It's not a "commodity", it's nearly 30 years of engineering that would take a multi-billion dollar investment to even come close to replicating. If it's so replaceable, why does everyone (except Apple) use Linux? When was the last time you bought an IOT device that ran, say, QNX?
All software is "just plumbing". The shiny-shiny on top is the mere tip of the iceberg and not what makes everything, you know, actually work.
it certainly touches the end user the moment they try to use the device for productivity and realize where the walls of the garden were established. But at that point maybe they're not a "user" anymore.
The whole phone will be a commodity soon if it's not already. When was the last time something felt like a significant innovation/differentiator in a phone?
(Personally I haven't been excited about a new phone feature since the S7's notification LED - and that apparently wasn't important enough to keep in newer versions).
Cameras and the accompanying image processing software have been getting exceptionally good. Not that I'm personally excited about these, but I think it deserves recognition.
Meh. I took some photos with a 10-year-old digicam a couple of weeks ago and it was much the same "marginally nicer than my phone" experience that it was when phones started getting cameras. Thank goodness I could get away from that horrible fake bokeh that recent phones do. I will admit that HDR support can be pretty nice.
Low light performance is also very nice in some phones. But what I'd like to emphasize is how automatic it all is. Surely someone with an entry level DSLR and a bit of Lightroom know-how can outperform an iPhone 11, but it's work to carry it around and apply the postprocessing afterwards, while on the phone it's just a few taps. So what I'd like to say is that it's not an achievement in imaging, but a big leap forward in automation.
All software is "just plumbing". The shiny-shiny on top is the mere tip of the iceberg and not what makes everything, you know, actually work.