Monday, December 20, 2010

The right time to buy a smartphone: Now

Technology moves fast. Nothing is worse for a geek than buying the latest gadget and then 3 weeks later seeing a new, better one on the market, or worse, in the hands of a friend. With this rapid evolution, when should you buy a product, if you never know if or when a new, better one is coming along? The answer is: buy then the evolution is stabilized.

Is there such a thing as stability in the tech world? Well, yes. Example: digital camera evolution: the camera you bought last year (or the year before, even) is mostly just as good as one you buy today.
I think the same stability is arriving to the smartphone scene.

For the past 20 years the features on a mobile telephone have been mostly hardware driven: Think of the features that have defined a mobile telephone for the past 20 years: size, autonomy, sturdiness, design. You bought new phone because the new model was smaller, sturdier, prettier or (for the last 5 years or so) because it had some hardware related feature you simply had to have, like camera, fm radio or mp3 playback. Innovation was hardware-driven.

Nowadays though, when it comes to smarphones, all smartphones have everything. All have gps, bluetooth, internet, wi-fi, mp3 playback, fm radio, the works.
So where is innovation occurring? What makes you want a new phone? Well, now you want a new phone because you need access to your email, you want the latest apps, facebook or twitter connectivity, or BBM etc. What do these things have in common: they are all software. Innovation is now software-driven.

What does this mean for you? Well, it's good news. Software, unlike hardware, can be upgraded. This means if you buy an smartphone now, you will get upgrades on your software, and will keep up with the new models. Take the iPhone for example: all iPhone apps run on all iPhone models. You have the same calendar, the same twitter app, the same facebook access on all models of iPhones, old and new, because they all share the same software. Sure the new iPhones are faster or whatever. But when it comes down to it, what makes the iPhone an iPhone is the software and the huge catalog of apps you can install and run and whether you have a shiny new iPhone 4 or the very first iPhone, you're aboard. In the Android world it's mostly the same (there is some fragmentation, sure, but Google is working it out).

If you're like me and want a smartphone but have been cautiously waiting for the right time to buy a smarphone, stop waiting and start buying. The time is now.

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2 comments:

  1. well said!gosto da tua linha de raciocínio

    Sofia PL

    ReplyDelete
  2. E um extra vertente económica.

    http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/22/2011-will-be-the-year-android-explodes/

    ReplyDelete