Authoritative foreign media complains about iPhone 8: All new features are available on Android phones

Ewan Spence, a contributor to the U.S. Forbes website, wrote today that 2017 is of special significance to Apple because the iPhone will usher in the important day of its tenth anniversary on the market, but the new iPhone to be released this year is "old wine in a new bottle" and is expected to have no innovation in terms of functionality.

Due to its unwillingness to take any risks, Apple has been stagnant in the smartphone market in recent years and lacks innovation. It has only followed competitors such as Samsung to improve its smartphone products instead of forging its own path.

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More and more people expect that the Apple iPhone 8 will be an all-powerful flagship smartphone with all kinds of magical hardware performance, fully reflecting the technological progress in the field of mobile phones. However, there may be a huge gap between reality and dreams. The 10th anniversary version of the iPhone will definitely have many new features, but all of these features are estimated to have appeared on competing products before. This is precisely why Apple will be financially successful again.

Will there be something truly Apple-specific on the iPhone 8? Increasing the base capacity to 64 GB is actually a common starting point for high-end Android smartphones, and it is becoming increasingly common on mid-range Android smartphones, and the maximum capacity configuration of 256 GB is not Apple's exclusive weapon.

Always unwilling to take any risks

Curved screens are not only a Samsung signature, but have been around for years -- if you want to see how curved glass looks on a flat screen, look at Nokia's Lumia 800 from 2011. The iPhone 8 is expected to feature an extremely sharp OLED screen, and while that would be a first for an Apple smartphone, the technology is common on nearly all high-end Android phones.

Android phones are gaining a lot of market share with wireless charging, thanks to the Qi standard. Charging surfaces are everywhere in my home and office, and I'm not the only one jumping on the bandwagon. Apple has also taken some steps in wireless charging, but even so, some commentators still think that Apple's choice of the Qi standard is a mistake and that the iPhone should not pursue wireless charging in its current design form.

Currently, the other alternative to wireless charging is fast charging, and including this feature in the iPhone 8 is not a new innovation, but it allows Apple to catch up with its competitors in this regard.

HD screens? QHD screens are now on the rise. Facial recognition? Windows 10 already has it. No physical home button? Countless Android phones (mostly low-end phones) have this feature, and it is becoming more and more popular. As for waterproofing, it has actually been around for years, and Samsung and Sony have made great progress in this regard. More efficient chips and CPUs? This question is even more out of the question.

Some people have made the point that Apple is rarely first to market with a new technology, but takes its time to perfect the advancement and make it easily available to consumers, which is a nice touch in the media, but I think Apple does this more to minimize risk than to get accolades.

Always want to play a good show of catching up from behind

Apple's biggest problem is that with so few product types and most of its revenue coming from iPhone sales, it can't take risks like its competitors. Samsung's Note 7 is a classic example of this risk - in the fourth quarter of 2016, when Samsung suffered huge losses due to the Note 7 recall and had no tablet phone revenue to cover the losses, the Korean company still had a large number of different types of products to fall back on. If the same crisis happened to the iPhone, Apple would have little room to maneuver to absorb any losses the company suffered.

In the smartphone market, Apple cannot afford as many risks as its competitors. Apple needs to launch new iPhones every year, continue to win user trust and drive significant growth in product sales every year, and it must bring users a sense of comfort and familiarity while launching attractive iPhones.

The success of the iPhone is crucial to Apple's future. Of course, this year's new iPhones are expected to be boring and the market is unpredictable. The smartphone market is becoming increasingly competitive and it's like a race between the tortoise and the hare. Apple always wants to come from behind and leave the best impression of being the tortoise, and wants to continue to conquer the city in an evolutionary and incremental way without taking any risks.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.