iPhone

We’re now two months into 2018 and possibly just days away from Apple releasing new products, so let’s take a look at all the new hardware we expect Apple to release this year. From new iPhones to upgraded iPads and unreleased products and features we’ve already seen announced, there’s a lot on the table this year.

Expand
Expanding
Close

My iPhone X lost a fight with concrete on Sunday morning when I folded up my jogging stroller and forgot the phone in its storage compartment. The smashed iPhone X is on its way to Apple’s repair facility (yes, the one that makes all those 911 calls) and I’m living on an iPhone 6 Plus for the week.

A few observations: the modern haptic engine is light years ahead of the 2014 vibration motor, cameras on newer iPhones have improved dramatically, and older iPhones feel slow in comparison with or without throttling. More on my experience with a throttled iPhone so far below.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Cellebrite, the mobile forensics firm that helped the US government break into the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone 5c, is apparently claiming it can crack any iPhone even if it’s running iOS 11. This is said to apply even to the latest flagship iPhones, although it’s possible this only applies to exploits fixed in recent updates to iOS 11.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Bloomberg has published a report that adds new details about the rumored 6.5-inch OLED iPhone and 6.1-inch LCD iPhone expected to join the updated 5.8-inch OLED iPhone later this year. New details include potential screen resolution on what would be the largest iPhone display ever, plus the possibility of gold returning later this year.

Expand
Expanding
Close

As 9to5Google has been reporting all day, Samsung today officially unveiled its new Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ flagship. The devices tout dual aperture cameras, curved displays, and more. As you would expect, however, Samsung was sure to take some jabs at Apple during its (very unenthusiastic) keynote…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple this evening has shared a new video offering a look into the development process that led to the creation of the Portrait Lighting feature on iPhone X. The video shows how Apple used the “art of portraiture” to come up with the technology…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Update: Telstra says the issue has been resolved and service is being “progressively restored.”

Earlier today some customers experienced a disruption to Apple iMessage and FaceTime services. We worked with Apple to resolve this issue. Services are now being progressively being restored. We apologise for any inconvenience this caused.

Telstra, one of the largest mobile carriers in Australia, is experiencing a widespread outage of iMessage and FaceTime services. Oddly enough, this outage only seems to affect Apple’s services, as everything else functions normally. The carrier has confirmed the outage on Twitter and says it is working on a fix…

Expand
Expanding
Close

A brief report claims that Apple will be adding a Chinese NAND storage chip supplier to its roster. The company has in the past bought these chips from Toshiba, SK Hynix and Samsung, but is now said to be in talks with Yangtze Memory Technologies.

The report is light on detail, but does make one interesting claim …

Expand
Expanding
Close

KGI continues to double-down on its claims on what the 2018 iPhone lineup will comprise. The 6.1-inch LCD iPhone will apparently resemble the iPhone X with a similar full-screen design, but at a more accessible price for customers; the analyst expects this new iPhone to be priced to replace iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, as cheap as $699.

The LCD 6.1-inch iPhone will use slightly less premium components, such as an aluminium frame instead of stainless steel. Nevertheless, given that it looks like a top-end iPhone in style, KGI believes the lower entry point will make it Apple’s most popular 2018 device and see total sales around 100 million units.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Global smartphone sales were weaker than expected in the second half of 2017, says TrendForce. It predicts that growth will slow to 2.8% this year, and says that there are ‘only two international brands with a clear future of growth in 2018’ …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has shot down the significance of an apparent source code leak for the iPhone’s iBoot bootloader which loads the operating system. The original report flagged the source code leak as the ‘biggest leak in history’ based on one researcher’s description, but Apple has significantly downplayed any risks associated with the leak while seemingly confirming its authenticity.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Barclays is out today with its latest analyst note which includes wait times for iPhone battery replacements appear to be declining. While this is good news for customers, the firm describes how this could potentially negatively affect Apple.

Expand
Expanding
Close

KGI said back in October of last year it was likely that Apple would bring Face ID to all three of this year’s new iPhone models, and this is supported by two new supply-chain reports today.

The reports says that Face ID is coming to the LCD iPhone as well as the flagship OLED ones, and that Apple is diversifying suppliers for the 3D face recognition modules needed for the feature …

Expand
Expanding
Close

The final list for Emoji 11.0 has been finalized and it features 157 new emoji. The Unicode Consortium has announced that among the latest emoji will be superheroes, redheads, partying face, hot face, cold face, infinity, and much more.

Expand
Expanding
Close

UPDATE: Apple has responded to Reuters regarding the announcement of the iPhone throttling, which can be found at the end of the post.

Recode reports that Apple is looking into the possibility of reimbursing customers who have paid the full $79 for an iPhone battery replacement. Lawmaker Sen. John Thune asked Apple about the issue and the company says that it is exploring ways to do so.

Expand
Expanding
Close

If you’ve got any recent model iPhone, you’ve got a great camera – both for still photos and for video. So good, in fact, that many independent filmmakers use it to shoot both shorts and full-length movies.

But such reports can give a somewhat misleading impression. Very often, the iPhone is the capture device, but it’s coupled to far more expensive supplementary kit like professional lenses, and gimbals to smooth footage.

What DJI has done with its latest gimbal is to bring smooth mobile shooting – and more – down to a price level that makes it extremely affordable. So much so that, when you consider all the things it can do, I’d say it qualifies as the best-value iPhone accessory on the market at the moment …

Expand
Expanding
Close