The Effect of a Technological Plateau on our Smartphones
Moore’s law is a prediction made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years.
Though physical limitations of molecular size have put a damper on this prediction recently, the general idea – that computers will keep growing more powerful, remains mostly true. There is a limit here, however, that computing in the modern age is increasingly bumping up against.
Smartphone Reach and Scope
Like internet speeds, smartphones have spent most of their existence up until this point playing catchup. The first smartphones, popularized by the iPhone 1 in 2007 were capable, though limited by today’s standards. Still, they could accomplish many of the same things as a PC and Mac on the go, which was impressive.
Over time, the improving technology within smartphones became many hundreds of times more powerful. The feats which used to struggle eventually became standard, and this introduced an issue.
Eventually, we reached a point where almost all users see no benefit from further increased speeds. If the tech can already accomplish everything in less than a second, why bother paying enormous costs for a new phone that’s a fraction of a second faster? Without this goal, where do we go?
Positive Changes to the Smartphone Ecosystem
With technology no longer requiring enormous steps to achieve functionality, many app developers have set their sights on better consistency and usability between platforms. The online casino arena is a perfect illustration of this direction, as seen with the New Jersey online casino service.
Casinos like this originally started on more powerful PCs, but have since taken their games and features like deposit matches and free spins to the mobile space. This is possible because of the increased processing power of smartphones, which properly leveraged by optimized apps, means caring developers can offer top-rate experiences no matter the system. In theory, most software developers for smartphones could take a similar direction.
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Potential Concerns
Potential issues creep in here from two main concerns. The first is that software developers could use the increased power of modern smartphones to avoid optimizing their code. This results in less than perfect performance even on incredibly powerful devices, and it’s an issue we’ve seen repeated many times already in the smartphone and desktop computing spaces.
The other concern is that despite plateauing technology meaning lower hardware costs, many hardware manufacturers won’t lower their prices. Apple, for example, is expected to release a flagship phone of a certain cost. Reaching this price level might mean overcharging, or implementing hardware that is already massively beyond the point of diminishing returns. In these cases, consumers and their wallets miss out.
Our big hope for the coming generation of mobile phones is that increasingly more hardware developers embrace cost-effective yet still powerful designs. This would have to be backed by increasing pressure on developers to optimize their apps, resulting in better usability and lower costs for all smartphone users. These are real possibilities for the first time in smartphone history, but whether a market built on overconsumption will adjust to this reality, is another question altogether.
