The fundamental issue is people's expectations of what happens to a product from year to year. Have you noticed, you never hear anyone say "I really don't think <Toyota/Mercedes/Honda/Audi etc.) is as good as a car manufacturer anymore, there is no innovation in their <2019/2020> cars? Nope - we have come to accept that cars are a mature product, and while there may be great innovation under the hood that we don't immediately see, there clearly is not anything earth shattering in a car - nor do we clammer for things like say, 5 wheels; 2 steering wheels so a passenger can assist; etc.
That said, I look at the iPhone 11 Pro and see a mature product (smartphone) but with some nice innovations that clearly go beyond just trying to make a "new" phone that is faster and more current than last year, with no innovation. There are probably more things, but isn't this innovation?
- The camera - besides the improvement in all the basic parameters that the world yawns over, how about (1) a portrait mode that now works with animals and objects? Portrait mode has to be able to separate the object of the photo with the background, so the background can be independently sharpened or blurred for effect - all well within a second. Imagine the challenges of moving this technology from just people to animals and any object you might take a picture of! (2) To get some of the nice effects, including night vision, they take 9 pictures, 8 of which are taken before you even tap the shutter, and combine them on a pixel basis to get the best picture. Think about just the problem of ensuring that color calibration and all the other calibrations are identical and accurate, and even ambient parameters like lighting are identical or adjustable, so the combined photo doesn't look like someone cut out pieces of 9 different pictures and glued them together.
- Touch ID - it's now able to authenticate further away, and at greater angles, and is 30% faster - like it sitting on the desk and you are on the side of it, looking at it. This one is useful too, I leave my phone on the desk all the time and will love Face ID working on more extreme angles.
- A better OLED screen, yet it uses 15% less power.
- Did you see the screen shot in the presentation how they can selectively light up/power up just the portions of the SoC that are needed, saving power and improving efficiency? I have been around manufacturing of electronics boards for 30+ years, this is amazing too me. They said 100 Voltage domains, underneath is 100s of thousands of small domains that can be powered individually. Amazing.
- A new speaker pair that sends the sounds out spatially? Rather than being constrained to 2 channels, sounds can be precisely placed and moved in three-dimensional space for better realism and sensation. No phone that I am aware of can do this.
Like I said, there are probably other things. Maybe I impress easily but the engineers are doing some nice work here.
