Leaker: Apple to Downgrade iPhone 18 in Two Ways

[Jeremy3292]

I will take a look at the Air 2 in hopes they fixed all the compromises the first gen device had, but it looks like the base 17 could be one of those unicorn iPhones that come out not so often that you keep for a few years. A lot of us on here said as much when it was released. Huge leap from 15 and 16 and it is only $799.

$99 for a new battery anyone in a year or so? 😎

 

[Ct applefan]

who are we pinning this on? tim or ternus?

This reeks of Tim’s final money grab

 

[JPack]

If true, this is a horrible move and will result in reduced customer satisfaction scores and less sales. It’s worth it for them to just eat the cost of keeping it the same as 17.

When you say less sales, does that mean more customers will forgo the iPhone 18 and choose the single camera iPhone 18e? Buy Android? Or completely drop out of the iPhone ecosystem?

 

[Happy_John]

Let me distill this down to what it will very likely mean:

iPhone 18 will probably have the same size notches the iPhone 17 series and not receive the smaller Dynamic Island cut-out.

I don;t think so, this would be too obvious a backwards step. It will still have a dynamic island, but the same island and same screen as the current model.

iPhone 18 will have a four core GPU A20, instead of five.

If it's a faster chip over, this won't be seen as a downgrade. They just need to present "speed numbers" to be able to sew it's "the fastest (non-pro) iPhone yet".

iPhone 18 will not get the LTPO+ panels that the iPhone 18 Pro and Fold/Ultra will receive. It will stick with the current LTPO. Apple will *NOT* downgrade the 3000 nits brightness.

Yes, they won't downgrade. They simply won't upgrade. Not the same thing as a downgrade.

It’s possible that the 18 Pro models will have higher than 3000 nits brightness.

Possibly, but again, that's an upgrade to the Pros. An upgrade to the pros that is not given to the base phone is not a downgrade to the base phone.

 

[jarman92]

Users enter the Apple ecosystem at $599. Just like the MacBook Neo, the iPhone E-series is a Trojan horse to lock in users at a young age. It's not ancillary, it's about investing into the next billion iPhone users.

Where's the next growth market for iPhone? Developing markets like India. Those consumers have no chance buying a $799 iPhone when their average annual salary is $3,000 to $4,000.

Soooooo it's an ancillary product line, at best ("ancillary" does not mean unimportant or irrelevant). Apple has been wildly successful for the past two decades without the e line, and the "base" iPhone remains the best-selling phone in the world (followed by the Pro and the Pro Max).

And regardless, as you said it's the price point that's important to developing markets, not the product line; so increasing the price point but maintaining the product line makes no sense, especially when Apple can just merge it with the "base" line.

Not saying Apple will do that, but it's logical from an outside perspective.

 

[jarman92]

3D Touch says hi.

iPhone 11 Pro/Max users remember.

Not remotely the same thing.

 

[capamac]

Emerging market consumers have little credit to begin with. They buy phones outright. In mature markets, these are prepaid phone customers. The main reason they're on prepaid is because they don't have enough credit.

All of this means the $599 iPhone is critical for Apple, not just a side thought.

Yeah, in the U.S. the use of credit hides the true and in my opinion inflated price of the iPhone.

The only reasone iPhone has mass market appeal in the U.S. is because the cost is hidden and spread out over time.

If the iPhone were only available for purchase outright with a single full price payment, it wouldn't sell nearly as well, coz then the inflated price would make is readily apparent how poor a value the iPhone is at present prices.

 

[roklanhavok]

I highly doubt Apple will be lowering the quality of any component. Lowering relative to the Pro yes, but still better than last year's model.

 

[JPack]

Soooooo it's an ancillary product line, at best ("ancillary" does not mean unimportant or irrelevant). Apple has been wildly successful for the past two decades without the e line, and the "base" iPhone remains the best-selling phone in the world (followed by the Pro and the Pro Max).

And regardless, as you said it's the price point that's important to developing markets, not the product line; so increasing the price point but maintaining the product line makes no sense, especially when Apple can just merge it with the "base" line.

Not saying Apple will do that, but it's logical from an outside perspective.

Unless you believe Apple can drop the base iPhone 18 down to $599 or even $649, then the E-line needs to exist.

The whole point of iPhone 16e was that Apple could not drop the price of iPhone 16 down to $599. They needed something especially engineered for $599. This is the same as MacBook Neo.

$599 is a long way from $799. Even a price hike of $50 across the board, $649 is a long way from $849 and far more affordable for developing market consumers.

 

[JPack]

Not remotely the same thing.

Both of them add or reduce cost to the display.

Tell me how it's different.

 

[platinumaqua]

Remove the camera button before lowering screen quality

I would gladly trade the camera button for a physical SIM slot since the button as implemented right now isn't very useful.

 

[smorrissey]

Forget about the iphone 18e having dynamic island...

 

[FasterQuieter]

Could be yield issues from switching to 2NM. I for one would rather get the new chip with a disabled core than the old chip.

 

[jarman92]

Both of them add or reduce cost to the display.

Tell me how it's different.

Because the removal of 3D Touch was not an immediately obvious downgrade to the quality of the display, and its removal was largely mitigated by the Haptic Touch.

 

[JPack]

Because the removal of 3D Touch was not an immediately obvious downgrade to the quality of the display, and its removal was largely mitigated by the Haptic Touch.

Peak display brightness is a feature rather than a quality. Being able to pump out 2,500 nits when outdoors instead of 3,000 nits is not immediately obvious to most people. The base brightness will still be 1,000 nits. Just like 3D Touch, most people will not notice.

 

[terrapinjess]

Why even release an 18. Just keep selling the 17. Despite the larger screen size (I traded my 13 mini while it still had some decent trading value), I’m so happy with it and it is a pretty big upgrade for me.
I do wish it was smaller because it already fell out of my pocket a few times. Also, the camera button is annoying (keep pressing it when picking the phone up, it doesn’t work to launch the camera sometimes and this happened last night at a concert!) but those are my only complaints.
What’s with the need to keep releasing a new model, especially when it will be supposedly downgraded. Oh… right… greedy, never-enough-money shareholders.

 

[capamac]

yeah phones today are far too large. My theory is most people use a phone as their sole computing device. They do not have a laptop nor desktop. Just the phone. So they want a big phone for the slighly less-unusable screen size which is a mere fraction the size of even a small laptop display.

 

[bodonnell202]

I wonder if they are planning to produce a new chip for the regular 18 and 18 Pro that isn't produced on TSMC's 2 nm process so there is a bigger performance difference between the Pro and non-pro phones. For the A20 line they could produce the A20 Pro chip on TSMC's 2 nm process, but then have the regular A20 made on a 3 nm process (N3X or N3C) with only a very modest performance improvement over the A19 chip. This way they could use mature (i.e. cheaper) manufacturing technology for the non Pro phones but avoid marketing them with last year's chip like they did with the iPhone 14 and iPhone 15.

 

[ab2c4]

I will take a look at the Air 2 in hopes they fixed all the compromises the first gen device had, but it looks like the base 17 could be one of those unicorn iPhones that come out not so often that you keep for a few years. A lot of us on here said as much when it was released. Huge leap from 15 and 16 and it is only $799.

$99 for a new battery anyone in a year or so? 😎

Shouldn’t need a battery for about 4 years. Supposed to last about 1000 charge cycles before hitting 80% health.

 

[stiligFox]

At the keynote they’ll say “This is not quite the best iPhone we’ve ever made…”

 

[ab2c4]

If they give the 18 the same processor as the 18e, it becomes a little harder to justify the extra $200 for the 18.

 

[Happy_John]

Could be yield issues from switching to 2NM. I for one would rather get the new chip with a disabled core than the old chip.

This. Framing a 2NM chip with a disabled core as a downgrade from a 3NM chip sounds a bit disingenuous of the article / leaker.

Next generation chips with disabled cores are not a downgrade. Standard models of all Macs come with binned M chips, you have to pay extra for an unbanned chip.

 

[coolkid93]

Pretty rich coming from the world’s richest company. But I’d start with Apple TV shows. Some of those people are getting paid way too much as well as top Apple Exec

 

[Happy_John]

If they give the 18 the same processor as the 18e, it becomes a little harder to justify the extra $200 for the 18.

Two cameras instead of one, 120hz variable rate promotion screen instead of 60hz. Dynamic island. That's your extra $200 of value.

I'm not saying it's worth $200, but that is the justification. These are things people can see directly. They can't see the chip directly.

Realistically, if the chip is fast enough to make all tasks on the phone feel fast enough, very few people will care about the core count. It's an iPhone, and all current A chips are pretty damn fast. It'll be the OS that makes it feel speedy or sluggish, not the CPU.

 

[Jeremy3292]

Shouldn’t need a battery for about 4 years. Supposed to last about 1000 charge cycles before hitting 80% health.

It'd be more like 3 years max as almost everyone uses 1 cycle daily (365 x 3 = 1095 cycles) and some use more per day. Also that's just cyclic aging and doesn't account for calendar aging of the battery.

In my experience when an iPhone battery gets down to around 90% capacity it feels noticeably different day to day on how long you can get out of it. For $99 I'm happy to get a new battery. I've done it before a few times as it makes the phone feel brand new. $99 vs $1,000+