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?
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.