Why today's phones are so boooooring?
andreyor.st
andreyor.st
Because the HW part of the UX has been commoditized to a giant screen where the big difference in style and UX is made by the SW and UI.
In fairness LG has tried experimenting with different HW UX over the years to distinguish themselves[1], and they went bust doing it because consumer weren't into that and voted with their wallets to those making boring phones like everyone else.
If consumers want large pocket Netflix machines you give them large pocket Netflix machines if you want to stay in business. They can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
[1] https://www.androidheadlines.com/2021/04/top-5-best-unique-l...
My Pixel 7 Pro is great and all, but it doesn't do anything _interesting_
Planning to collect all dual screen but they are kind of run out of stock.
LG's dual screen implementation is amazing. Both screen can operate separately, that's true multi-tasking! Damn I wish I bought more back in the days.
Like I said, that's an ADHD person's dream.
What ultimately forced me to upgrade, however, was the main screen fell off - the glue holding it to the body seemingly failed, and as it fell the ribbon cable tore. I mulled getting another one (or a Wing) on ebay, but the P7Pro seemed a wiser investment
> glue holding it to the body seemingly failed
This happen to my first V50 as well. Wonder why is the screen seemed funny one day and discovered that I can lift up the oled panel wtf. Carefully glued it back, still using it right now.
Weird that smartphones are the exception.
If, for instance, the phone is running something like KaiOS, then it's a low-spec smartphone even if it only presents dumbphone functionality.
Unihertz makes several phones that roughly fit your needs
So literally the worst parts of smartphone - unsolicited calls and SMS and dependency of having a phone number in literally every government form, bank and serious website.
Boring is good in technology. It means you don't have to think about it much, and that usually means it is doing its job.
I wish there was a phone on the market that did as little as those phones did. It appears, however, that if you want a cell phone at all, it has to be a smartphone ("feature phones" are just gimped smartphones).
It would not surprise me to see this change over the next decade or so. On the one hand, 5G will probably remain the dominant radio scheme for at least that long, so that there'll be less pressure on device manufacturers for constant hardware changes to provide basic functionality. And on the other, the mounting backlash against the current iteration of the tech industry and specifically the harms it inflicts on children (1) may well develop into a movement toward ensuring connectivity while structurally limiting the sort of access required for algorithmic exploitation - which seems like very naturally opening a niche for the sort of device you prefer. Such a genre of phone may not partake of the sort of design language you might prefer, and it will of course be overpriced as any luxury good, but in functionality I suspect it'll come quite close to satisfaction.
(1) Haidt et al.; I disagree with almost his every prescription and don't at all trust the company he keeps, but I can't argue with his identification of the problem.
Phones have gone from being gadgets to being appliances.
Tesla is perfectly boring and rational car, yet due saturation people are getting sick of same look and buying vastly inferior competition just to look different.
Even worse, having two identically looking houses next to each other is a nightmare for anyone on creative spectrum and pretty much illegal in most places.
But yes, blame smartphones.
This is anything but what I've heard from people who own them, over drinks at least, and certainly their latest model cannot reasonably be described with either adjective you used.
As for rational - it drives itself for most of time, has an app, minimalistic design, great efficiency, spacious and reasonably priced. There is little to improve at this point.
Maybe what lacks is app ecosystem or open source for more ways of customisation/automation, but it's far fetch given rest of industry.
Edit: Now compare Tesla with competition - every feature is an option. Lucky if you get an app. Manual driving for most part. Some even came up with fake engine sound and manual gear shifting on a fucking EV. If they try to minimise button bonanza it's usually a trainwreck. And of course - overboard with external styling - something that means absolutely 0 for your daily driving comfort and experience. All of this mess to _differentiate_ into some niche while selling 100x less cars than 2 mass produced Tesla models.
Nah, Nokia's OS was a joy to use and super fast with its shortcuts.
Probably either the OnePlus One or the PinePhone (if that even counts), though getting a phone with a 120Hz screen (OnePlus 8T) was somewhat cool as well. My PC monitors are still 60Hz so it was kind of novel to me.
There was also the Gemini PDA, but that thing was a huge mess and has made me skeptical of any other UMPC ventures or ARM devices with chips I'm not familiar with.
At this point you could probably get people excited just bringing back removable batteries, SD card slots, and headphone jacks.
I think of the Porsche 911 as a good example, beautiful but boring in its design iteration. It’s considered the top of its class in so many fields.
That’s how I feel about many things such as the aforementioned hd600. Classic design and outstanding performance.
Try showing today’s phones to someone in 1994.
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As to the article’s example of headphones as an example of a product that has interesting variation - I am not getting the same impression.
The headphones all look essentially the same with a slightly different case style - in other words if those headphones are exciting then a phone can be made exciting by buying an artsy case. Problem solved.
Actually, personalized phone cases are way better than the manufactures providing a non-customizable case like the headphone cases to. Both are wrapping a tiny bit of visual style around a standard product. But for phones one can choose from an almost unlimited number of variations if one so chooses, for headphones it’s only a couple options per brand.
Everyone already had phones by the time I came into this world, so I'm not sure there was ever a time to be really excited. They were just an every day part of normal life, not providing much to get excited about.
I was really excited for my first internet-connected pocket computer, but that too is something everyone has now and are just a part of every day normal life. They will never be really exciting again either.
Something will really excite me again someday, but it won't be something I (and just about everyone else) already have. That level of excitement requires something that will completely change the way of life.
Ask them their "vision" and they'll probably tell you a larger screen, or a thinner body. Some kind of optimization of what's there, and not something new and wacky.
Take a scroll on their website.
https://us.nothing.tech/pages/phone-2?variant=42721597718680
Asus ROG Phone has an optional active cooling fan you can attach to the back of the phone, and side mounted USB port for maximum gaming. These don’t appeal to me like the Nothing, but it’s different and fun.
Nubia or RedMagic has a active fan inside the phone.
Every time I got one for use as a main phone. Granted, in the last 15 years I first got Openmoko Neo Freerunner, then Nokia N900, then Librem 5 that I write this on; and before that I was a teenager in the era when getting a phone that had a camera was already cool... but they were all very exciting.
I remember the announcement of the first iPhone (somewhat exciting... but a complete disappointment as soon as it released) and Android (very exciting at first, but then slowly getting to iPhone level of disappointment).
Before the Librem 5 arrived I had to augment my N900 with an Android phone for about two years. That was annoying, but thankfully I could get excited again soon enough. I miss the keyboard though, capacitive screens still aren't great for writing.
Meanwhile, there’s a ton of aesthetic design in cases. The essay doesn’t make that point building on the quote above, but that seems to be the simplest answer.
If manufacturers come out with phones that stray too far from the rectangular touchscreen paradigm, the majority of app developers aren't going to customise their app for the phone, unless it's really succesful.
I used to make apps for Smart TVs, when Samsung release their "Sero" rotating TV, supporting portrait orientation AND the orientation changing whilst in the app was too much work, so we just ran it in a letterbox mode.
The author explains that the backs of phones are the primary distinguishing factor with inconsequential differences in screen resolution and refresh rates.
And then...favorably points out how the backs of headphones are the primary distinguishing factor with inconsequential differences in driver response.
Am I missing something?
The thing about headphones is that you don't see them when you have them on.
Last year when I bought a Galaxy Fold4. I would say that is the opposite of boring, it's freaking cool!