Development trajectory - how so-called smartphones are developed.

 I've been writing about a 'development trajectory' before, but never really explained what's meant by that. 

Basically it's a way to describe tendencies which seems to be both how various brands (and sub-brands) compete among themselves, but also the 'ballpark' or 'playing field' on which new (or 'new') models are designed: 
Imagine you should make a new, sellable phone today. You need to come up with something 'new', that's sellable, limit development costs, and yet still be able to do everything the consumer expects. 
Smartphones are - for reasons unknown - thought to be 'cutting edge' technology. Constantly launching (and pipelining) new models feeds this narrative. 
You'll probably end up with a version which is 'more of the same', cranking up numbers, not really toying too much with the general concept. That seems to be the case with most phone brands, anyhow, some of them aiming their phones as certain segments, as e.g. Cat.
Unless innovation stands on the shoulders of sound user insights, it will, however, operate like evolution: 
Most branches on the evolution has withered as that 'experiment' didn't prove viable / fit / sustainable. That's another way to put 'survival of the fittest' - Non-fit development tends to die. 
Which is costly when we talk product development. Anyway. Again I stray...

Modernism: newer is always better!, and 'development'

Without going too much into detail, a lot of (product) development is based on the Modern idea that tomorrow will be better due to technological innovations. The idea was founded as Modernism took over from Renaissance, coupled with a technology driven capitalism: 
Make new machines, that can work more efficiently, create more output goods - which is a service to the (industrialized) world. 

This optimism is embedded in a lot of development thinking: Newer is always better. 

It's easy to see why: During Modernism you'd experience the absolute fastest speeds reached on land by having the fastest running horse. Suddently trains would easily move with twice that speed, even being able to carry many times the weight a horse could. What a time to be alive!

And we see this progression in so many places - often represented with higher numbers. 

Take cars. Usually a new model would be branded and sold, just to be followed by a 'facelifted' model, sorting some (but never all) of the problems with the original. 
Eventually the 207 will be replaced with 208 - sending a message about the 208 being newer, better, more developed.
But, as we well know, cars have taken many directions in their development. It's not even a given that the newer version is 'better'. I mean: Peugeot had their instanses of not-so-internal combustion...

In phones it's easy to just follow numbers, albeit they are not always as see-through as you'd expect: 
S7, S8, S9 are following a clear timeline - But is the number or the letter the most important? More on this later...

The Modern Idea is quickly coupled with commercialization (some might argue; driven by commercial forces). Which in turn means it becomes a question of communication: How can you at a glance make the consumer see that your product is new, modern, cutting edge?
Add to that a segmentation - various versions for various purses. Both in terms of size (Polo, Golf, Passat), and 'branding' - e.g. SEAT, Skoda, and VW all being owned by the same owner, but sat at different prices. 

In this segmentation there's room for the idea of 'luxury' - some driving machines, arguably not bringing people or goods from one place to another in a remarkable different way than other machines - are sold at ten times the price of the cheapest alternative.
Because you want to express something with your consumption...

Arguably that is the case of iPhones today, albeit like Mercedes, the phones did have a very central role in the early development of the concept. The weird thing is that though very expensive, they are very popular in Denmark - most people actually have iPhones... That somehow removes the 'exclusiveness' of the brand, but then again: Denmark is a very rich country, in which it's mostly down to prioritization to afford most things.

But in this modern optimistic imperative of everything always improving, there is loads of blind spots. 
Especially as selling is all about the sale - and often the sale of a dream. 
The idea of quickly making the consumer wanting to buy your thing is essential here: How can you quickly make people want the same thing, but different?
The answer is, of course, often numbers... And that's where we move from the concrete world of actions and use of devices, and into the abstract, almost metaphysical realm of numbers, dreams, and The Modern Imperative: Newer is always better...

Development of technologies since the 90's

I am of a generation, where the idea of a personal computer (PC) was born, executed, and had a development trajectory. 

Long story short: Numbers were hugely important, module-built desktop PCs enabled you to change components such as processors, memory, storage, and graphic cards in your PC. 
On the sideline was laptops, not as dynamic. 
Games was a HUGE driver in development of PCs and the constant wish for the next generation of graphic cards, using unreasonable amounts of money on hardware with faster price halflife than organic fruit has driven the development, which ultimatively lead to strong telescopes, microscopes, and lots of other stuff (unfortunately also crypto currency).

Mobile phones along with laptop PCs drove the development (or; re-discovery) of rechargeable batteries, especially Li-Ion. In the 90's it was a drive to make phones ever smaller. How the tides have turned on that!!

Anyway. The point being: The idea that you could constantly upgrade you computer with new componenst, a symbiosis of game developer constantly raising the bars for graphics quality - and hardware developers happily delivering that constant, small development was a Klondike for commercial interests. 
We all learned weird words such as MHz, GHz, bits, bytes, megabytes, gigabytes, number of cores, and all sorts of abstract concepts which all seemed to promise a comparative betterment of the next generation - just around the corner. 
That you could buy a console for gaming, which in so may ways would perform better than a ten times more expensive PC was a matter of religion, rather than comparing the two. 

In all this Apple was building designed PCs, insisting on their own software and hardware structure. This actually meant that Apple Macintosch had an edge not only in design, but also was the preferred PC for sound- and graphics production. 

That was before the iPhone.
Back to phones, it makes sense to compare phones to laptops: Changes to laptops (and phones) are rather limited, as processors (graphic and central) are often very integrated into the motherboard. 
You used to be able to change memory, batteries, and storage on laptops, but even that has somewhat shut down. My 15-year old ThinkPad is of another generation; built to last. I hope the EU law on user-replaceable batteries will counter some of the development, where batteries are integrated. 
Anyway. 

Point being that we actually have several phones with user-changeable battery and possibility to expand storage. But for some reason (which may or may not draw on conspiracy theories of planned end-of-life on the products) these have become fewer...

The 90's was all about development, mostly driven by games. A trajector weirdly enough to some extent followed by phones, which - not matter how we twist and turn it - do not provide very good (graphic) gaming experiences...

The smartphone development trajectory

There's a really interesting documentary (BBC, I think) on The Rise and Fall of Nokia. 
At first they delivered good phones, drove the development of Li-Ion battery (which laptop owners today must be very happy about), and no-one could come near them. Closest was the neighboring country, Sweden, where Ericsson had a shout.

And then... Development happened. The idea of a smartphone was born, as color screens and speed on networks was developed. 

A smartphone would (and still does) consist of certain elements: 
- Ability to access internet at speed (not talking 56kbit/s, as GSM/EDGE, but faster). 
- A color screen
- A camera opening new opportunities such as video calls.

...and that, really, was and still is, that. 
Now, I hear you argue: WHAT ABOUT THE TOUCH SCREEN?? And though you have a point (this were where Nokia gave up the market, they simply didn't believe in the concept), it's not strictly necessary for a smart phone to have a touch screen: 
- Nokia had several very good phones, which (as I mention other places) were MUCH better at sending information (having physical keyboards - either full or T9), but Apple simply took the concept and changed it completely. Nokia's later efforts like the E7 was interesting, good phones - but really suffered from being heavily segmented, running on a platform which in spite of being open source was very, very limited. 
Still. For a few years I used a Nokia E55 for work. The software easily supported the then-Norwegian Opera, you could install a hotspot, and the GPS was very, very good  (Google Maps was more than inspired by Nokia). Adn that, really, was all you needed. The rush for apps came much later. 

An honorable mention would also go to Canadian Blackberry which was branded as the most secure phone in the world - you never saw Obama without his... They, too, for the most part chose another direction, than the touch screen. And most likely lost on that account. 

Now. 
These three parameters, internet access, screen, and camera are still the things we see getting branded, along with the design of phones. 
I don't want to pick on designers, but as long as we're talking touch screen phones, design differences are very limited - especially if you have the ideal, that as much of the front of the phones should be screen. 
That doesn't mean that you cannot tell a Sony from a Samsung or an iPhone. It's just that they're not really that different (as you can tell from my review of the Nokia XR20, I can be swayed by good materials - I'm not made out of stone!). 

The development of smartphone models are focused on development of those parameters, along with more classic 'computer components' such as processors, memory, and storage. 
These, along with the software version, has huge impact on how well and fast the phone operates. 
But a strong point is that the Xcover 4S performs really well - it being a five year old phone now...

If you stuck with me for this long, I'm sure you can guess what comes next: 

A low-down on the development of the key components of phones. 
The Modern Imperative of newer-is-always better is an underlying dynamic, along with the idea of progressing numbers always will mean improvement. As an imperative, not as a sense-driven balancing of various needs and bottom lines.

Development trajectory - internet speed 

I think we all need to acknowledge the longevity of the 3G networks. Only recently retired in Denmark, it proved to be brilliant: It wasn't even unusual to see people run the household internet through that network. It made the smartphone, but, let's just say it, it wasn't THAT fast: Uploading a picture which hadn't been downscaled would take time... 
It was, however, fast enough to perform rather well in video calls, and though 3G masts was a new thing, they didn't need to be as close together as later generations. 
And then we have 4G.
That's fast.
More than fast enough for a great majority of people. The masts are rather radiant (!), but even in urban areas, that seems to have been solved. 
I don't really think that there was a real need for the 5G, but that's the new thing.

And I'm not gonna go nuts about 5G, radiation, how it was coupled with The Corona Virus (WHAT?!), etc. 
But in Denmark, where we have a very good 4G network for most of the tiny country, it seemed odd to 'upgrade'. Yeah, I get it: It's faster. But it's not like 4G is slow. 
When this point was put up when Denmark started rolling out 5G, it almost drowned in nuttery from conspiracy theorists.
As far as I can tell, we now have 5G because it's there, and then some vague argument of low latency which is useful in hospitals. Where they have fiber optics internet anyway... 

Well... 5G seems very much just development - why we all need that speed and eventually pay for the rolling out of the standard is beyond me... We were literally fine.

But hey! Now we got a new, higher number, we get to live in the illusion of being 'cutting edge', and I really don't think it's harming anything except our wallets, and allow smartphone developers to come up with a new selling point: "Yeah, but the ole one doesn't support 5G". Seems to be a major driver, here...

If only pop culture would provide us with one-liners about how something apparently is good, without testing it in real life.
Or something about how simple minded people gets swayed by numbers...

Development trajectory - screens

This is my pet peeve. Screens are the main reason for power drain on smartphones, and they just keep getting bigger. So does batteries, to be fair, but it seems so unenlightened to just crank up the numbers on screens: 
As I mentioned on my Nokia review, going beyond 6'' simply makes no sense. Touch screens have in the first place been developed to mainly receive images/video, and aren't that great for sending e.g. text. 
But what happens, when they grow too large? I am willing to accept that a larger screen makes for better viewing of e.g. videos. There! I admitted something. 

But when that compromises the whole experience of using the phone, bringing it around, and require a lot of extra equipment as e.g. a purse, that's just not worth it: Any computer/tablet screen will always be better than a phaplet, anyway. 
Even worse: I could have been a carpenter with my big hands. But the actually struggle to reach all the buttons on a 6+'' phone. So not only does it require your eyes constantly fixed on the screen. Now you have to use two hands, too...

This is one area where I think there's just been a tendency to soldier on, keep cranking the numbers up, and never really stop to ask what the need / requests of users are. 

Screens are measured diagonally, and in inches (which otherwise not really is anything we use in the more civilzed part of the world). 
What's curious about this is, you can make the screen longer - and save on the pixels. This we were to learn when screens were very expensive and laptop producers came up with the idea 'wide screens'. 
Of course this was branded as an 'innovation', wide screens were for a while more expensive than normal shaped ones, and though I am all for saving on materials, this just seemed odd. 

On that anon it's curious to see how Sony with the latter Xperia series have managed to stay competitive by-the-numbers (?) with 6-6,1'' screens being very narrow. This means on one hand that you will be able to reach the keyboard with one hand. But you would also have several centimeters at the top of the phone which is just... There? Just... Taking up space, power, and through Archimedes making the risk of bending the phone much bigger. 
If only Sony would re-introduce the Compact format...
But that would mean... *Shivers* launching high-end phones with *SHAKES FRANTICALLY* lesser numbers than the model before...
You may even have happy customers as a bonus.
But no! NUMBERS!!! 

Anyway. That we actually see multiple brands trying off multi-screen phones in foldable formats really tells you all you need to know about the apparent 'need' to add size. This really hasn't been tested with the focus groups. It's all a matter of time until we'll see 3D screens tried on for... Well what the Hell for?

Development trajectory - Camera

Having lived through the entire development of mobile phones, I recall having a friend buying one of the first Nokias with color screen. My reaction was: Why? 
As cameras were added on later models, I got it. Add to that internet, and it all made some sense. 

Believe it or not, but digital cameras was big business back in the days. They, too, had categories such as professional SLR's, snap shooters, and various cross-overs. 
Before that the whole thing was analogue, which meant that the picture quality couldn't really be checked until you had the pictures developed - and when you had, you had to take the developer's print  quality into account. 
When pictures became digital, new standards of pictures were developed. 
I am well pleased with sitting at my mom's a see family albums with grainy photos with poor color integrity from the 80's. I suppose they hold som essense. 

But as mentioned before, I am now a father and want as good pictures as I can get of my son. 
And, as a side-thing, being able to take pictures of live concerts. Which, I concede is a tall order. 

In this development of pictures being available for viewing seconds after they've been shot, there's a balance to be made: Phones need to fit in pockets (DO YOU LISTEN, PHONE PRODUCERS!!!?), everything needs to be compact - and that challenges the law of physics, as photography is all about light...

That all said and done, especially the Sony Ericsson made some rather queer looking phones, being more cameras with phone as an afterthought, than the other way around. 

Cameras in phones quickly becomes complicated. As I've already mentioned, the Z5 Compact cranked up one aspect (MPix), while failing on the chip-side, making it really difficult to make clear pictures in that (frankly ridiculous) resolution. 
And without going into too much technical detail, MPix is simply a number describing how many pixels a photo consists of. Though too few pixels will result in 'pixelated' pictures, there's a limit to how many pixels it makes sense to add to, say a A7 piece of paper. 
That all translates to that a good SLR with 23 MPix would be able to take pictures which would look good in A2 or even A1 print quality. 
And, frankly, no-one besides a very specialized crowd needs that kind of resolution, which also will take up loads of storage.

So. There's the physical lens, there's chips to process images, stabilize, control light settings, there's a memory cache that needs to process the data fast, along with other parameters, I've no insight in. 
It all takes up space, but to complicate matters even more, there's now a tendency to add extra physical lenses.

I'm not per se against trying to solve some of the problems with getting more vivid, reality representing photos. But you cannot tell me, that the Blackview BV9900E actually NEEDS f**king four cameras? 
I am not going to go into the details of how it distributes the 48 MPix (see what they did there? #numbers), but as a consumer my primary concern is whether it takes good pictures with relative ease, and that's my conculsion here.

It is a strong point (probably the reason behind this blog) that consumers shouldn't as much be confronted with glittering sales material and #numbers, but also be given real reviews where phones are tested in everyday life, with examples of photos etc.
Fortunately the latter is on the upturn and hopefully will make this blog rather redundant: You're often able to google your way to some bloke who have taken some pictures with the phone you desire and hence better enable you to make assessment - rather than look at post-produced, glitery photos.

And still. I argue, you'll be able to take better, more reality representing pictures with a high-end older single-lens phone, than a low-range three-lens one. 
Just sticking another camera in there doesn't necessarily solve everything, Xcover Development Team [TM].

...which all leads to.

Development Trajectory - The Insides: Hardware and Software

Now, as I've mentioned before, the chip/processor is one of the things, that develops. 
Moore's Law (from the 60's) describes a tendency of exponential growth in microtransistors - which has proven to be surprisingly true during last century and the beginning of this. 

Then they started adding cores to processors. It's all very technical, but means that smaller transistors means faster calculations - and for the user at least some measure of faster handling of the software. 
Only question is: How fast do you need to go in a handheld computer? 

I am a bit puzzled by how you now can buy phones with eight processors. I struggle to understand why, especially as processors primarily have been developed to games... 

But even the fastes processor can be halted by slow memory, and so things are connected in chains. 
One point worth noting, though, is smaller transistors = less power = less battery drain. 
But I don't get the feeling that this has resulted in better battery life on average in phones. 

Now, as a consumer you'll very likely go into a store or read a review that this-or-that phone has a faster processor than the other, rendering it 'better'. Though my trusty Xcover 4S sometimes struggle for a second or two, I argue - this is salesmen's bullsh*t. It really doesn't matter to the ones who don't game graphic games on their phone. Which isn't that many...

Still, 4 GB of memory is certainly better than 2GB. But am I reaping the same benefits, when the phone has 6GB? Highly doubtful! 8GB? That's just #numbers. 

I am by no means arguing that hardware has no effect and is not to some extent important in phones. Just that the development is not aimed at the average user. 

On the outside we do see things such as fingerprint readers being one of the only innovations (if you discard niche development such as infrared cameras, pulse measurers, etc). I absolutely love the fingerprint reader, but am also puzzled by how easy it is to live without them: Screen lock can be opened with a simple code, app access is no hazzle etc. But it *IS* convenient!

Then there's the software. 
One of the greatest things about most phones today is that they are based on (semi) open standards: Android is in essense open source, and though some Chinese phones have been lock-outed of Play Store, most phones have the possibility to install apps. And though we've been through a very stupid time in history where there was supposed to be an app for EVERYTHING (and people failed in designing mobile friendly homepages in stead - which would have been much better on so many levels), it's interesting to be alive in a time in which you easily can say: I don't like the layout of this calendar. I'll get another.

Android (and, I suppose, IOS) has developed over time, sometimes adding new features, sometimes removing some, but mostly "excusing" new versions with security updates. 
Fair. 
In a tandem as old as computers software and hardware develop in parallels. I've read reviews encouraging users not to upgrade to e.g. Android 11 on the phone, as the hardware wouldn't support the upgrade properly. I think that's down to other reasons, but surely there's a trajectory here, where operation systems tend to require more from the hardware. This is, however, not always true - Take Linux on PC's, often being very compatible with older hardware. 
And Android being based on Unix, this should, in theory, hold true.

On top of Android there's usually a UI (user interface), which each brand develops. As I've pointed out with the BV9900E this is a point where phone manufactorers really can fail. You DO get used to one flavour, which I take it is part of Apple's succes: Once you're used to IOS, you'll dislike Android (of any flavour), if you're used to Samsung UI, you'll find Sony's UI strange, etc. 

However, they ARE just flavours, and as long as they a) work b) has a rather easy way to find what you need (e.g. search functions), you can get used to a lot. 

Now. The Klondyke of apps. As a Dane it's very easy to trust authorities. We even have the EU to ensure that we won't get f**ked over. 

But of course, it makes you think why your camera apps needs access to making and receiving phone calls... 

If you allow yourself to relax in that, and in addition have an innovative / experimental approach, you will find Android to be supperior to IOS. 

The fact alone that you can improve pictures by installing various non-stock camera apps tells quite a story. 
You may argue you don't need that on a iPhone as the phone app is brilliant. 
But then there's internet browsers, calendar, etc, etc. 

I e.g. strongly recommend splashing out on either Camera FV-5 Pro, or OpenCamera Pro (or both). 
And to install an alternative browser to Google Chrome - there are some very good alternatives out there, enabling you to get much more out of your 'pocket PC' / smartphone. 

I'm not entirely sure how Android 13 per se is *better* than Android 9. I saw a drastic betterment in battery life from Android 8.1 to 9 - but since then the only real argument for updating (as a consumer) has been that developer's won't support as far back as Android 9... Which only, really, is relevant if you have to install some new app apart from the ones you have already. Still. That's one argument for upgrading the phone, I guess. 

The point is, again (and now I'll stop hammering it home), that numbers are very abstract, supposed to indicate that you're really on the cutting edge of The Modern Imperative, and often hides the more qualified truth.

But five cameras are not necessarily better than one good one, with good support through the chain from lens to app. One may actually be better. 

You may stand in a store listening to a salesman arguing that the eight core mobile is much faster (they may even say it's 'future ready' 😂), but how fast do you need to go?
I know it's embedded in us to buy potential: There's no-where in Denmark you can legally drive 200 km/h on the road. It's barely possible to maintain the 130 km/h on the motorway where that's allowed (due to Danes being selfish bastards, who's national sport is driving below speed in the overtaking lane, never pulling right).
And yet: Cars easily able to do 180+ km/h are sold en masse. 
Because you *MAY* need it some day. 

In a time where we all are asked to look at how we use our resources, this genuinely seems mad. 
But, as so many other things, this is driven by the marriage between The Modern Imperative (new is better), and commercial sales of potentials. 

A repeated point

I have to admit that I absolutely love diversity - and also diversity in products. though I don't see the point in a phaplet, I think it's wonderful that people who seek this type of phone have the opportunity to buy that. 
But the idea that all manufacturer's follow in one direction, all constantly cranking up numbers, normalizing TV-sized phones is just... Off?
I saw that some smaller startups are doing smaller phones. That's brilliant!
There's even a movement towards 'dumb phones' - mostly carried by people don't wanting to be constantly drawn into the screen. Also brilliant. 
But espeically the last seems rather radical: The benefits of the smart phone is just very obvious. And fun. 
After even Apple have discontinued the development of the Mini series, you are as a consumer are forced to look at older models. Which is perfectly fine, bar the fact that unlike in cars you cannot expect a Li-Ion battery on a phone to last for eight years. 
Refurb shops will replace batteries, but in the process compromise the IP-gradings. 
For the fear of being political, I think the EU is doing ever so well in insisting on a) same chargers, b) user-removable batteries c) some measure of software security. 
You may argue they're a bit late... And looking at used phones, you will learn that sceen burn-in is the next issue. But Rome wasn't built in a day...

Conclusion

There seems to be a very strong narrative in sales: Make an air of being cool, cutting edge, and on the beat in the sales material. That sells. 
Numbers are efficient communications in this regard, and glittery pictures helps, too.

Social Anthropologist Rane Willerslew argues that sales and seduction is a simple task (which he sees mirrored - or mimiced - among the Yukagir): Appear to live in a perfect world, invite (or lure) the desired in - and shoot them in the face! 
Whether the "shot" then is to kill an elk or to make a sale, is all the same: The task is to appear perfect, establish a world in which the target wants to partake... And then you don't really care too much what happens after you have achieved your goal... You've achieved your kill/sale/score.

I've argued that The Modern Imperative is a strong representation of The Perfect World [TM].
But I also argue further, that there's a better position in product development where you work with genuine UX (which I must underline not solely is about which desires people communicate, but also a test in reality whether these desires are something that they attach real actions to). 

I feel kind-of like the kid in Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes: 
We all know that the emperor is naked, but his authority and the fear of countering a strong narrative means that no-one will admit it. Bar the kid.
We can all see that phones aren't necessarily getting better - just following a trajectory. Bar people who reflect on how phones are used...

It's a point in the story that the kid is not necessarily a hero. He's just putting a new perspective on things. Which then takes on. 
I dare not hope for as much...