After the big reveal of the new iPhone handsets, Friday marked the launch of the new XS and XS Max iPhones.
Down in London there was a the usual queue outside the flagship Regent Street store, however outside was a Huawei juice bar with “Ju%ce That Lasts” written on the side. They were very busy on Twitter with the “#HigherIntelligence” hash-tag too.
Huawei staff were giving out “brain-boosting drinks” that had “no traces of Apple” to “recharge minds”.
You see what they did there? 🙂 They also offered plug sockets to recharge battery-depleted phones. Now, I will say this for the Huawei phones. Whilst I had one (sadly it got destroyed) I was constantly impressed with the battery life. Sometimes it does go a little too far – shutting down apps like Strava quite often. However, the fact that Huawei make their own processors means that there’s more control over battery drain and I could easily go a couple of days before it went flat.
The Huawei Mate 20 is set for release on October 16th with a Kirin 980 chip and a dual neural processor for AI cleverness.
In the large Apple store in Birmingham, it was a very different story. Perhaps the rise of online sales and the continual struggles by brick and mortar stores meant that less people headed to the actual store. According to the Birmingham Mail the security guard at the Apple Birmingham store had only seen around 100 customers. The barriers outside were clearly not needed for iPhone XS customers this year.
So gone are the day of long, chaotic queues with people arriving in the early hours and hoping the supply of new products would not run out.
Perhaps the familiar design and price-tag has reduced the frenzy and hype?