- Hey guys, this is Austin.
The other day I was having a conversation
with a couple tech YouTubers
and we all had the same realization.
Smartphones are kind of boring now.
The last decade has been absolutely incredible
in terms of smartphones.
I mean in 10 years we've gone from this, to this.
However the issue is that here in 2019
everything's kind of great already,
there's not these huge leaps that we've been accustom
over the last few years.
Now phones being good these days
is certainly not a bad thing,
but for me the wow factors kind of going away.
Now sure, there are absolutely huge designs
that really revolutionized things back in the day,
but in the last couple years?
I mean the last phone that legitimately made say, wow,
was the Oppo Find X.
And with the motorized slider, even though that was cool,
the end of the day it still wasn't
that different than other smart phones.
The formulas already kind of figured out at this point.
So I sat down with Jon Rettinger,
an absolute OG Tech YouTube, who has seen a phone,
or two, or a hundred.
- It's like phones were different.
Blackberry's had physical keyboards.
Windows Mobile had a stylus,
and there were flip phones.
There were very clear, different styles of phones
and there was different phone for different people.
Seems like now we've got, just like,
different versions of a rectangle.
So we're talking before hand and I had a question
that I wanted to ask you. - Uh-oh.
- That I wanted to wait 'til we were on camera to ask you.
- That's not good. - So, do you think
the iPhone killed phone designs?
- Yes.
- 100%, right? - Totally.
It's not even a question
because if you look at phones before the iPhone,
there's like you said, all these different weird shapes.
After the iPhone everything's a rectangle,
everything has screen.
In the last decade the screens have gotten bigger,
the phones have bigger.
But you look at the shape of a phone now
it's just a screen, right?
There's no bezels anymore,
there's generally not a lot of notches anymore.
I mean a lot of companies, there idea of differentiating
the designs is like,
"Oh, it's semi-holographic on the back."
"Oh, we've got some super shiny color."
Which is cool, but it's exciting, it's not fun.
- Nothing.
It killed design because it was so successful
and it's a me too world.
- Let's take the brand new Galaxy Note 10 for example.
I recently got to take a look at it
and there is a lot to like.
It takes the current design language from the Galaxy S10,
brings back the S Pen, stretches the screen out to the edges
and, well, that's pretty much it.
This has become more and more of a problem
for the Note line lately.
Sure, if you're really into the S Pen more power to you,
but for most people, you're probably going to be better off
sticking with the Galaxy S10.
Samsung has made the line-up confusing,
to say the least this year.
If you compare the Galaxy S10+ to the Note 10,
it is a really odd comparison.
So the Note 10 drops the headphone jack,
the standard version of the Note 10 doesn't have
a micro SD card slot and to top it all off,
even though they have very similar screen sizes,
the Note 10 has a lower full HD resolution
compared to QHD on the S10+.
Now all of this means that the Note 10 does come in
at $50 cheaper in theory, however when you actually
take a look at the Galaxy S10+,
while the MRSP is a $1000, you can very easily find it
for significantly less than that.
Which makes that Note 10 a very, very tough sell.
Now there is a brand new, higher end, Note 10+,
which does bring a lot of the major features back.
So you've got that huge 6.7 inch display
with a proper high resolution.
You have the improved DeX experience.
You get the micro SD card slot back,
even though not the headphone jack.
And you do get some other niceties,
such as faster charging,
as well as faster wireless charging.
But all this is to say, that the Note 10+
comes in at over $1,000
before you even get into the 5G model.
This is a problem for the entire smartphone industry,
but especially when you look at Samsung line-up,
it gets very confusing very quickly.
Right now they have seven flagship models,
ranging from the slightly entry priced, Galaxy S10e,
up through the Galaxy S10, the Note 10.
And if you wanna go for the bigger guys,
you have the Note 10+ and the Galaxy S10+.
And then to round it all over,
there's a 5G version of the Galaxy S10+,
as well as a 5G version of the Galaxy S10+ 5G, no sorry,
Note 10+ with 5G.
Yeah, right.
It's the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G.
I don't want to unfairly single out Samsung here,
lots of other companies do this.
For example Xiaomi sells a number of very similar phones,
in some cases they're nearly identical,
under different brands, in different parts of the world.
And even looking at Apple,
you can see that the line-up has grown
steadily over the years, from one iPhone to two
and now three, and likely four before too much longer.
It is very a case where smartphones have gotten so similar
there only real way of differentiating
is small little tweaks of,
oh, this ones a little bit smaller.
This ones a little bit bigger.
This one has one extra feature.
Just to keep interested and mostly importantly,
keeping people upgrading.
- What's the difference between phones year over year?
Okay, so, you get in-screen fingerprint reader,
that's different. - Yep.
- You've got a face unlock, that's different.
But once you have those things, where do you go from there?
- We're seeing like, I mean, I think the last couple years
kinda felt like it was a accelerated endpoint
for the huge development, right?
So we went from bezels to slightly smaller bezels,
to smaller, to notch, to gone.
- Yeah. - That kind of
disappeared very quickly.
The finger print sensor went from, oh,
it's kinda on the home button to the back
to the side to the screen, right?
Face ID went from this huge thing to smaller to smaller.
We've got pop-up selfie cameras.
A lot of things that kinda felt the end times of like,
okay cool, let's make this thing the purest version
of the rectangle we can.
But now that we've hit it, it's like, okay,
and now you're going to do what?
Bigger battery, you're gonna make it thicker.
You're going to give it brighter screen.
I mean there's obviously innovation and there's iteration,
but the actual smartphone as it exists now,
I can't see it as going that much farther
before you go to folding phones
or you to go something which is completely different
and you tear up the playbook.
And I'm sure that companies
will try. - Yeah.
- I'm sure we'll see some wacky designs every year or two.
It's like, oh, this thing is a half folding, half flat phone
or whatever the case.
But the design as it is right now, is not really changing
and people don't need to upgrade as much.
Which I think is a huge problem for these companies,
as the smartphone space really reaches maturity
and reaches saturation,
that almost everyone who want's a smartphone
has already bought one.
To show just how similar smartphones are,
we're going to play a little game called
guess the smartphone.
I will be blindfolded and Ken will give me
a variety of smartphones, new and old, to see if I can
tell if there's any difference between them.
Spoiler alert, probably not.
All right, smartphone number one.
Well I immediately feel a vertical camera.
I mean, I would say that this is an iPhone.
It's got the same rounded edges.
I'm gonna guess iPhone XS Max.
- Yes. (bell dings)
- Hey!
All right, next?
This one's got a little more heft to it.
Oh, so we've got a headphone jack.
Okay, that's something right there.
No, I'm gonna say it's a Honor phone of some variety.
- [Ken] No. (Buzzer blares)
- What is it?
- [Ken] RedMi Note 7.
- Ah, the Note 7.
Okay, all right,
Fair enough, fair enough.
Oh, okay, this is chunkier.
Glass.
Finger print sensor on the back.
The closest thing I can think is maybe the Nokia 9,
but I'm not really sure.
(buzzer blares)
- [Ken] It is the Nokia, LG G8 ThinQ.
- Wait, what?
This is the G8?
- Yeah. - Why did you say Nokia?
Oh, there's a headphone jack,
I didn't feel the headphone jack.
Ah!
How is Nokia close to LG?
- [Ken] It's not.
- You're just trolling me. - Don't think about it.
- Okay.
Big phone, fairly light.
Ooh, we've got a physical button here.
Wow, I mean, that's a giveaway,
I wonder what phone this might be.
Oh, we've got it, is that finger print sensor right here?
Hmm, this is a Note 8.
I'm gonna say Note 8.
- [Ken] It's a Galaxy Note 7.
- This a 7? (buzzer blares)
(Austin moans) (Austin groans)
Take this back, I don't want this.
Tryna kill me over here.
Oh, this is a big boy.
This has gotta be Razer Phone.
- Yeah. - Definitely Razer Phone.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the thing, Razer Phone 2 right?
- Yes. - Yeah.
That's a big boy right here.
- Okay, Oh, that's a big boy.
Heavy.
Ooh, I'm feeling like a ridge here.
Ah, this has gotta ROG Phone, right?
- Yeah. (bell dings)
- Yeah, 'cause you can feel like, with the fake vents here.
Man, that's hefty.
Gaming phones, like the Razer Phone,
are a good example of how this should work,
but it kind of doesn't in the mobile space right now.
Now there are some legitimately gaming focused features
which I like on the Razer Phone.
High refresh rate, great audio.
But the underlying processor,
the underlying actual capability,
really isn't all that different than a much thinner,
much lighter, and in some cases, much cheaper smartphone
based on those same specs.
I mean sure, the marketing and the RGB is there
and for some people that's enough.
When it comes to a legitimate, different smartphone,
you're getting almost the exact same experience
as pretty much any other flagship out there.
And that's kind of a problem as far as I'm concerned.
When you look at the PC space, there are hundreds,
if not thousands of different models to choose to from,
and the differences here are actually really substantial.
So if you're picking up a thin and light 2-in-1,
it is a very, very different system
than a beefy over the top gaming laptop.
Not only in price of course,
as well as stuff like portability,
but importantly in the actual capability.
All smartphones, especially on the high end,
kind of do the same thing and very similar performance,
very similar specs.
Where in the PC space we have lots of different options,
lots of different choice and meaningful differences
in what these systems can actually do.
A gaming laptop has a very different
feature set than a thin light one.
And it's sort of the way that the PC space has developed,
that the smartphone space kind of hasn't.
It's all very homogenous, it's all very similar.
Where we're starting to see an actual difference
is with folding phones.
Now yes, they may have not had
the smoothest launch in the world,
however I do think there is an absolute ton of potential
and if five years from now
we're looking back at this moment,
I do think phones such as the Galaxy Fold
will be the first of the next generation of smartphones
that become standard.
Or it's a complete failure and we all give up
and go to a super thin phone from Black Mirror.
But you know, time will tell.
- I'm a Galaxy fold owner, like I loved that phone so much.
I don't care they had problems.
I think if they had just called
the Galaxy Fold Developer Edition.
- Good idea.
- Just call it Developer Edition,
there would of been zero problems.
But using that, that was the first time
since the older phones, where you saw something different.
Opening up Twitter on the front screen, or Instagram,
and then opening that up and having a bigger experience.
Go to the gym and you're watching Netflix,
you can open it and have a bigger screen
without having to carry an iPad.
That was something different
that I think was different with a purpose,
instead of different just for like,
- Not gimmicky. - look at us.
- Yeah. - The Blackberry Passport,
why'd you make it square?
That's weird, what pockets are gonna fit a square?
But it was different. - Yeah.
- But it was weirdly different.
- It was different for no reason.
- Yeah. - No, I totally agree
and think it's a really interesting thing to think about.
I'm curious to see what the final evolution of this is
because if you look at the iPhone, right?
You compare the iPhone to even the iPhone of today,
you can see it's similar.
But it's obviously a lot thinner,
you've got a much larger screen,
there's a huge evolution there
and I'm curious to see how far
something like a folding phone can be pushed.
Because obviously there are fundamental issues
of like, when you make it so thin is it gonna rip?
Or is it gonna - Yeah.
- break or whatever?
You can only imagine it can go so far, but how far is it?
Is it 20% thinner?
Is it half as thin?
Is the screen twice as big?
I don't know what that final iteration looks like,
but I'd like to think that if it's something
that people are really into that it will continue
to get better and better.
- I think consumers, and I'm lumping myself in there,
are so fickle, and we're all such hypocrites,
- Yeah. - about things we want
and don't want.
And in a couple years we're gonna give you
something crazy cool.
(moans) "I don't know, its a little thick."
This folding phone that I have in my pocket.
Or like, it's so amazing that these things
are even existing and I guess I worry that,
and again, being part of the part that,
we're too critical that it starts to stymie innovation.
- I mean let's face it,
we're talking about rectangular slabs of glass and metal.
Now because phones are so good these days
because 95% of phones can do absolutely everything
that a person needs.
Really the only differences that we're truly seeing is like,
oh look, the cameras a little bit better
or there's slightly more performance or maybe we have
one added little feature which is all great,
which is all stuff that I wanna see,
but does it get me excited?
Does it get people amped and ready to upgrade their phone?
No it doesn't.
What it does, is it means
the people who own smartphones today,
are not gonna just hold to them for a year
or two years, but they'll use them for three, four,
maybe even five years and that is absolutely coming back
to hurt these companies.
They rely on people buying phones on a regular basis
and if they can't make these upgrades sexy and interesting,
then their sales are going to continue to fall.
I mean everyone has a smartphone
or almost everyone has a smartphone at this point,
so really, the only growth opportunity for most companies
is to keep people on that upgrade cycle.
Keep 'em on the hamster wheel, keep 'em moving
and buying that new iPhone every year,
'cause if not, say goodbye to those sweet sweet profits.