zlacker

>>alphab+(OP)
It's starting to feel silly, having a yearly release cycle for smartphones. So much of this product page is focused on new software functions that may have some vague relationship with the slightly upgraded hardware, but that could mostly be released to existing phones. Every new iPhone, Pixel, or Samsung phone basically claims the camera is marginally better and hey, look at these software features that have very little to do with the hardware and should not fundamentally be a reason to upgrade to this phone.

There is so much time, effort, and physical waste that is generated by slightly redesigning phones every year purely for the sake of making sales (as opposed to meaningful improvement upon the existing design or introduction of a new hardware feature). Think not only of people upgrading for the sake of it, but all of the cases, screen protectors, and other assorted accessories cast in plastic for previous models that are garbage now.

It would be nice if we could just space these things out to 5 years or so now, because that's probably how long it takes for anything to change enough to justify a new model.

>>kimber+T71
Normally I agree with you, but I don't think that's the case this year at least. The on-device ML chip (Tensor G3) is a legit difference-maker. A lot of the ML features they are rolling out wouldn't be possible on older hardware. You could do the non-realtime portions in the cloud, but the realtime audio cleanup wouldn't work for example (way too much latency). Also, personally I much prefer on-device. I frequently have spotty data connections so it's very disruptive when stuff relies on cloud connectivity.

>>freedo+Ei1
When I upgrade in two or three years from now, the ML chip will probably be even better than now. My phone has been fine for the past couple of years and the introduction of something on iPhone 15 doesn’t really change that. I don’t mind waiting.