“Over the last 10 days, Samsung, Motorola and Nokia announced new smartphones ahead of Apple’s iPhone 5 event on Wednesday,” Darcy Travlos writes for Forbes. “Amongst the three, the bar has been set high for Apple, and attention has been drawn to certain features that have become the de rigueur for smartphones.”
“Nokia introduced the Lumia 920… Motorola introduced, at its high end, the Droid RAZR Maxx HD… Samsung kicked off the new product announcements with its Galaxy Note II… Amongst the three, Nokia appears to win on ‘nuance’ or media features with its image-stabilization camera, new music offering, and WP 8 layout,” Travlos writes. “Samsung appears to win on ‘brawn’ with its quad-core processor, fairly large battery and latest of the Android operating systems. Motorola appears in the squeeze position of ‘caught in the middle.’ Combined, the three have laid down some attractive products with features that Apple will want to address.”
Based on these new phones:
• Apple should increase the battery size on the iPhone 5, substantially
• Apple should announce an alternative to NFC, if it does not include NFC
• Apple should provide an improvement over its existing camera technology
• Apple should wow the audience with a new form factor
• If Apple changes the charger, it should be more convenient
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jaribbs” for the heads up.]
When did Forbes become so stupid?!
How about stupider…that’s today!
I’ve been obsessed about that…when did they become so stupid??
When?—Since the namesake presidential run in 1996 and 2000. Lacking the skipper’s firm grip on the tiller, the vessel began to founder.
Meanwhile—subordinates, befuddled by the novel economics of emerging technology, began to drift. And inevitably, the great man staking out political positions poisoned the publication’s fountain of wisdom. The once iconic journal of commerce drifted toward the Sargasso Sea of the mediocre…
In mobile computing space, this week the competition gathered strength. Microsoft is lying in the weeds with stealth Nokia warheads, Amazon’s entries are suicide bombers with explosives strapped to their bodies, Google’s comedy squad is spreading FUD like jelly on a bagel and Samsung wants a return to Pork Chop Hill.
The key thing, though, is that Apple’s opposition is TOO LATE. No matter what they bring to the rhubarb, Apple is doomed AND so is everyone else: the Mayan calendar ends December 21 of this year, and numerous sources infinitely better informed than the slack confederacy of tech pundits points to a definite end of times.
We who are weary of hyperbole, bile, cant, and needless hurt, say—well, if we must all die, then good riddance to a planet once lively with invention and promise but now mortally compromised by a repellant crust of minds diseased with envy and spite and oh so expressive of those emotions. Damn the Internet for a pig in a poke.
Recently, I’ve noticed a handful of writers at Forbes who’ve made it their life’s work to bash Apple — I’d cite their names but that would only dignify them…
He left one out: Apple should sue the crap out of Samsung and Google!
Yeah..sue ’em…that’ll make the iPhone better–OR…OR…OR..Apple could NOT act like little brats who take their ball and go home as soon as some one else shows some skill on the court and ‘Miachael Jordan’ their asses.
Apple better be wearing their ’23’ tomorrow…..man how do you go from reinventing the smart phone–some would say INventing the smart phone, to playing catch-up.
Hope Apple’s ass is sore from all that laurel-sitting
Dude, if anyone’s playing catch up, it’s the other guys. What rock have you been living under for the past 4 years?
Where has he been living?
1.) He’s living in 2012 where Android started 1.5 years later in production but now has double marketshare.
2.) In 2012 where most of the features announced in iOS6 have been available in Android for the past 2.5 years.
3.) In 2012 where Apple took the concept of the notification shade from Android (and improve it in many ways to their credit) and still had the nerve to say that Android is all copied.
4.) In 2012 where many Android devices have better battery life.
5.) In 2012 where I still won’t have NFC on my phone or have pattern unlock. 🙁
6.) In 2012 where I stare at rows and rows of icons that won’t allow me to move infrequently used apps off my screen and Apple built in stock applications take up an entire home screen and I can’t even uninstall the ones I don’t use.
I think he’s living in the real world, in the current times with many other Apple fans such as myself just want more now and are tired of waiting year after year just to be fed bread crumbs of 1 or 2 useful features here and there with each iOS and iPhone release that essentially are just playing catchup. In the world where we remember when every year (up to 2010 and the iPhone 4) where Apple design was second to none and they seemed genuinely interested in pushing technology forward.
I think the question really is, where have you been?
Great post.
Kaboom! Slam dunk post.
1) Android (the OS) has a greater market share than the iPhone 4S. In a head to head comparison iOS 5 has 10 times the market share of Android 4.0 and 4.1 combined. Seems you forget that for 90+% of Android based phones the carrier controls when and if you can upgrade the OS and thus those users are stuck in old, feature/capability poor versions of Android and the majority of those Android based phones simply cannot be upgraded to 4.0 or 4.1 even if the carriers allowed/supported it. (Think Moto’s newest phones that won’t even ship for another 6 weeks or so won’t ship with Android 4.1 — they’ve already announced they’ll be shipping with 4.0 even though Google owns Moto!)
2) Most of the features for 2.5 years? Care to list them? (I assume you mean features in iOS 6 that are not in iOS 5.) Android has a Passbook equivalent standard in a native app? Android has fly over maps standard in a native app? etc.
3) First, what has this to do with playing catch up? If it is improved as you say then you’re admitting Apple is ahead. Second, Apple NEVER said Android is 100% copied from iOS. Some patented features were copied. Several courts have said so.
4) Care to name those “many”? Yes, a few have significantly longer battery life. Those same phones are much heavier and much larger than an iPhone. Many, many people will prefer a PHONE to be the size and weight of a PHONE — not a luggable mini tablet or heavy weight battery with a phone attached that they cannot stick into their shirt pocket without it weighing the shirt down.
5) NFC is still a rare thing in the general market. It is the same as the 3G and 4G LTE issue. People faulted Apple for not coming out with 3G in the very first iPhone even though less than 5% of the U.S population (Apple’s entire market when the iPhone was initially released) had access to true 3G. The same with 4G LTE last year. People faulted Apple for not introducing the iPhone 4G rather than the iPhone 4S last year — even though less than 1% of the world’s smartphone buying population had 4G LTE access last year. Similarly, I’d be shocked if even 1% of the commercial market (stores, etc.) have NFC built n today. Additionally, if Passbook works they way it is rumored to work, businesses (and users) will get the convenience of NFC through the cloud without businesses having to retrofit their point of sale systems — or people having to “bump” their phones. Want a NFC experience with someone 100 feet or 100 miles away? Use Passbook or its evolved implementation.
Pattern unlock? Swipe to unlock is not good enough, easy enough for you?
6) You don’t know that iOS has let you group apps for some time now so you can unclutter your screen? You don’t know that you can move icons of apps around at will (even choosing to put NONE of the standard apps in the bottom row and just your favorites there)? You don’t know that you can move ALL standard apps off the home screen? Stop complaining about things that just are not real!
I’ve been living in the real world. Seems you are not.
Kaboom! Slam dunk post.
You left out one important little part: Apple has a 71% profit share of the whole mobile market, Samsung is the only remotely successful Android vendor, and everyone else is squirming around on the ground dying.
What does Apple have to catch up to, again?
Tell me one other company that is innovating on their smartphones. I said innovating, not blatantly and willfully infringing on patents held by Apple. Their motto seems to be, “If you can’t innovate, steal!”
But will their phones run iOS 6?
haha nice
Wake me up when Apple has something new & exciting to announce. The iPhone 5S will be a rehash of the iPhone 5 which is itself a rehash of the iPhone 4S which is a replica of the iPhone 4. The iPhone 10 will probably look like the iPhone 4.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….
nice…even if your tongue was in your cheek
If only you could sleep until Apple makes a radically different iPhone.
4 or 5 years of no more Ballmer’s left nut’s BS. Total bliss.
Amen to that, brother!
You have to admit he can be amusing, even if politically incorrect at times 😉
I guess the iPhone five will be a runaway hit as far as sales? I hope so as I am well invested. But as a long time Apple/Mac user for (30 years) I don’t think I’ll be trading in my 4S. There doesn’t seem to be that much incentive for me to upgrade. I really expected Apple to come up with a new form factor but I guess they are relying on a pent-up demand for the phone so they don’t have to spend the money to change things. Translated that means doing it on the cheap. Which is okay, it is after all it business. Maybe there will be something to really impress me but it will truly have to be a surprise. And the way things are these days there don’t seem to be any real surprises. There are no secrets anymore. Well anyway, will see soon whether the five is just a barely improved 4S or there’s something really unique. I just hope it sells like hotcakes! But personally I was hoping for more.
So LTE speed means nothing to you?
afraid it means nothing to most people who are not located in large areas like myself. I live in 13th largest city in texas and we probobly won’t see LTE past the HSPA for 2 years if we are lucky so that leaves a 4 in screen and loss of my unlimited 3G data on AT&T hmm, hope there is more tomorrow but doubt it I’m afraid
I hope the Cult supports me as I might not measure up to top of the line Androids and Windows phone.
IPhone 5
If you judge Windows Phone and top of the line Android phones by their sales numbers, they appear to be only supported by small cults. Irony much? =D
Headline is backwards and has what must be a typo.
It should read: “iPhone 4 sets high bar for competition.”
I just want it to work. I only have an N of 2, but the 2 people I know with Galaxy’s have issues with the thing shutting down randomly. The screen is big..but pixelated. Getting support from Sprint hasn’t been fun either. One of them is trading for a refurbed 4S.
I’m trading my 4 for a 5 just cause I can. The iPhone would have to really suck for me to drop all of the simplicity of iCloud, the great screen, camera, and one-handed usability.
Regarding form factor..how different could it be??? Other phone OEMs have proven that Apple got the overall design right from day one.
I get a new phone when my 2 year contract is up.
Apple tends to release a new iPhone every year.
Even if “5” is not a huge leap over the “4S”, it WILL be a significant upgrade over my “4”.
(Apple hardware is designed for a longer life cycle, compared to the Windows and Android alternatives.)
Yeah same here. I could have upgraded my 4 last February but it has been such a good phone I didn’t feel the need (though really wanted Siri) and waited for the 5 – now just tomorrow, for order anyway. Switching to Verizon from AT&T after suffering for years with AT&T’s poor reception in our area. My Verizon iPad 3 showed me we get much better Verizon reception here, so…
So I go to ‘meet the teacher’ night for my 14 year old tonight, and I walk into the tech/engineering class. The tables are lined with what look like netbooks. No sooner do my wife and I sit down, the teacher comes over to us, taps on the keyboard to ‘wake the computer’, and proceeds to tell us that ‘they work just like Macs’. I look down- it’s a Chromebook made by Samsung. How ironic that it would work just like a Mac (except the ‘trackpad’ was noticeably cheaper and lagged significant, and the whole thing was a flimsy piece of plastic). Their rationale for the Chromebooks? They are ‘cloud’ computers, and everything is free. Nice…
As frustrated as i have been over the past 15 years with my tunnel-visioned, Windows-centric school system, I must give them props for NOT bowing down to the “it’s cheaper” mantra and actually starting to buy iPads for every school in the city (not a minor issue in a school system with close to 90 schools and 72,000 students). Now, if we could just get them to stop buying those sad Lenovo laptops.
Ask the teacher which “Mac-like” anti-virus software they run.
Expect Apple to not deliver what everyone is asking for…
A bigger screen. Nobody asked for a LONGER screen.
How is a longer screen not also a bigger screen?
I would really like to get the 5 but Rogers (and all other carriers) in Canada stick us with 3 year contracts and steep early upgrade penalties. So I have another year to wait. At least I got my iPad 3rd gen with 4G this year.
Jeff, you don’t have to sign a contract to use the iPhone in Canada. In fact, it’s much cheaper to go and outright buy the latest iphone, and then walk into Rogers or Bell (Robbers or Hell) or Telus or Wind, etc., and get pay-as-you-go. All the carriers want your money. If you already own the phone, they’re quite happy to hook you up. The difference being, if you bought your phone, you can pay WAY less per month, don’t have to have a contract, and you can sell, upgrade, or get rid of your phone at your discretion, including throwing it into the Missinabe River, no penalty. The contracts are HORRIBLE (as you know). And you’re stuck with an out-dated phone after 3 years (in fact, they give you an out-dated phone to start your contract!).
NEVER sign a contract with a Canadian carrier.
Buy you iPhone outright from the Apple Store and go shopping for a plan. You’ll save money big time and you can even buy a new iPhone yearly for about $100 to $150 per year after selling the old one.
I guess I don’t understand why the form should change. I don’t want a damn wider phone. The thinner size and longer length coupled with the lighter weight would be useful. Wider is just wasted space. With the lon her screen, at least we can have an additional row of icons and nonletterboxed movies. That’s useful.
The big improvement should be features. Passport will make Google Wallet look cheap and Siri will be totally functional. The new map program will run circles around Google Maps and who knows, maybe the one more thing might be a new search engine linked to Siri.
Fingerprint recognition would be outstanding, but that may only be a pipe dream. I don’t understand what the other smartphone manufacturers are making, that the iPhone is lacking. They sure don’t have the abundance of apps that we have. Please let me know what else everyone wants (and don’t tell me a wider screen that is a total waste). I’d love to hear some innovations that anyone else is willing to recommend. Just list them here. Show me the practicality. If you can convince me, I’ll call my friends at Apple and back you to the hilt.
Otherwise, everyone needs to sit back and see what is offered tomorrow. I just don’t see what’s going to be so disappointing, or do the Wall Street jackasses have you convinced that they are so precognitive. It’s like Apple will give you a finger and you want the entire body. Slow down and relax, the world is not coming to an end!
I don’t thing they’ll ever technically ‘one more thing’ again. Not the same way at least. That was Steve’s MO.
I agree. It would seem weak and imitative for Tim Cook to ever do a “one more thing”.
The only thing the competition is setting up for Apple is target practice. And by “setting up” I mean sitting in a barrel. Apple competes with its own imagination of quality.
Just one thing, When does Apple need to be concerened about Faked image-stabilization camera Technology that Nokia/Microsoft got caught lying about as if it was real live imaging being captured at the product launch that has gotten more press then the phone itself.
Also by not having any price point’s out for consumers on diffrent line up costs, thats a real worry, /s
And this is just one example, every last one of thoes listed can be debunked and set on fire.
In closeing, we are all very much aware of Forbes and the other news sites using the same “MO”, whatever they can do to increase readership until the iPhone is release tomorrow, all ridding the coat-tails of Apple.
Just a little twist of doom and allot of Fud to increase the “Chicken Little” effect and you have allot of page clicks people.
Wow, this one is on the doll big time. Must have really bent over for all three checks. Maybe needed the money to fInish paying for the community college education.
May IP5 go nuclear on the completion.
Apple could release a 3G iP5 with worse battery life and no screen upgrade and users would buy it like crazy. The rest of the tech world has leaped far ahead of Apple in terms of offering customers what they will want, but as usual they are waiting for Apple to tell them they want it first so it will be 3-4 years longer before it happens.
I plan to get the iP5 but if it fails to impress I won’t and will simply wait, my current phone works just fine.
What the hell have the other smartphone companies offered to their customers other than inferior products which infringe on Apple’s patents. As I said earlier, a wider screen is a fracking waste. Now, tell me what else the iPhone lacks. I sure don’t want their inferior O/S. Some people just believe anything they read, even if it’s loaded with fecal matter. I guess these same people never learned to think for themselves!
You are totally brainwashed. They do not have a better phone than the iPhone.
Bigger phones are not bigger to give customers bigger screens. They are bigger to use bigger batteries.
Apple doesn’t need humungous phones. Their OS is more efficient and their batteries have a greater capacity at a smaller size.
You think a bigger phone is a more advanced phone. The truth is, a smaller LTE phone with a longer battery life is the holy grail. iPhone 5 wins. Android and Windows 8 phone loses.
Why, when brainwashing is mentioned, do I find myself thinking about the Manchurian Candidate?
There should be a term for a feature that is actually a step backward and doesn’t congeal or fit with the device’s basic nature & intended purpose. A larger phone screen isn’t appealing. An iPad is as the larger screen object. I don’t want to talk into a plank of technology. If this is all Andreck’s got then the Emperor has no clothes and in fact STOLE what clothes he might have!
Totally true… People mistake larger screens as a “feature”, which is the way it’s sold to them. In all reality it’s a repackaged design flaw.
Apple should this, Apple should that…
Darcy Travlos should get laid more often, maybe would be less annoying…
You could help, by volunteering…
I don’t believe there will ever be a jump as big as the original iPhone was in the smartphone category. After a massive revolution like that where do you go??? Incremental improvements. Would all these naysayers be happy if they came out with a round or triangular phone. Different just for difference sake does no good. Since the original iPhone there have really only been incremental improvements to the winning formula. Since 2007 there isn’t a single competitor that has built a phone to the same quality as the iPhone. I go to Best Buy and look at them all. Just plastic junk.
It took Intel to get PC makers to design better looking notebooks and whose design did they copy??? Now all the iMac copies are coming out. It’s obvious there is only one company in the tech sector that is innovating.
There are dozens of new Android smartphones and the analysts expect the iPhone to top every feature of every Android smartphone. That is rather unlikely to happen. The iPhone has to have a somewhat limited hardware feature set and I don’t think there’s any way of getting around that. You can only pack so many things in a smartphone and still have room for a battery. I’m still don’t quite understand why Apple wants to build iPhones so slim when it would be much more practical to have greater battery life with a thicker smartphone.
“still don’t quite understand why Apple wants to build iPhones so slim when it would be much more practical to have greater battery life with a thicker smartphone.”
Agree 100%. Should have kept the same thickness and use the additional space on a battery with 50% more capacity.
well, here is nothing to see at all. apple is not innovator with creation mind anymore. it becomes second MS or BS. now, they are faced with limitation. that’s why apple recently bought many companies and patents. it shows clearly that they are inferior. I hope that apple dies soon. it suddenly became serious cancer we must to cut off.
I tend to agree with you, Edward. Apple’s days as an industry leader are numbered. In the next few years, they will gradually recede as Asian conglomerates roll out innovation and expedience without relief until the glory days of the Korean Empire are rightfully restored. Then the hated hegemony of the western devils will be at last destroyed and Cupertino and the rest of the western fools will slide into the abyss after San Andreas fault
@Edward
You may want to check into the nearest alanon/synanon
Tell me why a reporter for a paper rag suddenly “knows” what Apple should or must do?
Reality please. It wouldn’t surprise me that the word merchant didn’t know what LTE or NFC means.
Tweaking a product has worked well for the Porsche 911.
The higher the bar, the easier it is to limbo under it.