Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker
The biggest problem is that smartphones have become so normal and specs so good that upgrades have become… boring.
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It’s weird, because the XR is the least boring, least iterative version of the “mainstream” iPhone possibly ever, yet in this thread we’re all bored and it’s not just us, it seems like the market wasn’t particularly enthusiastic for the XR either. Like, if you draw a line from 5-6-7-8-XR, the XR is the biggest change in both form and function. It’s the first iPhone in that line, since the very first, to have a learning curve. If the market was ambivalent on the XR because it wasn’t a big enough change from the 8, how can any future change possibly be bigger than ditching the home button and switching to the all-screen design? But if that’s not it, what gives?
Maybe it’s true that the phones that people already have are just still too good for people to want to upgrade (in other words, Apple isn’t adding upgrade-worthy features). It seems clear that people are keeping their phones for longer. The XR changed the form factor of the iPhone substantially, but what killer features does it have? What does it do for people that an iPhone 7 doesn’t? “Smart HDR” is a much harder feature to describe than “now it shoots HD video!” The low-hanging fruit is gone.
Honestly the only killer feature in the last few years has been Google’s Night Sight. That actually changes how the phone is useful to you, and Google has been rightfully advertising the shit out of it. I’m sure Apple will have their answer, probably next month, and maybe they’ll even add that feature to phones with the A12 (since it’s really software). But Google has it now, on phones that start at about half the price of the XR.