[technobabbler]

IMO phones are so stagnant now that manufacturers just tack on random things to see what sticks. Lidar! Radar! Refresh rate! A 7th camera! Oooh.

Who the hell uses any of that stuff? But it lets them keep releasing new versions and charge huge amounts for new flagships.

Those gimmicks help to prevent the phones from becoming the next race to the bottom that the PC and cheap Android markets have become.

[sho]

> Lidar! Radar! Refresh rate! A 7th camera! [..] Who the hell uses any of that stuff?

Well... you're right about the lidar, but I absolutely care about the camera and refresh rate. As a lifelong photography geek I basically upgrade for the camera improvements every year..

Camera, messaging, maps and dating apps are basically the only things I use my phone for these days...

[saiya-jin]

Lidar is actually really useful for portraits, Samsung S22 ultra uses it extensively and can find a single hair strand it doesn't blur compared to the background. Everything looks more realistic compared to pure software processing where I can spot errors quickly.

As frequent user my good old Nikon full frame (D750), I am really astonished by output these tiny cameras produce. Sure, its not for big screen/print unless we're talking about sunny day. But for everything else, it makes fantastic portraits. I got fed up with the need to carry big heavy pouch around all the time, and missed way too many pictures of my kids to rely on it anymore.

It also sees in the dark much better than I do with my eyes, also thanx to Lidar - the pics I take from night walks where there is basically no light source hundreds meters around and I am in the forest (yes my night walks take me sometimes to interesting places, I normally don't use any light). Very dark scene becomes full of (usually) true colors and details simply invisible to me.

10x zoom on my phone allows me to read signs not readable to my eyesight (digital 'AI' zoom is very useful up to cca 30x). I was skeptical too, and its true full frame is still so far ahead, but at what cost - bulk, weight, the need to spend hours on postprocessing batch of photos instead of quick edits in phone in few seconds.

[technobabbler]

Yeah, portrait mode is basically face ID in reverse and works a lot better than room scanning.

How does the lidar help with night shots though? Maybe focusing, but otherwise isn't it just a long exposure with algorithmic corrections?

[saiya-jin]

Well that focusing part is pretty important :) The rest is mostly about gathering enough light and compensating for handshake, probably with some ML.

For a photo you don't need much more. I can tell you that handheld shots are much better and easier compared to full frame dslr.

[adonese]

What do you suggest for a good camera with a tight budget? I used to have Samsung Galaxy S20 FE and it was just amazing. Trying to buy a new android preferably from flagship killers type of phones

[technobabbler]

That's cool. I'm glad there are still people interested in photography for its own sake instead of posing for Instagram!

[eole666]

"I basically upgrade for the camera improvements every year"

No wonder the earth is warming... You really need a new phone every year just for the camera ? I really don't get why anyone would do that without an actual professional need.

[vmception]

It’s partially because the cameras aren’t good enough one year, but do fulfill an edge case. The following year they fulfill another edge case. These reduces the need for using a dedicated camera, especially a bulky interchangeable lens ones, other times they fulfill an edge case that the bulky dedicated camera can’t do well either.

Makes them intriguing and fun to test out creatively. I can see the temptation.

The 13 has some things built in/enabled the 12 doesn’t have, which I had always wished the 12 had, such as video portrait mode, but I personally decided it wasn’t good enough for upgrade again, since its an ok assumption that the future models will also have that.

[sho]

> The 13 has some things built in/enabled the 12 doesn’t have

Night mode in wide angle! Although it's quite a bit less capable than the other lenses. Maybe in the 14 ; )

And @eole666 of course I don't literally throw the old phone away every year, there's a whole downchain of very willing recipients of lightly used iPhones. Hell, my old iPhone 6 is still being used for QA.

[eole666]

Sometimes I forget some people don't buy things to use them for years, but prefers buying every year the last novelties. It's kind of a weird consumerist way of life.

Yes, smartphone camera's are awesome now, but it's sad an awesome product like that will be thrown away after a year of use.

[scarface74]

With Apple supporting iPhones with IOS upgrades for years and security updates even longer, you don’t throw away an old iPhone, you either hand it down to someone else or you sell it.

Even an iPhone 6s from 2015 with a new battery is faster than most low end Android phones and it is still fully supported.

[vmception]

That's actually why I didn't upgrade from the 12 to the 13, because I wouldn't be doing the trade-ins. They were tempting offers but I hate being locked in to the same device for 24 - 30 months, which is a condition of most of the trade in offers. I would rather pay for the device outright and figure out what to do with my prior device, and so this newest iphone wasn't compelling enough for that.

(for context, my prior upgrades were in a more lenient trade-up program, which by coincidence resulted in me keeping up to date. not trying to pretend like avoiding a one year upgrade is some major sacrifice, its just what happened)

[andybak]

Why is 3d scanning any more of a gimmick than photography? When I travel I scan things for the same reason I photograph things.

[technobabbler]

The lidar plays a trivial role in that. Most of it is just algorithmic photogrammetry. If you turned the laser off you'd probably still get similar results.

And it's a gimmick because it's a tiny niche of people who do that, and I wish I didn't have to pay extra for a phone for a lidar. Would take a fingerprint scanner any day. Or a headphone jack.

[andybak]

> Most of it is just algorithmic photogrammetry. If you turned the laser off you'd probably still get similar results.

This is simply untrue. Most 3D scanning apps on iOS make no use of photogrammetry or they do it as an alternate mode for smaller objects. I don't know of one 3D scanning app that combines the LIDAR with photogrammetry. They use one or the other depending on the scale of the object you're scanning.

> And it's a gimmick because it's a tiny niche of people who do that,

It's not the reason Apple added it. They added it for AR and photography. Arguably the former is a gimmick but the latter is future proofing and might end up being a game-changer.

[smoldesu]

> Those gimmicks help to prevent the phones from becoming the next race to the bottom that the PC and cheap Android markets have become.

See: it allows them to keep increasing the cost of their devices while simultaneously preventing them from passing the savings from their streamlined manufacturing to the customer.

[amelius]

Glad they didn't include a laserpointer.

[bliteben]

hopefully thermal imaging next

[technobabbler]

Yeah, that and uv would be cool for looking at plant life.

The seek and flir imagers are cool for IR

[bliteben]

UV seems more possible now that I think about it, thermal would present huge issues with export regulations