Spring has taken hold, with all longer days and the useful spring stuff happening: singing birds, blooming flowers and the first mowing of the lawn coming up.
That also means that the prime season of Android phone enthusiasts is coming to an end. The big trade shows CES and MWC are long over and most of the key players have announced their 2016 lineup. The only one waiting is HTC, who will (I hope) confirm the leaks and their own Twitter hype this Tuesday Apr 12. I have been looking forward to this, since my current phone is up for replacement and I am particularly fond of their products. Of course, with all the leaks there isn’t much left to be surprised about – the only thing I still feel I need to know is whether there the camera has OIS or similar functionality.
Other than that (i.e. some details about the camera) there isn’t much about the specifications that gets me excited at this time. The hardware specs will be pretty much the same as all the other phones in that tier, since they all use the same components: The SoC will be from Qualcomm, the camera from Sony, the screen from either LG or Samsung. Gone are the days where the decision which model to buy could be made looking at specs alone; so if you don’t buy into marketing stuff of “life companion“-ship and “Life is good when you play more“, then event’s aren’t really interesting. It is only when you hold the device in your hand that you Know.
I think it is a good thing, because it means that focus can shift away from tweaking specs and over to something that actually make a difference in every day us like ergonomics, call quality and battery life (and camera features, although the cameras on most new phones is probably good enough for most purposes, unless you are one of those who must have RAW images, and in that case it won’t be as good as the DSLR you want anyway).
Feeling this un-excited I also understand why smart phone sales are starting to decrease. The devices are still getting better, but not better in a way that makes a big difference, and if your current device is good enough, there is little reason to upgrade, except for security updates (or if you did like me and bought a device with less memory and worse camera than last years model had). For example, a relative of mine is happy with his 2011 HTC Sensation, which does everything he needs it to do (calls, calendar, SMS, mail checks and a few simple apps).
It is the same falling trend as seen with tablets and (because we still use our iPad the same way we did when we got them, so why update) and PCs. It is probably not a coincidence that smartphone sales are leveling out now that the specs of the high end phones are comparable to mainstream PCs (2 GHz Quad Core, 4 GB RAM…). After all, they are used for the same purposes, and while hardware architectures may be wildly different, an email client is an email client, and many web pages the same regardless where you view them.
The time has come for something new and shiny to be excited about. Probably Virtual Reality.
In the meantime, it is good to know that the smart phone that I have come to rely on for planning, news and communications is a mature and reliable devices without too many surprises.