A couple of weeks ago, Artem Lutfullin talked about his impressions of the modern smartphone market. After reading that article and the comments to it, I decided to share my opinion on this topic.
In his article, Artem talked about the fact that after constant flashing, work on fixing glitches and other 'joys' when testing the Chinese, he was faced with the fact that he just wanted something stable that just works. There were different points of view in the comments, in particular, people began to feel nostalgic for the times of Symbian and Windows Mobile.
I periodically communicate with colleagues from other IT publications, and many of them note that over the past five years, the situation in IT in terms of 'interestingness' has significantly deteriorated. Everything is the same, no real breakthrough happened. Let's try to figure out why this is happening.
Arguments for'
Indeed, earlier the assortment of gadgets by manufacturer was much more interesting. They all differed in design, capabilities, and much more. You could buy some Asus and poke around with it for several days in search of that very stable assembly with maximum functionality. And so, when you have already finished, a couple of days later a new build comes out, and the adventure continues. It is important to remember that mobile gadgets were also a novelty for many then, poking around and understanding it was insanely interesting, and turned a blind eye to the shortcomings.
Arguments against'
Seven years ago I bought myself a Cowon Q5W multimedia player. It was very heavy, at five inches the weight of the player was over 400 grams. And so I used it and thought: 'Will there ever be lighter players, and even with HD-resolution?'.
Literally three or four years later, smartphones weighing 130 grams, five inches and HD resolution have become the norm in the industry. It's cool, it's great. Let's remember that advances in technology have stepped far ahead in comparison with ten or even five years ago.
Unfortunately, most nostalgic people remember only good things, but if they tried to use one of those gadgets on an ongoing basis now, they would probably face a lot of problems and inconveniences.
Conclusion
Yes, now we no longer flash devices so often, but just use them out of the box. But that's not so bad. This only suggests that manufacturers are putting more effort into optimizing smartphones and tablets, while we, as end users, get a better quality finished product.
And, of course, it is important to understand that we were all completely different ten years ago. I think that all of you understand the difference between 16 and 26 years old or between 26 and 36. It is quite possible that some are corny tired of gadgets or they have other concerns / interests.
But it's important to keep in mind that smartphones have taken a big step forward in terms of progress. If you were shown a modern smartphone ten years ago, I think you would say the same.