“In less than two weeks Apple is expected to unveil the latest iteration of the iPhone, and consumers have a long laundry list of what they’d like to see in the latest version,” Jefferson Graham reports for USA Today. “In a survey of 1,000 iPhone owners, retailer uSell found the number one improvement desired deals with power. ‘I really need a better battery,’ says Suzanne Monsen, visiting from Norway. ‘I have to charge it once or twice a day.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Either you do not know how to use your iPhone, Suzanne, or it is broken. More info here (how to maximize iPhone battery life) and here (battery replacement program).
“In the uSell survey, 37% chose improved battery. Other improvements folks want to see: No. 2: Bigger screen (19.2%). Apple is expected to make folks happy with a bigger, 4.7 inch model – up from 4 inches for the iPhone 5s. Rival Galaxy models from Samsung top 5 inches. No. 3: Better camera (11%). No. 4: Better phone reception (11%). No. 5: More storage (10%). When it comes to most desired new features for the iPhone, the majority of consumers (45.5%) said they wanted the seemingly impossible: an unbreakable, un-scratchable screen.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Unsurprisingly, the majority of survey respondents are simply parroting back iPhone 6 rumors after months of Apple – GT Advanced man-made sapphire news. If the news in the preceding months were instead heavy on, say, a wraparound display, that would likely be the survey’s top choice.
A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. – Steve Jobs, May 12, 1998
Macdailynews’s takes usually are funny, but when it comes to religion or known problems of iPhone it just cannot help himself and shut up. Sometimes silence is GOLD. iPhone battery is the main iPhone issue these days (well, a bigger screen would be another one). I’m not supposed to spend my limited time on Earth by caring about what I’m doing with my phone, so it would not run out of battery before the end of the day. iPhone currently sucks up the battery as quick as it can, specially when running network aware applications. It is a fact…you have to have a cable with you everywhere you go.
Sometimes, silence is GOLD[en].
“I’m not supposed to spend my limited time on Earth by caring about what I’m doing with my phone …”
Sounds like you waste too much time no matter what phone you’re using, which probably isn’t an iPhone anyway. I’m sure that big honkin’ Samsung has all the battery life you need.
‘Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent;
with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent.’
-God
Proverbs 17:28 (NLT)
“It is a fact…you have to have a cable with you everywhere you go.”
Are you traveling from place to place in your car? If so, it is not painful to have a charging cable permanently in your car.
If no car — a real world comparison with other phones would be useful. Would any last all day under your usage? If so, why not switch?
If you don’t want to switch, why not? Because the iPhone is, in other ways, markedly superior? Okay – so suck it up and figure out how to deal with the battery issue.
Probably no choice on the planet will give you one hundred percent perfection and one hundred percent match to YOUR particular needs. That’s life. Deal with it.
There’s this funny concept, only a few centuries old, called “customer feedback.”
We bought something, we have a right to praise its advantages AND complain when it doesn’t meet our individual expectations.
True Apple fans do not blindly accept everything Apple offers, they take the time to tell Apple things they’d personally like to see fixed and improved.
That’s part of a free market. Deal with it.
We’re going to finally upgrade from our iPhone 4 models, but the main reason is to switch from AT&T to Verizon.
If I could keep my 4 and switch carriers I’d do it, although the camera upgrade will be awesome seeing as how the one in the 4 is pretty darn good, especially using HDR.
Everything else will be icing on the cake.
Careful with Verizon. In south Florida, at least, they have a lot of areas with spotty LTE coverage. Unlike AT&T, the next step down is usually as slow as dial-up.
Source: I had an iPad with Verizon and connection was consistently and dramatically slower than AT&T on my phone.
It depends on your location of course. In my area of Ohio it can vary, but Verizon overall seems to be better. At work I can’t even make a phone call from inside the building, while those with Verizon can watch hi-def videos.
At home in a neighboring town AT&T works quite well. I’m not suggesting that one is better than the other, just that in my case Verizon will get me much better performance.
I think it’s ridiculous that land line phones work across the nation (and world) while we have to put up with a hodgepodge of coverage from all the different cellphone carriers.
It would be nice if they all used the same system and had to share all of the towers so we could all have the ability to use our phones everywhere.
Verizon is probably better overall with voice calls, but I rarely talk on the phone.
I was referring to data.
If I play many games my battery drains far faster, so with people increasingly doing that battery is more of an issue, I generally get home from work with about 30% battery, but it would be nice to not have to manage my battery life. I would gladly sacrifice one generations worth of slimming the size for simply increasing the battery size.
Some things I want in iPhone 6 that I probably won’t get:
– Aggressive pricing on top tier iCloud Drive storage
(Need real solution to storing ALL data from ALL devices at reasonable cost.)
– Wireless charging
(NFMR, not some silly inductive charging pad… and extend it to the entire Apple product line)
– Significantly better battery life
(during actual usage, not just while on standby)
– More responsive UI
(example: from any app tap home button and swipe down to access Search – without having to wait for animation to finish)
– Easier access to various Settings
(either simplify the organization or let me find any setting using Spotlight search.)
– Maps Updates
(transit & biking directions, much better international coverage, reinvent usability a la “Citymapper” app)
– Camera: add Optical Image Stabilization
(also bump up the resolution on the front camera)
– Camera: Add hyperlapse to time-lapse videos
– Camera: Limit depth of field, blur background or foreground
(probably impossible using optics, but get creative with software)
– More impact-resistant glass and more scratch resistant metal
– Water resistance
– More RAM for better multitasking
(I hate waiting for Safari tabs to reload)
– Send Siri to grad school
(need better AI and more advanced capabilities)
– A beautiful fitted leather case just like the one for 5/5S
Things I don’t need:
– “Sapphire”
– “City Tours”
– Thinner phone
– Anything larger than 4.7″
– an even more scratch-resistant glass
Uh, freediverx, the scratch resistance of a substance is a function of its hardness. Hardness is represented by the relative hardness on the Mohs scale, and sapphire has a Mohs scale rating of 9 (absolute hardness 400), and only two substances are harder and can scratch sapphire, carborundum and diamond. Among transparent minerals, only Moissanite a pure form of carborundum (Mohs 9.25, absolute ~500) and Diamond (Mohs 10, absolute 1500) can be synthesized and are harder. Both are more difficult and far more expensive to grow, and neither can be grown in large bolluses to be cut into flat screen size pieces.
The quality of impact resistance of a material is measured by its elasticity, and is represented numerically by Young’s Modulus in Pascals, where a larger number of Pascals is better. The Corning Gorilla Glass used in the original iPhone had a Young’s Modulus of ~65 GigaPascals, Gorilla Glass 3, used in the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5s and 5C, has a Mohs hardness of 7 and Young’s Modulus of ~71.5 GPa. A Sapphire screen would have a Mohs hardness of 9 and a Young’s Modulus of 345 GigaPascals.
Now, would you like to reconsider your ignorant list of “Things I don’t need,” and admit you really don’t know what you’re talking about?
If you’d read between the lines you would have gotten my comment’s intended message. What I want is a more impact resistant screen regardless of what material it’s made of. In other words, I’m saying I will not be impressed by reading it’s made of sapphire or any other material but only by the actual result of increased impact resistance. If Apple has found a way to make sapphire more impact resistant than Gorilla Glass, then I’d be thrilled.
Having said that, I believe you’re mistaken concerning Young’s Modulus. According to Wikipedia, Young’s Modulus is a measure of the stiffness of an elastic material, NOT the material’s elasticity.
“A material whose Young’s modulus is very high is rigid.”
-Wikipedia
Therefore, according to your own numbers, sapphire has an elasticity rating 4.8X lower than Gorilla Glass 3 and 5.3X lower than the original Gorilla Glass. Accordingly, one might surmise that crystalline sapphire is about 5X less impact resistant than Gorilla Glass.
While looking up Young’s Modulus you might also want to freshen up on the definition of “ignorant” by taking a peek at a mirror.
Why do you think Sapphire has been used for over a century in watch crystals instead of Gorilla Glass? Stiffness and resistance to impact at the end of a long lever where impacts occur daily without scratching or breaking, that’s why. Try talking to an engineers. One of my current clients is one and we had a long discussion about this subject some time ago. I don’t rely on Wikipedia for information. I also tutored in Physics when I was in college many years ago. I’m quite familiar with the physical properties of materials.
Sapphire is considered the optimal material for watch crystals primarily for its strength, scratch resistance, and optical clarity. In watches, It’s impact resistance is enhanced due to its surface area being relatively small in relation to the crystal’s thickness. To provide the same ratio on a smartphone display cover, it would have to be several millimeters thicker, which I’m sure Apple would not favor.
I suspect if Apple does use sapphire they will mitigate its brittle qualities by a) chemical/heat treatments, b) fusing with other materials, and/or c) building in support structures to reinforce key areas.
I don’t have the benefit of having tutored physics in college so if you’re certain sapphire is inherently less brittle than Gorilla Glass please provide a suitable reference.
“It is important to note that in the literal sense, hardness is not synonymous with strength. Brittleness basically indicates how resistant the material is to plastic deformation. A very brittle material will, when placed under stress, break/fracture rather than bend. In the case of a sapphire crystal versus a glass crystal, the sapphire is considerably more brittle. As a result, a sapphire crystal is more likely to chip or crack than is glass counterpart if both are subjected to an equally hostile stress (banging, etc.).”
http://people.timezone.com/library/itsabouttime/itsabout0010
Interesting you failed to in led your links disclaimer:
I cannot find anything that supports his claims that Tungsten Carbide is 9. Every other source places the various alloys of Tungsten Carbide at around ~8.5 to 8.9 on the Mohs scale. Silicon Carbide, which he exaggerates to 9.4 on the Mohs, is actually only 9.2 in its purest crystalline form of Moissanite. His numbers are way off for absolute hardness of the trans Mohs materials on the Knoops scale. I believe Sandler’s information is entirely suspect.
I repeat, for over a century, the most durable break, shatter, and scratch resistant watch crystals on high end watches have been bolus grown sapphire. Only low end watches have glass crystals or quartz crystals. Movado uses sapphire.
That being said, we already know that Apple uses a Multi ply screen akin to a sheet of plywood, so no doubt you are correct. There is no reason to use a monolithic sapphire screen to achieve the purpose. Thanks for the stimulating conversation.
Young’s modulus is the force a substance will take before it will break, sometimes referred to as its elasticity. Brittleness is also a factor in Young’s Modulus which I didn’t go into in a two paragraph comment. I tried to keep it simple. It still holds that the smaller the Young’s Modulus, the easier it will break.
My Google search results suggest the opposite: that Young’s Modulus is a measure of stiffness, not elasticity.
Higher number = higher stiffness = lower elasticity = lower force required to break.
If this is incorrect please provide a source.
Your 4-factor chain appears to be incorrect.
Wikipedia’s page on Young’s Modulus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young's_modulus
Fiberboard = 4 gigapascals
Oak = 11
Steel = 200
So higher number definitely does NOT equal lower force required to break.
Let’s not confuse the issue by introducing even more arcane physics jargon. Let’s stick with a simple definition of Young’s modulus.
I’m going by this (emphasis mine):
“Young’s modulus, also known as the tensile modulus or elastic modulus, is a measure of the STIFFNESS of an elastic material and is a quantity used to characterize materials. It is defined as the ratio of the stress (force per unit area) along an axis over the strain (ratio of deformation over initial length) along that axis in the range of stress in which Hooke’s law holds”
“A material whose Young’s modulus is very high is RIGID.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young's_modulus
If you scroll down to the table under the heading “Approximate values” you will see a list of various materials with their respective Young’s Modulus ratings expressed in GPa (or gigapascals.)
Note how materials known to be flexible and non-brittle (e.g., rubber, polypropylene, nylon) have very low ratings while materials known to be brittle (e.g., tungsten, diamond, etc.) have very high ratings.
Incidentally diamond is rated 1200 while sapphire (aka aluminum oxide which isn’t listed) is rated 300. So diamond, the second hardest known substance, is also the second most brittle.
Your logic simply does not hold, freediverx. By your conclusion, dropping a diamond and dropping glass, the glass would survive before the glass. Not true. Extend the logic, drop a tumbler made from Gorilla Glass 3 (Young’s Modulus of around 71 GigaPascals), and a tumbler of the same size made of Aluminum (Young’s Modulus of around 69 GigaPascal)s, on a so-so concrete floor (Young’s modulus of 30 MegaPascals—note the far smaller scale!). Freediverx, which tumbler is likely to survive unscathed? I assure you, it’s not the glass one.
This rhetorical back and forth is a waste of time. Stop arguing and cite a credible source.
I’ve looked at your links. They don’t mean much, freediverx. For example the link to youbreakitifixit.com claims to be testing an purported iPhone sapphire glass screen. . . But it’s the same size as a iPhone 5 screen. Where’d the get it? I frankly doubt it’s the real production or even prototype screen Apple was looking at. Those would be under strong lock and key security. Secondly, their “drop test” showed a the deformation stress given to the screen from striking the corner of a plastic framed Phone, not the very rigid aircraft aluminum frames typified by flagship Apple iPhones. Even with their non-exemplar test “sapphire glass screen from whatever source, the results showed the sapphire was “25% more” break resistant than Gorilla Glass 3. That is a significant improvement.
Your other link to a Canadian yahoo answer forum showed some interesting data. I found the comparisons of sapphire to 341L industrial grade stainless steel particularly enlightening. It showed sapphire was within 10% of the tensile strength and of the stainless steel, and around five times the sheer strength and Modulous of elasticity of the steel.
Neither of your links was supportive of your position.
free – don’t play word games about ‘stiffness’ and ‘rigid’. And it’s not a matter of ‘view’.
You stated, VERY clearly, that
Higher number = lower force required to break.
I merely showed you – from your own source, Wikipedia – that this statement is utterly wrong and that higher number does NOT equal ‘lower force required to break’.
I think maybe part of the problem in your thinking is that you are confusing ‘rigid’ with ‘brittle’.
Thank you, John.
Still waiting for you to cite any source claiming that a) sapphire is less brittle than glass and/or b) that a higher Young’s Modulus rating does not correlate with greater stiffness and brittleness and less elasticity.
Here’s more related reading:
https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100118233744AAVkg9Z
http://www.iclarified.com/43466/sapphire-vs-gorilla-glass-which-is-more-durable-video
Note how I’m sending link after link to support my view while you have yet to send a single one.
You can bend fiberboard or wood quite a bit before breaking it. The same amount of bending applied to a piece of steel of the same size and shape would indeed break it.
Again link to a source stating that sapphire is less brittle than glass.
Are you planning on bending your phones? I’m not. The aluminum frames of top of the line IPhone don’t flex. Handling the polycarbonate iPhone 5C didn’t show much flexibility either, but in-the-other-hand, I didn’t throw it on pavement to test impact flex. I’m certain Apple did.
Most glass breaks because of a chip or a scratch to an edge that disrupts the structure that spreads because of stress. Prevent the chip, the screen will not break. The hardness prevents scratches and chips. Combine that with a significant increase in resistance to flexing (stress) and that translates to less breakage.
By the way, you are asking for the strength of sapphire and it’s resistance to breakage. Try this:
“You can bend fiberboard or wood quite a bit before breaking it. The same amount of bending applied to a piece of steel of the same size and shape would indeed break it.”
In what world do you live?
Mr. free…your statement about fiberboard wood and steel is not correct………please make a more valid argument…..and that sapphire is more brittle than glass but please see the formulae of how these parameters are measured…..there are in ratios. There fore even if sapphire is more brittle than glass it still requires greater force that glass to shatter it.
re
“You can bend fiberboard or wood quite a bit before breaking it. The same amount of bending applied to a piece of steel of the same size and shape would indeed break it.”
Your statements are mostly complete nonsense. You clearly don’t understand what any of these terms mean or what actually happens when you apply force to these materials.
As shown above, you stated “Higher number = lower force required to break”. The force required to bend the steel (higher number) to the same degree is MASSIVELY larger.
But, furthermore, it won’t break. In fact, steel can be bent far further than wood or fiberboard. Where a piece of either of those will simply break, steel can bend until its ends touch.
See this huge steel beam bent almost completely back on itself. Try that with a piece of fiberboard or a wooden blank.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/6162175/911-attacks-Wreckage-from-the-World-Trade-Center-is-to-be-used-in-memorials.html
If you can’t stay in reality enough to grasp that, you really should not be arguing with Swordmaker.
MDN take: my wife just had her 4s battery replaced after having the phone 25 months. Of course the battery health degraded over a 6 month time frame. My daughter iPhone 4s has a bad battery as well (purchased at the same time as my wife) as well as a non-functioning on/off switch. I gave my son my 4s when I upgraded to a 5s on day one. His 4s had a nonfunctioning on/off switch as well. Apple should have fixed these issues for free. However, I’m upgrading to a 6 and my son gets the 5s.
On the other hand my ex wife was using my original iPhone I got on the first day they were available back in June 2007 up until February of this year with only about 80% degradation of capacity. We upgraded it to a free iPhone 4s. The original iPhone is now being used by my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter as an iPod touch to play games and still holds an all day charge. It’s over SEVEN years old on the original battery and was recharged at least every other day. That’s probably over 3,000 cycles.
What I want in the iPhone 6 is my apps, my photos, my contacts, my bookmarks. And my reflection in the glass when it’s turned off.
Oh, so you also love looking at yourself.
But I’m so pretty!! Lol!
No phone holds up to continuous all day use, not even landline cordless phones. Maybe some people/battery hogs need to get off the phone more and get a life off constant data dependency.
My phone’s battery life is adequate but it could be better. Typically I get home around 6 with 40% left, which is fine. But any day that I take a lot of photos or video it will be dead before nightfall. And if you’re walking around a big city with poor reception while relying on navigation, you’re dead in the water by mid day without a battery pack.
The frustration with battery life comes from the knowledge that an imperceptibly thicker phone could allow a slightly larger battery and yield noticeably better battery life, yet Apple keeps making the iPhone thinner and thinner while keeping battery life more or less the same.
I see lots of people asking for more battery life yet I’ve never heard a single person complain the iPhone is too thick.
– Better battery life for sure. It’ll last fine on most days but I don’t usually push the system. But after just an hour of taking *intermittent* videos at a racing event (total recorded time might’ve been 10 minutes, and another 10 minutes of “camera on, waiting to record”), battery went from 95% to 55% and I had to shut down the pro-level camera app down even more than I already was to last the rest of the day.
Standby, music, video-playback and wifi/cell web-browsing times are no longer sufficient specs for battery life. We need to know expected times when we’re actually pushing the hardware in advertised common uses, like video recording/encoding and streaming 3D games to an Apple TV.
Please stop with the RDF bullshit like Apple couldn’t dramatically increase battery life if they didn’t place such a high value on thinness. If Jony Ive simply left the iPhone 6 at 7.6mm, we could’ve had a much higher capacity battery AND a camera lens that’s flush with the back of the device.
Notice how “thinner phone” doesn’t show up on any survey.
I will again repeat that the phone that is being reported as having a protruding camera lens is NOT an Apple iPhone. It is a Chinese Goophone iPhone knock off that was released about five weeks ago with a heavily skinned Android OS. Recently, Goophones were shown with Apple iPhone 5 replacement components stuffed into them to simulate Apple products.
Goophone i6 Chinese Knock-Off of the soon to be released iPhone 6
Oh, good god, Swordmaker! You really are going to town today, trying to confuse people with FACTS and REASONED THINKING! Sheesh!
Thanks, John. It’s apparent you can lead them to the facts but you can’t make them accept them.
I am a heavy user of my 230 ish iPhone programs but in the year that I have had never had to recharge my phone on the same day . Perhaps it is because I close programs when I am finished using them and do not leave them running in the background .When using the phone in the car for navigation I do plug it in .
Programs don’t run in the background. Apple says closing them only makes battery life worse.
in my experience programs that use the GPS continuously use a lot of power-like Maps . nav apps like Navigon and RunKeeper .This has improved a lot since the coprocessor was introduced .but there are times when these apps can burn through a lot of power .I have had every iPhone since the second generation and in my experience power is far less an issue that it used to be .
R2, nowhere has Apple said anything like “closing apps makes battery usage worse.” It has stated that closing Apps frees up some memory and that some apps DO continue to run in the background if they are not closed down, but those are rare. The others do not.
I think no matter what the battery life was, somebody would be complaining it wasn’t enough. Video!!!? Streaming 3D games! Wow!
We have a microscopic computer/gps unit/still camera/video camera/music player/gaming unit/phone in our pocket and we want to complain about this sort of stuff.
Sheesh! Please, folks. Get one of those nice-looking cases with a whole bunch of extra battery. Big deal. Problem solved.
Yes, how DARE people use the heavily-advertised features of an iPhone like its video recording, Facetime and gaming to an Apple TV. MDN was pretty gung ho on iOS and AppleTV replacing game consoles.
If YOU are satisfied with light use that somehow doesn’t even include video capture, perhaps it’s YOU who needs a cheap Android feature phone for your Facebook and web browsing, not us iOS users who want to actually take advantage of the latest-generation premium hardware.
I think big companies like Apple should push for greater advancements in the field of portable energy solutions. We have a very powerful portable computer in our smartphone which is severely crippled by power requirements. We really need this. Don’t want to here about other competing devices with less battery life.
I think Apple’s very keen to get better battery tech, but chemistry at this level is a pretty unforgiving field. Some substances might pack more energy but are too unstable for handhelds.
For sure it’s advanced over the years, but new hardware features keep coming out much faster, and they demand more juice.
How many bitching about battery life are streaming stuff, playing games, using wifi, BT…
Anything that means the screen is on for hours, the phone is continually accessing cell towers, using all of it’s radios, is going to suck power from the battery. This much is common sense, use the phone functions more = use more battery. Suck it up, buy an Anker 20,000mAh battery and stop whining.
And what do I want from a new iP6? A bigger screen for book reading and navigation, an even better camera than I have now, and at least 128Gb storage.
All of which I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting.
What you say at the beginning of your comment is correct. The problem is many other phones have much more battery life under the same usage.
Many iPhone users have been in denial for years regarding battery life, now the truth is hitting home.
It will be interesting to see how much longer the battery lasts when they include wireless charging via radio frequencies.
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2014/08/apple-reveals-future-idevices-with-wireless-charging-circuitry.html
No, someone will sue Apple, claiming the radio frequency charging has caused them to come down with scabies, the creeping crud, hair loss, grown a fifth finger on their third arm, lost their sex life, and started speaking in Lower Slobovian Fidistanese Slang to them telling them to buy more Apple products.
The key to this user’s battery issue is the “visiting from Norway” bit. She is probably using Maps a lot, and Maps burns through the battery very fast. On a 4S I get about an hour to 90 minutes when using maps to navigate and then I have to recharge.
My experience as well
Thanks for a reasoned response instead of a philosophical position
Plus I heard Norwegians watch a lot of porn.
The battery should last a full day, at full bore, doing fully whatever the user, i.e., customer, wants it to do. Otherwise, make it a bit thicker, Jony, so we can solve the battery problem! Turning stuff off, in order to make the battery last through the day, is not a solution.
I was a big advocate of better battery life in earlier comments. 20 minutes of video capture should not drain the battery 50%.
But, a full day of full-bore use, which I take to mean constant use and maxing out one or more components (CPU, GPU, GPS, etc) is totally and completely unrealistic.
I’m not parroting anything back. Better battery life please–over all else including thinness.