What Technology?
Shot in the very early morning hours facing west.
I was outside with my dog, testing the low-light capability of the new iPhone 15 Pro Max. I shot this photo in such low light that the clouds you see were not visible to my naked eye. You can even see the stars. When you think about the complexity of this image and the clarity, considering I was holding the camera in my hands, it's all a remarkable thing, yet most people won’t notice the advancement. It looks like any other phone.
I upgrade my iPhone every year. I have since the release of the first iPhone in 2007. I'll never forget the date it first landed in my hand, June 29, 2007. We waited in line for hours, and I still own that phone. It's safely tucked away.
Every time a new phone is released, I think back to what we went through to help make the phone a reality. Our contribution was providing the Bluetooth software still listed on the licensing page on the phone to this day. After Steve Jobs unveiled the phone in January 2007, and I flew from the floor of CES to San Francisco just hours after the reveal, the phone was still not ready. Because of the refinements every year, some that seem so inconsequential, people forget just how limited that first phone was in comparison to the 15 today.
The original phone was more or less an iPod with a phone. There was no Bluetooth stereo (A2DP) enabled. The software was in the phone, but the phone's antenna and battery were still an issue. The iPhone was the first phone without a stubby, which is the antenna sticking up. That alone had some huge challenges, and for about the first five years, iPhones frequently dropped calls. People were so used to it, they just went about their days.
We were frantically working on capability solutions with Apple right up until the phone's release, and that effort continued after that. Qualcomm bought us in part because of the iPhone. I'll never forget attending those meetings at Apple as we worked on engineering solutions to everyday problems we now take for granted.
Every time a new iPhone comes out, I can't help but think of the hardware and software teams and what it took to move the iPhone from the 14 to the 15, and how deep the technology runs into all corners of the world. As I write this, a team is working somewhere on an even more advanced camera, better audio, better screen, stronger glass, and more exotic materials, not to mention the individual chips that make up the functionality of the phone. In total, it's hundreds of thousands of people in thousands of companies all working on something that leads up to the iPhone 15, just so I could take that photo with almost zero light in the sky other than what's reflected from a city twelve miles west of me. That shot, with that intensity, was not possible on the 14.
Bravo to all of you who made this possible. I can't wait for the 16 and beyond.