How much can companies improve a smartphone in one year? Does the industry really need it? The new flagship phones launched every year are standard in the smartphone industry. The only question is, what is the purpose, besides filling the producers’ pockets? The new iPhone from Apple, Galaxy from Samsung or the V series from LG appears every year. These are flagship phones, that is, the fastest, best and the most expensive phones of a given manufacturer. LG slowly breaks out of this trend and announced that it will no longer launch new phones every year, and only when it is needed or will have something interesting to present. LG’s Vice Chairman, Jo Seong-jin said:
“We will unveil new smartphones when it is needed. But we will not launch it just because other rivals do. We plan to retain existing models longer by, for instance, unveiling more variant models of the G series or V series.”
Designing a new smartphone model is certainly not an easy process. It is necessary to design a new graphics processor, a new CPU as well as most of the components that make up the smartphone. And then you have to start production of all these components and assemble them. And all this in one year! This means more or less that when a new iPhone or Samsung Galaxy has a premiere, they already know what the next model will feature, and maybe the production process has already begun. The question should be asked whether we need it, and whether it is necessary to spend a thousand dollars a year on the phone, which is several percent faster than the predecessor. It is worth mentioning that if there were no software updates that slow down older phones, we would not have noticed a difference in performance.
The last affair with Apple and slowing down of older iPhones has proven that the companies force us to buy a new model in a very cunning way. Apple under the pretext of saving battery life in older models began to slow them down through software updates. I wonder how many people were fooled and actually believed that their smartphone has become too slow after just one year. On a global scale, probably millions.
Sources:
- https://www.androidcentral.com/lg-will-stop-releasing-new-phones-every-year
- https://android.com.pl/news/107561-lg-nowe-smartfony-premiera-nie-beda-wydawane-regularnie
A well-written article about what is going to happen in such a short span of time.
Hi Szymon, I have to agree with you on some points that you mentioned. At the beginning Yes it’s totally true that Big companies like Apple, Samsung etc. forced us to buy a new phone every year. Why? Because each of us want to have something the best, one can afford the best car, the other is no a tech or car freak and want to have the best quality furniture’s, I think that those companies use it and it is somehow in our nature, that we want to have the best things. The last scandal with Apple is in my opinion not ethical move of the company and they should take responsibility for that.
Concerning the tech part of that topic. I think that such releasing of new iPhone or Samsung every year, from the other hand exert pressure on all the other companies to work more on their technology so it supposed to keep the technology moving forward even if those changes are small.
Norbert, I totally agree that Apple’s move was not ethical and they should pay for it, enough to stop such practices in the future. Interesting view that releasing new phone enhances technology development, more or less you are right.