I’m always excited to see the new features that major phone manufacturers like Apple, Samsung, and Google add to their flagship devices. However, my excitement has been tempered over the past few years because the new features have seemed less polished and useful. Instead of highly impactful features like additional camera lenses or under-screen fingerprint readers, we recently had numerous random AI features and Camera Control buttons.
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While some may find these features useful, most people feel otherwise. It’s hard to say whether manufacturers are out of touch with consumers or are pushing their agendas more. I suspect it’s the latter. When these features are added, many are rough and don’t seem thought out or finished. This is disappointing for devices that are getting more expensive. Innovation in the smartphone market should continue, but it should not come at the expense of the user experience.
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New features used to be impactful
They actually improved the user experience
A few years ago, we saw feature additions that had a large and meaningful impact on the user experience. While some earlier phones had two cameras, the HTC One M8, released in April 2014, was the first to use dual cameras like smartphones do today. While dual-camera smartphones were rare then, it’s hard to find a phone without at least two lenses, if not more.
By adding additional, more versatile lenses, users could take better and more diverse photos. Some manufacturers used two lenses to improve the amount of data collected, make their photos look better, and add depth. Others added wide-angle, telephoto, or macro lenses to take photos with a wider field of view, better zoom, or better close-up quality.
These additional camera lenses make smartphones more useful. Before, smartphone cameras were a novelty. They could take photos, but they were of poor quality and, if not in ideal conditions, had trouble putting out a serviceable photo. By adding additional camera lenses and dedicated software features around the cameras, smartphones have replaced dedicated digital cameras for most people. It has also saved users from spending money on and carrying two devices.
Another example is biometric device unlock. In the early days of phones and smartphones, users could set up PINs or passwords to unlock their devices. However, many people didn’t lock their phones, especially on non-smartphones, where you could only call or text. This was before we had all kinds of personal information on our devices, so locking a phone didn’t seem as important as it does today.
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As smartphones became more popular, it became more important to lock your device, but users still found PINs or passwords tedious. However, in September 2013, Apple released the iPhone 5S, which added TouchID, a fingerprint scanner on the home button. This gave users an easier way to unlock their devices, which was less tedious, and encouraged them to lock their devices.
While Android phones, such as the Motorola Atrix 4G in 2011, had an awkward fingerprint scanner implementation, the iPhone 5S popularized it. TouchID led many other major smartphone manufacturers, such as Samsung and Sony, to add fingerprint scanners to their smartphones in 2014, and they are now commonplace on modern devices.
Although fingerprint scanners are a common smartphone feature, facial recognition is another popular biometric security option. While Android introduced facial recognition in 2011 with the release of Android 4.0, Apple popularized the feature in 2017 with the release of the iPhone X. Early versions of Android’s Face Unlock used the front-facing camera, which had trouble working much of the time. Apple’s version used the front-facing camera and sensors that project a dot matrix to better recognize the users’ faces. While there have been Android phones, such as the Google Pixel 4 series and the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, with great facial recognition features, no Android phone has found the success Apple has had with the feature.
This is another feature that improved the user experience. Making unlocking a phone easier encouraged users to lock their phones and protect their data. It also made them more secure because it’s generally more difficult to hack a biometric lock than a password or PIN. These two useful new smartphone features improve the user experience.
New features are less exciting
They’re less useful, too
Unlike new features from five or more years ago, modern new smartphone features are less valuable. Over the past few years, we’ve been inundated with AI features, which have been touted as the next big thing in smartphones. However, these features haven’t lived up to the hype. Some features that have been slowly developing, like photo-editing features or spellchecking, are useful but didn’t fully rely on AI. Many newer features like IOS’s notification summaries, Add Me on Pixel phones, or features that let you rewrite your texts have largely missed the mark.
While some of these features, like notification summaries, could be useful, they’ve been executed so poorly that they often do not make sense. Other features, like Add Me or text message rewriting, are aimed at such niche use cases that it’s hard to see why most smartphone users would use these features. These features promise a lot but add little, if anything, to the user experience.
Another new feature that has been underwhelming is Apple’s Camera Control. Smartphone users have been pining for the day of the Nokia Lumia 1020, where a smartphone had a dedicated camera button to match the capable camera. Apple added an Action Button to its Pro phones in 2023, but its placement makes it difficult to use as a true camera button. Apple introduced the Camera Control in 2024, a pressure-sensitive button to activate and modify the camera. While this seemed to be what users wanted, many expressed frustration with the feature after using the Camera Control.
Common complaints are that the button is hard to press, which yields blurry or off-centered photos while pressing it to take a photo, and it needs minute movements to work correctly. Many also wanted a simple shutter button with swipe functionality for zoom. Camera Control has this, but with other features that complicate the experience of using the button. While it’s a great idea, it was not well executed.
These are only two new features that have missed the mark for users. While some have good ideas, they were executed poorly or are too niche of a market to matter to the general consumer.
Modern innovation seems confused
Are we just beta testers?
Modern smartphone innovation seems more like innovation for the sake of innovation than innovation to make the device better. While users want their phones to get better over time, they don’t want this at the expense of features that they value. A CNET survey in August 2024 found that smartphone owners care most about battery life (61%), storage (46%), and camera features (38%). AI features were a major reason for upgrading phones for only 18% of respondents.
AI features are in stark contrast to better battery life and storage for devices. AI features require on-device models, which require storage space on your device. These AI features require more powerful processors, which require more power. Even though phones are larger and have more energy-dense batteries, the increased demand from these processors is eating up and, in some cases, overtaking this increased capacity.
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Many of the new AI features also seem half-baked. AI, in general, has had issues with accuracy and overturning, which affected these features. I’ve heard numerous stories of IOS’s Notification Summaries saying absurd things such as “There are seven people at your front door” when there have been seven notifications from their smart doorbell of someone at the front door. Note summaries from Samsung have also yielded similar summary guffaws. Instead of being shipped fully baked products, we’re becoming beta testers for products that aren’t fully finished or have a full idea of what they should be.
Another large issue in tech and economies is that everything is becoming too expensive. Years ago, flagship smartphones were hundreds of dollars. Now, they’re close to or more than $1,000, making them inaccessible to many people. Most people want a reliable phone with good battery life, reasonable storage, and a good camera. AI features and the losses companies take on them increase the price of these phones, making them less accessible to the masses.
The way forward
Manufacturers need to keep innovating
While users are important, manufacturers are businesses that need to make money. Manufacturers must innovate to differentiate themselves and to stay on the cutting edge of technology. However, none of this should come at the expense of the user experience.
End users are manufacturers’ main customers. Manufacturers should focus on meeting their needs to differentiate from the competition. Instead of outdoing the competition with niche, headline-grabbing features, they should focus on users’ core needs. They can and should continue to innovate and try new things. Still, it should be balanced with a core focus on improving the user experience and making products that truly resonate with the market.
