Apple Event 2020. October.

English version |Русская версия

A month after the presentation Apple put us all together again on October 13 and finally showed a much-awaited update of its iPhones. Rumour has it that a one-month delay was due to that the company had been trying hard to implement 120Hz high-refresh displays, but unfortunately they didn’t succeed. Well, at least they will have something to impress us with next year, but now let’s have a closer look at what they showed during the event.

The first thing standing out is the new flat-edge design reminiscent of iPhone 4. It’s funny how Apple actually makes edges round or square off and on introducing it as a brand new design and we all tread on air giving it a big hand. No, seriously, I like the ‘new-old’ look and feel 😌

This year Apple showed 4 iPhone models adding iPhone mini to the tried-and-tested iPhone, iPhone Pro and iPhone Pro Max. It’s worthy of note that a mini model is different from the basic one only in size being somewhere in between iPhone 5 and iPhone SE, the rest is almost identical. In years past the Cupertino-based company had a different course of action — each new device had something different compared to others. The current behaviour might be indicative of that Apple is actively developing the services whereas each iPhone sold turns out to be a potential consumer of content of the said services.

Another important innovation is that now all the iPhones in the new lineup (not only Pro-versions) are expected to have OLED screens instead of good old IPS. Improved battery life, deeper blacks, truer colours and pleasant scrolling for everyone 😌

The main hero of the presentation was of course the support of 5G cellular networks. From this day forward all iPhones will be able to take advantage of 5G network speeds and that is 100 times faster than the LTE of today. To be honest, it’s not that clear what this acceleration is for when it comes to mobile devices as the use of stable LTE nowadays lets me watch 1080p/60FPS without even the slightest hint of buffering. One can say that with 5G we could watch a 4K/60FPS video, but let’s face it — watching a 4K video on a smartphone screen is strange enough. The only reasonable candidate under the circumstances for mobile devices is cloud gaming. They say that it’s actually a high stable speed with a minimum latency and response that comfortable gaming is lacking.

A weak spot of each and every smartphone is of course any glass surface be it a display or the back cover. This year Apple has decided to take care of the iPhone. As said by the company, now if a device slips out of your hand while you are trying to put it into your pocket, it will have 4 times more chances to survive the fall. But, as one of my colleagues said, 4 x 0=0 🤷‍♂️ I’m also pretty sceptical about such announcements until I see the real drop-test results. Anyways, I want to believe that this is actually true and we will no longer have to use screen protectors 🤞

Now all the iPhone Pro cameras in the lineup can take good pictures and videos even in low-light conditions. The front cameras of the lower-end models will not have these features.

Also the phone offers HDR video recording with Dolby Vision at up to 30fps for the lower-end models and 60fps for the higher-end ones. This by far seems to be an awesome feature which could help you shoot big-movie esque videos, but for an average user who is using the camera to post Insta stories it can hardly be icing on the cake.

On top of everything else the Pro family has a LiDAR sensor which first appeared in the iPad Pro after the presentation in March 2020. This sensor sends waves of light pulses out and gets them back as reflected from the objects in the environment. Based on this data you can create a credible 3D model of the space where the device is located. Thanks to the sensor Apple has enhanced the portrait mode in low-light conditions, improved the focus accuracy and speed and pumped up the AR features. From now on the augmented reality would better fit into the environment. And, of course, such kind of sensors pave a great way to high-quality apps interacting with a real world through the camera.

And what is absolutely cool and useful is the Magsafe feature. To cut a long story short, it’s just the magnets around the coil for wireless charging. Thanks to Magsafe the coils for wireless charging will be placed ideally one above the other which would allow to charge your phone faster and more efficiently. Of course, to make it work you will have to purchase a special charger. So far the only official accessory is the Magsafe charger by Apple, but I am sure soon lots of cheaper replicas and counterparts will be hitting the shelves.

Beside its main goal Magsafe opens up a possibility for an array of other attachments. Apple presented the cases which can now be snapped into place thanks to the magnets and not the specially designed case edges. Also Apple showed a pretty interesting mini-wallet for payment cards. Given that in many countries cash payments are gradually receding into the background, users are more and more in need of either a phone only or a phone with a couple of payment cards. And of course, we should be looking forward to more different accessories from the third-party vendors in the shortest possible time.

You might probably remember that the MacBook Air charger was also called MagSafe and in my humble opinion it is the safest and most convenient in terms of attachment to a laptop. I actually lost counts of how many times this magnetic attachment saved my laptop when I accidentally hit the charging cable. It is sad that the MacBook Pro of today has a USB-C port only.

From now on all iPhones are supplied with USB-C Lightning only. You won’t get a charging brick or a pair of EarPods (not the same as AirPods) with Lightning connector. Apple says the reason is that the company is aiming at reducing the amount of e-waste being pretty ardent environmentalists. But we know that in fact this was done for one reason only — to make up the losses incurred due to the use of pretty expensive 5G modems and keep the price for their devices at certain level. Generally speaking, I would not call it a false move. From time to time purchasing new iPhone models you will definitely notice that the number of chargers in your home is not going down but sometimes even increasing whereas the EarPods would not even be unpacked.

Also at the very beginning of its presentation Apple showed a mini version of its breakthrough smart speaker. It looks nice and could possibly help you in your everyday life if you live in the US and Siri works more or less properly. In many other countries it will hardly be on sale which is not that frustrating at all as voice assistants like Siri usually speak other languages worse than English and can run only simple commands like ‘Set a timer’.

‘New old design’, 5G, enhanced cameras, MagSafe and accessories. And as it always happens the last-year iPhones have turned into pumpkins. Just in time though as Helloween is on the way 🎃

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