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What's left for a phone to do?

I

Izauze

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 13, 2013
438
323
Doesn't it seem like phones have kinda reached a point of maturity where there's not a lot of growth left to see?

We now have what may be the first broadly successful mobile payment solution... We expect to soon see phones become nearly indestructible, and are likely a few generations from a real battery life solution. Then is that it? What could the iPhone 8, 9, etc. possibly offer?
 
For replacing a camcorder, I think Tim show a picture of one in reference to it being outdated, the phone would need to zoom 20x with equal stabilization.

My nine year old daughter did a pom routine center field and the video I shot is almost worthless rom the bleachers because there is no practical zoom.
 
- Battery that lasts a week
- Screen that doesn't crack easily (saphire)
- Water resistant
- Smaller area above and below the screen so the phone is smaller while maintaining the same screen size.
- Random feature out of nowhere that Apple will think of that will have some awesome marketing to make us buy the phone, play with that feature like crazy for 2 days, then never use it again. (siri)
 
Izauze said:
Doesn't it seem like phones have kinda reached a point of maturity where there's not a lot of growth left to see?

We now have what may be the first broadly successful mobile payment solution... We expect to soon see phones become nearly indestructible, and are likely a few generations from a real battery life solution. Then is that it? What could the iPhone 8, 9, etc. possibly offer?
Click to expand...

Nah. Biometrics, for example, is in its infancy so we'll undoubtedly see a lot more growth there. As radio technology improves and we get faster and faster broadband connectivity on the go, I also fully expect to see deeper cloud integration as time goes on, allowing our phones to gain access to more powerful resources to help accomplish certain more intensive tasks.

There's a lot of innovation left to be seen in the mobile marketplace, the technology just needs to be improved to make it happen.
 
2014 and Apple still aren't making waterproof phones, and tons of phones get water-damaged every year. Samsung are ahead of the game here.

Apple's file handling on iOS is tragic. I actually feel embarrassed for them at Cupertino when I think about it. All those heads, working all week for years, and we have mobile devices that are worse at handling files than computers were in the 80s.

Anyway, the big move now is making watches with phone-like capabilities. Again, Samsung way ahead - you can switch your SIM into their Gear S and handle texts and calls on it. No need to be tethered to another lump of metal.

Apple will go down this road too. Maybe 4 or 5 years from now you'll see a decent AppleWatch. Maybe never if it all blows and tech companies pull out.
 
Replace a car key would be cool. I believe they already have deadbolts that can be unlocked by iPhone app.

Some software related. I have a launcher on my galaxy called aviate. It's a great idea with poor execution. It's supposed to change your home screen based on where you are. For example, if I was in turner field, it would show me the weather widget and my sports apps like mlb, the score, at the ball park, etc. If I went to Taco Mac, it would show their app. If I was at a bar, it would show things like sound hound and uber. It never really worked well for me, but if executed well, it would be really cool. I expect apple would do a much better job of pulling it off.

There will always be room for improvement. I think we will reach a point where we can't make tech any smaller, but we'll still be looking for ways to better integrate the phone into our daily lives.
 
Izauze said:
Doesn't it seem like phones have kinda reached a point of maturity where there's not a lot of growth left to see?
Click to expand...

No. It looks like people are accepting that Apple has lost the ability to innovate and so have decided to settle for less.
 
Teste said:
No. It looks like people are accepting that Apple has lost the ability to innovate and so have decided to settle for less.
Click to expand...

Well, we haven't seen Apple's ability to innovate in a long time.

We've seen them play catch up and improvise. We've seen them make mis-steps.

Maybe Apple's innovations were just being in the right place at the right time (ie. where there were glaring holes in the market), and when pushed to innovate in a competitive market they don't have what it takes.
 
Ayr said:
2014 and Apple still aren't making waterproof phones, and tons of phones get water-damaged every year. Samsung are ahead of the game here.
Click to expand...
I completely agree. I reasonably expected the 5s to be waterproof, and was really surprised the 6/6+ aren't.

Battery life is solvable already, but Apple doesn't want to make the weight/thickness tradeoff required.

Ultimately, I expect our "phones" will be the hub of our digital lives. In transit, you use them just like now. At work, they power your large monitor, keyboard, and mouse. At home, they run your TV and play high-end videogames. Not there yet, but that convergence seems to make sense.
 
Pewpewpew said:
Being able to attach a file to an email to start with......
Click to expand...
That's been possible for ages.

It's up to the developer of the app, which stores the file in question, to give you that ability. e.g. Adobe PDF, iBooks, Photos are three such applications which have that capability. Two are first party, and one is third party.
 
Menel said:
That's been possible for ages.

It's up to the developer of the app,
Click to expand...

Oh dear God..

Good file handling functionality should be at the core of the OS. Developers should be building their App functionality around it.
 
It's interesting that in the post-Jobs era we have Tim (a money/numbers/finance guy) at the helm and one of the major new products we see is financial payments.

Just coincidence?
 
Hopefully battery is the next thing. Then that will open up other possibilities.
 
Arran said:
It's interesting that in the post-Jobs era we have Tim (a money/numbers/finance guy) at the helm and one of the major new products we see is financial payments.

Just coincidence?
Click to expand...

I'm sure it didn't hurt ;)

I don't see anything from Tim that makes me think Apple are special anymore. Just another tech company snowball eating into new markets to fill their bottom line. The design agenda and quality were set in place long ago by Jobs and others and that should continue for a long time yet.
 
Ayr said:
Well, we haven't seen Apple's ability to innovate in a long time.

We've seen them play catch up and improvise. We've seen them make mis-steps.

Maybe Apple's innovations were just being in the right place at the right time (ie. where there were glaring holes in the market), and when pushed to innovate in a competitive market they don't have what it takes.
Click to expand...

Not real excited about Continuity and Handoff, then?
 
Arran said:
It's interesting that in the post-Jobs era we have Tim (a money/numbers/finance guy) at the helm and one of the major new products we see is financial payments.

Just coincidence?
Click to expand...

Perhaps but not entirely likely. I think this is just the way things are going.
 
ZombiePete said:
Not real excited about Continuity and Handoff, then?
Click to expand...

Not really. To me they seem like product features that could have been sitting low down in the product backlog for some time.

And if a software company is delivering lower priority items from their backlog, it suggests the pipeline of ideas might be running out?

I hope I'm wrong.
 
Arran said:
Not really. To me they seem like product features that could have been sitting low down in the product backlog for some time.

And if a software company is delivering lower priority items from their backlog, it suggests the pipeline of ideas might be running out?

I hope I'm wrong.
Click to expand...

I don't think the level of integration we're beginning to see between iOS and OSX is the product of some last minute attempt to add relevance to iOS 8 and Yosemite. It's something that had to have been meticulously planned and coordinated between the teams. To me, it's been a really cool and functional feature so far; just the automated hotspot between my iPhone and iPad has been really convenient.
 
Ayr said:
Oh dear God..

Good file handling functionality should be at the core of the OS. Developers should be building their App functionality around it.
Click to expand...

Have you ever owned an iPhone or iPad? They weren't designed in that way. They were designed around an entirely different paradigm. One in which each app stores and manages it's own data.

That may or may not work for you. Some people do seem to have a hard time grasping it. There are alternatives...
 
ZombiePete said:
Not real excited about Continuity and Handoff, then?
Click to expand...


Handoff is a by-product of an older tragedy - the birth of the iPad and iOS. At the time a group of Apple naysayers were taken aback by how unproductive the iPad was - you couldn't simply work on it as you could with your Mac. So sharing workloads was out of the question, and so instead, the iPad was adopted and praised as a media device.

That changed gradually as more and more productivity Apps were developed, with workarounds for iOS's lack of file handling capability. Things are picking up and people start wanting to share their workload between devices.

This is where we should have been on day 1. iOS is the elephant in the room. If Apple went with Mac OS-lite or an OS that could at least handle files better - we'd be here sooner.

We know why iPad blew for productivity - they wanted to share the OS with the iPhone's. And an iPhone was never going to handle even a lite version of Mac OS (and its iOS was already established).

It's like watching a kid make a mess, then thanking them for partially cleaning it up.



Continuity, what's that? Texting or calling on a computer or something? Isn't there a 1000 ways to communicate with video and chat apps on the desktop already? Not sure what's going on here, didn't take much interest in it.
 
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