Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Does It Matter That We've Reached Peak Smartphone?
Gizmodo, in its typical sensational voice, ran a story this week in which it argues that smartphones are in a "ridiculously boring place" right now. Alex Cranz with the publication expresses her discontent with some of the recently launched smartphones such as the iPhone SE, the LG G5, and the Galaxy S7. "These devices have not redefined the way we phone, nor have they blown us away with unprecedented speeds, or wowed us with extraordinary battery life. Each of these new phones is merely a marginal improvement over last year's model." I agree with most of what Cranz has to say. In the past one year, we've seen QHD display panel, Snapdragon 810/820 SoC, 3 to 4GB of RAM becoming a norm. Nearly every manufacturer has reached that point, and then sort of stopped there. Compared to the Nexus 4, for instance, the Nexus 6P offers a significant improvement. But when compared to anything you purchased two years ago -- in the echelon of your choice -- the latest offering isn't going to leave a big impression on you. The industry is currently making small noises about what it thinks could be the next big thing. Some players including Samsung and Lenovo believe that it could be the virtual reality addon. We will have to see how much traction that gets.
My contention with Cranz's story is that it doesn't talk about how these devices are impacting people's lives, hence missing the big picture. I believe that it doesn't necessarily matter if our smartphones aren't going to get any smarter. The first-generation Moto G, from a few years ago, can also help you quickly get information from the Web, and it can also allow you to book a cab using Uber app, and do pretty much everything that you do on a flagship smartphone. As Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson pointed out last month, the next "second smartphone revolution" could enhance the lives of millions of people in places such as Asia, where most of the population still doesn't have a smartphone. When you look at that, it becomes unnecessary to talk about the top-of-the-line specs and the rate at which these smartphones are receiving incremental improvements. The vast majority of people in the emerging world are in a desperate need of a bare-bone smartphone that allows them to make phone calls, even if it doesn't do it in a "redefined" fashion, and works with speeds that don't blow them away, a couple of things that I think we are taking for granted. Wilson wrote: The first 2.5bn smartphones brought us Instagram, Snapchat, Uber, WhatsApp, Kik, Venmo, Duolingo, and most importantly, drove the big web apps to build world class mobile apps and move their userbases from web to mobile. But, if you stare at the top 200 non-game mobile apps in the US (and most of the western hemisphere) you will see that the list doesn't look that different than the top 200 websites. The mobile revolution from 2007 to 2015 in the west was more about how we accessed the internet than what apps we used, with some notable and important exceptions. The next 2.5bn people to adopt smartphones may turn out to be a different story. They will mostly live outside the developed and wealthy parts of the world and they will look to their smartphones to deliver essential services that they have not been receiving at all -- from the web or from the offline world. I am thinking about financial services, healthcare services, educational services, transportation services, and the like. Stuff that matters a bit more than seeing where you friends had a fun time last night or what it looks like when you faceswap with your sister.At this moment, it does seem to me that over the coming months, our smartphones are unlikely to get a major hardware boost. The biggest milestone we have on the horizon is what happens when everyone has these smartphones, and how does it impact our businesses, culture, and social lives. What's your take on this? Do you think we are yet to reach the peak point in the smartphone world? What's the big picture in your opinion?Update: 04/23 18:55 GMT by M :Robotech_Master's take on this is pretty insightful.
My contention with Cranz's story is that it doesn't talk about how these devices are impacting people's lives, hence missing the big picture. I believe that it doesn't necessarily matter if our smartphones aren't going to get any smarter. The first-generation Moto G, from a few years ago, can also help you quickly get information from the Web, and it can also allow you to book a cab using Uber app, and do pretty much everything that you do on a flagship smartphone. As Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson pointed out last month, the next "second smartphone revolution" could enhance the lives of millions of people in places such as Asia, where most of the population still doesn't have a smartphone. When you look at that, it becomes unnecessary to talk about the top-of-the-line specs and the rate at which these smartphones are receiving incremental improvements. The vast majority of people in the emerging world are in a desperate need of a bare-bone smartphone that allows them to make phone calls, even if it doesn't do it in a "redefined" fashion, and works with speeds that don't blow them away, a couple of things that I think we are taking for granted. Wilson wrote: The first 2.5bn smartphones brought us Instagram, Snapchat, Uber, WhatsApp, Kik, Venmo, Duolingo, and most importantly, drove the big web apps to build world class mobile apps and move their userbases from web to mobile. But, if you stare at the top 200 non-game mobile apps in the US (and most of the western hemisphere) you will see that the list doesn't look that different than the top 200 websites. The mobile revolution from 2007 to 2015 in the west was more about how we accessed the internet than what apps we used, with some notable and important exceptions. The next 2.5bn people to adopt smartphones may turn out to be a different story. They will mostly live outside the developed and wealthy parts of the world and they will look to their smartphones to deliver essential services that they have not been receiving at all -- from the web or from the offline world. I am thinking about financial services, healthcare services, educational services, transportation services, and the like. Stuff that matters a bit more than seeing where you friends had a fun time last night or what it looks like when you faceswap with your sister.At this moment, it does seem to me that over the coming months, our smartphones are unlikely to get a major hardware boost. The biggest milestone we have on the horizon is what happens when everyone has these smartphones, and how does it impact our businesses, culture, and social lives. What's your take on this? Do you think we are yet to reach the peak point in the smartphone world? What's the big picture in your opinion?Update: 04/23 18:55 GMT by M :Robotech_Master's take on this is pretty insightful.
... we reached peak laptop 5 years ago and peak desktop almost 10 years ago. Mature products, mature market. I'm not certain people would pay for a release that just improved stability and battery life, so expect some dodgy "features" over the next year or three.
Is to talk to another person, and be able to hear and understand them. Maybe the smartphone manufacturers could concentrate on the audio quality and intelligibility of phone conversations using their equipment...
Summary
Ever.
The peak? Surely you jest. I see room for plenty of improvements in smartphone technology. The technology is still in its infancy.
At this point I don't upgrade to a new phone until the battery on my existing one becomes useless and I can't find a replacement. There hasn't been a compelling phone feature to me for quite a while. Screen resolution, camera, CPU, data speeds are all at a good enough place. The last really cool feature for me was wireless charging.
I said much the same thing on TeleRead. There are many, many devices and things that haven't "advanced" in decades but are a such a quiet everyday part of our lives that we couldn't imagine doing without them. Smartphones (and their close relations tablets and e-readers) are becoming just like that. Not everything in our lives has to be replaced by something shiny and new every couple of years.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I don't think we've hit peak smartphone, but we're at a plateau. The next steps will be three things:
1. Reduced cost and improved durability, bringing smartphones to those areas of the world that currently can't afford them.
2. Improved battery life. That's going to come from battery tech, not the phone side.
3. Augmented reality. Not virtual reality, but something like Google Glass that can use the entire surface of the lens as a display instead of just a small chunk in a corner.
For such an insignificant app, you sure do mention it a lot.
Get a blog manishs and just stick with the submission's text. Nobody comes hear to read your personal opinions
Articles like this make me ask the same question when someone waved their fancy new Nexus in my face the other day talking up how "powerful" it was....
"Yeah, but what are you doing with it?"
Power, capacity and brandings don't mean much to me. Show me what you produce with your precious pocket gadget to impress me.
After all of these years, volume controls on phones still suck ass. The physical buttons are on the edge of the phone and you either butt-mute and butt-blare your phone all day long, or they're stupid hard to press and you can't tell without looking at the phone whether your change has even taken. On top of that, some apps "steal" the buttons, so you're never sure whether you're actually adjusting the volume or talking to the app.
On top of that, there are actually multiple settings, i.e., for ringer volume, media volume, etc. And some apps seem to have their own "private" volume setting that is only adjustable when the app is in the foreground. Or when the app _thinks_ it's in the foreground. Or when the OS has stopped lagging and gets around to thinking it's in the foreground.
And don't forget about headphones. Various things behave differently if headphones are plugged in. Some sounds go to the headphones and others continue to come out of the phone, for no obvious reason.
All of that assumes that you haven't tripped over the various OS bugs that make the volume unchangeable, etc.
So yeah, I still have a few hundred $$$ burning a hole in my pocket for any manufacturer that can solve this problem.
We may have plateaued for now but I think mobile phone/computers of 2021 will be radically more feature-rich than today's phones, and those in 2026 will be at least another generation beyond that.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Is to get a former CEO of one of the cellphone companies in the whitehouse, then they can reveal that Malasia or South Korea is part of the axis of evil.. hell they can even stage a fake terrorist attack against the US.. and then they can attack! This will drive the prices of cellular phones up 10X thereby increasing their profits by 10x! from there they can have their way with profiting from backdoors in encryption because it would be obvious that the terrorists already did so when they made the cellphones.. but then the government can have its way with our money and our rights and our privacy in the name of Murica damnit!
Peak Cellphone? That is just what we want the public to believe!
Muahahahahahaha!
There already were smartphones with QWERTY (incl. arrows, numeric row etc. - suitable for programming/VIM, not just for SMSes). There is no longer any single one QWERTY manufactured. There is probably still a long way ahead before we can see a usable phone when they still cannot get the QWERTY there.
Realistically, what more do you want one to do?
Peak smartphone may be here for people willing to stump up the moolah, but the world's becoming more and more connected because of cheaper, better devices. For most of the seven billion people, $700 isn't what they can splash on a nice phone, it's over half their annual income. Better value smartphones are bringing capable computers to the masses.
If they are stuck on how to innovate, then they can give me call.
:T:R:A:N:S:
As an Android user, the main thing I want now from a smartphone is regular updates (chiefly, security). As far as I can tell, only Google is committed to regular security updates for all their recent devices. Actually, I think Samsung might be doing so as well, but only for the S6 and S7. Stagefright was a major wakeup call for Android partners, but it seems that, after the dust settled, the OEMs have returned to the old "just buy a new phone" approach to solving the problem. Mind you, Joe Sixpack really doesn't seem bothered. Or maybe just not clued up.
I'm planning on grabbing the next Nexus when it arrives, hopefully with a 64GB option or an SD card slot, so I can benefit from the monthly security patches. I can only see attacks against smartphones increasing both in volume and sophistication, now that we've peaked and almost everyone has one.
My phone should break the laws of physics. It should conjure gold out of thin air. It should get me a threesome with clones of Hillary Clinton AND Bill Clinton if I so want it. If my phone doesn't do that, then don't bother making it.
It's long been true that one could buy a phone similar to last-year's model at a reasonable cost. Since there haven't been any radical improvements for a few years, there's no longer any reason to spend $650 on the hottest new thing. No reason to replace a phone that works fine, and when you do need a new phone the $120 model will do fine.
That shift has several effects, one of which is that carrier subsidies on phone purchases, in which the buyer pays for the $650 phone through a higher monthly bill on contract, have become kinda pointless. No reason not to buy a $120 phone up-front, then get $30 service with no contract.
New media is always pitched as an opportunity for education, health care knowledge, and global understanding. But it always gets used for porn, reality shows, and mindless entertainment. Now with more cat pictures.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
These devices have not redefined the way we phone, nor have they blown us away with unprecedented speeds, or wowed us with extraordinary battery life. Each of these new phones is merely a marginal improvement over last year's model.
Why is no one saying the same things about PCs? Modern smartphones are excellent at what they're doing, sans their poor battery life. Why would you want to switch your phone every 12 months, and why would you expect every generation to bring something new and incredible to the table?
Modern smartphones are already as powerful as 5-7 old PCs yet they consume roughly 100 times less power. I mean for all intents and purposes they are a miracle! You basically have a supercomputer in your pocket for fuck's sake. And yes, we haven't yet developed a good enough power source for them but it's not because we're not trying. It's because doing science nowadays is fucking hard. You just cannot go to your R&D department and tell them, "Hey, guys, let's make our phone better than the competition by inventing a new power source". It just doesn't work this way.
This whole, "show me more features or the smartphone has suddenly become boring", reeks of the most awful consumerism. Your 2-3 old smartphone suddenly doesn't work for you or what? If you have an excess of money to burn go invest them in biotechnology/new energy/aerospace/etc. companies.
If this means that the market has finally matured (i.e a new phone isn't obsoleted in 6 months since a next gen is being released) then it's great because that would open the market finally for a long term phone. You know a smart phone where you still in 10 years time get updates, can get cheap replacement battery and so on. I know that this won't happen ever since the manufacturers want to keep creating new cheap shit that we should buy and trash in 6 months, but still this would at least make room for one manufacturer that would release such a phone.
I love this quote: "[...] could enhance the lives of millions of people in places such as Asia, where most of the population still doesn't have a smartphone."
South Corea is number 1 in smartphone penetration. Malaysia is 8, just before Germany. China, with its huge population is ahead of France, and even Russia is close. And Fred Wilson (Venture Capitalist with a capital V, apparently) is under a rock somewhere, presumably in the early 1900.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_smartphone_penetration
These devices have not redefined the way we phone, nor have they blown us away with unprecedented speeds, or wowed us with extraordinary battery life
And yet people are happy to buy these devices and seem to be content with the level of performance they offer. It's important to remember that the "phone" is merely a platform. On its own, it's nothing - useless. When the apps come along that need more powerful phones, the manufacturers will develop them.
But for the time being, unless you're addicted to better, faster, bigger / smaller - just for the sake of having something a tiny bit better to brag about - then making phones faster or more capacious seems pointless.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Smartphones made a leap with installable apps, now they need to enable installable operating systems. We're currently in a phase where large parts of the OS are reinvented with every generation of smartphones, much how previously features like phone book, sms entry, and synchronization were new in every new phone (and came with new oddities and bugs), even from the same manufacturer. The ARM world needs to become a platform instead of a loose arrangement of components. Until you can buy a phone without OS and choose the software separately, the manufacturers will be overwhelmed with maintaining the base line of features and have no time and resources left for innovation.
We are on the cusp of having enough horsepower in our mobile devices to have a true desktop experience via docking station. Those of us in IT and other 2D heavy jobs can appeiciate the concept of having your entire computing platform in your phone. Dock it to your display/kb/mouse, and you're off and running. Take a look at Microsofts' demo of Continuum. It's a compelling use case.
I'm reading a science fiction novel set a hundred years into the future and corporations have colonized space. One of the characters made an observation that the toaster as a kitchen appliance hadn't changed despite all the advances in space travel. In short, your cellphone is another appliance.
Time to actually write something of substance.
I agree with the story. I'm a die hard corporate blackberry user. The only other phone I've ever owned is the iphone 3GS and that was because at the time _everyone_ in the office had one. You couldn't attend a meeting without someone talking about it.
Fast forward to the S7 and Android. The phone itself is sleek, and looks nice, but it ends there. Ergonomically it's a nightmare for me. Security is also a nightmare. RF is weak. For a phone costing over $1000 Canadian, I'm not impressed.
I'm still not sure where to post this, dumping a wall of text on Slashdot isn't exactly ideal but the phone has never seen the public network. Since the day I got it (last Tuesday), it's had a sim with no data and on a completely isolated wireless network for observation. What I've found is absolutely absurd. It's not only call home happy but it's like the neighborhood hoe. It won't stop broadcasting for benign things (DNS and multicast for the most part). I've disabled everything I can short of rooting the phone and I've not accepted _any_ TOS or license for anything (including Google nor Facebook), yet it persists. In a futile attempt to further isolate the phone it's now sitting on a VPN.. which it's ignoring for some hosts like connectivitycheck.android.com, but also more disturbingly external DNS. A lot of the call home garbage appears to be Samsung and Google, there is also some to odd places like Broadcom.
Phones out right now are largely snakeoil. It's no wonder so few sites "review" anything but how the phone looks or the stupid cameras. I couldn't find any doing even basic reception tests. Few show Email clients or the phone UI much at all. Some even consider the abysmal battery to be normal. Charging a phone nightly is NOT NORMAL.
I say, desktops and laptops are extremely shitty, and getting shittier. Shinier, but that's all polish and underneath they're complete turds. The smartphone has the same problem except it tries to cram a multitude of "appliance-izing" "apps" into the mix, instead of giving you full control over the phone. It consumerises the 'web (and doesn't give you proper a internet connection to start with, courtesy telco meddling), more or less like tablets do.
So, while desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and e-readers all are "enablers" of one kind or another, most of the potential for the end-user remains untapped. We could do something about that. Of course, that's not going to happen because the various manufacturers like their consumers beholden to them, and so are really not interested in serving discerning customers.
In that sense, and in particular on the smartphone markets, that are by and large driven by telco buyers because most people get a phone shackled to a plan, there's very little incentive to meaningfully move forward, and so it won't happen. And so in particular in the smartphone markets, yes, we may well have "peak smartphone", and worse, the laptop and desktop markets are being pushed into the same "beholden consumer" model.
It really is no surprise that the various manufacturers are crying over falling sales growth, or even falling sales altogether. It's not limited to smartphones, either.
Maybe things are wildly better in the Android world (probably?), but as an iPhone user, I'd just like to see more disk space so I can carry around my whole mp3 collection and actually use the super high rez cameras they put on these things for video. 128GB seems really small for 2016.
You could probably keep me on the upgrade treadmill for another decade (the every 2-3 year treadmill, I'm not interested in anything shorter), if you simply doubled the flash memory every 2-3 years.
No, I'm not interested in some hacky subscription based cloud solution which means I can't actually access my music and files when I'm hiking in the mountains.
The only thing that has peaked with smartphones is the need for more hardware in a smaller package. They have officially shrunk down and added most hardware features we need for awhile. The problem is that the OSs and apps barely scratch the service in what a smartphone COULD do it the UI and apps were refined. It's smart hardware, but really really bad software for the most part. Most apps on Google Play, MS Store or Apple Store are trash.. they are apps designed to make a quick buck more than solve any real problems. Many times making money off of features that are in the OS and ppl don't even know about. That's not a business model that builds a good customer relationship over time. It's an abusive relationship where Google kind of pushes users into the pool and says.. SINK OR SWIM. We are at the mercy of random fly by night app makers WAY too often on Android. Just look at the trash in the Play Store it should be obvious that smartphone software is very lacking. Stepping up your brain power an actually imaging where the smartphonere 2.0 platforms are going is a lot more useful and it helps you understand what I mean by software being the real limiting factor. It's key to note that the business models of iOS and Android are the core things making the platforms into entertainment platforms fire and productivity platforms a distant second. In the LONG run a market place can be good, but in the early days it creates a lot exploits and predatory coding. Google has done poorly to regulate this out. Apple has done infinitely better, but not great. MS probably has a far better Mobile OS in the making, but who knows until it's tested more. To me Windows 10 is what I mean by smartphones 2.0. These are phones designed to more realistically mimic the usefulness of computers and not just iPods. All current phones are more or less modeled after Apple's success with the iPod and iPod Touch. The problem is those are just kids toys. They are platforms meant to sell us entertainment first and foremost and things like very easy access to feautres are a distant side note on Android and iOS. I hope MS will pressure them into making more realistic mobile platforms that integrate into our desktops correctly. I don''t think most of you realize your getting screwed by Google and Apple pretty hard. Google is not accidentally funneling users into Google Music. They are 10 times worse than MS ever was at the height of Windows power. Google controls and defines Android and they have broken from the start. You can't use a lot of the features of the phone because the OS locks you out. Then on top of that you can't use a lot of features that developers COULD add in because Google blocks them or steals focus by forcing pre-installed apps designed to get you signed up for 10 bucks a month. The mobile platforms are entirely for profit platforms. The business models behind them dictate that they are not really tools being made for users. They are platforms being made to sell apps and the priority on that is overwhelmingly in the favor of profits and not a quality product. Voice commands are not something that should be taking decades to get. Voice commands were possible 20+ years ago on a desktop but nobody thought they were useful enough other than a few companies. MS could have had voice integrated way back in 95 is they had gotten to it. Keyword recognition does not require that much CPU power. Teach users to say the right command and it works.. let the babble stuff and you need a whole datacenter to maybe figure it out. In any case the problem is Google and Apple and MS not taking the right directions. Phones and desktops are lacking TONS of software features and particularly integration between mobile and desktop. Do you guys never ask yourself why doesn't google make like a GOOGLE app for Windows that would handle all the Android integration at the OS level? It's because they CAN MINE YOUR MORE when you use Chrome or Android so they don't want to make tools for your desktop. They want you to forget your desktop exists and take 3 times
Smartphones are dealing with a problem that PC's had to conquer. I haven't felt like a PC I run has bloat for ages. (True, I mostly run Linux and Mac, but even Windows 7 and 10 have felt responsive).
Contrast that with Samsung and it's night and day. I've held off upgraded because despite the faster processor and more ram, reviews (http://www.techtimes.com/articles/137991/20160302/samsung-galaxy-s7-bloatware-takes-up-massive-8-gb-of-internal-storage-from-the-get-go.htm, http://www.tomsguide.com/us/sa...). These can't be uninstalled without going above and beyond what a user should have to. If our PC's pulled shit like this we'd riot. So it's no wonder the upgrades fail to impress.
It is also no wonder we don't see radical innovation - obviously the companies are content to push the same shit over and over because we buy it over and over.
This and Intel. We are knocking at the physical limits of conventional semiconductor electronics, and industry is recognizing this.
We are knocking on the limits of what traditional computer architecture can do; cranked up the speed, pipelined, added more memory, parallelize, fabrics.
Computers are unlikely to get substantially better than they are now. The incredible growth we have witnessed in our lifetimes is ultimately unsustainable, and we are at it's end.
This can be seen in how most computer products sold now are underpowered. Being mobile is a big point, because you need efficiency. However it's also because companies need to package their products in ways that make you think you are getting upgrades when technology stagnates, so they can post black next quarter.
>"Compared to the Nexus 4, for instance, the Nexus 6P offers a significant improvement."
Because you skipped over the Nexus 5.
Some of us (me included) don't really need any tons more speed or 1,000,000 DPI displays. We don't want 3D. We don't want iris scanners, virtual keyboards, 100 megapixel cameras, or other gimmicks..... We want LONGER BATTERY LIFE, reliability, modern memory and storage options, in a SMALLER phone without losing any features, for a reasonable price.
I am a Nexus 5 owner and love the phone. Even today it is fast enough. But was very turned off by the only Nexus upgrade path- the Nexus 6. I didn't want a big phone. And tons of us screamed that. Google sorta listened and a year later the 5x finally comes out. Although reasonably small (it is still slightly larger than the 5), it is almost double the price but is a low end device! No 4GB RAM, no 64GB (or 128GB) storage, mediocre battery, AND NO WIRELESS CHARGING!
HELLO!!! Just because many of us don't want a tablet sized phone doesn't mean we want 4-year-old specs for memory and storage. I have money to spend for a real upgrade to the Nexus 5 and still waiting...
I picked one up when they came out and there is simply no reason for me to upgrade to anything else for the foreseeable future. IT works. Its only true weakness is the camera.
Good-bye
No
Toasters are in a ridiculously boring place right now. I'm expressing my discontent with the leading Cuisinart, Black & Decker, Hamilton Beach and Kitchenaid models. These have not redefined the way we toast, nor have they blown us away with unprecedented toasting speeds, or wowed us with extraordinary extra settings knobs. Each of these toasters is merely a marginal improvement over last years or even last four decade's toasters. The latest offering isn't going to leave a big impression on you. The industry is currently making small noises about what it thinks could be the next big thing. Some players believe that it could be the IoT addons. We will have to see how much traction that gets.
What's so bad about that? Hardware stability, software performance, all of these are good things.
Oh... riiiiight, the fucking shareholders. That's the problem. They expect the gravy train to always run run run. It won't. Get used to it. The number of available scams (er, new product "innovation") are dwindling.
I expect smartphone makers to refine what they have, listen to customer feedback, and forget about trying to out-do each other.
This is why my next phone will be the iPhone SE, or its descendant. I don't want a bigger screen or a thinner phone. I don't need a bigger screen or a thinner phone. I do want what I have right now, a decent camera, a fingerprint reader, and reasonably sized phone that won't double as a fucking surfboard if I would put a keel on it.
Comprende, Apple, Samsung? I don't want your stupid micro tablets like the 6S and Galaxy. That's why I've not rushed out to get the 6 or 6S -- or the SE for that matter. My 2.5 year old 5S does all I need, and does it very well. I'll replace it when it either breaks, or the battery fries or some other catastrophe happens to it. And it'll be a four-inch phone, guaranteed.
I don't care what any of you people think, I love the four-inch screen and heartily applaud Apple for listening to people like me and making a well-made, non-plasticky premium four-inch phone.
Do I sound a bit defensive? You bet your sweet bippy I do. All I hear from friends and co-workers is "wah wah wah big screen skinny phones rulz and if you don't like it you're a strange weirdo" and I'm thinking "those fucking 5+ inch phones just don't fit my hands right!"
Form is dictated by function. To me, huge phones don't function as I use them. So fuck off, big phone. Thank you apple, for making a nice, well-made little phone again. I'll buy it when I need it.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
What I want is my next phone to operate in PAN mode (personal area network), in which I wear the SIM card / "${new_shiny}G" transceiver / shared-storage-volume on my belt, and then I use any peripheral I wish to use in conjunction with it (dumb phone, smart phone, tablet, smart watch)—possibly several at the same time.
As I see it, each device would have essentially it's own installation and software profile (with the majority of storage local), but there would be enough on the belt blob that you could just pick up some device lying around (supposing you trust it enough) and associate it temporarily, and have it work well enough as a "guest" device on your PAN to get by.
I'd be totally happy to have two belt blobs: one for voice service and another for data service, provided it all worked together seamlessly. I'd source each service from the most competitive bid.
I dislike the current phone architecture and security model so much I turned my Android data modem off six months ago (after uninstalling most apps with any kind of dangerous permission bit) and haven't really missed it at all. I kept the light meter, sound meter, scientific calculator, stopwatch/timer and signal strength meters (GPS, Wi-Fi, "${new_shiny}G"). I would also have kept "POTS-comparable audio quality" if I had managed to download such a thing (maybe I just didn't search hard enough).
It hasn't been a problem. I'm around Wi-Fi often enough to not care and I rarely drive anywhere unfamiliar.
If you ask me, we're definitely at peak phone, but it's a dystopian peak, not a design peak.
What I would love is a $50 smartphone where I can at least partially upgrade it. A few things such as a better battery would be nice if. The simple reality is that while I have an unlimited everything package, I don't use my phone for that much. I use the maps, occasionally surf the web, run a few apps of no particular hardship on the CPU, listen to lectures and audiobooks, listen to podcasts, listen to music, and check simple things such as the time or weather. Oh, and I take non critical pictures and videos.
My present phone is an iPhone 5C which was an upgrade from a 4S only because the provider I switched to won't support the 4S.
I might switch to the 6 because of the larger screen. But if I could switch to the larger screen and only have the capacity I have now, it wouldn't bother me. In fact a 4S with a larger screen would be fine.
Even then the only reason I had a 4S is because I develop apps and my 3G couldn't go past iOS v5.1.1. So maybe I would still be using the 3G if I had not been "forced" to switch.
I think boiled down, I really don't need a $500 plus smartphone. If it weren't for the app development issue my phone would probably be something like the OnePlus 2. Simple, cheap, basic, and by far, good enough.
Anyone seen or played with one of those tiny spectrum analysers that Texas instruments sells for $1000 a pop?
Smaller than a mobile phone and runs on a mobile battery.
That, I think, given the speed of miniaturisation is the next big thing in technology to come to our smart phones.
The value really won't be in the hardware but in the reference databases and software that make it useful.
Imagine going out to eat and scanning your food for calories, additives, nuts (for allergies) before eating?
That's real power in your pocket. That's your trekkie "tricorder".
We're at peak Smartphone when each device has 2TG of storage, 64GB of memory, some 3GHz something 8-16 core CPU, 50 hrs. of battery life and enought gfx power to be used as a PS4 replacement and a desktop workstation. At the same time.
Give, we could already be there, but convergence hasn't caught on yet as an overall concept with the general populace and phonemakers are still making plenty a buck by inching out increasingly smaller upgrades to strange early-adopter flagship markups of 2-3 times the price for a slightly weaker phone. As look as that stiil works, we won't see an ultimat smartphone.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Most phones shouldn't cost $650. Most have construction/parts cost of ~$250. That could be sold at a lower price for a profit.
Other than that, the U.S. phone system needs to be re-regulated. It's a mess with how they nickle-and-dime for bandwidth.
I have an LG Enact. I've had an LG Enact since November 2013. I want to upgrade. However there are no high end phones that have a built in keyboard. I hate touch keyboards. They always read what I try to type wrong. Why has nothing except the Blackberry Priv come out with anything faster than a dual core. The priv won't even work for me since I'm on a CDMA network.
It's called "mature technology". I bought a Galaxy S7, and now, it's not innovative. It just combines the best features of the S5 and the S6. The fingerprint scanner is several orders of magnitude better than my old S5. My only complaint is they left out the infrared blaster, so I can't use it as a remote control for my TV. There are other technologies they could add, but smartphones are too expensive already for something people are going to replace every two years.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I loved the mechanical keyboard in my G1. What people don't realize is that typing on a touch screen requires watching the screen, whereas you can touch type without looking on a mechanical keyboard.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I bought an unlocked dual SIM GSM phone for $29. I use it with a T-Mobile account that costs $10 per year (after paying $100 the first year). It works well for answering phone calls when my FreedomPop Samsung Galaxy phone (no monthly charge) is away from Sprint coverage.
Now it it possible to get an unlocked Blu phone for $20. Or, if you think that is too expensive, $18.
An advantage of the less-capable phones: More than thirty days of stand-by time. ($74)
One of the nice advantages of being heavily involved with technology is that you can feel comfortable saying no to technology. I've met people who felt they had to have the latest iPhone because other people bought the latest.
I am not, of course, saying anyone else on Slashdot would make the same choices.
Hyperspectral cameras
3d / dual / depth-sensing cameras:
- combine with WiDi to get an air-keyboard, air-mouse instant connection to a bigscreen = PC
P2P network topologies
Medical Sensors
Completely-Sealed (zero port) GoPro "survive anything" design: Bluetooth, wireless charging, etc
Wireless USB: just be connected
Hub of an IoT home
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
When I come home and browse the web using my monitor, keyboard and trackball, but my computing device is still the smartphone in my pocket, then we'll be closer to peak smartphone. When I'm playing my virtual reality videogames and doing my virtual reality tourism, and have ditched my monitor and television for my augmented reality display, and my computing device for these activities is the smartphone in my pocket, then we'll be closer still to peak smartphone. Peak smartphone is still quite a ways off.
The innovations are so incremental that it is hardly worth covering and has been like that for years.
If a vendor would dare to make their phone even 2mm thicker to provide excellent battery, THAT would be news worth covering. I know I would buy it. For example a iPhone 5 SE+, not with a larger screen but 1,7mm added (back to iPhone 4 depth) to provide more battery,
I want a smartphone I don't have to insure or put in a waterproof box with a screen protector etc.
I want one that is cheap enough and robust enough that I put it in my pocket and use it. I don't want to worry that if I drop it or accidentally fall into a lake that I will have to buy a new $400 phone or increase my contract by 2 more years. I don't want a smartphone so expensive that I feel compelled to insure it.
Actually, I have this now, a Moto E that I got for about $50, but I have to run the Verizon Customer Service gauntlet to get it to work (it is a pre-paid model that works fine on the Verizon network but you can't buy from the contract site (I have a Verizon contract) , so it confuses the heck out of them).
It would be nice if the big players would stop milking people by only offering very expensive phones and making them seem cheaper with financing and lock-ins. It would also be nice if they didn't force you to upgrade by deliberately withholding upgrades to the software. For example, the Moto E already has android 6 developed for it. Verizon has deployed it in other countries, but not the US.
No special gripe against Verizon, they all pull this junk, Verizon is just the devil I know.
Basically, it's not the hardware that is the problem right now with phones, it's the OS. Specifically, stock Android still doesn't allow IBSS mode, so it's not possible to build ad hoc P2P communities to extend the reach and range of Wifi networks. Or, maybe, to create the new killer-app, like say, nomadic file sharing. There are some patches out there for Cyanogenmod to enable IBSS for some Broadcomm chipsets, but unless Google finally decides to merge them back into mainline Android AOSP, there won't be any momentum to see widespread adoption of ad hoc networks, and therefore new uses for smartphones any time soon.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
There is seemingly more innovation in the Chinese smartphone market right now though certainly there is a lot of copying and catch-up, too. But some of these Chinese manufacturers release new models many times per year instead of just on an annual refresh cycle. They have been trying things like multiple displays, cameras with changing orientations, dedicated hardware buttons for instant photo snapping, huge batteries, etc. Overall quality is picking up, too, but for sure, there is still a way to go. But nonetheless, these companies are probably more agile and willing to take some risks vs. Apple, Samsung, etc. LG at least seems willing to try something new once in a while.
...but inexpensive access to data plans has not. The biggest roadblock to broader smartphone adoption is the ridiculously high price of operating them. Even 50$ per line and month is grossly overpriced for what you get an how much it costs the carrier.
I'm probably too cynical, but any story like this I assume it's a PR piece. Maybe pre-hyping some other announcement, or playing down the recent story about Apple expected life times.
The Priv is available on Verizon now.
Smartphone (benchmarks) were always boring.
Cyanogen is making an OS available, are you? Granted, it's almost an Android clone, but that's just about your only choice at the moment.
Unless someone builds one and provides a comprehensive app store, it's irrelevant. The market won't accept a phone without apps, so you're limited to FOSS nerds---which makes it very hard to turn a profit.
This. I'm stuck with my current smartphone, and when it eventually dies, I'm just stuck. I would love a modern midrange phone with a slide-out keyboard like my current Photon Q, but there just... isn't one.