So the Great Mentioner is more convinced than ever that the iPhone 7, so-called, will finally do away with the standard headphone audio jack in favor of having headphones plug directly into the Lightning port – or not plug in at all. Depending on who you believe, there will be an adapter for regular headphones and it will or will not be included. Or the phone will incorporate wireless charging so you can charge with the headphones plugged in. Or everything will be done with wireless headphones which will or won’t be included. The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that the move is being made so that the phone itself can be thinner.
If this is true, and this is how it goes down, it’s the final proof that Jony Ive is too big for his britches. The iPhone doesn’t need to be any more thin. It’s arguably too thin already, as the camera protrudes from the back of the last two years’ models unless you put a case over them (which in turn compromises the whole “thin” thing). In fact, the release of the Apple battery case for the iPhone 6S is (or is as good as) a tacit confession that the iPhone 6S went too far in sacrificing battery for svelte. It would be one thing if the iPhone 7 sacrificed the headphone jack for the sake of using that space for battery, but if this is all about shaving yet another millimeter off the thickness while leaving the battery the same size or smaller, we have a problem.
Because, like I said, the phone crossed the finish line two and a half years ago. The original Moto X, processor and OS notwithstanding, had just about a perfect hardware spec sheet: 4.7” AMOLED display in a smaller footprint than the iPhone 6S, 2 GB of RAM, LTE and WiFi and Bluetooth and NFC, the smaller nano-SIM form factor, and a 2200 mAh battery – 28% larger than the one in the 6S. Apple has yet to break the 2000 mAh battery mark in a non-gargantuan phone, and 2 GB RAM only became standard with the 6S.
Now, consider the Moto G. It doesn’t have NFC and the camera is the same step down you take with most Android phones, but this year’s Moto G has 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of onboard storage expandable to 48 GB with the use of a micro-SD card. It’s got a 2470 mAh battery, all the LTE bands you need for domestic use, 1080p HD video capture, it’s functionally waterproof in daily use…and it’s $220, sack and all. No contract. Compare this to last year’s iPhone 6, in 16 GB form, which – unlocked and contract free – costs you $550. It’ll be another $100 for this year’s most basic model, and the cheapest iPhone you can currently buy – the two-year-old 16 GB iPhone 5S – will set you back $450.
You can get two topped-up Moto Gs for the price of the cheapest shipping iPhone. Or you can go balls-out and order the most expensive current Moto X – with 64 GB of storage, a leather back, custom engraving and a rack of different colors – for less than last year’s base-model iPhone 6. And this is an important comparison, because yesterday AT&T became the last major carrier to give up on two-year contracts with phone subsidies. From now on, everyone is paying the full price of the phone, either up front or in installments.
This is significant. The iPhone was differently priced for about a year before turning into just another phone, as far as AT&T was concerned – but the flip side of that was that the contract subsidy obscured the full price of the phone and it was still better than anything else out there. But now, as we start 2016, there are brand-new Android alternatives out there that are perfectly good – certainly good enough for Ed Earl Brown – for literally half the cost or less of an iPhone. Circumstances have contrived to take a device that was cutting-edge-yet-affordable and transform it into far more of a luxury good than ever it was previously.
And what Jony Ive proposes, if this report is true, is to take it even further up the fashion ladder and sacrifice even more practicality for style. To some extent, Apple was always willing to be a high-end product at the expense of market share, just keep those margins up – but this would be an unambiguous gesture in the direction of surrendering the middle ground for good. And if that’s the space they want to play in, so be it. I’m just not sure it’s the best space to lead from.