iPhone 11: Phone or Camera?

The iPhone 11 release has followed Apple’s pattern of creating trending buzz surrounding its release. The top three questions swirling in the buzz are the following: 
Firstly, Are the iPhone 11 updates worth the hype?
Secondly, Who is the iPhone 11 designed for?
Thirdly, What does the price cut mean for consumers and future phone pricing trends?
Lastly, The iPhone 11 does have some incredible features and updates; however, are they enough or did they turn the iPhone into a camera that can text?

Updates & Hype

The iPhone 11 feature updates focused on the camera. With new features such as:

• Night Mode
• 2 back cameras with wider angles
• 3 back cameras on the Pro and Pro Max models
• New wide-angle front camera
• The Solfie (slow-motion selfie)
• *Deep fusion

Other feature updates include:

• Wireless charge sharing
• Slightly longer battery life
• Faster processor speed
• Better water resistance 
• New colors
• 2nd facial recognition for unlocking 
• Apple TV+ included for a year  

*Deep fusion is how the iPhone 11 will be creating detail-rich and scientifically optimized images. In general, deep fusion works by taking 4 short exposure images, 1 long exposure image, and 4 secondary images. The processor then goes through the 9 images and selects the best pixels to form an optimized image.   

At this point the list of updates has created a large debate across the tech community, centering around the question, has Apple provided enough new features to make it worth the upgrade? For example, based on the new specs, the significant changes only apply to the camera and operating speed. The rest of the updates are minor improvements compared to the iPhone XR. Click here for the full list of updates.

Designed for You?

iPhones, like all Apple products, have always been designed with the goal of user simplicity. Of course, the camera updates are no exception. The new features reduce the need for extensive photo editing. Someone looking for great social media pictures fast will see the iPhone 11 camera updates as considerable improvements. As a result of the Fortune Magazine debate on YouTube, debitor David Morris says, the iPhone 11 is for “Instagram boyfriends”. Addressing the question, who is the iPhone 11 designed for. Morris’s comment supports the idea that the iPhone 11 camera updates were made with social media influencers in mind.

Earlier in the debate, debitor Lisa Segarra, addressed the comment, ‘the iPhone 11 updates are only marginal compared to the iPhone X’, by pointing out those upgrading to the iPhone 11 will usually be upgrading from an iPhone 7, 8, or older smartphone. Taking a closer looking at the technology adoption life cycle Segarra’s point is supported.

Overall, only innovators and early adopters will upgrade from a relatively new iPhone X series phone, which is a small portion of smartphone users. The difference between the earlier model smartphones and the iPhone 11 will provide more noticeable improvements to those in the early and late majority phases of the technology adoption life cycle. Those in the early/late majority phases upgrade later and less frequently than innovators and early adopters.