Apart from "faster", "better at connectivity", and "better at taking pictures", where does Apple have to go with this thing? A new chassis design? Why?
I agree that this was a boring keynote. But I think it's boring because Apple has got this particular product design nailed. It may not be the best phone we'll ever see, but they're holding 20 and the dealer is showing 6.
And that's my fear. The first decade of the 2000s' Apple would answer this question with something you didn't think you needed. But it was a gamechanger.
I could imagine Steve Jobs walking out on stage and saying:
"We did the Retina Display. We changed displays forever. The iPhone4 is the best display on any phone, and it's been almost a year and a half since we released it. But there's a huge glaring problem with it -- it's 2D." At this point you begin to hear the audience pick up in anticipation.
"The world isn't in 2D. You can't appreciate the vibrance of a 3D world fully when projected onto a 2D surface. People have tried 3D though." Steve pulls out a the red/blue paper glasses from his pocket. Tosses it on the floor. The modern 3D TV glasses from his pocket, tosses it on the floor. Pulls out an EVO 3D. Looks at it for a second. Tosses it on the floor.
"You don't do something, unless you can do it right. We figured out how to do 3D right."
Maybe next year.
And I say this not because I think you missed his point, but in a probably futile attempt to head off discussion about how 3D is stupid.
How many people at the Sprint store are seriously going to pick up the HTC Evo 3D and say "screw the iPhone 4S, I'm buying this thing because it's 3D!"
I think it's funny how everyone expects a new design every year, just because that's how the cell phone world has always been. Looking at the iPod, Apple only had a few designs that they gradually improved and made smaller.
I've been waiting to buy an iPhone for half a year, because I assumed that getting the iPhone 5 would be worth the wait. Oh, well...
Just buy the new i4S. The i4 is a great, great device.
I'm pretty sure the SGX543MP2 blows everything else out of water currently:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4686/samsung-galaxy-s-2-intern...
The offscreen numbers are resolution independent and as far as I can tell the 4GS should be near identical with the ipad.
Basically no one is going to surpass the 4GS hardware until Q2 2012 when 28/32 nm phones are shipping and the iphone 5's chip will already be on display in the ipad 3.
A lot of people expected the 4GS/5's A5 to have one GPU disabled but I guess they can just turn it off dynamically for battery and somehow handle the heat when it's needed.
Android is not quite iOS but its a very close second and better than what anyone else has been capable of creating.
Android is second best in apps. And #1 in terms of market dominance. But if you jump back and forth for a week between the iPhone for and Nexus S, you'll feel a huge difference.
* I don't really like Android that much (or iOS).
To be honest though, I'm running CM7 and not the stock image. Still, I see iphone/pad users miss swipes all the time or have to try repinching a few times, but for some reason it registers less on a shiny device.
New Android update next week though. Is it just me or did they really miss a golden opportunity to go head to head before people pre-order 4GS's this week. Google should have counterprogrammed their event for tomorrow.
The ICS reveal later this month will reveal whether Google has addressed this issue. Most of Honeycomb is already GPU-accelerated, but not all of the performance issues were fixed.
> The iOS and Mango device respond very similarly to
> basic things like swipes, pinches, etc... Android
> is a lot more jittery, even on the SGII HW.
Now, maybe the 4G offers a smoother experience than Android (no GC + hardware acceleration?), I don't know, but the 3G experience was sure as hell nothing to write home about. I can say, however, that my Atrix is noticeably more responsive after switching from Motorola's firmware to Cynanogen Mod, but -- again -- I don't know how it compares to a 4G.
(Please forgive my poor use of terminology. I'm sure someone else can do a much better job of explaining this.)
You'll see the limitations of Apple's model in mobile Safari: scrolling too fast gets you to unrendered sections of the page, which must be rendered and filled in software; as well as pinch zooming, where you get a blurry zoomed texture for a moment or two while the software re-renders the page and updates the texture.
But really, do people care so much about a redesign? Near field what? 3D?! Come on... For 3GS owners like me this is an enormous upgrade, for 4 owners it will still be very noticeable. When you add the iOS 5 improvements & cloud mobile life will be much smoother. Very much like when the 3GS came out.
You are completely right.
You have not tried a 4S, so you're just making stuff up. Like your comment about time travel. I'm sure that time travel can not be done by the apple people, unless they know Michael J Fox. Which I guess they may know him, considering Steveo (he hates it when I call him that) wears a black turtle neck some times. He also really loved a drink before, but not so much now after that whole incident with the 12 livers he had to take from interns.
In summary, your prophetic ideas are astounding and wise past your years. Well, wise past the years of anyone in our generation, and the previous five generations before.
One more thing...
Steve does wear cool specs though. I think the success of apple is at least 46.34% to do with the CEOs specs. The new vice president in the video didn't put on a good pair for this showing. They were kind of too thin, and not thick and black enough. Really, he should take some fashion classes, because he would have gotten a D- for his outfit this time.
Sprint just capped their WiMax phone tethering and modems, they'll surely cap the phones themselves when load increases.
I sincerely hope Apple isn't about to do a replay of the Mac. Great introduction with incredible technology. But a few years into it, begins to stagnate.
HW wise this nothing like the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 was a far superior device over the Galaxy S phones. The Galaxy S II though is pretty close to this. In terms of the raw HW I think I might call it a draw now. The camera is superior on the iPhone I suspect, but the small screen size negates that win.
Based on this trend, unless Apple has some aces in its sleeve, over the next year we'll see Android phones clearly pull ahead in HW.
SW though iOS still kills Android. Mango and iOS seem to be the ones that have the fundamentals down. I almost think someone needs to throw Android out and start from scratch. The inability for that OS to be stable and the fact that its still sometimes jerky on SGII HW is embarrassing.