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Apple also showed off its first wearable, the Apple Watch.
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Read more.Quote:
Apple also showed off its first wearable, the Apple Watch.
The new, more rounded, iPhones look quite appealing to me (at least going on the pictures here and elsewhere). And kudos for doing them in two different sizes rather than trying to force everyone into a single size. It'll be interesting to see how comfortable the Plus is to hold compared to my LG G3, which also has a 5.5" screen.
The iWatch though - oh dear - not exactly the mold-breaking triumph of form and fashion is it? And as the article says, it's not doing anything that Pebble, Samsung, LG, Sony and Motorola aren't doing. So much for the "watch this space and we'll show you how it should be done" from the iFans. Think the Moto 360 is still the most attractive, although the new LG G Watch R might be in with a shout too, (apologies if this, along with the G3 comment above, makes me sound like an LG fanboy - which I'm not).
Quite interested in the iPhone 6. My Galaxy S3 is starting to show its age a little and I'm keen for a change of scenery again. Personally, I don't like larger phones. The 4.7" would be ample for me.
As for the watches - not for me. I ditched watches when phones essentially replaced them, and don't see myself going back to them.
iPhone... welcome to the android party :p
In all honesty, yes they look ok and I'm sure they're relatively well made, and feels better to hold with rounded edges, but if you look at it subjectively the key 'features' are at least a year old or more in most cases. I'm not going on cpu/gpu as iOS has always worked well on it's hardware but 1GB of ram, 1080p max screens, finally getting nfc etc is pretty low/mid level specs these days. Now this is the bit which gets me, for years apple has been going on about one size fits all mantra and now they have to support multiple resolutions and they look to be taking a similar track to android in how it changes it's layout like android does, a perfect example is the email app, it switches into a 2 column view... just like android has for years.
Now the iWatch, yes they can call it Apple Watch but it's the iWatch, why because it's absolutely useless without the iPhone, now don't get me wrong android wear currently needs an android phone too but Google are working towards being able to do certain things without the phone (gps if hardware is there, music playback, fitness stuff I assume) where the iWatch is basically a glorified second display and is likely always going to be that way.
As to the interface... all I'll say is that dial, sorry digital crown, looks like a pita for someone with normal size hands and the argument about covering your screen is just mute in my opinion, it's not exactly hard to lift your finger and I'd argue it's easy to do that than play with a small dial.
When I saw the 'announcement' all I could do was lol at the 'animated smileys'... I remember those from msn and most people hated them back then. Having said that I did like the nfc being on the watch and linked to the phone/payment system, not sure how secure that would be as it's easier to swipe an arm than a phone in a pocket but I like the 'idea'
Then they had the price... US pricing shows it will start at $50 more than the moto 360 with the metal strap... I'd hate to think how much the most expensive model will cost as that base price is likely for the plastic strap.
But at the end of the day it doesn't really matter how much we dislike apple's latest products, or that there are better products out there, they'll sell like hotcakes for one reason... marketing. Apple get so much free, imo biased, marketing from newspapers/tech blogs saying how wonderful everything is that most other brands don't get a look in. I've seen reviews were good products get lacklustre reviews purely because it's not apple or it's made out of plastic not metal....
"iPhone 6 Plus has a resolution of 1920 by 1080 with 401 pixels per inch. That’s full 1080p HD resolution." (as seen at: http://www.apple.com/live/2014-sept-event/)
My oh my! Brilliant! What ever will they think of next at Apple. It'll take ages for Android phones to catch u... Hold on a minute. Android phones are at 2560 x 1440 pixels? Never!
I will be interested to here what improvements are made to the A8 SOC - A7 was quite groundbreaking as the first 64 bit ARM based SOC released for a mobile device.
So when are they going to reveal all of the new stuff they've invented...? :P
It's always a bit different with Apple because they market themselves in such an obnoxious and often downright stupid manner. Classic example would be their ads last decade on security.
However, the phone has nothing, not one new feature. Yet the price tag is high. The screen in paper specifications lags behind existing android and wp devices. Heck I just spend £280 on a Lumia 930 which has on paper a better screen than these as yet unreleased devices. This screen and size is the biggest change...
The A8 could be interesting, but how many people find their phone actually slow? Rather than the internet connection being poor, or the back end server being swamped? Can't imagine it's many who are needing to upgrade for more 'power'.
So we look at the watch. Now whilst BSODMike would probably sigh I do like mechanical watches, hell I'm wearing a curious russian one now, so I may be a little bit biased, but... Would I like to talk into it, 70s scifi? Nope, my headphones for my music do a better job for that. Will it be able to display anything really useful? As is I find myself wanting larger and larger phone screens because there is too much data that I want to see. Will it be better than having say TellMe / Cortana read a text message too me, probably yes, but it's only half the problem solved.
We then look at it as a style piece, is this technology brutalisim? It don't have no alibi.
It makes the moto 360 look good. That's a first in a way I suppose.
No mention of battery life, how hard charging is, only that the clasps were a bit poor. Ho hum.
Compared to my £50 fitbit tracker, which has a 5 day+ battery life, I don't see it. A lot of the demo apps were concepts that the Microsoft Spot watch had, yet no one wanted it, because it was too expensive and battery life too poor. Yet I bet next to the iWatch it will be incredibly long lasting.
There isn't really anything interesting of substance here.
1080p is ridculous for a 5 inch screen I'd have to get a magnifying glass to even see the individual pixels at 720 - it's just wasting battery power to render at a higher resolution just so they can put bigger numbers on the box.
Still using the best phone I've ever had a Moto G which is fantastic value and I prefer it's looks and design to that of any iPhone. I'm glad I never bought into this phone epeening it's saved me a fortune. Funny thing is people say I'm jealous and can't afford an iPhone - I easily can I'm just not that dumb.
Well I am only interested in the technical aspects of the A8 in the general evolution of ARM cores,especially since if they get powerful enough we might start to see them in laptops for examples. When it comes to phones I tend to be more worried by battery life,which for me is the most limiting factor ATM and I have a Moto G which generally is quite decent for that. Another factor is also how good a phone can pick up a data signal or GPS lock in harder areas.
When it comes to performance,even basic new generation SOCs are more than fast enough for most purposes and once you get past 720P the increasing screen resolutions will make less and less of a difference IMHO. I would rather have a 720P screen with half the power consumption of a 1080P screen in a phone with a 4" to 5" screen.
more spyware???????????????
The new iPhones just look exactly like the an S5 and a Note3 - nothing of any interest there.
The Apple Watch does at least look nice (imo), but i'm not really seeing that 'killer feature' that you always used to get from Apple. Maybe they're hoping the payments thing will be a must-have but to me that just looks like a security disaster waiting to happen.
As far as i can see, the only reason to get excited about any of this is that it should massively expand the market for wearables, which will hopefully lead to interesting innovations elsewhere. Other than that, meh.
having an iphone 5s and not particularly wanting a bigger phone, I'm happy about iphone6 as it doesn't offer much of an improvement over 5s. the NFC is of no interest to me either, so that's the main two things. even the speed increase of 25% isn't that much considering the 5s was supposed to be twice as fast as the 5. this of course means the 5s is going to be powerful enough for most new stuff for a while. so no need to upgrade
the watch looks pretty cool though. I fancy one of those. the different straps are a great idea as you can make the watch look casual/sporty with a plastic strap or slightly dressier with a metal strap. initially it doesn't seem to have any/many features that interest me apart from telling the time, but I'm sure it will have a lot of possibilities. the health stuff is of no interest to me or probably most lazy arse tech geeks. I don't need a watch to tell me I've only taken 7 steps all day. however many people buy watches simply for telling the time, and some spend hundreds or thousands on them, so this falls into that catergory too. it's a cool watch and can do tricks. it could be cool in a club if someone can make it flash colours along to the music whilst you dance, or state song details and BPM etc
No Sapphire = no sale.
Great news - the 5S has dropped in price, so that is moving up the list.