Welcome to Brown’s Bytes! Your weekly insight from Mobliciti’s CTO Andy Brown. Follow #brownsbytes
16th October 2020
A bit later than in previous years, but we’ve reached the moment for the inevitable Brown’s Byte about the latest iPhone.
iPhone 12
Remember the days of secrecy and hype… they really do feel like a long time ago now. Pretty much everything there was to know about the iPhone 12 was leaked and, as I’ve mentioned in previous years, the lack of new features has left all smartphone manufacturers to differentiate on the minutiae.
Last year it was all about the cameras. This year it’s…
5G!!
Don’t get me wrong, 5G is important and a step-change in how connectivity will be provided and perform, but with my UK hat on, it’s not yet anywhere near ubiquitous enough to warrant too much fanfare.
Unfortunately, UK networks are probably spending as much time ripping out the Huawei kit that they’ve installed as they are pushing 5G further. The decision to ditch Huawei is almost inevitably slowing down our adoption of 5G.
Not to worry since the iPhone 12 will do what all devices do… be backwards compatible to 4G/3G/2G. This is no bad thing – I’ve spoken before about how 4G is more than good enough for well into the medium term, but it does mean that the 5G killer use cases (admittedly we don’t yet know what they are on a smartphone – gloss over that!) will also be delayed. There has to be a tipping point where you’re on 5G more than 4G as you move around, just as it did with 4G and 3G, in order for the features that make use of all the extra speed and low latency to reliably be used.
And even if 5G is there, Apple has made a big deal about their devices having “Smart Data Mode” and thus being able to decide whether it needs to use 5G at all to avoid draining the battery (I have a bit of concern about this if I’m honest).
Which underlines that a lot of the time 4G will be more than enough for some time to come!! Which means 4G phones aren’t obsolete overnight…
And in the Enterprise…
As is often the case, I think the more interesting item is going to be the price reductions to existing devices and how we now have a broad range of Enterprise capable devices to suit most price points. Our Mobile team advise that we’re now seeing UK pricing (EX VAT) of:
iPhone SE now £332 down from £349
iPhone XR now £415 down from £524
iPhone 11 now £499 down from £607
iPhone 12 Mini (5.4″ screen) £582
iPhone 12 (6.1″ Screen) £665
The XR, in particular, has been very popular in Enterprise – look at that price now!
And thanks to iOS14 being the same on all these devices, it does perhaps mean that 4G will do just fine for now!
Get in touch if you’d like help sourcing and deploying your devices.
