iPhone 5se vs iPhone 5 Photo (Supposedly)

[Gudi]

Futureproofeness is the keyword in the A8 vs. A9 debate.

I think the 2nd generation 64-bit Apple ARM chip will hold up very well. I mean there won't be a 128-bit transition anytime soon. Whereas the 5C was crippled by it's 32-bit CPU from the beginning.

How well is that new phone going to run in a year from now with a few more iOS updates. I want it to run like a Ferrari.

Have you ever driven a Ferrari? They aren't known as smooth rides. iOS hardware requirement increases will level out, as will ARM performance gains. We must be close to a time, when older iPhones will hold up much longer than before.

Well latest rumor is that it is getting the A9. I think that will be huge for the phone's longevity since the A9 is a beast which will not soon become outdated.

Even with an A9 a 4-inch phone will never run at the same frequency, because of heat concerns.

 

[The Game 161]

Said to include live photos

 

[colorfuel]

I think the 2nd generation 64-bit Apple ARM chip will hold up very well. I mean there won't be a 128-bit transition anytime soon. Whereas the 5C was crippled by it's 32-bit CPU from the beginning.

Wat. Nobody is expecting a 128-Bit transition. That has nothing to do with futureproofness. 2 GB Ram do.

I've had a 64 bit CPU since AMD64. Basically it only means being able to adress more memory. Its not what makes a CPU faster. Of course Apple, deciding to leave out 32 bit devices of certain functions makes those less futureproof but thats not ulitmately the problem. The iPhone 5 runs alot better on iOS 9 than the 4S did on iOS 8. Both are 32 bit, which was more futureproof?

When Apps and iOS are going to involve 2GB Ram devices in their developement, 1 GB Ram devices are going to lag more and more.

 

[fitshaced]

Why not a 3 inch iPhone to be a Watch companion and the ability to use one watch with several phones? Would be useful for runners/cyclists allowing all functionality. I'd buy that.

 

[aces99]

Yes, an A9 would be great, but knowing Apple I wouldn't bet on it.
Performance wise I wouldn't be worried: the aging iPhone 5S is still running great (I love my wife's 5S), so I'm expecting this new device to be even better.

Yes a A9 with 2GB ram will rock and I would be all over it like a hot chick in a bikini. If it has that and NFC I would be all in. 3D Touch and all the other stuff would be gravy and I am not all concerned about. According to the latest rumour it will have the A9. Will have to wait to see. Fingers crossed.

 

[aces99]

Well latest rumor is that it is getting the A9. I think that will be huge for the phone's longevity since the A9 is a beast which will not soon become outdated. But I also do not think that cheaper phones will get flagship parts. You will always have to buy the most expensive iPhone if you want the latest and greatest. Heck, even though I own a 6S I don't have access to the camera motion control that is in the 6 Plus versions.

They certainly aren't adding new features that aren't in the 6S to this phone. So forget about Touch ID in the screen.

No It won't have Optical image stabilization like the 6plus. It won't have anymore than what the 4.7" has. But being equal to would be great. It won't have the Touch ID in the screen for sure and I am willing to bet even the next flagship iPhone 7 won't either. I only mentioned it in how Apple could get rid of the bezels to make more room and screen real estate. But it isn't going to happen anytime soon.

 

[aces99]

Have you ever driven a Ferrari? They aren't known as smooth rides. iOS hardware requirement increases will level out, as will ARM performance gains. We must be close to a time, when older iPhones will hold up much longer than before.
Even with an A9 a 4-inch phone will never run at the same frequency, because of heat concerns.

Yes actually I have. The Ferrari F430 Spider. I never drove it but cruised around in it and not sure what Ferrari you rode in but it was the fastest and smoothest ride I have ever been in hands down. But I was just using "Ferrari" as a figure of speech none the less.

 

[Gudi]

Nobody is expecting a 128-Bit transition. That has nothing to do with futureproofness.

Nobody was expecting the 64-bit transition on ARM either. The A7 was a surprise just like the PowerPC to Intel transition on Mac. I'm not saying 128-bit is happening, but when it will happen, nobody will expect it.

I've had a 64 bit CPU since AMD64. Basically it only means being able to adress more memory.

You look at the problem from the wrong side. Of course a 64-bit CPU is backwards compatible with 32-bit software and everything looks fine. But even the fastest 32-bit CPU with the most memory can't run 64-bit code and is locked out from all iOS features programmed as 64-bit only, as there are Split Screen Multitaskting, Safari Content Blockers and Night Shift. Basically everything that's cool about iOS 9 doesn't run on 32-bit iPhones. #futureproofness

 

[jmgregory1]

No it wasnt. The iPhone 3G was the model needing to show off the 3G service. Hence Apple skipping iPhone 2. The 3GS was the "speedier" version.

Relic of - they called the 3G that because of the change to 3G service and the 3GS was the S version. But they have not used that naming convention since then and they won't go back, otherwise we would have had the iPhone 4G, 4GS, 5LTE, 5LTES, etc.

 

[colorfuel]

@Gudi: But the point was that the A9 is more futureproof than the A7 eventhough both are 64 bit. And again, nobody cares for 128 bit, I dont know why you even brought this up. Apple can shut out devices out of features for any reason they want. It could be 32 bit, it could be for the amount of Ram it could just be because of the version of bluetooth if the feature uses bluetooth or just because they can and want. Its not that because the A7 is 64 bit that it will be getting every single feature the A10 generation is going to get. Compiling features like flux integration into their 32 bit code would be easy but they chose not to just like the chose to left out features on the 4S compared to the 5. It has nothing to do with 32, 64 or 128 bit. Its just what they think makes sense for their products and what doesnt.

 

[ShinySteelRobot]

> pill-shaped volume buttons and power button moved to the right side

Why, Apple, why? The sleep button on the exact opposite location of the volume buttons is the worst design idea ever. Why must I accidentally sleep my phone when I want to change the volume, and change volume when I want to sleep the phone?

Please put the sleep button back on the top of the phone where it belongs.

 

[coolfactor]

4 inch.

 

[oldmacs]

And you incidentally left out the tests where the iPhone 6 scored TWICE the iPhone 5S.... Incidentally.
"Irrelevant " tests like memory I/O ....

You obviously didn't read what I wrote. I left it out as I am talking about the A8 processor being nothing special compared to the a7 in the 5S. Not the storage speed as that is independent to the chipset and doesn't have anything to do with the discussion we're having.

A more relevant benchmark would be geekench which demonstrates clearly the lack of improvement that the A8 showed over the A7.

 

[Max(IT)]

Yes a A9 with 2GB ram will rock and I would be all over it like a hot chick in a bikini. If it has that and NFC I would be all in. 3D Touch and all the other stuff would be gravy and I am not all concerned about. According to the latest rumour it will have the A9. Will have to wait to see. Fingers crossed.

what rumors ?
[doublepost=1453762095][/doublepost]

You obviously didn't read what I wrote. I left it out as I am talking about the A8 processor being nothing special compared to the a7 in the 5S. Not the storage speed as that is independent to the chipset and doesn't have anything to do with the discussion we're having.

A more relevant benchmark would be geekench which demonstrates clearly the lack of improvement that the A8 showed over the A7.

A8 processor is an improved A7, where memory latency is one of the improved aspects.
NANDs performance was dramatically improved, so it plain false to say that the move from 5S to 6 wasn't a noticeable one.
Even if you discharge NAND performance, benchmarks like SPECint2000 (focused ONLY on the cpu) showed improvements ranging from 20% up to 55% , hardly a "minor" speed up.
Offscreen graphics tests, not dependent from the display resolution, showed differences like this:

and you keep trying to dismiss that as irrelevant ...

 

[MacCubed]

> pill-shaped volume buttons and power button moved to the right side

Why, Apple, why? The sleep button on the exact opposite location of the volume buttons is the worst design idea ever. Why must I accidentally sleep my phone when I want to change the volume, and change volume when I want to sleep the phone?

Please put the sleep button back on the top of the phone where it belongs.

On the larger phones it has to go on the side otherwise you can't lock it easily..

 

[tresmith]

I hope it's unapologeticly plastic.
[doublepost=1453763815][/doublepost]if the rumor is true that it's going to be an A9 processor than it makes more sense to release it as an iPhone 7 during the major release in the fall.

 

[oldmacs]

and you keep trying to dismiss that as irrelevant ...

Oh for goodness sake start reading what I posted.

Whether you want to live in denial or not, when compared to the leaps in processing shown with the 3G to the 3GS, the 4 to the 4S, the 4S to the 5, the 5 to the 5S and the 6 to the 6S, the leap from the 5S to the 6 is minimal in comparison. Even the charts you posted show the major leap from the 5 to the 5S. Small increases like the ones you just highlighted are just that - small increases compared to the huge gains on many other iPhone generations.

Screen Shot 2016-01-26 at 10.23.19 AM by oldmacs, on Flickr

If you want a different representation user Jsameds posted this earlier

See what happens between the 5S and 6 compared to the other generations?

 

[Andres Cantu]

It's not an argument, it's my answer to your "why not?". It's one reason, why not...
You seem to understand when you put IF in your answers, but not in mine.

I have no doubt that they will run the same iOS on release. IF they have the same internals then the numbering would/should likely be similar.

But IF they do NOT have the same power, they both might not be able to run the same iOS in 3 years. The numbering could/would make the upgrade option explanations much easier (i.e. some 6s models run iOS 12 and some don't).

Gary

Fair enough, that makes sense

 

[ValO]

How about you bother reading what I wrote.

Apart from the NAND storage speed difference (which has nothing to do with this argument about the A8 vs the A7 anyway), there differences between the 5S and 6 are minimal compared with the difference between the 5 and 5S, and the 4S and 5 and the 6 and 6S.

Google Octane:

5S vs 6 - difference of 960

5 vs 5S - difference of 3,613


3DMARK

5S vs 6 - difference of 2,120

5 vs 5S - difference of 9,472


GFXbench

5S vs 6 - difference of 9.3

5 vs 5S - difference of 26

The 6 was a big upgrade over the 5S mainly in design, it was not a major update in terms of processing. Its even obvious in terms of Apple's advertising. The 6S has the margin of improvement over the 6 highlighted, so does the 5S over the 5, the 5 over the 4S and the 4S over the 4.

Yes,

But you don' t seem to understand that the 2gb of the a8 will affect the octane benchmark considerably. It will make a difference compared to a 1gb a8.

And with the graphics benchmarks: you keep comparing scores of 1136x640 vs 1136x640, (5 to 5s) and 1136x640 vs 1334x750(5s vs 6).

That is a bad comparison, a 2gb a8 in a 1136x640 iphone will get much higher scores than the same soc in a 1334x750 iphone.

You just don' t want to get it.

Perhaps you will be satisfied with a 1gb, 1 core a9 soc? Just because of the name?
[doublepost=1453766517][/doublepost]

Oh for goodness sake start reading what I posted.

Whether you want to live in denial or not, when compared to the leaps in processing shown with the 3G to the 3GS, the 4 to the 4S, the 4S to the 5, the 5 to the 5S and the 6 to the 6S, the leap from the 5S to the 6 is minimal in comparison. Even the charts you posted show the major leap from the 5 to the 5S. Small increases like the ones you just highlighted are just that - small increases compared to the huge gains on many other iPhone generations.

Screen Shot 2016-01-26 at 10.23.19 AM by oldmacs, on Flickr

If you want a different representation user Jsameds posted this earlier

See what happens between the 5S and 6 compared to the other generations?

Ehmm higher res displays??? More pixels to push? Just look at the off screen scores posted earlier.

 

[aces99]

what rumours?

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...eplace-iphone-5s-iphone-6-and-6-plus.1952615/

 

[dannys1]

I like the design, looks like a mini iPhone 6.

Looks like more years of glass screen protectors that don't cover the entire front. Not a entirely a bad thing, but I was hoping for a different approach this time... Can't seem to go back to non glass protectors

How about no protector at all and just use the glass as it was intended?

 

[Michael Scrip]

Much of this is necessary because the pricing structure is more complicated now ... it's not just $199, $99, and $0, with the real price buried in the carrier contracts ... now the customer is being broadsided with the full price of the phone. They've gone from spending $199 on a brand new state of the art phone to $649. That's a big change to absorb. As a result, there are going to be fewer people willing to fork over $450 to get into the Apple ecosystem.

No... they're not being broadsided with the full price of the phone.

At Verizon, for instance, they used to have signs like this next to the iPhone:

$199
$99
$0

And now they have this:

$27.08/month
$31.25/month
$34.41/month

You are NOT forced to pay the full price for an iPhone today. Honestly... nothing has really changed. Here's why:

You used to pay $199 down and then the other $450 was included in your bill. They called it a "subsidy" but YOU were actually paying for it over the next 24 months.

Now... you actually see how much of your bill is for the service and how much is for the phone itself.

The end result is still the same. You're getting a $650 phone by paying for it over 24 months like you always did.

I would argue that it's easier to understand today since you clearly see what you're paying for.

No more hidden $450 "subsidy" tucked inside your bill.

 

[oldmacs]

Yes,

But you don' t seem to understand that the 2gb of the a8 will affect the octane benchmark considerably. It will make a difference compared to a 1gb a8.

And with the graphics benchmarks: you keep comparing scores of 1136x640 vs 1136x640, (5 to 5s) and 1136x640 vs 1334x750(5s vs 6).

That is a bad comparison, a 2gb a8 in a 1136x640 iphone will get much higher scores than the same soc in a 1334x750 iphone.

You just don' t want to get it.

Perhaps you will be satisfied with a 1gb, 1 core a9 soc? Just because of the name?

It will make a difference, but it will not be as good as the A9, even a slightly lower clocked version of the A9.

The resolution is not going to effect the scoring as much as you say, it simply isn't. Of course i do not want a single score A9 with 1GB of ram. I'd like an A9 (with the improvements in efficiency and in performance over the A8) with 2GB of ram.

the resolution difference between the 4S and the iPod Touch 5 (which has a very similar A5 albeit one made on a smaller process) does not make a huge difference. The diffenrce between the 4S and Touch 5 is .5 inches, compared to .7 between the 5S and 6. The Touch 5 scores almost the same as the 4S despite pushing more pixels. If your argument was being applied here, the Touch 5 would perform significantly worse than the 4S due to that extra pixel push. The same with the iPad Mini vs iPad 2. Same situation - nearly the same processor, yet the nearly 2 inches smaller Mini which would be pushing fewer pixels does not automatically perform better than the iPad 2.

The increase in performance between the 6 and 6S due to the A9 is massive, and even if the chip was under-clocked, would still be big - the A8 will come nowhere close to it.

Putting an A8 in this thing regardless of a difference resolution is going to prematurely age it, as essentially a 2014 product, where as the A9 is a more modern chip.
[doublepost=1453774523][/doublepost]

How about no protector at all and just use the glass as it was intended?

Because some of us like our iPhones to be non scratched

 

[Mac 128]

No... they're not being broadsided with the full price of the phone.

At Verizon, for instance, they used to have signs like this next to the iPhone:

$199
$99
$0

And now they have this:

$27.08/month
$31.25/month
$34.41/month

You are NOT forced to pay the full price for an iPhone today. Honestly... nothing has really changed. Here's why:

You used to pay $199 down and then the other $450 was included in your bill. They called it a "subsidy" but YOU were actually paying for it over the next 24 months.

Now... you actually see how much of your bill is for the service and how much is for the phone itself.

The end result is still the same. You're getting a $650 phone by paying for it over 24 months like you always did.

I would argue that it's easier to understand today since you clearly see what you're paying for.

No more hidden $450 "subsidy" tucked inside your bill.

Oh I understand how it works. But sometimes what a customer doesn't know is easier, regardless if it's better. The old way, they appeared to pay once for the phone, and the rest was rolled into their bill. Now they have to manually calculate what their rate plan is, plus their monthly payment for the phone on their own to figure it all out. And is that locked, or unlocked? In the end it's better for them, but I don't think it's easier. Easier is -- the phone costs $200, and the contract costs: $70/month. Don't have to think about it again for two years. Is it better? Yes. Easier? No.

So for someone who hasn't upgraded their phone in two years since they last bought a brand new iPhone 6 on contract, they are in for a whole new world of cell phone pricing when it comes time to upgrade to an iPhone 7.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Oh I understand how it works. But sometimes what a customer doesn't know is easier, regardless if it's better. The old way, they appeared to pay once for the phone, and the rest was rolled into their bill. Now they have to manually calculate what their rate plan is, plus their monthly payment for the phone on their own to figure it all out. And is that locked, or unlocked? In the end it's better for them, but I don't think it's easier. Easier is -- the phone costs $200, and the contract costs: $70/month. Don't have to think about it again for two years. Is it better? Yes. Easier? No.

So for someone who hasn't upgraded their phone in two years since they last bought a brand new iPhone 6 on contract, they are in for a whole new world of cell phone pricing when it comes time to upgrade to an iPhone 7.

A customer doesn't have to manually calculate their bill.

When I got my latest iPhone after these changes have been made... the salesman had a worksheet where they tallied up all the various parts of your bill:

Here's how much the basic line costs per month (voice and texts)
Pick your data plan and here's how much it costs per month
Pick your phone and here's how much it costs per month
Insurance? Here's how much it costs per month
etc...

Then they add it up and that's how much you pay each month. It's not hard to comprehend.

The salesmen spells it out pretty well. No customer has to figure anything out on their own. They had a similar worksheet the old way too.

You're gonna spend some time in the carrier store with the salesman explaining things regardless... and you don't sign the paperwork until you understand everything.

I agree that it's different... but I wouldn't call it hard. And with all carriers dumping contracts/subsidies and switching to payment plans... you're gonna have to learn it sometime.

Side note: I would imagine most people used to get the latest iPhone in the 16GB capacity because it was the cheapest option up front. You needed $200 before you could even walk out the door.

But if you wanted the top-end iPhone the old way... you needed $500 immediately!

Now... you don't need to pay anything up front. The cheapest current iPhone is $27 a month and the most expensive iPhone is $40 a month... versus $200 to $500 up front.

I would definitely call not having to pay $500 up front "easier"