Why today's phones are so boooooring?

So, here’s a question - when were you last excited for a new phone? Well, I mean really excited?

Here’s the thing. Phones are so boring today that most retail stores show you the backside of the phone. Because from the front they all look exactly the same.

Do you remember the old days when phone manufacturers fought for your money by trying to make cool-looking phones? Nokia and Siemens were legendary rivals, at least in my region. And then Sony Ericsson came to the party and nuked Siemens out of the competition for a few years - no one talked about Siemens. And then Motorola came with their Razor series and woooh! Just look up old phone magazines - they’re filled with amazing designs.

I still have my old Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones:

Yes, they’re busted, but I still love them - they look rad.

Now look at the typical online marketplace for phones:

Apart from the wallpaper at the front, these phones all look similar - it’s a black rectangle. The backside is where the design is supposed to happen today, yet most phones are just some variation of mat glass, leather, or just some colored plastic for cheaper ones.

*duh*

Smartphones are a pretty much a figured-out tech since 2007. It has to be a black rectangle, because the screen is the most important part, so it has to cover all of the available area and it was refined over the years until no borders were left to spare. And the backside is pretty much what is left for creativity, but you can’t do much with how big camera modules are today, because people demand good cameras even in cheaper segments.

Well, you could say that. But do you know that other tech, that was figured out and for a much longer time than the Smartphones? I’ll give you a hint, it contains the latter part of the word “smartphone”.

Headphones.

Headphones haven’t really advanced much since the 80s. I mean, they did, and quite a bit in the IEM field, but not radically overall. One of the most balanced studio headphones as of today are Sennheiser HD 600 were released in 1997.

I know, there are all these different technologies for producing sound, like dynamic, planar-magnetic, electrostatic drivers, MEMs, and possibly more. But we have had great audio since the 80s, you don’t have to buy new headphones every few years - the technology is already pretty much maxed out our hearing capabilities.

We approach the same scenario with smartphone screens - ~500 ppi on a 7-inch screen is already far beyond the required amount to not-see the individual pixels. It’s like drivers in headphones - the sound resolution is way beyond human hearing, so there’s no need for more advancements to be made. Different drivers have different response times, sure, but it’s the same with screens if you think about refresh rates.

But I digress. Have a look at modern headphones:

Yes, these all are premium products, but even consumer-grade ones are competing in design and ergonomics:

Think about it - headphones, essentially, are just ovals or circles - you don’t need all these fancy earcup designs, materials, and whatnot. Again, one of the best-sounding headphones is just an oval with a perforated mesh on the outer side:

You don’t need all of these cool-looking shapes on the earcup, yet headphone manufacturers do it because it is a form of expression. Art, even.

And if you look at premium smartphones, apart from a back rectangle on the front, what do you get on the back usually? A mat glass with too many cameras and a logo that you gonna cover with a phone case anyway.

When Samsung showed up their new foldable phones, I got excited for a bit, but the foldable screen tech is still not ready for prime time. And again, these phones all pretty much look the same. They do have a different hinge design, and often the outer shell has a more stylized look, but still, do you remember the old foldable phones?

Why today’s phones are so boooooring?