iOS ARKit requirements - any phone that runs iOS 11.
Android Tango requirements -
a) the latest Android OS -- judging by history a year out it will only get around 10% penetration (https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html)
b) a high end Android device - with the average selling price of an Android phone hovering around $220 (http://fortune.com/2016/02/15/apple-android-asps/), there aren't that many high end Android phones being sold.
2) Only a small portion of Android phones are "flagship". The rest aren't. The crazy fragmentation of the Android ecosystem makes the real marketshare for something like this small and a long way away. Android phones are still at the mercy of carriers and OEMs. Google doesn't have the ability to push out the latest OS like Apple does.
I was looking for a technical answer instead of the same old rhetoric. Adding this additional functionality to Google Play Services and to the Support Library would make it available to all devices using GMS.
>Only a small portion of Android phones are "flagship"
This is a ridiculous statement. Do you have any numbers to back up your claim that only a small portion of Android phones are flagships? Any phone with an SnapDragon 8 series SoC, Exynos 8 series SoC, Kirin 9 series SoC would easily be able to handle this.
My interpretation of “flagship” is the Pixel or (formerly) the Nexus lines. What Google considers the flagships. I could also be interpreting that incorrectly. I’m just used to Samsung, LG, and Moto having some level of control and obstruction on when their phones get OS-level updates. Not sure if the Play store apps have enough system-level permissions to implement whatever core services would be needed to support an SDK for other apps to use.
“Same old rhetoric” seems a bit unfair. It’s been my observation for a while now that you can’t rely on any given Android phone to have the latest OS installed. They usually don’t. (EDIT: And that usually means features can’t be relied upon for app developers, which is why it’s relevant here.)
>It’s been my observation for a while now that you can’t rely on any given Android phone to have the latest OS installed. They usually don’t. (EDIT: And that usually means features can’t be relied upon for app developers, which is why it’s relevant here.)
The major features usually require an OS update, but Google has been compartmentalizing the OS for some time and making things downloadable from the Play store or available via Google Play Services. They also use a Support Library to backport new API's to older OS versions.
It doesn't matter what SoC a device has, if the OS only sees a buggy OpenGL ES 2.0 driver.
2. Pushed for Healthcare, Android lack the ability to safeguard patients' data since Android is open source and could be steal
3. ARKit is one of the many AR out there, still early to judge whether iOS can get AR wide adoption by developers, it's easy to develop while Androis flagships could work on AR using 3rd parties SDK seem not as smooth as ARKit without Tango enabled and need lot of testing on different devices than on iPad and iPhone.
4. Camera quality are subjective, Flickr have plenty to show creative photography. I always feel most flagships can take good and bad photos just like DSLR, if you don't know how, you are just an owner, not a photographer. Just like, you are just a player, not a professional.
HEIF is an awesome format which can recreate bokeh close to DSLR and other effects without a specialize hardware.
HEIF has certain desirable compression (and other) properties for storage, but that is entirely orthogonal to bokeh, which is an optical visual characteristic that is generated (optically or algorithmically) during capture. And, needless to say, we're several generations away from an iPhone class camera having enough depth differentiation to come close to any Circa 2000 DSLR's bokeh. Right now bokeh on the iPhone is an awkward techology demo, which more often than not doesn't quite work. Yet.
2. Android being open source does not make it unsuitable for safeguarding patient data. I'm surprised you would even mention this as it undermines your entire argument. The open source nature of Android actually makes it more secure because you have more eyes on the code. Security through obscurity is always less secure.
3.Google could also provide a variation of the Tango SDK to support normal devices.
I would say that the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus could both use a bump in sensor size to really be the best in all situations, but as-is they’re the most well-rounded for stills even if the HTC 10 can definitely produce better images in a number of scenarios... In video capture there’s almost no competition...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10685/the-iphone-7-and-iphone-...
Citation needed. There's a lot of good phones on the market but the iPhone is still as good as anything - best OS, best CPU, tier 1 battery life/GPU/camera screen. The first phone to consistently beat it in ratings over nearly a decade was the Note 7 and we all saw how that turned out and the mere fact that Samsung drops all their plans and engineers around Apple's leaks should be enough to tell you who the king is.
> The DXOMark rankings say it all
They haven't even reviewed the 7+ so no they don't say what you want them to.
Sure, but this is just only of many:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J2AvHwELlc
It's really not even a contest. Just have a look at the blind camera test done by MKBHD. The iPhone camera didn't fare too well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtmGMcMeEJE
>They haven't even reviewed the 7+ so no they don't say what you want them to.
If they did it would still have scored below the Android phones.
(1) It was a contest, the iphone won in some areas and (2) you missed the companion piece [1] comparing video where the iphone won fairly handily. (3) The pixel is one phone, you keep talking about "android phones", (4) you're back to claiming the iPhone is an also ran ("not even a contest"), make up your mind where you want to put your goalposts down.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfptPhPCmAU
> If they did it would still have scored below the Android phones.
I guess if you believe hard enough you don't need actual facts. Here are the facts:
(1) Every year the best iPhone launches with a camera that is among if not the best in the world.
(2) Last year was no exception with many reviews saying essentially the same thing: best camera on a smartphone.
(3) Some android flagships have comparable cameras and these (a) usually launch a few months after the iphone, (b) sometimes beat the iphone camera in raw spec(s) but (c) despite spec advantage often aren't clearly better in still comparisons (CNET: On paper, ... camera hardware looks impressive... But when it comes to photography, the proof is in the pictures. That's something the iPhone 7 Plus proved in our tests against single-camera shooters like the Google Pixel and the Samsung Galaxy S8.) and (d) they tend to get wrecked in video comparisons.
Somehow you have spun that as "Android flagships have already had the better camera's for a couple of years" and that "it's not even a contest" both of which are simply nonsense.
It would seem you're confused about the iPhone winning in some area's. Let me recap the results:
1. Pixel
2. Draw
3. iPhone
4. Pixel
5. Pixel
6. Pixel
>Every year the best iPhone launches with a camera that is among if not the best in the world.
Yes, it's among the best. It's just not the best anymore. They're now having to rely on gimmicks to differentiate themselves.
>Last year was no exception with many reviews saying essentially the same thing: best camera on a smartphone.
And then the Pixel launched and took the crown in many reviews that proclaimed it as the best smartphone camera in the world.
>Some android flagships have comparable cameras and these (a) usually launch a few months after the iphone, (b) sometimes beat the iphone camera in raw spec(s) but (c) despite spec advantage often aren't clearly better in still comparisons
Yeah, they really are better in still comparisons and especially under low light conditions.
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/10/29/13466786/...
>Somehow you have spun that as "Android flagships have already had the better camera's for a couple of years" and that "it's not even a contest" both of which are simply nonsense.
DXOMark indicates otherwise and it shows the iPhone continuing to fall further and further in the rankings. The only nonsense here is you trying to convince yourself that the iPhone still has the better camera when countless reviews and blind tests have proven otherwise.