Apple changed the direction of modern tech when it introduced the iPhone fifteen years ago. The brand still leads the pack when it comes to smartphones, but where’s its next innovation coming from?
The iPhone has just celebrated its fifteenth birthday. Whereas for many of us that was an awkward age of self-loathing and, well, a general loathing of pretty much anything come to mention it, Apple’s range of smartphones has never been stronger.
Over the years various complaints have been raised against the devices, but each has been dismissed one by one. Battery life is far better than previous generations, the cameras are more versatile than before, and the premium handsets now have the enhanced refresh rates that we’d ben waiting for. On top of that, the processing power and software support remain simply unparalleled amongst smartphone peers, putting even brands as renowned as Samsung to shame.
It’s fair to say that iPhone has had a very good decade and a half, and shows no sign of stopping. But it’s also true that in setting the course for the modern smartphone, innovation in the area has been somewhat stifled. When the iPhone came out it was a pathbreaker that challenged all other devices to evolve or die, and that’s exactly what happened; even relatively unwelcome design changes, such as the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack, have been enthusiastically adopted by the Android crowd.
Now that we’ve had this fifteen years of phones resembling featureless slabs, while getting excellent albeit often incremental improvements all the way, I’d love to see Apple push the boat out and once again shake things up and take the leas in a new direction.
While the likes of Huawei and Samsung have experimented with foldable devices, we’re yet to see such a handset from Apple. Whether this, or a rollable display, could be the future is unsure at this point — but that’s all the more reason I’d like to see the tech giant make a bold statement of intent and try something new even if it’s not a sure bet.
The iPhone’s gargantuan success shows that innovation can reap huge rewards; that’s why I’d like to see Apple take another leap into the unknown and use more imagination when designing the next generation of devices.
