The latest phone reviews have been eyebrow raising.

The just announced pixel is the same phone as last year. I know it sounds like a usual complaint, but look at the actual specs, it literally is the same phone with differences so small that hey might have passed as regional variance.

As for the Samsung, the screen can darken when looked from the side for privacy. That’s pretty much it. Price increased though.

Coupled with the current iOS situation it seems like things are… rotting. Everything in decline.

> The latest phone reviews have been eyebrow raising.

It's eyebrow raising for me in other ways.

I have a Pixel 9a and it's been quite good with really solid battery life. It's barely 6 months old and I got it new straight from Google.

A few days ago I noticed the battery started to drain much faster than usual. I also noticed at the same time Google is pushing the 10a.

Nothing changed on my end. I barely use the phone in my day to day. In 10 hours today I sent 3 text messages with Whatsapp and lost 60% of my battery in that time frame. Up until a few days ago, 60% would last me 3 days.

I find it weirdly coincidental that the battery life went from amazing to worse than a 5 year old device I had prior to this just as they are releasing new phones. I've powered it down and given it a full discharge / charge too. It's still draining at an alarming rate.

The only reason I changed my phone was because my provider stopped supporting it when migrating to 5g VoIP.

Otherwise I'd still be rocking my S9.

I'm also using a pixel 2 for Android development and Google play billing isn't supported on it.

The hardware is fine but they make it obsolete with software.

I'm guessing they'll soon move to a subscription pricing for phones.

I'm actually super fine with the hardware stagnating! Work on the yields, cut the prices, simplify and make it more robust, while keeping the spec the same. It gives developers something to focus on, like a console, so the software gets better over the life of the device, not worse.

Perhaps this could give room for physical design changes instead. I'm sick of phones that are just a slab of glass. I remember fun, weird, fashionable designs! Buttons and keyboards, phones felt like an individual choice, not just this boring black mirror. I'd take ten years of stagnation on hardware development in phones in exchange for ten years of exciting form factors with improving software. Let's face it: the spec is high enough for anything we need to be doing, by now. The software is the real problem, and there's room here for massive improvement.

Upcoming Apple display mounted to wall or robot arm is rumored to have audio interface and new OS without 3rd-party apps, only "AI".

Jony Ive at OpenAI is rumored to have smart speaker, pendant, pen and bone-conducting headset in the launch pipeline. Audio interfaces, no screens,

Meta is selling millions of smart glasses, with Apple and others following.

If the memory market was not distorted, home AI + agents + open models could have a bigger role via AMD Strix Halo. Instead, they will be reserved for those who can afford to spend five figures on 512GB or 1TB unified memory on Mac Studio Ultra devices.

OSes have been in decline for a long time. This memory price is just a blip, though. These supply and demand shocks happen periodically and always return to normal.

I think even going back a few generations, phones are improving at a much slower pace. You can only jam so many cameras onto a phone frame before users lose interest. A few years back there was a mad dash to add AR features to flagship phones so they could wow us with apps that never materialized. My last few upgrades have been almost imperceptible. Buyers just don't have a good reason to buy new phones every two years.

> Coupled with the current iOS situation it seems like things are… rotting. Everything in decline.

Just "commoditizing". Last years microwave ovens were basically the same as 2024's also, and no one cares. You still need them and people still buy them and use them as much as ever, but at a replacement rate and not because of fashion or innovation.

That is a good thing. It means the economy is doing what it's supposed to do and bringing maximal value to consumers so we can spend our resources more efficiently (on other fashion-driven junk in different market segments), making us richer.

It's only bad news if your business is selling "phones" and not innovative products more generally. Which, yeah, is pretty much AAPL's trap. But that's on them, not us. We're winning.

Don't worry, I'm sure the billions of dollars being spent on AI slop will restore consumer enthusiasm any day now...