Apple's Long-Awaited Overhaul of iPhone SE Nears Release (bloomberg.com) 36
Apple plans to unveil a long-anticipated overhaul of the iPhone SE in the coming days, a move that will modernize its lower-cost model in a bid to spur growth and entice consumers to switch from other brands. Bloomberg: The company expects to announce the device as early as next week, ahead of it going on sale later in the month, according to people with knowledge of the matter. [...] The new device, code-named V59, also will be Apple's first with an in-house cellular modem, replacing a component from Qualcomm, Bloomberg News has reported. It will have a larger screen with Face ID and also include a speedier A18 chip, which will help support Apple Intelligence. The removal of the home button from the iPhone SE means that Apple will have fully phased out the iconic interface, which debuted on the first iPhone in 2007.
SE? (Score:3)
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You have confused "terrified" with "disgusted".
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Does it come with an ADB mouse and keyboard, and a built in hard drive?
No, the "S" is for "sucks". [hrwiki.org]
It's the iPhone that exists so budget prepaid carriers can offer an iPhone that doesn't make their customers run off screaming when they hear the price. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the rumors are wrong and it doesn't get Apple Intelligence.
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You forgot the 'E' for excrement.
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Does it come with an ADB mouse and keyboard, and a built in hard drive?
Sadly the keyboard is not included, but it does have a 1.44MB SuperDrive and expansion slot.
Free beta testers (Score:3)
>> The new device, code-named V59, also will be Apple's first with an in-house cellular modem
So apple is going to save money from not having to buy from Qualcomm, any guesses if savings are going to be passed on to consumers?
Re:Free beta testers (Score:4, Insightful)
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They're pretty much killing the only reason I changed from Android to Apple - no decent smaller phones running Android these days.
The iPhone 13 Mini was the last truly compact modern phone Apple sold. The SE is just a large phone with a lousy screen-to-body ratio.
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Yeah why even call it the SE? It's just a low cost normal iphone. Seems to betray the purpose of the brand.
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My old SE died just before christmas (the battery would often drain to 1% straight away after unplugging from the charger, so it made it rather unreliable).
When I went into the second-hand phone shop, they looked at it like it was some sort of artefact, and when I asked for the smallest iPhone they had, I got looked at like an artefact!
Phones nowadays have become ridiculously big. If you don't live your whole life on it / run your influencing business from it, there's really no need for them to be so big -
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Re:Free beta testers (Score:4, Insightful)
If you believe Apple charges too much for their products then buy your phones from someone else. If enough people do that then Apple will have to lower prices to match their features, add features to match their prices, or go out of business.
I remember hearing many times farmers that would scoff at the cost of a John Deere tractor, claiming the extra cost is just to pay for a layer of green paint. Farmers are very practical people, they don't pay extra for a paint job. I see much the same with iPhone, not everyone is willing to pay extra to have the outline of a piece of fruit stamped on the exterior, there must be a lot of people seeing value beyond a logo to sell so much product to so many people.
Brand recognition works for luxury items as that's a means of conspicuous consumption. Utility items, like phones, tablet computers, and laptops, will have an aspect of conspicuous consumption but that won't carry a brand to wide adoption. If there's wide adoption of a brand then the "elitism" of the brand is gone and it's not conspicuous consumption any more, it's what practical people buy.
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I got my iphone 6S at the small shop downstairs from where I live with a battery at 85% capacity compared to brand new for 100$. It lokks brand new. I barely use smartphones, no apps, no nothing is installed on it, I manually turn on GPS, bluethooth, wifi and cell data only when one is needed so the phone keeps its charge much longer that way and offer some kind of extra protection regarding personal data that way I guess. The phone still currently gets security updates from Apple. Perfect for me.
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Re: Free beta testers (Score:2)
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>> The new device, code-named V59, also will be Apple's first with an in-house cellular modem
So apple is going to save money from not having to buy from Qualcomm, any guesses if savings are going to be passed on to consumers?
If you’re looking at the iPhone SE model, you’re already looking at the one that’s gonna save you money.
Hell, you just just saved hundreds by simply not buying the iPhone Pro Max Plus Premium Platinum Princess model.
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So apple is going to save money from not having to buy from Qualcomm, any guesses if savings are going to be passed on to consumers?
What savings? How is giving Qualcomm a few dollars cheaper than spending millions on R&D developing an inhouse modem after spending billions to acquire a modem division?
Expect all savings to be passed on to you, the RRP of the iPhone SE is $1,015,000,799 with everything passed to you. ;-)
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Absolutely agree. I doubt this is in any way cheaper for Apple. I'm pretty sure (from what I've read about their chip) that the issue is that the performance is not as good as a QualComm modem, hence why they are putting it in their budget model. I doubt the performance issues are enough that most people would notice, but in head to head performance tests it would come across badly.
I'd expect they will try to go for lower power or something so they can put the chip into their wearables etc first. Whether we
Wobbly Future (Score:2)
I'm on a iPhone 13 that I bought new a year ago. I just found the cost of the latest models a bit crazy. It was genuinely confusing trying to remember what the differences between each model were, and I just didn't feel the value matrix was very strong, so I just got the cheapest one. It's really good and will last me a long time.
It's pretty obvious that Apple has been doing increasingly dubious business practices to try to maintain margin (the storage upgrade costs, the whole 8GB entry level thing, the stu