- The iPhone 14 has a suspiciously high number of features that only work in North America
- This is, for example, satellite communication or the function of a payment terminal
- Does this behavior remind you of Apple’s South Korean Samsung?
The fact that Apple restricts certain selected functions only to customers in the US, possibly Canada and a few other large countries (very often, for example, China or Japan) is nothing new. With this year’s new products in the form of the iPhone 14, it looks like the gap between America and Europe is opening up even more. Does Apple want to follow in Samsung’s footsteps?
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Apple like Samsung
The world’s number one in smartphone sales, Korean giant Samsung is a renowned innovator. However, it cannot be overlooked that the manufacturer distinguishes between markets. It beautifully illustrates Samsung’s relationship with chipsets. It develops its own chipsets under the Exynos brand. It puts them in phones sold in Europe, that is, also in the Czech Republic.
The latest flagships, entering the market in the US or South Korea, already have an SoC from Qualcomm, a renowned American component manufacturer with many years of tradition and experience. And while this year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 series has enough to worry about, it’s the older Exynos that have suffered from overheating and a host of other issues.
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iPhone in the US better than in Europe?
While Apple hasn’t “stooped” to offer American customers a de facto better processor, it’s similar. Over the past couple of years it has introduced a number of innovations, which were immediately labeled “US only”. How am I?
- Emergency communication via satellite – in places where there is no good signal or mobile internet, you can simply contact the ambulance or your emergency contact via satellite; there is no doubt that this feature can save lives
- 3D city view – a complex 3D model of the city was initially available only in the metropolises of Washington, DC and San Diego, later it was extended to Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco and some cities in Canada
- Citizen and driver’s license in the phone – however, this feature in the Wallet app is only available in some US states
- Touch to pay – a simple function to turn the iPhone into a terminal for receiving contactless payments, very useful for small businesses; Unfortunately, Europe is still waiting
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On the other hand, in some cases, the iPhone of Europe is (from a subjective point of view) better than that of the USA. And that, for example, in case you need to use a physical SIM card. Apple has removed the slot for a plastic card with an associated phone number on the US iPhone 14 and there are probably no plans to return it. So both the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro for the US only support eSIM. Unfortunately, there are very few other similar cases.
And it’s even cheaper in America …
An iPhone purchased and used in the United States therefore demonstrably has more features and innovations than one in Europe. And the situation is aggravated by the price of the latest iPhones, which in Europe is 15 to 25% more than last year, in the Czech Republic by about 3 thousand crowns, although it has remained exactly the same in the US. Apple is quite innocent in this: inflation and the change in the dollar’s exchange rate against the Czech koruna are more responsible for the jump in price.
Despite the fact that the US economy has also been consumed by inflation, it’s not a problem for Americans to buy an iPhone. Show Picodi analysis, who tried to figure out how long the average citizen of a country would have to work to earn the new iPhone 14 Pro (128GB). While in the USA it is enough to work for a mobile with a price of 999 dollars for less than 6 days, the Czech Republic earns 33,000 crowns, what it costs in our country, in 22 days.
Author of the article
Jakub Fischer
Journalist, passionate about modern technology, summer months and Asian food. I like Lynch’s films, Pollock’s paintings, the French house and the Arsenal football team. In my free time I play on the PlayStation and go for a jog.
