Outsmarted by Our Smartphones?
As phones get thinner and smarter, people seem to get fatter--and more foolish. The unfortunate and uncomfortable truth is that technology is usually only as good as its user.
To employ an analog metaphor in a digital age, you can lead a horse to the water but you can’t make him drink it. Just as a book whose covers are too far apart is intimidating to read, smartphones today pack in far more than what users bother to do with them.
That’s because smartphones have become grand weapons of mass delusion. Forget Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field, smartphone makers have us bedazzled and bewitched with one single word: ‘specifications’.
Octa-core, quad-core, all that bam-bam about RAM, a camera with mushrooming megapixels, and an alphabet soup of abbreviations and contractions – DLNA, MHL, GLONASS, A2DP, EDR, LE.
Everything to provide a tectonic shift in usage patterns, eh? Maybe, but to what end, o ye Stalwarts of Siliconia?
Out of Whack Modernity
Old ways don’t open new doors. Tech hacks, pundits and writers may whoop and gasp at the Next Big Thing.
But isn’t most of the stuffing in these totems of modernity quite of out of whack with what people actually use? And really want?
What good is a Qualcomm 820 processor if all one is going to do is check mail, forward Whatsapp messages, and snoop around on FB?
To what purpose is that convoluted camera interface with hazzar features when people persevere in shooting videos in portrait mode and couldn’t care a whit about aspect ratios or aperture?
Technology vectors are one thing, ground realities quite another. Circa 2015, so complex is the smartphone beast, that angels fear to tread near most features.
Functions not only remain exploited but simply unexplored. Take Apple Pay. (You’ll hear the tech savvy crowing about it even though it’s yet to reach Indian shores.)
In the US, Apple Pay has been around for almost 10 months and over 700,000 retail locations as well as more than a 100 banks support it.
Yet, according to data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, a leading consumer knowledge and insights firm, barely 15 percent of iPhone 6 users have actually tried Apple Pay.
Call that an extreme example if you will. To me, it signifies a case where the technology is ready, but the user is not. Or perhaps doesn’t need it. Not yet. And that’s how the cookie is increasingly crumbling these days.
Roti, Kapra, aur Makaan
Before getting our knickers in a twist about gigahertz, octa-cores and megapixels, why can’t phone makers go back to the basics and revisit the “roti-kapra-makaan” of phones? That’s elementary things like battery life, water resistance and security.
Smartphones have been around for almost 15 years now if you take the first Palm and BlackBerry into reckoning. And yet many of us still struggle to keep our smartphone afloat for a day. Why? Battery life, if anything has gone down in the past few years instead of going up.
Yes, the displays are delightfully big, bright and beautiful, processors zip, devices are slim and svelte, and usage has increased manifold. Fine. Yet in this scramble for bigger-thinner-faster, it’s the battery that takes a hit.
Studies show the average annual gain in battery capacity for smartphones at current levels of R&D is a mingy six percent.
If battery tech had seen the interest, investment and development that microelectronics has in the last few decades, by now we’d have car batteries the size of one rupee coins.
And isn’t it shameful that all smartphones aren’t water resistant in this day and age?
Come on, if a 12K Moto G (3rd Gen) can withstand immersion in up to 3 feet of water for up to 30 minutes, why can’t the ones that cost bigger bucks?
Nay, it’s about time every darn phone over Rs.10,000 was water resistant without costing a paisa extra.
(Ashish Bhatia is an independent technology writer and columnist. Apart from The Quint, he contributes for Financial Chronicle, Mint, Platinum, and The Telegraph. Prior to this, he was a tech columnist for the Hindustan Times and the editor of PC World India.)
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