When speaking about obsolete technology, the things that spring to mind are not generally iPhones.
Cold war shelters, perhaps, the horse and carriage….this:
(My apologies for the singing).
But 9 to 5 Mac are reporting that, according to Apple internal documents, the iPhone will be labelled ‘vintage’ in the United States and ‘obsolete’ in Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe, Japan and Latin American stores.
The phone launched in 2007 with the switch to old school set for June 11 this year.
Vintage is like, a type of clothing right?
Apple defines vintage products as those discontinued more than five but less than seven years ago, for which the company has discontinued hardware service, except for products purchased in California (owners of Mac and iPod products in California have a few options, available here).
Obsolete products are those discontinued more than seven years ago, for which all hardware service has been discontinued “with no exceptions”, and for which service providers can’t order obsolete parts.
The original iPhone was discontinued in June 2008, which means by its scheduled switch over date this year it will be right in vintage territory. So why is it vintage in the UK? Because the Canadian, European, Latin American and Asia -Pacific regions, and all retail stores, make no distinction between the two – all products on the vintage list are considered obsolete in these regions, Apple says on its website.
BOOM
However, 9 to 5 Mac points out that the vintage status applies with AppleCare and Authorized Service Providers; so you can have the device serviced if you call directly.
For comparison, the original iPhone measured 115x61mm, and weighed in at 135g at 11.6mm thick, with a 3.5 inch screen, resolution 320×480 pixels with 165ppi. It had a 412 MHz ARM 11 processor (that’s sluggish, folks) with a 2MP camera.
Apple’s latest iPhone, the iPhone 5, measures 123.8×58.6 mm, weighing in at 112g at 7.6mm thick (that’s thin, folks). Its screen is 4 inches, with resolution of 640 x 1136 pixels, with 326 ppi, almost twice the first original’s.
It runs an Apple A6 dual core 1.2 GHz processor and 1GB RAM, which is pretty darn grunty, packing an 8MP camera.
Technology times, they are a changin’.
