Whos getting bored of the smartphone war?

A

///AMG

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Sep 19, 2012
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I ask this because I used to buy 3-4 high end smart phones a year out of contract from 2008-2012. So far all the phones for 2013 leave me kind of underwhelmed. S4 is just as boring as the iPhone 5 was design wise, mostly incremental to me. I mean where are the phones with some striking innovative designs, and features that arent just gimmicks? I think partially its because phone hardware has gotten so damn fast the difference in performance are so close it doesnt even matter anymore. All I see is the same design these days, faster SoC, stupid big screens, and super gimmicky features (s pen anyone? Seriously never used it ever). Cant anyone do anything innovative anymore? The best looking phone so far to me has been the HTC One and even that looks similar to the iPhone.
 
You lost me after you called S-Pen gimmicky.

Just because you "never used it before" doesn't make it a gimmick. Smart Phones are coming out with plenty of new features that intrigue consumers enough to buy them. You are most likely getting bored because you burned yourself out. How about instead of jumping on a phone you are 'hoping' to be amazing, why not wait it out till there is actually something worth it to upgrade to?
 
s pen isnt gimmicky, I like it but I don't use it nearly as much as I should.
 
I think you are crazy the S4 / One / Note are the most innovative smart phones made in many years. Why were you buying phones like crazy when most were nothing more than higher DPI screen / slightly faster CPU?

Now phones are starting to take shape, they are starting to diverge into multiple product segments. Back in those days people only said here is a smartphone, there were no options they were almost all the same size. At those times they were stripping features out of phones thanks to apple. Stylus, removed, keyboards, removed, cut and paste removed lol.

S pen is a gimmick? really, its a freaking digitizer on a phone, a phone can finally sense pressure and become a real note pad. Maybe you dont do anything ever that requires you to draw out a diagram for anyone or explain anything to them, I don't know, maybe you never have to remember anything. IR, now your phone can actually control all your devices without needing a clumsy stupid expensive hack stuck in its headphone jack. If you aren't already using a phone to control your entire HT setup maybe you should try. It was ridiculous that we ever needed to drop $50 on an IR emitter that should have been a 50 cent addition to every phone. I hope every phone from here on our sees the value of that and implements it. Temp sensors, humidity sensors, I hope all this stuff becomes par for the course. There is way more real innovation going on now then there was back then. In the near future we are looking at stuff like flexible displays, with side viewing, watches, we are probably very shortly going to see people seriously replace desktop computers with phones.

back then all that was happening was google and apple were trying to build the utmost basic infrastructure in their phones that exist in every OS already. There was no innovation it was just copy this or that function that already existed in WM or BB or a desktop.

It really is amazing how opposite people can view things. This is the first time since the HTC touch pro that I have been excited about phones. But then again I never burned myself out like you did I didn't go crazy and buy multiple phones in 1 year. I buy when my contract runs out, and my whole family does this, since we all go at different times I see a good gradient of phones about 4 every 2 years. Maybe you just have a very different usage pattern then me but more likely I think you just have one of those personalities where you get excited and really into something then you burn out. If you step back and start writing down what has been added hardware wise over the years you will see a clear jump starting now Who cares what a phone looks like, they are all, small rectangles composed almost entirely of screen.

I repeat Did you see a different design back then? Pretty sure they were all rectangles with screens. lol, and from my first to the most current phone in my family, the HTC one X, all of them essentially can do nothing more than the very first android phone we had. Now with my dads GN2 real new shit is coming down the pipeline. Multiple apps open at the same time, and we might even start getting things like surface like covers for phones that interact more.
 
I can't wait to go from this RAZR Maxx to the note 2 at the end of the month
 
S pen is gimmicky. Ill tell you why. I have a W8 ultrabook with a n-trig stylus. It makes S pen look like a piece of crap, not only is it a gimmick compared to my ultrabook its utterly worthless. Although comparing a $1700 ultra book to a $600 phone isnt really fair, but the features and usefulness of the S pen are so limited it is a gimmick, I am not the only one I know who never bothers to use it. 90% of my co-workers that have a GN2 didnt bother to take use it after the first day they got the GN2. Note I have a GN2 so its not like I am saying I tried the S pen out at a store and made a strong conclusion about it. I have had the phone for a few months now.

I had a TP2 compare that with todays design I actually quite miss it. I bought many different phones because back then they were adding real hardware features, data connectivity 3G, WiMax, LTE, front face camera, NFC etc. Also because I switch from WP, iOS, and Android.
 
There is nothing innovative about IR blaster, my Nokia N80 had it and zillion other phones. Heck, even Nokia 6110 that I still have has it (1997 phone). I'm a bit surprised that it took this long for them to add it in Android phone.
 
///AMG said:
I ask this because I used to buy 3-4 high end smart phones a year out of contract from 2008-2012.
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So, you had way more money than sense, you spent alot of it on pointless sidegrades, and now you're wondering why smartphones don't interest you anymore? Seriously?
 
I use the s-pen every day. Sketching out presentation layouts, having clients sign pdf contracts, taking notes in meetings, & I am sure there are more I haven't listed. Just because YOU cannot find a use for it, doesn't mean it is a gimmick. I don't have a 1700 ultrabook, like you, but you obviously DO use a stylus, so you have disproved your own point.
 
Tup3x said:
There is nothing innovative about IR blaster, my Nokia N80 had it and zillion other phones. Heck, even Nokia 6110 that I still have has it (1997 phone). I'm a bit surprised that it took this long for them to add it in Android phone.
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Who said it was innovative?
 
Congrats, OP, for learning that there's more to life than buying a new smartphone every quarter. Next step: Go outside!
 
I somewhat agree. Performance in Android has somewhat plateaued in the last year, I think. There's only so much hardware can do before software has to be updated to take full advantage of it. JB's "project butter" honestly didn't do a whole lot in terms of smoothness from what I could see on my Gnex or my Note 2 (it did make noticable improvements in some areas, but there's still plenty of stutters).

So, IMO, innovations needs to start happening in software now, not hardware. Google needs to at least properly address Android's minor UI smoothness problems, integrate a proper backup/restore solution for their phones and add a competitive (to iMessage and BBM) chat system to their OS. Apple is due to overhaul iOS' UI since it has bascially been the same since it launched with moderate additions along the way and is seriously lacking in customization/personalization compared to Android. And Microsoft still needs to add a lot of standard features (change app defaults, volume profiles, T9 dialer, change notification tones, etc.) to WP and maybe have an option to change the "launcher" so it's not for total simpletons (IMO). I think WP may lack more in customization than iOS.
 
I do somewhat agree as well, I think that phones are starting to hit that threshold where they are already plenty fast for an average consumer, or anyone really. I mean phones can do many things now a days pretty efficiently. Quad core processors, bigger ram and screens, that's just nice extra features people pay for, more for just having the latest and greatest really.
 
I think there is going to be a major sag in the market as the carriers move away from phone subsidy and people see the real prices of these phones. $500 to $700? Are you kidding me?

$150 smartphones are going to be the place to compete IMHO
 
dandragonrage said:
Congrats, OP, for learning that there's more to life than buying a new smartphone every quarter. Next step: Go outside!
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Lol, I go outside plenty. Probably spend more time with nature than most of you guys here. Some of the jokes here are funny, most of the assumptions are not even close. I never side grade phones. If you havent noticed for a few years OEMs specifically Samsung and HTC were doing 6 month product cycles with large upgrades in hardware, introduction of larger screens that werent too big, HSPA/HSPA+, WiMax (HTC Evo), LTE (Thunderbolt), introduction of brand new OS (Nexus devices, Windows Phone), or large updates to OS that only came on that device first for a while, Front Facing camera( I use face time very very often since I work 60-70hr weeks), NFC which I love using on vending machines and at grocery stores. Then it was massive increase in efficiency thus large upgrade in LTE battery life. Now its barely noticeable performance increase, screen already so big it doesnt matter, resolution so high you cant tell, and battery life that already last 1.5-2 days on heavy usage. There were plenty of smartphones for the past few years that introduced something new that wasnt in phones before that I found useful but now. All I see is very small incremental updates.
 
I agree with ///AMG. Phones have hit a point where the screens are large enough and they're powerful enough that I don't see any point in upgrading. There isn't much in the line of new features worth getting excited about. My GNex has been such a great phone I'll stick with it for a while longer.
 
Blown 89 said:
I agree with ///AMG. Phones have hit a point where the screens are large enough and they're powerful enough that I don't see any point in upgrading. There isn't much in the line of new features worth getting excited about. My GNex has been such a great phone I'll stick with it for a while longer.
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Yup pretty much agree with that too, its like I said though phones pretty much hit that threshold of being relatively quick and already having plenty of features. Granted I have an iphone 5, the jailbreak extends my freedom just a little bit more which is nice. I will stick around with it for a while though the form factor is just right for me.
 
I agree. The only thing out there that seems innovative is the HTC One. After reading about how nice it was on the web, I went to a store to get a hands-on. It is really impressive. I looked at the S4 the same day. It is nice feature wise, but the cheap looking plastic really stands out. I know they want the device to be lightweight, but it really comes off as being cheap. The faux finishes on the plastic make it even worse. Hats off to HTC on this one.
 
breal1 said:
I agree. The only thing out there that seems innovative is the HTC One. After reading about how nice it was on the web, I went to a store to get a hands-on. It is really impressive. I looked at the S4 the same day. It is nice feature wise, but the cheap looking plastic really stands out. I know they want the device to be lightweight, but it really comes off as being cheap. The faux finishes on the plastic make it even worse. Hats off to HTC on this one.
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Yeah my last phone before my iphone was an HTC One S, I've always loved HTC phones because they were metallic/aluminum. I don't really like plastic phones at all, no offense to samsung products though. To me, the plastic kind of feels cheap which shouldn't be the case if you just spend 400-500 dollars on a new phone.
 
narupls said:
Yeah my last phone before my iphone was an HTC One S, I've always loved HTC phones because they were metallic/aluminum. I don't really like plastic phones at all, no offense to samsung products though. To me, the plastic kind of feels cheap which shouldn't be the case if you just spend 400-500 dollars on a new phone.
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To be honest I could care less how a phone feels as I'll probably still put a case over that 600. If I had to choose I'd rather have a phone that is plastic and "feels" cheap rather than a aluminum phone that has many reports of hardware defects (slanted screen, gap in casing, broken camera lens,etc)
 
T4rd said:
I somewhat agree. Performance in Android has somewhat plateaued in the last year, I think. There's only so much hardware can do before software has to be updated to take full advantage of it. JB's "project butter" honestly didn't do a whole lot in terms of smoothness from what I could see on my Gnex or my Note 2 (it did make noticable improvements in some areas, but there's still plenty of stutters).
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The whole concept of project butter was just piss poor. So they forced vsync and triple buffering. If the phone couldn't maintain 60fps before, it wasn't going to now, in most cases. In the rare cases where triple buffering did help achieve 60fps, there would be more noticeable input lag. On top of this, instead of a consistent 50fps, or whatever a phone previously got, the stutters would be more noticeable.

I'm sure that butter was more appreciated on a device like the Droid RAZR, which had some poor UI lag on Gingerbread at release. For my SGS2, it made little difference as the phone was already very smooth from day one.
 
perhaps there's a limit that a 5 inch slate of electronics can reach.
i'm not a fan of google glass in its current state, but i think it's the next progression of smartphones or communication devices in general. i wouldn't want a camera attached to the side of my head or glasses, but some sort of visor with a virtual/holographic HUD would be so awesome.
 
darkpark said:
perhaps there's a limit that a 5 inch slate of electronics can reach.
i'm not a fan of google glass in its current state, but i think it's the next progression of smartphones or communication devices in general. i wouldn't want a camera attached to the side of my head or glasses, but some sort of visor with a virtual/holographic HUD would be so awesome.
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No sir... I'm not down with transhumanism. If I can hold it in my hand and put it down and turn it off NOT For me.
 
I agree with ///AMG mostly, as my N4 does more than I could have ever imagined already (heck, my iPhone 4 I had already pretty much met those purposes; just switched because I decided to get off the Verizon money wagon). The only thing that would make me switch from an N4 at this point, is an N5 with proper USB OTG support and perhaps memory card support.
 
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