It used to be an incredibly exciting area of technology. An exciting place even before the iPhone, with Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, BlackBerry, Palm, and Samsung competing with each other. The iPhone changed everything though.
Not many realise that we witnessed the next revolution in personal computing with the introduction of the iPhone. The iPhone changed the world in so many ways. It was so exciting when it came out. Remember when having 3G was exciting in iPhone 3G? When the iPhone 4 got leaked, it was huge! Its design, coupled with the retina screen felt like future. Text looked like saturated, high quality print, it was unbelievably good. Everything felt so new, unfamiliar, fresh, and unusual.
Nowadays, a smartphone is a commodity device, just like your PC, laptop, microwave, and the toaster. Even the latest flagship is like "yea, OK, whatever". It's the same with all technology, we get used to it. I was blown away by 16-bit consoles, then 32-bit ones. When I first saw the original PlayStation I was astounded by it, shocked. Amazed with the PS2 too. PS3, PS4, and the rest... meh, even though the hardware, the graphics and everything got much better.
I believe there are several reasons for why smartphones are boring now. First of all, it's been 18 years since the iPhone got introduced, it's very well established technology now. I think we have reached the peak smartphone in terms of form factor and in terms of what a human needs. The size is pretty much maxed out, bezels are so thin that it does not matter anymore, the screen has a resolution where it is sharp enough for anyone, and the processing power has long overtaken an average user's needs. There are still advancements, smartphones are getting faster, but it does not matter, because consumers are at a point of good enough, capabilities overtake requirements.
Smartphone cameras were the last exciting part about them, but that has stagnated too. Barely any difference in quality. A 3-4 year old smartphone will easily take nice photos and video. Even the Chinese camera flagships with their 1"-type sensors did not prove to be much better than what Apple, Samsung, and Google offer. In fact, often times iPhones, Pixels, and Galaxies win in the camera comparisons. Smartphone cameras have reached the peak, and unless there is some sort of a new innovation, a revolution, this is pretty much it.
Flagship smartphone hardware is at a point where makers have to artificially hold things back. For example, Samsung released their S25 flagship series, and the base S25 still has 128GB storage, so they can price gauge for 256GB. They did not upgrade the camera hardware. Once the water rises around them, and they have to go to 256GB storage as base, there will be nothing much they can add to hardware.
There is still some areas that they could innovate on, for example two USB Type-C ports, a fingerprint sensors in the power button, they could upgrade cameras to 1"-type sensor, bigger ultrawide, bigger periscope, etc. but it's nothing revolutionary. I am not very excited with foldables and other form factors.
That brings us to software. Modern flagship smartphones are as powerful as a laptop, but there is nothing to take advantage of that power. How excited are you about opening up Instagram 0.25 seconds faster than before? The next step in the smartphone evolution is the addition of a desktop mode, and your smartphone acting as your PC. They are at the doorstep of truly becoming the "everything device", but I believe they are being artificially held back.
If Apple does it and they add a real desktop mode to iPhones, they will cannibalise Macs, so they are holding back. Google simply does not seem to be capable of executing it. And Microsoft exited the smartphone business.
Everyone is playing it safe and they are all focusing on selling investors on the "AI", which I am not very excited for myself.
Even if they added a desktop mode, I don't know how exciting it would be, it's still a very familiar commodity device.
