Slashdot Mirror
Apple Unveils iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max, iPhone Xr (venturebeat.com)
Apple on Wednesday announced its 2018 flagship phones: the 5.8-inch iPhone Xs and 6.5-inch iPhone Xs Max. From a report: As the direct sequel to the iPhone X, the iPhone Xs retains its predecessor's marquee features: a stainless steel frame and 5.8-inch, edge-to-edge Super Retina display, interrupted by a depth-sensing Face ID camera inside a black "notch." The new model promises the best liquid resistance in any iPhone, with a screen that's now HDR10 and Dolby Vision-certified.
As expected, Apple also introduced a larger version of the iPhone Xs called the iPhone Xs Max. While the iPhone Xs packs a 5.8-inch OLED screen into a footprint roughly the size of its former 4.7-inch iPhone 6, 6s, 7, and 8 models, the Max version includes a 6.5-inch screen within a chassis sized like the 5.5-inch-screened iPhone 6 Plus and its successors. [...]
The iPhone Xs has a 2436 by 1125 screen, while the Xs Max has a 2688 by 1242 screen, the largest ever in an iPhone. Apple's calling it "Max" because it's bigger than the iPhones' past Plus-sized displays. Apple also says that the new phones have wider stereo sound fields than before.
[...] The handsets are powered by A12 Bionic, a 6-core, 7nm CPU with 2 performance cores that deliver up to 15 percent speeds and 40 percent lower power, with 4 efficiency cores running at up to 50 percent lower power. Apple is touting a 50 percent GPU performance improvement over the A11 Bionic, as well. It also has a second-generation Neural Engine, and can process 5 trillion operations per second, up from 600 billion the year before. Both the new iPhones sport a dual-camera system:12MP wide-angle+12MP telephoto. The new iPhones can accommodate up to 512 GB of internal storage. The base models of iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max start at $999 and $1,099 respectively. More on this here. On the sidelines, Apple said it was inching closer to selling its two-billionth iOS device.
The company also announced the iPhone Xr, the cheapest among the three handsets announced today, that sports a 6.1-inch LCD display (instead of OLED screen) and does not offer 3D Touch functionality. Its base model starts at $749. All of these handsets go on sale later this month.
As expected, Apple also introduced a larger version of the iPhone Xs called the iPhone Xs Max. While the iPhone Xs packs a 5.8-inch OLED screen into a footprint roughly the size of its former 4.7-inch iPhone 6, 6s, 7, and 8 models, the Max version includes a 6.5-inch screen within a chassis sized like the 5.5-inch-screened iPhone 6 Plus and its successors. [...]
The iPhone Xs has a 2436 by 1125 screen, while the Xs Max has a 2688 by 1242 screen, the largest ever in an iPhone. Apple's calling it "Max" because it's bigger than the iPhones' past Plus-sized displays. Apple also says that the new phones have wider stereo sound fields than before.
[...] The handsets are powered by A12 Bionic, a 6-core, 7nm CPU with 2 performance cores that deliver up to 15 percent speeds and 40 percent lower power, with 4 efficiency cores running at up to 50 percent lower power. Apple is touting a 50 percent GPU performance improvement over the A11 Bionic, as well. It also has a second-generation Neural Engine, and can process 5 trillion operations per second, up from 600 billion the year before. Both the new iPhones sport a dual-camera system:12MP wide-angle+12MP telephoto. The new iPhones can accommodate up to 512 GB of internal storage. The base models of iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max start at $999 and $1,099 respectively. More on this here. On the sidelines, Apple said it was inching closer to selling its two-billionth iOS device.
The company also announced the iPhone Xr, the cheapest among the three handsets announced today, that sports a 6.1-inch LCD display (instead of OLED screen) and does not offer 3D Touch functionality. Its base model starts at $749. All of these handsets go on sale later this month.
Totally amazing.
Sweet, now I can throw away my old iPhone X, or maybe sell it on eBay. It was getting kind of boring.
I hope theyâ(TM)ve dropped the ridiculous network restriction on the Watch. Currently in the UK it only works on one network AND your iPhone must be on the same network. I donâ(TM)t use that network so the Watch has been off-limits to me.
iPhone Xs Max? really? they need to hire some people to come up with better names.
It's now almost as good as the Pixel 2 phone released a year ago.
At least that's what they used to say.
from https://twitter.com/sixcolorse... :
If you fall and are unresponsive for a minute the apple watch series 4 will call the emergency number for you. Also sends your info to your emergency contact. AW also can now detect and alert on low heart rate and screen your heart rhythm and alert if it detects a-fib
How much does Apple care about this heart-analysis feature? Here's the president of the American Heart Association to call it "game changing."
You can have my Apple Watch when you pry it off my cold, dead wrist. Literally. :-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I want more detail on this "5 trllion operations per second". Considering the GTX 1080 is a 9 teraflop card , I am pretty skeptical that the A12 is pushing ~60% of that.
They're really naming their phone XS? I don't know about anyone else, but if I find myself about to buy an expensive phone named Excess, I'd stop and think about whether I really need this.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
I thought the iPhone already came with lots of excess. Or at least it seems to be targeting people who themselves have plenty of excess (money). But now if the phone is called (phonetically) "eye-phone excess" I think that might cause a little confusion.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I do like the e-Sim feature. Having two phone numbers on a single device.
Is the max ipad plus. Obviously that needs to come next year, but we can dream, because the ipad plus max just sounds terrible.
Also, just to ask: how do we pluralise the iphone Maxs? As the MaxSS? I suppose that we can be thankful that the Lightning connector is being removed, since they would have to do something clever, like denote the SS with lightning bolts...
The Spanish Inquisition of Psychometrics; Burning all the heretics.
I was getting updates to my iPhone 5C (circa 2013) as of last year. Show me any Android phone that issues OS updates four years after the release.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I'm currently using an iPhone 5, so I guess I'm on Year 6. Only two apps that I regularly use won't get updates anymore. Everything, otherwise, still runs fine. Don't really see a need to upgrade. It takes OK pictures. Battery life is fine. I can browse the web and read email when I need to. I might upgrade to the iPhone SE or XR at some point but I don't see the need to right now.
I know a few people that were put off of apple's ecosystem because of a lack of dual-SIM phones.
There are a few reasons to have it, like people who hunt for the best price/coverage between two operators, or executves with work and personal numbers, or people who travel a lot.
whatever the reason was, if you wanted/needed the feature, now you have an excuse to go for an iPhone.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
2 performance cores that deliver up to 15 percent speeds
Woah, gotta get me some of THAT. How do they do it ?!?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Most things never have a version 11. Neither Windows, nor MacOS, and now even the iPhone. It just stops at 10. Or you pull a Firefox/Chrome and your version number is over 9000.
This year, the flagship phone is the "iPhone Excess".
So, next year, they're not even going to pretend - the 2019 flagship will be called the "iPhone Conspicuous Consumption". ... you heard it here, first.
#DeleteChrome
Now where is that endorsement money Apple?
I think the axing of the SE is more significant than the new products that were announced. I was still really hoping for an SE 2.
Constitutionally Correct
Apple. There are 7 Macs in your lineup. 2 of them are 6 years old. 5 get a "DON'T BUY" from the macrumors.com Buyers Guide. And 1 gets a "NEUTRAL". https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac
The average professional can not upgrade or repair your hardware anymore. You soldiered the memory and hard-drives. Removed the useful ports. And the escape key. ifixit.com gives recent MacBookPro's a repair-ability score of 1 out of 10. https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability
Guess you've been focused on other things, phones. Let us know if you go back into the computer business.
What's that? A phone exclusively for NBA players? For just about everybody else will look like a jerk with one of those to one's ear. I forgot - one uses these devices for anything other than phone calls.
While now only functioning as an emergency phone, my Lumia 1520 was the exact right size and aspect ratio. I was hoping for something like that to come along. Instead, we get this awful candy bar shaped device that may not be bigger than my Iphone X.
If I went back to Android, I'd maybe have to check out the Honor Note 10.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Technology creeps forward.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
They could have released a professional version and called it the iPhone XP!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
My Note 5 still gets updates. It's a little over 3 years old at this point.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
My Nexus still gets regular updates.
no / words
But where is the Iphone Xhpj?
My nexus 5 doesn't
The SE X ?
Apple will settle for a bunch of money and be forced to remove those features.
That would be true of any other company, but Apple has so much money they could either just carry on and leave the features, or more likely send teams of 10 thousand lawyers to utterly destroy anyone who tried to sue them over this feature.
Having such a vast excess of cash and a huge userbase is its own form of insurance, the risk to Apple is spread very thinly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A really interesting aspect of the Dual-Sim thing, is that in China only Apple is making a model that does not have the eSim, but supports two "real" SIM cards at the same time.
I could see a lot of people from other parts of the world interested in being able to use two full SIM cards instead of an eSim (more limited carrier support being just one) - it'l be interesting how many are imported from China around the world.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think he can do math. The problem is that most calculators won't tell you that 3 is less than 5.
not really an Apple issue outside of them not including a SIM tray on the watch for savings of physical volume.
But wasn't the whole SIM -> microSIM -> nano SIM "race to the tiniest" madness happening, exactly for the purpose on saving on physical volume ?
Or were nano-SIMt somehow already a requirement for the giant slabs of smartphone, when other manufacturers have managed to cram *dual* SIM and microSD behind the battery cover ?
But, ... but... this one is 0.1 mm thinner !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I broke my iPhone 7 about a month ago and have been waiting for the new stuff. After the corroborated leaks started coming out I just went and bought an SE which, ironically, arrived today. New phones are too big. I was hoping for a new small phone. Iâ(TM)ve used many large phones on my time and find the poor one-handed operation to totally ruin it.
The processor the 5 trillion operations per second refers to is not as general purpose as the CPU and GPU. Is a processor dedicated to processing operations related to running values through neural networks (think matrix operations mostly). Given the very limited in scope tasks it has to do the higher operation count is not unthinkable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
sounds like Apple wants to just make phones and ignore all other devices.
Your Average Joe
MSN title a few days back: "iPhone prices would rise up to 20% if Apple assembles in US like Trump wants".
Well, they did it without Trumps help. In Sweden, the maxed out XR, or whatever they call it now, ist over 2000â.
I say let Trump have it. Apple will increase the prices no matter what, so at least Apple should produce them here.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
My wife has an iPhone 6 that is really slow since the last OS update. That update took to a bunch of storage space too and of course there is no SD card slot.
I gave my ancient Galaxy S3 (2012, 6 years old) to my friend and he still gets security updates. It runs well.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Apple also says that the new phones have wider stereo sound fields than before.
More meaningless marketing drivel. "Wider sound fields" and "deeper pixels". It's like the phrase "hand crafted" which you see every restaurant using lately which sounds like it should indicate something meaningful but really is a content free phrase. A McDonalds hamburger is "hand crafted" because some minimum wage teenager put a patty between two bits of bread. Unless no humans touched the product everything is hand crafted. Companies claiming their food is "home made" is another bunch of nonsense. Unless it was actually made in a home then it is by definition NOT home made. You can't make a pixel deeper and you can't make sound wider. I understand what they are doing but that doesn't actually make it correct or honest.
If I want a big screen, I have an iPad mini. Why do I want to drag around a big screen when I don't need one?
"Big" is a question of perspective and use case. It's the wrong question. The question is how will you use the device and what size screen fits your preferences and needs. Your needs are probably different from mine and so what constitutes a "big" screen to you might be different. I've looked back to some of my older iPhones with 3.5" screens and they are clearly too small to be optimal for my needs. The real question is what is the biggest size screen that you can comfortably carry while still meeting your needs? THAT is the size device you should get and there is no one sized fits all answer to that question.
For me I have an iPhone X and the screen on that is just about right for my needs. It's actually the main reason I don't use an iPad because the iPad doesn't offer me anything extra that my iPhone doesn't already do so the added screen size gains me nothing useful. And for my needs a "big" screen is WAY larger than the screen of any tablet sold. (I'm typing this in front of three 28" 4K monitors which I make full use of) I had an iPhone 7s and it was the right screen size (for me) but the device was just a bit too large to comfortably handle - barely fit into pockets, easy to drop, etc. The iPhone X has the same screen size but a smaller form factor so it's just about right. Your mileage may vary of course. The only way to really know what works for you is to go hands on and try some stuff out.
That's really unfortunate. I've always though BMW was ridiculous with things like the BMW X3 XDrive35i and so on.
At least those names convey some useful information about the build of the car to someone who cares and it's consistent from vehicle to vehicle. Good luck telling the difference between a Jeep Wrangler Sahara versus a Sport is just by the name. At least with BMW's system you can explain their naming conventions for every vehicle in their lineup in about 30 seconds which makes it better than most. I agree however that nearly all car naming systems are thoroughly idiotic and needlessly confusing.
If you are an iPhone user, you really don't need to upgrade every year. Every 4 to 6 years probably.
If you use it as much as I do you'll wear it out or break it and you will certainly wear out the battery far quicker than that. 2-3 years is probably more realistic for most iPhone users to upgrade. Expecting your battery to last for 5 years is completely unrealistic no matter what kind of phone you have (they just don't have that many recharge cycles in them) so even if you do keep the phone longer than 3 years you'll likely be paying for at least one if not two battery replacements if you keep a phone that long.
Year 2: You are finally getting apps that will support your phones new features. (btw 6 months ago there was an Android competitor that is superior to your phone)
Yeah, Android fanboi's like to claim that even though it's a ridiculous argument. "Superior" is a matter of need and fit to a use case. Apple sells a lot of phones because they offer a value proposition to a lot of people which is more compelling than the Android options for them. The best phone is not necessarily the one with the biggest list of features. Other things matter just as much if not more. Usability, network effects, apps, build quality, performance, workflows, ecosystems, price, and more all matter. It's about the ENTIRE value proposition, not just comparing the length of the feature list. And yes I get that this sounds like me being an apologist for Apple but the exact same argument applies in reverse. Android phones sell in larger numbers (collectively) than iPhones precisely because their ENTIRE value proposition works better for many people - particular the price bit. The "superior" phone is the one that best meets the needs/wants of the person (and collectively people) buying it.
Plus let's not pretend that most Android phones don't slavishly copy new features from iPhones. See how many of them copied the (arguably useless) notch despite there being no technical requirement and arguably no utility to do so. There are great Android phones but having a few novel features before the iPhone gets them doesn't make it "superior" as a general proposition.
I bet when Apple increase the size of its smallest phone again you will again say that the new format is the ideal for you.
Not unless my hand gets larger. But thanks for trying to paint me as a blind fanboy to hide your own bias.