It’s really hard to determine which iPhones I haven’t purchased over the years. I know that I owned an iPhone original, 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S, 5, 6, 6S, 7, 8 (Plus), XS, 11 Pro.
So therefore it seems I skipped 5S and 10, right? Well, to get semantic, I did not ever own an iPhone 6 Plus, 7 Plus, 8, XS Max, XR, 11, 11 Pro Max or SE (1 or 2). But this is truly semantic. Generationally year over year speaking, I skipped 2 years since June 2007 and I’ll be skipping a 3rd in 2020.This isn’t to brag but instead to convey that me skipping iPhone generations is pretty rare. Looks like I do it 16% of the time. Each time the reasons are usually the same. It comes down to the year over year improvements but this year, there’s something slightly different.
Cost.
Last year, I spent $1349 for an iPhone 11 Pro in addition to $39 for Apple’s clear case that I continue to use a year later even though it’s pretty beat up. I then added $199 for two years of AppleCare+. Monthly, that’s $133 a month for a phone. Over 2 years, it’s only $67. Not cheap when you also factor in the cost of cell phone service which I don’t even have at my house thanks to Verizon’s terrible coverage and honestly, during a pandemic where I’m home almost 95% of the time, it sucks giving Verizon $70 a month for a service that I’m not using aside from receiving calls via Verizon using my home WiFi (aka Verizon Wi-Fi Calling)…I mean seriously, they’re making serious cash off of me this year.
I feel as if the delay of upgrade for an additional year allows me to get more value out of the iPhone 11 Pro during a time where selling these things isn’t as easy as it once was. eBay’s fees are insanity, Craigslist is dead and Facebook Marketplace requires I join Facebook and it is the only marketplace the general public are using these days. The largest garage sale venue in the world is owned by Facebook. There are some other person to person sites but due to scamming, they have some big hoops to jump through to sell there and finally, as I’ve talked about a few times this year, the trade-in market is at an all time low. Apple thinks my $1349 iPhone is worth $450 after 12 months. Despite they fact they can spend $75 refurbishing it and sell it for $899 any day of the week. Factoring in the fact I have AppleCare for another year further extends the minimum life of this phone to 2 years.
As for the iPhone 12 Pro itself, well if the offering was compelling enough, I’d forget everything I just wrote and buy a new phone. Here are the tent pole features and my thoughts on them as a consumer and Apple Fanboy:
- 5G, I have 1X service aka 2G at my house and I have to drive 3 miles in any direction to get 3G. I would prefer Verizon give me service at my house than invest in 5G but as a rural American, I am well aware of how little we’re regarded in the nation for services, political representation and utilities planning
- Improved cameras…kind of but really only on the Max model and as I refuse to repeat the discomfort I had with the iPhone 8 Plus (my only big iPhone), I would rather show Apple with my money that them forgoing adding pro features to a pro iPhone and instead making you spend $100 more for them (sensor OIS, larger sensor) and have to also deal with a huge screen, I’ll just protest. Besides, the largest camera improvements are in computational photography and this is just a filter in my opinion. I took only a couple of hundred photos with my iPhone in the last 12 months. My Canon 5D remains my primary camera at around 15,000 photos per year. My iPhone is used to take photos of beer and food.
- A14 Bionic, fast but I don’t do anything computationally expensive on my iPhone. I don’t play games for example or edit photos or videos
- Video improvements have been a huge tent pole for me but once they reached 4K 60 HEVC recording with 3 cameras, I really hit the limit of what I need to record. HDR is nice but won’t improve my oil change videos on YouTube
- iPhone 4 Design, yeah I loved that design and I look forward to the iPhone 13 Pro to carry that over and I’ll enjoy it then
- The only tent pole feature of the iPhone 11 Pro I wanted them to improve was the ultra-wide angle lens. I think the UW lens on the 11 Pro looks like garbage. Seriously, it’s really bad because it lacks Focus Pixels like the other two cameras have. I believe if I read correctly, the 12 Pro does gain this feature and therefore should have better ultra wide images but that’s the only compelling feature I’m missing out on and I’m certain this lens and sensor will get even better in 2021.
- LiDAR, great for shooting at night but I don’t shoot at night
- Better Selfies? I’m not really the demographic for that
- So, the iPhone 12 Pro is fantastic but this is an S-year for a great phone. If you’re running an iPhone X or XR or XS, you’ll love the improvements made. As Apple lengthens the upgrade cycle to 3 years for most people, I too will change my buying preferences and likely be on a 2 year cycle forever unless of course a year over year improvement happens that is so compelling, I have to upgrade.
This isn’t that year. Don’t worry Apple, I’ll be upgrading to your subscription bundle when it comes out next month :)