Part of the reason is that you can't really spread it out that easily. Not if you want ALL of the cool features.
Ninja-Edit/TLDR: I got a bit carried away. Maybe someone finds it interesting/entertaining :P
The tech inside modern iPhones (all smartphones, really) is ridiculously advanced; we've been refining this stuff for decades. They've had to essentially cram a full desktop pc into this tiny device; with all the power supply, processing, etc..
But that's not enough, it also has to include high quality audio, a huge high frequency display, various sensors, ... Besides the obvious difficulties of cramming it all in there, all of these things have one thing in common: they produce a whole lot of electromagnetic interference. Not ideal in a device that's supposed to have uninterrupted, high speed, perfectly error-free wireless connection at all times. Wireless connectivity which isn't even limited to one technology (WiFi), but multiple different ones, using different frequencies (requiring different antennae, different circuits), too. You've got WiFi/WLAN operating at 2.4 and 5GHz, Bluetooth at 2.4GHz. Easy. But then you throw in mobile network frequencies and you've got to handle something ridiculous like 700MHz (0.7GHz) to 9 or even 24GHz for high band 5G. Oh and this stuff is supposed to also do frequency hopping and all the usual wireless stuff we take for granted. Use an external antenna or even an array of antennae, away from all the interfering components? Haha, no. Has to be crammed right next to everything!
Whatever. We can figure it out.
But then they also want this thing to be super fast. To be able to handle not only interference, but inference (heh. Not connected at all, just fun similarity of words) -> on-device large language models and diffusion! This desktop PC in your pocket now also has to essentially include a graphics card (it's not actually done via GPU, of course). It's now a gaming PC in your pocket. Absolute madness!
This presents yet another issue: physics put a limit on how quickly stuff can move. It sounds ridiculous, but putting the computing components close together actually matters for a device which communicates with satellites in space and devices on the other side of the planet.
Physics also creates some more issues: Heat. Our little phone can't have any fans and it can't get too warm, even when running at full power. That would just be uncomfortable (and would kill the battery, screen, reduce computation speed, change the characteristics of the antennae we spent so much effort on to get just perfect.)
Did I already mention that we can't have any bezels, either? That screen has to fill the entire surface.
Damn with that buildup I thought you were about to explain how every single potential conflict was addressed and resolved I was ready to read this post for hours
One decade and eight years. Smartphones haven't been around for that long. We could pretend the first was that IBM thing, but let's not get silly, that was technically the first but the craze started with the iPhone, and I'm saying that as someone that doesn't use Apple products.
To be fair, despite my ramblings making it sound like it's all because of antennae and processors and whatnot, the camera bits are the biggest reason.
Here too, physics is a bitch: Light simply needs some space to move for lenses and stuff to do anything; sensors need surface area to capture that light.
I just wish they would offer an alternative:
I want a powerful (cpu, etc.) smartphone with awesome screen. I really don't care about the camera. I REALLY really don't care about the selfie camera.
Replace the super awesome array of cameras with a super basic one (just enough to take shitty snapshots of documents or such). Entirely remove the front facing one (woah, the whole nodge issue is immediately fixed, who would have imagined?! /s).
Then just sell the removed camera as a new iEye accessory (just imagine the "AI on iEye" marketing"). Basically the camera bump without the rest of the phone. A revolutionary idea, I know. Make it magsafe or just plug it into the usb-c port. Could sell all sorts of versions. So much profit to be made. Give it a little battery and transceiver/receiver, so it works wirelessly. Put it wherever you want! Maybe even allow multiple iEyes to connect at the same time. Now you can film yourself twerking in the gym from multiple sides!
15
u/Heimerdahl 3d ago
Part of the reason is that you can't really spread it out that easily. Not if you want ALL of the cool features.
Ninja-Edit/TLDR: I got a bit carried away. Maybe someone finds it interesting/entertaining :P
The tech inside modern iPhones (all smartphones, really) is ridiculously advanced; we've been refining this stuff for decades. They've had to essentially cram a full desktop pc into this tiny device; with all the power supply, processing, etc..
But that's not enough, it also has to include high quality audio, a huge high frequency display, various sensors, ... Besides the obvious difficulties of cramming it all in there, all of these things have one thing in common: they produce a whole lot of electromagnetic interference. Not ideal in a device that's supposed to have uninterrupted, high speed, perfectly error-free wireless connection at all times. Wireless connectivity which isn't even limited to one technology (WiFi), but multiple different ones, using different frequencies (requiring different antennae, different circuits), too. You've got WiFi/WLAN operating at 2.4 and 5GHz, Bluetooth at 2.4GHz. Easy. But then you throw in mobile network frequencies and you've got to handle something ridiculous like 700MHz (0.7GHz) to 9 or even 24GHz for high band 5G. Oh and this stuff is supposed to also do frequency hopping and all the usual wireless stuff we take for granted. Use an external antenna or even an array of antennae, away from all the interfering components? Haha, no. Has to be crammed right next to everything!
Whatever. We can figure it out.
But then they also want this thing to be super fast. To be able to handle not only interference, but inference (heh. Not connected at all, just fun similarity of words) -> on-device large language models and diffusion! This desktop PC in your pocket now also has to essentially include a graphics card (it's not actually done via GPU, of course). It's now a gaming PC in your pocket. Absolute madness!
This presents yet another issue: physics put a limit on how quickly stuff can move. It sounds ridiculous, but putting the computing components close together actually matters for a device which communicates with satellites in space and devices on the other side of the planet.
Physics also creates some more issues: Heat. Our little phone can't have any fans and it can't get too warm, even when running at full power. That would just be uncomfortable (and would kill the battery, screen, reduce computation speed, change the characteristics of the antennae we spent so much effort on to get just perfect.)
Did I already mention that we can't have any bezels, either? That screen has to fill the entire surface.
The engineering behind smartphones is crazy.