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?

  • TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

    • massive_bereavement@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      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.

    • sbird@sopuli.xyzOP
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      2 days ago

      Ah so things like Apple Intelligence being a staggered release

      • TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        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.

        • sbird@sopuli.xyzOP
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          2 days ago

          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.

          • TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            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

            • sbird@sopuli.xyzOP
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              2 days ago

              Yeah, Apple Intelligence really was half-baked. Apple be Apple I guess

              • TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                Ya we’re talking about the company that secretly throttled phone performance and battery life so nothings outside the realm of possibility