So I used to be quite a tech enthusiast but kinda stopped, I used to be a lot in cameras, smartphones etc even tho i cud never afford them lmao
Anyway today i saw the MKBHD video he released recently about oneplus, and it got me thinking, i remember the time when i used to really be into it and remember devices being so cool for their time like iphone 11 and 12, the samsung galaxy s phones… oneplus obv, always came with a lot of actually cooler features like better battery lives, new cooler designs, improved cameras etc etc, we also had companies like ASUS making and experimenting with cool phones
However now it just seems that they all add useless irrelevant features, AI slop being number one of them, but even then the designs are much uglier now… iphone 12 and 13s used to look so elegant and cool… same with samsungs galaxy note series and s10 series, ASUS went out of the market… and oneplus is… well just another random generic brand… the only brands doing smthng cool are prolly xiaomi or vivo but even then its a lot more cool for the first week and then forget abt it than much else
Same kinda happened with the camera market… i remember there used to be cameras lile XS-10 or fujis XE4 and XT30 making big news about being arnd and under 1000$ and being such good value for money with good sensors… IBIS in some cases, and in the full frame you had A7iii from sony and Z5s from nikon offering insane value However now apparently 1K dollars only gets u recycled parts from much older cameras… and entry level is now fuckinf 1.5k+ dollars for APSC cams, micro four thirds is dead (i always wanted a g9 so bad lol it was like 999$ a steal but i was like 15lol), and even the cameras dont seem much that great, however maybe i just am not upto date on that stuff so idk… the pro market might be getting better… im talking more as an enthusiast who just sees them from outside lol
Yup, still rocking my oneplus 5t from 2018 and will keep using that bad boy until it literally breaks.
I think smart phones started going downhill for me in excitement once they started removing hardware features like sd card, audio jack, and user swappable batteries.
Also, trended with cost of phones going up and companies like Google being seen as more and more untrustworthy so that for some they have a reason to use custom roms again.
I miss my Nexus 5X. Probably still be using it if it hadn’t gradually destroyed itself.
Cars peaked before 2020 for sure.
Nope. Now we are getting better and better electric cars and slowly begin to phase out shitty combustion engine cars. We really need to prohibit those big SUVs and pickups in favor of tiny cars, tough.
Sorry, I referred to car features that we really need. Before 2020 we had functional car interiors that everyone knew had to use and were pretty safe. I haven’t seen much innovation that has helped beyond moving all controls to the glued on iPad behind a subscription.
The mid 2010s. I miss my old LG G5, the ability to customize the hardware with the USB c port and hesdphone jack being a simple replacement was a gamechanger for me. The LG G6 was a downgrade from nearly all the features of it’s papa besides the better internal chip and camera but you still lost all manual control button use with the upgrade sicne that was an attachment mod as well as the DAC.
I fucking loved that phone.
I generally cite mid-2010s (e.g. 2015ish) as when society peaked technologically. This is before the rampant enshitiffication of everything. Most new tech “advances” are of marginal use (or outright detrimental) to the average person and are only beneficial to corpos and govs.
I’d say the main exception to this is medical tech. Those advancements do present real benefits, at least to those who can afford it.
I think the reason tech hadn’t been as enshittified in the 2010s was that the companies making these products and services could still grow profits just by expanding number of units sold. So you could make more money while also being good to your customers. Make great stuff, expand the potential market, make more profits, repeat.
Eventually however your market caps out. Eventually everyone who isn’t living in an uncontacted Amazon tribe or too poor to afford food already has a smart phone. It doesn’t matter how great the features are; the global market for smart phones will never be more than ten billion units a year. And likely never more than half of that. You can only sell so many phones in a year, and people can only afford to pay so much for them.
So what do you do if you can no longer grow profits by growing scale? You have to wring ever more profit out of each customer. And thus, enshittification.
idk, i kinda think that nokia’s smartphones were peak technology (the og nokia, not what came after with microsoft buying them)
Some of them had linux before it was cool. I also kinda miss the formfactor of a smartphone with a keyboard.
Modern smartphones really lack in variability. Basically now, when choosing between comparable models of diferent vendors, you just choose whether you want qualcom or mediatek soc, and which vendor’s bloat you tolerate more. I really miss all the wacky experiments with formfactors and OSes
Not so much peaked, but plateaued.
They are getting more powerful, but the difference between an 8MP and 16MP camera was a lot more obvious than the last 5 years worth of changes.
Raw chip performance? Yeah… but I am kinda talking more about the actual useful features tbh, for eg the camera sensor technology has all but remained the same since iphone 14, (for all brands not just apple) nd neither have they improved the image processing pipeline, the straight out of camera images are still absolutely shit. Thanks for the proRAW tho, i have used my frnds newer iphones and they are the same with that weird pastel hdr-y look, all they r offering is just random AI improvements no one needed
Same with stuff like battery life, now i am not saying its not getting better, but it has definitely not been a focus, oneplus recently came with the silicon carbide tech but the major brands and rlly slow to adapt to that, u can see xiaomi and vivo phones still absolutely in these two areas so its definitely not tech plateauing (1inch sensors, bigger batteries), more accurately there is a weird preference order of AI and unnecessary visual changes
Camera is basically the only specs I need to look at in a phone today as a general user.
I think the last major feature (which was software based) was the iPhones down cycling their refresh rate to conserve battery power. Every iPhone since then feels no different, and the useless UI additions which slow down the previous generation processors are a lot more noticeable
I have to use an iPhone for work and the liquid glass ui is absolute shit.
I legit switched back to Android because of the UI changes (when they leaked). I’d be okay with bringing back a late 2000s Aero vibe but make it consistent at least
The peak was like 2014. The inception of social media and the ad industry is what ruined smartphones.
iphone 5 was the last good iphone. Steve Jobs was right in that an every day carry device/tool should be fully operable one handed.
If RIM had innovated maybe we’d see physical keyboards with features that could compete with touchscreens. Like programable keys with digital displays for multiple languages. Maybe interchangeable or even customizable button layouts.
Social media, specifically video shorts, shifting us away from reading and writing is leaving us neurologically under stimulated.
I got a new phone in 2020.
I haven’t seen a compelling or interesting device since then. Even then, I was barely convinced I actually wanted the upgrade in 2020, but I spent a lot of 2020 in a poor mental state and made some less than sound decisions.
I kinda want a folding phone? But not really. Like if you handed me one I’d be happy, but if you asked me to pay even $300 for one I don’t think I would.
foldables seems very prone to breaking than a normal one.
I love the idea of a folding phone, but the fact that it has a lifetime number of folds before it breaks is a no go for me. Until the lifetime number of folds is as ridiculous as the number of IPv6 addresses, I don’t think I want one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTdbpoQkR4U
With a 5-year lifespan and a conservative estimation of 200.000 folds, I count 110 folds per day, which comes out at around 1 fold every 6 minutes for 16 hours straight every day
Also because no gorilla glass… :/
a fingernail scratches it
They have the film on top (at least on the Samsung folds) which helps prevent scratches.
I don’t really open mine super frequently, but it’s nice to have when I do.
Maybe 2-3 times a day on the low end and 20ish in the high.
Btw might be a naive question but i never realized why cant they just use plastic around the hinge and use glass everywhere else
Because then you’d have a lip/ridges in the screen that would effectively look like 2 vertical cracks all the way up the screen. Honestly, the “plastic” screen isn’t that big of a deal. It’s effectively just a screen protector anyways, and Samsung gives you a free one within the first year, and replacements are $20 afterwards.
I’ve had my Fold 7 for 3 months now without issues, and honestly it’s the first phone I’ve owned since my first Note that actually felt like a “game changer” in any way. It makes for a fantastic E-reader and it’s just far more pleasant to read longer form articles and such on.
No, the newest 2026 Razers have Gorilla glass on the inside foldable screen, and the hinge was reworked in metal.
That is also a significant downside. I am not nearly careful enough with my phone to be trusted with something so frail for regular use.
I mean, the main reason they’re making folding phones is that general phones have gotten so large. I’d love to have some decent small-form phones back on the market.
I’d dig a foldable that unfolded rectangle. I don’t like those squar ones. I don’t think I’d have a use for one. A rectangle one would be good for photo and video.
The square has grown on me. Works just fine for reading documents, photos and videos aren’t terrible with the bars, and if I really want to I can zoom in to fit the vertical since most of the action is in the middle anyway. One pleasant surprise is that old media in 4:3 actually looks better than on a rectangle.
Can confirm, I have a zflip and love the small folded form factor that opens up to a semi large rectangle screen
Well firstly since about 2020 everything has basically doubled in price due to inflation, so that’s more or less your camera point. As someone who also takes pictures, they’re certainly still innovating, it’s just money is worth less now.
The phone thing is more down to the product category maturing. 5-10 years ago there were still obvious improvements to be made to the hardware and software. Now we’ve effectively perfected the black rectangle for the current tech available, so the only stuff they can do to differentiate now is bloat. Also, as above, everything is more expensive, so if they get some commercial partnerships attached to that bloat they can keep the prices a bit more constant than stuff like pro cameras (which just have to get more expensive because bloat like that wouldn’t be tolerated for pro gear)
Remember when Futurama joked that the iPhone cost $500?
I like my Xperia, you can even use it onehanded. “Normal” phones look like phablets nowadays.
I bought an iPhone 12 mini specifically for its small size. It’s not rare for people to say something like, “wow your phone is so small wtf”, and I’m like yeah that’s the whole point. I don’t want or need to carry around half a fucking tablet.
Tech peaked when I was 15 year old and had an iPod nano that clipped to my jeans
I still have one of those.
yes but 2014.
I haven’t been excited about a new smartphone since LG V20. What ever is “new” in our current flagships doesn’t really interest me that much.
