Things like large 1” camera sensors, SiC batteries that offer 6-8k mAh, and other cool tech that would improve phones a lot. It’s not just Chinese brands either (e.g. Sony has an optical zoom camera on their flagship, Nothing has some excellent budget to midrange offerings).
It seems really weird, Apple/Samsung/Google are massive companies with so much money, yet they don’t try to offer this kind of tech on even their most expensive phones. In contrast, other phone makers have budget to midrange phones with insane battery capacities, Ultra models with innovative cameras, etc.
To me, it makes sense that Apple isn’t offering these kinds of things. They’re already extremely profitable and have the whole walled garden ecosystem that draws people in. Google focuses more on software rather than hardware, and their cameras are helped by software magic.
What surprises me is that Samsung isn’t trying to get better hardware to get more market share. If they had huge SiC batteries, large camera sensors, or other cool tech, it would definitely help sway buyers from Apple and other brands.
Especially since Samsung is struggling against both Chinese competition and, to a lesser extent, Indian competition. And in the U.S., they certainly want to steal market share from Apple.
What is with the reluctance of these massive tech companies from using the latest tech in their phones?
Apple was never leading edge - their goal is to incorporate when it works well
But you’re both cherry picking and wrong. There’s huge lists of features on every new phone, you’re picking two and deciding that means no innovation. Take a look at the dozens of other features on models from each manufacturer.
SiC batteries that offer 6-8k mAh
You’re complaining about battery chemistry that you believe is innovation, yet current batteries are much larger. Why switch if the technology is not as good yet?
What surprises me is that Samsung isn’t trying to get better hardware to get more market share.
You say this about the company that invented folding screen phones? lol
Apple is pioneering better SOC than anybody else.
But apart from that you are perfectly right, none of the big 3 companies are actually pioneering anything anymore.
Google never was, but leaned on 3rd parties that made some very good Nexus phones, ending with the Huawei made P6.
Now Google is only pioneering making a cheap camera look good heavily retouched with AI.
Now the pioneers are mostly Chinese, while Samsung seems to be falling behind.
Google Pixel was never a front runner, iPhone was traditionally in some areas mostly software, while Samsung was in both software and hardware.
If you want the coolest newest stuff, it seems China is ahead with Xiaomi, Honor, Vivo etc.
The Samsung S25 Ultra is still absolutely a great phone, and I think recognized as the leader to beat, as a well rounded high end package.Regarding camera I think it’s getting damned hard to say which is best, comparison tests with many photo’s seems to swing between one phone maker to another, and movie stabilization also vary, even with good camera.
I think Samsung is still clearly ahead of Google and Apple, and the Chinese phones too have strengths and weaknesses. I like Xiaomi a lot in their flagship killer range, but on the top tier, they still have problems with camera stabilization Samsung handles better IMO.
The thing that impresses me most, is how much phones still improve in a single generation.
Maybe not enough to ditch the old one, but definitely enough to make the new model worth considering even when you can get last years model at a pretty hefty discount.Ask any apple fanboy/fanatic and they will tell you, and they will be correct: Apple rarely leads the charge. They wait and they bide their time, and they watch how a technology is applied and how it works well and how it fails, and then they engineer a solution that they believe to be a smoother user experience to everyone else, and only then do they drop a new tech.
Budget phone makers are trying to stand out and captivate a much smaller market segment, so they have to go big or go home, or else no one will care.
The big guys are so big that they can actually use the market itself as market research, and the big guys are so big they can hold out until they know they have a stable, proven solution.
Didn’t they just kill that big 3d glasses after like 5 years everyone else and their dog did 3d glasses and gave up?
In Jobs time there was this perception that Apple does everything perfect. Then he dies and the perception stayed. It was never true, but now it’s so much further from truth. Charging mouse from the underside is plain stupid.
Apple rarely leads the charge.
Absolutely that is how it is now, but they did coin the format every modern smartphone uses today. And originally they were way ahead of the competition in almost every aspect. They were so dominant, that for years there was a shortage for every other manufacturer of components to build smartphones that could compete!
But a lot has happened since the still pretty recent emergence of the first iPhone, that absolutely revolutionized the concept of smartphones.
And the competition is absolutely cutthroat, so even major renowned labels couldn’t keep up.
Like Nokia, HTC, Ericsson that were all major brands, are now almost completely gone. Obviously the Blackberry RIM is almost gone too, and I think Microsoft is out completely now, despite they were a significant factor before iPhone, and investing billions in an attempt at a come back!So it is quite amazing that a statement like Apple rarely takes a lead is so easily taken as a true statement, considering how different it was just a few years ago. A testament to the absolutely crazy development cycle smartphones still have.
Apple does however still lead on the SOC by a good margin.I’ve been using Apple products since 1979. I’d definitely say that the statement is true; Apple rarely leads the charge. That doesn’t mean they never do, but they tend to, in most cases, wait for a trustworthy tech to come along, and then push forward with it, dragging the rest of the market along behind them. There’s always innovations and synergies, many of which wouldn’t happen naturally in the market, but the stuff they integrate is generally already well tested and proved.
Counter examples include the original Macintosh, the Newton MessagePad and kinda-sorta the iPhone. More common behavior is related to things like PowerPC/ARM, USB, Firewire/Thunderbolt, nVME, trackpads, wireless peripherals, and the like.
Apple was built on innovation, and you completely left the original product out.
Apple II, Macintosh, MacBook Air, iPod, iPhone, iPad. In software OSX was also significant, and obviously IOS that worked extremely well for both iPhone and iPad.
The M series of SOC are also way ahead of anything else. Retina display for iPhone was also a first. And finally the technologies Apple has used to completely switch the hardware architecture of major series of products.
First from Motorola to IBM Power, then from Power to x86, and finally from x86 to Arm. No other company has dared doing that, and when Microsoft tried to emulate it, AFTER Apple they did it way worse!There is no way you can realistically say Apple is not generally an innovative company, and that they aren’t leaders. When 5 times they’ve been leading major changes within an industry. What other company did that? There are very few companies that have brought groundbreaking disruptive new products like Apple has.
I’m saying this as one who has sworn never to buy another Apple product, because I despise the Apple closed garden mentality. So I’m definitely not a fanboy.
:cough: AI :cough:
that would be more believable if they didn’t release the apple vision pro.
Or the years they took biding their time before they finally implemented battery charge time estimation on ios.
Or the time biding their time refining, erm, copy and paste?
Come on!
Copy paste has been available since iOS 3.0, launching alongside the iPhone 3GS.
I don’t know what you’re trying to say with the other two statements
three, point, oh
for copy and paste.
Not one, but three point oh!
Same for Windows Phone 7 when it launched. No copy and paste there either.
so?
Love that the downvote and blunt reply suggests you think I’m not agreeing with you.
It was another example of a massive computer company surprisingly being unable to include a bread-and-butter feature at the launch of their new mobile computing devices.
Cherry-picked examples are cherry-picked examples.
The trend still sticks
what trend? they made thi ipod, they made the iphone, they’ve been late, really really late, for very basic features on either. And a bunch of just plain bad stuff.
Butterfly keyboards, magic mouse, touch bar on macs, not cherry picked at all. There are tons of examples
they engineer a solution that they believe to be a smoother user experience
You had me until this bit. I support my mom and the iPhone she got instead of an android. I have no idea how to use this thing, and she’s the mother of 2.5 nerds. This swishy swoopy UI is so bad it’s toxic.
But I think that’s just a young and sparkle-addicted product management team who forgets that they need to sell to their market and who believe they know better.
I’ve had the same issue every time I’ve tried helping someone with an Android phone. I kind of figured it’s because it’s not what I’m used to so it seems foreign.
I had an Android work phone for a while and I got more comfortable with it because I was using the UI regularly.
My parents switched from Android to Apple and they’ve both said they find the iPhone easier to navigate; they’re both ~70 years old.
Personally, I think that Android and Apple appeal to different personalities with different needs and that people are naturally resistant to change.
Agreed, have used both android and iOS over the years and both OSes has their pros and cons. Currently staying with iPhone because nothing beats their face ID in my opinion.
I stick with Apple because it “just works” for me and they haven’t done anything to piss me off enough to change.
There was a video by PolyMatter recently on the economics of why Apple cannot yet move the bulk of iPhone manufacturing away from China (available on Nebula and on YouTube). This is perhaps the singular quote which helps answer your question, around the 02:35 mark:
Any country can assemble the iPhone. But Apple doesn’t need to make an iPhone, it needs to make 590 every minute, it needs 35,000 per hour, 849,000 per day, 5.9 million per week. That’s the challenge facing Apple.
The sheer scale of Apple’s manufacturing – setting aside Samsung’s also humongous scale – means that there might not be a supplier for that quantity of large image sensor or new-tech batteries. Now, Apple could drive that sort of market, and they probably are working on it. But as the video explains, Apple’s style is more about finding an edge which they can exclusively hone, up to and including the outright buying out of the supplier. This keeps them ahead of the competition, at least for long enough until it doesn’t matter anymore.
In some ways, this might sound like Apple has a touch of Not Invented Here Syndrome, but realistically, consumers expect that Apple is going to do something so outlandish and non-standard that to simply be jumping onto a bandwagon of “already researched” technology would be considered a failure. They are, after all, a market leader, irrespective of what one might think about the product itself.
Historical example of heavy R&D paying dividends until it stopped being relevant: Sony’s Trinitron CRT patent expired just around the time that LCDs started showing up in the consumer space. Any competitor could finally start producing CRT TVs with the same qualities as a Sony Trinitron TV, but why would they? The world had moved on, and so had Sony.
In brief, Apple probably can’t deliver to the world a new iPhone with massive image sensors right now. But that certainly doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have their camera team looking into it and working with partners to scale up the manufacturing, such as by increasing yield or being very clever, probably both. Ever since that one time an iPhone prototype was found in a Bay Area bar, their opsec for new prototypes has been top notch. So we’ll only know when we know.
Oh, that makes sense. Apple/Samsung manufactures way too many phones for the new and upcoming tech like SiC batteries and super large image sensors. Hopefully Apple (eventually) innovates again instead of adding yet another button.
Turning the question around, too, it is clear why small manufacturers MUST use all the top spec parts: they don’t have Apple or Google’s brand and ecosystem of services to fall back on. Who’s going to buy a phone from a nobody brand with no services or ecosystem that also has crappy specs? Apple and Google can get away with it, and cheaper parts are cheaper which helps their profit margins. Small brands have to try hard to wow the world and get noticed. One way to do that is to compete on specs. In my opinion it’s a crappy way. But it’s a way.
If the tech proves out and scales, Apple and Samsung will eventually incorporate it but by that time the smaller players will have moved on to newer tech.
YouTube video as a source. And nebula ad as a cherry on top. Nice!
Most people don’t really care about cool tech, they want a phone that just works
I would argue that everyone wants more battery life and most people would appreciate better cameras too. Cool tech is useful tech. There’s a reason why other companies are adopting it
We picking favourite features? Let’s talk about headphone jacks. Make it .3mm thicker if all that volume can be consolidated on the header jack they ditched because apparently it can’t fit and wasn’t feeding their radio earbud business enough.
and microsd card slots. Pushing people to pay more for storage upgrades…
Even better: add a second USB-C port, so we can use a wired headphone and a charger at the same time.
I really don’t think the average person cares at all about improving the current picture quality of phone cameras. The pictures get posted on instagram or sent on a messaging app, and looked at once on a 6 inch screen. They are not getting printed. Most people wouldn’t even notice.
Battery life is a thing people would maybe appreciate, but then again, people seem to be fine with charging their phones overnight, and current phones seem to last one day on one charge.
But for instance, let’s say Samsung adopts SiC batteries. Battery life would be much better, so more people would buy Samsung phones over Apple and it would be one less advantage for going for the smaller brands vs Samsung. Plus, if you had two-day battery life, when the battery inevitably degrades, you’ll still have solid battery life.
Battery life would be much better, so more people would buy Samsung phones over Apple
I do think there is a segment that would want that increased battery capacity but this claim ignores both human apathy and inertia.
OP is talking 6 AH batteries. If that’s all SiC can do, why would Apple use it in place of current 18AH batteries?
Plus, if you had two-day battery life, when the battery inevitably degrades, you’ll still have solid battery life.
But the companies want you to buy a new phone when the battery degrades.
fair enough. It’s not very nice big tech, but they were never that nice to begin with
when the battery inevitably degrades, you’ll still have solid battery life.
We used to have user replaceable batteries. The companies stopped making them and few people cared
The latest tech isn’t proven to last, might be harder to integrate, might require making design choices that affect the production line, the reliability of the phone, the battery longevity, the supply chain, the operating system, etc. Using the newest tech is a surefire way to make sure you have to do a recall, if you’re the biggest companies on the planet.
A marketing prof once told me that a lot of phone companies, Apple in specific, split their projects up into several releases as a form of planned obsolescence. You’re more likely to find this in matured and established brand names because they have the power of goodwill to retain their market share whereas an up and coming company relies on being innovative in the sense of being early adopters of new, sometimes not fully tested, technology.
So for example, you see 3 iPhones being released in the span of 2 years. Those were likely 1 project released in a deliberately staggered manner so that “fanboys” “early movers” “brand loyal” (basically materialistic people who either don’t understand or love being manipulated by corps) will pay for 1 project that a team worked on, 3 separate times.
I bought the first iPhone when it was released. It didn’t have stereo bluetooth support, that was on the newer iPhone 3G.
However, except for the network adapter, both were hardware-wise exactly the same.
I found a kext file in my phone, that had disabled the function, as in:
“Bluetooth_stereo = false”
After enabling that, it worked like a charm.
That was the last iPhone I ever bought.
Ah so things like Apple Intelligence being a staggered release
I’ve been off apple products for over a decade now other than my 2012 macbook that I basically just use as an exclusively youtube player so I’m not too familiar with Apple Intelligence, it looks like it’s their proprietary AI algorithm so in that case, it’s less staggered release and more the fact that AI gets better the more it is interacted with.
In a nutshell, most of the promised features of Apple Intelligence wasn’t released on launch (notably, still no smart Siri), at first only things like image playground and note summaries.
It’s possible that was deliberate but they don’t usually announce things they don’t originally plan on releasing as that can damage their reputation. Possible that they truly couldn’t meet deadlines or that they were purposely trying to create hype, hard to say without being upper management in Apple
Yeah, Apple Intelligence really was half-baked. Apple be Apple I guess
Ya we’re talking about the company that secretly throttled phone performance and battery life so nothings outside the realm of possibility
Samsung, being the largest manufacturer of South Korea, has an incentive to keep their production as in-house as possible. Which is why they’re reluctant to license technology that they can build themselves, such as cameras.
That makes a lot of sense. Samsung’s displays are also quite good too.
I still find it strange that they’re not trying to develop SiC batteries though, esp. for their foldables and thin “Edge” puone
They don’t want to take ANY risk with batteries. Don’t ask them why…
But honestly, Fold 7 is definitely one of the most impressive phone I’ve ever seen.
if their phones go poofy it would be very bad
They probably are. But, this problem is also much larger for them than for other players. Oneplus is estimated to have sold 10 million phones over a one year. Samsung sold 4 times that number of s24 alone. If the suppliers can’t provide that level of manufacturing then they have to build the supply chain themselves, and that takes a lot of time, R&D and money.
SiC batteries would also help a lot for thinner phones like foldables (see Find N5 and XFold 5 from Oppo and Vivo compared to Samsung’s Z Fold 7) as well “thin phones” (see Samsung’s S25 Edge and Apple’s rumoured 17 Air)
How do you know SiC batteries last and don’t have any long term issues that aren’t expected?
Another thing, Qi2! Only Apple and the HMD Skyline support it. Why is that?
Leaks show that the upcoming pixels will have it. Also because Apple opened up the (magsafe) standard only in 2023, and it takes time to implement things.
E: first link that came up https://www.androidpolice.com/pixel-10-finally-qi2-pixelsnap-addons/
I find it interesting that, of all companies, HMD was the first to adopt it (aside from Apple)
