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Comment by rish1_2 | Hacker News Reader

If I had to take a guess what will replace the iPhone it will likely be new sci-fi tech that makes the cell into a piece of see through slab of glass that is touch based. If this is possible to do in the future, I think people will start buying that. Until then iPhone will reign supreme!

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What would that enable though? Aside from just a new “look” that’s more modern and makes your old phone look outdated?

I think if you had something like google glass, but made my Apple, and looked like normal glasses, that could be big, but still not as useful as a smartphone because of the input limitation. It would be as useful as an Apple Watch at first, but with a bigger screen.

most consumer techs get popular from the "wow" factor and use cases are discovered later. Maybe the glass slab could be used to detect disease from your saliva. Who knows...

This is largely what every sci-fi film has predicted. Though, I don't really see the value of my cell phone being see-through, beside it looking cool.

iPhone was all about the cool factor. Touch based screens didn't add value to the initial consumer except for the "wow" factor. Actual value of touch based came much later. The tech needed the "wow" factor to start the chain reaction into something meaningful.

They were almost immediately useful, maybe not for the touch aspect but for the large screen that could actually browse the full web without being nearly as clunky as everything else on the market.

Here's a depiction of just that in a concept video[1] from Microsoft in 2017.

[1] https://youtu.be/wraF2DjALls?t=152

It's really hard to make electrical conductors transparent, though. Indium tin oxide is the only significant exception and you probably couldn't make a microchip out of it.

It will still be called iPhone.

Eventually the complexity of the iPhone will force them to multiply by -i.

What does that solve for?

Makes me think of The Expanse (tv version)

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