How grand are the $1000 Apple and Samsung smartphones?
For sure, the crazy-expensive $1,000 smartphones being introduced this week to consumers are sleek and super-powered, things of beauty and wonder.
I’ve been conducting a hands-on with the 6.3-inch-screen Samsung Galaxy Note 8 that will land in stores Friday.
And many a fanboy and girl will drool Tuesday as Apple’s Tim Cook and company explain the whys and wherefores of its one-grand (and up!) new darling — the 10th-anniversary, 5.8-inch-screen iPhone X.
The iPhone X offers a number of improvements in common with the Note 8, as it turns out. We’ll know even more sometime Tuesday afternoon, when Cook goes beyond the already-leaked details.
But honestly, spending more than a thousand dollars on what’s really a multimedia pocket computer/communicator/entertainment system doesn’t make sense for people who use their phones primarily for making and taking calls. Lots of perfectly functional mobile phones can fill that bill for far less money.
And if you now have a case of new-phone envy just because your two-year-old Apple or Samsung smartphone ain’t what it used to be, it might behoove you to check out options for replacing the phone’s worn-down battery or cracked screen. Recent models can still be upgraded to the newest iOS and Android operating systems and pull off most of the new phones’ enhancements in health monitoring and pay with a swipe, as well as augmented and virtual reality.
Hello, Gorgeous: As in today’s top (LG and Sony) TV sets, the very best images in the new top-end Apple and Samsung phones are enabled by self-illuminating OLED — organic light-emitting diode displays — outclassing back-lit LCD screens for the playback of web pages, phone-shot images, and some streaming content. OLED tech produces a richer array of colors, a broader range of lights to darks (high dynamic range), and absolutely perfect inky blacks (not just dark grays.) Newly launched HDR-enhanced travelogues on YouTube are heart-stoppers on the high-def, wide-screen-formatted Note 8.
Adding to their charms, both Samsung and now Apple are extending these OLED screens all the way to the edge of the phone, and even wrapping the screen/picture a hair around the sides. By eliminating the bezel (picture frame) around the screen, makers can squeeze a larger image into a tidier package that you can still grip with one hand and comfortably slide into a tight jeans pocket, though having glass wrapping the edge makes the phones more vulnerable to breakage.
This advanced image-tweaking doesn’t come cheap. OLED is harder to make, and at the moment only Samsung (ironically supplying arch-rival Apple, too) is doing it right for phone displays. According to industry analysts at USB, the wholesale price (cost to manufacture) for last year’s top iPhone 7+ back-lit LCD display was $60 per unit, while the new OLEDs are about $85 wholesale. On the phone’s way to market, all costs are marked up several times, of course. Apple products reportedly build in at least a 37 percent profit margin.
And if, God forbid, you crack that puppy and have to replace the integrated display module, the cost will be close to $400 – almost as pricey as the first iPhones were10 years ago, Hiren Paten at iRepairWorks, 1358 South St., estimated. That’s why current Samsung phones with OLED screens “are much less often repaired than the LCD screens on iPhones, which run $70 to $129 to replace.” (Replacement batteries are also cheaper on iPhones: $65 versus “close to $100 on a Samsung, because of the latter’s glued-on back,” Paten said.)
Photo friendlier: Upgraded (and pricier to realize) picture-taking skills are another major appeal of the new one-grand phones. Both feature twin, image-stabilized lenses on the back “business” side – one optimized for wide-angle shots, the other pulling in tighter telephoto images, with just one easy tap switching the view. No digital “zooming” (which actually softens the image) is necessary. Cooler still, the new phones actually “dual capture” images from both lenses simultaneously, allowing you to retroactively change if you want the background to be in or out of focus. On the Samsung, this variable “Live Focus” feature is easily adjusted with an on-screen slider “switch.” Makes you feel like such an artiste! (BTW, LG and HTC phones already offer a twin-lens, variable-focus feature, though not with image stabilization.)
Better security: Just like in sci-fi flicks and at high-security facilities, you’ll be able to unlock the new high-end Apple and Samsung phones with face recognition, in addition to the old reliable number-code entry and the sometimes-cooperative (rarely for me) fingerprint-scanning method. (The Galaxy Note 8 also offers a tricky biometric iris-scan option.) Once having registered an image of yourself and activating the feature, the phone will wake up when it sees you staring at the screen. We’ve already discovered a quirk, though, on the Galaxy Note 8 iteration: If you set up your initial registration image with your glasses off, the unlocking circuitry won’t then recognize you with your glasses on. Apple’s “3D Sensing” system may be more capable and forgiving as it scans more of your face, side views as well as straight on.
Super chips: Arguably, there’s enough processing power and memory in these new high-end phones to launch a missile into space. Apple’s six-core independently running array in the X (also steering the new and cheaper 4.7-inch-screen Apple 8 and 5.5-inch 8 Plus) will be working that power for dramatic augmented-reality effects (think superimposed image of a coveted Ikea sofa suddenly materializing in your living room), for more-robust personal-health tracking applications, and for cute stuff like Animojis – emoji messages that mimic your facial expressions. Samsung deploys its quad-core processors in the Galaxy Note 8 for enhanced note-taking and drawing with the on-board S-Pen, for instant foreign-language text translation and for double-duty (with connected keyboard, mouse and monitor) as a desktop DeX computer useful to edit documents and photos, plug into video conferences, create music, and play games.
Wireless charging: Another sweet thing Samsung has offered for several phone generations, wireless induction charging, will finally be available to Apple X high-rollers. Instead of connecting a tiny power cable plug, you simply rest the phone on a special base unit that magnetically radiates energy into the device. Great for the bleary-eyed, but not without its issues. “Induction charging demands a glass-backed phone,” said iRepairWorks’ Paten. “The glass is very thin and prone to breakage.”
The new iPhone 8 and 8 Plus (lacking the induction-charging feature) will continue to offer an unbreakable aluminum backing – another factor, besides price, that may persuade shoppers that a mere $700 phone is all they need.
Just as a red-hot sports car lures showroom gawkers who then opt for a more conservative model, a $1,000 to $1,200 iPhone X may prove more of a come-on than a hit. Some pundits have already predicted that the X will claim just 20 percent of Apple phone sales.
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