New iPhone range comes with caveats in SA
The Apple hype machine was operating at maximum power this week as the world’s most valuable technology company unleashed its new range of iPhones.
In the days leading up to the launch of the iPhone 12 series, Apple’s market capitalisation passed the $2-trillion (R33-trillion) mark for the second time in two months, just two years after hitting the $1-trillion level.
A key factor in market enthusiasm was not so much the innovation behind the new devices, but the fact that Apple has now released the biggest model range yet in a single year.
This means it is able to expand its market reach beyond its existing loyal fan base, as well as appealing to market segments that may have felt left behind by the design direction the company had taken.
In particular, the iPhone 12 mini, as well as the iPhone SE released earlier this year, are departures from Apple’s journey towards ever-bigger displays. The latter has a 4.7inch display, harking back to the days when Apple argued that no-one wanted a screen bigger than 5 inches. It quickly changed its tune following the massive success of the
Samsung Galaxy Note series, which began at a “mere” 5.3-inches in 2011.
The iPhone 12 mini enters the world with a 5.4-inch display, which makes its name deeply ironic, given the company’s mockery of the “giant” Samsung handset almost a decade ago.
However, the highly efficient design of the new device means that the handset as a whole — including screen, bezel and thickness — is smaller than the clunky iPhone SE or the original Samsung Note.
The new flagship of the range, the iPhone 12 Pro Max, was hailed by Apple CEO Tim Cook, with the customary cliché, as “the most powerful iPhone ever”. As commentators keep trying to remind him, it had better be: it is also the most expensive iPhone ever, starting at $1,099, which means it will probably land in SA at more than R30,000.
It is also the largest iPhone yet, with a display measuring 6.7 inches, which still makes it a shade smaller than the 6.9-inch flagship phones in Samsung’s S20 and Note 20 ranges.
A major selling point in the US is that all the new phones are 5G-enabled, and compatible with most 5G of the various networks across the world, making it only the second manufacturer after Nokia-maker HMD Global to take this approach.
The speed potential of 5G, which offers fast live-streaming video, downloading an album of music in a second, and playing demanding computer games on a handset, was at the heart of the hype. “The arrival of 5G marks the beginning of a new era for the iPhone,” said Greg Joswiak, senior vice-president of worldwide marketing at Apple.
With 5G only likely to be widely available in SA after new spectrum is issued to mobile network operators after March next year, that is not yet the biggest selling point for South Africans.
Apple naysayers revelled in the obvious flaws in the new range, in particular the absence of a wall charger. This has been a standard practice for iPhones, which have in recent years included only a charging cable that plugs into standard USB-enabled wall plugs.
However, the iPhone 12 devices all ship with a newcable format, which only fits into wall chargers fitted with the more recent USB-C ports. These ports are common for plugging charging cables into phones, but unusual on the charger side of the cable.
In this context, “unusual” means it is unlikely that most purchasers of the new devices will have a compatible wall charger. Only one previous device, the iPhone 11 Pro, took this approach. For the rest, the charging cables from their older phones will still work in the new range.
On the surface, the phones offer little that seems innovative. Some analysts highlighted this perception as the reason for a 2% drop in Apple’s share price on launch day, ignoring the fact that the price had run up substantially more than that over the prior week.
The truth is, the iPhone 12 range is built on what might be termed deep innovation, meaning that it is invisible but makes for fundamental improvements.
The devices run on Apple’s new A14 Bionic chip, unveiled in the new iPad Air line-up last month, using the first 5-nanometer processor in a smartphone. The transistors in the processor are 5nm thick, and the chip can hold 11.8-billion transistors. Both Samsung and Huawei use 7nm processors in their top-of-the-range phones.
That doesn’t make a noticeable difference in size, but makes for better processing speeds, improved battery life, and enhances the use of artificial intelligence to optimise the handset’s operations and anticipate the user’s intentions.
The iPhone 12 Pro models have also introduced a feature that, until now, the world has only known as being central to self-driving cars: Lidar, standing for “light detection and ranging”. Used to measure distances and help a car detect objects and motion in its surrounds to prevent collisions, it may well help one avoid pedestrians who are glued to their phones, but is intended here to provide advanced augmented reality (AR) functions. That will improve both camera functionality and games that use AR.
The South African distributor of the iPhone, the Core Group, was tight-lipped on local availability and pricing, but announced that it will make home deliveries for contract purchases made online. That will be a small consolation for having a device for which the networks are not quite ready.