Apple's iPhone 5 Media Event

Snowdog said:
Yes, because a comedy sketch explains Apple's success. :rolleyes:
I guess this is an accurate representation of Americans?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhTZ_tgMUdo


It is this kind of nerd arrogance that doesn't get what makes a good product.

You can also see it in full swing here. Apple didn't specify what is in an A6 SoC, just a dramatic improvement in performance (which is what counts). But spec sheet nerds will wank endlessly about core count, or core vintage.

But in reality the spec sheet of the A6 is irrelevant to the whole phone actually being a good product.

Spec sheet obsessed nerds will never understand what it takes to make a good complete product.
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Much like the presidential race --- at the end of the day it's the same crap from each side.

It's pretty hilarious to me to see one apple fan say things like "pfft well the S3 was *only* 15% faster, who cares about that? it's obviously not superior just because its 15% faster.

I have neither (and don't plan on buying one or the other) it's just damn hilarious to watch you people go around and around about the same crap for years .

I could have sworn we were on the hardforum -- where things like "spec sheets" actually matter. If Apple could switch places with Intel 20 years ago, we would still all be fapping over a spec-less "magic" PowerPC CPU.

My point is that if a company trying to get your money only tells you "it's a dramatic improvement over what you have now" -- that tells me nothing. When a company uses terms that are ambiguous like "Magical" "dramatic" instead of giving me stone cold facts it makes me want to spend money elsewhere.

The people that accept that line of thinking aren't [H]ard at all - they willingly eat up anything given to them. If you bought the phone to impress your friends, and total strangers at starbucks, why on earth would you care about things like specifications? There could be two miniature hamsters inside powering the thing, and you wouldn't notice or care.
 
collegeboy69us said:
It's pretty hilarious to me to see one apple fan say things like "pfft well the S3 was *only* 15% faster, who cares about that? it's obviously not superior just because its 15% faster.
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You should also note that at least one person in this thread has pointed out that the GPU in his high-end Samsung phone 'runs his games fine' and that he doesn't need additional GPU power that the iPhone has.

It goes both ways. When Apple has a hardware advantage, Android users will claim hardware does not matter. When Android users have a hardware advantage with X new Android handset, Apple users will claim that hardware does not matter. If you think that Android fans don't do the exact same thing Apple fans do, you're sorely mistaken.
 
collegeboy69us said:
My point is that if a company trying to get your money only tells you "it's a dramatic improvement over what you have now" -- that tells me nothing. When a company uses terms that are ambiguous like "Magical" "dramatic" instead of giving me stone cold facts it makes me want to spend money elsewhere.
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Except that isn't what they said. They quantified what matters. Performance:
~2X CPU/GPU performance:
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/6275/iPhone5-299.jpg
And actual timing improvments for specific actions:
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/6275/iPhone5-301.jpg

That is actually much more useful to how it performs than spec sheet wanking about core counts/GHz numbers, which is merely pissing contest about the biggest number on a spec sheet, that tells you nothing about actual performance.

Naive Nerd Spec sheet worshipers seem to be interested in impressing people with having the most CPU cores, or other irrelevant nonsense, while failing to grasp why the rest of the world doesn't care.

Even grown up techies realize there is more to performance, than a number on a spec sheet.
 
gwu168 said:
???

Oh, I'm not saying quad A9 paired with sgx543MP4 is a bad thing. Hell, a quad A9 paired with sgx543MP4 will be a beast of a chip. The GPU will definitely beat anything coming from android or windowsphone this year.

Apple has rarely been cutting edge with CPUs, so quad A9 wouldn't be out of the ordinary (Hell, Apple ARM processors hasn't bested the competition since the 3GS).

On the other hand, Apple has always be ahead of the competition in GPU performance, which they will maintain with a sgx543MP4 variant.

Anyways, I wouldn't count of A15 chip in the A6 yet. I think I presented pretty strong evidence that the A6 might just be a die shrunk quad-core A9 paired with a sgx543MP4.

Edit: My bad, the A4 is A8 based so yes the transition from A4 to A5 resulted in a change from A8 to A9 ARM chips. Still I hold my reservations.

Btw, A15 is roughly 40% faster than the A9. Thus for a 2.1x speed up Apple will have to clock the A15 at around 1.2GHz (I'm assuming iphone A5 was running at 800MHz)
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Here is Ars' tech break down on the iPhone 5 and what they think is inside it and why. Pretty good read.
 
Snowdog said:
Yes, because a comedy sketch explains Apple's success. :rolleyes:
I guess this is an accurate representation of Americans?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhTZ_tgMUdo
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Yes, I think it does explain a lot of Apple's success. And yes, I think that is a pretty accurate representation of Americans. I guarantee you could go out yourself and ask those same questions to random pedestrians and you would get similar responses.

I think the iPhone is much more than a phone for most of its buyers, it's standard issue for most people who don't care to look at the alternatives, almost like a common appliance. They just default to the iPhone because of its huge success and penetration into our tech culture; because it was the first smartphone in the market that was esthetically appealing in both software and hardware, plus its functionality was considerably better than any RIM or WM OS at the time.

Since that has happened, people have gotten stuck in that comfort zone that is iOS, so they just keep coming back to it and will continue to until they mess something up badly enough to force people to migrate from it (which I don't see how that would happen). That's mostly what I attribute to its continued popularity and success; Its initial success without any (real) competition for the first 2-3 years (G1 was a start, but I don't think Android truly competed until at least 2.0+), which allowed it to anchor its place as a phone standard for very many smartphone customers, creating a snowball affect for its future iterations to build upon and attract more customers solely based on its previous popularity and some incremental improvements.

Please notice that I used words like "most" and a "majority" here. I know most people here are technically competent and don't fall into the above and know what they're buying as opposed to the alternatives, but this is a tech forum where people stay on top of current trends in tech. We don't represent most people out there on the market.
 
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Most people here are enthusiasts so they have to realize that although the iPhone is just "elongated" the internals are actually quite impressive. The best GPU just got better on a mobile phone.. nothing to scoff at. It is also rumored to have the first true cortex A15 architecture.. that's pretty damn good if you ask me.
 
resale value is one of my reasons and that it works well with my other items
 
refraxion said:
just read around, they are stating several weeks for the unlocked version
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i think you misunderstand
last year they said the same about the 4s

but if you bought the 4s off contract from Apple--and only apple--it was unlocked. Connecting it without an att sim says its unlocked--sold a few like that for $$
 
note235 said:
i think you misunderstand
last year they said the same about the 4s

but if you bought the 4s off contract from Apple--and only apple--it was unlocked. Connecting it without an att sim says its unlocked--sold a few like that for $$
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Hmm.. I didn't buy a 4s so I wasn't aware that thats how it was done last year too. I read the verge and they are saying that we'd have to wait several weeks before they start selling the unlocked versions. From Apple.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Well it has to do with what Apple considers to be core principles of the phone. The iPhone has maintained the same width, because they designed the phone to be held and operated with one hand. This is done by gripping the phone with the fingers and operated with the thumb. As such, for average sized hands, having a wider phone is suboptimal. You may disagree with that design mantra, but they made those design decisions for a reason, it wasn't arbitrary. As such, the only way to get a bigger screen was simply to make it taller.
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Yeah right but I still have to text with two thumbs for faster texting. Remember texting speed is their core promo for the original iPhone...

So where on earth is the swype function to complete the full one thumb operation. Oh wait they do, for jailbreak versions but its weak and totally unadaptable.
 
silz said:
Remember texting speed is their core promo for the original iPhone…
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No, it wasn't. "The killer app is making calls."

So where on earth is the swype function to complete the full one thumb operation. Oh wait they do, for jailbreak versions but its weak and totally unadaptable.
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Don't know about you, but I'm able to raise and lower the on-screen keyboard with a thumb swipe, so long as the application supports it. Messages, for example.
 
gwu168 said:
In the transition from A4 to A5 Apple still used A9 based processors. Only difference was the the cores were double. Again Apple claimed 2x the CPU performance through doubling of cores.

(snipped details)

Thus one can reasonably expect a quad-core A9 A5x 32nm to be around 100 mm^2. (I'm sure their chip designers can shave off a few mm^2 from a new layout)

Thus I'm still not convinced that the A6 is A15 until I see a picture of the chip.
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For those intersted in hard core details. Anand has a new bit of info up. They are thinking this is neither A9, nor A15 but a custom Architecture of Apples own (Something like Krait).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6292/iphone-5-a6-not-a15-custom-core
 
Terpfen said:
Don't know about you, but I'm able to raise and lower the on-screen keyboard with a thumb swipe, so long as the application supports it. Messages, for example.
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What does that have to do with Swype functionality? Just because you can invoke the keyboard with one thumb doesn't mean you can actually use it with only a single thumb.
 
CEpeep said:
What does that have to do with Swype functionality? Just because you can invoke the keyboard with one thumb doesn't mean you can actually use it with only a single thumb.
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No, but the width of the phone and the fact that the lower half of the screen is within range of your thumb makes the keyboard usable with one thumb. There's a slight advantage to using the left thumb, since you can switch to the numerical and symbolic keyboards better using the left thumb, but that's really about it.
 
I never understood why people liked Swype. I had it on an Android phone I had and thought it sucked. Then again I loved T9 back on the old dumb phones and other people hated that, so I guess different strokes for different folks.
 
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