Smartphones have gotten very, very good in their current form factors. With all the effort, this means that annual smartphone releases are sufficient.
It doesn’t take long for the evidence to pile up:
- OnePlus just announced that there won’t be a OnePlus 9T (or 9T Pro) this year. That comes after there was no 8T Pro either, although an 8T did, which was rated as good, but confusing the lineup.
- In the same year, Apple moved away from its “S” releases and firmly stuck to a new flagship iPhone in September / October.
- And Samsung couldn’t distinguish its Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series enough. In 2021, only the S21 and its Galaxy Fold Z line worked, leaving the famous Note series on the bench.
It’s not hard to see why flagships stick with annual. Just as laptops and televisions only develop cautiously each year, smartphones are facing the same phase of maturity.
- Every year phones get better and better, but the level of technological maturity does not allow for big leaps within months.
- I saw this go around on Twitter via a prankster and it’s simple but true (and replace it with any other series with iPhone):
👉 OnePlus CEO Pete Lau announced “OnePlus 2.0” with an important forum post describing how Oppo and OnePlus will finally run the same operating system, with OxygenOS CEO Gary Chen now leading a joint effort that is a shared one Android 13 experience. What it means is less standalone OnePlus, more parity between Oppo and OnePlus. It’s hard to say what this might look like in 2022, 2023, and beyond.
Okay, the evidence that October 19th will be the launch date for Pixel 6 is really piling up as Techtober looks like it will apply again (Android authority).
Speaking of which, HMD Global could unveil a Nokia branded tablet on October 6th (Android authority).
📅 And in almost Techtober news, Amazon has set a date for its hardware event in 2021: September 28th. No indication of what new or updated Amazon devices will showcase it (Android authority).
📈 US officials could put Honor on the entity list that has apparently divided US government bureaucrats (Android authority).
🍎 iOS 15 is now available for iPhones all the way up to the iPhone 6S, so something that affects roughly a billion people means a lot of articles and bits and pieces about what it all means. MacStoriesAs usual, with more than 20 pages of screenshots and details on how to use new things like live text on the camera, setting focus modes, scheduling notification summaries, and so on, provides the most detailed details on what’s new. MacRumors Also includes nice and helpful details about using these new features with videos. Here is The Verge’s Review that also includes iPadOS 15 and its minor changes, suggesting that the iOS 15 updates are mostly quality of life and the iOS 14 update remains the winner lately.
📺 Netflix is rolling out a free plan in Kenya to fuel growth, with around a quarter of its paid offerings in the free version which I think is mostly the original content? (Android authority).
🚗 Tesla drivers become “inattentive” when they use autopilot, finds an MIT study. What is good when everything works fine! (Engage).
⏩ Sony’s new PS5 firmware can make your games a little faster (Ars-Technica).
🎮 Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a new PC and PlayStation 4 and 5 game that is getting great reviews (IGN).
💰 Here’s definitely 2021: Sorare is raising $ 680 million for its fantasy sports NFT game. Hm. Shall we start an NFT game ?? Here’s the idea: buy data that you think will make a difference in technology in 2022. If you are right you will receive a beautiful gold NFT star (TechCrunch).
🏍 Whoa: A radically new motorcycle design is on the track for the first time (Interesting technique).
🚰 “ELIi5: Do you get the same benefits from sleep if you had a nightmare?” (R / explainlikeimfive).