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In terms of usefulness and end user experience, I find no difference between the iPhone X (A11, 4 billion transistors) and my current 14. Seems to me that all
by throwaway4good 3y ago
In terms of usefulness and end user experience, I find no difference between the iPhone X (A11, 4 billion transistors) and my current 14.
Seems to me that all that extra processing power is still looking for a use case.
- jwells89 3y agoFor me there’s some benefit in little things like on-device OCR and image classification, which has been helpful for quickly surfacing particular photos in my library but yes the broad strokes have not changed much.
- throwaway4good 3y agoI am wondering about this; I have noticed the OCR (that you can photo something and the copy the text as plain text). How compute sensitive is that? Is that not available on the X? It is a useful feature. In particular in Google translate (lens function) which I am pretty was also there on the X (perhaps requiring a trip to Google’s server).
- jwells89 3y agoI’m not sure if it’s available on the X or not, but it would make a lot of sense if a certain level of hardware acceleration is required to do this OCR in the background with little to no negative impact on battery life. The X’s SoC can probably handle one-offs just fine, but it might not hold up as well to the OS churning through photos OCRing them in the background.
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- jeffbee 3y agoEven if you didn't change anything about the software, the newer CPUs would still give you better energy efficiency and thereby longer battery life.
- londons_explore 3y agoBut the software devs will always more-than use up any extra efficiency, so it'll still barely last a day, and will die early when it gets heavy use...
- jeffbee 3y agoThe CPUs (and the software) are so efficient now that only the screen and the radios really consume energy. If you find yourself blaming high CPU usage for low battery life, it's likely you are either incorrect, or the problem is just some bug in the application, nothing intended.
- londons_explore 3y agoOkay - App devs find yet more reasons to ping their server every 5 mins and keep those radios active...
- jwells89 3y agoThis varies a lot from app to app. It’s true that some are built in a way that puts no thought towards efficiency, but there are plenty that are built by devs who care. I like to keep around test devices that somewhat represent the average user’s device, and when it’s practical a low end device and test against those every so often just to make sure the app performs reasonably well. This has been in my experience more important for Android apps than for iOS apps, though, because the gulf in power between currently-sold devices in the Android world is vastly more large than in the iOS world. With few exceptions, I find that reasonably efficient apps tested and developed chiefly on newer iPhones work fine on older iPhones, but developing and testing an Android app only on flagships will make for a miserable experience for users of low end or older Android devices.
- 3y ago
- Legend2440 3y agoMachine learning is that use case, it'll eat up as much processing power as you can throw at it. LLMs on your phone are a few hardware generations out, but they are coming.
- throwaway4good 3y agoML/AI is not really a use case but rather a technology. The use cases may come a one point but right now, as far as I can see, they are missing.
- oraetlabora 3y agoWell that says more about you than about the iPhone. One example: User experience regarding camera processing improved tremendously between X and 14. Only with the bigger processing power they could optimize images in a fraction of a second after taking them. The photonic engine as we have today, would not be deliver the same experience on an iPhone X.
- throwaway4good 3y agoIt is still the same use case. I mentioned the iPhone X and not the earlier models because the X takes really good photos and videos. Sure the later models are better; but it is a bit like watching 4K instead of 1080p on the TV. I can tell the difference but 1080p is fine.
- heyoni 3y agoI’d say you’re right and the differences are marginal for most photography but the real differences come out with things like night photos or portrait mode. Daylight pics are mostly all the same honestly.
- user_7832 3y agoI would say consider yourself lucky that you don’t use questionably-coded apps. I have an iPhone se 2020 (a generation newer) and some apps have a noticeable and annoying lag. A local transport app (9292) is a particularly notorious offender.
- paulddraper 3y agoPhoto/video processing
- throwaway4good 3y agoThe iPhone X had excellent camera and photo/video processing. So much better than the earlier models; from the X up to today's model it is much more marginal improvements. Really nothing I notice as a casual user.
- starcraft2wol 3y agoThe features you use are not the features everyone else uses.
- hedgehog 3y agoFeature, not bug. There is a steady stream of features that build on the newer hardware, for example local dictation support starts with A12 devices. The big question is not whether a five year old phone supports the most current software (I would hope so), it's whether today's brand new phone will likewise support the updated software in five years, and what features can app developers rely on being present in five years.
- adrr 3y agoDeep Fusion is noticeable on photos if you view on a bigger screen or crop in. Cinematic mode is very well liked for making videos with background blur.