A DECADE OF PHONE TECH
Technology
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MILA GEORGIEVA
IPHONE ‘V’ COMPETITION EDITION
This issue is all about time…spending time, wasting time, and generally thinking about what we do with our time. But what have phone companies done with their time? It’s completely insane to think that the first generation iPhone came out a whole decade ago, but indeed, this time ten years ago people had only just been introduced to a piece of technology which would inspire so much change in the future. The first iPhone was rather impressive (for its time!)-but it was also considered large! With a 3.5” display and width of 11.6mm, it was certainly chunky. Spec-wise, it had a screen resolution of a mere 320 x 480 pixels (think rubbish quality 480p video on YouTube), with a miserable pixel density of 165 pixels per inch, meaning the overall resolution of the screen was poor: if you were to take a screenshot from that phone and view it on a big screen, you’d see a lot of pixelation. Much like with its single rear-facing 2 megapixel camera-again with the pixelation!
Technology
The phone itself was also not the most
And now we fast forward 10 years to 2017.
powerful - supporting a single 412 MHz processor and 0.125 GB of RAM. It did,
The iPhone has morphed into a more
however, have 16 GB of storage which was an
elegant beast in the form of the iPhone 7:
impressive amount, considering apps were
interestingly, only weighing 2g more than
only just coming about, your phone had a lot
its predecessors, the newest iPhone on the
of storage available for music. But good luck
market has an upgraded 4.7” screen with
gaming with that RAM - you wouldn’t even
a resolution of 750 x 1334 (more than HD!)
be able to multitask;
and a pixel density of 326ppi (around double since the first generation). Cameras have
you want to have a conversation AND text
improved significantly: 12 megapixels in the
someone back? Sorry, no can do.
rear-facing camera and 7 megapixels in the front - perfect for all of those selfies and
The title of ‘Best Phone of 2007’ however, is
Snapchat moments. Spec-wise now rocking
held by a champion in the form of the Nokia
a quad-core 2340 MHz, 62-bit processor
N95: it cost around twice as much as the
and 2 GB of RAM with 256 GB of storage…
iPhone and prided itself on being the most
making it a rival for some laptops!
high-spec piece of pocket equipment money could buy. It was smaller than the iPhone,
Its main competition is the Samsung Galaxy
with a 2.6” display (how did we ever function
S7 Edge, which still seems to be keeping the
with such tiny phones?!) and it also had an
top spot as one of the best phones from last
old-style physical keyboard with the number
year. It’s a larger phone with a 5.5” display,
pad and no full QWERTY. It did however,
twice the resolution of the iPhone (1440 x
slide out to reveal media buttons for music at
2560) and 534ppi. The rear-facing camera
the top. It also had two cameras: one on the
matches that of the iPhone, but the front
front, and one on the back, with the latter
camera is a slightly lesser 5 megapixels
being a spectacular 5 megapixels.
(still much better quality than that of the rear-facing camera of the Nokia!). Getting
Delving into the specification further, it was
to the really nerdy stuff, the Galaxy S7 Edge
interesting to find out it’s screen resolution
has an octa-core (eight-core) 2300 MHz
was less than the iPhone (240 x 320 pixels
processor with 4 GB of RAM. Well, within the
- think even poorer quality YouTube videos)
range of a laptop, and in fact, having a much
but the pixel density was higher, meaning in
faster processor, it’s almost a gaming phone,
theory, the display should look sharper. You
though the processor here is mainly used for
also had a slightly less powerful processor
rendering photos and videos as the phone
at 332 MHz, with only 0.16 GB of storage
can shoot in 4K crystal clear video quality. A
(expandable to 8 GB), which unfortunately,
phone, truly deserving of its ‘Best Phone of
doesn’t quite seem convincing enough to
2016’ crown.
win the top spot!
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