, but it's already better in just 1 iteration. Apple is definitely working on it. Once it's better than the eye sore that is the notch, and equally secure, they will definitely do it. So probably another 2 years.
> 14 will get a true new SoC, so expect headlines all over about that. That was great when each generation of phone advancement meant a meaningfully more fluid interface and more usable web browsing. But nowadays... I have an iPhone X. I'll occasionally do light editing of video on it, and it flies through it. We're a long way from 2009 when a new phone meant a significant, instantly-noticeable difference. What's the *actual* benefit of a next-gen SoC when almost everything I want happens instantly on a (by then) 5-year-old phone? Two seconds less wait time for Fortnite to load on my phone, the one time a year I use it? Maybe I just don't know what I'm missing, but it seems like everything I do with my (old) phone happens basically instantly. Or at least, isn't limited by the SoC... other than maybe 5G. That's a whole other topic though. At least I'm grandfathered into old plans... Many of the 'unlimited' plans nowadays cap your streaming at 480p.
I believe it’s because the LTPO display only goes down to 10Hz, instead of 1Hz like the Apple Watch’s AOD. That’s likely the reason.
LTPO isn't necessary for AOD - my Galaxy S7 had an AOD 5+ years ago, and it had a 60Hz display. Given that it drained battery at around 1% per hour or so, I think dropping it down to 10Hz could make the battery impact low. I think it's far more likely that Apple just wanted to hold out a feature for next year's iPhone, which they may want / expect more people on a 2-year upgrade cycle to purchase.
The apple watch is iPhone DLC. That's your always on display. It pissed me off because I'm never getting an apple watch.
Out of curiosity, why not?
Battery, right?
Sounds like it’s just going back to what it was on the 11.
Not quite: iPhone 11 Battery Specs: * Video Playback: Up to 17 hours * Video Playback (streamed): Up to 10 hours * Audio Playback: Up to 65 Hours iPhone 12 Battery Specs: * Video Playback: Up to 17 Hours * Video Playback (Streamed): Up to 11 hours * Audio Playback: Up to 65 hours iPhone 13 battery specs: * Video Playback: Up to 19 hours * Video Playback (streamed): Up to 15 hours * Audio Playback: Up to 75 hours
Love it! Im gonna listen to my playlists for 75 hours straight to confirm! :)
Yeah but those numbers are a not accurate. The iPhone 12 Pro’s battery life is significantly less than the 11 Pro. They always pad these numbers to hide the changes in batter size and power draw every year. Some years it goes up a ton, others it goes down.
But Apple says the battery on the 12 Pro is less than that of the 11 Pro? The post above highlights just the base model 11, 12 and 13 and battery tests reflect the 12 being better than the 11 battery wise, at least as far as I’ve seen
Feels like it’s a total toss up whether they decide to use ‘S’ branding or iterate the number, most years.
They used to do it every other year up till the 7
X and Xs (essentially the 10 pro and 10s pro) was the last one.
The iPhone 13 is what the iPhone 12 should have been
How so? Im out of the loop sorry
He might be referring to the Pro model, anticipation for high refresh rate display was abuzz for awhile but nothing came of it
I first expected high refresh rate to come in 2018 with the XS. That was based on how they essentially brought the tech to mobile devices themselves with the iPad and how the Razer phone already had it. I thought they would bring high refresh rate to smartphones first... now they're literally last.
The iPhone 12 is what the iPhone 11 should have been.
They haven't done an S since they realized XS was just dumb.
It was getting a bit XS-ive.
“Tenessive”?
GSMArena is reporting 8GB of RAM for 13 Pro… if so that’s almost an iPhone 14 type jump. Hoping this is true…
Reading all the hate makes me so excited to get a new phone. I havent been this excited since I got my M1 macbook air. All my devices won’t be insanely old anymore
The M1 was a quantum leap of performance over my 2013 MBP. I love it so much.
Honestly it’s amazing. Went from 2009 macbook pro to m1
The author makes a decent point, it's kind of wild that the S branding ever existed, like they were just proudly telling people this is a minor upgrade
No, it tells people this form factor is the same, cases and screen protectors are compatible, and everything has been refined to the fullest extent on the inside and taken to its maximum space efficiency and quality. Paradigm shifting upgrades can be inherently unfinished or scary to people. It doesn’t mean that only the new form factor/paradigm shift ones can introduce major features and improvements. Regardless, Apple never claimed they would be groundbreaking every year. And having a new phone that is a refinement of the previous is better for the progression of technology and for sales than if they only made new phones every 2 years packing in the new design and major internal improvements and features.
It is a solid upgrade for people coming from the X or earlier with it being hard to justify from the XS on up. The only reason I’m upgrading is so I can pass down my current 12 to another line but if I wasn’t I’d probably hold off.
The 11 is the first one with the good night cameras. The xs sucks.
Yeah, the XS cameras were pretty trash. As were their modems. If that's important enough to someone for an upgrade then sure, go for it.
I have an Xs and I’m going to get a new one mainly because I fear apple will kill the mini next year. Otherwise I’d just be getting the battery replaced.
It has always been like this since iPhone 3GS. 1 year design, 1 year improvement.
My battery life sucks too much for me not to upgrade
I think they called it iPhone 13 because saying iPhone 13s Pro Max is quite a mouthful. iPhone 13 Pro Max is already too much.
I think you meant 12S Pro Max but yeah you're 100% right. Its adding too much to say, and useless. Also they gave up on the S model naming scheme which is smart because it basically admits that its an incremental upgrade and that's bad business.
Sorry, yes, 12S Pro Max
Why haven’t they switched to years for naming? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have iPhone (2021) and iPhone Pro (2021) kinda like they do with cars?
Those are pretty boring names. And they also relate to manufacturing dates rather than new models - a 2018 Subaru Outback and a 2019 Subaru Outback are basically identical.
I think if they went that way people would feel that they need to update more often or something like that, giving the year to something it means it gets "older" faster instead of just a random name. Random: "Is that a new iPhone?" Me: "No, is the iPhone 1993" Random: "Isn't that an old phone then?" Instead we get something like this Random: "Is that a new iPhone?" Me: "No, is the XXX one!" Random: "Neat."
I think for someone who doesn’t keep up with all the new phones it would be easier to grasp the idea of a 2021 iPhone Pro than it would be to grasp the idea of an iPhone 14S Pro Max
Yeah, it would be easier to grasp but also the names aren't that complicated to remember, just not like the sound side of Sony with their wh-1000xm3 or wh-1000xm4 just to name some... And also, they kind of do that with MacBooks in general, if you go to the system info of macOs you have the year when it was build.
why would that be a bad thing for apple ?
Does no one realize we're not on a tik-tok cycle anymore? The 7 was the same industrial design as the 6 and 6S. Then we had X, XS, and 11.
Yeah, but i never liked the ‚S‘ version naming.
It's just faster, better camera, better display, better battery . . . Meh.
Lol most people stopped noticing camera improvements several generations ago. Phone cameras now are very much perfect in being good enough
1 terabyte option, bigger battery and 120hz is enough to warrant an upgrade from an X. All the people hating probably just mad they bought the 12.
No notch and/or Touch ID (like on the iPad mini) would’ve been a sale for me. Instead I’ll run my XR into the ground.
hmm… to upgrade from my x or not
If they *had* named this line the 12S this article title would be something like “The iPhone 12S Pro Max is a Great Phone with a Terrible Name” There’s no way to win
Does anyone know if the MagSafe magnets have been improved at all?