I'm not seeing a hugely compelling reason to move on from my A13-powered iPhone 11 Pro. I've never had my battery go below 20%, even on vacation; the pictures are great already and the videos are quite solid for what they are, especially with the ability to do slo-mo which the kids LOVE with their sports and activities (jumping in the pool, scoring goals in soccer, video of them on Drop Zone rides, etc); and I can't remember ever having a hiccup with respect to the hardware. Everything I want to do is incredibly snappy on the A13.
Honestly, the lack of progress is a bit of a compliment. Their product (A13 in particular, but also the iPhone 11 Pro) is just so good that it's already at the limit of what even I could ever need from a phone, CPU/GPU wise.
Kudos to Apple because power savings will be wonderful for many, and the 15-30% speed increase of A15 over A13 might make a difference for some, but I'll be waiting another year.
I'm not seeing a hugely compelling reason to move on from my A13-powered iPhone 11 Pro. I've never had my battery go below 20%, even on vacation; the pictures are great already and the videos are quite solid for what they are, especially with the ability to do slo-mo which the kids LOVE with their sports and activities (jumping in the pool, scoring goals in soccer, video of them on Drop Zone rides, etc); and I can't remember ever having a hiccup with respect to the hardware. Everything I want to do is incredibly snappy on the A13.
Honestly, the lack of progress is a bit of a compliment. Their product (A13 in particular, but also the iPhone 11 Pro) is just so good that it's already at the limit of what even I could ever need from a phone, CPU/GPU wise.
Kudos to Apple because power savings will be wonderful for many, and the 15-30% speed increase of A15 over A13 might make a difference for some, but I'll be waiting another year.
Apple has a killer trade in program. That is why I am upgrading. It will only cost me a few hundred bucks for the Pro Max.
Yes you save money but trade-ins work with older iPhones too so it is cheaper to upgrade less often. Not that there's anything wrong with upgrading yearly if that's what you want, but most of us just don't need/notice/use the incremental improvements smartphones make every year whether Apple, Samsung, or whatever.
Not necessarily. That may be the case with the lower end models, but my wife's 2 year old iPhone was only worth $100 when trading in to the 12. Meanwhile my iPhone 11 Pro Max was worth more than $500. I don't recall the exact math, but when I did it at the time, upgrading both years came out narrowly ahead. This could have been a one time fluke, however. I don't care about the economics from it as long as it is affordable to me. I absolutely would not pay $800+ every year for a new phone, however.
The newer phones supposedly have an extremely durable screen. The drop tests are astounding. I have dropped my 12 Pro Max on a hard concrete floor twice (it has a case) and it survived without a scratch.Just checked and if I bought an iPhone 12 today (since iPhone 13 can't be ordered yet but I assume the trade in values will be the same on Friday) I'd get $790 trading in a 12 Pro Max, $500 trading in 11 Pro Max and $320 trading in an XS Max.
Since the Pro Max has been selling for $1100 the last few years that means it depreciates $310 in year one, $290 in year two, and $180 in year three.
So it costs you $310 plus sales tax on $1100 to upgrade every year - let's call it $380 since I'm at 6% sales tax. $600 plus tax to upgrade every other year - call it $670 or $335 per year. $780 plus tax to upgrade every third year, call it $850 or $283 per year.
I actually would have thought it would cost more to upgrade every year. The intangible this doesn't account for is that having a newer phone carries a bigger risk if you drop it and break the glass. I checked by answering as if I had an 12 Pro Max with a broken screen that is worth $790 otherwise and Apple won't even take it as a trade in - their page says they'll recycle it!
I checked Gazelle and it would be worth $178 (versus $435 in perfect condition) over a $600 hit from Apple's trade in value! Clearly getting it fixed for the $329 Apple charges would be a better deal, but still a $300 hit. iFixit charges $549 for a new display for the 12 Pro Max so DIY doesn't make sense unless you can get a display for less than they charge, but maybe some random mall kiosk can do the replacement for less than $329 though whether Apple would give full trade in value for a phone fixed by some rando I don't know.
Now while I've dropped my iPhones onto concrete a few times over the years, I have never broken a screen (knock on wood) just scuffed the corner/edge a bit so I don't worry about that too much even though I never use a case. But I'm always worried about it anyway the first few weeks I have a new phone - ever since I had my iPhone 5 replaced under warranty (the power button issue) and I was happy because I'd dropped it and got some scuff marks on it and I dropped the replacement not 20 minutes after getting it while exiting a cab lol! My heart sank since it landed face down, but luckily no damage.
Side note: Geekbench recently locked the json output behind a login.
Geekbench Metal score is decently faster on the 5 core A15 than the A14.
So about 10% faster ST, 25% faster MT.
Though with the larger improvement in MT either the clock rate of the small cores increased by a lot more than 10% or it did an update?
Guess we'll have to see what they announce for new Macs and how that fits in with the complete lack of any IPC improvement in A15's big core.
Which is basically solely from increased clock speed. I wonder if it is possible Apple simply used the same core from A14? Maybe they had their hands full with handling the extra complexity of the interconnect, snooping, etc. to handle multiple Jade-C chiplets for the higher end Macs and took a year off updating the core?
Though with the larger improvement in MT either the clock rate of the small cores increased by a lot more than 10% or it did an update?
Guess we'll have to see what they announce for new Macs and how that fits in with the complete lack of any IPC improvement in A15's big core.
Which is basically solely from increased clock speed. I wonder if it is possible Apple simply used the same core from A14? Maybe they had their hands full with handling the extra complexity of the interconnect, snooping, etc. to handle multiple Jade-C chiplets for the higher end Macs and took a year off updating the core?
I'm skeptical you will see the chiplets soon. The Macs that are coming out soon probably just have more cores, maybe you will also get frequency tweaks like the iPhone did.
Can this chip go into a MacBook now? How wide is the memory bus?
Given those benchmarks, did Apple decide to give Qualcomm+Nuvia a chance to catch up?
Or perhaps this was designed as an efficiency generation, we shall see.
I'm skeptical you will see the chiplets soon. The Macs that are coming out soon probably just have more cores, maybe you will also get frequency tweaks like the iPhone did.