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v1: The Great Android vs. Apple Debate (Lost in Server Changeover)
v2: The Great Smartphone & Tablet Thread, v2: iPhone / iPad / Android / WP8 / Blackberry
v3: The Great Smartphone & Tablet Thread, v3: iPhone / iPad / Android / WP8 / Blackberry
v4: The Great Smartphone & Tablet Thread, v4 (Android & Windows): Curved Screens Taking Over
**************
Well there is no question that the two major headlines in smartphones (really all of tech) has been:
Although there has been highly valid frustration vented online the two forward looking truths the mainstream market goer benefits to understand in interpreting Apple's manuever is to understand that they are, first, migrating towards USB-C so that accessories and peripherals are universal between all computers (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, watch, television, speakers, routers, digital cameras, etc.), and second, simultaneously pushing the market towards wireless audio headsets.
The advent of USB-C as the truly universal port is only slightly less desired than hoverboards. The sooner we achieve this the sooner that every cord in one of those old boxes you pull out from the closet might still have relevance as an older generation of USB-C that is still compatible with future implementations: just running at older USB-C speeds. That cord will be good for any job if it's still relevant.
Apple uses its own proprietary "lightning" technology, so you'll need an adapter if the port isn't natively lightning, but that single adapter should now adapt any USB-C accessory to any apple mobile device (you'd need a Thunderport adapter for the latest USB-C Thunderports on the laptops and desktops):
iPhone 7 and 7 Plus review: Great annual upgrades with one major catch
Windows phone is said to be "dead", as Microsoft hasn't coughed up a new flagship since the Lumia 950 XL from October of last year, and Blackberry's move to Android with the Priv didn't spark the jolt it needed. It's effectively down to the challenger Android, who controls the lion's share of the market, versus the crown-wearing Apple, who controls the lion's share of its profits. Among the major North American manufacturers HTC has found itself quietly fading despite the recent HTC 10 release, so winning the Pixel phone contract must have been a landscape-altering boon.
2016 has been all about the rise of the Chinese manufacturers whose three largest manufacturers in sum now control a larger share of the market than Apple alone. National leader Huawei allegedly outspent Apple by over a billion USD last year in research & development, and aims to be the 2nd biggest manufacturer by shipment by 2018. Xiaomi, Oppo, & Meizu are further refining their mimicry of the iPhone while ZTE & Vivo focus on producing the thinnest smartphones in the world. Meanwhile, Lenovo continues to hit home runs in the western market via its recent acquisition Motorola while also competing back home on Chinese soil.
Nevertheless, the Chinese still haven't figured out how to crack the top where Apple and Samsung battle alone. One year later and 5.5" has inched that much closer to establishing itself as the norm & baseline, not the "supersized" variation of phones. For North Americans the premier market is almost wholly in this class, now. In fact, the Apple iPhone 7 Plus is outselling the "normal" sized model because of the demand for the dual camera feature in the larger version.
For processing power, the iPhones have the newest Apple A10 Fusion chipset in them, and this processor is easily king of the mobile world [2]. Every Android in these next two posts, including the Samsung handsets, uses some version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset. For the clarity of comprehensiveness I will outline the top five competitors and their respective top chipset (must be currently employed in a phone's production) in this extremely lucrative market:
Apple iPhone 7
4.7"
Apple iPhone 7 Plus
5.5"
Samsung Galaxy Note 7
5.7"
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
5.5"
v2: The Great Smartphone & Tablet Thread, v2: iPhone / iPad / Android / WP8 / Blackberry
v3: The Great Smartphone & Tablet Thread, v3: iPhone / iPad / Android / WP8 / Blackberry
v4: The Great Smartphone & Tablet Thread, v4 (Android & Windows): Curved Screens Taking Over
**************
Well there is no question that the two major headlines in smartphones (really all of tech) has been:
Although there has been highly valid frustration vented online the two forward looking truths the mainstream market goer benefits to understand in interpreting Apple's manuever is to understand that they are, first, migrating towards USB-C so that accessories and peripherals are universal between all computers (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, watch, television, speakers, routers, digital cameras, etc.), and second, simultaneously pushing the market towards wireless audio headsets.
The advent of USB-C as the truly universal port is only slightly less desired than hoverboards. The sooner we achieve this the sooner that every cord in one of those old boxes you pull out from the closet might still have relevance as an older generation of USB-C that is still compatible with future implementations: just running at older USB-C speeds. That cord will be good for any job if it's still relevant.
Apple uses its own proprietary "lightning" technology, so you'll need an adapter if the port isn't natively lightning, but that single adapter should now adapt any USB-C accessory to any apple mobile device (you'd need a Thunderport adapter for the latest USB-C Thunderports on the laptops and desktops):
iPhone 7 and 7 Plus review: Great annual upgrades with one major catch
Google killed the Nexus line, but Android Police reported that it is being re-envisioned as the Google "Pixel" line, and the first two handset models will be the Pixel and the Pixel XL. Techtimes leaked an alleged mock-up of the Pixel design. It is now confirmed that HTC is the manufacturer behind these models.Ars Technica said:THE WHOLE HEADPHONE JACK THING
Enlarge
Andrew Cunningham
If you kill the headphone jack, you need to replace it with something better
The iPhone 7 includes plenty of improvements, but the thing it will probably always be remembered for—for better or worse—is its removal of the standard 3.5mm headphone jack.
For the sake of readability, I want to separate the “how do the Lightning headphones and AirPods actually work” questions from the “why is Apple taking my headphone jack away" questions. I’ll start with the latter topic, because I want to take one more stab at articulating why this issue is more complicated than “old = bad” or “the headphone jack stands in the way of progress.”
Apple and its most ardent defenders are framing the decision to remove the jack mostly as a conflict between “new” and “old.” The original version of the technology dates back to the late 19th century, and the modern 3.5mm version began life in the 1960s. In Phil Schiller’s words, it is “an ancient, single-purpose, analog big connector,” and it’s getting in Apple’s way as it tries to improve other aspects of its hardware.
Apple is doing all it can to directly or indirectly credit most of the iPhone 7’s major advancements to the space saved by abandoning that headphone jack, both in its presentation and in its briefings afterward. There’s more room for battery, for a better camera, and for a larger, more capable Taptic Engine. No headphone jack also means one less hole to waterproof. In any other year these would have been expected improvements delivered in a substantially redesigned enclosure that helped to make them possible, but sure, at least Apple is giving us plenty of sugar to help the medicine go down.
I don’t have a problem with any of those criticisms of the headphone jack. It is old. It does take up a lot of space relative to what it does. Wires are annoying, and you and I are currently bathed in cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth signals that attest to the popularity and convenience of wireless protocols.
But that’s not where this conversation should begin and end. The headphone jack is old, but it’s also a widely used standard that’s so entrenched that you can just assume it will be there in almost anything you buy. And it has been that way for the entire lives of most of the people who are thinking about and writing about iPhones. I can plug the same headphones into a 1989 Game Boy and a 2015 iPhone 6S as well as the entertainment system on a multimillion dollar passenger plane. People regularly bring up things like the floppy disk, the optical drive, the 30-pin connector, or even Flash when they talk about the headphone jack, but the scale of the headphone jack’s entrenchment is on an entirely different level.
Yes, that technology is imperfect. But being able to assume the jack will be there is a valuable convenience that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. It pretty much only does the one thing, but you can always count on it to reliably and capably do that thing. There’s no pairing to do or product licensing to worry about, no “smart” bits anywhere in the process to “help” make your listening experience “better” with pop-up messages or configuration options.
To make any tech purchase in 2016 is to negotiate your way through a tangle of competing standards, proprietary technologies, and ecosystems. If I buy this, will it hook up to my other stuff? Is this some giant company’s version of a standard technology that is totally incompatible with three other versions of the same idea from three other giant companies? Will it play the streaming videos I already own? Will I need a dongle or adapter, how much will it cost, and how regularly will it need to be replaced? Will I need to upgrade anything else to get the most out of it? Now the ancient and single-purpose but unassuming, ownerless, and reliable headphone jack gets to be a part of the mess.
Don’t count on Apple changing its mind
Right now if you don’t want to deal with the headphone jack thing, you can either keep your current iPhone or buy a 6S or SE—iOS 10 treats older hardware well and the 6S and SE are all still solid, capable phones. But don’t hold off in the hope that Apple will reverse course and restore the headphone jack next year. That ship, barring some major unforeseen development, has sailed.
Apple won’t reverse course because it won’t have to. First, it is the world’s largest and most influential tech company, and people and other companies (Android phone makers included) tend to go where Apple leads. If you make accessories and don’t want to miss out on potential sales, you'll start working around the headphone jack. Second, the rest of the iPhone 7 is good enough that many people will end up buying one anyway, tacitly endorsing all of the decisions that Apple made while designing it.
Now that the process has started, the headphone jack will vanish from the iPhone lineup with surprising speed. Remember, the TouchID fingerprint sensor was introduced in September of 2013, and by September of 2015 a fingerprint sensor was included in every single new iPhone sold. The NFC sensor used for Apple Pay was introduced in September of 2014, and by March of 2016 every single new iPhone sold included an NFC sensor. Apple’s control of its ecosystem combined with regular refresh cycles means that new hardware trickles downward and outward much more quickly than it does elsewhere (look at fingerprint sensors and USB Type-C in Android phones to see a more diverse ecosystem’s meandering path toward the future).
All of this is to say, do vote with your wallet if you feel strongly. Do send Apple reasonable, level-headed feedback if you have it, preferably by calling customer service or e-mailing or even letter writing rather than spouting 140-character hate at the Twitter account Tim Cook almost certainly never actually looks at. But if you want to stay in the iPhone ecosystem (and there are still many, many reasons to stay), start making peace with the idea of one day giving up your headphone jack, because you’ll almost certainly have to.
The good and bad about Lightning headphones and Lightning dongles
So how exactly has Apple implemented this change, and how do the new wired and wireless headphones work? To start, Apple ships a pair of wired Lightning earbuds and a short 3.5mm-to-Lightning dongle in the box with every iPhone 7, which is certainly a better way to treat users than Apple did with the separate 30-pin-to-Lightning adapter four years ago. Extra dongles will ship for $9 apiece, which likewise isn’t an awful deal for people who need dongles specifically for their cars, or for work, or whatever.
The Lightning earbuds look, work, and sound exactly like the 3.5mm version that they replace, which is good enough news for users even though it doesn’t do anything to demonstrate why a digital connector is better than an analog one. If you liked the old earbuds (I mostly do, or at least I don’t dislike them enough to replace them), you’ll be happy enough with these. If you hated the old ones, the dongle is still there for you, and Lightning headphones will likely become more of a thing as time goes on.
It should go without saying, but these Lightning headphones also work the same way with any and all other iDevices with Lightning ports going all the way back to the iPhone 5. If you’re the rare person who doesn’t have any devices without a Lightning port, you won’t have a problem swapping the 3.5mm earbuds out for your Lightning ones and getting on with your life.
The audiophile set could also see some benefits by using Lightning rather than 3.5mm headphones. They can draw power from the phone that can be used for noise-canceling, obviating the need for built-in batteries, and they can include their own higher-quality digital-to-analog converters (DACs) and amplifiers to provide better sound quality than the phone’s built-in DAC is capable of. Most users won’t notice or benefit from these improvements, but they’re there if you care to use them.
Most people will feel the absent headphone jack the most in two situations. First, if you’re listening to music on your iPhone and you’d like to plug into some non-iDevice with a 3.5mm jack but no Lightning port, including but not limited to your Mac, you’re out of luck. To solve this problem, I’ve found myself using my standard 3.5mm earbuds plugged into the dongle to listen to music and podcasts on the iPhone 7 just to make it easier to switch to my MacBook Air or 3DS when I want to.
The latter problem is more complicated: if you need to charge the phone and listen to audio at the same time. This runs up against the less-talked-about effect of the disappearing headphone jack, which is that the iPhone 7 only has one port where all previous models had two.
The iPhone 7’s greater battery life should help a little. You won’t need to plug your phone into an external battery pack or into the adapter that you keep at your desk at work quite as often, so you won’t run into as many cases where you need two ports at once. But if you, say, listen to music or white noise or ASMR videos or something to help you fall asleep and you also want to charge your phone overnight, it gets more complicated. Currently, there are no perfect solutions. You’ll either need to invest in a bulky Lightning dongle with two ports; in Apple’s official Lightning dock; or in wireless headphones, which remain more expensive than wired headphones and give you another battery to worry about.
And there's one more thing to consider if you're an entrepreneur or small business owner who uses a card swiping system like Square to conduct transactions. Many of these systems rely on the headphone jack in current iPhones rather than Lightning. It may be awkward, but in an interview with MacWorld a Square spokesperson said that these accessories would work normally using the 3.5mm dongle. The current version of Square's card reader also supports contactless payments—once again, wireless is the answer.
I can totally accept the premise that the future is wireless, but the present is still mostly wired. If you buy an iPhone 7 on launch day, you’ll be wading into the most painful part of the transition. Make sure you go in with your eyes open.
The W1 chip fixes Bluetooth, but only Apple can use it
Wired headphones are there for people who want a low-cost option or for people concerned about audio fidelity, but Apple’s intent is clearly to push more people toward wireless headphones. Another important piece of that puzzle is the W1 chip, an Apple-developed piece of hardware that will show up first in Apple’s AirPods and in a few pairs of Beats headphones.
To clarify, the W1 is not intended as a competitor or a replacement for Bluetooth—according to Apple, it is in fact a Bluetooth controller chip with some other Apple-developed proprietary additions. It’s designed to speed up and simplify pairing (it does) and stabilize Bluetooth’s sometimes inconsistent and shaky audio streams (it does). But it’s not meant to replace standard Bluetooth, and AirPods and any other W1 headphones will work just fine with anything that supports Bluetooth, including Android phones.
That’s crucial—my worst fear here was that Apple would “fix” the wireless audio problem using its own proprietary wireless protocol, something that would forever keep Apple’s wireless headphones from being as useful and versatile and universal as good old 3.5mm headphones. But by augmenting Bluetooth rather than replacing it, Apple remains committed to the open standard everyone else has to use while also making the experience better for its customers.
Second, the W1 is a chip that goes in headphones, but it doesn’t need to be included in your phone itself. It’s pretty cool to be able to flip the AirPod case’s top next to a four-year-old iPhone 5 running iOS 10 and have the AirPods pop up, pair, and work exactly the same way that they do with an iPhone 7. So any W1 headphones will automatically work fine with any current iPhone, and these headphones will also be auto-paired to any Mac, iPad, or Apple Watch signed in to the same iCloud account.
As much as I like the W1, it’s still not a slam-dunk wireless replacement for the 3.5mm jack. Apple has total control over the chip, and unlike Lightning, Apple tells us that it will not be licensing the chip out to third-party headphone makers. That could always change, of course, but for the foreseeable future it means that getting the best possible wireless audio experience on iOS means buying headphones from Apple. It puts Apple in exclusive control of the kinds of headphones you can buy and how much those headphones cost to buy, and so far they cost a lot more than most normal people are going to want to pay for headphones.
Anyone who wants something different has plenty of Bluetooth options to choose from, but you also have to put up with the same old Bluetooth pairing wonkiness and audio skipping issues. Likewise, you’ll have those problems if you pair AirPods with any non-Apple Bluetooth device.
Windows phone is said to be "dead", as Microsoft hasn't coughed up a new flagship since the Lumia 950 XL from October of last year, and Blackberry's move to Android with the Priv didn't spark the jolt it needed. It's effectively down to the challenger Android, who controls the lion's share of the market, versus the crown-wearing Apple, who controls the lion's share of its profits. Among the major North American manufacturers HTC has found itself quietly fading despite the recent HTC 10 release, so winning the Pixel phone contract must have been a landscape-altering boon.
2016 has been all about the rise of the Chinese manufacturers whose three largest manufacturers in sum now control a larger share of the market than Apple alone. National leader Huawei allegedly outspent Apple by over a billion USD last year in research & development, and aims to be the 2nd biggest manufacturer by shipment by 2018. Xiaomi, Oppo, & Meizu are further refining their mimicry of the iPhone while ZTE & Vivo focus on producing the thinnest smartphones in the world. Meanwhile, Lenovo continues to hit home runs in the western market via its recent acquisition Motorola while also competing back home on Chinese soil.
Nevertheless, the Chinese still haven't figured out how to crack the top where Apple and Samsung battle alone. One year later and 5.5" has inched that much closer to establishing itself as the norm & baseline, not the "supersized" variation of phones. For North Americans the premier market is almost wholly in this class, now. In fact, the Apple iPhone 7 Plus is outselling the "normal" sized model because of the demand for the dual camera feature in the larger version.
For processing power, the iPhones have the newest Apple A10 Fusion chipset in them, and this processor is easily king of the mobile world [2]. Every Android in these next two posts, including the Samsung handsets, uses some version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset. For the clarity of comprehensiveness I will outline the top five competitors and their respective top chipset (must be currently employed in a phone's production) in this extremely lucrative market:
- Apple (A10 Fusion Quadcore)*
- Qualcomm (Snapdragon 820 Quadcore)
- Samsung (Exynos 8890 Octacore)
- Mediatek (Helio X25 Decacore)
- HiSilicon (Kirin 955 Octacore)
Apple iPhone 7
4.7"
Apple iPhone 7 Plus
5.5"
Samsung Galaxy Note 7
5.7"
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
5.5"
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