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Apple's Lower-Cost iPhone to Lack Retina Display?

99.99 percent unlikely

Introducing a lower-res 4 inch screen would mean that developers would have to start supporting and entirely new resolution--there isn't a single app in app store that would work natively, pixel to pixel ratio-wise. The most likely scenario is a lower quality panel on a retina pixel density screen.
 
99.99% unlikely to lack Retina Display

Honestly new Android phones with 1080p display are priced lower than iPhone 5, so why would Apple sacrifice a good display on their lower-cost phone?

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Glassman said:
Here in China you get plenty Androids for $150~$200 with ~4" 800x480 + ~1GHz single core A8 or A9 and just above $200 you're into ~4.5" 960x540 + ~1.2GHz dual core A9.

There is no way Apple can release a new phone in 2013 with 4" 568x320 and not be a flop, let alone a laughing stock.

Producing a Retina resolution screen is cheap enough these days - cheap enough to sell one in iPod touch and still make solid margins.

The cheaper iPhone will, despite not using the absolute best components, still look and feel miles ahead of the legions of mid-tier Android offerings. In fact I expect the look & feel to be pretty close to the regular iPhone. Plastic MacBooks were still ways ahead of plastic Acers and Asuses of it's time, right? Same story here. iOS is the major draw as is the half-bitten fruit at the back.

Apple will of course have to differentiate and make you want the expensive one. That's fairly simple - the plastic body that's coming in (childish) colors vs. the classy aluminum + glass in black & white. The A7 processor vs. whichever one they see fit for the cheaper one - guessing 32nm A5 but could be anything lesser than the classic iPhone. Storage may be limited to 8/16GB only, no expansion option. RAM may be limited to 512MB. Camera can be the 5Mpx piece they shove into iPhone 4 and iPads. All in all there should be absolutely no problem with differentiation.

Priced at $300~$350 to be relevant - must be noticeably bellow iPhone 4/4S is selling now.
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Not really, now you can get a Chinese "Note" with MTK6589 1.2 GHz quad-core, 720p display at USD $250 in Hong Kong.

If this "lower-cost" phone is still priced at $300, then I think many upgrading users will trade-in their old phone for a new iPhone with Retina display instead. This lower-cost iPhone will only be relevant to 1st time iPhone owners.

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efraintango1 said:
Introducing a lower-res 4 inch screen would mean that developers would have to start supporting and entirely new resolution--there isn't a single app in app store that would work natively, pixel to pixel ratio-wise. The most likely scenario is a lower quality panel on a retina pixel density screen.
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LOL, so when Apple is laughing at Android for fragments, Apple has iPhone in 3 display resolutions as well :D
 
Michael CM1 said:
You mean like the cheap Mac people kept thinking would always happen despite Steve Jobs saying Apple couldn't make a decent computer at those insanely low price points?
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Stop quoting Steve Job and price point. Price point for electronic widget has been moving down every year. What is considered as good 6-7 years ago at $500 retail now can be produced now at $200 retail. There are plenty of mid tier smartphone at 200-400 range. So why can Apple produce one at those range that is "decent".
 
paradox00 said:
Why is this concept a surprise to anyone? This should have been obvious from the start. It's and easy way to lower costs and differentiate their products. It also allows for better performance on a lower specced phone, which is something Apple cares about. It's easy to downgrade retina graphics to non retina, every 4 pixels simply become 1. So the recent news that retina apps are required is a non-issue. All of these comments remind me of "Apple will never release a non-retina iPad Mini", but that's what they did. Now if they said this would be a 3.5" phone, that would be surprising.

4.0" screen, non retina display, single core A5 processor, plastic case. That's what people should expect at this point imo. Basically a long 3GS with performance somewhere between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S (closer to the 4S).

If Apple introduces a new, larger screen size, it will most likely come to the premium version first (or simultaneously).
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A new Smartphone model with single core CPU in late 2013 or 2014? You got to be kidding.

Even the cheapest Samsung smartphone now have got dual-core CPU. A budget iPhone shall be competitive and not just being cheap.
 
profets said:
That would simply be terrible.
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Why? Are you complaining that a rumoured lower-cost iPhone isn't quite as good as a full-price iPhone? Of course it isn't. That's the whole point.

Of course we don't know if there is any truth to these rumors at all, but the only thing that makes sense is producing a phone that is in some way inferior to a modern iPhone, but which is on the other hand a lot cheaper. So people can decide what they want. A better phone or a cheaper phone.
 
gnasher729 said:
Why? Are you complaining that a rumoured lower-cost iPhone isn't quite as good as a full-price iPhone? Of course it isn't. That's the whole point.

Of course we don't know if there is any truth to these rumors at all, but the only thing that makes sense is producing a phone that is in some way inferior to a modern iPhone, but which is on the other hand a lot cheaper. So people can decide what they want. A better phone or a cheaper phone.
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Umm, so you are expecting a budget iPhone to be worse than iPhone 4?
 
mirko.meschini said:
OK, so a 3 years old iPhone 4 (at a price point lower than actual 429€) has a retina display, and the new low cost iPhone has not. Even the (2 times) old iPod touch 4th gen has a retina display.
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And Apple could build an iPhone without Retina display, giving comparable performance with a lower cost GPU, better battery life, for less money. I can buy a phone for a price (without contract) from £10 to £500. Apple could build a phone _anywhere_ in that range. And a phone at the lower end of the range wouldn't have a retina display. A phone at the lower end of the range also would have the advantage that it takes customers away from cheap Android phones only, not from current iPhone sales.

HarryKNN21 said:
Umm, so you are expecting a budget iPhone to be worse than iPhone 4?
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Depends on the price. If you look at the huge market share of Android smartphones, the majority is cheap phones that don't come anywhere close to an iPhone 4. I would expect a phone that is only slightly cheaper than an iPhone 4 to be the same as an iPhone 4. A phone that is half the price of an iPhone 4 would be less good, of course. It would also be half the price.
 
Then honestly remain iPhone 4S on sale is the answer! Why would Apple ever sell a budget phone that would have completely new design, new display and even a new CPU?

That is just like saying iPad Mini is the budget iPad? And trust me on this, a new iPhone with only single-core in 2014 definitely won't sell!
 
elvetio said:
For all of those saying that this phone does not make sense: in a lot of countries the subscription based model simply does not work. For instance, I pay only 5€ a month and I get free SMS and phone calls to all of those from my carrier. People don't want to spend 30 euros a month to get an iPhone. In the long run it is more expensive to do so than to pay full price. In Europe and other countries this is quite common
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Exactly. I don't have a smartphone because I simply don't want to pay £37 a month for two years (UK), it's a very high price and I probably won't use any minutes and just a handful of texts. The total would be £888 for the iPhone over two years! Buying a decent smartphone for the full price is just unrealistically expensive too, which doesn't leave any other choice really, than to stick with a mid 2000's Nokia (back when Nokia made good phones) and a Pay As You Go package.

If Apple released a cheap iPhone that may not have a Retina display and may not be as slim and as awesome and all as the iPhone 5, but did what it does well (the basics such as iPod, Safari, Camera, Mail, Calendar), I would probably be interested to buy it full price, unlocked. I could just get an old second-hand iPhone alternatively, but it would be nice to have an official, new device for this purpose.
 
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No retina display....well, they have to leave something for the lower-cost-iphoneS don't they??
 
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I think a lower cost iPhone on the 350-400$ range should be a 4.0-4.3" 1136x640, with plastic body, A5 dual core processor and 3G only. With such a device they can replace 4-4S (so 3:2 screens and dock connectors go away). Later with the next year iPhone 6, they can introduce a two size high end aluminium device, 4" and 4.5-4.8", 4" at 1136x640 and 4.5-4.8" at @3x retina 1704x960. The 4" high-end can be different from low cost device with a smaller alluminium body, more powerful processor and LTE.
 
yeah right

I get a big kick out of these 'low cost" phones.

If you are paying close to $100 every month for 2 years to the phone companies, would you really care if you playing $extra $100 or $200 at the start up?

If you can't afford a one-time $200 payment, i can't imagine you being able to afford $100 monthly payment for 2 years.

just my 2 cents.
 
claus1225 said:
I get a big kick out of these 'low cost" phones.

If you are paying close to $100 every month for 2 years to the phone companies, would you really care if you playing $extra $100 or $200 at the start up?

If you can't afford a one-time $200 payment, i can't imagine you being able to afford $100 monthly payment for 2 years.

just my 2 cents.
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Without contract it makes a difference. I'm in Europe and I pay 8€ a month for calling/sms/data. Here prepaid options start from 4€ a month, data included.
 
profets said:
That would simply be terrible.
Click to expand...

More like, realistic.

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claus1225 said:
I get a big kick out of these 'low cost" phones.

If you are paying close to $100 every month for 2 years to the phone companies, would you really care if you playing $extra $100 or $200 at the start up?

If you can't afford a one-time $200 payment, i can't imagine you being able to afford $100 monthly payment for 2 years.

just my 2 cents.
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Not every carrier in the world has the USA model, chief.
 
pmz said:
More like, realistic.

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Not every carrier in the world has the USA model, chief.
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No, much more terrible than realistic. It's a 3 year old screen. They've used it for a while in a $200 iPod. Not being able to work that into a low cost iPhone would be a joke.
 
SirLance99 said:
You bought a new Android phone THIS YEAR with Gingerbread? That is your own fault for not buying a top tier premium Android. Blame yourself for a bad buy.
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The phone was a fantastic deal (and a good buy). I paid $100 less than a Nexus 4 (which I would have preferred but when I needed the phone there were no Nexus 4s in stock and wouldn't be for more than a month) and it had an update to ICS (that was just an update you had to do yourself). I wouldn't have purchased it without that ICS update released (the phone came out in March 2012 and ICS for it came out in October, I got it in December). The problem is though that a lot of people would buy it and then never upgrade it because they wouldn't know they could.

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Sincci said:
Really, a Samsung phone that was released in 2013 with Gingerbread? Which model is that?
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No, it came out in 2012, I mistyped in my original comment (what I really meant to say was that it was released within the past year (but I erroneously shortened that to "this year"); technically, it had just been a year since the release when I made the comment. It's the Galaxy S Blaze 4G (terrible phone name but a great phone): http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2401830,00.asp

I got it because it was only $200 new without a contract, which allowed me to sign up for T-Mobile's $30 / month plan. There were no other comparable phones (great screen, great battery life, 1.5 GHz dual core Snapdragon S3, etc.) for that price at that time. The Nexus 4, which was my first choice was out of stock and when it was in stock had shipping dates >1 month out, which didn't work with my needs.
 
I don't understand why they would need to do this when they already have two cheap phones. The 4 is free and the 4S is $99 and they have the retina display.
 
Compile 'em all said:
This. Apple aren't accepting non-retina apps.
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No, they said they won't be accepting apps that don't SUPPORT the retina screen. Their is a big difference. As long as the app supports the retina display then it will be approved. Developers can still develop apps for non retina devices though.

Though I will say I think it should have a retina display. Their are some pretty cheap phones out there that have a pretty high quality display.
 
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