So I used to be quite a tech enthusiast but kinda stopped, I used to be a lot in cameras, smartphones etc even tho i cud never afford them lmao
Anyway today i saw the MKBHD video he released recently about oneplus, and it got me thinking, i remember the time when i used to really be into it and remember devices being so cool for their time like iphone 11 and 12, the samsung galaxy s phones… oneplus obv, always came with a lot of actually cooler features like better battery lives, new cooler designs, improved cameras etc etc, we also had companies like ASUS making and experimenting with cool phones
However now it just seems that they all add useless irrelevant features, AI slop being number one of them, but even then the designs are much uglier now… iphone 12 and 13s used to look so elegant and cool… same with samsungs galaxy note series and s10 series, ASUS went out of the market… and oneplus is… well just another random generic brand… the only brands doing smthng cool are prolly xiaomi or vivo but even then its a lot more cool for the first week and then forget abt it than much else
Same kinda happened with the camera market… i remember there used to be cameras lile XS-10 or fujis XE4 and XT30 making big news about being arnd and under 1000$ and being such good value for money with good sensors… IBIS in some cases, and in the full frame you had A7iii from sony and Z5s from nikon offering insane value However now apparently 1K dollars only gets u recycled parts from much older cameras… and entry level is now fuckinf 1.5k+ dollars for APSC cams, micro four thirds is dead (i always wanted a g9 so bad lol it was like 999$ a steal but i was like 15lol), and even the cameras dont seem much that great, however maybe i just am not upto date on that stuff so idk… the pro market might be getting better… im talking more as an enthusiast who just sees them from outside lol
Not so much peaked, but plateaued.
They are getting more powerful, but the difference between an 8MP and 16MP camera was a lot more obvious than the last 5 years worth of changes.
Raw chip performance? Yeah… but I am kinda talking more about the actual useful features tbh, for eg the camera sensor technology has all but remained the same since iphone 14, (for all brands not just apple) nd neither have they improved the image processing pipeline, the straight out of camera images are still absolutely shit. Thanks for the proRAW tho, i have used my frnds newer iphones and they are the same with that weird pastel hdr-y look, all they r offering is just random AI improvements no one needed
Same with stuff like battery life, now i am not saying its not getting better, but it has definitely not been a focus, oneplus recently came with the silicon carbide tech but the major brands and rlly slow to adapt to that, u can see xiaomi and vivo phones still absolutely in these two areas so its definitely not tech plateauing (1inch sensors, bigger batteries), more accurately there is a weird preference order of AI and unnecessary visual changes
Camera is basically the only specs I need to look at in a phone today as a general user.
I think the last major feature (which was software based) was the iPhones down cycling their refresh rate to conserve battery power. Every iPhone since then feels no different, and the useless UI additions which slow down the previous generation processors are a lot more noticeable
I have to use an iPhone for work and the liquid glass ui is absolute shit.