The iPhone 6 Review(anandtech.com) |
The iPhone 6 Review(anandtech.com) |
Phone hardware just isn't interesting, anymore. We've reached the point that personal computers reached a couple decades ago: They're all pretty good and not much different from the model released two years ago (though they are faster and have more storage and RAM).
Strange that even a hard-nosed tech site like anandtech can't resist the typical fetishiztion of buttons and whispered sighs of "So intuitive" and "designey!" Meanwhile, valid competitors like the Nexus or Samsung line-ups either get strict apathy or get criticized in a way that Apple is immune to (for example the Note's size being unacceptable yet the 6+ size being perfect). Or the Jobsian logic that the press repeats (size of iphone is perfect because of human thumb size) and then ignores when even Apple itself doesn't buy that argument anymore.
I think the world of tech reviewing proves how well marketing works, especially against those who often see themselves as resistant to it and self-declared rational/skeptical/intellectual thinkers. If anything, these types seem more susceptible to it for some reason.
I don't even really read reviews in a serious fashion at this point, except maybe at Ars. Reviews seem to be marketing vehicles, either consciously or sub-consciously on the part of the reviewer. Ars seems to be more even-handed than most and they try not to fall too deeply into the trap of bikeshedding or pandering for ad impressions. I can't be the only one unhappy with how these things are reviewed nowadays. It seems like the narrative of the "nerds have won" in regardless to tech is pretty disingenious. If anyone has won, its the marketers. The more you spend to promote your talking points, the more often those talking points will be believed or, at least, repeated. It doesn't seem anymore complex than that.
I'm also willing to concede that there's a subjective element here that makes reviewing of commodity tech almost like reviewing the arts. At a certain point performance, durability, etc are all fine for the top competitors and reviews just address things that are more subjective than objective for the lack of things to talk about. Mobile has certainly reached that space and the only rational move for these companies is to just invest more in marketing to make your 'SoC tied to a touchscreen tied to a mobile OS tied to an app store' look better than the other guy's 'SoC tied to a touchscreen tied to a mobile OS tied to an app store.'
Now the role of the reviewer is to communicate these marketing messages effectively.
I really don’t get why you think it’s not rational to care about these things. I really don’t get that. It is literally incomprehensible to me. Can you explain that to me?
Here's one: http://anandtech.com/show/8425/huawei-honor-6-review
Here's another: http://anandtech.com/show/8441/nokia-lumia-930-review/2
Commoditized parts don't get mentioned in reviews. (I don't know what USB driver is in my laptop because who cares? It's a commodity)
What is left, then, other than device ergonomics, appearance, and other things that differentiate devices?
It's frustrating. I have to grip the phone unnaturally so that I don't click both buttons at the same time.
What are you other three fingers doing? I tend to grip with thumb on the right edge, index finger resting on the back and last 3 fingers holding the right edge.
Are you an amputee?
Who cares about the box.
I'm just curious if the new size will be a good fit for me or not.
I realize that both incidents are my fault, but this phone is by far the most fragile iphone I've ever owned, out of 4. In the 10 days that I've owned it, I haven't changed any of my behavior and it already has been damaged twice. I'm pretty disappointed with the poor durability of the phone and am considering replacing it with my reliable iphone5, and waiting for the 6S which hopefully fixes these durability issues.
I was pretty entertained by the second comment, which I think has the highest density of Apple hatred the web has thus far witnessed.
And if you can't have a hobby then being irrationally angry on the internet will do instead.
Judging by scope, being irrationally angry on the internet seems to be a hobby unto itself.
He posted the exact same comment in the 6+ companion review, disappointing.
"it is truly unbelievable how a company, formerly known for its remarkable design, dares to put out such a crap ton of shit"
Then he / she goes on to describe how, in his opinion, apple has failed.
You tend to get so much of the latter on HN, so reading that guy's comment is almost refreshing :)
But, at the end of the day, fussing over curvy edges, chevroned pixels, and extreme CPU and GPU performance is irrelevant to me. I bought the iPhone 6, but then I took it back and returned to my Nexus 5. I just can't justify spending over $700 (upgrade fees, contract, etc.) for a phone that does nearly everything my current $350 phone does.
I'm sharing this because I hope that some people will avoid this mistake. They're taking advantage of the denomination effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denomination_effect), and I got sucked into it too. For most of the people reading this: your current phone is just fine, save your money and use it for something more important.
I see this sentiment batted around quite a bit these days. Just because nobody has revolutionized the smartphone in the past few years doesn't mean it's not possible.
To pick three innovative features that have made it into real smartphones, you can look at the Samsung Galaxy Beam pico projector, Jolla's 'The Other Half', and the YotaPhone E-Ink backscreen. Some would argue that these are gimmicks, but isn't all innovation a little gimmicky before it reaches mass market adoption (I'd argue camera phones were in this category originally, and they certainly aren't gimmicks anymore).
Jolla's The Other Half is especially interesting, as it allows for people to personalise the functionality of their phone (along with the look). Whether it takes off or not remains to be seen.
It's hard to say absolutes about the future.
It's always tricky anticipating the point of sufficiency. Probably because it's a moving target.
Besides I'm not sure that the iPhone was such low hanging fruit. It probably cost Apple a tonne of R&D and effort to research and build and was ahead of its time by at least a good couple of years.
Nvidia clearly wants to license it out and I think Apple would be the best one to take advantage of it. Apple seems to be pushing the GPU side of their SoCs quite a bit.
From what I understand of the technology it was built with efficiency from the ground up as opposed to the nVidia tech of the time such as the TNT and Geforce which were designed for raw performance.
Good article about it: http://www.anandtech.com/show/558/4
I think Videologic/Imagination Tech patented the heck outta a lot of the techniques they came up with so wouldn't be surprised if they're ahead of the pack on efficiency.
This is surprisingly ignorant from Anandtech. Surely they know better.
While Apple raced to win the spec war (I say that tongue in cheek, but the truth is that Apple tries really hard to give you bragging rights, buying the biggest PowerVR designs, jumping on incomplete ARM specs, etc), going to ARMv8 far before her peers by creating a derivative of early A57 designs (much like Qualcomm did with Krait, getting in early on the new A15 design), every other vendor has been soberly pursuing ARM A57 at their own pace: It isn't like there is some great lack of performance in competing devices, and this simply isn't a critical thing, so there seems to be no great rush.
The Tegra K1 Denver will be the first salvo from alternatives, and early indications are that it will provide pretty extraordinary performance, and presumably we'll search for ways of using that power productively.
Looks like I've stepped into the distortion field, where Apple is both uncatchably ahead of everyone, and simultaneously not even trying.
He mentions it on the third paragraph.
"As I discuss in the iPhone 6 Plus review, going by Consumer Reports' data it seems that there is a weak point near the bottom of the volume rocker, although it's far less likely to be an issue on the iPhone 6 due to its smaller size."
http://www.phonecruncher.com/news/2576225/apple_bans_german_...
> the bending issue is very real
I'd suggest that the issue is that you're a guy who thinks sitting on $1,000 of glass and aluminium is a normal thing to do.
Granted, I don't this should be as big of an issue as some people are making it out to be, but I think the discussion should go beyond chastising owners for putting their phones in the wrong pocket. That's not much better than saying "you're holding it wrong."
If the back pocket is "not supported", that's fine, but when support is pulled on anything that people use, (however obscure or unwise its use may be), there's going to be friction.
This is where the marketing concept of "life-proof" comes from. Shit happens. Day-to-day consumer devices are going to get bumped, dropped, damp, sat on, etc. If the iPhone can't handle those things, the answer isn't "Be more careful you idiots", the answer is people will (presumably) stop buying them.
Regardless, I will have mine tomorrow so coming from 4s my biggest shock will be size. I am assuming the new processor will make iOS 8 feel "snappier" as it has dogged my 4.
Size comparison site I found useful http://www.piliapp.com/actual-size/iphone-6/
"I fed my phone to my dog! Can I have a new one?"
"I dropped my phone out of my car! Can I have a new one?"
"My phone fell into a commercial smoothie blender! Can I have a new one?"
It's extremely frustrating that when I and my friend told this to others, we get accused of lying. Granted that in the large scheme of things these are anecdotes, but it's still not a lie. The phones bend when you keep them in your front pant pocket, a handful of people have reported this.
http://www.phonecruncher.com/news/2576225/apple_bans_german_...
Anybody who actively uses their phone, particularly the Camera, CPU and GPU capability, definitely stands to see a pretty big improvement if they upgrade every three years, and definitely every four. The jump (for me) from the 3GS to the iPhone 5 was massive, particularly around the camera. The shutter is incredibly fast on the iPhone 5. And the Games/Display also were a pretty big leap forward.
Anybody who is currently on an iPhone 4 can definitely justify moving to the iPhone 6 if they are an active user, and I would even suggest there might be value for 4S users.
I'd concur with you that iPhone 5 users can probably wait another round before seriously considering upgrades though, and obviously iPhone 5S users under contract (unless they have some really huge need for the large screens), don't have any need to update anytime soon.
All this is predicated on you owning your phone. Obviously anybody stuck in a contract with the carrier in which they are "subsidized" should just upgrade every two years and re-sell your phone.
[Edit - I just checked out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_5 - The Nexus 5 is less than a year old and already has a 4.9" display. Unless you are a professional phone reviewer, I'm not sure what would motivate you to pick up an iPhone 6. Returning it was almost definitely the right decision]
I went from a 4 to a 5S, and was very happy, but I'm not sure that I'd have bothered if I had a 5, or even a 4. Phones don't generally need to be upgraded every year, and most people don't do this.
I feel that most phones these days have pretty adequate cameras for their most common use-cases (Instagram, facebook, some holiday/party snaps, etc.).
For any other use-case a proper camera is the way to go in my opinion.
are you posting this from bizarro world? apple is the one tech company that does not advertise tech specs. they mention them in the keynotes and move on. as if you ignored thousands of articles about this very fact. amazing.
Apple makes a really big deal about their cores and GPU, as they have every right to (they're pretty great). Quite aside from their keynotes that focus extensively on this, on the product page you learn, right near the top, about the A8 64-bit processor and M8 coprocessor, as if these facts have any relevance to an end user. They're bragging points. Apple talks about their 64-bit advantage ad nauseam.
They absolutely brag about their chip. They boast specs (as they boast "retina" displays and thinness and grams and materials).
Wait, you think ARMv8 was incomplete when the 5S came out? What on earth makes you think that?
Also, it's clear that they DON'T try all that hard; they could have used the six-core variant of the PowerVR used here, at the cost of battery life.
> going to ARMv8 far before her peers by creating a derivative of early A57 designs
Hrm? Cyclone isn't particularly similar to A57. Also, if they'd wanted A57, they could have just implemented it; it was available in the right timeframe.
No it wasn't. A57 wasn't actually done when Apple outed Cyclone. Apple clearly ran with early aspects of A57 (your disingenuous misreading about ARMv8 being ignored). At exactly the same timeframe, nvidia, Qualcomm, and others had as many details of A57 and ARMv8, and none of them ran with it. Indeed, nvidia and Qualcomm are just getting to 64-bit parts, doing a pretty good job with their existing architectures.
Apple wanted to be first, and they pounded every bit out of 64-bits in their marketing. But here, again, we have to pretend that reality isn't as it actually is.
Also, it's clear that they DON'T try all that hard; they could have used the six-core variant of the PowerVR used here, at the cost of battery life
This is absurdity theater. Apple has chosen higher bin/tier PowerVR parts than her peers for virtually every single generation. But because they didn't choose even higher we are to believe that they don't try hard? Do you actually look at the benchmarks, or just continue on with a ridiculous narrative based upon preconceived notions?
It's similar another famous case of a perfectionist founder rejecting customers' demands, Henry Ford's famous statement about the Model T that "any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black." (http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7213/pg7213.html#id00226)
Do you mean "last 3 fingers holding the left edge? That style seems to be a minority, based on a quick Google image search. If fingers are wrapped around a phone, the index is with the rest of the 3 fingers.
This is how I hold my phone http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/isolated-woman-hand-holding-p...
Check out the image search for examples. Most hold it the way I'm describing: https://www.google.com/search?q=holding+phone
> Are you an amputee?
no
I've never sat on my smartphones before, whether they were large or small. And I've always kept my smartphones in my pocket.
I have a decent DSLR, and I rarely use it because I rarely happen to carry it. Even when I had a Galaxy S, with a pretty poor camera, I was making much more use of the phone camera than I thought I ever would. The affordances for instant editing and posting are just a world apart on smartphones.
So yes, it's always in your hand, but most people don't get to enjoy the feel, the thinness, or even the design.
I think it's reasonable to ask for phones that are water proof and shock proof. That is, a phone should be able to handle a dunk in the swimming pool, and should certainly be able to handle being dropped on a sidewalk. Both of those are every day events that happen to everyone. Until phones get to the point at which they can routinely handle both (neither of which any iPhone has ever been able to do), they come up lacking.
In addition, a phone should certainly not deform that much if it sits in a reasonable pocket.
On the flip side - I'm not expecting my phone to handle 200 pounds of force by me sitting on it on a hard surface repeatedly, particularly if there is hard edge/corner involved (which greatly increases the PSI the device has to handle). I also absolutely do not expect a phone to not deform if someone tries to bend it. People can bend freaking rebar, and I'm not expecting a phone to be structurally stronger than rebar.
That isn't to say you shouldn't be proud of your device if it can handle that amount of stress - I think it's definitely an advantage, it just isn't what I would consider the "minimum bar of performance for a smartphone."
When consumers expressed a clear preference for big, thin phones that offer a lot of mechanical advantage to their round butts when sitting on them.
it's something I care about
But not enough to buy a smaller, more durable phone? One with a thick, rubber or plastic exterior case? No? I didn't think so.
That's not much better than saying "you're holding it wrong."
Maybe people should take personal responsibility for breaking their belongings?
I only just recently upgraded from an old feature phone to a Moto G. One of the major reasons I selected it was its relative cost versus other phones, and thus less worrying on my part about it (also, it was the cheapest phone Republic Wireless was offering). While that's not specifically buying based on durability, it's the same idea of being concerned about how much money you've sunk versus how easily it will break.
Even still, I don't go sitting on it (or, if I discover I'm sitting on it, I immediately cease the sitting action). I'm not arguing Apple should refund these people for their bent phones or anything, and I agree that people should take personal responsibility for their actions. I'm just fine with the potential lack of durability being discussed, which is the issue stevewepay originally mentioned.
EDIT: Upon further thinking, I agree that my comparison to "you're holding it wrong" is somewhat mistaken. While the grip one uses on a phone doesn't have any common-sense effects, putting a phone in your back pocket and sitting on it should have clear potential consequences, even if phones of the past typically had the durability to withstand it.
In FantasyLand, engineers could create phones with 8 inch displays that were still somehow useable with one hand, and you could run over them with your car ("life-proof" - oopsies!) and they'd be ok. In the meantime, put your money where your mouth is and buy a smaller, more durable phone like an iPhone 5.
"life-proof" is kind of a silly term, I agree. But as much as you might want to mock people who do not baby their smartphone like a delicate glass flower, they are most of the market.
In April 2013, ARM announced that the first production A57 chip had been fabbed and tested at an unspecified prior date: http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-and-cadence-partner-to...
> At exactly the same timeframe, nvidia, Qualcomm, and others had as many details of A57 and ARMv8, and none of them ran with it.
Google is showing me lots of documents published by ARM on ARMv8 from 2011. By Oct. 2012, Samsung had licensed the A53 and A57 core designs: http://www.techhive.com/article/2013298/arm-introduces-64bit... . They didn't have 'many details'; they had the design itself.
> Apple clearly ran with early aspects of A57
Which ones? I mean, Cyclone was wider than A9, but that's hardly a shock. My impression is that A57 isn't, in any case, really suitable for phones except in a BIG.little configuration.
http://mobilesemi.blogspot.ca/2014/09/apples-64-bit-processo...
By Oct. 2012, Samsung had licensed the A53 and A57 core designs: http://www.techhive.com/article/2013298/arm-introduces-64bit.... . They didn't have 'many details'; they had the design itself.
ARM designs are like a GIT repository, and the AXX continued having revisions and changes through 2013. Running with it early and you are bound to either go on a detour or end up with a noncompetitive variant.
The phone is the outlier, not the use case.
My ex-wife always sat with her 3 in her back jeans pocket because fashion designers refuse to put sensible front pockets on women's jeans. The 3's case began to crack at the top around the power button after a while. And this is a girl sitting on her phone - not some 200lbs guy.
And I certainly wouldn't sit on my nexus 5 or the SGS4 that it replaced.
[0] This also depends on the seat. My couch at home is very cushy, it'd be hard to break it there. But my kitchen table chair is little more than a slat of wood cut to a comfortable shape.
It has a glass screen, that alone should make it obvious that you shouldn't sit on it.
So once people may have fixed certain expectations about the durability of an iPhone. But those will have to be revised with the new models.
The rear pocket in women's jeans might be able to accept an iPhone 6, but only if the woman's rear isn't present at the same time.
It's interesting that "cargo" pockets, located on the side of the pants at mid-hip height, are popular right now, because that's a much better and safer place for a phone than the back pockets.
They tend more than other manufacturers to boast brands and subjective description rather than the base specs -- "retina" rather than PPI, for instance -- but its true that they do sometimes boast specs.
They'll brag about their (completely meaningless) processor name (A8), but won't spend as much focus as others boasting measures like GHz or core count, etc. -- IOW, they don't spend a lot of focus on things that you can meaningfully compete with and compare across vendors.
Because they are selling magic and brands, not concrete features.
Erm, comparing frequency and core count is unhelpful, as you can see from the benchmarks in the article. The A8 is generally faster than the current Qualcomms, but has a far lower frequency and half the core count. Apple probably don't want to fall into the same marketing nightmare AMD did, where low-frequency high IPC Athlons competed against high-frequency low-IPC P4s.
And because it's completely pointless to sell concrete features for certain components. If they boast the Ghz number it will be relatively easy for competitors to produce higher figures. Ghz don't mean anything unless you take into account all kind of details (architecture, throttling...) that no one except really detail-oriented reviewers will go through and that will bore 90% of the users. Hence the bragging on the name.
What Apple doesn't do, is release products that compete solely based on these hardware specs. Their approach is "yeah it's fast enough, but it's also beautful etc."
Life's too short to use ugly crap.
Completely agree.
As far back as I can remember (Apple iMac G3) they've been touting their processors and architecture as being superior to other manufacturers, and one of the key reasons you should be using their hardware. So your comments are right on point, and something that's easily lost when most people only see is their advanced design chops.
I really am curious.