Things like large 1” camera sensors, SiC batteries that offer 6-8k mAh, and other cool tech that would improve phones a lot. It’s not just Chinese brands either (e.g. Sony has an optical zoom camera on their flagship, Nothing has some excellent budget to midrange offerings).
It seems really weird, Apple/Samsung/Google are massive companies with so much money, yet they don’t try to offer this kind of tech on even their most expensive phones. In contrast, other phone makers have budget to midrange phones with insane battery capacities, Ultra models with innovative cameras, etc.
To me, it makes sense that Apple isn’t offering these kinds of things. They’re already extremely profitable and have the whole walled garden ecosystem that draws people in. Google focuses more on software rather than hardware, and their cameras are helped by software magic.
What surprises me is that Samsung isn’t trying to get better hardware to get more market share. If they had huge SiC batteries, large camera sensors, or other cool tech, it would definitely help sway buyers from Apple and other brands.
Especially since Samsung is struggling against both Chinese competition and, to a lesser extent, Indian competition. And in the U.S., they certainly want to steal market share from Apple.
What is with the reluctance of these massive tech companies from using the latest tech in their phones?
There was a video by PolyMatter recently on the economics of why Apple cannot yet move the bulk of iPhone manufacturing away from China (available on Nebula and on YouTube). This is perhaps the singular quote which helps answer your question, around the 02:35 mark:
Any country can assemble the iPhone. But Apple doesn’t need to make an iPhone, it needs to make 590 every minute, it needs 35,000 per hour, 849,000 per day, 5.9 million per week. That’s the challenge facing Apple.
The sheer scale of Apple’s manufacturing – setting aside Samsung’s also humongous scale – means that there might not be a supplier for that quantity of large image sensor or new-tech batteries. Now, Apple could drive that sort of market, and they probably are working on it. But as the video explains, Apple’s style is more about finding an edge which they can exclusively hone, up to and including the outright buying out of the supplier. This keeps them ahead of the competition, at least for long enough until it doesn’t matter anymore.
In some ways, this might sound like Apple has a touch of Not Invented Here Syndrome, but realistically, consumers expect that Apple is going to do something so outlandish and non-standard that to simply be jumping onto a bandwagon of “already researched” technology would be considered a failure. They are, after all, a market leader, irrespective of what one might think about the product itself.
Historical example of heavy R&D paying dividends until it stopped being relevant: Sony’s Trinitron CRT patent expired just around the time that LCDs started showing up in the consumer space. Any competitor could finally start producing CRT TVs with the same qualities as a Sony Trinitron TV, but why would they? The world had moved on, and so had Sony.
In brief, Apple probably can’t deliver to the world a new iPhone with massive image sensors right now. But that certainly doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have their camera team looking into it and working with partners to scale up the manufacturing, such as by increasing yield or being very clever, probably both. Ever since that one time an iPhone prototype was found in a Bay Area bar, their opsec for new prototypes has been top notch. So we’ll only know when we know.
Oh, that makes sense. Apple/Samsung manufactures way too many phones for the new and upcoming tech like SiC batteries and super large image sensors. Hopefully Apple (eventually) innovates again instead of adding yet another button.
If the tech proves out and scales, Apple and Samsung will eventually incorporate it but by that time the smaller players will have moved on to newer tech.
Turning the question around, too, it is clear why small manufacturers MUST use all the top spec parts: they don’t have Apple or Google’s brand and ecosystem of services to fall back on. Who’s going to buy a phone from a nobody brand with no services or ecosystem that also has crappy specs? Apple and Google can get away with it, and cheaper parts are cheaper which helps their profit margins. Small brands have to try hard to wow the world and get noticed. One way to do that is to compete on specs. In my opinion it’s a crappy way. But it’s a way.
YouTube video as a source. And nebula ad as a cherry on top. Nice!
The latest tech isn’t proven to last, might be harder to integrate, might require making design choices that affect the production line, the reliability of the phone, the battery longevity, the supply chain, the operating system, etc. Using the newest tech is a surefire way to make sure you have to do a recall, if you’re the biggest companies on the planet.
A marketing prof once told me that a lot of phone companies, Apple in specific, split their projects up into several releases as a form of planned obsolescence. You’re more likely to find this in matured and established brand names because they have the power of goodwill to retain their market share whereas an up and coming company relies on being innovative in the sense of being early adopters of new, sometimes not fully tested, technology.
So for example, you see 3 iPhones being released in the span of 2 years. Those were likely 1 project released in a deliberately staggered manner so that “fanboys” “early movers” “brand loyal” (basically materialistic people who either don’t understand or love being manipulated by corps) will pay for 1 project that a team worked on, 3 separate times.
I bought the first iPhone when it was released. It didn’t have stereo bluetooth support, that was on the newer iPhone 3G.
However, except for the network adapter, both were hardware-wise exactly the same.
I found a kext file in my phone, that had disabled the function, as in:
“Bluetooth_stereo = false”
After enabling that, it worked like a charm.
That was the last iPhone I ever bought.
Ah so things like Apple Intelligence being a staggered release
I’ve been off apple products for over a decade now other than my 2012 macbook that I basically just use as an exclusively youtube player so I’m not too familiar with Apple Intelligence, it looks like it’s their proprietary AI algorithm so in that case, it’s less staggered release and more the fact that AI gets better the more it is interacted with.
In a nutshell, most of the promised features of Apple Intelligence wasn’t released on launch (notably, still no smart Siri), at first only things like image playground and note summaries.
It’s possible that was deliberate but they don’t usually announce things they don’t originally plan on releasing as that can damage their reputation. Possible that they truly couldn’t meet deadlines or that they were purposely trying to create hype, hard to say without being upper management in Apple
Yeah, Apple Intelligence really was half-baked. Apple be Apple I guess
Ya we’re talking about the company that secretly throttled phone performance and battery life so nothings outside the realm of possibility
Samsung, being the largest manufacturer of South Korea, has an incentive to keep their production as in-house as possible. Which is why they’re reluctant to license technology that they can build themselves, such as cameras.
That makes a lot of sense. Samsung’s displays are also quite good too.
I still find it strange that they’re not trying to develop SiC batteries though, esp. for their foldables and thin “Edge” puone
Most people don’t really care about cool tech, they want a phone that just works
I would argue that everyone wants more battery life and most people would appreciate better cameras too. Cool tech is useful tech. There’s a reason why other companies are adopting it
I really don’t think the average person cares at all about improving the current picture quality of phone cameras. The pictures get posted on instagram or sent on a messaging app, and looked at once on a 6 inch screen. They are not getting printed. Most people wouldn’t even notice.
Battery life is a thing people would maybe appreciate, but then again, people seem to be fine with charging their phones overnight, and current phones seem to last one day on one charge.
But for instance, let’s say Samsung adopts SiC batteries. Battery life would be much better, so more people would buy Samsung phones over Apple and it would be one less advantage for going for the smaller brands vs Samsung. Plus, if you had two-day battery life, when the battery inevitably degrades, you’ll still have solid battery life.
when the battery inevitably degrades, you’ll still have solid battery life.
We used to have user replaceable batteries. The companies stopped making them and few people cared
We picking favourite features? Let’s talk about headphone jacks. Make it .3mm thicker if all that volume can be consolidated on the header jack they ditched because apparently it can’t fit and wasn’t feeding their radio earbud business enough.
SiC batteries would also help a lot for thinner phones like foldables (see Find N5 and XFold 5 from Oppo and Vivo compared to Samsung’s Z Fold 7) as well “thin phones” (see Samsung’s S25 Edge and Apple’s rumoured 17 Air)
Another thing, Qi2! Only Apple and the HMD Skyline support it. Why is that?
Leaks show that the upcoming pixels will have it. Also because Apple opened up the (magsafe) standard only in 2023, and it takes time to implement things.
E: first link that came up https://www.androidpolice.com/pixel-10-finally-qi2-pixelsnap-addons/
Apple was never leading edge - their goal is to incorporate when it works well
But you’re both cherry picking and wrong. There’s huge lists of features on every new phone, you’re picking two and deciding that means no innovation. Take a look at the dozens of other features on models from each manufacturer.
SiC batteries that offer 6-8k mAh
You’re complaining about battery chemistry that you believe is innovation, yet current batteries are much larger. Why switch if the technology is not as good yet?
Ask any apple fanboy/fanatic and they will tell you, and they will be correct: Apple rarely leads the charge. They wait and they bide their time, and they watch how a technology is applied and how it works well and how it fails, and then they engineer a solution that they believe to be a smoother user experience to everyone else, and only then do they drop a new tech.
Budget phone makers are trying to stand out and captivate a much smaller market segment, so they have to go big or go home, or else no one will care.
The big guys are so big that they can actually use the market itself as market research, and the big guys are so big they can hold out until they know they have a stable, proven solution.
Didn’t they just kill that big 3d glasses after like 5 years everyone else and their dog did 3d glasses and gave up?
In Jobs time there was this perception that Apple does everything perfect. Then he dies and the perception stayed. It was never true, but now it’s so much further from truth. Charging mouse from the underside is plain stupid.
:cough: AI :cough:
