Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “iPhone 13: Do you need it?”.
[ Applause ]: this is the iphone 11 pro and these are the most powerful and most advanced iphones that we have ever built in a stunning new design. We get it tim. You want to sell us new phones, but what about that amazing phone that you announced? 12 months ago, on that same stage, this is iphone 10s. Wasn’T that the best phone ever and seeing new iphones come out every year and the prices go up and up and up i started asking myself: is the newest iphone like really the best one out there? I’M gon na look at older iphones, even going back as far as six years to see if you can still get the best of apple experiences and put to the test. If the newest iphone really is the best iphone, so we’re gon na get to which iphone is actually the best, and i think you’ll be surprised uh. But i do want to thank this video sponsor clean, my mac x, we’ll talk about them later on in the video. So when a new iphone comes out, the phones that came out last year or year before tended to slow down, it was something people mentioned in whispers.
They didn’t want to update to the latest version of ios because they were going to slow their phone down for years. It sounded ridiculous until it wasn’t apple is apologizing. After admitting a software update deliberately slowed some older iphones, the tech giant says the update is intended to prevent sudden shutdowns in the iphone 6..
So this is kind of what people have started, calling apple’s planned obsolescence where, with every software update, older phones get slower and slower as you go further back in generations, and i guess logically that would make sense. The power in those phones gets less and less compared to what’s. New batteries tend to degrade the headroom that those phones had with speed and performance has gotten lower and lower. Until eventually, it’s bumping up against everything that operating system can do that made sense, but also seemed really coincidental. So, if you don’t know, apple has had multiple class action. Lawsuits brought against them for this very thing, and apple’s had to pay millions of dollars for each one. So those filing the lawsuits were claiming that apple purposely slowed down the phones, just as a sales tactic, to get you to buy a whole brand new iphone. So apple’s side of the story, they were claiming that, when their phone’s battery performance dropped below 80, so battery health, it was affecting the performance of their phones and it wasn’t meeting sort of what apple’s minimal standards for effectiveness of their phones to get the apple experience. They couldn’t deliver it with batteries that had dipped that far so apple was slowing them down to slow down the battery degradation. That was the reason behind it and, according to apple, was for the betterment of their consumers. So i’m going to get into you know my opinion on it. Well then, i think that’s true later in the video, but for now i want to get real-world tests on some of apple’s, older phones that are above that 80 percent threshold of battery.
So they haven’t gotten sort of that throttling that can still run ios 14 and see how they stack up against apple’s latest. You know the iphone 12 and i think the best place to start is with the camera. Typically, i really like and probably tell blind camera tests for cameras that are relatively in close quality to one another, but this might be one of the easiest blind camera tests that i’ve ever done on this channel say.
Having said that, can you tell which one is the iphone 12. look at things like sharpness, highlight preservation, color temperature, how it treats shadows, you can see it gets better with each subsequent iphone released and that’s very clear from these examples. Probably you could very easily pick out which one was the iphone 12, but how did you do with the others were able to tell which one was better among the not iphone 12 options? So very clearly, changes have been made to apple’s camera software and hardware and image something that’s been with apple, since the iphone 6s is 4k video recording, i think, granted the sharpness that video is definitely going to vary depending on which phone you’re using, but you can Still enjoy features like that, while running the latest ios on a six-year-old phone. That is not something that i think other phone manufacturers can say and if you’re interested, we actually did a very similar video for the pixel side as well, comparing from the pixel 2 all the way up to the pixel 5 with some, i think, with surprising results.
If you want to check out that video we’ll link to it down below so clearly and obviously the iphone 12’s camera quality like stomps those other models into the dirt in every single way, and i think i was expecting that and probably i’m guessing – you were too Apple’S camera quality is pretty linear. Each new phone that comes out its camera is better than the last one in most ways. So from a camera standpoint, if you want to have the best camera, that apple has to offer still best bet, and you have the means to do. It is pick up the newest iphone.
Looking at these iphone 10 photos they’re a lot closer to the iphone 12 quality than i remembered in my head. The hdr doesn’t always hold up as well in all fairness, but i was still pretty pleasantly surprised at how well the iphone 10 has held up. I’Ve said it before: i’m just going to say it again: if you’re keeping up all these phones can run ios 14, so that means they are getting the latest security updates. Now, if you’re doing like just normal phone things, things like texting, making calls general scrolling around the phone third-party apps stuff you’re, not going to notice a huge difference between any of these phones.
I think that shows the processing power of apple’s own silicon. You start to see real performance issues in things like playing games, taking pictures and, as expected, just like camera quality. There’S a direct correlation of the performance to its age games load much slower on the older phones, especially when i play games that are more graphic. Intensive.
The performance, though, did not feel all that different between the iphone 12 and the iphone 10, but i did see a significant performance drop on like the 6s plus and only when starting games, but there’s also an occasional frame rate drop as well. So going back to the camera at least the performance of the camera, not the actual image. I did notice something that i don’t remember being a problem when i owned the 6s plus the shutter lag on the 6s plus is really bad. Maybe it got worse on ios updates as they went along um, but, like i mean really bad, like the photo that i thought i was snapping when i hit the shutter button was definitely not the moment that the 6s ended up taking on the iphone 10.
That’S not an issue, it seems just as fast as the iphone 12 on the shutter side, which obviously doesn’t have any shutter lag at all. But again, this isn’t just the software’s fault here, it’s mainly just older, outdated hardware that can’t keep up with the software so and i think that’s a point that i want to come back to. I think this is what a lot of people will point out as part of apple’s planned obsolescence. They make their software.
Take these huge jumps between operating systems, allegedly on purpose, so the hardware can’t keep up. That’S a sales tactic right. If you see that your phone can’t keep up with the software, you have, you think your phone is outdated. Presumably you will go buy a new one.
If apple has their way, you’ll buy a new apple phone. Well, we’ve heard that argument right. We’Ve heard that for for years, if that were true, why would apple still support the 6s plus a device that again is six years old at this point, so computers are like obviously expensive, right, they’re, not something that replacing every day or every month. So i’ve got right here, a macbook air from 2015, which makes it by my keen math brain six years old and if you’ve got a computer that is unoptimized like this one: riddled with spyware, malware and there’s.
Actually, software you can run to make your older system seem and act newer, you’ve probably heard of it. We’Ve talked about it here on the channel for years. It is called clean, my mac x, so trying to do anything on this machine, as is, is stupidly, slow and it doesn’t have to be so clean. My mac x chases the junk in all corners of mac os.
So it’s going to do things like clean uneven files like outdated, cache, broken downloads, logs, useless localizations. It’S also going to remove tons of clutter that you may not know. Are there freeing up storage? So it boils down to making sure you can trust your mac and clean. My mac x is another tool to make sure that you can do that. They also have a new challenge out. It’S hashtag mac, sos challenge to kind of show you things that you can do to speed up your old computer.
If i learn more about cleanmymac x and i think you should either go to their website or just click. The link down below people like to criticize apple for being profit driven and now he’s talking back to sure they are they’re publicly traded company. That’S literally tim cook’s job is to make profit. But for this argument i don’t see any profit-centric reason for the supportive phone that is six years old.
Those phones are worth almost nothing to buy, to buy used. It’S worth almost nothing to apple, to have people keep using those phones, but yet they’re still supporting them, and i think the same thing is going for the iphone batteries. They use lithium-ion batteries like every other phone. They degrade over time. It’S it’s the physics, it’s the chemistry of sort of the lithium ion.
That’S in there that, obviously there are things you can do to mitigate segregation of the battery, but ultimately and again like people, you can’t stop it from aging, and i think this is where we start to see why apple lost these class action lawsuits because apple knew About battery degradation and exactly how it would impact performance of their phones – and they didn’t say anything about it publicly and their reports, mainly with the iphone 6s battery percentage, when like low, maybe 10 20 percent suddenly drop off to like nothing. So you look at your phone, it had 80 battery life left, then it would suddenly just go to zero and shut off, and that is a problem and imagine a scenario. I imagine a lot of people found themselves in side of the road cars broken down middle of nowhere-ish, pull out your phone to call for help.
I got 18. I got enough to make a phone call. Then. Suddenly your phone just goes dead.
You’Re gon na be in trouble. You don’t have a cord with you, and that is a really big reliability and safety issue with the phone and one apple was clearly not comfortable with. So they consciously chose behind closed doors to scale phones performance down, so the phone wouldn’t suddenly shut off. It wouldn’t leave people, you know stranded so to speak, essentially choosing at least in apple’s minds the lesser of the two evils: they’re taking a lower performance, her phone.
That’S still going to function now for me, i can understand the business rationale and i think it’s probably a fair compromise. Considering the phones are older, but i think the issue people had and me included. Zappo didn’t tell people that they didn’t say it, and i think that lack of transparency was ultimately the reason that apple lost those lawsuits or, at the very least it could have given users the choice which way. Do you want to go? Choose your own adventure pick your path, know your consequences and, as a result of the first lawsuit apple, if you remember offer battery replacements for older iphones, actually they’re still still doing now.
That way, you can have a healthier battery in an older phone and its performance. Only limited by the internal hardware, as opposed to the software, so all of that still doesn’t scream planned ops, lessons at least to me uh. While the experience might have been slower on older phones. You could still like use those phones in the event you’re stranded again on that side of the road analogy, you would still have a phone that works, it might be slower than the newer faster one. We still have a phone that functions. I would prefer that than one that could just die at a moment’s notice, but all of these kind of like planned obsolescence lawsuits keep coming and they eventually could, i think, have some pretty big consequences for consumers.
So i’m going to editorialize a bit. I think these lawsuits in the short term are generally pretty good for consumers. Lets companies apple occluded know that there are sort of issues and consequences that can happen for not being transparent. I think, ultimately, that was apple’s bigger issue.
They didn’t disclose what they were doing and again. They didn’t give users choice, but the more of these class action lawsuits that happen, i think, unintentional consequence is going to be apple’s going to stop officially supporting older devices. So perhaps people will look to buy newer. Iphones phones that have been out for one to two years, that’ll drive that price up simple economic supply and demand where people looking to buy those phones.
The prices are going to continue to skyrocket. So the folks who had limited budgets that wanted a three or four year old iphone, presumably won’t be able to buy one or would not want to buy one because it can’t run the latest software from apple. I don’t know economics brain kind of working here, but at least it does seem like unintended consequence that perhaps could end up not helping consumers while trying to help consumers. So to the question i asked the beginning: do you have to buy the newest phone to get the apple experience? I was actually surprised.
The answer is very clearly. No, i think the three-year-old iphone 10 is probably the best combination of value to like, let’s just call it appleness you’re, still getting the cutting edge. Tech like you have in face id, albeit for first generation you’re, still getting hdr, though clearly it’s not as good as.
What’S out right now, you’re getting a phone that in-app performance still feels close to as quick as what’s out, there’s no shutter lag. Video is still really good. You get a phone that still looks like a modern iphone, but now for uh, depending on where you go, 300 350 bucks you’re, getting still you know, quote the best of apple without having to shell out eight nine thousand dollars to get the latest shiny thing.
I think there’s a point to that and me especially feed into the machine of having to buy the newest newest newest. Well, what came out a few years ago is still equally good. Just because something comes out, that’s better doesn’t make what came before it bad and that’s a perspective that i still struggle with in my own head as i sort of feed into that consumer machine of always wanting to get the latest and greatest. And if you look to get that iphone 10 – and i think you should know that you’re getting a phone – that’s three years old, so you’re.
Halfway to that six year point we talked about with the iphone 6s. You presumably won’t get the same shelf life of buying a new phone, but if you’re cool with that keeping a phone for one two or even as far as the three years, you are still going to get the best of apple .