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Standardization has the downside of pausing development. Eg higher resolution screens that are being experimented on for VR but need a market to support. A st

Standardization has the downside of pausing development. Eg higher resolution screens that are being experimented on for VR but need a market to support. A standard sized battery would also affect on the screen sizes to choose from for designers.

Aardwolf 3y ago
Not by that much, look at a phone battery soldered to a phone PCB today, it'll fit in most form factors. If there are a couple of different standardized sizes, it could fit anything, and also allow combinations of multiple. Look at PC monitors: you can attach all kinds of monitors with different resolutions to PC's, and there exist some pretty exotic ones with eye trackers etc... too, and of course also various VR headsets can be connected too.
jonnycomputer 3y ago
Absolutley true. However, the form factors really haven't changed that much in the last decade; at some point, it makes sense to standardize, even at the cost of further innovation. I am absolutely grateful that my plumbing and electrical fittings are standardized. I'm grateful that most (old-school) electrical devices use the same four kinds of batteries, and get really frustrated at the coin-batteries that come in 20 something different sizes, because I almost never have the right size around. And I'm grateful that we charge almost all of our devices by a small number of USB connectors. Because standardization is also a boon to innovation, or rather, a lack of standardization can get in the way of innovating, especially at the level of interoperating services and hardware.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
I dunno; if phones were more like PCs, you could have a screen on the front that was a fixed physical total size and connected via standard connectors and still have a lot of room for variations, up to and including changing the number of pixels in that fixed size. That would still fall down when faced with ex. in-screen fingerprint readers or maybe punch-hole cameras (and variations thereof) but the majority of phones don't have those so you'd still win overall.

Aardwolf 3y ago

Not by that much, look at a phone battery soldered to a phone PCB today, it'll fit in most form factors. If there are a couple of different standardized sizes, it could fit anything, and also allow combinations of multiple. Look at PC monitors: you can attach all kinds of monitors with different resolutions to PC's, and there exist some pretty exotic ones with eye trackers etc... too, and of course also various VR headsets can be connected too.

jonnycomputer 3y ago

Absolutley true. However, the form factors really haven't changed that much in the last decade; at some point, it makes sense to standardize, even at the cost of further innovation. I am absolutely grateful that my plumbing and electrical fittings are standardized. I'm grateful that most (old-school) electrical devices use the same four kinds of batteries, and get really frustrated at the coin-batteries that come in 20 something different sizes, because I almost never have the right size around. And I'm grateful that we charge almost all of our devices by a small number of USB connectors. Because standardization is also a boon to innovation, or rather, a lack of standardization can get in the way of innovating, especially at the level of interoperating services and hardware.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

I dunno; if phones were more like PCs, you could have a screen on the front that was a fixed physical total size and connected via standard connectors and still have a lot of room for variations, up to and including changing the number of pixels in that fixed size. That would still fall down when faced with ex. in-screen fingerprint readers or maybe punch-hole cameras (and variations thereof) but the majority of phones don't have those so you'd still win overall.