When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone back in January of 2007, many of us responded with a snicker.
"Touchscreen keyboard? That's going to be a pain to use."
"So expensive."
"Who's going to build apps for this thing?"
My, how wrong we were. The iPhone paved the way for the modern smartphone, which is now so ubiquitous and crucial to our daily lives, it's hard to imagine life before it. I'm no fan of Apple (as regular readers have probably noticed long ago), but Steve Jobs really did change the world.
This year has been a particularly eventful one for smartphones, in terms of both good and bad. We got a major PR/business disaster that also shone light on the dangers of lithium batteries (Samsung Galaxy Note 7); the first real bezel-less phone (Xiaomi Mi Mix); a "new" iPhone that scrapped the long-used headphone jack (iPhone 7); Google's first supposedly self-made phone (the Pixel). I say "supposedly" because as much as Google's marketing want to spin it, the phone is still made by HTC and contains many of the Taiwanese phonemaker's DNA), etc.
But the market has also become so saturated that it seems like there's a new phone release every other week. The thing is, this is not necessarily a bad thing to consumers, because just about every company has gotten really good at making smartphones. Back in, say, 2012, you could only trust the big names for a quality phone, but not in 2016. This is why it bugs me so much that mainstream media in the west (I'm talking about the general news sites, not the dedicated tech sites, which mostly do a great job) write about Apple and Samsung phones as if they're the only two players in the game.
Read Article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bensin/2016/12/14/the-best-smartphones-of-2016-ranked-except-the-pixel/#78dbca696b34
"Touchscreen keyboard? That's going to be a pain to use."
"So expensive."
"Who's going to build apps for this thing?"
My, how wrong we were. The iPhone paved the way for the modern smartphone, which is now so ubiquitous and crucial to our daily lives, it's hard to imagine life before it. I'm no fan of Apple (as regular readers have probably noticed long ago), but Steve Jobs really did change the world.
This year has been a particularly eventful one for smartphones, in terms of both good and bad. We got a major PR/business disaster that also shone light on the dangers of lithium batteries (Samsung Galaxy Note 7); the first real bezel-less phone (Xiaomi Mi Mix); a "new" iPhone that scrapped the long-used headphone jack (iPhone 7); Google's first supposedly self-made phone (the Pixel). I say "supposedly" because as much as Google's marketing want to spin it, the phone is still made by HTC and contains many of the Taiwanese phonemaker's DNA), etc.
But the market has also become so saturated that it seems like there's a new phone release every other week. The thing is, this is not necessarily a bad thing to consumers, because just about every company has gotten really good at making smartphones. Back in, say, 2012, you could only trust the big names for a quality phone, but not in 2016. This is why it bugs me so much that mainstream media in the west (I'm talking about the general news sites, not the dedicated tech sites, which mostly do a great job) write about Apple and Samsung phones as if they're the only two players in the game.
Read Article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bensin/2016/12/14/the-best-smartphones-of-2016-ranked-except-the-pixel/#78dbca696b34