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We've Reached Peak Smartphone (washingtonpost.com)
You don't really need a new smartphone. From a column on the Washington Post (may be paywalled): Sure, some of them squeeze more screen into a smaller form. The cameras keep getting better, if you look very close. And you had to live under a rock to miss the hoopla for Apple's 10th-anniversary iPhone X or the Samsung Galaxy S8. Many in the smartphone business were sure this latest crop would bring a "super cycle" of upgrades. But here's the reality: More and more of Americans have decided we don't need to upgrade every year. Or every other year. We're no longer locked into two-year contracts and phones are way sturdier than they used to be. And the new stuff just isn't that tantalizing even to me, a professional gadget guy. Holding onto our phones is better for our budgets, not to mention the environment. This just means we -- and phone makers -- need to start thinking of them more like cars. We may have reached peak smartphone. Global shipments slipped 0.1 percent in 2017 -- the first ever decline, according to research firm IDC. In the United States, smartphone shipments grew just 1.6 percent, the smallest increase ever. Back in 2015, Americans replaced their phones after 23.6 months, on average, according to research firm Kantar Worldpanel. By the end of 2017, we were holding onto them for 25.3 months.
I want:
A tiny phone that just dials and talks and runs a 4G access point. You take this everywhere, it's tiny and fits in your pocket and solid enough to not need a case, you can call and read messages, and run it as a wifi hotspot. The interface reflects the tiny nature. Use a Wifi tablet as your main media/work device connected via the tiny phone's hotspot.
Phones as getting bigger and clumsier, and Android tablets have stalled, (largely due to some idiot and his ChromeOS, and 'Android Go' targetting none existant markets).
But to get bigger the phone part you need all the time needs to be separated from the big touch screen part, you only need sometimes.
Something the size of an iPod Nano 8th Generation is what I want.
Computers have reached that no later than 2008. A level of quality that is basically sufficient to satisfy nearly all users, and if all you really care about is office, that level was already reached before the millennium rolled over. You could easily tell that by simply looking at how long you keep your computer. This one here is now about 5 years old and I still have no reason to replace it. I don't think a computer would have lasted me 5 years back in 2000, simply because most new software wouldn't run on it properly.
Today I'm hard pressed to find software that doesn't run and if, I'd be hard pressed to say I want or even need that software.
Same with smartphones today. People can do what they want to do with the cellphones they already have. The need to upgrade because the new version of your OS doesn't run or to finally run the software you want to run smoothly simply isn't there anymore. Better graphics, more CPU power, ok, but what for? Until we replace our computers with cellphones, i.e. having docking stations that turn cellphones into desktop replacements, the need for that power simply isn't there.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think the next thing we'll see is an uptick in requests for new batteries from current phone owners.
People will decide that the phone they have is "good enough" and just replace batteries when the charge isn't enough to get them through the day,
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I hate upgrading shit just for the sake of upgrading. I can't justify getting rid of something in perfect working order just because something new is released. I just wait until something breaks, then go out and buy the best replacement I can at the moment, which will last me another several years.
I was glad when AV gear reached the good enough point (1080p and DD 5.1 surround for me), then PCs (after I quit hardcore gaming, I doubt I'll ever need more than an i5 and 8GB of RAM and 1TB HDD for the foreseeable future), now smartphones.
All my devices have all the features I want, and more.
Having said all that, I'm glad we got to the good enough point with smartphones. Hopefully, the prices of high end devices can start coming down now.
Yes, but there comes a point where "good enough" is not worth the cost of improving.
As a n example, look at aircraft - in the early days of flight there were many improvements constantly appearing and aircraft got better and better, until we reached the 747 and Concorde (2 planes that performed different tasks - one efficient, one fast) and that's pretty much where the state of the art stopped. Nobody tried to make a new plane for a very long time after those, and even today when the first new models came out, one is bankrupting the company because its "too good" to be useful and isn't cost-effective for the customers.
So everything reaches a plateau. I would think a S curve to technology improvements is mostly appropriate for even smartphones. Until a breakthrough technology like holographic or neuro-injected displays appears!
-- a paradox attributable to substantial increases in reliability.
True innovation is what's lacking, and perhaps phone manufacturers have been resting on their laurels, confident the need for the "newest shiny thing" would be enough to carry the day.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I don't think it's a problem as just because a smart phone has become "good enough" does not mean that there aren't plenty of other things that aren't "good enough" and worth improving upon or that we have invented everything that we need or would like to have. But even if we somehow manage to get to that magically point in time where any improvements to existing products have hit a wall of diminishing returns and can't imagine anything else we need, I don't think it's the end of the road.
Just as we've seen with music and art, the next generation is not satisfied with their parents' music and there's no reason to think that "not your father's smartphone" won't be a thing either. You can even argue that much like with music that today's fare is nowhere near as good as what proceeded it in the 60's, 70's, or whatever other magical time period you want to use, that we'll see the same with phones. There may be no objective improvements and subjectively some will find the changes worse, but the new generation will want something of their own that defines them. Never mind the power of branding as social status which we already see driving a lot of purchasing decisions and there's plenty of room for continuing on into the future.
The wheels of our economy don't depend on things getting demonstrably better in order to keep turning. They merely require that people keep wanting to buy things and engaging in economic exchange with one and other to obtain them. That those things may change over time is largely inconsequential, or we'd already be reeling from the losses seen the the horsewhip and buggy industries over 100 years ago, the utter destruction of the typewriter industry, and the massive number of jobs lost when we get rid of all of those telephone switch operators.
If there's any major economic upheaval it will come from automated robots that are capable of laboring for humans and can be set to any task such that there's no need for a person who owns one to buy shoes since the robot can do all of the necessary labor from raising the food for the animals to be used for their leather all the way to molding the rubber soles and stitching the whole thing together for you and then keeping it in good repair. I think that's sufficiently far off into the future that it's not worth worrying about right now.
Aircraft have continued to improve. Fly-by-wire systems. Lighter and stronger materials. Better fuel efficiency and quieter engines through advanced CFD modeling. More cost-effiective maintenance by having telemetry sent straight to the manufacturer. So parts can be sent to the next maintenance call before pilots report a problem. Some components are made from carbon-fibre for strength.
But the basic general shape of an aircraft hasn't changed. It's a slow refinement process. You'll notice that the tips of wings have little wings themselves or actually curved upwards. That's to reduce drag due to wingtip vortices. The flight-control software continues to get upgrades.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It's not just refinement of existing designs - manufacturers are starting to experiment with electric aircraft now. Batteries don't have the capacity for long flights yet, but short hops are starting to look doable. Not to mention automated drones that can carry people. There was a hybrid aircraft announced late last year which had three ordinary jet engines, one electric engine, batteries and a generator.
There's going to be some exciting developments in aircraft in the next few decades. They'll mostly have wings, a tail and a point at the front, but there's still a lot of stuff happening.
I am extremely saddened by the fact that my scientific discipline - materials science - is nowadays abused to design extremely precise engineering techniques for planned obsolescence. Limiting battery recharge cycles was a great method, but some far more sophisticated ones have emerged. These are based on:
- fatigue limit of components subjected to repetitive strain (including designing built-in vibrational modes - that's right, the vibrational modes are added on purpose, and affect parts with a defined fatigue limit (like copper, for instance).
- oxidation of polymers, especially elastomers
- polymer deterioration induced by "useful" additives, like some fire retardants and plasticizers (though fire retardants are much more effective).
These techniques are nowadays quite deeply developed, and their ONLY purpose is to bring the product to a very limited lifetime AFTER the warranty period. Therefore, for profit of the corporations and at direct odds with all consumers. As a scientist, this makes me actually quite sad. My only consolation is that I don't work in the industry, so at least I am not on the dark side.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.