Before all of you iPhone loyalist get your USB cables in a knot, let me preface my comments by saying that I’ve had every generation of iPhone since the first one and am currently using a 64 gig 4S. I’ve also had seven Android phones including the very first one, the Google Nexus, and have been using a Samsung Galaxy III since the day it was released.
Apple has several serious issues that are going to cause them market share problems in the coming years. The first one is their inability to modernize the iPhone’s design. From virtually every technology source out there, all are saying the next gen iPhone will be very similar to the current 4S and will have only a slight increase in overall screen size, and this will come by increasing the height of the phone. This is a negative for many reasons. Reason numero uno is that it gives Apple very little room for increasing battery size in a phone that has been plagued by battery issues since its introduction. Reason number two is that much of the phone buying public has become quite fond of the larger screens manufacturers like Samsung and HTC are using. For power phone users like myself the larger screens make multi-tasking much easier and also allows room for a serious upgrade in battery power. That’s a huge plus! And if you’re a gamer, there’s no way you can make the argument that smaller is better. Even if Apple increases screen size to 4 inches, as far as I’m concerned, that’s not big enough.
An even bigger problem than the overall appearance of the next phone may in fact be its sub par hardware. Regardless of what processor the next iPhone has, it is highly unlikely it will surpass the performance specifications of the highly acclaimed Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Chipset currently used by both Samsung and HTC and a host of other manufacturers. This dual core 1.5 GHz chip is blazing fast and has been improved upon since its introduction. It is my opinion that Apples’s A Series Chip will NOT be able to match the performance or efficiency of the Qualcomm chip. The next iPhone’s purported 1GB of RAM is also a problem for me considering the G III has a whopping 2 GB chip. Again, if you are an aggressive phone user that likes to have a lot going on at once, that’s just not going to be enough memory.
Up till now Apple lovers have consistently in my opinion sacrificed much to own Apple products. Apple has continued to count on this, evident by their releasing phones that are inferior to other products on the market at time of release, yet still are able to command a premium price. Nobody likes being taken for granted, and should the Apple faithful ever come to this conclusion, its going to take a lot more than a picture of an apple with a bite out of it to bring them back.