HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Wow, just read through all of this and there are like 3 separate debates/arguments threaded through.
To those arguing "never", you know the old saying: "Never say never". They will eventually commoditize. It's not impending- maybe not even many years away- but they will. The so-called "new features" that are most wowing tend to be software features and hardware plateaus will support many software app advances (unless artificially limited). As some have said, the hardware can only advance so far before the heat management doesn't support another incremental gain.
While the OP question is generic with "smartphones" instead of specific with "iPhones" (but the answers seem to generally key around iPhones), I'll offer the "thin" benefit consumption as the timetable predictor. Since Apple keeps making a big deal out of "thinner" and "we" keep believing there's some tangible benefit in "thinner" for us, someone should make a chart of the pace of trimming the thickness of each model since the first one. Extrapolate that into the future and you should see the point where the iPhone ___ will become so thin that it no longer exists. At that point, I think it will be hard to sell that iPhone for existing "premium" prices- even with a subsidy.
Then again, around HERE, I can see people buying what appears to be an empty box to brag to their friends that they are actually holding a phone so thin it doesn't even exist: "your 1mm thick phone is such an antique", "why carry around that .01 ounce abomination?", and so on.
More seriously, as the iPod was absorbed into the iPhone, I suspect the iPhone will be absorbed into something else (and I'm not too confident- nor personally enthusiastic- that that might be an iWatch). I would guess more than one company are looking at a product like Google Glass (of which I'm also not personally enthusiastic) and thinking about how to make the physical nature of the rest of a phone disappear. In other words, I think the physical "brick" disappears- not because Apple's spin of thin eventually makes it physically vanish but because lugging around a brick of any thickness is a chore and a high-value brick is a tempting thing to steal like it's easy to lose or drop.
Look again to scifi. Do they have physical bricks? If you look at Star Trek TOS, they did have communicators that look like yesterday's flip phones. However, look at TNG, and that communication is basically a broche they wear on their clothing. How do they text, SMS, "take a selfie", etc with that? They don't… or don't appear to do so. But they still seem to get everything done they need to get done with the tech of the day. Yes, that's fantasy, but often scifi shows a way or various ways forward and reality takes steps toward them, catches and then surpasses.
The brick is hot now. A thinner brick is hot tomorrow. A bigger-screened one too. Retina. Longer battery life. Faster. Eventually, we run out of hardware gimmicks to spin. Eventually, the hardware is so powerful that small increments make bricks "good enough" to hang onto for one more generation, then two. And then they are like computers where one can update every 4 or 5 years and generally keep up with almost every advance. It's inevitable. And it's probably closer than we want to believe.
To those arguing "never", you know the old saying: "Never say never". They will eventually commoditize. It's not impending- maybe not even many years away- but they will. The so-called "new features" that are most wowing tend to be software features and hardware plateaus will support many software app advances (unless artificially limited). As some have said, the hardware can only advance so far before the heat management doesn't support another incremental gain.
While the OP question is generic with "smartphones" instead of specific with "iPhones" (but the answers seem to generally key around iPhones), I'll offer the "thin" benefit consumption as the timetable predictor. Since Apple keeps making a big deal out of "thinner" and "we" keep believing there's some tangible benefit in "thinner" for us, someone should make a chart of the pace of trimming the thickness of each model since the first one. Extrapolate that into the future and you should see the point where the iPhone ___ will become so thin that it no longer exists. At that point, I think it will be hard to sell that iPhone for existing "premium" prices- even with a subsidy.
Then again, around HERE, I can see people buying what appears to be an empty box to brag to their friends that they are actually holding a phone so thin it doesn't even exist: "your 1mm thick phone is such an antique", "why carry around that .01 ounce abomination?", and so on.More seriously, as the iPod was absorbed into the iPhone, I suspect the iPhone will be absorbed into something else (and I'm not too confident- nor personally enthusiastic- that that might be an iWatch). I would guess more than one company are looking at a product like Google Glass (of which I'm also not personally enthusiastic) and thinking about how to make the physical nature of the rest of a phone disappear. In other words, I think the physical "brick" disappears- not because Apple's spin of thin eventually makes it physically vanish but because lugging around a brick of any thickness is a chore and a high-value brick is a tempting thing to steal like it's easy to lose or drop.
Look again to scifi. Do they have physical bricks? If you look at Star Trek TOS, they did have communicators that look like yesterday's flip phones. However, look at TNG, and that communication is basically a broche they wear on their clothing. How do they text, SMS, "take a selfie", etc with that? They don't… or don't appear to do so. But they still seem to get everything done they need to get done with the tech of the day. Yes, that's fantasy, but often scifi shows a way or various ways forward and reality takes steps toward them, catches and then surpasses.
The brick is hot now. A thinner brick is hot tomorrow. A bigger-screened one too. Retina. Longer battery life. Faster. Eventually, we run out of hardware gimmicks to spin. Eventually, the hardware is so powerful that small increments make bricks "good enough" to hang onto for one more generation, then two. And then they are like computers where one can update every 4 or 5 years and generally keep up with almost every advance. It's inevitable. And it's probably closer than we want to believe.
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