blog.michal-wt.com

Last time I read one of these articles about stagnation in mobile segment. Many tech reviewers and journalists are complaining about new flagship smartphones that they didn't have enough new features and they are not enough revolutionary. I have a lot doubts about it. I think that the most of them are overloaded by features.

How many features can a spoon have?

I heard about inteligent and smart spoons which provide a better taste of food, count calories, and make many other things. There are many other things like this, such as a smart fridge with a screen and internet connection. We can buy everything smart! Can you believe that you can buy a smart flowerpot with a dedicated smartphone application? Do you really need it?

...but this is an article about smartphones... Many years ago, I asked some people in comments on the technology portals about the sense of using smartphones and what motivates them to buy them. I'm not sure, but I think it was in year 2010, and they answered that they are using them to... Yep They really answered it: They answered that they need them for professional work. After 14 years this answer in my opinion stayed weird and funny. Why did I ask them? Because I thought and I haven't changed my mind, that in those times these gadgets provided many useless features. Many of them made our live easier and they are useful such as the camera, NFC sensor, 4G/5G/wi-fi modem. We are looking for parameters, new features and...

We become the slaves of...

Who really needs 4k screen on smartphone (Sony Xperia 1V)? Is the size of margins around the screen really important? How could a foldable screen really improve your work with your phone? How many screens and cameras are enough? How much RAM memory is enough? How many videos you recorded in 8k, and how many slow motion videos have you recorded? Do you remember the megapixels fight? Is a 60Hz refresh rate for the screen is not enough?

We can think that we becomes the slaves of numbers but it's not a truth...

We become the slaves of our vanity

We have stagnation in the market, but the flagship new models still sall. I know many examples of people who buy new iPhones every year. Are you looking for these exaples? Check out tech reviewers on YouTube. The truth is that we buy many smartphones only for bragging. A new and expensive smartphone increases in our perceived social status and boosts self-esteem.

In current time, it doesn't matter who you are inside, it matters what you have. To be precise: not what you have, but what you show that you have. This is the main reason why we have a big market of the fake clothes and why expensive brands make and sell clothes with huge logos.

It must be expensive and visible. Now we have a little stagnation, and we can't show a completely new-looking phone with shitty useless features after a year.

What I have...

I decided to use a flagship model because I want to use it for a long time. Now I have Samsung Galaxy S21, and I'm still satisfied. It has more than I wanted. It takes great photos (enough for me), has a very good screen (I don't need 424 ppi and 120Hz refresh rate), speaker and microphone with satisfying quality, and it is water and impact resistant enough. What more do I need? More RAM? Better CPU?

No, we don't need more RAM and better CPU's

We need more optimized software. I work as a software developer and when I see the tech-stack of current apps for phones and desktops. I'm terrified... Piece of shit like React native, Electron, CEF and thousands of lines of shitty JavaScripts consume your hardware resources and make very good hardware very slow. The correct approach is to use more advanced and more optimized tools to create efficient and fast software. I don't know how it looks in other countries, but in Poland we have software developers with backgrounds in fields like zoology, law, journalism etc...
...and we have what we have... Cheap software developers after 3-month camps who make slow and shitty software.

What I want

It may still be a Samsung Galaxy S21, but with more open and unlocked hardware, which provides possibility to manually install another operating system. In my opinion, Samsung Galaxy S smartphones are not difficult to fix. I changed the battery in S7. You can watch it on my youtube channel [click]. Except for that (I think, it's not a problem now), the availability of spare parts and good prices for them.

That’s all now. See you on the next article!