I was using an iPad Pro from late 2018 (mostly just for casual web browsing, reading documents and watching video on, I still do all my real work on laptop/desktops) as well until this year, and would have kept using it if I hadn't accidentally dropped it in water. I don't really notice much difference at all between my old one (when it worked) and the new iPad Air I replaced it with, except for the battery being a little better and having a bit more ram being nice (websites in background tabs are less likely to be purged from memory when I come back to them).
Maybe in that vein, one thing I wish phones would do to differentiate themselves is just add more sensors. I want my phone to be the tricorder from star trek. iPhones should have first party support for generating point clouds and measuring distances using lidar. Their microphones are probably already calibrated, why not expose that as a decibel meter. Same for light sensors. Phones used to have IR emitters, why not add those back in?
Also the iPhone still only has 240fps slow motion, I've found samsung's 960fps really useful in capturing transient phenomenon or even measuring mundane things like LED flicker.
Conversely the Pixel seems to be the only one shipping with an IR thermometer, and they'll probably remove it given most people don't seem to care. That's something I would've found useful in ad-hoc situations where I've had to make do with the back of my hand.
Air quality detection (especially pm2.5, CO2, and CO levels) would be great but I don't know if those sensors can be miniaturized enough to fit.
That's the problem with non-Google and non-Apple phones.
Second, the article doesn’t focus on phones we buy. There won’t be a shortage of those.
> We’re already at the point where marginal buyers in the poor world are getting priced out of the smartphone market. We’re rapidly approaching the point where buyers in the rich world feel the same thing.
So it predicts that phones we buy are next.
1. High-resolution screen, finally approaching paper (600dpi) 2. High-refresh rate screen, up to 240 fps. Once you see 60 fps, you are already hooked, and 240 is just mind-blowing. 3. High-resolution camera, 50 Mpx means that the camera actually starts to match paper (600dpi) 4. Slo-mo camera (240 fps) to match the screen. 5. Decent memory sizes. On my recent 24 Gb size memory I can actually run multiple apps in parallel, and they are not getting killed. You see, using all available memory is a competitive strategy for app developers -- when they use all the memory, their competitors are evicted from RAM and the user is less likely to receive notifications. 6. Decent sdcard size (1Tb). Same reason for the storage. App manufacturers are trying to use all available space, so that you would delete the competitor's apps in order to keep using theirs. 7. HDMI over USB -- finally you can connect a keyboard and a monitor, and get rid of your laptop, just use one device for everything.
I'm a sample size of one, but I'd rather have 20% better battery life (this would extend the life of a three year battery to roughly four years) than eye candy. Extremely aggressively glued-in batteries turning into hazardous gas packages are the only reason I replace portable computers these days.
And -given the history of such things- lack of care in system design means at year two or three, you'd find that your phone very, very inconsistently delivers 240fps. I think it's pretty widely known that once you get to somewhere around 15 or 30 FPS sudden variation in frame rate is far, far more noticeable and unpleasant than rock-solid "low" frame rate. [0]
[0] That is, a 240 FPS system that janks down to 30 FPS every few seconds is gonna be considered much less pleasant to use than one that always runs at 30 FPS.