Why you won’t be lining up for the new iPhone 16

Trying to figure out what to focus on for the first post-Alex Hern TechScape was tricky. (If you missed it last week, you can and should revisit his valedictory newsletter after 11 years at The Guardian). Why? Well, everything is happening all the time now – so there are any number of topics to dive into.
We could talk about the likelihood of Elon Musk running Donald Trump’s “government efficiency commission” if he is re-elected as US president. But that would involve doing another newsletter on Musk, and you may be as tired as Alex was of that. The likelihood of the latter is still a flip of the coin; the likelihood Musk would stop running his multi-trillion-dollar companies for a low-paying government job, less so.
We could talk about Pavel Durov’s first public statement since his arrest in France last month, and how Telegram’s anti-censorship stance has crumbled (you can now report content in what used to be private chats that will be looked at by a moderator).
Or we could talk about Nvidia’s integral role in the economy – but I spoke with Nimo Omer for Monday’s First Edition newsletter about that.
Instead, let’s talk about the latest major moment on the tech beat, which has become exhaustingly full-on in recent years: Apple’s latest iPhone announcement. And why, despite the bells and whistles, and being a tech-adopting lot, I bet many of you won’t be lining up to buy it.
The reasons are complicated. One is the simple cost of the iPhone 16, which starts at $799 (£610). For many, such a high price is too much – particularly when the economy is struggling, work is short and a new prime minister is branding himself as head of the “doom and gloom” government, as Observer political editor Toby Helm put it.
“Sales of new mobile phones have dropped dramatically over the last decade,” says Ben Wood, chief analyst at market research company CCS Insight. In 2013, Brits bought almost 30m new devices. Last year, just 13.4m were sold. CSS Insight forecasts that figures will be around the same level. Their research suggests most people expect to keep the next phone they buy for up to five years.
At the same time, phone makers are offering fewer dramatic changes to their products year-on-year. “These days, updates to mobile phones are mostly incremental from a hardware perspective,” says Wood. “Last year’s iPhone will likely look very similar to this year’s, albeit with a slightly bigger screen, slightly better camera and perhaps better battery life. That’s quite a contrast to the mid-1990s to 2007, when there was an unbelievable acceleration in performance and capability of mobile phones.”
All eyes on AI
The adoption of AI into the iPhone – which Apple trailed at its worldwide developers conference (WWDC) in June – could be considered a step change in how the iPhone works. But there may not be a huge hankering to use ChatGPT on your phone, as I explained for in a contentious comment piece in June.
Lest you think I’m just a pessimistic, jaded tech reporter, market analysts are with me. Wood believes AI has become a “battleground” between Google (which has Gemini), Samsung (which is touting its Galaxy AI), and Apple (which understood the assignment, and cannily branded its version as Apple Intelligence, trying to make its name synonymous with the tech). Will all the investment to put AI into their phones is worth it? “I’m not convinced it will move the needle much on overall sales of new devices,” he says.
Besides, Apple has already said European users won’t be getting integrated AI on its devices this year because the company isn’t sure it can do so without breaching Digital Markets Act rules in the European Union. There is one exception to that: it will be accessible in the UK, which is of course no longer in the EU, come December. But if you spend much time on the continent it won’t be usable there. So you’re paying for marginal updates, and the potential lure of AI at some yet-to-be-determined point.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
This is where I make an embarrassing admission: despite covering the latest whizz-bang technology, I don’t see the point in keeping up with the latest hardware. I’m not an Apple fanboy, though I do use my iPad – a seventh generation one, released in September 2019 and discontinued a year later – every day.
It works, and it works well, even though it’s five years old. That’s in part because, with few exceptions, Apple’s annual hardware updates tinker around the edges. Does it actually matter if my news app renders a little crisper thanks to a fancier screen, or apps open a millisecond quicker thanks to a marginally faster processor? And if it does, do those marginal benefits justify the cost of a new device?
My phone is the same: when I dropped my years old Samsung two months ago and needed to replace it after a screen repair damaged the keyboard, I elected to buy a similarly out-of-date phone: a 2021 Samsung A52. I chose it because it was the latest model I could find at a semi-affordable price that still had a 3.5mm headphone jack, a technology I cling to because Bluetooth headphones have given us nothing but the agony of lost earbuds and having to listen to other people’s music on public transport.
I’d argue the new iPhone is a lot of money for not a whole lot of new stuff. Still: you may disagree. And if you do, please let me know – you can find me on X at @stokel.
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