The Best Smartphone War: Are we really getting smarter?

There was a time, not so long ago, in the early and mid-2000 when phones used to come equipped with complete physical alpha-numeric keypads and a smartphone meant a good camera phone with 'decent' hardware. In 2005, Nokia introduced the N-series as a successor to the Nokia 6260. The N90 was then the talk of the town with its '2 megapixel' camera and Carl Zeiss lens, Symbian OS, 31 MB of built-in memory , no radio, 2.1 inch TFT Screen and a folding transformer camcorder-like design commanding a price tag of several hundred Dollars . This was followed by the N70, N93, N73  and so on in 2006 which had features which can be considered negligible in present times. 

The N Series continued to flourish in the smartphone segment with regular releases of feature enhanced phones in all possible shapes. The Nokia Communicator series which was like a small booklet having double screen and a sizeable complete QWERTY keypad found popularity with business customers in the form of Nokia 9300, 9500 etc. and rivaled the older blackberry devices to an extent.

Nokia at the time even had the largest market share in the smartphone segment. This was until Steve Job's Apple Inc. came up with the iPhone.

In 2007, when Samsung was an unknown player in the industry, Apple came up with a phone which revolutionized the smartphone experience. It was not the case that touchscreen phones did not exist before the iPhone but the ultra-sensitive feather touch (And not press!), the smooth user interface with the iOS took the tech world by storm. Sleek and slender looks and the popularization of "Apps" as we know them started biting into the competitor's market shares and crowned Apple as the king of smartphones with dedicated fans from its other products. While Apple's simplicity attracted the masses, Blackberry's push mail found love with businessmen and Nokia's reliability and durability was chipping in the third place. In around 2008, Android, an open-sourced Operating system for mobile devices was launched by Google to compete with Symbian and iOS. It was initially met with lukewarm response but constant improvements and it's open and customizable nature meant that it was adopted by various phone manufacturers Acer, ASUS, HTC, LG, Motorola, Panasonic, Samsung, SONY, DELL, Huawei etc. All these phone manufacturers jumped into the smartphone market to have a piece of the pie with their versions of Android running touch smartphones sprinkled with advanced hardware and 'unique' software features. Some were hugely successful with customers such as HTC, Samsung, LG etc. and others such as Dell, Acer etc. which were unsuccessful. The touchscreen revolution was so strong that Research in Motion Ltd. (now Blackberry Ltd.) which was resting on its previous laurels and chose to stick on the tried and tested Blackberry OS, Blackberry Messenger and QWERTY keypad failed miserably. In 2012, when the sleeping beauty Blackberry finally understood the market wanted touchscreen phones that provided greater flexibility and could be switched from a business phone to a multimedia monster and back again in no time, It was too late. In 2013, the launch of the Blackberry Z10 touchscreen smartphone was seen as a poor emulation of other phones which were already market leaders. Nokia's Symbian Operating System suffered a similar fate for it's uninteresting and relatively cumbersome UI and had to be abandoned after the last NSeries phone the N8. In 2010 Nokia tried to partner with Intel to launch a new Linux-based mobile operating system- 'MeeGo'. The OS was slammed by customers as well and was a short-lived failure. In 2011 Nokia partnered with Microsoft to run Windows OS on its phones and the launch of the Nokia Lumia series gave Nokia some respite in terms of increased sales and overall appeal of their smartphones. Nevertheless, Nokia too was unsuccessful in winning the gamble in the long run and was eventually bought by the tech-giant Microsoft as a slightly expensive grocery item for US$ 7.2 Billion in September 2013. 

So it boils down to 2 Operating systems which are ruling the roost till date. It is Google's Android and Apple's iOS with Windows OS settling in for the third place. To be more specific it is the clash between the most prominent smartphone manufacturers of present times: Samsung and Apple who are fiercely competing with each other till date for the top spot and the former holding it (for now). HTC, LG, SONY and Motorola (After Google's acquisition)  too can't be underestimated by any means. I would not speak much about the Nokia Lumia series here.

Who could have predicted that Apple would go out of the way to make colourful smartphones in the shape of iPhone 5C or go gold with the iPhone 5S. It discontinued outright it's 'successful' flagship iPhone 5 in just 9 months after its release and launched not one but two phones simultaneously. That's very unconventional by Apple standards. The case is similar with Samsung. Samsung launched the Samsung Galaxy S4 after a year of S3's launch. After the initial success of the much hyped S4 came the nauseating slurry of Samsung Galaxy devices being launched in confusingly quick succession the S4 Zoom, the S4 Mini, the Galaxy Mega and so on and most recently the Galaxy Note 3. 

Frequent Flagship smartphone releases with an interval of less than 6 months to 8 months has become the norm. The result is customers being bombarded with more and more smartphones to choose from. There is sudden, quick and continuous drop in existing smartphone prices week by week. A phone releases at a ridiculously high price making the manufacturer 60-70% margin on the cost of production.  For example an iPhone 5 costs US$200 to manufacture while the 5S costs slightly higher than that to build. The price drops in one one month and even further by the first quarter of the release date. And the cycle goes on ad infinitum. Eventually the phone is outdated and forgotten rather quickly for the price it is purchased for. The same is the case with the Galaxy S4. 

Is it really innovation? Hoarding of technology: relying on the same popular operating system with updates, increasing camera capabilities slightly with every new model, putting a 'new and improved' processor every few months with a model launch and bundling all that with a few extra never -heard-of features, tweaking the RAM, installing a new chipset, experimenting with different screen-sizes Ex. 4.8 inch in the Galaxy S3 to 5 inch in the S4 to 5.5 inch in the Note 3 to an outrageously large 6.3 inch in the Galaxy Mega to just 4 inches in the Apple 5/5C/5S from 3.5 inches in the 4/4S. Also there is a racist approach, openly followed by smartphone manufacturers nowadays in terms of differential release dates region-wise and the bigger problem is that of reduced features in some markets for instance, no 4G LTE version of the Galaxy S4, No Facetime in Apple iPhones and no 4K Video recording capabilities in the Galaxy Note 3, slower processors for South Asian markets like India etc.  in products shipped these countries. In the competition to reduce costs and increase profit margins, manufacturers are shying away from using premium materials to produce their phones. While the plastic body of the Galaxy S4 was a surprise was a shock at the high price point the phone is placed at. The relatively poor call quality (the main function of any 'phone') in the S4, no Xenon flash, no Carl Zeiss Optics for the camera. Not to forget the flop show of the iPhone 5C with it's plastic casing or the faux champagne gold colour in the iPhone 5S Gold. Customers are in short just getting minor upgrades with each passing smartphone and each suffers a very high obsolescence rate. As far as I am concerned, that's a big NO unless you are too keen.

This begs the question: Why will a person already having a well-functioning perfectly good smartphone which released less than a year back upgrade to a marginally better new phone which is on the market now. The answers are many: Smartphones serve these days as status symbols of wealth rivaling luxury watches to some extent  but the easy availability of Chinese clone phones like the HDC S4, though not in wide circulation thankfully, which are shockingly close to the real thing defeats the purpose coupled with fast ageing of the genuine phones which become outdated before you can say- floccinaucinihilipilification. Another reason could be peer-pressure and wanting to stay technologically up-to-date to fit in your social group. All this topped with innovative marketing techniques and aggressive advertising of the smartphones through TV, Internet, Print Media and News channels means you cannot escape the urge and start desiring 'revolutionary' features which you didn't know existed and you were doing well enough without remotely feeling their need until yesterday. 

Think. Does a new smartphone released every now and then really make your life simpler as claimed? or Does it make it more complex by having to upgrade unnecessarily and getting used to a new device? And need I even mention the battery issues we face with these devices? So, I feel you should hold on to your dear smartphone, if it is good enough, until these smartphone wars get over if you want to be smart with your money. Let the storm pass. Let me also remind you of the laptop wars of the past, which proves that nothing lasts for eternity. My advice to you will be to be smart and suave, don't get carried away and don't get controlled by smartphones, control your smartphone instead! 

By Kazim