I know this feels odd to read this way, because we are now in an era when technology is almost at its peak, we’re thinking of colonizing Mars, and supposedly, humanoids are a thing now.
Between all this, there is a recurring problem we face every day, and every tech enthusiast is now somewhat irritated.
You’re reading on that, probably. Ya its our smartphones. I guess our parents were right ALL ALONG!!
Recently, people have been complaining that our phones look more like a fancy brick than something that is really in use. A phone that I found very interesting and fun was the Google Pixel 6 series, with a neat design, simple aesthetics, and the perfect amount of new features to try out, but also being interesting, released back in 2021.
To give a boost to your GK, it’sbeen more than 50 years since the world’s first commercially available cell phone was made, which came from the streets of New York by a Motorola engineer, Martin Cooper, in 1973.
In and around 1993-94, we got the first smartphone, the IBM Simon, which actually had a resistive touchscreen and came preloaded with a calculator, a calendar, contacts, and email. Well, it feels like a sprint, but for the manufacturing companies, it was a marathon, spending exponentially on R&D and coming up with new ideas to make the work easy for you.
If you remember the time of HTC smartphones, it was one of the greatest. This was actually the time when I felt that companies were actually trying to innovate, understand, and experiment with anything new they thought could work.
OKAY!! Enough of the GK class, let’s hop back into the real reasons why smartphones are boring, or do we feel this way?
2007-2017 was the real time when companies did real innovation for smartphones (and about them too). The designs were popping, eye-catching, we were transitioning from buttons to touchscreens, and companies were actually working towards innovation to show externally, not only “in” the phones, if we talk about the AI features, etc.
Phones nowadays have everything “slightly” better; there is no “wow” left. The chips are “slightly” better, the cameras are “slightly” better.
The only wow factor left, if we see any, is the new colors that tech giants release for their limited-edition phones or flagship range. It is to deny the fact that, because of those slightly better chips and upgrades, we can game on a phone, it was limited to just the PC’s or PlayStations. This is one of the perks we got, and I can second that. I am a big-time mobile gamer myself.
If you remember correctly, when iPhones were launched, they were meant to be affordable, amazing for the public, and of course, they built on the idea of owning a luxury device with you, which was a statement piece and gave you a great social stature.
But everything faded with time, innovations became a thing of the past, everyone is now just looking in each other’s notebooks to copy the answers and write them in their own style, and say that it wasn’t copied, it was inspired.
Don’t get me wrong here, this is what I feel.
I feel phone companies nowadays are following the combinatorial creativity theory, which was a theory invented in 1964 by Albert Einstein and Arthur Koestler. Basically, it was the idea of trying to re-arrange some existing elements, concepts, or ideas in new configurations.
Well, I am guessing tech giants are heavily doubling down on this theory, which is interesting but still feels stable.
Releasing a new phone every year now just feels like the companies are just trying to prove how fast we are. As I write this, the tech world has started reacting to the release of the Samsung Galaxy S26. I am quite fascinated by its new features, like privacy display, you can choose what part, when to hide in your phone, so you don’t look like a creep.
But hear me out, I have a suggestion to make. What if the companies really take 2-3 years to release the next flagship or a new model? That way, the teams can really get time to innovate, create, and come up with new things.
That way, the companies can take time to come up with poppy designs, shock the world, bring new ideas, or maybe revolutionize the market. It’s a long process, but it would be fun.
Meanwhile, they can bring up small software updates and something meaningful to our phones. Because if you really narrow down and see carefully, we are in a place where software is our only way of “something new.” What I like to call this age is “software stability”, where stability is good, but we need excitement, a little off the edge, something to feel the adrenaline and the rush towards the brand.
Well, I guess this is the time when we have to give space to those guys and just let them cook for a while, we actually don’t know what is there for us later this year or in 2027.
We’ll wait for something that really fills our ears with honey to hear something as tempting as “Pro Max Ultra AI Neural Engine Titanium.” Until then, scroll hard, inspire yourself, and take some time off the screen; your eyes need that rest.
