Everyone knows that the smartphone industry turns on the products and services that come out of Cupertino and Mountain View. This worldwide duopoly of smartphone ecosystem domination is being futilely challenged by administrations around the world. Love it or hate it, Apple’s ecosystem is unmatched by any other, past or present.
The most interesting news coming from CES 2022 is that Google will be making a play to match elements of Apple’s ecosystem. While interesting to tech writers and super fans, this is not at all interesting to consumers. It just means that instead of innovating, one of the major platforms is putting all their wood behind the arrow of catch up. In the meantime, Apple will be releasing new iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Yawn! The real action, as is often the case, will be from the smaller players who have to work ten times as hard to get one-tenth the media coverage. Even that only gets them a millionth of the available consumer mindshare. But those are the companies that also try the interesting innovations first. Between the announcements, rumors, and crystal ball, here is a sneak peak at what to expect from the rest of the smartphone industry:
Better Service and Support
Okay, this one is more of a wish than a prediction. The fact is most smartphone manufacturers offer abysmal service and support. They pawn it off on third-party providers who don’t seem to know what they are doing most of the time. It is a rather ugly situation. That said, part of the solution would be for companies to do better technical documentation which can be easily obtained through technical writing services. First- level phone support is a universal waste of everyone’s time. If the documentation provided to consumers was better, many wouldn’t need to make the call at all.
Those that called would get better equipped support staff who could consult informative documentation that is easy to navigate and understand. Third-party service would improve a great deal because techs would have better specifications and instructions that are localized for more markets and languages. Right now, an American tech trying to make sense of a mess of broken English and Mandarin makes for a poor repair. Small manufacturers don’t have to open retail locations with Genius Bars. They just have to do better documentation. That would go a long way toward changing the narrative about service and support.
Sleeker Design
We can predict that the next iPhone is going to look a lot like the last one. We also knowthat one of the biggest predictors of how big the upgrade cycle will be is how much the design has changed. One thing companies can do to differentiate themselves from the pack is to push out fresh designs. They can do that because they have no real attachment to previous designs. Being detached from legacy design means you can just go for it every year.
The Honor 50 5G is one of the best looking smartphones on the market. It outclasses the looks of phones from Apple and Google. More companies are starting to step out of the shadow of the large companies and try new designs. Not all of these new designs will work out. But expect to see more phones that catch your eye in ways that phones from the big companies don’t.
Megapixel Madness
Cameras are huge with smartphones. I literally mean they are huge in size, and getting bigger all the time. The megapixel count will push beyond 50 as new sensors are now available. Smartphones will officially enter the megapixel wars left behind by the digital camera industry. Like the previous wars, this one is already being marked by misleading information. Those high megapixel counts are most generally being combined into groupings that end up being equivalent to 12 or so megapixels just like we have now. They are also being used for high zoom levels. Even so, the way we talk about phone cameras will change radically this year. No one really knows what will be released until it is released. We can hope for better service and support powered by better technical documentation. We can easily predict better designs. And we know for a fact that phone cameras are officially entering the new megapixel wars.
