Here’s a bit of unexpected news: Apple is doing away with the traditional two-year iPhone cycle, according to the Wall Street Journal. In other words, don’t expect anything special from this year’s model. The good news is that 2017’s should be just as awesome as 2016’s will be dull.
The 2016 iPhones will reportedly maintain most of the the same feature set as the current models, and the same 4.7 and 5.5-inch screen sizes. The most notable difference will be the long-rumored removal of a headphone jack which will make the phones thinner (because that’s totally necessary) and “improve water resistance.”
The phone will allegedly ship with a Lightning-to-3.5mm connector, similar to Lenovo’s new Moto Z.
While I’m all for getting rid of the traditional “tic-toc” cycle of phone upgrades (number upgrades one year, ‘s’ models the next), you have to wonder why then release an iPhone this year at all.
Of course, Apple will probably make a load of money from holiday sales anyway, but I’d rather they just commit to the more substantial 2017 phone if they’re going to drop the cycle anyway, to build up the hype and save consumers the upgrade-itis itch.
It’s worth nothing that breaking the upgrade cycle this year makes a lot of symbolic sense; 2017 is the iPhone’s 10-year anniversary, so Apple doesn’t want it to ‘just’ be an iPhone 7S. Instead, it’ll likely be something particularly special – perhaps with that wraparound OLED display.
Smartphone announcements are no longer that exciting nowadays, so I’ll take waiting another year if it means an iPhone that will truly blow my socks off.
Now there’s just one question: What will this year’s iPhone be called? The iPhone 6.5? The iPhone 6s…s?
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