For as insightful as the HN crowd usually is, it's funny that we all just swarm a thread about a new phone that isn't terribly remarkable.
As for it being faster than all Android phones. Ok. And? I dont look at my Galaxy and say "if only this was 1 or 2 or 5 or 6.7% faster." We are kind of past the "it should be faster!" for basically ALL smartphones in my view.
Some of us continued to hold out in the hopes that there might be a new device announced that wouldn’t require spending $700+ on something that is effectively worse than what we already have.
Some of us are pretty disappointed that we now need to spend money to maintain a device that is unlikely to receive security updates past IOS 14, or spend money on something that is explicitly against what we want.
I’ll get over it myself, but it won’t stop me being frustrated in the immediate term, because you’re absolutely right. Instead of being anything new and useful (as price point isn’t a big differentiator on here, given average earnings), it is just another phone, and it’s just like all the other phones out on the market.
It’s too damn big.
It takes the “iPhone most people should buy” from $750 to $399.
It completely demolishes the Pixel 3A and makes that phone just about impossible to recommend. A load of Android OEMs selling at this price point should be terrified.
And much more than the original iPhone SE, expect this phone or a $399 phone to finally stick around for Apple. The iPhone SE seemed like an experiment or a way to squeeze out more use out of some remaining machinery. But, I don’t know, this feels different. Apple is selling a price point and they’re going to keep that permanently. Look how much fanfare is on the home page of their site. This thing might even be updated every year.
And honestly, the iPhone SE is too small for most people and had more downsides than this.
Switching to another OS / ecosystem is not something done easily. When you are an Android user and everyone around you is why switch to iOS? There are plenty of good Android devices available for $400-$750. Also: in a lot of countries people just prefer a very big screen size.
So I think your comment is a little over the top. Yes it might attract some customers but I don't believe it will mean an exodus of Android users.
For a long time, Apple's 2 gen old phones were still faster (based on Geekbench) than the fastest android phone.
edit: iPhone year is actually 2017, not 2015.
Also, I don't get the phone 'workflow' where you heavily depend on computing power to render some web pages faster. Connection reliability is usually much bigger factor if that's what you really do (which is strange but maybe I am not a typical phone user).
