20 ms·

The end of smartphone innovation

• tutufan 10y ago
  A phone with volume buttons that actually and intuitively worked--in practice, not just in theory--would be innovative. A phone that incorporated debouncing on its touch screen would be innovative. A phone that didn't require high manual dexterity in order to avoid tapping the wrong thing would be innovative.
  • asafira 10y ago
    Innovative, maybe technically yes. But in reality, these are not really game changers.
• sandGorgon 10y ago
  one word - fuchsia. https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/ https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/
  • emsy 10y ago
    Knowing Google, Fuchsia was probably started as a mean to kill yet another product.
    • rocky1138 10y ago
      You're getting downvoted but your vocalization has some merit. I looked at the link and decided not to bother reading it since it'll probably get closed down in a few years, so what's the point?
      • emsy 10y ago
        People seem eager to forget, given that Google Talk was discontinued not even a week ago.
        • rocky1138 10y ago
          The real nail in the coffin for me was when they killed Google Reader for no good reason. What a shame.
  • michaelmrose 10y ago
    What's revolutionary about it android is pretty mediocre.
    • torartc 10y ago
      Why is Android mediocre? In my experience, it's more capable than iOS.
      • valuearb 10y ago
        i have both and no, Android still rough around the edges.
        • hesarenu 10y ago
          I have both. I feel iOS lack in certain areas compared to android.
      • michaelmrose 10y ago
        Lack of updates on most devices, xml to define interfaces, fake java as its primary development language, messy file hierarchy, obnoxious issue wherein apps cannot be given access to entire SD card meaning you can't just have a pictures or ebook folder and have more than one app have access to said folder. Example annoyance third party gallery app can't delete photos created by other photo app. Alternatively calibre companion can't access the same hierarchy as ebook readers. Until recently the offline map support was crap I think this has improved but as I already have Navigon for $30 to have this basic feature so I haven't verified this. If you don't reboot it regularly it generally becomes unusable due to memory leaks eventually. It crashes for no discernable reason on occasion usually when I'm not even using it surprise reboot! The obnoxious need to hack your own device to have full control of it. As an Android user my next phone will be a dumb phone plus laptop.
      • swiley 10y ago
        That's not saying a whole lot.
• djhworld 10y ago
  I have a Nexus 5 from 2013 or whenever it was they released it, still going strong. I don't see that much innovation in newer phones to warrant an upgrade, at least in the sense of spending hundreds of pounds on what amounts to be a slightly faster processor and the promise of Android O. The only thing I can think of that might force my hand, outside of the phone breaking, is the security updates (Google no longer supports the Nexus 5 - so it will be stuck on Android 6 indefinitely)
  • arkitaip 10y ago
    I have a Nexus 4 and functionality wise it's all I need but the random reboots and UI glitches are getting really annoying. Like that time I was on hold for 30 minutes and the phone decided a random reboot was needed.
    • daptaq 10y ago
      My Nexus 4 is is still doing well, except for the battery I had to replace once already. The trick was to install cyanogenmod, remove all Gapps, and get all software from F-Droid. I use the KISS launcher, have no social networks that run in the background (except for WhatsApp), and so on. All in all it's a pleasant experience, even though there might be an occasional bug from time to time. If it weren't for the battery, I would have no reason to replace the phone, ever.
      • jholman 10y ago
        If we're comparing, my Galaxy Nexus is still serving my needs just fine, with all original parts, still running stock Android 4.3. It does all the phone stuff, plus Maps, car-share apps, games, Chrome, wifi tethering, music, etc. Chrome's a bit sluggish, though. Maybe Lineage would speed up Maps/Chrome. Hmn.
  • Nullabillity 10y ago
    > Google no longer supports the Nexus 5 - so it will be stuck on Android 6 indefinitely Sounds like it's time to upgrade to Lineage, they still even support Nougat on Nexus 4.
• simonh 10y ago
  Anybody remember Lawnmower Man? VR and AR have been the next big thing for most of my lifetime now and I'm a child of the 60s. In fact, didn't Google Glass already prove ordinary people don't want computers strapped to their faces? I think it will be a niche, like smart watches. It will be a nice little business, like the Watch is for Apple.
  • IshKebab 10y ago
    No Google Glass sucked for other reasons. The voice interface didn't work very well, the screen was in an awkward position, there we no socially acceptable reason to wear them, they cost $3k and their most compelling feature over a smartphone was hands-free first person video recording. Compare that to something like Snap's Spectacles which basically took Glass's best use - hands free first person video recording - but use a sensible button-based interface, cost $130 and are sunglasses which are totally socially acceptable. I think people are also more willing to wear crazy things on their heads when the do actually offer something new and innovative, e.g. the Vive or Hololens. Nobody is saying "OMG nobody is going to wear the Hololens in public; you'll look like a total arse". They're saying "Woah Hololens actually does good AR for the first time ever."
    • ThomPete 10y ago
      Google Glass sucked as a consumer product, it works fine as a business product.
      • matthewmacleod 10y ago
        Google glass also sucked as a business product.
        • ThomPete 10y ago
          No its doing ok actually. In factories
  • MarkMc 10y ago
• drops 10y ago
  Is there even a reason to buy a new smartphone nowadays? They get a bit flatter, get bigger screens, but overall we reached the point where their progress kinda flatlined. They have everything an average user could want since early 10s.
  • maaaats 10y ago
    The batteries become crappy after a few years. And since they cannot be replaced..
    • culturestate 10y ago
      "Not user serviceable" != "non-replaceable." Apple is happy to replace your iPhone battery for around $80.
      • HeavenBanned 10y ago
        I tried replacing my iPhone 5S battery for 15 bucks from a popular kit off of Amazon. Ended up bricking my iPhone in the process. Just because you can afford to pony up $80+ dollars for voodoo-servicing doesn't mean that I should also subject myself to that bullshit. Apple could have made the replacement of batteries as easy as Blackberries, make no mistake about it. They just chose not too, and no amount of excuses and rationalizing will lead me to believe otherwise. If it's an engineering priority, it can be done. Battery-swapping was little-to-no priority (possibly even sabotaged, but what do I know?) so we are now left with this shitty state of affairs. Speaking of Blackberry-style battery-swapping, are there any smartphones today that afford that kind of flexibility? I'm still using my Bold 9930 and I don't really see any reason to leave it until things shape up in the smartphone market. [I'm going to have to Google it probably depending on how popular this gets.]
    • TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      What do you mean after a few years? Name one smartphone that doesn't have crappy battery life out of the goddamn box! Seriously smartphone manufacturers, stop trying to shave 3 yoctometers off the thickness every 6 months and give me a phone that is thicker but has a battery that lasts a reasonable amount of time and cycles less deeply so it has a longer life.
• jaddood 10y ago
  I agree that the time of smartphone innovation is gone, and I'd argue it's been gone since years, but still breathing the last breaths. On the other hand, I do not think AI is the next big thing. It is a good candidate to be so, but there should exist much better guesses we can make. You should have a product, not simply a way of doing something or a technology. You need to sell a product, so pure AI won't do anything. But even if it doesn't do much by itself, it should play a big role in the coming S curve (as the article names it.) Good article!
  • camillomiller 10y ago
    Well, multitouch was not a product. You need a technology and then products that successfully build upon it. Exactly what's not happening with VR for consumers (but applications in the b2b sector are much more interesting I gotta say)
• tempodox 10y ago
  Funny that he should put a Magic Leap video in his article. I thought the consensus is that this is actually really fake, as opposed to the iPhone. The mechanical turk of the 18th century was also fake, but that didn't mean mechanical chess players were the next big thing.
  • ghshephard 10y ago
    Evans has seen / played around with the Magic Leap tech, and he is pretty certain it's the real deal.
    • valuearb 10y ago
      The effect may be a real deal, but is the box still the size of a refrigerator?
• jansho 10y ago
  How about the opposite of innovation? A new generation of dumb phones that reminds you who's the real boss in life. My ideal one would be: - it's small, maybe 3" - it's super light - still feels substantial when you do hold it though - has basic functions (call, text, alarm) but with updated modern interface - max 3 apps if you reaally can't get away without them (e.g. whatsapp) - sophisticated non-intrusive tech embedded (e.g. Track if lost phone, able to take dictation) - fiercely anti-snoop - super robust, will be fine even if thrown over cliff, chewed by toddler, stamped on et cetra Edit: formatting
  • mseebach 10y ago
    Moto G4 + Cyanogenmod + only the apps you want mostly ticks your boxes. After all, "being in charge" doesn't mean "my phone decides what I'm (not) allowed to do". Not sure if "find my phone" can ever be compatible with "fiercely anti-snoop". At least, you'll need to provide (and secure) your own server.
    • ino 10y ago
      After moto g2 I'm never ever buying a motorolla phone again. Ever. Constant crashes, hangups, it takes 5 minutes to power on. I'm not alone, the internet is filled with people having the same issues. The updates to newer android versions made everything even worse. Worst phone ever, and I bought it because os the astroturfing on the internet.
      • motog4user 10y ago
        Moto G4 32gb owner. Cheap reliable, fast. Battery is good. Now with Android 7... Best bang for my bucks yet.
        • tremendo 10y ago
          You're obviously peddling the phone (your username, 2-hrs-old account). But I want to know, how you have Android 7 on the G4? mine has 6.0.1 and there are no pending updates. Other than that, very happy with this phone.
• std_throwaway 10y ago
  I don't think this is true. Phones are still getting bigger and thinner while battery life only decreases slightly. This game can be played indefinitely.
  • daptaq 10y ago
    Well there is a physical limit, which when we reach an atomic level, for with processors, at which we can't make stuff smaller anymore. And other than that we see an obvious trend towards some particular phone width, for example. And it's not like phones are getting twice as thin every year, but they're slowly approaching a limit. So yes, you might be able to play the game indefinitely, but I doubt anyone will care about those extra picometers a phone managed to shave of.
  • TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    I don't believe it's possible to slightly decrease battery life indefinitely. Also, there is a limit to thinness. Maybe the rest of the phone could be hidden in an alternate universe and the only thing that protrudes in to our realm is the direct visual cortex stimulator. We'll see.
    • camillomiller 10y ago
      *we'll feel Ftfy
• wykydtron 10y ago
  I still think smart phones that dock and become full PC work stations would be great.
  • homarp 10y ago
    looks like Apple is working on something like this, based on this patent http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/03/23/apple-investigating-accessory-that-turns-iphone-ipad-into-full-fledged-touchscreen-laptop http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/03/23/apple-investigatin...
    • Nullabillity 10y ago
      How on earth is Motorola Lapdock not prior art to that?
      • pasta 10y ago
        I think the Apple patent is mostly about using your phone as trackpad while docked.
        • Nullabillity 10y ago
          Not seeing those either. KDE Connect (and others) already do the trackpad thing, and there's plenty of prior art for switching to a certain program when a device is connected.
  • mamon 10y ago
    Something like this? http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2347628/computex-asus-transformer-book-v-is-a-three-in-one-laptop-tablet-and-smartphone http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2347628/computex-as...
  • RandomOpinion 10y ago
    > I still think smart phones that dock and become full PC work stations would be great The HP Elite x3 phone already does that. http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/tablets-243002--1/hp-elite-x3 http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/tablets-243002--1/hp-elite-x3
• Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  I have a Samsung Galaxy S5 running LineageOS. It has a replacable battery and I have replacements (and have replaced it once so far). I will be keeping it until it breaks, because it's more than fast enough to do everything I demand from my phone and I have no reason to spend hundreds of dollars to buy the latest and greatest in planned obsolescence.
  • tluyben2 10y ago
    My mother (in her late 60s) has my S5 and she complains it is too slow; does Lineage make a difference?
    • fapjacks 10y ago
      It all depends on what you've got on your phone now, but it made a huge difference for me. My battery life also went from something like 6 or 8 hours of use to twice that easily without changing my habits.
    • Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
      The stock ROM is full of garbage. This is true of any phone. For a while I kept an image of my phone with the stock ROM in case I needed to restore it, which I had stripped down of most of the crap by rooting it and removing a bunch of stuff. There are well over 200 unnecessary packages installed that include spyware, bloatware, adware, and uselessware. The only explanation I have is planned obsolecense. LineageOS is as fast for me today as it was when I first installed it (back when it was still CM).
      • tluyben2 10y ago
        Okido. Will that exactly that then. I thought Samsung would be Ok and did not want to risk my mother having to do anything tech :)
  • catdog 10y ago
    Same here, I own a Galaxy S3 LTE which I also keep up to date using custom roms (though official CM/LineageOS support is lacking lately making it a bit less straightforward) and even that is basically already fast enough for everything.
• unlmtd 10y ago
  When the patents of the piston engine ended, the combustion engine saw tremendous innovation. So as long as the monopoly is in place, only the military will get hand held computers, and everyone else will get toys. IP is fraud.
  • Clubber 10y ago
    >IP is fraud. I wouldn't go that far. IP is a carrot for development. Imagine if you spend a decade and $100K developing an idea, and just when it started taking off, Oracle or somebody copied it and took the entire market. That can and does still happen, but at least you have legal recourse with IP laws. It was originally a way to foster innovation for a maximum of 28 years, then the works would enter the public domain to be improved upon. Over the years, the copyright duration has become ridiculously long, negating the social benefits of it's existence. The fundamental concept is sound, it's when it's perverted to help the wolves rather than the sheep that it stinks.
    • Zigurd 10y ago
      Even the phrase "intellectual property" is highly tendentious. It implies property right where there are none. What you get from the patent office is a temporary government granted monopoly. Often, as with, for example, spectrum, the people holding the license tend to view the object, and not the government granted license, as their perpetual property.
      • sbov 10y ago
        Depends upon how you look at it. I find the idea of property rights a bit funny because every physical thing you can own exists because in the past someone murdered the fuck out of people to own what it's made from. In that regard, intellectual property is the only property not built on human suffering.
  • petra 10y ago
    On the other hand, lack of some protection against competition, or a reasonable business model, often stop the the serious investment needed to take many products to market. Maybe an interesting useful compromise, would be to build a patent pool(maybe between universities), where you must contribute any patent you develop, but you can use patents freely for research and small scale commercialization - but in any case of large scale commercialization, you agree to share some reasonable percent of royalties among the relevant patents of that pool , with the amount that goes towards each patent doesn't interefere with your business, and gets settled in a fair, sideway process ?
• zimbatm 10y ago
  The smartphone is a concept, a portable computer with Internet connectivity and a touch screen as a primary mode of interaction. I don't think we should limit our thinking to it's actual form. The key bit is the portable, connected computer. How we interact with it and the form of the actual device is hopefully going to evolve.
• clubm8 10y ago
  Is endless innovation desirable? I have an iPhone 6s. I like it. I'd like to see longer battery life and higher storage capacity in future models, but otherwise it's a good phone. I don't want it thinner - in fact, I'd be happy if they added some heft so I didn't need a case, without one it feels like it is about to fall out of my hand. (This might allow for a removable battery, which would also be useful) I don't want a dumbphone - I like having access to all my music and podcasts. And I like being able to do secure texts and calls with Signal. Privacy advocates seem to fetishize burners and feature phones, but a "dumb" Nokia blasts out everything in the clear.
  • taf2 10y ago
    a bendy phone would be nice. perhaps oled technology will lead to this and that could lead to a better phone that doesn't break if you sit on it... so maybe a little more innovation could be nice?
    • themodelplumber 10y ago
      One squidPhone7, please.
  • valuearb 10y ago
    Thinner, lighter phones are easier to hold and get used more. Thin phones won because anyone who wants more grip or battery can always add a case. Thicker, bigger battery phones fail because no case can make them lighter. They only address a niche while thin addresses everyone's needs. And sealed batteries won because they can fit more capacity. Few people prefer carrying (and charging) two 8 hour batteries to a 10 hour sealed battery.
    • dpark 10y ago
      Sealed batteries are why I always wanted a thicker phone. Adding an external battery case adds a huge amount of bulk to the phone, whereas adding capacity inside the phone adds only moderate bulk. But I'm using an iPhone 7+ and for the first time since my last dumb phone, I have no battery life complaints. So while I'd still add more battery life if given the choice, it's not been an issue for the past 6 months.
• coldcode 10y ago
  Throughout history most technological improvements could not be predicted ahead of time. In 2005 few people thought mobile phones would change much at all. In the 1950's the President of IBM supposedly said there was a market for maybe 5 computers in the world. In 1990 no one thought there would be a global network for anyone and everyone that would change the world a few years later. I assume whatever will happen next will be a surprise to most people, although in hindsight you might have noticed what was coming.
  • cafebabbe 10y ago
    > I assume whatever will happen next will be a surprise to most people, although in hindsight you might have noticed what was coming. Ah! You're talking about global warming :)
    • pdog 10y ago
      Given that 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is caused by human activities[1], the surprise would be if it didn't happen. [1]: https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
  • maxerickson 10y ago
    Al Gore's apocryphal invention of the internet is based on a reality where he pushed to fund computing and networking initiatives throughout the 1980s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_techno... One of the primary drivers of the various government bills was the notion that networks would be enormously beneficial economically. People had a pretty clear idea that a global network would be a big deal.
  • phil21 10y ago
    > In 1990 no one thought there would be a global network for anyone and everyone that would change the world a few years later. This this may be in danger of going into pedantic territory, I don't feel this is true at all. The prevailing discussion in the late 80's/early 90's on the tech boards (BBS) I frequented were all talking about networking and how computers were one day all going to be interconnected. In fact FIDONET and the like probably had already met that bar, in an early PoC sense. Lots of folks in that space had the vision of at least a nationwide network of 24x7 connected bbs' if not the entire picture. You also had a lot of guys working in private industry, who operated small "national" or regional networks between a few sites at that point. I still remember a day in 1994 when I played Chess over the Internet with someone in South Africa - thinking that holy crap, the world we had been dreaming and talking about for 10 years finally was coming true.
• ancarda 10y ago
  >Apple and Google won (Google only outside China, of course) Could someone explain this? My understanding was few in China used an iPhone and Android is extremely popular? Is that now out of date given Apple's recent pushes into the Chinese market?
  • ajross 10y ago
    iPhones are actually pretty popular in China, broadly comparable to their market share elsewhere (I don't have numbers). But while Android dominates, it's not "Google" Android. The phones don't ship the GMS app suite and don't integrate with the Google services stack.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • zwily 10y ago
    iPhones are crazy popular in China. When I was there, it seemed half the people had iPhones. (I know the real stats disagree, that's just what I observed.)
  • skinnymuch 10y ago
    OP said Google hasn't won in China. Not Android. Google doesn't benefit at all as far as I can see if the Android being used lacks Google apps and integration.
• api 10y ago
  PCs took a lot longer to stop innovating, but they were (and still are for desktops) an open platform.
• rsync 10y ago
  I think we should give credit where credit is due - Apple has "solved" three form factors: - the laptop - the tower workstation - the smartphone Maybe we should use something other than laptops ... maybe there is an as-yet-unforeseen device that our computing work should shift to. Until such time, we use laptops, and apple solved the laptop with the macbook air. There's nowhere to go from here but spec improvements. That's why they are desperately adding weirdo things like the touchbar - the form factor has been solved. Same with tower workstations. You're not going to beat the cheesegrater mac pro. All you can do is bump the specs. This is a good thing - they solved that form factor. Unfortunately Apple has other priorities than churning out low volume, non-sexy updates to an under-the-desk device. Finally, the smartphone: Apple solved that form factor with the iphone. Everything since then is really just an iphone with different sizes and different little details. They are all just monolithic touchscreen slabs. Maybe there is some new form factor waiting to be discovered, but that's a new product category - that would be real innovation and would be a jump just like the jump from dumbphones to smartphones. But for now, what we have are smartphones and they are all really just iphones - because the problem has been solved.
  • JohnJamesRambo 10y ago
    Wow, you have a different view of "solved" than I do.
  • asafira 10y ago
    your heuristics are out of this world.
  • kerbalspacepro 10y ago
    Didn't the Surface Book solve laptops though? There is a reason that Apple is killing MacOS and jamming iPhones/iPads into keyboard/GPU/battery packs.
• Magnets 10y ago
  It doesn't mean there isn't any improvement. Phone cameras are getting so incredible now that you really don't need to carry a P&S and with things like HDR+, OIS, 4k video you'll get better results. People have been saying that smartphones replaced cameras for years, but now they are not just a replacement but actually better. There has still been innovation with dual cameras, finger print sensors, laser focus, better LED flash, USB type C and monthly Android security patches will probably encourage people to upgrade after they reach EoL for a device.
  • KON_Air 10y ago
    That depends on purpose, sure, they are fantastic for "catch the moment" but there is nothing else going on for them about photography (video is a different story, at least from what I hear). On the otherhand yeah, phone cameras getting better and enabling more and more applications is awesome.
  • wl 10y ago
    Are there P&S cameras that are worse than than best-of-class phone cameras? Yes. Are there P&S cameras that wipe the floor with any phone camera out there? Yes (e.g. Sony RX100, Fuji X100)
  • orbitur 10y ago
    My $200 Canon P&S that I bought in 2013 still takes better low-light pics than my iPhone 7. Phones are good enough, sure. But top of the line phones still can't do low-light very well.
    • jseliger 10y ago
      Yes, exactly. And cameras like the Canon G9X or Sony RX 100 series are leaps and bounds better. To be sure, most people don't give a damn, but some do.
    • jp555 10y ago
      Bit better in low light, but can you edit your RAW pics on it? How about editing 4K video? Of course I'm being facetious, but top of the line smartphones are pretty great cameras generally speaking. Man I wish I could have changed the crappy OS in the P&S cameras I used to use, and now I can pick the camera/video shooting app I prefer. Plus edit & upload pics from the device.
• fullshark 10y ago
  > I increasingly think that augmented reality is the next fundamental platform shift. I read these articles and everyone seems to be operating from the assumption that a fundamental platform shift is inevitable and coming within the next few years. Is it really unthinkable that smart phones that you carry around in your pocket are the dominant platform for the next 50+ years?
  • pjmlp 10y ago
    The problema is all those OEMs and their shareholders that need something to hold on, so that they can keep targeting growing targets year after year.
  • arglebarnacle 10y ago
    I wouldn't rule it out, but no computing hardware platform has ever been dominant for 50 years before so there are reasons to believe we're not about to get started with that kind of cycle now. Mainframes, minicomputers, desktop personal computers, laptops, and now tablets and smartphones. Maybe we have reached the end (for 50 years at least), but I think the safer bet is that the next big technology 30 years from now will be something that surprises us, not something we already have or could easily predict having wide adoption.
    • cft 10y ago
      Except the Moore's law has (almost?) ended now, for the first time in 50 years.
    • narrator 10y ago
      The next big technology revolution is AI. Should be pretty obvious at this point. The next one after that will be consumer technology integrated with human biology. All the fitness trackers are the first primitive attempts at that, but lab on a chip and brain machine interfaces are on their way. The $6 cell phone semen analyzer is a harbinger of this.
      • AsyncAwait 10y ago
• faragon 10y ago
  There will be no end, until everything gets into the smartphone, in my opinion. Tablets are in decadence, and laptops will fall dramatically once convenient operating system support for external screen appear (e.g. a la Windows 10) on Android and iOS.
  • empath75 10y ago
    Smartphone screens are just too small for certain tasks.
    • faragon 10y ago
      Sure. That's the point of using external screens (e.g. dumb "docking stations", converting any phone into a laptop).
• erikb 10y ago
  I don't know. I don't see any big innovation coming next. Just because we don't see one doesn't mean we have to force one of the creative things that aren't market ready yet to be that next innovation. When the iphone hit it hit big time. Everybody knew immediately that this will be a game changer. AR, VR are just like that. The only thing that really let's me "wow" is AI and all its applications we haven't considered yet like autonomous cars. But this may happen next year or in five years or maybe even just in 20 years. And on the road there something else might happen that is totally unexpected to most of us.
• aluhut 10y ago
  I'm going to jump on the AR train when implants become mainstream. Glass and those watches seem silly to me as a normal consumer. The professional applications I've seen recently look quite useful so I'm very positive about future development in this sector.
• overgard 10y ago
  The more I think about it, the more I think the word "innovation" obscures thinking. If you boil it down, "innovation" just means "change in a novel manner". That doesn't mean good change, just unexpected change. It's easy to say "apple isn't innovating anymore", but what else does a smart phone need?
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• exabrial 10y ago
  I think we'll just keep removing features and raising the price :/
• Animats 10y ago
  Samsung says they're going to introduce a foldable smartphone with the display wrapped around the outside.[1] This provides a small display for routine use and a 7" display when desired. [1] http://bgr.com/2017/01/11/samsung-foldable-smartphones-release-date/ http://bgr.com/2017/01/11/samsung-foldable-smartphones-relea...
• rockarage 10y ago
  Smartphone Innovations is far from over it is just harder. Upcoming innovations: 1.)Superior camera: Incredible Low Light sensitivity, Incredible compensation / correction for camera shake, will be better than any current implementation. 2.)AR support: example: http://www.waverlylabs.com/ http://www.waverlylabs.com/ This earpiece will work with a smartphone app.
• vit05 10y ago
  Snapchat could become the most successful entrant in AR. Especially after the launch of the first version of Spectacles. They already have an audience that likes to make, see and share new things. You could consider them as a niche company in media and hardware sectors. Other companies are clearly focused on produce one solution to everything before know how people will like to use, for what purpose. They are the only company that is pursuing produce something Cool that people will like to use on streets.
• debt 10y ago
  Seems direct connection and solar charging are the next major innovations. So like no internet to talk to a friend through a phone from phone to phone(if you can call them a phone at that point). Also if Apple or google get into the solar game by putting a super high efficiency panel on the phone that might change the world. They work at such large scales that it's likely drive the overall cost of solar panels through the floor so solar cars solar fridges solar tiles solar showers idk solar anything similar to what they did with quadrocopters. Those would likely be the two main points of world changing ground breaking innovation I'd see. Idk how they'd achieve either of those things on the technical side but they have enough money to find out.
  • nradov 10y ago
    You can already buy solar charger cases but I doubt a mainstream manufacturer would ever integrate solar cells directly into a smartphone. That would add cost, weight, and bulk for a feature few consumers want. A solar panel doesn't work in your pocket.
• tlow 10y ago
  This article is naive to the HUGE patent library Apple will be capitalizing on for iPhone 8, which will be a device to see. I've heard to called as ambitious as the original iPhone. To the comments on platform shift, might you call it a paradigm shift? If so, Thomas Kuhn, the man who popularized that phrase in his book "On the Nature of Scientific Revolutions" argues that individuals within a revolution would likely not be aware of such a fact.
• dredmorbius 10y ago
  Think Hegelian. The smartphone gave us pocket comms and information. Unfortunately, with the Jevons paradox and Gresham's Law impacting on our fundamentally limited attention -- rivality is the counterpoint of virality -- we're in a world in which distractions, distortions, impositions, agency, and privacy are up for grabs. Contra several assertions within this thread, we've seen information systems and regimes which have lasted far beyond 50 years: speech and language themselves, early writing systems, clay tablets, papayrus, block printing, moveable type, increased literacy, ever cheaper and faster publishing methods, voice, image, moving image, and broadcast. More recently networks with some degree of peer-to-peer and mass comms integrated. There have been advances and regressions. When Gutenberg first pulled the lever on his press in Europe, there were 30,000 books on the continent. Not 30,000 titles, but 30,000 books, total. There were 50 million by the end of the century, nearly a billion by 1800. Reproduction rates went from about 120 impressions an hour, to over one million with the steam-powered rotary presses of the late 19th century and early 20th, which promoted populist wars in Cuba, the Philippines, and the muddy trenches of Normandy. Liberalisation in the 19th century lead to a fundamentalist backlash amongst early 20th century religious groups, particularly in the United States, the descendents of which are still active in creationist, young-earth, and global-warming denialist cults. Mobile devices of today strike me as akin to patent-medicine and radium-water peddlers of an earlier age. We're waking up to the fact that these technologies have both positive and negative elements. The boosters, ben-evans amongst them, keep preaching more and faster, shades of the jetpack, flying car, meal-in-a-pill, and plastic-prefab-house fantasies of the 1930s through 1960s. Instead, we realised that not all marketing claims are justified, that pollution presents real hazards, that there's something to be said for modestly-traditional housing and clothing styles (the 1990s grunge fad looked little like Lost in Space or Space 1999). We're discovering that our social networks and bubble-filtered news meshes poorly with liberal democracy, or carefully-cultivated brand-consciousness, in the case of YouTube. Spam and phone solicitations crowd out what few moments of uninterrupted time we can find -- the technorati now revel in not being connected, rather than jacking in to their email every five minutes. A practice which was freakish in 1999, naff today. Among the largest disruptions of the 1990s was a small local events-and-items listing which was passed about via email. Turns out that it accomplished, at far less cost, and price, what newspaper classifieds did at the time. Whilst Moore's Law appears to be winding down in terms of chip density and capacity, the cost component of it isn't, and we still have the fact that computing costs are falling by roughly an order of magnitude each decade. This means that what Google accomplished in the 1990s, Facebook could achieve at roughly 1/10 the cost, and today's Emerging Threats will be able to achieve at 1/10 the cost of Facebook, 1/100th that of Google. It also means that the cost horizon is shifting, from making and obtaining compute devices, to managing and organising them. If you're interested in getting a log of conditions over the life of a package shipment, you can slap a $5 SOC unit in the packaging and have it phone home when it finds WiFi (or 4GL) at its destination. In ten years, that will be a $0.50 SOC, in twenty, $0.05. We're likely to have tens or hundreds of billions of such devices, all around us. Which at such price-points, won't be worth the time to property engineer, secure, harden, or patch. Collectively, these will have a considerable amount of processing power. And though most of these devices won't be tied in to physical systems, that compute power might be put to use finding those that are and ... persuading them in various ways. Lights. Heating systems. Automated vacuums. Industrial control machinery. Drones. Self-driving vehicles. Food for thought.
• bigato 10y ago
  It's not unreasonable to think about 10, 20 or even 30 years with mostly incremental improvements and no ground-breaking changes in both smartphones and smartwatches. I list some examples below. Several of them are already under development, and some are already available but just not cheap yet. - Batteries that can be fully charged in 5 minutes; - Autonomy to go for a month without a charge, achieved by the combinations of new technologies in batteries, screens, chips and better software; - Scratch and shock resistant screens that can be equally visible on daylight and at night, maybe by working like and colored e-reader screen when there's enough ambient light available, thus making reading more comfortable; - Some kind of battery charging technology that improves over the awful usb connections that we have nowadays, whose cable connectors don't last much; - Better cameras that rival today's DSLR. There are some experiences going on using several small combined cheap sensors in a single smartphone to achieve results in the DSLR range; - Cheap and fast disk storage over say, 10 TB, as fast as RAM; - Cheap and fast data connection at any location of the planet. Like streaming HD netflix in your tent in the middle of a blizzard in Antartida; - High quality, small, wireless earphones whose batteries last for a week without recharging; - Simpler, faster and more efficient development plataforms; ... And I'm sure you can add a few more. Each of these are changes that separately would not be considered exactly ground-breaking, but all of them together could bring mobile computing to a whole new level.
  • untoreh 10y ago
    when I think about smartphone innovation I generally think about all the level of automation that could be done with for example tasker for android, if only smartphones could pull sensors data and substantially eliminate overheating, we could have a seamless experience with very little interaction needed, probably not even touch inputs. Smartphones today are sleeping most of the time, they are not dumb, but very much lazy. The benchmarks war has done a ton of harm...look! this device hits 200k on this benchmark, too bad battery dies after 3hours if you keep that up, btw you might also feel an uncomfortable heat in your hands...