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We have certainly hit a saturation point of sorts in cell phone design. At this point, its lots of incremental improvements rather than huge leaps (eg. going from 1 inch screens to 5 inch).
Yes the biggest hurdles have been improving battery life. This will get incrementally better as displays, modem technology and other improvements get more efficient in their use of power (the biggest power hog of the phones resources).
What has happened is now phones are portals into the interwebs WITH telephony capabilities grandfathered in. As we push for more data centrism, M2M capabilities will get more robust and all web driven data will grow exponentially.
We see some sort of ideas now with iPhone apps that work with tangibles.
For example there are interior lights for the home sold by Philips in the Apple store. This will be a huge growth market in the future as we will be able to control MANY facets of our homes with HTML5 like portals and M2M connections.
Operating systems as we know them now will be far less relevant in terms of apps and the like as well. This is how the HTML5 standard will be the baseline for this future mode.
But for now, yeah the ooohs and ahhs are not as prevalent as maybe 5 or 6 years ago when the App revolution started really kicking into high gear as well as other goodies like social networking and email became less cumbersome to use on a phone.
My HTC Evo 3D runs almost everything I need fine (except the NDS emulator).. this model is about 20 months old already.
I agree. I have the HTC EVO V, which is essentially just a rebadged EVO 3D with Android 4.0 pre-installed...and it is great. I still get compliments on it, and the glasses-free 3D screen really wows people.
The EVO V, which Virgin Mobile now sells for $150, and a $35 / month 300 mins talk / unlimited text / data plan is probably the best deal in the mobile arena right now.
I agree. I have the HTC EVO V, which is essentially just a rebadged EVO 3D with Android 4.0 pre-installed...and it is great. I still get compliments on it, and the glasses-free 3D screen really wows people.
The EVO V, which Virgin Mobile now sells for $150, and a $35 / month 300 mins talk / unlimited text / data plan is probably the best deal in the mobile arena right now.
I have it from Virgin Mobile too.. i usually refer it to as the Evo 3D as most ppl I know never heard of the Evo V 4G though. Too bad it went down from $200 to $150 like a month after I bought it..
The title of the thread belays its irony; do people really own cell phones, and do they use their mobile devices primarily for calling?
They are not good enough yet - ironically many of the folks on this forum are the reason for the slow progress in app development and new features (eg - developers must make apps that maximize profits, which means eschewing features for the newest devices because most users are not on the most current hardware).
Improvements in battery technology and UI/UX are reason enough to upgrade on a regular basis, IMO.
You've got S2's running Jellybean right now with the S4 soon to come out. The phones are totally capable of doing it, it's just Apple, Google and the carriers know if they withhold these features, these updates, it's incentive to make people buy a new phone, but 2 year old phones were powerful as hell then, and they still are.
Imagine if Game Developers on PC forced you go buy new hardware to play the current years games. Sure, your 2-3 yr old PC can run it on "Good" settings at around 45-50 fps with most things turned on, but no, you need to buy all new everything to play the new Crysis all all. And they do this every year.
That's pretty much how the updates work. Unless you root or jail break your phone you can't get access to features your phone is totally capable of using.
There are no "killer apps" on smart phones. The most graphically intensive games aren't even the most popular. Not by a long shot. How powerful of a phone do you need to play Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja?
Apps will get more complex and bigger, data networks will get faster and require new internal radios, processors will get so fast you may be able to hook your smartphone to a monitor and run a full desktop OS on it--and that's just in the next few years. You have to understand that these types of discussions have been going on for decades about advancing technology and its only our own shortsightedness that prevents us from perceiving how things can improve.
I remember picking up a Gateway desktop in 1999 and being told by the salesman and my friends that the 10GB hard drive was much more than I'll ever be able to use. Wrong then, wrong now.
Apps will get more complex and bigger, data networks will get faster and require new internal radios, processors will get so fast you may be able to hook your smartphone to a monitor and run a full desktop OS on it--and that's just in the next few years. You have to understand that these types of discussions have been going on for decades about advancing technology and its only our own shortsightedness that prevents us from perceiving how things can improve.
I remember picking up a Gateway desktop in 1999 and being told by the salesman and my friends that the 10GB hard drive was much more than I'll ever be able to use. Wrong then, wrong now.
So true! Then Napster came along and hogged all those precious GBs
The technology is only as good/useful as what you are using NOW to access stuff (social networking, email and small tasks). So, relative to that topic its true. Most of the phones are good enough for achieving these tasks in the way we interact with them now.
Right now we are working on some killer new devices coming out this year and the future isnt looking too shabby
Consider the Dick Tracy comic strip and bring into modern technology. When a wrist watch becomes that cell phone with a holographic screen, and with a miniature ear plug headset then smart will have moved closer to good enough.
Consider the Dick Tracy comic strip and bring into modern technology. When a wrist watch becomes that cell phone with a holographic screen, and with a miniature ear plug headset then smart will have moved closer to good enough.
I just don't understand buying a new phone every, single year. Especially from Apple, who love to withhold features.
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