Techdirt Podcast Episode 132: Is There Any Smartphone Innovation Left?

from the not-so-smart-anymore? dept

Smartphones have been one of the most world-changing innovations of our time — and for a long time, smartphone design was a hotbed of innovation. But more recently that innovation seems to have stagnated. So where does this technology go next? That's the subject of this weeks episode, in which we try to figure out whether smartphone innovation is still happening.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: innovation, podcast, smartphones, technology


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Thad, 1 Aug 2017 @ 3:28pm

    Google's allegedly working on a new, non-Linux-based mobile OS, though I'm not sure they intend for it to look much different from Android to end users.

    I think there's a lot of niche potential for user-serviceable phones like the Fairphone, and GNU-based phones like Ubuntu Touch (abandoned by Canonical but still under development by the UBports community, and fairly mature), Plasma Mobile, and (I think?) Sailfish. I don't think it's likely that a new OS will break through the Apple/Google duopoly, but they could occupy a similar enthusiast niche to what Linux does on the desktop.

    That stuff's all evolutionary rather than revolutionary, though. As for any major shifts in how we use phones...well, if I knew that I'd be working on those projects myself.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    DB (profile), 1 Aug 2017 @ 5:46pm

    There are a huge number of potential innovations on the horizon. Many are based around spacial sensors and image processing -- stereoscopic vision, time-of-flight sensors, IR imagers, etc. Gesture recognition might become interesting, or entirely news ways of interacting with the device might become suddenly popular. Eye,and even focus tracking might become input methods.

    Who knows, after more than a century, typing might be gone in the blink of an eye.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.