“Better battery life is something that smartphone users have been asking for since the dawn of smartphones and yet it’s one of those areas where we’ve seen the least overall progress,” Adrian Kingsley-Hughes writes for ZDNet. “Sure, what the iPhone of 2018 can do with its battery is light years ahead of what the iPhone of 2007 could do with a battery that physically — and chemically — didn’t look that different.”
“What Apple can do with what is in reality a very small amount of power… is incredible,” Kingsley-Hughes writes. “But battery life has now grown to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, concern for iPhone users.”
“With Apple having to impose software limitations on users because batteries prematurely wear to the point where they can no longer power a device adequately, it’s clear that engineering is taking a backseat to design over at Apple HQ,” Kingsley-Hughes writes. “If I could design the perfect iPhone, I would add a little to its thickness — not much, maybe a millimeter or two — and use that increased volume inside the device to equip it with a substantially bigger battery”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It doesn’t matter how pretty it is if it doesn’t work.
From the “just asking” file: “What’d be wrong with slightly thicker iPhone with more battery life and a flush camera assembly?”
Yes, we know Apple thinks thinness sets iPhone apart from all other so-called smartphones (actually, it’s the operating system, the software and the ecosystem), but… at this point, the selling point of “thinness” is overrated.
The law of diminishing returns can also be applied to industrial design. Apple’s eternal quest for thinness eventually runs into issues such as bulging camera assemblies, battery capacity, strength (breakability), etc. – is Apple’s quest for thinness now bordering on the quixotic?
So, is it “you can never be too thin” or is it “thin enough is thin enough?” — MacDailyNews, December 21, 2015
SEE ALSO:
Open thread: What’d be wrong with slightly thicker iPhone with more battery life and a flush camera assembly? – December 21, 2015