If you use iCloud backups, you get that. Downloads your settings first, then restarts and download all your content. Your phone is an exact copy of what you had before minus the debit/credit cards in Wallet.

It's not as if Android offers anything either. Third party tools like syncthing can be used to backup the camera folder, but the root android folder is protected against copying because of permissions issues that Google refuses to fix. Same if you connect it to an external SSD. You have to root your phone truly be able to make a simple, complete backup. But that comes with a lot of disadvantages for financial apps, security, etc.

Why cable? 7 hours? All the previous iPhones I just held near each other and it transferred in like 20 mins via wifi

Unsure whether that was phone to phone or iCloud to phone but either way was entirely painless

Granted I was on both fast wifi and fast Fiber

Last android phone I bought (my current device, got it as a refurb, ill never buy new again its a waste of money) supports high speed usbc with display and data out. Usb3.2 gen2 I think it is. I specifically chose this phone because of the high speed usb transfer rates. I use the 128gb storage for data transfer all the time and I also like being able to plug it in to usbc monitors and use it as a desktop when I need quick compute functions and don't want to lug a pc around or boot up my actual desktop.

I make sure most of my clients whenever they buy new monitors get usbc hub monitors. The price is bugger all extra and once I show them what I can do with my phone they basically want the same. Not to mention I haven't installed a laptop workstation space that isn't usb c one cable to plugin and go in about 3 years now.

I would buy that except they’ve put in full thunderbolt 4 in the pro so they’ve got an insanely fast interconnect on that phone with the same USB-C port.

Granted, that requires a tb4 controller chip but I don’t know if that’s built into the A18 pro or not.

How does one get decent audio from a phone without a 3.5mm-jack? I am only half joking, and I know this is beating a dead horse. But sometimes you need to make sure the horse is really dead. If I sit with my phone and a pair of headphones with aptX adaptive it is only good if I have direct line of sight and don't move around. This is my experience with all adaptive codecs. Putting my phone in my pocket makes it noticeably worse. If you walk into a store with 2.4ghz WiFi (or too much Bluetooth interference?), suddenly your audio quality tanks even more.

My wife's airpods only supports aac256 at absolute best, meaning it sounds bad most of the time. If I sit with the phone in front of me it is more or less unnoticeable, but putting her phone in my pocket, the cymbals start sounding like splashes in a pool.

And then there is the latency. Anything above 50ms is unbearable. For some reason it works ok in English, but I almost can't watch Swedish (my mother tongue) or German content with that kind of latency.

I think more like "make things as simple as possible, but no simpler"

(for mistaken values of "as possible")

Too bad because wireless airdrop compresses media files.

Who would that benefit? Like, they have to service these devices, a cable connection is just much more reliable.

I wish they used wireless when viewing from computer nearby. Sort of fuse your online library with phone.

Airdrop is only ok for few photos.

Yup it's the same thing with ProMotion missing on the display even though it's identical to last year's Pro model.

I started self hosting things like that, and I am always surprised at how fast things get.

Wrong! Tons of "regular users" want to transfer their image library from their phone to their PC. This is usually dozens of GB of data. Very often the tranfer (from iphone to cheap windows laptop via oxidized cable) is not even completly successful.

My usual recomendation for these people is to buy icloud storage ($$$$) and sync the images over the web, because this is faster an less error prone.

EDIT: therefore the average amount of times anyone who buys a non pro iPhone plugs it into a computer with the intent to transfer data to it is almost 0

Samsung has offered USB 3.0 support as far back as the Note 3 about 10 years ago. I enjoy the speeds on my own S23 when shooting 4k video and want to edit the dozens of GB it often generates. And the 'extra parts' don't seem to have slowed Samsung down from record-breaking profits.

Let's be honest: useful USB ports aren't going to sell iCloud storage subscriptions.

My parents do that all the time. The videos of their grandchildren take AGES to transfer.

Meanwhile, my phone that is half the price does almost 8 gigabits.

Didn't they put it in the SoC for the 15 Pro/16 Pro? It's an $800 phone and it's a feature that much cheaper competitors have (e.g. Pixel 8a) . For the times you need it it's handy. I know quite a few people that have been frustrated trying to get GBs of photos off their iPhone too where it runs it problems due to the sheer volume.

They support other niche features like display out so why not support for almost 15 year old USB speeds. How much does it seriously cost to add?

How will we ever get good peripherals and good use-cases if everything can only ever be USB 2.0?

That's a flawed argument, like saying people rarely use their car's hazard lights or emergency jack.

I routinely transfer GB of photos taken for work to my PC via imazing.

The sentiment of “I don’t need it so I can’t understand why anyone else would either” is asinine.

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