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a surprising realization

Posted by matthew on 25 Oct 2011 / 2 Comments

Dis­claimer: This post is writ­ten purely from the per­spec­tive of a self-professed nerd that fol­lows tech­nol­ogy rather closely.

 

There are just too many smart­phones hit­ting the mar­ket — specif­i­cally Android devices.

I know that the cur­rent trend in mobile devices is a move from basic fea­ture phones to smart­phones. I sus­pect that trend is respon­si­ble for the mar­ket being flooded with afford­able smart­phones. I know…I know. There needs to be smart­phones to fit every budget.

My prob­lem is not so much that there are so-called “entry level” or “mid-range” smart­phones. (Though this range of devices does cre­ate an issue of over­all improvement/advancement of the Android oper­at­ing sys­tem.) My issue is that there are so many of these devices that they nearly indis­cern­able. This issue, how­ever, is not lim­ited to afford­able smart­phones. A good deal of annoy­ance with the glut of Android devices comes in the high-end seg­ment of the smart­phone mar­ket. As some­one who fol­lows tech pretty closely, I can tell you that a high-end smart­phone seems to be released just about every two or three weeks. Given that iPhones are only released on an annual basis, I’m clearly talk­ing about Android devices. Each new iter­a­tion is only slightly dif­fer­ent than the lat­est and great­est released just weeks prior.

As I thought about this sit­u­a­tion, I was reminded of a funny scene from one of my favorite movies, Amadeus.


 
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for inno­va­tion and push­ing the enve­lope. In some respects, it’s inter­est­ing to see what new fea­tures and capa­bil­i­ties can be added to smart­phone. I think the drive to “out tech” each other is dri­ving this fre­netic release sched­ule; but let’s not fool our­selves, the release sched­ule of the iPhone has a lot to do with this as well. With the antic­i­pated launch of the iPhone5 just a cou­ple of weeks away, man­u­fac­tur­ers of Android smart­phones, as well as Google itself (steam­ing ahead toward release of the “Ice Cream” oper­at­ing sys­tem update), are rac­ing to bring com­pelling prod­ucts to mar­ket to counter the iPhone lust. Microsoft is also in the mix with the Mango update to it’s Win­dows Phone 7 oper­at­ing system.

Rais­ing Microsoft’s name is rel­e­vant here. Not because the mar­ket is flooded with Win­dows Phone 7 devices. To the con­trary. What’s inter­est­ing is that Android has seem­ingly taken the place of the older ubiq­ui­tous Win­dows Phone. Before the cur­rent oper­at­ing sys­tem updated, Win­dows Phones fea­tured a decent oper­at­ing sys­tem, but did not drive inno­va­tion. Google’s Android is inno­vat­ing, for sure, but the sat­u­ra­tion of basic devices with older ver­sions of the oper­at­ing sys­tem have, in my opin­ion, led to the issues of frag­men­ta­tion and ambiva­lence by some devel­op­ers from cre­at­ing appli­ca­tions for the platform.

Ok. Instead of just post­ing a rant, here are a cou­ple ideas on how to change, or improve, this issue of smart­phone saturation.

  • Google/Android need to set min­i­mum require­ments for proces­sor speeds and inter­nal mem­ory. My son’s Ti-89 cal­cu­la­tor has more com­put­ing power than a lot of the crappy smart­phones on the mar­ket. Microsoft took this approach with Win­dows Phone 7. This doesn’t mean that every phone will be great, but at least even the cheap­est vari­ent on the plat­form is capa­ble of per­form­ing the same tasks as a more expen­sive device with more bells and whistles.
  • Car­ri­ers should real­ize that more is not always more. Hav­ing a store stocked with a plethora of marginally-performing smart­phones doesn’t make you the nation’s best wire­less com­pany. It just means you have a bunch of shitty phones. The pay-as-you go car­ri­ers, many owned by the large car­ri­ers, need to get with the pro­gram, too.

Con­sumers have a role to play, too. In my opin­ion, hav­ing a smart­phone is a lux­ury. If peo­ple are will­ing to drop $25+ for a data pack­age, on top of the under­ly­ing min­utes plan, they should at least be will­ing to drop more than 40 bucks for the phone. Stop being cheap! I hear a lot of “Well, that’s more phone phone that I need.” Why even get a smart­phone, then? Just get a fea­ture phone with mes­sag­ing. Addi­tion­ally, far too many of us have come to accept the ter­ri­ble bat­tery life asso­ci­ated with these phones. I have yet to meet any­one with a smart­phone, other than a Black­Berry … and I won’t even get into that … that can get more than a day from their phone. With the intro­duc­tion of 4G phones, bat­tery life is taken an even greater hit.

Note: I have been sit­ting on this post for a while – Sept. 26. In the time since my draft, Motorola intro­duced the Bionic, only to outdo itself by intro­duc­ing the Razr, which is, essen­tially, the same device — just thin­ner. Mean­while, Apple lifted the veil on the iPhone 4S. Though many were dis­ap­pointed, includ­ing me, that there was not a new form fac­tor; Apple focused on mak­ing an industry-leading device bet­ter. The final nudge to hit pub­lish on this post was see­ing an arti­cle last night on the tech site Phone Dog.

What do you think? Are there too many phones avail­able, or do you like hav­ing a lot of choices?

  • Shawn Duffy

    Amen!  This is my biggest com­plaint about Android phones.  I admit, I’m a huge fan of Apple prod­ucts.  But, also, as a geek who likes to tin­ker, I can admit that there may come a day when I aban­don the iPhone for an Android phone.  But, also, as a geek, I love get­ting the lat­est and great­est device.  I have no idea what the lat­est and great­est Android phone is.  And, even if I fig­ure it out, will that change in a month, instead of a year?  Apple does keep a tight grip on its prod­ucts, no doubt.  But there’s a rea­son for it and, dare I say, it’s their pri­mary advan­tage here.  The user expe­ri­ence is absolutely con­sis­tent across all iPhones and users always know which iPhone is the “best”.  The same can’t be said for Android.  Its biggest strength is the open source nature of the OS but, it’s also its biggest weakness.

  • http://www.matthewdlyons.com/ matthewd­lyons

    Thanks Shawn. I agree completely. 

    For some time I, rather sheep­ishly, com­plained about Apple’s walled gar­den. How­ever, there’s some­thing to be said about hav­ing a famil­iar expe­ri­ence across devices. It doesn’t make me stu­pid. It doesn’t mean the devices or users are “dumbed down.” It is a con­scious deci­sion to deliver a con­sis­tent, solid experience. 

    I just read that there are 100 dif­fer­ent Android devices on the mar­ket (world­wide) with six dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the oper­at­ing sys­tem. That is crazy! As long as device man­u­fac­tur­ers and wire­less car­ri­ers see profit in mar­ket­ing cheap smart­phones, and Google refuses to set min­i­mums, there will be this split in per­for­mance and user expe­ri­ence on Android devices. This, unfor­tu­nately, means that a num­ber of devel­op­ers will con­tinue to stay away mak­ing, or port­ing, apps to Android.