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Features We Want – Nay, Demand – From the New iPhone 7

A simple list of demands from us to you (providing 'you' are 'an Apple representative or employee').

Probably what the iPhone 7 will look like, more or less (Photo: Yasser Farahi, via)

Taste that, baby boy? Taste that tang on the air? Metal, isn't it, metal deep and copper like your blood. But that isn't blood, my boy, my beautiful strong male heir. No sir and no bob. That's iPhone. There's iPhone a-coming. Hear the rumbling? Hear the wind whip up strong and light around you? See the dust and mud on the distant mountains tumble? Change. Change around the corner. Buckle down and hammer your tent pegs in deep to the flesh of the earth, my baby boy son boy. Tell your mother you love her but that you'll never see her again. Long is the night ahead of us. Many a horror between us and the future. Many demons to slay. Also we have to camp outside the Apple Store with all the nerds if we're going to get our hands on one.

Annons

And so the iPhone 7 launches at… I don't know, some point this week. And we all have an iPhone, don't we, except those weirdoes with Samsungs. 'It's better!' they say, the weirdoes. 'It's got Android! It's got way better integration with a Windows computer! It… it almost runs Angry Birds, now!' No, not now, please, Samsung people. Not now while we wait for our iPhones, the new god in our hands.

Still, it's not like the iPhone is perfect. I mean it's better than a Samsung, or whatever, but it's still not perfect. And that's why we have a list of suggested features for Apple to peruse and call the factory in China and be like 'STOP! STOP PRODUCTION! Put all these features VICE asked for on instead! Delay the launch indefinitely! I can't believe our team of incredibly high-level engineers, like arguably the best product engineers in the world, that they didn't already think of all these things that a Slack team of six disinterested journalists did! It's wild that the most successful product design team in history didn't come up with this! What the hell is wrong with us, man!' about it. Onwards:

A PERFECTLY FLAT SURFACE ON THE BACK FOR… FOR DOING— JUST. RIGHT. FOR DEFINITELY NOT DOING LINES OFF, BUT

It's just very useful to have a completely flat, non-bevelled surface on the back of a phone, sometimes. For… things. For putting things on. In a very level and secure way. And then inhaling those things, alone, in a pub toilet.

SOME ACTUAL FUCKING HARD DRIVE SPACE SO I DON'T HAVE TO KEEP DELETING PRECIOUS PHOTOS AND MEMORIES EVERY TIME I HAVE TO REINSTALL UBER

I have no memories of my last birthday because I only have a 16Gb phone and one day I had to make a choice about what was more important: remembering the act of turning 29, or Pokémon Go. And what I am saying is: I just caught a really dope Electabuzz, I made the correct decision.

A BATTERY THAT LAST LONGER THAN HALF A DAY JFC

I went to the effort of buying a €7 off-brand charger cable to just have about my work desk at all times and I might have one to constantly be plugged in back home next to my Telly Chair1 too, and frankly the decision to buy extra chargers to leave around high traffic areas of my life was one of the greatest I have ever made, however and still: it would be good to have a battery that lasted a bit longer than about four hours, for once, wouldn't it.

A SCREEN THAT CAN TAKE A COUPLE OF POUNDINGS ON A PAVEMENT OR A SLIGHT DROP OFF A BEDSIDE TABLE WITHOUT CRACKING LIKE SUCH FRAGILE GLASS

I am just personally really bored of doing the 'Does anyone know a good place to get an iPhone screen fixed (cheap!!)?' Facebook update, then having someone tell me about a "really great bloke who works out of a grocers on Kingsland Road and did it for me one lunch hour", and me not really trusting that to go well and just paying €90 to get it done somewhere that has a website. Like clockwork, every six months.

A CHARGER CABLE THAT DOESN'T GO GREY AND MUCKY AT ONE END AND FRAYED AND HORRIBLE AT THE OTHER WITHIN THE SPACE OF ABOUT A WEEK-AND-A-HALF

Like umbilical-like tendrils that we suckle our power from indefinitely, slaves to the tendrils, attached to them for not as much power as life, and to say that: they always get really twisted and fucked up and grey at the end and need taping. Sort that out, 'Apple'.

A BAKED-IN PHOTO EDITOR THAT DOES A BIT MORE THAN JUST CROPPING AN IMAGE A BIT SMALLER

Windows 95 had paint and even that was better than the native editing software that comes with an iPhone. Come on! Just let me draw a willy over a photo without having to install another app!

A CAMERA THAT AUTOMATICALLY DELETES ALL THE SHIT PHOTOS YOU TAKE WHEN YOU UPLOAD THE ONE GOOD ONE FROM A BATCH OF 30 TO INSTAGRAM

There is face detection software and eye de-reddening software and the burst feature and somewhere in between the cracks of all that code is the capability to do what I just asked with one simple software update.

A FEATURE THAT REMOTELY DEACTIVATES YOUR MUM'S EMOJI KEYBOARD FOR 24 HOURS

Not my mum, but yours. Listen, we know it's for the best. She doesn't know what the hearts-for-eyes emoji is actually for. She somehow attaches every colour of loveheart to the most basic 'u coming downstairs for dinner?? x' text. Lord help you when she discovers there are some emoji that look like cats. Come on. You need this.

A SUBTLE NOTIFICATION THAT COMES UP AFTER YOU OPEN FACEBOOK, OPEN INSTAGRAM, CHECK TWITTER, CHECK YOUR EMAIL, THEN COME BACK ROUND TO FACEBOOK AGAIN, THAT JUST SAYS 'YOU ARE BORED. DRINK A GLASS OF WATER AND DO SOMETHING MORE CONSTRUCTIVE.'

Maybe this one is unique only to me but I find myself doing a loop of the same four apps for maybe 20, 21 hours per day, and really could do with an occasional intervention.

A FEATURE THAT ASKS YOU WHEN YOU TRY AND TEXT ANYONE AFTER MIDNIGHT 'U SURE ABOUT THAT MY BRO? U SURE?'

If you are texting anyone after midnight you are either trying to score or trying to fuck and we're on the seventh iteration, here, technology should be stopping us by now from being our worst selves.

A MILLION POUNDS FROM APPLE AND A NOBEL PRIZE FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE COMMITTEE IN RETURN FOR ALL THESE IDEAS

Thanks!

@joelgolby

Annons

1. I have, I am afraid, gone full dad, and I have a chair that I like to sit in when I watch television and play on the PlayStation, and I get really angsty if anyone else sits in it, because I am creaking into the abyss one notch on the gear at a time, and I know now that I am older than I am young, and essentially: death soon, please

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