Fold a phone in two, and it’s now twice the thickness. Pockets are long. So long and thin phones are better than short and fat phones.
“But add to that the fact that the halved' phone then features an additional glanceable display for simple notifications, and that becomes really interesting.”
Apple we have a useless foldable display that makes information impossible to be seen at a glance and the compensate that Samsung puts a second, much smaller, screen on the device… and that’s supposed to be a good thing? None of this makes any sense.
Yes, fold a tablet so that it takes less space in a bag. But a phone? Until they aren’t much thinner it’s just stupid.
Sigh… if only we could all agree on what is “cool” so designers could cut right to the chase. Unfortunately, “cool” borders on “fad” and fad has a short shelf life that is heavily impacted by the constantly changing polarity of “whim.”
Look at how “cool” was expressed in mid to late 1950s automobile designers and buyers. “Cool” to some folks meant wings and fins and acres of chrome. Within a few years, the whim bit flipped, the wings got clipped, and boxy became cool. Since we’re talking cars, consider the Porsche 911 that debuted in 1964, only a few years after the last of the fin cars fell out of the cool club. The same basic Porsche 911 is still in production today, while entire generations of other “cool” cars have arrived, ascended the mountain of coolness, and quickly descended to mediocrity and even derision on the other side of Mt Cool. Some people even thought the AMC Pacer and its sibling the Gremlin were “cool” at some level. Gag me.
So, which of all these generations of cars were truly “cool?” Coolness is definitely in the eyes of the beholder, but I'm more inclined to think that a design like the 911 that withstands the test of time and is constantly refined within its core concept is beyond “cool.” It never succumbed to fads like wings and fins or bulbous grills. The original designers of the 911 would still recognize the current version but would be blown away by the innovation and performance in the current version.
Just saying that Apple doesn’t have to resort to fads and gimmicks to be “cool,” especially with a product that’s been setting the standard for the market segment that it serves.
Apple wants you to have an iPhone, which it frames as a premium mobile device. Samsung instead opts to cover almost the entire market, introducing value-oriented devices alongside its flagship products.
The key here is that Samsung could easily have a really bad year for one of its flagships, and have it not completely wreck its revenue for the year. Indeed, this actually happened with the Galaxy Note range a few years ago, with the major battery issues practically writing off an entire generation for line.
Diversification is for people who can't nail the biggest bet.
Read up on your DED, Mark. There are plenty of articles here on AI (and more on Roughly Drafted) pointing out that having to make more devices to earn less money is a worse scenario.
Apple haven't made significant changes to the iPhone because, firstly, they got the design right the first time and thus could iterate on minor improvements over time and secondly because they understand how the whole ecosystem works. It's not just the design of the device, it's how you operate it, how it works with everything else you have, how little attention it requires (yet it handles more if you want), how short a time it takes to learn the core features (but you can spend more if you want)...
At the end of the day, Apple doesn't need the iPhone to be "cool" - they've developed it into a mature business, and it's going to enable the next big "cool" thing, whatever that ends up being. It's already helped launch the Watch and AirPods.
No gimmicks please. The hardware is fine, it’s the software that seems to get ever worse.
Agree! iOS 15 is a 100% quality disgrace. Some functionality isn’t even beta worthy. And updating to it actually made me lose functionality that feature phones of the pre-iPhone era had working. Is it too much to ask for a simple notification when a new message arrives? I mean, it’s freakin’ 2021 now? I’m getting exhausted just thinking about writing a list of bugs and user awkwardness in iOS 15.0.2. Wtf just happened at Apple’s software dev?
The biggest is problem is the weight and price. Back in the day flip phones were small. People wanted the lightest small phones. Now people want giant phones. In turn it would be too heavy and they would have to charge a lot more
Comments
So, which of all these generations of cars were truly “cool?” Coolness is definitely in the eyes of the beholder, but I'm more inclined to think that a design like the 911 that withstands the test of time and is constantly refined within its core concept is beyond “cool.” It never succumbed to fads like wings and fins or bulbous grills. The original designers of the 911 would still recognize the current version but would be blown away by the innovation and performance in the current version.
Read up on your DED, Mark. There are plenty of articles here on AI (and more on Roughly Drafted) pointing out that having to make more devices to earn less money is a worse scenario.
Apple haven't made significant changes to the iPhone because, firstly, they got the design right the first time and thus could iterate on minor improvements over time and secondly because they understand how the whole ecosystem works. It's not just the design of the device, it's how you operate it, how it works with everything else you have, how little attention it requires (yet it handles more if you want), how short a time it takes to learn the core features (but you can spend more if you want)...
At the end of the day, Apple doesn't need the iPhone to be "cool" - they've developed it into a mature business, and it's going to enable the next big "cool" thing, whatever that ends up being. It's already helped launch the Watch and AirPods.
iOS 15 is a 100% quality disgrace. Some functionality isn’t even beta worthy. And updating to it actually made me lose functionality that feature phones of the pre-iPhone era had working. Is it too much to ask for a simple notification when a new message arrives? I mean, it’s freakin’ 2021 now? I’m getting exhausted just thinking about writing a list of bugs and user awkwardness in iOS 15.0.2. Wtf just happened at Apple’s software dev?