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00:00Hey what's up guys, MKBHD here. So, a question I've seen with increasing frequency over
00:08the past couple years is, are we at peak smartphone? Right now, have we hit peak smartphone?
00:16You know, it's something that just seems to get said a lot now, like yeah, you know, smartphones
00:20are all kind of the same, I think we're at peak smartphone. It seems like every new phone
00:24coming out these days is basically the same as the last one, with some minor tweaks, and
00:29there's no big revolutionary jumps anymore. And there's almost never a good reason to
00:33spend a thousand dollars on this year's phone, when you already have last year's thousand
00:39dollar phone. So yeah, maybe we've reached peak smartphone. So I see all this, and as
00:44the guy that's been in the smartphone world for a while, been reviewing them for a long
00:48time, I felt the need to chime in, so I'll give my two cents. The answer to the question,
00:54have we reached peak smartphone, is, yes, but no. You see, everything you're thinking
01:02and seeing, I'm also thinking and seeing too. It's all true. Yes, we are seeing less big
01:08revolutionary jumps in smartphones. Yes, there are less crazy, never before seen features
01:14in phones year over year. And yeah, it seems like the functionality and the form factor
01:19have all sort of evolved into just, we all have glass rectangles now, glass sandwiches.
01:24This is what we call a mature market. We've seen this before. You always have the greatest
01:28rate of change at the beginning of the curve, and then as you reach the ideal or peak smartphone,
01:34it sort of slows down and doesn't change that much year over year. But that's not to say
01:40we don't get some seriously impressive improvements every single year. So rewinding a bit, at
01:47the beginning of smartphones in, say, the early 2000s, there were constant big new
01:53changes and features that were literally revolutionary. We had the first phones with a glass touchscreen
01:59and the first phones with multi-touch. That's when we had the first time they ever put a
02:02camera on the back and the front of the phone. That's the first phones with an app store,
02:09the first phones with desktop class web browsers. Like it was just milestone after milestone
02:14after pillar after pillar in the smartphone world. And it was more than just the new hardware
02:18features. It was what these new hardware features enabled. Smartphone photography, video chat,
02:26real-time multiplayer gaming. I mean, the list goes on. So now it's easy when you fast
02:30forward all the way to the iPhone 11 next to the iPhone XR, it seems like they're almost
02:37the same phone at a glance. I mean, we're all these glass rectangles anyway. But I think
02:41if you zoom that far in, you start to ignore and lose track of the outer edges and the
02:46peripheral that are still pushing things forward and still enabling new things. And it's oftentimes
02:52not as drastic or as fundamental as it used to be, but it's real. For some examples, in
02:57the past few years, we've recently gotten ultra wide angle lenses for wide photography
03:02and videos that don't need a separate camera or add-on lens. We've gotten portrait mode.
03:08We've gotten high refresh rates and new backlight technology on displays that's more efficient
03:12and that reduce the latency of the interface and make everything feel significantly smoother
03:16than it ever has. Computational photography is another big one. It's taken major strides
03:21in the last couple of years with incredible HDR, with real-time previews, combining multiple
03:26frames into one composited image nearly instantly with a single tap of a shutter button. And
03:32with that and a few new night modes, photos that were literally impossible a few years
03:37ago are now just effortless on the latest phones. Fingerprint readers are under the
03:41displays, 65 watt fast chargers bring a battery from zero to a hundred and half an hour. And
03:47yeah, phones literally fold in half now, not just like flip phones of the past, but there's
03:53a whole first generation of fitting a larger display in your pocket than you ever could
03:58before because the displays are flexible along with the devices built around them. There's
04:02even more on the horizon that we're looking forward to. The cameras in the front going
04:06behind the display glass, we look forward to wireless charging getting better, wireless
04:11audio getting better, 5G just to name a few. So here's another version of that question
04:18to consider. Have we reached peak car? It's actually a very similar question. And when
04:27you zoom out again, going from not having cars to having automobiles suddenly was this
04:32massive step and every new piece that was added, every new feature was a major game
04:38changer that could drive this young new product category forward so long ago. Now though,
04:44in 2019, what is a car really? I mean, they all have four wheels, they all have an engine
04:49in the front and a trunk in the back and a steering wheel and some seats, right? So are
04:54we at peak car? I mean, yeah, you can say we're at peak car. We've done the same curve
04:59and we've plateaued the same way, but you have to be careful not to ignore all the
05:04newest bleeding edge innovations and all the things that are enabled from them. Specifically
05:08the electric car revolution and what that means for sustainability, what that means
05:12for autonomy, what that means for performance, the Rivian R1T and the quad motor tank turn,
05:19what that means for features, Tesla's worldwide supercharging network and everything that
05:24is the Cybertruck. So yeah, to say we're at peak car is technically true. We've done
05:30the same plateau, we've seen the curve, but it still ignores a lot of the most exciting
05:35revolutionary parts of that industry. And so to say we've reached peak smartphone,
05:40same thing, it's technically true, yes, but I think when you say that, you start to ignore
05:45all the crazy newest stuff we've gotten, the computational photography, the bezel-less
05:50OLED displays and the whole folding in half thing. Here's the ridiculous rumored spec list
05:57of the Galaxy S20 Ultra coming up. A huge 120 Hertz AMOLED display, edge to edge,
06:05a Snapdragon 865 and up to 16 gigs of RAM, half a terabyte of flash storage with a microSD card,
06:12so expandable up to another terabyte, a 5,000 milliamp hour wireless and fast charging battery
06:19and 108 megapixel primary camera and four others. And that's not to mention whatever other stuff
06:25they're building into the software, which can also enhance and improve the experience and enable
06:29new things. Like not any single one of these things is drastically new by itself and none
06:35of these specs will individually enable you to do anything crazy new that you couldn't do before
06:40in your smartphone, but that combination of specs all in one place, all in one phone is new. And if
06:46you showed that spec sheet to someone literally just three years ago, they'd probably tell you
06:50it was impossible. So when people ask, are we at peak smartphone right now? Yes, but no. We've
07:00clearly reached a point where people don't need to buy a new thousand dollar phone every single
07:04year over year. And we've reached a point where software updates are getting better. Phones just
07:09last longer now. People can use a three or four year old phone and do everything they still need
07:13to without upgrading to the bleeding edge stuff. But don't forget about that bleeding edge. Don't
07:17forget about Galaxy Fold 2 or the Cybertruck, you know, that's still happening. Don't let that plateau
07:25make you ignore all the incredible innovations still happening in these industries that are
07:29driving us forward or you might miss it. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.