Breaking up big tech can make smartphones interesting again
- Reference: 1607929453
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/12/14/breaking_up_big_tech_can/
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A decade ago, I upgraded my smartphone annually. A few years later I went biennial, and now, well, I can’t say exactly when I’ll replace it. That feels deeply wrong to someone who has made a career in technology and has a futurist’s desire to experience novel devices.
Could it be that smartphones are no longer on the bleeding edge?
Sure, we need them to communicate, to work, and manage increasingly digital lives. That need spelled their doom: in the fourteen years since the iPhone’s introduction, they’ve blazed a path from intensely fascinating toys to utterly banal tools.
Apple and its kin have done their job too well; in making the smartphone indispensable, they’ve also made it completely ignorable. We use them, they work reliably across continuously lengthening spans of time - and beyond that we don’t need to care about them very often … Unless you’re an Apple shareholder.
And it’s a good thing if they’re upset, because a smartphone with a working life of five years touches the planet less-harshly even if it’s used for catching up with the latest fake news on Facebook or [1]self-radicalising videos on YouTube .
I find myself going through the same contortions around Apple’s new [2]M1-based computers . Both of my heavily-used, five-year-old Macs remain in very good condition (though the MacBook Pro has been in for repairs). They’re both fast enough for anything I do with the exception of heavy video editing. Do I need an upgrade to a laptop that has three times the speed and endless battery life? In this COVID-world, where I rarely even leave the confines of my suburb, that kind of portable power is not imperative. Again, Apple has done their work so well that I simply can’t justify an upgrade.
Yet sales have climbed: people continue to buy loads of new computers, as the pandemic accelerates our transition into a world where some hybrid of work-in-the-office/work-from-home/work-from-anywhere becomes the new normal. We need new kit to stay connected, collaborative and collegial, but this looks less like a PC renaissance than a ‘dead cat bounce’.
The important move in this moment is the one has shaped computing for more than half a century: a pendulum swing back toward centralised cloud services driving smartphone ‘terminals’.
Although an entirely worthy effort, [3]breaking up tech’s trillion-dollar giants will not slow the drive toward the centre. They’re beneficiaries rather than the facilitators of this transition, caught in the right place at the right time. If anything, their anticompetitive practices deprived the cloud of much of its competitive innovation, making it less attractive than it might otherwise have been in a more open and chaotic market. Should the new antitrust suits against Google and [4]Facebook succeed in usefully brief amount of time, we could even see the cloud migrate away from banal messaging, scheduling and CRM, to become a source of endless novelty and delight - an object of fascination.
And maybe that’s what all of this comes down to - the need to feel something more than just the ‘same old-same old’ when staring down into a screen. What once seemed wonderous now feels dry, prosaic and boring. Our hardware has long had everything needed to give flight to our dreams. We need to dream bigger, sailing beyond the comfortable and the known, if we want to find something truly surprising. At the end of a horror year, could we resolve to create some delight in the next? ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/16/radicalised_television/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/07/apple_apple_apple_wip/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/16/web_giants_breakup/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/09/facebook_crushed_competitors_to_maintain/
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Done their work well?
It's less a question of what new things are in our phones but rather what new things could a phone do? Identify a problem that could be solved by a pocket-sized lump of sensors and processing power.
The maturity of phones (i.e, lack of change year in year, reliability) allows us to re-examine (or at least fine tune) our relationship to phones. After all, the user forms a part of the system.
What will make phones fun again?
3D scanning, environment aware, context sensitive. Your workshop resembling Tony Starks fictional base of operations. Wave your phone around your kitchen, and receive a list of which size fittings ton buy and use the data to have work surfaces CNC cut.
Our machines aren't very aware of our surrounding. If something goes wrong with a 3D print, my 3D printer will continue use printing garbage, oblivious to the original error. No 'common sense' like any computer.
We're dancing apes. Let's use the sensors in our phones to require us to look at the screens less.
Lockdown has made it clear to many people that phones aren't in themselves fun. Pubs are fun. Festivals are fun. Meeting old friends, getting outside, is fun. Making stuff and tinkering is fun. Some of my friends use their phones to find other men to have sex with, which they report as fun. Some even suggest going for runs and exercising is fun.
Phones are a distraction to pubs and festivals, but can aid some people in exercising (note: our bodies have a lot of 'sensors', maybe we don't actually need fit bits), and are invaluable in meeting people with similar interests.
To clumsily return to the cloud question: environment-aware phones need to scan and process data locally to minimise latency.
3D sensors and ML silicon is being shipped on higher end phones, but so far devs have yet to explore applications.
The new Macs look great, but I don't need one. However, I have a use for SolidWorks, which unlike rival AutoCAD Fusion has never had a MacOS release. I searched online to see if there was any whiff of that happening, and the feeling is that a cloud version of SolidWorks is more likely than a Mac or ARM version.
That said, my old laptop is sufficient for my CAD needs, and being semi rural I use a car so carrying a heavier laptop with its power supply isn't that great a chore for me compared to someone who hops from bus to train.
Digital lives?
Oh how easy we fall for the marketing speak.
Re: Digital lives?
Get sick, get well
Hang around the ink well
- Google Project Tango, used multiple lenses and projector to capture accurate point cloud data of a room in colour. Abandoned.
- Google ARCore. Largely a toy. Not accurate.
- Microsoft Kinnect. Big. Requires laptop with GPU. Popular with hobbyists.
- Qualcomm released demo of realtime point cloud of pianist's fingers playing a piano.
-Microsoft aims Hololens AR system at industrial users.
- Samsung puts VGA resolution laser ToF sensor in most expensive Galaxy varient. Bless.
- Leap Motion make inexpensive device to track fingers through space in real time. Didn't catch on.
- Apple place similar LiDAR sensor in iPad Pro, followed by the most expensive iPhone varient the next year. Makes camera autofocusing very fast, but otherwise under adopted by devs for other purposes. Apple also known to be looking at AR glasses 'when the technology is good enough'.
Whatever any new innovation is you can be sure it'll have to slurp your data by design.
If it 3D maps a room, that room will be geotagged, its dimentions and contents AI processed to send you adverts about considering replacing that 'shabby' table in the corner of your kitchen.
For most of us phones are a utility tool now. Everyone has a small black rectanular screen in the pocket, if not two. I don't think I've installed an app for months now even then it was probably forced by whatever delivery service I needed that day.
Folding phones might be intersting but really all they are is the sae thing with a bigger screen. Everything is just a bit incremental now. Better camera, higher res screen (pointless now since eyes cant really tell any more), battery life just as shite as ever.
What else do most people actually want their phones to do?
I only use a fraction of the functionality of my current phone
My current phone is a Galaxy S10e. It has a dedicated button for a voice assistant - which I don't use as it requires you to agree to a creepy-stalker EULA where Samsung can do what they like with the data. It has a whole Samsung Health app (run tracker etc.) which can't be uninstalled. I don't use this as it sends the data away for them to do what they like with. Google Assistant is installed (Android Phone). Don't use it as they get all the data. GPS. I keep it switched off as Android can't be trusted. Bluetooth - off for the same reason.
I'd like to trust and use the hardware I already have, never mind new hardware. I paid a lot of money for it, and don't like being monetised to make Samsung or Google even more money.
Re: I only use a fraction of the functionality of my current phone
Turns out to quote the 5+ year old mantra "there's an app for that". Android assistant button can be reassigned to something more useful. Like opening your favourite app, taking a picture or setting off some sort of alarm.
Why this isn't included out of the box I have no idea*.
Also with regards environmental sensing... Sony tried this with NFC tags yeeeaaaars ago. But since this was Sony, it was an expensive add-on, none were included with the phone and rare as rocking horse teeth to find if you actually wanted to buy them (you could have different apps, settings, network connections triggered off the little tags, seemed like a neat idea... Just poorly implemented as Sony is want to do from time to time).
* lies, I have every idea why they don't let you decide what that single button does.
I'm finally replacing my tablet (Google Nexus 7) after 7 years. Even then only replacing it because the battery life is terrible now and half the apps I have on my phone (Nokia 6.1) don't work on the tablet because it's Andoid 6.0.1. Really not seeing any great leaps forward in technology in the old one and the new though (Lenovo M8)
Done their work well?
Do you mean they've stopped innovating? There's very little new in phone technology right now. The whole segment is ready for a new disruptor to 'do something new'.
I needed a 2nd phone last week as a separate device for 2FA. Fired up my old Blackberry Priv. It's running Android 6 which is barely distinguishable from my more recent phone running Android 9. I'd expect the same if I compared an old iPhone with something more recent. This constant focus on thinner but bigger disguises the near total stagnation of the market.