5 ms·

Smartphone hardware is in the 9th inning. These devices have mostly hit the natural limits of what's achievable for now. Bad for Apple since this effectively le

by bedhead 13y ago

Smartphone hardware is in the 9th inning. These devices have mostly hit the natural limits of what's achievable for now. Bad for Apple since this effectively levels the playing field.

ako 13y ago
Limits of what is achievable, or limits to what is useful for most users? I assume most users won't notice speed improvements anymore.
- bedhead 13y ago
  Both, although more so the latter.
uptown 13y ago
"These devices have mostly hit the natural limits of what's achievable for now." Isn't that always the case? But "now" is a moving target.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Usually, but not always. In 2007, it turned out that the available technology allowed something way better than what was actually being sold. Apple realized this and used this fact to go from zero to smartphone dominance nearly overnight. Gaps do happen, they just don't last long before someone comes along and gets rich by exploiting them.
swamp40 13y ago
I disagree completely. Perhaps the 9th inning of a preseason game? Flexible displays are coming soon. The paths for easy integration with multiple low power wearable peripherals have just been forged, and the area is still in its infancy. Mobile payments have not fully arrived yet. The phones are all still in rectangular boxes - something that will look ridiculous in 20 years. I think there is a lot yet to come hardware-wise.
- swamp40 13y ago
  ...and Haptics! Clickable buttons, raised hyperlinks, textures - all coming soon!
- bedhead 13y ago
  Flexible displays would certainly be neat, but their utility for a cellphone largely escapes me. Wearable peripherals are a different category, they're not smartphones. Regardless, I dont have terribly high hopes for these future devices. Mobile payment is mostly not a hardware issue. It's a software issue and a matter of coordination or market forces selecting a standard or two. It's things like THIS that are the next battleground in mobile: services and integration. They are in rectangular boxes because that shape, for various reasons, happens to be extraordinarily efficient. TV's haven't changed shapes. I think smartphone hardware is pretty much dead. The major leaps - touch screens (which is so ridiculously underappreciated as an innovation), HD screens, HD cameras, CPU horsepower, nice OS's, voice recognition, blah blah - are behind us. There is a reason that almost all of the best selling smartphones look alike, feel alike, and generally have the exact same feature sets. The differences between each other, in the grand scheme of things, are lamentably minute.
- cookingrobot 13y ago
  These are great points. To add to your list - I'd love it if as part of mobile payments they do what's needed to completely replace a wallet. If I'm at a restaurant paying for a drink with my phone, I should also be able to send them a verified copy of my id with photo and age. Then I could stop carrying a wallet entirely. Integration with low power peripherals will be nice, but don't forget about high powered peripherals like tablets and tvs. If I put down my phone right now and pick up a tablet, I should be able to finish typing this comment with no interruption.
wisty 13y ago
Can you plug your iPhone into a couple of 30" monitors, and use it as a workstation?
- wmf 13y ago
  It's not clear that this is thermally possible.
  - jl6 13y ago
    Sure it is, just use an external CPU in the docking station.
    - wmf 13y ago
      So now your "docking station" is actually a separate computer; what part of the phone would it use? The storage?
      - jl6 13y ago
        Yes, it would be very useful to have a single OS image that could scale its user interface and capabilities to the hardware it finds attached at any given moment.
        evilduck 13y ago
        OSX already does this. Got a base model Macbook Air and a big powerful iMac or Mac Pro? Connect a thunderbolt or a firewire cable and boot in target disk mode, you'll boot from the Air's hard drive but get the full hardware capabilities of your iMac or Pro (better GPU, more CPU power, whatever).
  - shabble 13y ago
    I wonder if it would be practical couple the CPU directly to an externally accessible thermal pad, and have some sort of docking station which includes additional cooling. There are probably better cooling options available (liquid, heatpipe?) if you could find a way to connect/disconnect them reliably and not compromise much on the mobile aspects of the design.
ctdonath 13y ago
Except that Apple just doubled the processing power. That, with everyone else now needing (and, given a year, able) to catch up & exceed, is hardly "the natural limits of what's achievable for now". The processing power curve shows no sign of slowing down, and with wireless tech racing past LTE toward 100Mb territory meaning local storage capacity becomes a mere buffer instead of a limit, we're nowhere near "natural limits". The only limit we face now is users finding sufficient aggregate need for all that power & bandwidth. Build AppleTV into a touchable monitor, drop a wireless keyboard on the desk, and eliminate that 4" bottleneck for most users - BAM, death blow to Windows etc.
sytelus 13y ago
Not true... there is so much still left to do in smartphone arena: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6352045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6352045

by bedhead 13y ago

Smartphone hardware is in the 9th inning. These devices have mostly hit the natural limits of what's achievable for now. Bad for Apple since this effectively levels the playing field.

ako 13y ago

Limits of what is achievable, or limits to what is useful for most users? I assume most users won't notice speed improvements anymore.

bedhead 13y ago
Both, although more so the latter.

uptown 13y ago

"These devices have mostly hit the natural limits of what's achievable for now." Isn't that always the case? But "now" is a moving target.

mikeash 13y ago
Usually, but not always. In 2007, it turned out that the available technology allowed something way better than what was actually being sold. Apple realized this and used this fact to go from zero to smartphone dominance nearly overnight. Gaps do happen, they just don't last long before someone comes along and gets rich by exploiting them.

swamp40 13y ago

I disagree completely. Perhaps the 9th inning of a preseason game? Flexible displays are coming soon. The paths for easy integration with multiple low power wearable peripherals have just been forged, and the area is still in its infancy. Mobile payments have not fully arrived yet. The phones are all still in rectangular boxes - something that will look ridiculous in 20 years. I think there is a lot yet to come hardware-wise.

swamp40 13y ago
...and Haptics! Clickable buttons, raised hyperlinks, textures - all coming soon!
bedhead 13y ago
Flexible displays would certainly be neat, but their utility for a cellphone largely escapes me. Wearable peripherals are a different category, they're not smartphones. Regardless, I dont have terribly high hopes for these future devices. Mobile payment is mostly not a hardware issue. It's a software issue and a matter of coordination or market forces selecting a standard or two. It's things like THIS that are the next battleground in mobile: services and integration. They are in rectangular boxes because that shape, for various reasons, happens to be extraordinarily efficient. TV's haven't changed shapes. I think smartphone hardware is pretty much dead. The major leaps - touch screens (which is so ridiculously underappreciated as an innovation), HD screens, HD cameras, CPU horsepower, nice OS's, voice recognition, blah blah - are behind us. There is a reason that almost all of the best selling smartphones look alike, feel alike, and generally have the exact same feature sets. The differences between each other, in the grand scheme of things, are lamentably minute.
cookingrobot 13y ago
These are great points. To add to your list - I'd love it if as part of mobile payments they do what's needed to completely replace a wallet. If I'm at a restaurant paying for a drink with my phone, I should also be able to send them a verified copy of my id with photo and age. Then I could stop carrying a wallet entirely. Integration with low power peripherals will be nice, but don't forget about high powered peripherals like tablets and tvs. If I put down my phone right now and pick up a tablet, I should be able to finish typing this comment with no interruption.

wisty 13y ago

Can you plug your iPhone into a couple of 30" monitors, and use it as a workstation?

wmf 13y ago
It's not clear that this is thermally possible.
- jl6 13y ago
  Sure it is, just use an external CPU in the docking station.
  - wmf 13y ago
    So now your "docking station" is actually a separate computer; what part of the phone would it use? The storage?
    - jl6 13y ago
      Yes, it would be very useful to have a single OS image that could scale its user interface and capabilities to the hardware it finds attached at any given moment.
      - evilduck 13y ago
        OSX already does this. Got a base model Macbook Air and a big powerful iMac or Mac Pro? Connect a thunderbolt or a firewire cable and boot in target disk mode, you'll boot from the Air's hard drive but get the full hardware capabilities of your iMac or Pro (better GPU, more CPU power, whatever).
- shabble 13y ago
  I wonder if it would be practical couple the CPU directly to an externally accessible thermal pad, and have some sort of docking station which includes additional cooling. There are probably better cooling options available (liquid, heatpipe?) if you could find a way to connect/disconnect them reliably and not compromise much on the mobile aspects of the design.

ctdonath 13y ago

Except that Apple just doubled the processing power. That, with everyone else now needing (and, given a year, able) to catch up & exceed, is hardly "the natural limits of what's achievable for now". The processing power curve shows no sign of slowing down, and with wireless tech racing past LTE toward 100Mb territory meaning local storage capacity becomes a mere buffer instead of a limit, we're nowhere near "natural limits". The only limit we face now is users finding sufficient aggregate need for all that power & bandwidth. Build AppleTV into a touchable monitor, drop a wireless keyboard on the desk, and eliminate that 4" bottleneck for most users - BAM, death blow to Windows etc.

sytelus 13y ago

Not true... there is so much still left to do in smartphone arena: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6352045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6352045