Looking back at the smartphone race in recent years: Users are being “fooled” by a lot of ridiculous redundancies!

The lifecycle of current smartphones is shrinking and manufacturers are forced to introduce successor devices with upgrades and improvements to please consumers. The current product cycle is usually about 1 year or even shorter. New launches will often come with promises of a top notch user experience.

iPhone 12 launched in October with a “new” design

But the beauty of big brands is making their users think they need those new features, upgrades. And users are so overwhelmed that they are confused by the words “honey” and quickly hook up their wallet to spend on things that even I do not really understand what benefits it will bring me.

Hardware configuration – change or die!

Our users are gradually getting used to these views about smartphones: “Does this child not use Snapdragon 8xx? Must be weak and laggy”. Others disparage a certain company for introducing flagship devices that only use chips with a code name that starts with digits 7. Products equipped with weak processors will quickly be locked down that will not be durable. and for poor performance. That is right thinking, but not enough.

You understand it is important to have strong hardware, this is not wrong. But products equipped with powerful hardware must come with well-optimized software to be a perfect device.

Typically the iPhone with the hardware configuration is not so prominent, but they can knock away all competitors running Android in performance tests. The simple answer is synchronization, Apple has developed its own A-series processors, the iOS operating system, so they understand their products and know for sure what is the best solution. It is not too difficult to understand when an iPhone can operate continuously after many years of use, while other competitors running Android have ever been replaced.

Hardware configuration is also important, but synchronization is really the key

There is a paradox, however, that even though your iPhone might still work well after years, Apple somehow still has to introduce users to one or more new models, with microprocessor. New processor, higher RAM capacity, along with countless other improvements in hardware. Because they understand that, if they do not do this, the majority of public opinion will jump into criticism, the press will write critical articles, that “American Apple” is becoming a true blood-sucking demon, creative ability. ceased and even called for a boycott.

Someone realized that, if your left hand is holding an iPhone XS Max and the other side is 11 Pro Max, how many percent will you confidently point out, what is the difference in performance between the two models mentioned above?

This race is even more difficult for other products when they share an operating system that is Android, the choice of processor is only a few names like Qualcomm, Huawei, Mediatek and Samsung.

The battle is even more fierce on the Android front

So they have to how to make their products stand out from the competition. Simply put, is cramming all that is possible into your flagship. Why mention flagships only because they are the best devices a manufacturer can make. Although the Galaxy Note 9s are still operating steadily in 2020, but Samsung still has to continue to launch the Note 10 and Note 20 with a lot of new equipment, all, just to satisfy public opinion. .

The price of a smartphone in 2020 has reached 3,000 USD (Photo source: Endgadget)

What are the consequences of upgrades and cramming? That’s the price, since we got the first smartphone with a price tag of up to $ 1,000 in 2017, since then, every year, the phones introduced to the market have owned the price. increased steadily. The peak of 2020 is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 with a price of up to 3,000 USD, but this is considered a reasonable price with a breakthrough product like Z Fold 2.

Too many camera “holes”

Going beyond the original design purpose of the products used for communication purposes, modern smartphones now have many auxiliary functions, especially photography.

Previously, a smartphone only owned 1 or up to 2 cameras, now this number has reached 3-4, even 5 different lenses, to serve needs such as shooting legs. Use, macro or simply used to aid in focusing or measuring depth of field. Since then, the fact that the smartphone has more cameras has become one of the top criteria for users to “down money”. But are many of the cameras really good?

According to Mr. Le Xuan Tinh, the representative of the retail store on Le Hong Phong street, said: “In fact, this is all derived from customer psychology, which is unintentionally affected by ‘ trend ‘created by the manufacturer, adding more lenses to the camera cluster inadvertently made the user’ obsessive ‘and defaulted that multiple cameras means good image quality.

This not only appears in flagship models, even in the mid-range and low-cost segments, manufacturers are also following the trend of multi-camera, the purpose is to hit the user psychology. The more cameras will be good, that is the mindset of the general user and the company is extremely “psychological”.

Lots of “eyes”

Anh Tinh added: “However, there still exists a small part of customers with technology knowledge and they are not fooled by the numbers. Therefore, instead of choosing the new mid-range smartphone. With a lot of cameras, this set of users turns their attention to old flagship models, they have enough knowledge to dare to trade off between quantity and quality.

Many limitations in design suddenly became a trend

Apple continues to be an example, when it introduced the iPhone X to the market in 2017. Due to the technical limitations at that time and until now, “American Apple” is still impossible. designed a smartphone with a true bezel-less screen, replaced by a rather large defect on the screen and that was “called to love” by the user as a rabbit ear.

The components are located in the rabbit ears cluster on the iPhone X

Without making global users wait, this defect quickly became a trend. We have dozens of smartphones that possess the same design as the iPhone X. The funny thing here is that although it does not possess the complicated equipment to serve facial recognition like the iPhone X, the smartphone models at that time, especially models from China still tried to copy this extremely annoying defect.

Rabbit ears on all fronts (Image source: Endgadget)

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Over time, these rabbit ears have been gradually reduced. Even the big Google is forced to follow this somewhat odd design, the most typical example is the Pixel 3 XL model, however, unlike the iPhone X, the “buffalo ears” appeared on the flagship year. 2018 caused the search giant to receive a basket of stone bricks.

The story of the 3.5mm headphone jack disappearing from the iPhone 7 models is similar. For Apple, this is a genius move. But from the perspective of competitors who have missed this trend, it is indeed a bitter fruit.

In short, if you are a lot of money user, the launch of a smartphone with prices up to thousands of USD still does not make you tremble, then of course, this article is not for you.

If you really are not too eager to invest in a mobile device that can meet your expectations, please keep the following notes in mind.

Please clearly define your needs, if you only watch movies, surf the web gently, mid-range or high-end machines that have been released last year will still do well with the above tasks. If you want to play heavy games like Asphalt 9, choosing an old flagship is a wise action.

Samsung Galaxy M51 with 7,000mAh capacity battery

This doesn’t mean the newly launched mid-range smartphones are lousy products. In a way, such as the time used, the Galaxy M51 with 7,000mAh battery will be the better choice for you.

Photo: Internet