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When to Expect the iPhone SE 4 or So-Called 'iPhone 16E' to Launch

motrek said:
I suppose the modern successor to the 5 1/4" floppy is the USB flash drive, which can hold a jillion times more data, is a jillion times faster, is smaller, and is more durable. You'd have to be a complete idiot to prefer the former.

Can we honestly say that Face ID is much better than Touch ID? ... Actually, is it any better at all?

I've never owned a phone with Face ID but I'm constantly seeing people around me being forced to enter their PINs because Face ID has failed in whatever particular situation they were trying to use it in.

While I can go for weeks without having to enter my phone password with Touch ID...
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The only time I need to enter my pin is when I do not present my face to the FaceID sensor.

A TouchID equivalent would be I just finished of a bag of Doritos, all my fingers are cheesy, and I have yet to lick my fingers. I need to use my knuckle to get into my phone and have not set that up as a fingerprint for TouchID. I enter my pin with my knuckle.
 
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McKodiak said:
The only time I need to enter my pin is when I do not present my face to the FaceID sensor.

A TouchID equivalent would be I just finished of a bag of Doritos, all my fingers are cheesy, and I have yet to lick my fingers. I need to use my knuckle to get into my phone and have not set that up as a fingerprint for TouchID. I enter my pin with my knuckle.
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There are many times when I want to unlock my phone and my face is not directly in front of it. I keep my phone on my desk while I'm working and when I get a notification, I will often unlock my phone with my finger and look at it from a steep angle to see if anything needs my attention. I can't imagine that Face ID would work in this situation. Having to pick up my phone to do the same sounds SUPER annoying.

Also, the phone holder in my car works fine but doesn't point the phone at my face. There are times when I want to unlock my phone while I'm driving (or stopped, anyway) without taking it out of the holder. I can't imagine Face ID would work in those cases either, I'll have to take my phone out of the holder and point it at my face in order to do anything with it. Not looking forward to that, either.

My point is, I don't think Face ID is obviously better than Touch ID, so comparing it to a no-brainer advance in technology is not the right way to think about it.
 
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eatrains said:
The phones in your list of phablets are bigger than the mini.
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It depends on what you measure. What I was referring to is that some had a smaller screen diagonal (smaller than the mini’s 5.4”).
 
klasma said:
It depends on what you measure. What I was referring to is that some had a smaller screen diagonal (smaller than the mini’s 5.4”).
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Measuring screen diagonals is not a great way to compare these devices.

I don't think it's valid to compare the diagonal of a rectangular screen where all the space is usable, vs. a screen with severely rounded corners and a notch/cutout at the top and the bottom of the screen devoted to a big virtual home button.
 
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klasma said:
You mean mid-Apple-fiscal-year.
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Yep.
eatrains said:
It's almost 6" tall and 3" wide. It's absolutely a phablet.
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No it’s not. It is a smartphone.
klasma said:
Phones with displays as small as 4.6” were considered phablets: https://www.gottabemobile.com/defin...ts-predict-208-million-units-to-ship-by-2015/
Even the iPhone mini would probably have been considered a phablet (aspect ratios were different back then though).
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It was 2015, we are in 2025. ten years ago.
That’s why I wrote the term phablet doesn’t exist anymore.
 
motrek said:
I suppose the modern successor to the 5 1/4" floppy is the USB flash drive, which can hold a jillion times more data, is a jillion times faster, is smaller, and is more durable. You'd have to be a complete idiot to prefer the former.

Can we honestly say that Face ID is much better than Touch ID? ... Actually, is it any better at all?

I've never owned a phone with Face ID but I'm constantly seeing people around me being forced to enter their PINs because Face ID has failed in whatever particular situation they were trying to use it in.

While I can go for weeks without having to enter my phone password with Touch ID...
Click to expand...
Anecdotes are all well and good -- but past a certain point, they are all highly subject to interpretation.

You say you are "constantly" observing people who have issues with Face ID. (I would be tempted to question that assertion -- but let's take it at face value, for the sake of conversation.) Thing is... I've gone for weeks without any issues with Face ID. Does that somehow make me better at technology than the people who you've observed? Of course not. It's an anecdote. It means only that one person's personal observations are different from another's.

Paralleling that, you also observe that you can go for weeks without an issue with Touch ID. Well, I had an iPhone 6 with Touch ID before I bought an iPhone X with Face ID, and I've had multiple iPads with Touch ID. It worked well enough most of the time, but it was by no means perfect. I know all too well the struggle that Touch ID can present when it decides for one reason or another that it just doesn't want to play. I am also all too familiar with that annoying initial task of training it to recognize a fingerprint in the first place. Do my past struggles somehow make you better at technology than me? Once again, of course not. It's an anecdote.

The point is, what matters most isn't necessarily the details surrounding our anecdotes. It's the overall trends surrounding them. People migrate to newer technologies, over time. That's just a thing. You can like it or dislike it and you can complain or celebrate it -- but there's really not much you can do to stop it.

Me, I'd rather be the guy figuring out how to bend that new technology to my will. Oh, I'm sure I'll complain now and again, along the way, while I work my way up the learning curve... but it's a matter of mindset: I just think it's more interesting to complain about new toys than it is to complain about not being able to find those old toys that I used to enjoy playing with.

(Poor old codger... I really did feel sorry for him. But the fact was, nobody sold systems with 5 1/4" drives, anymore. You just have to move on, at some point.)
 
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zarmanto said:
Anecdotes are all well and good -- but past a certain point, they are all highly subject to interpretation.

You say you are "constantly" observing people who have issues with Face ID. (I would be tempted to question that assertion -- but let's take it at face value, for the sake of conversation.) Thing is... I've gone for weeks without any issues with Face ID. Does that somehow make me better at technology
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Nobody is saying that anybody is "better at technology."

My claim is that Face ID isn't actually a better technology than Touch ID. Newer? Sure. But what if Apple came out with Face ID first and then Touch ID? Then Touch ID would be newer. Which one is newer is kind of irrelevant.

So it's not a matter of "don't be a goober who still wants to use floppy disks."

We're not talking about a clearly superior technology (e.g. USB flash drives) vs. a clearly inferior technology (floppy disks).
 
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eatrains said:
The phones in your list of phablets are bigger than the mini.
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The original iPhone had a 3.5” display, as time has gone on cell phones have gotten bigger and bigger. The mini like the original iPhone sizes aren’t in demand as consumers want larger and larger devices. Apple stopped making the mini because there was not enough demand, that and App interfaces are geared for larger screen phones. I understand you want the mini form factor, hell I want the TouchBar to make a comeback. Neither one of us is getting our wish. Time has moved on. If you’re so hard up for a mini phone, check out Android: they have a few options at the size you’re looking for… Apple won’t miss you. 😉
 
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FlyingDutch said:
No it’s not. It is a smartphone.
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A Hummer is a vehicle, but still huge. A phablet is a smartphone, but still a phablet.


SFjohn said:
The original iPhone had a 3.5” display, as time has gone on cell phones have gotten bigger and bigger. The mini like the original iPhone sizes aren’t in demand as consumers want larger and larger devices. Apple stopped making the mini because there was not enough demand, that and App interfaces are geared for larger screen phones. I understand you want the mini form factor, hell I want the TouchBar to make a comeback. Neither one of us is getting our wish. Time has moved on. If you’re so hard up for a mini phone, check out Android: they have a few options at the size you’re looking for… Apple won’t miss you. 😉
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None of which makes these phones not phablets. They're huge. And no, Android doesn't have any non-phablets either.
 
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eatrains said:
A Hummer is a vehicle, but still huge. A phablet is a smartphone, but still a phablet.



None of which makes these phones not phablets. They're huge. And no, Android doesn't have any non-phablets either.
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You can call phones whatever you want. I know a someone that brought the new iPad mini with cell service to be their main phone. I’m planning to get an iPhone 17 Pro Max later this year, because that size works for me. I guess you’ll have to deal with a ~6” phone because no one is making anything smaller. There’s. No. Market. For. It. Unless you want a smartwatch… 😉
 
eatrains said:
A Hummer is a vehicle, but still huge. A phablet is a smartphone, but still a phablet.
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An Hummer is huge COMPARED to other cars. An iPhone 16 is equal or smaller than most of the other smartphones.
eatrains said:
None of which makes these phones not phablets. They're huge. And no, Android doesn't have any non-phablets either.
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Since ALL OF THEM are similar in dimensions, the term phablet doesn’t mean anything anymore
 
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Probably by April with a starting price of $499. If Apple decides to go with 16E, we might see yearly refresh to the device.
 
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FlyingDutch said:
An Hummer is huge COMPARED to other cars. An iPhone 16 is equal or smaller than most of the other smartphones.

Since ALL OF THEM are similar in dimensions, the term phablet doesn’t mean anything anymore
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These "phones" are huge COMPARED to a normal phone. Just because they're all big doesn't make them not big.
 
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eatrains said:
No, I'm living a life where I actually leave the couch. For an actual mobile device, these phablets are too big.
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Wear an Apple Watch Ultra in black. Leave your phone at home. Problem solved if you take a few days to set up the watch correctly for the first time. No watch too big compared to the phablets you see everywhere, which everyone else calls phones. 👍🏻
 
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motrek said:
There are many times when I want to unlock my phone and my face is not directly in front of it. I keep my phone on my desk while I'm working and when I get a notification, I will often unlock my phone with my finger and look at it from a steep angle to see if anything needs my attention. I can't imagine that Face ID would work in this situation. Having to pick up my phone to do the same sounds SUPER annoying.

Also, the phone holder in my car works fine but doesn't point the phone at my face. There are times when I want to unlock my phone while I'm driving (or stopped, anyway) without taking it out of the holder. I can't imagine Face ID would work in those cases either, I'll have to take my phone out of the holder and point it at my face in order to do anything with it. Not looking forward to that, either.

My point is, I don't think Face ID is obviously better than Touch ID, so comparing it to a no-brainer advance in technology is not the right way to think about it.
Click to expand...
If I may interject into the discussion of Touch ID being superior to Face ID, or vice versa, I will say that my fingerprints are so worn out that my iPad almost never recognizes them and I have to enter a code when starting them. On the other hand, my iPhone has Face ID and I almost never have to enter a code. So it seems that my face is doing better than my fingers and that is why I am in favor of Face ID.
 
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endSE said:
If I may interject into the discussion of Touch ID being superior to Face ID, or vice versa, I will say that my fingerprints are so worn out that my iPad almost never recognizes them and I have to enter a code when starting them. On the other hand, my iPhone has Face ID and I almost never have to enter a code. So it seems that my face is doing better than my fingers and that is why I am in favor of Face ID.
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I don’t like Touch ID. same problem here with iPad, very unreliable. I won’t buy another iPad with Touch ID. I’ll get an iPad Pro next with Face ID.
 
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As someone who uses TouchID and FaceID across devices each day, I find them both to be hit or miss

Sometimes it makes no sense to me as to why one is working well or not
 
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