If you ask me, "essential" is something that removes the bloat of questionably useful "AI assistants" poking their noses into every conversation in order to bet

If you ask me, "essential" is something that removes the bloat of questionably useful "AI assistants" poking their noses into every conversation in order to better advertise to you — not to mention a lot of the other junk that clutters up modern smartphones inside and out. I don't think we should all return to feature phones by any means, but people still struggle with basic usability and you can't count on, for example, a phone to last all day doing regular stuff, or to be relied upon to work anywhere in the world. To me trying to outdo the bleeding-edge devices and services is not a valuable proposition, since small advances here and there mean 1st place in whatever area (payments, notifications, accessibility) is passed around like a football. Why not focus on the "next billion users" or whatever people like to say? Why on the top few percent of existing users, who will only get a fractional improvement to their experience? It strikes me as shortsighted. But I suppose that's where the money is today.