Once upon a time, smartphone presentations were like football finals. We used to discuss megapixels, gigahertz, even logos on the case. And now? Now the new Galaxy is like a new stapler in the office. It's there and it's good.
No one expects anything anymore
Apple shows a "thinner" iPhone. Samsung reduces the thickness of the folding lid by another half a millimetre. Xiaomi (conditionally) invents another "revolutionary" sensor that measures the level of inspiration in the blood. But it feels like updating a folder with icons. Nothing has changed.
Fractions of a millimetre as a symbol of modern senselessness
The idea of making smartphones thinner is as necessary as making bricks more round. Nobody feels 7.6 mm versus 7.4 mm, except for engineers who sleep with it. But everyone feels that the battery is smaller, and the cost of a protective case will be added to the additional cost of a "fashionable thin smartphone". Is this progress? Well, no. It's just marketing and corporations' attempts to increase profits for shareholders amidst industry stagnation and a lack of breakthrough innovations. No CEO is tasked with reducing profits this year - only increasing them. But how? So they come up with unnecessary, unnecessary things that no one needs, for which they can charge a little extra money. Consumerism as it is.
Artificial intelligence is also just noise in the pipes
"Now with AI!" marketers shout. And you open your phone, and it's the same phone you had last year. These neural networks are not in the smartphone. They are in the cloud. Your entire "AI camera" is just a good old-fashioned auto-filter that used to work on trained neural networks, but no one focused on it. ChatGPT also works on Galaxy S9. So why buy the S25 Ultra? It's definitely not for AI.
This is not stagnation. This is digital necrosis.
The smartphone market is no longer developing - it is rotting while carrying the burden of PR illusions. No one is counting the days until the announcement of a new smartphone. No one is waiting for a breakthrough. Everyone just wants the battery to last longer and the glass to not break on the first drop.
And now what?
Nothing. Smartphones are here to stay. They will be with us for a long time. Perhaps always. But it's like a microwave: everyone uses them every day, but no one reads their reviews.
Drink your coffee. And don't expect anything interesting from smartphones anymore.
For those who want to know more
Co-founder and editor-in-chief of gagadget.com. Graduated from the Journalism Department of Kyiv National University in 1998. I made my first publications in mass media in my school years (there were still newspapers then). Observed the evolution of smartphones in the front row since Nokia 7650 on Symbian. Since 2002 he has specialized in the topic of smartphones, mobile communications and analysis of the development of the consumer electronics market.
