Delicious.
Another grab-a-hot-beverage, put your feet up read. And read you should. Lot’s of great detail here.
John Gruber’s iPhone XS review
Delicious.
Another grab-a-hot-beverage, put your feet up read. And read you should. Lot’s of great detail here.
Based on the review, for those that are happy with the photo quality or don’t use their phones as cameras a ton, there’s not much to write about. Better wireless charging and slightly improved FaceID (FaceID as is works great for me, but faster is better). I’m not saying that’s the case, but the review is almost all photo/video quality.
Well yeah, because everything else about the new iPhones is pretty self-explanatory and expected. The camera upgrades are the biggest X factor here, so it definitely warrants more than a passing mention in the review.
Remember, this is the S year when we get tech improvements but not major features. I think if someone has an X or 8 there’s no reason to consider upgrading and even a 7 might be a stretch. I mean, we’re in the mature phase of the smartphone cycle – we’ll see some nice to have cool stuff (FaceID, etc) from here on in but for the vast majority of use cases, a new phone won’t blow away one that’s 2-3 years old.
I chatted with Gruber on Twitter asking for his impressions of the XR (from the hands on area, I don’t think he has a review unit) vs the Max and basically the difference is the display, the camera and that the case material is a bit nicer. It will be interesting to see how the Xs vs Xr sales seem to shake out.
S years usually get a bunch of whiz bang new features to go with the tightening of nuts and bolts and processor improvements.
3GS: Video camera
4S: Siri
5S: TouchID
6S: 3D touch, Live Photos, much better Touch ID
Though I guess the one this year would be … dual SIM?
Good points. I think your timeline shows the slowing of the S getting major things, though. Video? Huge. Siri? Also huge. Touch ID… nice but not really the earthshaking thing of the first two. 3D Touch, live photos, TouchID gen 2…. again, nice but nothing like getting video or a smart voice assistant.
I think we’re simply at the point where we already have all of the huge, big splash features. Even FaceID, while a good addition, is a refinement on the basic feature of biometric ID.
This series of phones brings nice things – dual SIM yes, but also smart HDR, no bezels in any of the phones, truetone displays… but it’s hard to think of really big, ‘wow’ features that could be added to a phone at this point.
That’s fair, though I would say Touch ID was bigger than Siri. Fast, accurate, secure biometrics was pretty huge.