Smartphones: I’m fed up with manufacturers’ strategies!

Yesterday we learned that Apple is thinking about bringing the exclusive functionality of the iPhone 15 Pro Max to the future iPhone 16 Pro. We are obviously talking about the ability to offer up to 5x optical zoom instead of “just” 3x.

Thus, Apple appears to be taking advantage of the fact that the internal space of the iPhone 16 Pro has increased, a direct consequence of implementing a 6.3” screen instead of the traditional 6.1” screen. But… Do you really believe that the lack of space was to blame for the omission of the feature?

This strategy is very old, and primarily serves to push consumers towards the more expensive model. This is not new, but it is getting uglier.

Smartphones: I’m fed up with manufacturers’ strategies!

Therefore, a few years ago, it was perfectly possible to buy a version of any high-end smartphone, and decide whether you wanted a smaller screen or a larger screen.

A choice that would also mean having a larger or smaller battery, which would directly influence the device’s autonomy. But it was just that!

Basically, I chose the size I wanted, and the battery I wanted, without compromising anything. Nowadays it’s not quite like that! Want the best? You have to buy the biggest one.

In other words, then came the strategies… As was the example of the Galaxy S9 and S9+ from 2018, where Samsung decided to implement another difference in addition to the physical size and battery capacity.

What has changed? Just look at the image above! The Galaxy S9+ had a rear module with 2 cameras, while the Galaxy S9 was a little out of the spotlight, with just one camera on its back.

Lack of space on the Galaxy S9+ due to the fact that it has a variable aperture lens? Perhaps! But do you really believe this? Samsung wanted to sell the biggest, most expensive and most powerful model, because at the end of the day, that’s what makes money.

This strategy was readily adopted across the Android ecosystem. But, in case you didn’t know, Samsung wasn’t the first manufacturer in the mobile world to implement this joke.

As you can already imagine, Apple was the first to try “this thing”.

Do you still remember the time when the iPhone 6 was the same as the iPhone 6 Plus? Or was the iPhone 6s the same as the iPhone 6s Plus? Me too, and I miss it. But this strategy was also adopted by Apple in 2016 with the iPhone 7, with the Plus model hitting the market with two rear cameras instead of one.

This is where we saw the first big difference between twin high-end smartphones.

But… Very curiously, Apple was also the first manufacturer to forget this strategy a little, when it started launching Pro and Pro Max models. For many years, the iPhone Pro was a serious top of the range, with 99.99% of that that the most expensive model had to offer.

This is how things should be… Always!