[kapnobatairza]

Echoing some of the other comments on this story, we've reached a point where the marginal return on value for upgrading your phone is very low at the moment. From a design perspective, the thin bezelless/buttonless slate makes it difficult to differentiate your product. The apps you use will be the same and will more or less run the same, since mobile applications are rarely bottlenecked by the CPU. Any improvements in camera quality are almost imperceptible. Same with screen/display quality. What is the incentive to upgrade?

It is possible that the "smartphone" form factor has become a commodity and the market is overly saturated with products. I think we won't see another consumer electronics explosion until other form factors start to become more ubiquitous (smartwatch, smart AR/VR HMDs, actually smart TVs, smart speakers, smart automobile infotainment, etc.). Specifically, I think smart HMDs are going to be the future once chipset and battery technology are advanced enough to make them sexy.

[clairity]

> "From a design perspective, the thin bezelless/buttonless slate makes it difficult to differentiate your product."

this plays directly into apple's strengths (build quality, UX, etc.), and i'd be very impressed if it had been a conscious strategy employed by apple over the years (apple still captures the majority of industry profits). by collapsing the feature space along (roughly) one dimension, it's easier for consumers to recognize the premium positioning of apple's iphones.

[jobigoud]

A few month ago the foldable screens were hyped like crazy. Maybe it was too soon but it could be another differentiator if done well.