Manufacturers of Android devices may have scoffed at the notion of a 64-bit smartphone when Apple unveiled the iPhone 5S last year, but those same hardware makers are apparently tripping over themselves to play catch-up now.
DigiTimes today reported that Google's forthcomingAndroid L operating system appears to be moving up the timetable for adoption of 64-bit hardware capable of taking full advantage of it.
According to unnamed industry sources, 64-bit CPUs could become "mainstream technology" for Android smartphones by the end of next year now that manufacturers have stepped up efforts to adopt the speedier architecture.
Lenovo, K-Touch, Huawei, Vivo and HTC have all reportedly signed up for Qualcomm's 64-bit Snapdragon 610, 614 and/or 410 processors, which have been designed with rapid migration to Android L in mind.
On your marks
64-bit processors from rivals MediaTek and Samsung Electronics have already started making their way into the supply chain, with MediaTek's architecture reportedly already in the hands of "China-based handset vendors."
Samsung apparently plans to keep its own 64-bit technology closer to home with in-house smartphones for the remainder of 2014, presumably expanding availability for other customers next year.
Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Technologies also appears to have a roadmap to 64-bit already laid out, but sources claim those processors won't appear until the first half of 2015 at the earliest.
Google still hasn't confirmed an official launch (or even a final name) for Android L, which could roll out next month at the earliest, suggesting many of the first handsets to ship with the OS upgrade may not take full advantage of what the software has to offer.
Tim Cook said Apple’s new iPhones will cause “the mother of all upgrades.” But with two brand new models to choose from, as well as two carryovers that are now just a year old and significantly cheaper, it’s arguably never been harder to choose from among Apple’s smartphone lineup. In addition, carriers are fighting harder than ever to steal one another’s customers, giving buyers willing to jump around a greater chance to find the best deal. Still, with so many models, so many rates plans, and so many options for getting value from your old phone, there’s almost too much to cover at once. In a multi-part series, I’ll try to walk you through each part of the equation, starting today with: Should you get a new iPhone, and if so, which one? (This post is long. Those big bold headings are designed to help you find relevant sections. If you’re absolutely positive you want / need a new phone and know where to get it, skip way down to the section of which phone to buy.)
Do you want a new phone?
If not, let me save you the next few minutes of your life and recommend you spend it elsewhere. But if you’re here, there’s a good chance you’re at least thinking about it. You may well have an iPhone 4s or older, and are probably eligible for a discounted upgrade to a newer model. In fact, if your phone is that old, there’s a good chance its battery life isn’t what it was and there’s a 100% certainly it doesn’t even have 4G LTE. It’s time to upgrade. The equation is trickier for people with an iPhone 5 or 5s, unless you’re eligible for a discounted upgrade. It’s not that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus aren’t substantially better — they are — it’s that you might have to pay full price to get one, and that could cost you.
Tell me more about upgrade eligibility.
Sure, there are a number of tools that can allow you to figure out whether you can get an iPhone 6 for as little as $199 with a new 2-year contract. If you use the following numbers on your phone, you’ll get information about your status:
AT&T: *639# (call)
Sprint: 1311 (text “UPGRADE” to that number)
Verizon: #874 (call)
I’m listing those because it’s quick and dirty to use them, but given that AT&T will try to convince you to buy a new phone via AT&T Next, its monthly installment plan, that’s really a stopgap. (T-Mobile customers can almost all upgrade through the Jump program. If you’re on a legacy plan and don’t have Jump, you can talk to a T-Mobile rep about getting it). While all the carrier websites have upgrade info somewhere, a good way to check status is Apple’s iPhone order page. Once you select your phone options there, you’ll get to a screen where you can check your upgrade eligibility. After you enter the requisite information, you’ll either learn you can buy a discounted phone now or see the date on which you’ll be eligible to do so. It looks like this:
(If you happen to have the Apple Store app already downloaded on your iPhone and start an order there, you can have the app notify you on the date you become eligible for a discount.)
Discount or not, I want a new phone. What’s it going to cost me?
The good news is you can pay as little as $0 for a brand new iPhone 5c. And prices have come down on last year’s flagship model, the 5s, which is now only $99 or $149, depending on how much memory you want. The iPhone 6 is $199/$299/$399, as has been common for the new models. But with the addition of the 6 Plus, there’s a whole new tier at $299/$399/$499.
If you aren’t eligible for a discount, add $450 to those prices, making the iPhone 6 $649/$749/$849 and the 6 Plus $749/$849/$949. Think that’s a lot? It’ll cost more in many foreign countries. (An iPhone 5s, for example, is $940 in Brazil at the moment.) All four major carriers now offer some form of installment pricing, which allows you to spread those costs over 24 months. But the rules for whether you can take advantage of those programs vary by carrier and often depend on your current contract status. Right now, I’m going to direct you to my previous post on Verizon Edge and AT&T’s cheat sheet on its Next plan. Sprint has some quirky new options which I’ll analyze in a later post and T-Mobile offers Jump.
The upshot: If you’re eligible for a discount, you want to take advantage of it because you’re paying for the privilege. But even if that’s the case, it might be time to switch to buying your phone on installments. The links above help you understand why; in short, you’ll start to pay less each month for service when you “buy” the phone a little each month. If you’re not eligible for a discount, this is going to be pricey upgrade. Either way, you can trade in your old phones and the next post in this series will have recommendations on how and where to do that.
I heard Apple’s website blew up taking pre-orders. Should I pre-order a phone now? Or should I go wait in line next Friday when the phone is released?
What a week for Apple huh? Such a high from the new product announcement, such a low from their creaky website breaking while streaming that announcement and then blowing up taking orders for the new iPhones. Not to mention the debacle Apple created with giving away the new U2 album for free. Anyway, the good and bad of the website blowing up is it means Apple got a lot of orders. Most models of the iPhone 6 are still slated to ship in 7-10 days, which means they’ll get on their way to you very close to launch. The 6 Plus, on the other hand, has a 3-4 week backlog for many configurations. That said, if you’re willing to pre-order now and then go pick up your phone on launch day, you have your pick of nearly every model in many cities. You won’t have to be there when the store opens, either. Just get there sometime on Friday, September 19.
If you go to the carrier websites, the situation looks worse, with most deliveries now slated for early-to-mid October. But here’s the thing: If you show up on launch day– or likely anytime over the subsequent weekend at an Apple Store — odds are you’ll go home with a new iPhone of your choosing. Some colors and memory configurations may sell out, but at least with the smaller iPhone 6, availability should be good. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile might not have the stock Apple itself has, but again they’ll have phones at launch, in decent quantities. How do I know? Because it always works that way. I’ve checked the last several years with most carriers and even if you aren’t the earliest bird, you can usually go home with an Apple, rather than a worm.
You’ve spent a lot of words telling me the how and the how much, with a dash of why and where thrown in. Maybe you could tell me what to buy.
I thought you’d never ask! Four phones makes this harder than ever. Let’s start with the hard part: Picking between the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, if you’re committed to the newest stuff and are debating between bigger and biggest.
Size matters, Part 1: Both of these phones are significantly larger than any recent iPhone. But they are wafer thin. That will make them easy to hold and easy to slide in a pocket. You can read all the dimensions over at Apple’s site, but if you want to see what they mean in real life, CNN has created a handy template you can print. I did that, cut it out, taped some thin cardboard behind it to create a stack very approximately 7 mm, the depth of a new iPhone, and held it, put it in my pocket, etc. You don’t need to do this, but you might benefit from some of my findings:
It’s important to realize that you don’t really grip and use your iPhone all that much. You kind of cradle it for one-handed use and for two hands, the sizes we’re looking at become irrelevant, even for petite people. There are three main times bigger won’t be better:
Holding your phone up to your head, where you do need to grip the phone. If you do this a lot, get a headset and skip the 6 Plus.
Putting it away in a pocket or purse. If you have limited space or a huge affinity for skinny jeans, consider the smaller model. This is especially true, I believe, if you like to put your phone in your back pocket.
Actually using it one-handed for typing or browsing or running an app. I’m a normal-sized male who has had both the iPhone 5 and 5s. It’s impossible to comfortably reach every corner of those screens without reaching for the top left (as a right-hander). The problem will get worse with iPhone 6, though Apple is offering a special mode to allow for better one-handed use. Odds are you won’t like having to activate and leave that mode and that it’ll only be a partial fix. If one-handing is critical, again you probably don’t want a Plus.
By now, you’re pretty sure I’ve made the case that the iPhone 6 is better because in each case where “size matters” it wins. But it’s never that easy.
Size matters, Part 2: Apple isn’t charging $100 more for the phablet-sized iPhone 6 Plus for nothing. Beyond screen size (5.5 vs. 4.7 inches), you get more pixels per inch, better battery life (twice as long for music, 20-40% for video and web browsing) and an improved camera. Let’s break those down:
The screen has 37% more real estate. That’s going to make nearly everything better. Videos? Better. Reading an e-book? Better. Web pages? Better. Most games? Better. Typing? More accurate, i.e. better. 401 pixels per inch instead of 326? Sharper is better.
Check out my detailed post on battery life at “In Picking Form Over Function, Apple Gave The iPhone 6 A Lousy Battery“. If you think the iPhone has a good battery now, you are probably indifferent between the 6 and 6 Plus. (You’re also kind of mistaken, but in this case, your ignorance is truly bliss and I’m genuinely happy for you.) If you understand how short-lived the iPhone battery can be, get a 6 Plus.
The Plus is the only model with optical image stabilization. That can lead to sharper pictures, especially when you’re trying to catch something in motion. Forbes contributor Amadou Diallo thinks the feature could be a big winner.
Size matters, Part 3: The hardest part to understand about these new phones is how you’re going to relate to the new sizes physically. Consider weight. The 6 Plus weighs 6.07 oz. against just 4.55 for the iPhone 6. Compare those numbers to the 3.95 of the iPhone 5s and you think, “Wow, that 6 Plus is 50% heavier, no way I can deal with that!” But what if I told you the 4s weighed nearly 5 ounces? Does it seem so far-fetched now?
Of course, the 6 Plus is huge in length and width. It’s 1.35 inches longer than the iPhone 5/5s and about 3/4 of an inch longer than the plain iPhone 6. The 6 itself grows only about 1/2 inch in length and 1/4 in width from the 5s, but the length difference to the iPhone 4s is greater. These are all just numbers until until you touch and hold the phone you’re going to use for the next year or two. For many of you, the iPhone 6 won’t feel especially big after a while. The thinness, the tapered edges and the small weight gain should all be comfortable. The 6 Plus may take more getting used to. (Disclosure: I pre-ordered a 6 Plus. Even if I find it huge at first, I can’t imagine not sticking with it.
Memory: Apple has made a big change this year. Instead of offering 16/32/64GB configurations, it now offers 16/64/128GB with the same gaps of $100 and $200 for the upgraded configurations. That’s much fairer — the $100 buys 48GB extra instead of 16 — and also makes it a clear choice for all but light users. If you only have a handful of apps, don’t ever store music, and can’t imagine that changing, buy a 16GB phone and you’ll likely be OK. The extra space rarely earns its money back on resale, too. But it’s too easy to run out of space with a 16GB iPhone and it’s likely to be an issue for many existing iPhone users when they try to download iOS 8 next week. If you see yourself keeping the phone for 2-3 years, get the 64GB. Obviously, if you’re a power user, the 128GB option is welcome and you should take advantage if you see fit. (Disclosure: I went with 64GB. In a year, I’ll upgrade my phone again and I can’t see needing the space that soon.)
Color: Silver/white, gold/white, space gray/black all make return engagements on both models. Pick whatever you like but be aware the back of the new iPhone is far less aesthetically executed than before. The gold with the white edging looks surprisingly chintzy, so take a look before handing over your credit card. (Disclosure: I had the white 2 years ago and the space grey this past year. I’m going back to silver/white. I have no compelling reason to do this; it’s purely aesthetic preference.)
Speaking of which, can’t I just buy an iPhone 5s or 5c?
If you don’t care about the newest features, including using your phone as an electronic wallet, yes. If you want the smaller screen, definitely. If you need to save money, no question about it. The 5s has the fingerprint sensing TouchID and still has a very nice camera. If you can afford to go to $149, you can get it with 32GB of memory and have a solid phone that’s a strong upgrade from a 4 or 4s. It will work with the Apple Watch should you purchase one later to enable Apple Pay and it’s a nice compromise. The 5c is really an iPhone 5 in a colorful shell. It’s decent, but much older inside. No Touch ID and an inferior camera. It also has just 8GB of storage. I don’t like that configuration and don’t recommend it. But if you have no money to spend and are upgrade eligible and just need to have an iPhone to run 2-3 apps, well, I won’t say no. I would strongly encourage you to consider an installment plan on a 32GB 5s or 16GB iPhone 6 though.
Is there anything else?
As I promised, I’ll do a round-up of trade-in options very soon and try to pull together all the pricing from all the major carriers in one handy chart, for those looking to switch or take advantage of the various deals out there. If there’s a question that you have that wasn’t answered above, post a comment below and I’ll come back here over the course of the next week and try to answer as many as possible.
The iPhone 6 era is just 10 days old, but for Apple it was already underway sometime last year. By April 2013, company executives understood they had a strategic vulnerability. The booming smartphone market had expanded remarkably in 2012, growing from 494 million units the year before to 722 million sold. While 70% of the gains occurred in phones below $300 — a market Apple had no intention of partaking in — the rest came from phones with screens larger than the iPhone’s 4-inch display. Worse still, premium-priced phones with 4-inch screens actually was a shrinking segment, down 22 million. That Apple managed to sell more iPhones was a remarkable achievement but it meant challenges lay ahead.
Trouble ahead: Apple saw its strategic vulnerability at a company offsite in April 2013.
We know these numbers from Apple’s own internal documents, made public in the patent trial with Samsung. While we don’t have the follow-on data for 2013, smartphone shipments again boomed, crossing 1 billion units. Apple managed to grow iPhone sales 13% last year, but that was barely 1/3 of the 38% industry-wide figure. Given the recent pattern of iPhone revamps — a physical redo in the first year followed by internal changes in the follow-up — Apple’s strategy discussion last April surely never touched upon making changes to the iPhone 5s. It was simply too late to do anything about that. But the long build up to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, with the larger screens already favored in the premium (and sometimes not-so-premium) Android segment was inevitable.
Watch this: Apple has managed slightly stronger gains of late, but hopes the iPhone 6 will push things much higher.
The iPhone has become Apple’s most important product in numerous ways. Not only does it represent more than half the company’s revenues, expected to be $180B for the fiscal year ending tomorrow, but it contributes even more of the company’s gross margin. It’s also the iPhone that drives app development, where Apple’s App Store continues to get more new apps first, despite iPhone’s smaller market share. With the least expensive iPhone still running at $450 unsubsidized, Apple is clearly not targeting the lower price bands. But it couldn’t continue to miss out on growth in the premium segment it had come to define and dominate.
In choosing two models to fill the void, Apple is playing a clever game. It can satisfy customers who feel the need to have among the largest screens while also creating an “anchor” that makes the basic iPhone 6 seem less big. The effect here might best be understood by way of example. Several years ago, Sharp introduced the first mainstream 70-inch televisions. While they did manage to sell some, customers were intimidated by the size and buying the “biggest thing out there.” Not long after, Sharp brought an 80-inch model to market. With sales almost a secondary goal, a major reason for the larger model was to make the 70-inch look less intimidating in showrooms. It worked quite well, Sharp execs told me at the Consumer Electronics Show. Sales of the 70-inch rose nicely and the effect was so successful the company later started selling a 90-inch model which boosted sales of the 80.
The iPhone 6 Plus similarly helps sell the iPhone 6. That’s critical for Apple because right now it has chosen to continue another iPhone tradition: Selling mostly one model while offering several. Though we won’t know the real ratio of iPhone 6 to 6 Plus until the latter is more readily available (right now it’s about 6:1), we can assume from Samsung’s experience with Galaxy that the smaller model will be the far bigger seller. Knowing that, Apple is likely already ordering more of the 4.7-inch screens and the smaller chassis and batteries by far. Of course, should the mix vary from what’s planned, the company can adapt. But the lead times on some of these parts in the mammoth quantities Apple uses them make having some foreknowledge critical.
In choosing to create the 6 Plus, Apple made it clear the future is mainly the 4.7-inch screen . This was a clean break from the 4-inch design of the 5/5s and the even smaller 3.5-inch display of the 4/4s. Some long-time iPhone users will find the transition uncomfortable, which is why the 5s will remain on sale not just this year, but also almost certainly next. While resolutions may converge on the 1920 x 1080 of the iPhone 6 Plus eventually and perhaps the display will gain a tenth or two of an inch, the physical size will likely as a maximum for some time.
But the main focus of offering larger models wasn’t to attract people already happy with iPhones*, rather it was to offer up something Android users could consider as an option. It goes back to than anchoring effect. I spent about 6 days with an iPhone 6 Plus. Personally, I didn’t care for it finding the device too big to use at all with one hand and awkward in general. But something remarkable happened when I placed a 5s back in my hands after relinquishing the 6s. It felt downright tiny and almost toy-like.
Basically, in less than one week a device size I’d used daily for two years – admittedly with some frustration, but constantly nevertheless — went from reasonable to ridiculous. My brain and hands had become acclimated to the bigger keyboard and screen that quickly. It’s certainly true this effect can work in reverse. There are Android users who have given up a Moto X or Galaxy S4 in the past year and come over to iPhone and adjusted. But Apple had to understand that mentally the transition from large to small was difficult and few would make it, especially when the initial visceral reaction is: This iPhone is really puny.
After about half a day back with the 5s, I picked up an iPhone 6 and it felt pretty close to perfect: The design makes it feel smaller than it is, yet the extra screen real estate provides much of what I found wanting in the iPhone 5s. The 6 is slightly smaller in size to the current Galaxy S5, but far more comfortable to hold thanks to the contoured edges. (Apple gives up .4 inches in screen size to get there, a tradeoff many Android users could likely live with as the diagonal is nearly identical to the Galaxy S3, Moto X and others.) There’s a lot more to say about that comparison, which I’ll leave for an upcoming post. But for now, it’s important to understand that with Apple, little happens by accident. The company saw the weakness in its product mix as demand shifted toward larger models, especially in the high-end segment where it plays. Arguably, it took longer to respond than it should have but in coming to market with a complete lineup, it closed nearly all of its vulnerabilities at once. The one hole still to fill appears to be in the $300-$350 range. But that, too, is a much longer conversation.
* Another important segment, those potentially leaving iPhone for Android’s bigger displays, matters too. That they exist at all, however, further points out the need to attract Android users to iPhone.
Happy birthday, Google. You didn't invent Android, but you made it awesome, for which we are sincerely grateful. Most of the other stuff that you do is pretty cool too. We'd tell you to watch a certain John Hughes movie, but you're too young to appreciate the reference.
Google declared September 27th its "official" birthday with a 15-year celebration last year, though a precise date for the start of the company isn't really known - you could say that the start of the project goes back at least 18 years to when Larry Page and Sergey Brin began work on their custom "BackRub" search engine at Stanford University. The company was officially incorporated on September 4th, 1998, though an earlier version of Google was posted on Stanford servers before then.
Android's official birthday is November 5th. This commemorates the day that Google introduced the Open Handset Alliance in 2007, though the original "Android" company was started by Danger Inc. co-founder Andy Rubin and others way back in 2003 and acquired by Google two years later.
Are you looking for a powerful little tablet for yourself, or perhaps a Christmas present? Then you might want to mosey on over to Newegg, where EVGA's model of the NVIDIA Tegra Note 7 reference hardware is currently on sale. You can pick one up for just $129.99, an impressive $70 off of the retail price. Newegg is also offering free economy shipping via its "super Eggsaver" option. Sorry, international readers: though Newegg has stores in a handful of other countries, it looks like this deal is limited to the US.
The Tegra Note family of 7-inch tablets use the Tegra 4 processor, which is still a beast of a system (especially for gaming) more than a year after it debuted on the original SHIELD. Aside from the processor, the Tegra Note hardware is pretty similar to the original 2012 Nexus 7, including a 1280x800 screen and 1GB of RAM. But the Tegra Note 7 also includes a 5MP rear camera, MicroSD card slot, and an integrated passive stylus (plus NVIDIA's impressive note software), making it a good all-around 7 incher and an excellent budget device. The front-facing speakers and HDMI-out port don't hurt, either.
Updates for the EVGA Tegra Note 7 and other nearly-identical hardware comes directly from NVIDIA, which is generally very fast on the draw when it comes to new versions of Android. That said, the tablets are still on 4.4.2 about three months after 4.4.3 (and later 4.4.4) became available. If you're on the fence, be sure to check out Cameron's review of the hardware.
Since Oppo first teased its brand new flagship, the N3, we’ve seen a number of leaks come out showcasing the new cooling system, hinting at a new design and even suggesting the phone will come in an aerospace grade metal body. Well the company has come out and confirmed the aerospace metal in a new teaser on its Facebook page. The photo also makes mention of a stainless steel body for those who prefer a little heft (and possibly less out of their wallet) to their phone.
Whether or not the stainless steel variant will be cheaper is anyone’s guess. From what the image suggests, the alloy will encompass the darker device while the stainless steel variant will be a lighter color. With the device expected to launch at the end of October we’ll know more soon enough. Stay tuned!
Earlier today, an unannounced LG-branded wearable passed through the United States of America’s official certification authority — the FCC. According to information included in the filing’s documentation, we’re looking at the South Korean company’s first 3G-enabled smartwatch.
Unfortunately, the paperwork doesn’t reveal anything about the actual internals of the unit, but we do know its dimensions are 57.7 x 35.5 mm. To put these figures into perspective, Samsung’s Gear S measures in at 58.3 x 39.8 mm — so LG’s offering is just a tad bit smaller.
Would you be interested in an LG standalone smartwatch? Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below.
