Peak /pēk/
n.
The pointed top of a mountain.
Do
you remember a few years ago when most people still sported those bulky plastic
back phones with the thick bezels and horrendous cameras? These days we have
phones that come with CPUs that rival that of many laptops, cameras that shoot
sharp even in low-light conditions, metal and glass frames, graphene batteries,
under-screen sonic fingerprint scanners, 120hz screens, and let's not forget
the folding phones that are coming out.
With
handheld tech like this that's readily available for the average consumer, we
have to ask ourselves if there's any more that smartphone manufacturers can
develop that would justify the thousand-dollar price tag that they slap on most
flagship smartphones these days.
After
all, a good appeal of most flagships is that they often come with a
newly-developed feature that isn't found on other smartphones. However, as
these "special" features slowly become standard in most smartphones, consumers
will eventually begin to ask themselves if there's a good reason to even spend
a thousand dollars on a flagship smartphone when there are many phones that
cost cheaper. I mean, can't they make new-generation tech cheaper?
Have We Peaked? Actually, Yes. But
Not In The Way You'd Expect.
Yes,
we've peaked. We've peaked in smartphone design in 2007, since the
first-generation iPhone was unveiled at a keynote speech by Steve Jobs. That
was the pivot that drove us to where we are now. And while there are many new
iterations of the smartphone, you can consider how we still adopt the design
basics of the very first iPhone. - A slab that has a touchscreen on the front.
Many years later, the core principles of the smartphone remain the same, albeit
with tweaks here and there.
Why Does Smartphone Innovation Matter
To Manufacturers?
As
previously mentioned, manufacturers now have an urgent need to bring something new to the
table
that's compelling enough to justify the absurd prices they charge for a
smartphone.
Innovative
tech will almost always be a good enough reason to charge a lot of money for a
product. Just look at the Sony Ericsson P900, which was a smartphone
released in 2004, but had a release price of $850. As can be easily seen, the
asking price for the Sony Ericsson P900 was outrageous for what it offered. And
yet, people still bought it because of it's intuitiveness.
Do We Really Need More Bells And
Whistles?
In a
more technical perspective, you might consider modern smartphones to be more
capable than they have ever been. Most smartphones even have hardware that can
rival most consumer-grade laptops. And yet, we seem to want more power.
Sometimes we have to ask ourselves whether or not we really need more powerful
hardware (hardware that the average consumer might not even need nor even care
about) just so that phone manufacturers can continue to charge
near-extortionate prices for their products.
Would it not be more beneficial for
smartphone manufacturers to instead focus on the basics, such as repairability
and better battery life? Especially when you consider that competent Google phone glass
repair services, such as this one,
are difficult to find.
Shouldn't we, instead consider
putting an added focus on making more durable and repairable devices,
considering how much the average consumer relies on smartphones?
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