Next Evolution in Mobile Devices

[wcowings]

With the trend in mobile phones heading towards lower cost devices, I am not looking forward to the next few years in mobile. Every day you read on these forums about the coming low cost phones. I personally am not looking forward to low cost cheaply made phones. It is like we are stepping back in time. What are your thoughts?

 

[garublador]

I don't think that cheaply made phones is what they're referring to. What people are looking for are phones that are affordable without a carrier subsidy that are still made well. We're getting to the point where if you just dial back some of the specs that are now needlessly high you can make a phone that's less expensive, still made well and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

All the low cost iPhone stuff is more important in non US markets where iDevices are super expensive.

I think that the Moto X has a hint at what will be next in smartphone devices. A super low power processor that takes care of non-critical tasks when the phone sleeps will start to be standard on upper level phones. There are all of these location services, activity recognition, voice recognition and NFC triggering that can be, and in some cases are, done that suck a battery dry becasue they have to wake up a power hungry processor. Look at all of the threads about disabling location services and Google Now to extend battery life. It makes a huge difference. If you can offload that stuff to a processor that takes minimal power you can get a bunch of extra functionality without sacrificing battery usage.