Apple had quite a lot of new options to announce with its iPhone 13 lineup this week. The iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Mini, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max have higher battery life, quicker A15 Bionic processors, smaller show notches, upgraded cameras, and, with regards to the Pro fashions, excessive refresh fee 120Hz ProMovement shows.

It’s a pleasant assortment of updates, however take a step again and the vary begins to look an terrible lot like an iterative replace over final 12 months’s iPhone 12. They have an virtually similar look to the squared-off design launched with final 12 months’s fashions, and Apple was cautious to indirectly evaluate the efficiency of its new A15 Bionic chip to final 12 months’s A14 Bionic, solely to its opponents. There’s additionally no main new initiative just like the MagSafe ecosystem that Apple kicked off final 12 months, and on the underside of the telephones you’ll see the identical outdated Lightning port moderately than USB-C. It all feels very acquainted.

So it’s no marvel that much of tech Twitter instantly responded to the telephones’ announcement by referring to them because the “iPhone 12S,” aka a minor replace to final 12 months’s iPhone 12. That’s how Apple used to call its telephones. There’d be a significant replace one 12 months, normally with a giant design change, adopted up with a extra minor revision that modified some inside parts and options however saved the general feel and appear the identical. The iPhone 3GS, 4S, 5S, 6S, and XS all used this method. So what modified?

Photo by Michael Shane / The Verge

Apple began to maneuver away from this formulation with 2016’s iPhone 7. Not solely did the iPhone 7 break the cycle through the use of a really comparable design to the earlier 12 months’s 6S as a substitute of a brand new look (apart, after all, from the notorious lacking headphone jack), but it surely was by no means adopted by an S-model of its personal. Instead, the following 12 months Apple jumped straight to the iPhone 8, a minor revision that completely deserved to be referred to as the 7S, and which ended up being fully overshadowed by that 12 months’s iPhone X.

Ever since 2018’s iPhone XS, it looks like Apple has deserted the S-suffix completely. Every 12 months will get a brand new quantity, no matter whether or not it affords a significant overhaul just like the iPhone 12 or a extra minor replace just like the iPhone 13.

Of course, Apple’s closest competitor within the US, Samsung, has been utilizing this method for years. Every subsequent Galaxy S system has had a much bigger quantity than its predecessor, and no person desires to be the corporate with the lower-numbered telephone than its rival. In reality, if Apple had launched an iPhone 7S in 2017 it might have competed towards Samsung’s Galaxy S8. No marvel Apple jumped straight to eight and skipped the iPhone 9 completely.

In retrospect it appears completely wild that Apple was keen to proudly broadcast that it was having an off 12 months. Unless you have been the sort of smartphone person that needed to have essentially the most up-to-date iPhone 12 months after 12 months, that S-suffix was a useful indication {that a} new mannequin solely contained minor modifications. “Don’t worry about upgrading this year, folks,” was the implicit message.

But the fact was that smartphone know-how was advancing so shortly on the time that even a “minor” improve may nonetheless comprise large new options. The iPhone 3GS was the primary iPhone that would formally document video along with taking pictures, the iPhone 4S launched Apple’s Siri voice assistant to the world, and the 5S was the primary iPhone with biometric safety (a fingerprint sensor). These are all main additions that we now take without any consideration on trendy Apple units, and so they arrived with the comparatively muted fanfare of an S-branded iPhone. The S-branded iPhones additionally supplied large digicam enhancements over time: the 4S was the primary with an 8-megapixel digicam, the 5S added slow-motion video, and the 6S elevated the rear digicam’s decision to 12 megapixels. Every 12 months, Apple gave its prospects a reasonably good purpose to improve.

Image: The Verge

The smartphone market is now a really completely different place. Smartphones have matured, and even midrange fashions supply mainly every little thing most individuals really need a telephone to do. Every 12 months we’re instructed concerning the newest telephones’ efficiency upgrades and edge-case digicam enhancements, but it surely’s nothing that’s going to fully change your life.

Consumers have seen. Far from upgrading to the most recent iPhone yearly, as of 2019 CNBC reported that US prospects have been ready a mean of over two years to improve their telephones, whereas within the UK individuals have been ready virtually 28 months. At the time, these figures have been all trending upward, and it appears protected to imagine that they’ve grown even longer within the two years since. It was additionally round this time that iPhone gross sales began to plateau, and Apple stopped reporting on iPhone gross sales numbers, opting as a substitute to bundle their numbers in with different system classes.

Instead of specializing in large upgrades, Apple appears to be prioritizing a much bigger lineup with units to attraction to completely different tastes and value factors. As lately as 2017, the corporate was promoting simply two flagship telephones, the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus. The following 12 months it launched three (the 8, 8 Plus, and X), and final 12 months it switched to 4 with the iPhone 12, 12 Mini, 12 Pro, and 12 Pro Max. With so many type components to maintain up to date, it’s not stunning that large overhauls have change into much less widespread.

Unless you really need the most recent and biggest know-how, there actually isn’t a lot of a purpose to improve yearly, and that’s a great factor! It’s rather more reasonably priced for these individuals who choose to purchase their telephones outright, and it’s worlds higher for the atmosphere. Apple could now be utilizing extra recycled supplies in its units, however manufacturing them and transport them within the first place nonetheless makes use of assets.

In this context, it isn’t stunning that Apple has modified with the occasions. For starters, it’s making extra of an effort to earn cash exterior of {hardware}, like its more and more broad array of subscription companies overlaying every little thing from music and video streaming, to gaming and residential health. If it might’t earn cash from promoting you a brand new iPhone yearly, it’ll certain as hell attempt to earn cash from you streaming the most recent season of Ted Lasso.

That doesn’t imply that Apple has given up on the thought of promoting you a brand new telephone yearly. Far from it. If branding this 12 months’s telephones because the iPhone 13 tells us something, it’s that Apple is extra eager than ever to persuade its prospects to improve, by branding this 12 months’s telephones as an all-new vary versus a extra modest replace to the iPhone 12. The slowing progress of smartphone know-how signifies that Apple can’t afford to relaxation on its laurels with an S-branded system. Everything must be brand-new and as thrilling as doable.

So sure, this 12 months’s iPhones may, and arguably ought to have been branded because the iPhone 12S. But the smartphone trade has modified, and Apple has modified with it.