>if this marketing strategy succeeds, those of us who care about functional specs like battery life and durability/water resistance, and especially price, lose

>if this marketing strategy succeeds, those of us who care about functional specs like battery life and durability/water resistance, and especially price, lose out. If it flops they'll question why. Exactly. Look what happened with the Galaxy S6: it basically flopped, because it eliminated 3 killer features that its predecessor the S5 had: water resistance, removable battery, and SDcard slot. The S7 added two of those back in and it's doing much better in sales.