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Apple Might Debut 3 New iPhones in 2019 (fortune.com)

Posted by msmash on from the up-next dept.

Apple is planning to release three new iPhone models this year, including a device to succeed the newly-created XR model, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. From a report: Apple will unveil direct successors to last year's iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. The iPhone XR, which is believed to have been the least popular of the three, will be updated with a model that comes with the same LCD display and similar design, according to the report. Apple is also considering adding a triple-lens camera system to one of the 2019 models in a bid to compete with Samsung and others that are readying similar camera systems, the Journal's sources said.

3 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Each more boring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    and expensive than the last.

    1. Re:Each more boring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Not only are they more expensive, they ask that you remove the headphone jacks from some of your other belongings as part of the payment.

  2. Re:The Inevitable Slowing Down of Apple by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Although you can arguably say that Apple invented the smartphone as we know it, they are now mired in an endless game of tug-of-war with their rivals Samsung and the rest of the Android clan. This is unfortunate because I feel they are pumping the lions share of their considerable resources into simply keeping up with the competitors that originally copied their ground breaking concept of what a phone could be.
    I feel Apple needs to somehow break free of this endless 'boring' update cycle and release their newest earth shattering product.

    The thing is, Apple didn't actually invent the smartphone-as-we-know-it. It was an evolutionary development that other phone manufacturers had slowly been migrating towards. LG was actually the first out the door with a smartphone with a capacitive touch display as its primary interface. And the Samsung evidence which was disallowed in the iPhone case (because they missed a filing deadline) showed that they had been working on similar iPhone-like phones before the introduction of the iPhone.

    What Apple did (very successfully) was guess where this evolutionary development would lead in the future, and bet the house on a phone design further along this development path than any other phone manufacturer's at the time. And that bet rightly led to a massive financial windfall for them.

    Since then, they have missed pretty much every other major evolutionary change to smartphone design. They openly ridiculed the trend towards larger phones (a phone with a 3.5" screen looks like a toy today). They missed the trend towards a wider aspect ratio. They've been hostile to a universal phone charging connector. They were late to follow the trend towards capacitive control buttons (instead of physical buttons). They were slower than the rest of the industry in adding LTE capability. They were late to incorporate NFC. They missed the trend towards OLED displays on flagship devices. They missed the trend towards bezel-less displays. They've played catch-up on all of these features.

    They did get the trend to high-resultion displays right (though I'd argue that was obvious, and they just did it quicker than anyone else due to a design flaw in iOS). They helped make fingerprint sensors (which first showed up on a Motorola phone but was a niche product) standard. And I applaud their approach to security and privacy. But pretty much all their other "innovations" have been hostile to customers (glass back, non-swappable battery, removing the headphone jack, lack of expandable memory, lack of a way to directly transfer files between devices, walled garden for apps).