Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

The original iPhone launched almost exactly 10 years ago. It had a 412MHz single-core processor, 128MB of RAM, a 320x480 screen, 2G data and no GPS.

Will anyone want to use an iPhone 7 or a Galaxy S8 in 2027?

View on HN

There are enough people around the world, who can not even afford a smartphone but would like to have one if they could.

It had Wi-Fi already, you could write messages make phone calls, play some casual games, read e-books, listen to music.

So they probably would be happy to have the original iPhone today, but with software and an open source software eco-system that allows it to still function like the day it came out.

Assuming, we had reverse engineered all drivers, we could even improve it and give it state of the art cryptography for messaging and phone calls.

Expect the rate of improvement in smartphone hardware to gradually decline over time, just like it already has for desktop and laptop computers. At some point even low-end smartphones will be "good enough" for the vast majority of users, and then device vendors will shift most of their innovation efforts to whatever is the next new hot form factor like AR glasses or whatever.

> At some point even low-end smartphones will be "good enough" for the vast majority of users

I think we are more or less already there, maybe not the lowest of all ends but buying high end already feels like buying that more shiny expensive car with more horsepower which is hardly more useful because you are unable to leverage it.

I'm still perfectly happy with a 5 year old MacBook from mid 2012. It has a 2.7 GHz i7 CPU, and 16GB of RAM. I think I'll still be happy with this laptop 5 years from now (unless it breaks). I played with the new touch bar at an Apple store, and you can do some cool stuff, but not enough to make me buy a new laptop.

I think I would still be happy with my iPhone 6S 10 years from now, but there are many reasons I would upgrade. Here's a short list:

* Waterproof (Come on Apple, it can't be that hard. Samsung did it.)

* Longer battery life (I'm looking forward to >= 1 week)

* OLED screen with deep blacks and vibrant colors

* The dual camera focus hack in a regular-sized iPhone

* Some breakthrough in camera technology that gives a proper depth of field without the dual cameras. (I'm starting to get really disappointed with my 6S photos, but I don't want to carry around a 7 plus or a huge DSLR.)

I don't care about the processing power or memory any more. The iPhone 6S has a perfectly smooth UI and all of my apps run perfectly fast.

There are plenty of people using very old devices by Western standards in emerging markets: for them, it's a question of whether you want internet access or not: modern devices are totally unaffordable (heck, charging can be expensive, and involve walking several miles to your uncle's farm where there's a generator).

That's the first of a kind device. 10 years from that is not a good model for predicting the change 10 years into the future. In the last 5 years the rate of change has clearly plateaued.

I don't care about 10 years, I would love 6. This would be the first shot I have at 5 with security patches.

IOS 10 runs in 4.5 year old hardware, and iOS 9 on 5.5 year old hardware and Apple is still issuing security patches.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com