The Smithers breast and doll’s hat are increasingly appearing on the phone. “Same”, “No change”. The jumps in the high range were not exponential except for some specific generations. But they weren’t like the last two years either. Cell phones that look like clones and with just some extra tricks on the technical sheet. Maybe it’s not so easy to keep improving. Maybe the peak smartphone we talked about a while ago is a reality.

Let’s talk about screens. If there’s one thing that fascinates me about high-end mobile phones, it’s how we normalize and, to some extent, underestimate the technologies they contain. Without going any further, an iPhone 14 Pro’s display is quite likely to be better than your own television. Dolby Vision, HDR+, professional monitor calibration. Samsung is not far behind.

The screen leaps will go over microLED, a technology that Apple intends to implement in the Apple Watch Ultra in 2024 and later in the iPhone. By this I do not mean to say that there is still no room to improve the panels (because there is a lot, and especially at maximum brightness), but the generational leaps will be small. Apple’s 2,000 nits marks the next step in brightness, although the rest of the tech sheet remains the same as previous courses.

Let’s talk about processors: raw power is another of the points where we normalize having phones that have become more powerful than PCs in most cases. It has reached the point where the new era of mobile games includes bringing PC games like ‘Genshin’ to mobile. Impact’ or ‘Fortnite’. Our mobile transport offers are almost 20GB and no one is surprised.

However, powerful processors aren’t just for gaming. They allow more computation when taking photos, implement real-time processing functions within the operating system (instant translations, layer separation on photos in a matter of seconds, etc.). There is still room for cell phones to continue to gain power, but that will only make them increasingly smart.

Let’s talk about drums. The optimization story is sometimes believable. But math is math, and we need milliamps if we want the relevant battery jumps. Manufacturers don’t seem to want to break the 5,000 mAh limit by focusing on fast charging systems. Other than a corresponding leap in the technologies used to manufacture batteries, nothing seems to indicate that we will break this resistance.

Let’s talk about memories. save a little generosity It occupies the top end along with 256GB, 8 and 12GB RAM from some manufacturers who continue to sell the base 128GB versions. Some phones have versions with 16GB of RAM, perhaps the next standard once the component crisis subsides. Another relatively baseless leap that we haven’t seen (and don’t think we will see) any improvement in several years.

Let’s talk about cameras. Until not so long ago, we had a camera on the phone. We now have a sensor around an inch, an ultra-wide angle, and several telephoto lenses if you choose the right mobile. We are getting to a point where the improvements are no longer even going to the final result, instead RAW modes, 200 megapixels and other “professional” tools that a significant part of users will not benefit from.

The scope for improvement will continue to be wide until manufacturers move away from taking oversaturated skies, vegetation, and nighttime photos that don’t really show what we’re seeing, to approaching the JPEG processing of a professional camera. Computational photography has its pros, but it kills the naturalness. However, this is more of a manufacturer’s philosophical decision than a hardware or technical capability issue, so I don’t expect major advances in the short term.

Maybe it’s time to rethink the pace of pitches.. It’s something that won’t happen, but the fact that last year’s mobiles (already dropping in price) are a better value-for-money option compared to their slightly improved and hundreds of euros more expensive successors, perhaps a yearly caveat. jumps arouse suspicion.