The S Cycle: Apple’s Innovation By Iteration

There’s a stigma surrounding the “S” years of iPhone launches. Apple followers hail the newest iPhone as “the best yet,” an eerie callback to Apple’s own marketing, yet so many dismiss it as “the same phone repackaged and rebranded to make more money.” Apple looks greedy and their new phone looks underwhelming.

But Apple is right. The S Years are the best years.

Quite literally, the S model phones are better than their predecessor. That is an obvious realization on paper, yet, these phones are often treated in reviews as the same phone packaged with a gimmicky new feature or two and fancy marketing. Just as often, these new features are represented by media outlets as Apple’s repackaging of an already existing technology. Maybe they’re right. But regardless, Apple almost always does it better. (i.e. contactless payments, fingerprint sensors, video recording, etc.) Looking back to the iPhone 3GS and skipping forward to this year’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, Apple has continued their tradition of following up a drastic iPhone redesign with a phone that looks similar with some pretty major under-the-hood changes. When you look closely, however, the biggest technological jumps the iPhone has ever had happens on the S years.

iPhone 3G & iPhone 3GS

With the iPhone 3GS we got a much faster phone (the biggest speed jump since the original iPhone) and video recording on a mobile device. With a legitimate way to edit that video on the device, might I add. iOS was also hitting some major strides at this time as well, with the App Store exploding and the new camera technology present on the 3GS opening brand new doors for developers.

iPhone 4 & iPhone 4S

With the 4S we got another major speed jump, a huge camera improvement — 5MP on the 4 to 8MP on the 4S, 720p video on the 4 to 1080p on the 4S, and autofocus and face detection on the 4S — and Siri. Sure, Siri may not have been the greatest virtual assistant at launch, but she opened the door to a new way of communication with our mobile devices: speech.

iPhone 5 & iPhone 5s

The iPhone 5S broke a huge barrier in mobile performance when it introduced the world’s first 64-bit architecture on a mobile phone. Apps got more powerful. The device ran faster — way faster actually. Single core and multi-core Geekbench scores broke the 1,000 mark for the first time with iPhone, and TouchID began a new trend for mobile device manufacturers.

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s

That leads us to today, where the Geekbench scores on the new iPhone 6s actually beat out the new MacBook, more than doubling the score of the iPhone 6 before it. We have another camera sensor upgrade — 8MP to 12MP — and Apple has added a new method of device interaction again: 3D Touch. I really hate the fact that they used the “3D” branding for this feature, because it’s actually much more imprtant to the industry than the preconceived notions attached to “3D” would suggest. 3D Touch is great, and once its potential is fully realized by the iOS developer community no one will be able to argue that point. Flagship Android phones in 2016 will ship with pressure sensitive screens. Just watch. Even the oft dismissed Live Photos will become a fan-favorite for anyone with loved ones (also read: everyone).

The iPhone 6s really is the best phone Apple has ever made, and it’s the best phone you can buy today. Apple has an interesting way of making everything they sell seem like a necessity, but with the iPhone, most of what they say is true. The S Cycle is hugely important.

The S Cycle is when Apple takes their already fantastic smartphones and improves on them in ways that push the industry forward. The numerical upgrade years are big, yes. They introduce a new hardware design, but if we’re honest with ourselves Apple isn’t really pushing any boundaries with their phone hardware design. Most of the time, they introduce bigger and better screens. This isn’t to say that Apple’s hardware design isn’t among the best in the industry, but they don’t pave the way forward like the camera, mobile processing, and other new technologies on the S years. They maintain a premium standard. Every year the iPhone is great, but the S Cycle has a greatness that is often missed. It’s as if the design teams at Apple push their new big-screened phones out the door so they can finally focus an entire year (and likely more) on improving the things that are really going to shake things up. The things that most people won’t see when they pick up an S device, but will definitely notice by the time they put it down.

Watch out for the S Cycle. Those are the great years. Those are the years where Apple acts like Apple. Iteration pushing forward innovation.