Is anyone actually excited about the 2014 flagship phones?

[kyrax12]

It seems that smart phone technology as reached a plateau.

1. Resolution - I don't think human can see pass 1080P on a smartphone. So higher resolution won't really do much of anything except for a marketing scheme.

2. Camera- maybe relevant and intriguing. More powerful sensors with higher megapixels?

3. CPU- generally quadcore CPU is already enough. Octa-core I heard was more battery efficient. (Not too sure about this)
It seems that phones with strong CPU are still lagging because of the operating system.

4. Battery- This is what excites me. I hope battery technology advances to the point where we get 3,000+ mAH battery and a type of battery which doesn't degrade as fast long term. I highly doubt this in 2014 though.

 

[Ravynmagi]

1. Yeah, I would think the DPI race should be coming to an end for now. Phones are now in the 400 to 480 DPI area and that seems to be more than enough. Some manufactures even made intentional decisions to dial back down the DPI to 720p. I can't imagine we'll go beyond 1080 or 1200p next year.

2. I don't know much about cameras. But it seems like more megapixels isn't the solution. Cameras are pretty good for my needs at this point, so it's not something I worry about. Google needs to do a bit more with the stock camera app though.

3. Don't think we need more cores, but more powerful cores instead. I think there is always room for improvement in this area. But it would sure be nice if I didn't feel my phone heat up in my pocket just because it's checking for updates on Twitter and downloading a few emails.

4. Seems like everyone has been so busy trying to make our phones as thin as a stick of gum that they forgot about battery life. Seems like we haven't had much noticeable improvement in this area. I like with that Motorola is okay making their phones fatter to give us bigger batteries. Hopefully the anorexic race will come to an end and we can see larger batteries and more efficient designs.


For me, I'd like to see 802.11ac wireless become common in 2014.

I want to see more attention on phone speakers. Thank you HTC for getting started early. Hopefully someone can make forward facing speakers that don't require such large bezels though. However I'm okay with the download facing speakers too like on the Nexus 5.

I hope glossy plastic dies a horrible death. Glad to see Samsung didn't use that on the Note 3. Soft touch matte backs on the Moto X and Nexus 5 also look very nice, I hope to see more of that in 2014.

Something I'd love to see on phones that I don't see much is an extra button on the side. And Android allows me to define what this button does. It could be a dedicated camera button, it could be a mute or rotation toggle button.

 

[jpeyton]

1. Resolution - I don't think human can see pass 1080P on a smartphone. So higher resolution won't really do much of anything except for a marketing scheme.

Nobody is proposing anything past 1080p on a smartphone.

2. Camera- maybe relevant and intriguing. More powerful sensors with higher megapixels?

Nokia and LG already have OIS; Samsung looks to be next with the GS5. Everyone is going BSI, with faster lenses, and larger sensor areas.

3. CPU- generally quadcore CPU is already enough. Octa-core I heard was more battery efficient. (Not too sure about this)
It seems that phones with strong CPU are still lagging because of the operating system.

This shouldn't be important to most people. For most smartphone related tasks, even last year's S4 Pro was fast enough. People will be more concerned about the speed of the software experience versus the clock speed of the CPU.

4. Battery- This is what excites me. I hope battery technology advances to the point where we get 3,000+ mAH battery and a type of battery which doesn't degrade as fast long term. I highly doubt this in 2014 though.

LG already jammed a 3000 mAH into the G2.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Nobody is proposing anything past 1080p on a smartphone.

Yeah, but LG and Samsung have already demonstrated 5 inch 1440P and 1600P displays, so you never know. Haha.

 

[kyrax12]

Nobody is proposing anything past 1080p on a smartphone.


Nokia and LG already have OIS; Samsung looks to be next with the GS5. Everyone is going BSI, with faster lenses, and larger sensor areas.


This shouldn't be important to most people. For most smartphone related tasks, even last year's S4 Pro was fast enough. People will be more concerned about the speed of the software experience versus the clock speed of the CPU.


LG already jammed a 3000 mAH into the G2.

Never said anything about people proposing anything past 1080P resolution. Just that, every year's update are just specs that are enhanced.
I am just indicating why an resolution increase wouldn't spark any excitement.

For the CPU comment, I was indicating myself that the CPU is already more powerful itself. It is the O.S that needs to be improve for a more fluid mobile experience.

Lastly, I think the reason why the LG G2 has a 3,000 mAH battery was because the phone was so large. Two of 2013's flag ship phone don't have 3,000 mAH battery. S4 and the One.
It would be good to see 3,000+ mAH batteries as a norm for flagship devices in 2014.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I have a feeling instead of seeing the software get more lean and efficient, we'll see the opposite. And we'll just need the more powerful phones and processors to compensate for it. It's how Samsung and others will keep people upgrading more frequently. Seems to be working pretty good for Samsung at least.

 

[kyrax12]

I have a feeling instead of seeing the software get more lean and efficient, we'll see the opposite. And we'll just need the more powerful phones and processors to compensate for it. It's how Samsung and others will keep people upgrading more frequently. Seems to be working pretty good for Samsung at least.

I don't think the majority of Samsung's customer like the gimmicky software. Seeing as it hinders the phone's performance.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I don't think the majority of Samsung's customer like the gimmicky software. Seeing as it hinders the phone's performance.

Probably not, but Samsung is selling tons of phone and nobody else in Android is even remotely close to their success. As long as people keep buying Samsung, I dunno if they'll really make any big changes to what is working so well for them.

 

[boomhower]

I certainly am. I'm an iPhone user so the rumored larger screen has me excited. Rumored display tech change for better battery life would be nice. Otherwise not so much. My iPhone 5 is plenty fast with the 5S being faster yet. Camera I'm good with current tech for my uses.

 

[Red Storm]

We still have a long ways to go, but phones have progressed very nicely thus far.

 

[gorcorps]

Not really

The S4 Active is pretty much all the phone I need. I've kind of outgrown the desire to tweak and tinker with roms and such like I used to, so I'm not really tied to where the development community goes anymore. The only thing I'm even a little excited for is the idea of dual booting Android and windows on HTC phones.

 

[openwheel]

I am. I expect to see more dedicated processors like Motorola has done.
I am usually one to buy used midrange phones for myself, but it's always fun to see what's coming up down the pipeline.

 

[JAG87]

We need better, not bigger batteries. We should be able to use our phones heavily and not worry about making it until end of day.

 

[Red Storm]

We need better, not bigger batteries. We should be able to use our phones heavily and not worry about making it until end of day.

Some of us already can and do. :sneaky:

 

[JAG87]

Some of us already can and do. :sneaky:

Oh yea, which phone can you use heavily (like actually use for 3 or 4 hours combined out of a day) and have it last all day? Besides the Droid MAXX and third party batteries.

 

[Red Storm]

LG G2, Note 2, Note 3. And I get way more than 3 hours of use.

 

[dawheat]

LG G2, Note 2, Note 3. And I get way more than 3 hours of use.

Not sure yet on Note 3 as I haven't had it long enough, but the Note 2 was good enough to get to the end of the day on moderate use only. Heavy use on poor connections are still out of reach of most phones - though the G2 and certainly the Maxx look like good candidates.

I've gotten as little as 4 hour on-screen time with my Note 2 on poor connections and up to 6.5 hours on-screen time when mostly on wifi. Good (and literately 2X as good as my Nexus 4) but still not quite good enough.

So I agree - between smarter SOCs, power saving displays, and bigger/denser batteries - I'd really like to see a step forward in usable battery life.

 

[JAG87]

LG G2, Note 2, Note 3. And I get way more than 3 hours of use.

We're talking about phones, not phablets. Anybody can get good battery life with a huge battery. While the G2 is actually remarkable for a 5 incher, the Note 2/3 are inarguably laughable as "phones", for both size and weight.

But anyways, my point was that we shouldn't be limited to one or two devices, we need improvements in battery technology across the board.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I am. I expect to see more dedicated processors like Motorola has done.
I am usually one to buy used midrange phones for myself, but it's always fun to see what's coming up down the pipeline.

I dunno. I still don't get what the advantage of Motorola's X8 design is. Why use a dual core processor with two specialized cores that can only be used for certain tasks instead of just a quad core that can be used for those same tasks and be used for other purposes as well? At least for people that don't use those specialize functions as much (talking to their phone or weird gestures to wake up the camera app) those cores wouldn't go to waste if they were just four regular cores.

 

[SpongeBob]

We're talking about phones, not phablets. Anybody can get good battery life with a huge battery. While the G2 is actually remarkable for a 5 incher, the Note 2/3 are inarguably laughable as "phones", for both size and weight.

But anyways, my point was that we shouldn't be limited to one or two devices, we need improvements in battery technology across the board.

Improvements in battery technology would of course be better but I don't think we NEED it to achieve all day battery life. My Razr Maxx HD easily lasts a day with heavy usage. This is a 2012 phone. I don't understand why other OEMs haven't done the same thing.

 

[Lil Frier]

I wouldn't be surprised if more jumped onto the wireless charging wagon. I guess it is one of the reasons my 920 is bulky (which I actually like), but if hey can improve the needed device space for the feature, it could become a commonplace option. But really, what could people expect? all devices have just been spec improvements, that's what computers are. You can make it faster, and you can adjust the size.

The things that aren't spec-related you want aren't necessarily controllable by OEMs. Well, Android OEMs get to play with their annoying skins, and Apple controls its OS, but the actual improvements to the OS itself belong to Google and Microsoft (who will become an OEM soon enough). Other than wireless charging and the Nokia camera tech, what have we seen come about that isn't just a typical spec bump from one year to the next?

I guess those 64-bit SoCs Apple has could become commonplace, since the super-sized devices are already looking at 3 GB of RAM, meaning we're getting close to the point where 64-bit gets useful (over 4 GB of RAM). We could also see Intel and AMD enter this market, seeing as AMD has ARM chips planned for 2014 (Hierofalcon and another I can't remember). I don't know that Intel is coming with an ARM chip soon, but it would be REALLY interesting if we saw them attempt to push a Bay Trail phone, I'd enjoy that.

We'll probably just get spec bumps and phone colors, though.

 

[Mopetar]

I guess those 64-bit SoCs Apple has could become commonplace, since the super-sized devices are already looking at 3 GB of RAM, meaning we're getting close to the point where 64-bit gets useful (over 4 GB of RAM).

I believe that most (Anything that's Cortex-A15 at least) of the main SoCs being used today have 40-bit addressable memory, so there's no need to move to the 64-bit architecture on account of memory limitations.

 

[Aganazer]

I wonder if this will be like PC's have been for the last 10 years where people don't see any reason to upgrade anymore. My S4 (hell, even my older HTC Sensation) does just about everything I want to do with a phone, so I'll probably just keep it for a while.

 

[sgrinavi]

I'd really like to see the lifebook concept expanded to a windows based platform where you carry around your CPU, wiindows apps and a couple hundred gigs of storage, You could have docking stations with higher grade hardware as required.....

 

[openwheel]

I dunno. I still don't get what the advantage of Motorola's X8 design is. Why use a dual core processor with two specialized cores that can only be used for certain tasks instead of just a quad core that can be used for those same tasks and be used for other purposes as well? At least for people that don't use those specialize functions as much (talking to their phone or weird gestures to wake up the camera app) those cores wouldn't go to waste if they were just four regular cores.

Power efficient dedicated processors sip battery. Quad core ARM processors can't do everything well. Apple is already following suit with the 5S' separate dedicated processor. I think Morotola is headed in the right direction. Simnilar reason why we use GPU instead of onboard graphic.