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iPhone 15 Pro There are almost no upgrades left for iphones

Other than improved SOC and telephoto lens as well as Thunderbolt 4 connector. That's about it. Software improvements to battery life and performance as well as split screen multi-tasking and true reverse wireless charging.
 
I wonder back in the early 1900s folks said the same about the automobile…

“Ohhhh big deal the new 1916 Model T now has electric lights - how innovative Mr. Ford…same car for a decade. The car has reached its peak!”


I’m still waiting for my holograph projector … maybe by iPhone 25.
 
Still waiting for sensor size to be greater than an inch at same 48 MP. Perhaps Variable Zoom all on the same single sensor perhaps, so theres only one (or max 2 lenses, for spatial pics). I’d also like a better selfie cam.

That and Battery to have some form of quantum leap (most probably due to a new gen tech).

I honestly don’t care about having a notch or a notchless display as some other folks do. I have never thought about it since the day it first arrived.

Screen tech has also peaked. Didn’t care about 120Hz. Wasn’t noticeable as much as folks claimed it would be. OLED was the last biggest update that mattered.
 
HackMacDaddy said:
computers used to look like this:

View attachment 2268573

Now they fit in your pocket and are million times more powerful. So I am absolutely sure that camera tech as well as battery tech can be improved to a point where we will get better performance without the need of being larger.
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That's different. You can't defy the laws of physics with capturing light. You're never going to have a lens like mirrorless cameras have in the iPhone. This is one area where innovation can only do so much. Nothing has changed in this area for decades.
 
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Bananasaurus said:
That's different. You can't defy the laws of physics with capturing light. You're never going to have a lens like mirrorless cameras have in the iPhone. This is one area where innovation can only do so much. Nothing has changed in this area for decades.
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I admit, I'm not educated on that, but still I can imagine some supplier will invent "Laser Photography XDR" or something, pair it with AI and we will get something you would never thought is possible.
 
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george88 said:
- Iphone chips are at 3nm, they can barely get any smaller, so no more big cpu/gpu upgrades forever
- Camera upgrades are only limited to increasing optical zoom, in the next 5 years all Apple is gonna do is slowly increase the zoom to 10x, quality has barely changed in the last 5 years
- No other "big features" left besides TouchID under display
- No big cosmetic changes left for the phone, since the Iphone X it's basically looked the same every year

Basically there's nothing left to look forward to. Iphones have reached their peak.
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well advancements are only made if someone imagines something and brings it to paper and builds it. if u have no imagination then u cant imagina any advancements
 
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Almost no uogrades left? There is still a huge pill in the screen.

A camera under neath screen is the biggest upgrade Apple still has not made.

Did you guys hear about foldable phones which Apple will copy at some point?
 
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Zest28 said:
Almost no uogrades left? There is still a huge pill in the screen.

A camera under neath screen is the biggest upgrade Apple still has not made.

Did you guys hear about foldable phones which Apple will copy at some point?
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"Almost no" yes, not "none". What you talk about are minor cosmetic updates, that would be nice, but not groundbreaking.


As for foldable phones.. this could be a big update, but it's apple, i doubt they will do it
 
I agree with the original poster. The phones are pretty much done.

The problem is now that it's the peak of the product cycle so the minor enhancements we're seeing now tend to result in a net decline of quality because "we have to do something!!!!!!!" becomes the imperative.
 
Apart from the fact that there is a lot of potential for hardware upgrades in the upcoming years, while keeping in mind that of course a product that has evolved like the Smartphone has, will have a flattening curve of innovation, my guess would be that at least for Apple the main impetus of innovation will be integration. Integration of Services, integration of other Apple-centric hardware, as they did with the screen-control-thing, with handoff, with FindMy and so on and which will really take off with Vision NonPro, which might make good use of Phone, Watch and Headphones, integration of further software innovation (much of the new features of AW9 ist software evolution). Plus integration of AI, which for Apple is a different playing field than for ChatGPT, as I think they will find ways to add it more or less seamless into the existing UX – and I see a lot of potential here, not only for an AI-driven Siri, but also for Tasks, Calendar, the new Journal, Mail, Music, Health, Fitness+ and so on – the scope of what large learning model-based software could do on a device like the iPhone is amazing and the privacy Apple is selling as part of the parcel will be an important factor here.
 
Quite the opposite, we have only just begun, the tech just isn’t there yet, true innovation is a ways away, but it’s coming.
 
dk001 said:
Just reading through this thread I had to bust out laughing a time or two.
Just by reading some of the posts here and other places, there are a lot of improvements in both hardware and software that could be done. No upgrades? Not by a long shot!
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It's always helpful to provide examples with statements like these :)

Also I think when people say "no upgrades left" they are referring to current or reasonably realistic near-future technology. Saying "the battery can be upgraded to last a year" or "we can get holographic displays" is kinda pointless. Truth is, it's been a while since we saw something with a wow-factor like face-ID. Everyone knows the cameras will get slightly better each year and the screen a few % brighter.

What upgrades do you envision for iPhone 18, for example?
 
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george88 said:
- Iphone chips are at 3nm, they can barely get any smaller, so no more big cpu/gpu upgrades forever
- Camera upgrades are only limited to increasing optical zoom, in the next 5 years all Apple is gonna do is slowly increase the zoom to 10x, quality has barely changed in the last 5 years
- No other "big features" left besides TouchID under display
- No big cosmetic changes left for the phone, since the Iphone X it's basically looked the same every year

Basically there's nothing left to look forward to. Iphones have reached their peak.
Click to expand...
iPhones have been stagnant because one of the many ways Tim Cook squeezes every drop of money he can from iPhone sales is to limit spending on research and development while keeping sales prices extortionately high.
 
sack_peak said:
Hopefully Apple doubles data throughput every chip generation if most end users actually use the feature.
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Hopefully we won't be on USB 3.1 for 12 more years. Thinking Thunderbolt 4 on iPhone 16 Pro Max and/or the Ultra with the non-Pro models getting USB 3.1. Right now it's better than 480 Mbps on iPhone 14 and earlier.
 
jcp007 said:
Hopefully we won't be on USB 3.1 for 12 more years. Thinking Thunderbolt 4 on iPhone 16 Pro Max and/or the Ultra with the non-Pro models getting USB 3.1. Right now it's better than 480 Mbps on iPhone 14 and earlier.
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This is my hopeful iPhone USB-C data throughput timeline

- 2024: A18 Pro 20Gbps
- 2025: A19 Pro 40Gbps
- 2026: A20 Pro 80Gbps
- 2027: A21 Pro 120Gbps

When that occurs hopefully macOS on iPhone will happen when connected to a USB-C display with these I/O

- Thunderbolt 4
- Ethernet
- USB-A
- Headphone
- SDXC slot
 
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I do get the original posters point.

There are some limits we've reached or are close to in terms of the perfection of the current design for iPhones. You could see the pixels in the first iPhone. This stopped around iPhone 4 and as the screen tech improved and the resolution and brilliance is now so high/great that there's not much more you could do to make things look better to the average person's eyes. We have a 120hz display. We're at the point where humans eyes aren't good enough to benefit from further improvements.

There was a time when I had to charge my phone multiple times a day, when I had to keep brightness down low and turn off a load of stuff running in the background to try to keep decent enough battery life. That finally stopped around the iPhone 8 for me and is no longer an issue. Sure we'll get better battery tech, better power saving tech, but we're at (for most users) close to all day battery life, so we're at that peak.

Then there are things like Camera tech, again unless you're a professional photographer we already have great quality photos. Why do I need more megapixels? Why do 99% of users?

You will notice jumps in speed and features as IOS is developed and if you skip a few iPhone models, but things seem to have stopped being big yearly ups around the point of Iphone 6.

We've had the same form-factor for years, piece of glass, minimal buttons. It would be fascinating to see real innovation from apple to produce something different. If apple can release a beautiful, creaseless folding phone that'd be one Idea (but hardly revolutionary).
 
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Marbles1 said:
I do get the original posters point.

There are some limits we've reached or are close to in terms of the perfection of the current design for iPhones. You could see the pixels in the first iPhone. This stopped around iPhone 4 and as the screen tech improved and the resolution and brilliance is now so high/great that there's not much more you could do to make things look better to the average person's eyes. We have a 120hz display. We're at the point where humans eyes aren't good enough to benefit from further improvements.

There was a time when I had to charge my phone multiple times a day, when I had to keep brightness down low and turn off a load of stuff running in the background to try to keep decent enough battery life. That finally stopped around the iPhone 8 for me and is no longer an issue. Sure we'll get better battery tech, better power saving tech, but we're at (for most users) close to all day battery life, so we're at that peak.

Then there are things like Camera tech, again unless you're a professional photographer we already have great quality photos. Why do I need more megapixels? Why do 99% of users?

You will notice jumps in speed and features as IOS is developed and if you skip a few iPhone models, but things seem to have stopped being big yearly ups around the point of Iphone 6.

We've had the same form-factor for years, piece of glass, minimal buttons. It would be fascinating to see real innovation from apple to produce something different. If apple can release a beautiful, creaseless folding phone that'd be one Idea (but hardly revolutionary).
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folding phones are a useless end expesnive piece of tech its a gimmick. just look the galaxy fold its crazy fragile and crazy expensive. i will never buy any foldable phone neither android nor iOS
 
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OnawaAfrica said:
folding phones are a useless end expesnive piece of tech its a gimmick. just look the galaxy fold its crazy fragile and crazy expensive. i will never buy any foldable phone neither android nor iOS
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A problem with folding phones is their added thickness and weight.

Imagine putting two iPhone Pro Max phones together to get double screen size & double battery.

It would weigh roughly 1 pound. The last 1 pound phone was 3 decades ago with the IBM and BellSouth Simon Personal Communicator
 
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They can continue to work on the weight of the phones. We should have Pro Max phones that weigh around 6oz or 170grams.
 
OP wrote….

“iPhone chips are at 3nm, they can barely get any smaller, so no more big cpu/gpu upgrades forever
- Camera upgrades are only limited to increasing optical zoom, in the next 5 years all Apple is gonna do is slowly increase the zoom to 10x, quality has barely changed in the last 5 years
- No other "big features" left besides TouchID under display
- No big cosmetic changes left for the phone, since the Iphone X it's basically looked the same every year”


https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/19/apple-silicon-next-upgrade-in-2026/

Then we may have this above. Along with other innovations. Months and years down the road there’s always improvement.
 
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Fat_Guy said:
They could pull that off, but the R&D and cost to other sub-manufacturers and programming would severely cut into the profit margin of the phone. Apple Inc. is a business to make money.
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Sure but so are all businesses, including the ones that build their brands around innovation, which somewhat begrudgingly includes Apple. But their current management has seen the iPhone become their Bread & Butter and have taken an extremely protectionist stance on it. Take big risks anywhere elsewhere in the line but don't risk upsetting the Apple cart by screwing around with the iPhone. Unfortunately that also aligns with the value extraction approach (pulling every nickel & dime out of the product cost + premium pricing x the massive volume = shareholder bliss) to produce a very nice but less & less exciting & seemingly stale product over time. To change that, Apple would need to see customer malaise become a sales falloff costlier than the expense & risk of dramatically changing what the iphone currently is. Or just different management w different priorities... somehow.

Instead they gently stroke their cash cows pretty fur, and experiment elsewhere, pumping the innovation into watches & AppleVision. When I think about it, those are less narrowly & rigidly defined product categories with more potential to be interesting than a brick in ones pocket anyway.
 
ThomasJL said:
iPhones have been stagnant because one of the many ways Tim Cook squeezes every drop of money he can from iPhone sales is to limit spending on research and development while keeping sales prices extortionately high.
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Apple is spending record amount on R&D, but that doesn't mean it's on the iPhone.

www.consumerelectronicstestdevelopment.com

Consumer Electronics Test and Development - Apple sets new record for R&D spending in 2022

New figures reveal that Apple spent a record $26.25 billion on research and development in 2022, a rise of about four billion from 2021.
www.consumerelectronicstestdevelopment.com www.consumerelectronicstestdevelopment.com

I just want something more interesting that camera upgrades. I'm not sure what, but I just don't care about the iPhone cameras much. I have zero interest in VR/AR.
 
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