It was only a matter of time, but eventually technology was always going to catch up to the hype. To the spectacle. For those of you out there who can remember the arrival of the original iPhone, with its capacitive touchscreen and other key features that differentiated it from the actual smartphones of the time, do you remember how excited people were? How excited you might have been?
I can still recall my friend, who worked for AT&T at the time, and how over-the-moon he was for the original phone that brought Apple into the smartphone market. He kept showing things off, like Safari, and how easy it was to use the touchscreen, and whatever else he could find to show off. I was a hugeWindows Mobile fan back then, and still carried a BlackBerry, too, so I wasn’t immediately swayed by the iPhone. But his excitement was infectious, and the more I tried it the more I was won over by it.
And then Android landed in my lap with the original G1 for T-Mobile, from HTC. I loved that phone! Even if Android wasn’t ready for prime time back then, I still fell in love with it.
webOS, on the other hand, was certainly ready for the limelight and it deserved every second it held inside of it. Sure, the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi had their shortcomings in the hardware department, and battery life, but webOS is still my favorite mobile OS to date. I miss that platform like crazy, and I really wish it wasn’t stuck on a TV these days.
HTC won me over again with their Trophy and Surround Windows Phone 7 devices, but again, it was mostly the software. Windows Phone 7 was awesome, and it’s still a platform that I want to see really take off, flourish even, and I’ve got my fingers crossed that it happens with Windows 10 Mobile some day.
But now, I’ve begun to see that people aren’t all that shocked or caught in awe by what these companies deliver anymore. There might be features that are welcomed additions, but the spectacle seems to have worn off. That same friend that got so excited about phones back in the day just doesn’t seem to care much at all, for instance. And at the tail-end of 2015 there were a few Op-Ed’s written about how boredom has taken over in the smartphone race.
I haven’t thought about it much, to be honest. And, even now, I can say that I’m still in love with seeing new features in the platforms that we’ve been using for years. But maybe that’s where the real “boredom” is coming from. The platforms are staying the same, from iOS to Android to Windows 10 Mobile, in broad strokes, and we’re only getting sprinkles of new features.
But here’s why I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. We’re at a point now where the technology has caught up with the spectacle, and wanting that original feeling back isn’t a bad thing, but I don’t think we should fault these devices that have become so integral to our lives for not being able to capture that feeling year after year. It’s similar to the release of Jurassic World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. These films are within franchises that revolutionized films in one way or another when the first of their namesake was released all those years ago. But people seemed to be disheartened in the franchises when the new films couldn’t reproduce those feelings.
I know that those films did for some people. The folks that might have had those films be the first time they were introduced to those unique worlds. And the same can be said for someone who is buying their first smartphone and it turns out to be the iPhone 6s, the Nexus 6P, or the Lumia 950 XL. These smartphones might be “boring” to someone who’s been using smartphones for more years than they can count on one hand, but to someone who’s new is probably pretty excited by the power of the device in their hand.
But, I want to hear from you. Are you bored with your smartphone? Have you been bored with smartphones for awhile now? Or are you still excited by the functionality and features in your daily driver, and still look forward to your next upgrade? Let me know!