iPhone 13 - Incremental is only half the story

Apple iPhone 13 reviews from the US press are in. This time there is a wider spectrum of opinion than you’d expect to see when Apple launches a new iPhone.

At the New York Times, the headline on Brian Chen’s Apple iPhone 13 review – the story is behind a paywall – dismisses the new phone as “the most incremental upgrade ever”.

He says the annual phone upgrades from Apple and Samsung are a “mirage of tech innovation”. For Chen, upgrades are “a celebration of capitalism”.

Chen has a jaundiced view, not negative, but not positive.

Battery and cameras…

Joanna Stern is kinder. At the Wall Street Journal her headline reads: “iPhone 13 Review: From Mini to Pro Max, It’s All About the Battery and Cameras”. This is also behind a paywall.

Stern is positive about the battery life improvements. This will make more difference to many iPhone users than the new camera mode which is her second focus.

…better display

There is no paywall hiding the Verge’s Dieter Bohn more positive take. The headline on his review says: “…A better display, the best camera, and incredible battery life.”

Bohn makes an important point about the cameras on the new iPhone models. Other reviewers can get bogged down with technical specifications and intense testing. Bohn writes: “ I also can’t remember the last time I’ve said “whoa, look at this photo” as many times as I have during this review.”

Reporting his response this way says more than raw figures ever could.

Low light

His big point is that the iPhone 13 takes excellent photos in low light conditions. This has been the case with the last two iPhone ranges. Both were good at low light photography, yet the iPhone 13 takes this to a higher level.

Now Apple has fixed low light photography, there is little more to ask for. Phones have reached the end of one evolutionary path.

There’s scope for incremental improvements, there always is. Yet that’s it for today’s metal and glass slabs. The next change to get excited about will be revolutionary.

Incremental or not, Apple does a good job of pushing the boundaries of what is possible with a handset.

A different world

Apple may not throw up as many new ideas and features as the Android phone makers, but they live in a different world.

First, Android phone makers have to compete with each other and prove their phones are not commodities. They crave novelty and points of difference regardless of whether these are things customers want or need.

Second, many of the so-called innovations that turn up in Android phones go away again after a generation or two. Some are half-baked, some are change-for-the-sake-of-change. A few, think of ‘beauty mode’, appeal to people’s worst instincts.

It would be easy to dismiss the iPhone 13 as an incremental update. Indeed, that is exactly what the New York Times review does. Yet that’s not the whole iPhone 13 story.

Numbers, revenue, profit

Apple has won the phone market. While Apple may not sell the most handsets worldwide, it does make more phone revenue than anyone else. Moreover, Apple makes more profit from phones than anyone else. Almost no other company does.

Huawei is, in effect, out of the picture. This month Oppo, a would-be rival, hit the wall. Samsung sells more phones than anyone else, but it makes more money selling technology to Apple. No other phone maker gets close.

Earlier this year Apple sold its 2 billionth iPhone. There are more than a billion active iPhones in use today. It accounts for one mobile phone in four around the world. In the US Apple has a 60 percent market share. That’s 50 percent in the UK.

The most telling statistic is that more than 10 percent of US and UK iPhone users switched in the last two years. The company’s dominance is accelerating.

Apple allure

When discussing this subject, there are frequent comments about Apple’s allure all being in marketing or snob value. And there are claims iPhones are expensive.

The first assertion is clear nonsense. Samsung spends many times as much on marketing as Apple does. So did Huawei when it was still a player.

Likewise the snob value argument doesn’t hold much weight. Apple always sells its phones on the functionality. The product may have cachet, but the company doesn’t talk that way.

When Samsung launched the Galaxy Z Fold2, the company’s reps talked about it being a status symbol.

Oppo tried to push the same snooty buttons with a ridiculous overpriced Lamborghini phone. The market ignored it.

Expensive is in the eye of the beholder. You can spend NZ$3000 on an iPhone 13 Pro with a terabyte of storage. The cheapest iPhone 13 is the mini which starts at NZ$1250. Apple still sells the NZ$900 iPhone 11 and a NZ$750 iPhone SE.

Apple doesn’t have a monopoly on expensive. There are Android phones at all these price points.

Active life

The second part of this is that iPhones have a longer active life and have better resale prices. None of the critics take any of this into account. A $2000 phone with a five year working life is cheaper and better for the planet than a $1000 phone that needs replacing after 24 months.

It’s true you can get by with a $600 Android phone. On the surface there is validity to the argument that no-one needs to spend more than that on a phone.

But this ignores many of the less tangible but valuable aspects of life inside Apple’s curated garden. The App Store is better, the app choices are better. The integration with other Apple products beats anything offered in the Android world.

It’s a better all-round phone experience. I should know, my work involves a constant stream of new phones to test. I have access to almost any model and still choose to invest my own money on an iPhone.

The pay off is better productivity and convenience. Don’t take my word for it, there are a billion other iPhone users you can ask.