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Why the iPhone 6 Has the Same Base Memory As the iPhone 5
Lucas123 writes When the iPhone 5 was launched two years ago, the base $199 (with wireless plan) model came with 16GB of flash memory. Fast forward to this week when the iPhone 6 was launched with the same capacity. Now consider that the cost of 16GB of NAND flash has dropped by more than 13% over the past two years. So why would Apple increase capacity on its $299 model iPhone 6 to 64GB (eliminating the 32GB model), but but keep the 16GB in the $199 model? The answer may lie in the fact that the 16GB iPhone is, and has been, by far the best selling model. IHS analyst Fang Zhang believes Apple is using that to push users to its iCloud storage service. Others believe restricting storage capacity allows Apple to afford the new features, like NFC and biometrics.
Its only to drive people to use cloud services and buy the expensive model for more capacity. Apple would be stupid to satisfy its users.
The answer may lie in the fact that the 16GB iPhone is, and has been, by far the best selling model.
Therein lies the answer. It's always about the money. Period.
That doesn't sound right. Can anybody confirm?
So you've got a part that costs X, and after two years the cost is reduced by 13%, meaning that the part now costs .87 times X. You can continue to use this part, offering either a 13% reduction in the portion of your overall price that is contributed by this part, or you can maintain overall price and reap slightly more profit. You can also decide to use two of this part to increase device capacity, and now your cost is 1.74 times the original X. You can now reduce your profits by keeping your overall price despite increased cost, or you can increase your product price and hope that purchasers absorb the change
TL;DR? 13% is a trivial cost reduction compared to doubling the cost while doubling the memory.
Or maybe it's just that the electrical engineer doing the circuit layouts was wearing a green shirt that day. Analyst Foo Kin Ublivius believes green shirts cause electrical engineers to be afraid of increasing memory quantities. Others believe memory in smartphones are made from the ground-up brain matter of orphans and restricting storage capacity allows Apple to save their orphans for more important things like assembling iPads.
"Oh no... he found the
It is obviously because Apple has engineered iOS so well that it only requires a fraction of the memory that Android does.
And, iOS8 has such wonderful memory technologies that Apple developed that even new apps only need a small fraction of the memory that they would need in Android and iOS7. So, there was absolutely no need to put extra memory that will never be used.
In an age where 16 GB is available as RAM on many desktops and laptops, it's stupid to sell/buy a computer with only 16 GB persistent storage.
The iPhone is just an underpowered palm computer with touch interface instead of keyboard/mouse of a laptop. Is the portability premium so high, or the case so shiny, that we have to pay 2 times the cost of a powerful laptop while getting computing power/memory of a 5 year old laptop?
BTW, please stop calling flash as "Memory" (in the title) because memory is often confused with RAM.
Yeah, don't store the stuff locally because that needs power and then stream the content over the air instead, because that doesn't need power.
That's about right. I just checked my iPhone (4s), and in over two years of use, never cleaning anything, I've barely passed 5GB. By far the biggest use of space is recorded videos, followed by photos, then several big apps.
I'm not going to say "16 gigabytes ought to be enough for anybody," but it is enough for many people right now. Maybe they use ICloud, or maybe they're following good habits to move photos off of their easily-lost phone, or maybe like me their primary usage model is streaming and other ephemeral data. I just don't see a pressing need to add more memory on the low-end model. There doesn't have to be some sneaky marketing plan to say "this is good enough for now."
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Usual strategy is to sell at high margins to a small percentage of your customers. In Apple's case they are doing it the opposite way. I think ive read nvidia and amd do the same with graphics cards as well where the performance models are the lower margin sku.
It turns out MOST people use very few apps.
The need for more then 16GB is a very small part of the market.
Why add more flash that won't be used?
http://Lenny.com
An expanded memory will be the new wonderful feature of the iPhone 7 that all the world was expecting.
Personally I have little use for a large amount of storage. My music collection is small, I don't care to watch videos on my phone and I prefer not to keep my entire picture library on it. As long as the OS doesn't take up a unreasonable amount of space 16gb works just fine for me.
The iPhone is just an underpowered palm computer with touch interface instead of keyboard/mouse of a laptop. Is the portability premium so high, or the case so shiny, that we have to pay 2 times the cost of a powerful laptop while getting computing power/memory of a 5 year old laptop?
No, the cost of miniaturized components is higher. And that's not even counting your gross exaggeration, the iPhone is 2 times the cost of a crappy barely-functional laptop, NOT a "powerful" laptop.
companies like Apple buy everything in bulk. They probably thought that buying up as many 16GB modules as possible would cover them over the production lifecycle of the 5, which it has, but now they've got crates of the 16GB chips they have to use somewhere: so how about the budget next generation phones? Once the 16GB models are gone, you won't see 16GB iphone 7s.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
"What can we include to meet a specific price point?" In this case, $200.
If that means Feature A (total GB) has to suffer to include Feature B (NFC)....so be it.
To upgrade my phone to IOS 8 I had to free some space. This basically involved deleted some Apps that I never use that were taking a great deal of space. I don't buy apple movies because they can be only played on apple devices, so the majority of data is music, most of which is stored on the cloud, and photos. I know people have almost no music on their devices, but stream everything. To be honest, streaming has meant that many people do not have to deal with the hassle of local storage. Though we can get into a philosophical argument, the fact is that I do not store as much on my mobile devices as I once did. Even my laptop now has less stuff on it. As to why there is still a 16GB model, that is obvious. Apple needs an entry level device and is not willing to enter the cut rate phone market. Amazon has done this with a 99 cent 32GB model and at $99 64GB model. Obviously they are hoping customers buy the 64GB model even though what is essentially $100 for a 32GB upgrade is essentially highway robbery. Some will do it even though the pricing structure provides little value. Most cell phone companies do this. Apple, being a premium device, is just a little more aggressive.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Local music can easily blow through that limit. Mine does. Streaming stuff is fine in urban areas, but if you travel outside of urban areas with little phone service regularly, and you don't want to carry another device, it's pretty irritating to be significantly limited in the amount to music you can carry.
I prefer not to keep my entire picture library on it.
With its tiny resolution cameras you don't need a lot of storage. It is only 8MP the selfie cam is an astonishingly small 1.2. I agree though mobile devices should advise space free not total amount. In this case iOS 8 takes up 5GB of that space so should advertise itself as a 11GB phone
Maybe it's just me, but when I hear a term like base memory, what comes to mind is how much ram the device actually has for runtime applications to use, not flash ram,which I would equate more to permanent or offline storage.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Apple users are such whiners. If 16GB is not enough, just insert a TF card.
The iPhone 6 comes with 1 Gb of memory. And has options for 16, 64 and 128 Gb of storage.
Why does this even get published?
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
don't need 16Megs. People on slashdot criticize apple for forcing you to buy features you don't need. Now you critize apple for making the base model something not geek worthy. they are offering what their customers need. Chances are the number of songs or photos you want to keep stored on your iphone at any time isn't geoing with time. and that's the majority of the space usage on most people's phones. With icloud and beats streaming that need is going to dramatically shrink as well. The only thing likely to really be a space hog is more tricked out games and things that use the greater pixels of the large phones. But as I said, at the moment it's photos and music that dominate the storage needs and those will be going down not up.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
An expanded memory will be the new wonderful feature of the iPhone 7 that all the world was expecting.
The iphone was few bragging points and one of them is its slimness is one of them. look at the ugly badly designed protruding camera on the me too iphone to protect the use of this stupid advantage(sic). It uis the same reason they don't have removable batteries.
People who run out of memory are more likely to upgrade when the next iPhone comes out.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
You're using the word 'powerful' to describe an Apple Laptop, aren't you. As in 'powerfully overpriced.' Or 'powerful' in the sense that Limburgher Cheese has a powerful smell. Right?
Because power in computing is defined by what the user does with the hardware using software, not what some marketing price point dictates. And a powerful laptop ten years ago is still powerful today, thus a $300 laptop from WalMart is powerful in the right hands. A $1600 Mac Book Pro in the hands of the typical user is no more powerful than a $200 chromebook. But it looks shiney.
That's about right. I just checked my iPhone (4s), and in over two years of use, never cleaning anything, I've barely passed 5GB. By far the biggest use of space is recorded videos, followed by photos, then several big apps.
And it is not a good comparison. Photos and Videos take up more space on a phone because the cameras now are higher resolution, even though they are still tiny compared to the opposition, and Apps are growing exponentially I have several Apps that are GBs. I know Apple does not have as many Apps as Android, but I would find it astonishing if it were not the same.
The iPhone 6 comes with 1 Gb of memory. And has options for 16, 64 and 128 Gb of storage.
Why does this even get published?
Because 16GB it is considered useless with todays ever growing Application, Photo and Video sizes...and ironically OS Sizes. Even. National newspapers are discussing it http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
I'm waiting for the Slashdot story about how obviously no one will ever need more than 640k of memory ever.
I do want to rant out about iPhone 6 memory though. 1GB is ridiculously low. They claim it was a choice to reduce battery use.
Using the gopro with 240 fps on the gopro app on a Galaxy S4 is a nightmare and I envision that it will be the same on the iPhone. Not quite sure how they plan on getting good performance even for in-phone features.
The iPhone 6 isn't close to what you had on a 5 year laptop. 5 years ago: 4g ram, 256g HD, somewhere on the order of 10x the video speeds was standard in a PoS laptop.
I looked at the iPhone 6 tear down and the chip sizes are not that much smaller than a laptop's chips. So it's just miniaturized case, motherboard, battery and camera (and the battery holds a lot less charge than a laptop battery).
But you can buy a very decent laptop for 1000 bucks, with 10-15 times more RAM, 10 times more processing power with an i7 CPU, and 10-100 times more persistent storage.
Please do not presume to speak for the rest of us. Many of us are still using 32-bit Windows machines and having only 2-4GB of RAM installed.
But hey, if you're a geek/enthusiast, go ahead and enjoy your 16GB RAM awesome machines. Knock yourself out.
Tell that to my kids.
They filled up their 16GB ipad within a month with apps,pictures and videos.
And then try to update your iOS version which needs 7GB....
The 16GB model exists solely to make the 64GB model look like a better value. This is a marketing decision, nothing more.
Amazin Prime does...
We have several movies downloaded to our iPads for use while away from WiFi...
The explaination is quite simple: more beer!
If you buy the 16GB instead of the 64GB you have and extra $100 left over to spend on beer!
Well, if you know that you're gonna need more local storage you can just get the model with more local storage. But I do think this is mostly just a case of there not really being all that much demand for models with more local storage. Or rather, there are a lot of users who are perfectly happy with 16 GB so there's no point in discontinuing that model.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
"allows Apple to afford the new features THAT NOBODY WANTS, like NFC and biometrics."
For as far as I know, in some countries (especially inside the EU) there is a TAX on all devices more than X-gb.
The bottom line isn't about what is cheaper and what can be put in - it's the users.
When I ordered my wife's new phone, I asked how much memory she wanted. She didn't know - said her current one is 64, so at least 64. I said hold on, wait:
Went home, checked her phone, said, "You realize with all the apps, photos, videos, etc..you've only breached 5gigs on your phone, right?"
Many users simply *do not need the capacity*. Just because many of us are geeks, install a ton of stuff, and store a lot of media, doesn't mean most people do. Many people use their phones _as phones_ and enjoy the simple features of photo/videos on demand on occasion, reasonable security, being able to video chat, etc...and have a good UI to work with. They don't *need* huge storage. A reason why 16 gig models are often the best selling isn't because everyone utilizes cloud storage - but because they simply DO NOT NEED that much storage, and just want the built in features.
Think: Customer centric. It'd do many of the previous posters some good -- calling yourself an IT genius does nothing if your technology doesn't serve real people.
maybe 16Gb is enough for the real current use cases for the average iphone user?
Apple has been pretty good in identifying the users needs and limiting what they put in the phones.
Which was the case for the iphone 1, where everybody wondered about UMTS. As a matter of fact, iphones are not meant to be "general puprose computers", and they suck ehen used as such. They are perfectly balanced media players.
Other than display, why is it benchmarking better than the Samsung Galaxy S5?
Half the cores, half the ram, and ... no appreciable gain in performance.
Never mind last year's 300 dollar phones.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
_My_ car has a 6 bbl carburetor
I listen to the spec war arguments among my under-30 developers and all I hear is my friends sitting around a garage in 1978 arguing over whose engine had more horsepower. HP which they could never use because of the poor state of tires, steering systems, and suspension design in the 1970s. I could pop a new chip in my 2012 family sedan and vaporize any of those 1970s garage rods at the stoplight with half the nominal horsepower. It is all about what suits the purpose, not who has the "better" spec numbers.
sPh
Interesting thing is that the majority of Android spec warrior techs I meet are adamant Microsoft partisans and not only hate all things Apple but Unix and Linux as well.
https://www.samsung.com/global...
SD card for storage up to 128 GB, 4K video, etc.
When you buy an iPhone 6 you're reaching backwards.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Why do we still call it a phone? It's a biometric tracking device with GPS, audio and video capabilities.
Cow goes mooooooooooooooo
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I agree. That's why I prefer phones with removable storage. I have a 64gb card in mine with all my music on it.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
It will cost Apple 5 dollars or less on a phone that will cost over 500 dollars (without a contract) in the store to upgrade it to 32G. It's not a matter of physical space in the phone because they have 64G and 128G models as well. This is purely so they will sell more 64G phones to people that think 16G isn't enough.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I think it might be the case of 'normal user' vs 'power user' in deciding to only offer 16GB and 64GB phones. You have 'most' people who are like Sarten-X and 16GB is 'plenty'.
Then there's power users like you who will use more than the base amount. Now considering this population of people who want more local storage, how many are going to be satisfied with a 32GB model if a 64GB version is being offered for 'only' $50* more? After all, you already 'know' that you're going to bust 16GB, which means your phone will be half full.
It's entirely possible that Apple noticed a 'hockey stick' effect in it's sales - lots and lots and lots of 16GB models, lots of 64GB models, but the 32GB model was selling the least. So why have it? Odds are the 32GB users will grumble a bit and buy the 64GB model anyways.
*It seems like it'd be pretty standard: $199 for 16GB, $249 for 32GB, $299@64.
I don't read AC A human right
All of my Android phones include the ability to add a MicroSD card.
Great! Sounds like you are a satisfied customer of Android phones.
I don't care how much memory is on the phone, my data (pictures etc) doesn't reside there
Fair enough. I don't personally care to store my photos etc on an SD card but to each their own. I'd rather sync my stuff wirelessly to a remote drive and not worry about storing my stuff on a modern day floppy disk. If you want to go old school that's fine but don't presume the rest of us want to follow your lead.
Apple's continued refusal to add a MicroSD slot is just more of their way of ripping off their customers.
So because Apple provides an extremely popular product but doesn't provide the exact product you want they are "ripping people off"? Curious and rather condescending logic. I'm pretty confident that most people could not care less about the presence or absence of a MicroSD card slot. It adds to the cost, adds to the bulk, adds to the complexity, is one more layer of unnecessary complexity and in most cases wouldn't get used much if at all. Personally I'd rather the space be taken up with additional battery if anything because that is FAR more useful to me.
I looked at the iPhone 6 tear down and the chip sizes are not that much smaller than a laptop's chips. So it's just miniaturized case, motherboard, battery and camera (and the battery holds a lot less charge than a laptop battery).
I haven't looked at that teardown, but I'm willing to bet that there's a lot FEWER chips because there's more integration within them, not to mention the engineering to fit that many into such a tight space. Mounting chips on BOTH sides of the motherboard? That's not normally seen in laptops or desktops.
Anyways - from a quick count I got 18 chips in an iphone 6.
In my laptop the RAM alone is 16 chips. Yes, it's a desktop replacement laptop.
I don't read AC A human right
Then add a microSD slot with support for 64GB memory slot.
You seem to think that a microSD card is an unambiguously positive feature. It is not. You seem to understand the upside but let me lay out the downsides:
1) It adds bulk to the phone for a feature that most customers do not care about and will not use
2) It adds to the cost of the product for design, manufacturing, warranty, and support (again for a feature few will actually use)
3) It reduces the reliability of the device by a small but statistically significant amount. When you are selling these in the millions that adds up to substantial expense.
4) Adding the microSD card comes at the expense of other features that could occupy that space such as additional battery capacity.
5) It is a vector for dust and debris to enter the phone (see point 3 above)
6) It requires supporting third party hardware that may have compatibility issues
7) SD cards come in a variety of speeds and people will inevitably buy SD cards that are not fast, incompatible or have other performance issues
8) It complicates the software on the device and almost certainly will result in bugs.
9) The functionality can be replicated in other ways that may (and in fact are) preferable to other people such as wirelessly syncing data to other devices.
10) SD cards basically are modern day floppy disks. Do we *really* need to go back to those?
I can keep going. If you want a microSD card on your phone because that is critical to you then there are plenty of excellent options available to you, particularly among Android phones. Pick one and stop trying to tell everyone that they are stupid because they don't care to do things just like you would.
Because 16GB it is considered useless with todays ever growing Application, Photo and Video sizes...and ironically OS Sizes.
Maybe among the slashdot crowd but that's not even remotely true among the General Public. I'm pretty sure Apple and other device makers have a pretty accurate idea how much space actually gets used on most devices. Furthermore they have options available for those who actually do need more storage space.
National newspapers are discussing it
They also spend a lot of time discussing vital matters such as the latest escapades of the Kardashian family. Do you have a point?
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7GB for an upgrade? I think you've mistaken this for your Samsung Galaxy touchwiz crap... :)
Oh, you are one of those guys who would hold a laptop up to his ear to make phone calls, because Skype is free, right?
In an age where 16 GB is available as RAM on many desktops and laptops, it's stupid to sell/buy a computer with only 16 GB persistent storage.
If that is all people actually need then why it it stupid? I'm pretty sure Apple and other smartphone makers have a much more accurate idea of how much storage actually gets used than you do.
The iPhone is just an underpowered palm computer with touch interface instead of keyboard/mouse of a laptop.
I dispute your framing of this issue. iPhones and other smartphones are hardly "underpowered". In fact they are incredibly powerful especially given the engineering challenges in play including battery life, heat, size and budget limitations. If you think these issues are trivial then by all means dazzle us with your brilliance and make a better product.
Is the portability premium so high, or the case so shiny, that we have to pay 2 times the cost of a powerful laptop while getting computing power/memory of a 5 year old laptop?
Short answer? Yes. Long answer? You are comparing apples to oranges. The heat, power, size and performance requirements of those two devices are wildly different. Do you really want a cooling fan in your cell phone? Because heat is a HUGE problem and speed = heat. Given the size of battery that is in a cell phone you simply don't have the power budget to crank up the performance to that of a current laptop.
The iPhone 6 isn't close to what you had on a 5 year laptop.
Could you stick that 5 year old laptop in a shirt pocket? I didn't think so. Why do you insist on comparing devices with wildly different heat, power and size budgets as if they are somehow the same thing?
And some how, this dual core, and half clocked cpu, out performs nearly every quad core and octo core Android phone on the market. Have you even asked yourself why this is? And what would happen if Apple did decide to go double clock speed and quad core...?
As for resolution, show me a sRGB capable screen on Android please.
I don't think you appreciate how bizarre this sounds to those of us who used to have cassette tapes.
I used to think that too, but I've had a Samsung phone that I *could* put an SDcard in for four years now and I've never put one in. But I still value the option of doing so enough that I won't consider an iPhone until they have an SDcard slot.
Indeed, I was reading the title and summary and thought "Slashdot really is dead" if they confuse memory and storage like the ignorant masses.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Well, to make a long story short, the phone is 1/10th in almost every respect compared to a similarly priced laptop (cpu, ram, screen, storage etc) but the price is same as a laptop. Don't you think we deserve a discount for less powerful parts and fewer/cheaper parts used? I bet the RAM does not perform as good as that on the latest laptops. In other words, does apple pay 10 times as much as laptop manufacturers for RAM or flash? Of course not, so why should the consumer?
Charge a premium for making it compact, and a functionally and aesthetically designed case, but still, it should be priced nowhere near as much as a laptop. Well, maybe we can forgive Apple for overcharging since they are a manufacturer of luxury goods. But other phones (i.e. Samsung etc.) should not be charging the same ridiculous premiums Apple is charging.
Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick - just how much music do you need? On my (recently replaced with a 32gb 5S*) 16gb 4S I could have a ton of apps, several hundred photos, and still have room for six days (continuous play, no repeat) worth of tunes.
As the grandparent said, this isn't some sneaky marketing plan... I suspect16gb really is enough for most common usage.
*Pretty much just because I could.
I admit, the distinction is blurred with solid-state storage, but one of this article's keywords is "RAM" - which is not related to the article's contents at all. That's confusing because my main complaint with the new iPhone is that it only has 1GB RAM, the same as the iPhone 5. The article title made me think it was going to address *that*.
O yes, I forgot it's Apple. They can charge $100 for each 16gb of additional storage. Silly Andriod users like myself just go buy a 64GB mirco sd card for $39.
Agreed. I live in an urban area and make do with a 16GB phone. I stream music (urban use) and save playlists to my phone (rural, train or motorway use) for day to day use but put up with carrying an iPod Classic when I'm away for any length of time, especially when going abroad, or for long train journeys. Carrying the extra device doesn't both me for the sort of trips I use my iPod for.
Andy.
> I just don't see a pressing need to add more memory on the low-end model.
more RAM is always welcome, and a mere 1GB is criminal in this day and age
Floppies allowed transferring and backup of files. They were great!
First off floppies were NOT "great". They were necessary but were obsolete at least 15 years before we finally were rid of them. The floppy is dead and we are better off for it. Second, there are lots of ways to transfer and backup files, not the least of which is through a wireless network. These are available any user of iDevices so I'm puzzled why anyone would really want to deal with the headache and extra expense of a postage stamp sized ersatz floppy disk.
I think the no external storage policy is to protect iTunes and prevent piracy.
A nonsensical argument because you can transfer the files off the iDevice in a variety of ways.
Ironically, I think the reliance on iTunes hinders Apple's concept of the "post- PC era".
This we agree on. iTunes is important strategically to Apple but it's been stretched WAY beyond what it ever should have been asked to do. Fortunately I don't have to deal with it directly very often these days.
If only submitters edited the summaries to be pedantically correct, /. could truly become a refuge from the the usual 14m3r crowd.
but in a sense, the article is correct; the iphone 6 has the same gigabyte as the iphone 5.
Very interesting. Good analysis. That's way below what I had 5 years ago and I owned the cheapest laptop of my life then but your argument is reasonable.
The title says Memory, but they're talking about Storage.
The answer is that a lot of people use less than 16GB of storage. The more interesting question is why the 32GB doesn't exist.
I think it's because people either don't use much storage at all, like my mom or girlfriend who just use the iPhone for email, Safari, Twitter, Words with Friends, Facebook, and streaming music. For them, 16GB is more than enough.
Once you start collecting music, photos, videos and such, 32GB is not nearly enough, so 64GB kicks in. While 32GB would be enough for those in between casual users and media collectors... say those that just take a lot of pictures, but nothing else, the numbers of these people are too small to support a 32GB offering in the line up and Apple is better off bumping these people up to 64GB.
It's not just music. Movies take a lot more space. And you don't necessarily know days in advance which piece of music will be apropos in a particular situation.
I think the TF card reader for Lightning devices can only be used to download photos, not anything else. And it appears to be only for iPad; iPhone compatibility is unconfirmed.
BTW, please stop calling flash as "Memory" (in the title) because memory is often confused with RAM.
Flash memory is a form of EEPROM, or electrically erasable programmable read-only memory.
Movies are irrelevant, as they weren't the topic of conversation. And your comment about music is bilge - 9 gigs (my current collection) is over a thousand songs. If you can't find an "appropriate" (whatever the heck you mean by that) selection in there, the problem isn't lack of memory on your phone.
Seriously, like several commenters on this subthread, you're way the heck out on the end of the bell curve - but blithely unaware of it.
> In an age where 16 GB is available as RAM on many desktops and laptops...
>The iPhone is just an underpowered palm computer...
Do you realize how big 16 GB of desktop RAM physically IS? And do you realize how fucking SMALL a modern smartphone is?
"Underpowered"? Compared to what, exactly? Please, show me a palm-sized computer from ANY manufacturer with all the power of a current desktop computer -- I'd love to have one.
Yes, the "portability premium" IS pretty goddamn high to make AN ENTIRE COMPUTER about the size of a laptop's hard drive alone. Do you actually CARRY your laptop in your pocket? No? Hmm, I wonder why that is... (And if you say "yes", then you've got a tiny netbook AND big pockets... and I'll bet my next year's pay that I can find a more powerful and larger computer.)
Also, there's this little thing called "physics"... how big do you want the battery to be to run a device at a certain performance level for any reasonable amount of time? Do you think there's no difference between the current draw of a big stomping desktop compared to a smartphone?
Seriously, how did you get a "+5, Insightful" out of that? All the smart people must be doing something besides reading Slashdot this weekend.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Sorry, I don't buy it that the premium is so ridiculously high. They took a dumb phone and added a more powerful cpu, a touch screen and more RAM -- that's about it. A laptop is a stripped down PC (you can't plug in your device card in the pci/pcie slot). And a smartphone is a stripped down laptop so they are similar but not the same thing shrunk down.
Compared to a currently selling laptop, obviously. But it's priced same/higher than that laptop. Why?
Fine, don't run it at the performance level of a laptop. But then don't charge the customer the same price as a laptop. The CPU speed/RAM size vary as much as 10 times between an iphone 6 and a $1000 laptop. That's a ripoff.
Okay, smart guy, you better address all the points I'm making both in this post and the thread. Don't be intellectually dishonest, like many slashdotters, by skipping portions of text that contradict your point of view.
After all those years I grew tired of 128 kbps MP3 for the music.
Am I the only one who at first red "base memory" as RAM and would prefer the term storage to memory when it is used to described persistent storage?
Spending more time more often to manage and decide for the subset of music you want to listen to is boring.
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Sounds,like those trading up to the i6 are being sucker punched.
I really don't understand apple"s conservative features.. Why not to make the device open for memory, connection etc.. It would be more easier for users.
So much for "cutting the cord".
How were people with those low-end 8GB-iPhones doing the OTA-update?
For example, movies are always streamed now - you don't store your Netflix movies locally. So you don't need a huge data library.
Always? No. I have plenty of videos stored on my phone but then again I don't do Netflix or cloud storage, youtube is about the only thing I stream. But then again I have an sd slot so storage ain't really a big issue. You are correct in your assentation though that 64GB isn't 100TB so well done there.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Heaven forbid you have to ''put up with carrying an iPod Classic'', sure is a hard life eh?
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Does anyone other than me get irritated by the description of the 16GB version being described as a $199 phone?
That is like saying your SUV is a $300 vehicle, because that was the down payment.
You missed one crucial one. Processing speed. I would dismiss most, other than possibly #1, not everyone uses all features, but then again you could say the exact same thing about a host of other features that most people do not use either.
From my experience, I have a Galaxy S3. When I was trying to decide from going from my Apple 3S, to either the new Apple 5 or the Galaxy S3, the SD card was one of the deciding features. I got a 64GB SD card off Amazon for about 50$. I dumped about 40GB of music on it.
One of the things I have noticed, is that once you have it on there, it is difficult to use. The file system is slow. Now that could be that the software that runs the file system wasn't built for that kind of volume, or it could be that the processor just doesn't have the guts to really parse that much information very well. Then again as you say in #7 it could be the card with performance issues. However it being a SanDisk of decent quality, that it would probably have to be inherent, should that be the case.
Anyway with the Galaxy, it is actually inside the phone, so if you don't use it you may not even know about it, no dust, etc. and likely negligible cost considering what goes into making and marketing these things. Anyway I like having the choice, and it is obvious that Apple has been playing the no media game for some time to force you to use their services and/or upgrade to more expensive devices, which is one of the things that also made me move away from Apple.
Anyway mine works, I am happy with it, and I think it is insulting at this point to not give consumers choice. Then again, consumers do have a choice to go with something else, which I exercised.
As you say however, it is probably a truism that on any device, most users don't use half the features anyway, so the lowest common denominator is what you design for. However that is a good way to stagnate and not innovate over time. Which is probably why you see all those TV commercials from Windows and Samsung making fun of the Apple 6 and how behind the times it is. Apple can probably afford to cost on its brand name for awhile, however a lack of innovation may be their eventual downfall.
You must be new here, don't be so god damned sensible. My favorite part is how we generalize what is good enough for everyone. I have a 64GB iPhone and I don't need the space, I just don't want to think about it. I shoot a lot of video and while I have a $4000 camera I often shoot B roll on my phone because I want to. And since no one bought my phone for me I'm confused why anyone would care what I do with it.
Take heed everyone and be thankful we are blessed to be a in a place and time where not only do these things exist but that many of us on this forum can afford them. It is an embarrassment of riches.
And what would happen if Apple did decide to go double clock speed and quad core...?
My guess is it would catch fire if the battery lasted longer than 10 min, and this from a stalwart iOS user.
Shocking as it may seem to you, people's usage varies.
Shocking as it may seem to you, it consists a few hundred kilobytes of sound files for various bings and bongs which come as part of an OS. Actually, I don't really know how much it contains, since I've never looked, and don't have more than a vague idea on which partition it's stored. Streaming ... I've heard of it. Is there any reason whatsoever to find out anything further about it?
On the other hand, I clock up 10-20GB of photos each year, though I wouldn't use a camera phone for that. Unless I got a microscope attachment for it. Good point - I'll need to look at that, unless the client gets down and actually puts together a microphotography suite.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
One thing I've found with my 16gig Sony Z2 is 1080p slow motion videos funnily enough use a lot of space.
Probably should have thought about that.......
At least I can add a micro SD card to it.
You may think that allowing 3rd party apps is positive feature, It is not.You seem to understand the upside but let me lay out the downsides:
1) It adds bulk to the phone for a feature that most customers do not care about and will not use
2) It adds to the cost of the product for design, manufacturing, warranty, and support (again for a feature few will actually use)
3) It reduces the reliability of the device by a small but statistically significant amount. When you are selling these in the millions that adds up to substantial expense.
4) Adding the 3rd party apps features comes at the expense of other features that could occupy that space such as additional battery capacity.
5) It is a vector for Viruses and Malware to enter the phone (see point 3 above)
6) It requires supporting third party software that may have compatibility issues
7) 3rd party softwarecomes in a variety of speeds and people will inevitably buy software that are not fast, incompatible or have other performance issues
8) It complicates the software on the device and almost certainly will result in bugs.
Most of your disadvantages are amazingly tenuous at best, and easily miss-applied to all sorts of other features.
In the end Apple profits by people wanting to upgrade their phones as soon as possible - expansion capability reduces that.
9) The functionality can be replicated in other ways that may (and in fact are) preferable to other people such as wirelessly syncing data to other devices.
10) SD cards basically are modern day floppy disks. Do we *really* need to go back to those?
I am having some trouble seeing your point..
So, if I get this right, the people wanting to show off their nice new shiny 'ITS A REAL APPLE!' devices are the overly focused hotrodders overspending on things they dont really need in the hope of a bit more social position, right?
And the people buying a perfectly functional android phone for 1/3 the price, and not upgrading it to this 'latest model' endlessly are the sane ones, hmmm?
In that care, I could not agree more!
Of course if you are trying to say that spending very top dollar on an iPhone is 'sensible' but looking at the fact that an equivalently priced android phone has more features, higher specifications, etc is foolish, then I think perhaps you partook of just a little too much of the happy powder somewhere along the line.
Hell, even apply compare themselves to 'luxury brands' now... and for good reason.