When will the smartphone market shake-out?

[Midwayman]

the problem is that there is no competition when the phone market is controlled by the carriers. phones should already be $300-400 retail

Some are. However just look at the international unlocked market. They don't have the same issues we have in the US and typically the phones are going for several hundred under carrier MSRP.

 

[ahgem2000]

enlightening

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Well it's easy to say that now, but we don't know where we'll be in two years. Smart phones have a long ways to go to even match yesterday's desktop performance.

Well software only uses so much resources unless you expect them to keep bloating it up.

The issue with Android was that it wasn't optimized and that 600mhz, 1ghz phones were not sufficient. That's why when we jumped to dual core it was still like oh my god my phone is usable now. The 4=>4s change wasn't that big because iOS is more resource efficient.

But even with Android I think we're at a place where quad is nice but it isn't going to be that big of a difference. You can see it being faster, but it's not the difference between usable and slow as hell.

Thus even on my SGS2, I don't feel that far behind my gf's SGS3. She feels my phone is rock solid and fast as hell at times. Maybe because I'm rocking CM9 and a custom kernel (can't wait til CM10 gets the hwcomposer fixed and mem leak resolved). I could upgrade but at that point I'm upgrading for the larger screen and nothing more.

 

[dagamer34]

Well software only uses so much resources unless you expect them to keep bloating it up.

The issue with Android was that it wasn't optimized and that 600mhz, 1ghz phones were not sufficient. That's why when we jumped to dual core it was still like oh my god my phone is usable now. The 4=>4s change wasn't that big because iOS is more resource efficient.

But even with Android I think we're at a place where quad is nice but it isn't going to be that big of a difference. You can see it being faster, but it's not the difference between usable and slow as hell.

Thus even on my SGS2, I don't feel that far behind my gf's SGS3. She feels my phone is rock solid and fast as hell at times. Maybe because I'm rocking CM9 and a custom kernel (can't wait til CM10 gets the hwcomposer fixed and mem leak resolved). I could upgrade but at that point I'm upgrading for the larger screen and nothing more.

You should keep in mind that at the same time CPU and GPU power were improving, screen resolution was almost doubling every two years, going from 480x320 in 2008, to 800x480 in 2010, and finally 1280x720 in 2012. Android has gotten "good enough" since we aren't really expected to higher than that (there might be a 1080p panel in a phone this year, but I consider that to be a fool's errand).

 

[Sureshot324]

Some are. However just look at the international unlocked market. They don't have the same issues we have in the US and typically the phones are going for several hundred under carrier MSRP.

Link? Are these phones using older hardware?