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Have we reached "peak smartphone"?

Peak Smartphone Achieved?

  • Total voters
    106
DeafTourette

DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
This is a question that was asked by Marcus Brownlee (MKBHD) on YouTube and now I'm asking it. I agree with him. Yes... But no.

We have had leaps and bounds of technological innovation since the first iPhone came out. More and more functionality was added with subsequent iterations and launches of new phones. Apple, LG, Samsung, Palm, Blackberry, etc kept innovating until we've come to the all-too familiar rectangular form factor we have now.

We have yearly iterations of APUs from Qualcomm, mediatek, Helios and others. We have the improvements to the cameras, additional cameras or more RAM.

But I think that doesn't look at the whole picture. The smaller innovations that make up a whole in furthering the market. Everything from computational photography to battery life efficiency due to software to ... It's a lot.

Even bigger changes have happened within the past year like foldable smartphones that change the form factor a bit.

These small (and large) iterative changes and updates help push the market forward, I believe.

What say you?
 
I haven't felt the need to upgrade in years, and I used to be a yearly buyer of these things. I feel like that says a lot, that technical obsolescence/not doing its job, would be the only reason I'd get a new phone.

There just hasn't been that much exciting, except premium features that are really cool (the triple cameras and such these days), but that I don't really need.
 
If my battery lasting less than a day is "peak", I certainly hope we haven't.
 
Far from it thats what I believe. There're still plenty of innovations that can be implemented in smart phones

Battery solar charge (no it wont explode), massive RAM, battery can't handle heavy use and many more can get better

So no, we still got a long way for "peak smartphones"
 
it's all pretty meh, i use a moto g something or another with 2gb ram

i'm happy with it, i can compute whatever i want on my phone except 3d games
 
Sort of.

Even budget phones nowadays have everything I *need*, but there are certainly 'nice to haves' that arrive with each new iteration from the flagship manufacturers. So if I upgrade once every few years, there's enough new features that it feels really nice using a new phone.

I went from the Galaxy S8 to a OnePlus 7 Pro recently, and although visually the phones look pretty similar, I love the HFR display and warp charging and now those features would be tough to give up.
 
I still think they can go further, specially regarding battery. But unless there's some big breakthrough or innovation in that regard I do think we reached the point of diminishing returns a while ago.

I'm on a galaxy S8 and unless it breaks or gets stolen I see absolutely no reason to upgrade right now. And even that one felt like a rather small upgrade compared to the S6 I had before.
 
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Another negative aspect compounding on that is the price. $600 or $700 for a new hyped phone made sense and was fine. $1000+ or close? That's where I start really questioning if I need something, and "peak smartphone" really becomes something to consider.

I'm glad that those phones exist for people with the money and the passion, but I'd rather invest that kind of serious money elsewhere, than in what's essentially a luxury product.
 
It's dumb (feature) phone time. I have thought seriously of getting one of those with KaiOS for calls and whatsapp.

The smart for the camera and games when needed.
 
As others have said, we're peak in everything but battery tech and who knows how long until a breakthrough there. It's been 30 years since lithium ion.
 
-Arcadia- said:
Another negative aspect compounding on that is the price. $600 or $700 for a new hyped phone made sense and was fine. $1000+ or close? That's where I start really questioning if I need something, and "peak smartphone" really becomes something to consider.

I'm glad that those phones exist for people with the money and the passion, but I'd rather invest that kind of serious money elsewhere, than in what's essentially a luxury product.
Click to expand...

Even though I know it's mostly through contracts, I'm always amazed by how many people buy these super expensive phones. To me all of these $1000+ phones seem to offer so little more compared to a mid range $350-500 one that I'd never even consider buying one. Or you can just wait a year, get a flagship model from the previous year on a sale and still get a very good device for less than half of the original cost.

I paid like $330 for my S8 and never felt like I was missing out on much compared to the $1000+ phones from some of my friends.
 
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A really great phone is usually something like the OnePlus line. Especially the McLaren or #T lines. I need more storage space, though. I save A LOT on the phones.
 
I'm still rocking the Iphone 6s. I borrowed a pair of newer apple headphones and the headphone jack has been replaced with one of those lightning charger things so you can't charge your phone and listen to music at the same time anymore! Fuck you apple!
 
Battery still needs improvement. Otherwise we hit the point of diminishing returns. For what I use a phone for at least.
 
We don't even have 5g in the mass market yet. Cell phones have far from peaked, but I will admit we are in a current slump.
 
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I voted yes because the new big thing phone makers are pushing are foldable screens that mostly work like shit and are super crazy expensive, I mean if you want a phone with a big screen they already have those without needing to bend like origami.
I think it's a expensive scam that nobody needs or wants .
 
With 90 or so % usage for messaging - we have had peak smartphone for years. Most people buy them without ever actually needing what they offer. We take pictures that we never look at again.
 
SpartanN92 said:
Not everyone lives in an area that gets good WiFi. I live in rural Kentucky and for a lot of people the only internet they can get is 4GLTE.
Click to expand...

5g won't fix that. What you need to do is be able to lay down some fiber optic cable. Or AirFiber. Thats not the fault of the internet companies. Its the fault of the governments and internet companies thinking data is some limited resource.

5g still needs the internet backbone of fiber to transmit data. If you have fiber close it would be better to just tap into that. If it isn't close it won't be worth having 5g as the speeds will rely on 4g network.

It's so short range the use case and advantages are basically nothing.
 
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We haven't hit the peak until we can plug them directly into our brains. Plus already mentioned battery life needs some work.
 
Voted no because of battery among other things.

Battery - Granted I don't use the phone 24/7 like some do, I don't use wifi, just cellular data and i do some moderatly surfing and checking twitter but mostly I use it for work (mail & calendar). Had a few calls today and been listening to ~2 hour of an audiobook (locally stored).
Went from 100-80% today so not that bad like some of you. But I miss having to charge my phone once a week and be done with it.

Camera - can always be better, one day we will have a fucking hubble telescope on our phones :P

Durability - Not sure if I'm lucky or I just don't flap my phone like a dick in the wind all the time, but apart from a drunken incident in early 2000 where i dropped a Nokia 8210 in the pisser (it worked after rinsing it and drying it but you know.. it fell in a lot of piss), the only other phone that I've broken was one of the best phones ever - Sony Xperia Z3C.
It lasted 4 years (died late 2018) and did so in a pristine condition up til the day I found a chip missing from the screen, no idea how it broke because I never found it on the floor. I do have 4 cats so I have my suspicions but hard to say, never found the glasspiece missing either.
But that's the 2 phones I've broken, I've been caseless and screenprotectorless since iphone 4-something. But that doesn't mean I don't want durable phones and screens.

Could probably come up with more shit but I spend to much time on this post already :P
 
We reached peak 20 years ago.

hd8sQrt.jpg


I know a friend who still uses this. He never had any problems and it does the job.
 
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I think the mass market will move away from top-end high prices phones.

I swapped from a Galaxy S-something or other, to a Huawei, which cost sub-£100 and I've never been happier. It an amazing little phone and mind-blowingly impressive for the price.
 
Bought the iPhone X shortly after release. Since then nothing was released that was worth an upgrade, from my point view.
 
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I feel like the iPhone 6S was the point where phones did everything that 90% of people needed. That was also when upgrade cycles started getting longer. Ever since then (2014), it's just been tinkering around the edges and massive price increases.

I will say the night shot stuff is pretty awesome but not like $800 phone awesome. I have an iPhone 8 and don't see why I should upgrade.
 
Kinda, you can still use an iphone 6-8 for a few more years, most people mainly use it for social media and YouTube. The biggest draw for getting a new phone is having the feeling of buying the newest phone and the speed of the phone.
 
I just upgraded from an iPhone 7 to an X. I thought I'd hate Face ID - I love it. I thought I'd hate having no home button - I have adjusted within a couple of hours use and don't miss it at all.

I love the new OLED screen and how smooth and slick everything feels and operates. The X is slightly heavier and bulkier than the 7, but overall I'm very pleased to have upgraded.

Battery life also seems to be a huge improvement.
 
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Na. I am waiting for the phone that is basically a contact lens projecting the screen into my vision controlled by my eyeball with an AirPod like ear piece.
 
It seems like the smartphone trend peaked in like 2017, in terms of specs, speed, camera, quality, etc. But there is obviously so much room for improvement. At this rate, future smartphones will be like smooth pieces of indestructible glass that can be folded and shape-shifted. That is the future. Heck, I'm just waiting for a legit "holographic" device that isn't even "phone". More like an interface that is displayed in front your eyes.

3D-phone-300x215.jpg


I haven't upgraded since 2018 (OnePlus 6) and I'm perfectly content. That being said, I used an iPhone 5 before I upgraded, and was an Apple user (3, 4s) before that. Current technology wise, the new features and bells and whistles and extra don't really impress me. I just want to access the internet, make a few calls, text people, etc.

It's more of a battery life issue. When a smartphone becomes slow and unusable, then it's time to upgrade. And seems like iPhone especially has this issue. If there was a way to make my phone's battery last more than a couple days with heavy usage, I would a lot more optimistic about the future of smartphones.
 
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Phones need a couple more features, they're in a position where they're pretty much proven as great smart devices, but we should continue to build to make them better, what would you alter? Most companies won't take a risk.
 
We are just in a state of flux until certain technologies can be implemented into phones. Foldable screens are still shit, battery life is atrocious and cameras can always be improved and the AI behind them.

With the announcement of a color e-ink display, I'd like to see another company take a stab at implementing a dual screen option.

There was a Russian phone manufacturer that created one but they went belly up and I don't think it ever reached the US.


Yota YotaPhone 2 pictures, official photos

m.gsmarena.com m.gsmarena.com
 
Voted yes because of diminishing returns. I'm over here with a phone from 2013 and its camera quality is the only real downside (for me) for not upgrading.
 
Mista said:
Far from it thats what I believe. There're still plenty of innovations that can be implemented in smart phones

Battery solar charge (no it wont explode), massive RAM, battery can't handle heavy use and many more can get better

So no, we still got a long way for "peak smartphones"
Click to expand...


Those are just upgrades that won't do anything to increase the usefulness of a smart phone, push the innovation of a smart phone in new directions in terms of how it will be used, or give it new found abilities.

What you mentioned just makes the battery last longer, run faster, etc.

No, smartphones have peaked. Yes we can refine them and improve them but they still work the same way, they just do it a little better is all. All we do now is make improvements to the existing platform without actually evolving the platform.

Ok I can charge it with sunlight, ok it has so much ram it's faster but how does any of that alter how the phone is actually used? How does the way I use my phone change or what new possibilities does that open up for me?

One day phones will evolve again much like old cell phones turned into ones you could in your pocket, then smartphones. Just like each of those stages reached the peaked and then became something new and set a new peak so will the smartphones we have now will also. So yes phones as we know them now have peaked.
 
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No, of course not.

There's always room for improvement. There's always going to be more and more advanced apps developed that demand memory and CPU cycles to work properly.

Aside from raw computational power, there are still bottlenecks in the overall user experience. Battery life, for one. Input speed is also an issue. People have gotten pretty fast at typing with their thumbs, but I can still think faster than I can type. Voice to text is still a thing, but it's an imperfect solution. Durability could be better, and cost could be lower. There's many aspects of the phone that still can be improved.

And that's not even getting to the idea that there are phone features that can't be improved yet because they don't even exist yet. I'm sure there are some who thought we were at peak cell phone in 2006, and didn't think we could improve them any more. Then BAM Apple does a game changing paradigm shift and introduces the iPhone. Who knows what the next paradigm shift is going to be in phones or even when it will come.

I can't wait until we can simply sync/pair/interface our phones directly with our brains and bypass the bottleneck of finger input altogether. At that point we can communicate instantly and wirelessly. It'll be basically telepathy.
 
Gargus said:
Those are just upgrades that won't do anything to increase the usefulness of a smart phone, push the innovation of a smart phone in new directions in terms of how it will be used, or give it new found abilities.

What you mentioned just makes the battery last longer, run faster, etc.

No, smartphones have peaked. Yes we can refine them and improve them but they still work the same way, they just do it a little better is all. All we do now is make improvements to the existing platform without actually evolving the platform.

Ok I can charge it with sunlight, ok it has so much ram it's faster but how does any of that alter how the phone is actually used? How does the way I use my phone change or what new possibilities does that open up for me?

One day phones will evolve again much like old cell phones turned into ones you could in your pocket, then smartphones. Just like each of those stages reached the peaked and then became something new and set a new peak so will the smartphones we have now will also. So yes phones as we know them now have peaked.
Click to expand...
Foldable screens will allow for different form factors and paired with the future higher specs, youll be able to achieve some worthwhile stuff to make cell phones fresh again.
 
I still want to be able to wirelessly stream stuff to my TV easily. It works with YouTube reasonably well now with most TV sets, but there's still a long way to go with all apps.
 
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