this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
253 points (95.0% liked)
Technology
59374 readers
6250 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The practical performance differences between N3B and N3E should be more or less immaterial to the end user. N3E just has a lower defect rate, meaning a greater portion of chips will be valid when made under that process versus made under N3B. There was a fairly credible rumor a few weeks ago that Apple was paying TSMC per valid chip instead of the industry standard per wafer. So for us, the end users, the cost won't even be passed down — that's just a cost that TSMC has to bear.
That said, if you don't need a new phone now, waiting is good in general. Whatever is out today, they'll have something better next year. Wait as long as you're willing and able between upgrades. Unless you're absolutely loaded with money, I guess.
Honestly, if not for security patches, most people could probably use a top of the line 8 year old smartphone, like the Iphone 6, without almost missing any feature or functionality, maybe for 20 years or more. Would certainly be great for the environment if we could use a smartphone for 15 years or more, with all the computational power already available this should be doable on the technical level. Unfortunatelly, it will not be allowed to by mnanufacturers, and we do not have a universally compatible functional linux for phones, that also can pass the locked bootloaders.
I update every 4 years, and it's mainly just due to wear and tear and limited hardware and security improvements.
I also just feel like you don't appreciate the improvements that are made if you're just getting incremental changes every year. Waiting a few years means you're going from a ~10% improvement in performance to a ~40% improvement.
But yeah, can't wait for phones to become a thing that is updated when actually needed, like laptops. Not just annually because Big Tech tells us to or whatever.
I appreciate all the technological quirks, but most people don't really need or even use then.
I do not know how different the current cameras are from an Iphone 11 Pro Max, but i just see people taking pretty pictures with the software optimizations (that could be updated via software) and uploading then to instagram, whatsapp etc, lots of times in compressed and digitally altered formats. Or writing text messages, using the bank app, playing shitty mobile games like candy crush, watching tiktok-youtube-streamings, paying stuff by nft, listening to spotify-other musics, etc. I really strugle to think how a common person with common habits will NEED to upgrade from a Iphone 14 Pro any time soon (for hardware reasons).