Apple’s "Gather Round" event yesterday was a highly anticipated event for Apple fans since it’s always fascinating to see what the company has been working on lately. A company with Apple’s resources is seemingly always capable of unveiling a few surprises, so every event they hold has a lure of “one more thing” or something totally unexpected like last year’s iPhone X (despite leaks). This year’s event didn’t provide much in the way of “oh wow” moments, but there were a few surprises at least, but not all of them were positive.
$1,000 Is the New Normal
The biggest surprise for me is that smartphones are officially ludicrously expensive now. I certainly remember feeling sticker shock when Apple announced the iPhone X’s $999 pricing last year, but at the time it was billed as a super premium phone, and it had never before seen (from Apple) technology like an OLED display and FaceID, so the price almost seemed fitting. With the recently launched $1,000 Galaxy Note 9 and the rollout of the iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max, that pricing scheme has returned with a vengeance, as the XS Max with just 64GB of storage is an insane $1,099.
Though the 64GB XS is still $999, the “old’ regular X model is no longer available, as it was discontinued as soon as the keynote ended. This means Apple’s tradition of just reducing the price of the previous generation phone as the “cheap option” is sort of dead, but not entirely since it’s still selling the iPhone 7 and 8. Still, those who were hoping for a less expensive iPhone X due to their patience are left with only one option, which bings me to the next surprise.
iPhone Xr
Though the iPhone Xr had been billed as a newer version of the toy-like iPhone 5C from back in the day, what we got was quite the opposite. When they were rattling off the specs for the “cheap iPhone X” I was shocked at how similar it was to the iPhone Xs. I wholly expected it to be running last year’s A11 Bionic chip, which would have been in keeping with tradition, but this phone has almost all of the same guts as the flagship phones, but there’s still some pretty notable differences.
The biggest of course is that it doesn’t use an OLED display, but LCD instead, and at lower resolution that results in a still-decent 326ppi, which is officially “retina” so it will probably still look good. It has a bit less water resistance, and has an aluminum body, but these “downgrades” are offset somewhat by the fact that it’s available in some ritzy colors. There’s only one camera lens instead of two as well, but all in all the Xr seems like a really good phone, and at $749 for the 64GB it’s much more affordable than the Xs.
Not to mention it’s available in a 128GB model, unlike the Xs and Xs Max. Overall the Xr is probably the phone that has generated the most excitement from the event, whether or not Apple intended for that to be the case. It seems like a very solid upgrade from an older iPhone, with enough new technology to excite people.
The Xs and Xs Max Are Basically the Same
In the past Apple has always differentiated their regular size phone from their huge phone by imbuing the bigger version with exclusive technology. Previously it was optical image stabilization mostly, which can be super helpful for taking photos in low light, so this wasn’t just a trivial feature. With the new phones however, Apple has essentially made them exactly the same aside from expected differences in battery capacity due to their size. They both have the same camera system, the same A12 Bionic chip, the same storage capacities, and are essentially the exact same phone, just in two different sizes. That’s great news for people with FOMO anxiety.
The Home Button Is Dead
With the launch of the “cheap” iPhone Xr Apple has officially done away with the TouchID and the Home button. There will seemingly never be a new phone from Cupertino with this feature, so it’ll be FaceID from here on out, until the company develops some sort of biometric sensor that lets you just touch the phone anywhere for it to unlock.This will disappoint some people who probably haven’t used FaceID, and I used to enjoy the responsiveness and ease of use of unlocking my phone with a finger as I picked it up. That said, as an iPhone X user who has been using FaceID for almost a year now I won’t miss it. The technology works extremely well, and there’s even times where it unlocks when I’m barely even looking at my phone; it works that well.
No More iPhone SE
As a previous owner of a 4” iPhone SE, I must admit it pains me to see the itty bitty iPhone die a premature death in favor of bigger phones. I loved the SE when I had it, and felt it was the perfect size since it allows one-hand operation. All Apple had to do was add FaceID to it and an OLED display (or even the Liquid Retina display from the Xr!) and they would have sold boat loads of them. But apparently Apple doesn’t want to do that, as they have officially removed it from their website, and relegated it to the dustbin of history. Maybe it’s a The Last Jedi thing where you have to let the past die or something, but I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t just give it iPhone 8 guts and sold it for $500.
AirPower Is (Still!) M.I.A
Last year Apple showed off a snazzy charging mat called AirPower that would make life easier for people who own an iPhone, AirPods, and an Apple watch. Heck, it would even be awesome for a couple of iPhones too, but with the keynote in the rear view it seems Apple is experiencing some issues with it as it was not only left out of the keynote, most of the references to it have been scrubbed from Apple’s website according to Macrumors. There’s still a photo of it on the AirPods page, but its status is “currently unavailable,” which isn’t promising.
Bloomberg reported earlier this year on the engineering challenges the company faces bringing the custom-designed charging mat to market, and they are not insignificant. Still, the company claimed it would be released in 2018, so they still have some time, but we're not hopeful.
