Smartphones Are All Alike, Let’s Have a Price War

We've seen more or less every phone that has descend out in the last three years here at PC Humanity and have reviewed most of them. It is always glamorous to obtain a newly smartphone in-house or to read rumors of the next cock-a-hoop smartphone release.

But this year, the phone world has been exceedingly predictable. At this year's CES, back in January, the vendors started sounded quite repetitive. Information technology seemed like every phone had the exact cookie-cutter specs: A 4-inch or larger exhibit, a front-facing camera for video chat, a dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel or 5-megapixel back-facing camera and 4G network support. Jolly much all of them ran Android 2.2 (the scant non-Mechanical man phones were Windows Speech sound 7) and were getting Android 2.3 eventually.

On one hand, it is nice to have whatever uniformity in a sometimes chaotic, fragmented Android populace. But information technology can get a second confusing for consumers (and for reporters) when all the phones seem almost identical on wallpaper. Phone makers are resorting to little things to distinguish their product from the others, like throwing a custom-made skin over the Mechanical man UI or preloading their phones with branded apps, many of which are just bloatware in the eyes of consumers.

But sometimes manufacturers surprise me: The Xperia Play, the Sidekick 4G and the HTC EVO 3D all offer specific designs or features that make them stand out from the balance of the jam. But these phones also seem to be targeted toward very particularized audiences (gamers, social networks, embryonic adopters). Manufacturers are going to have to bring off with carriers to material body out a way to offer consumers more choice, while shut up unexpended competing.

Something similar may be happening in the land of data service. Afterward speed examination Verizon's HTC ThunderBolt, which rarely connected at less than 10 mbps in my tests, we realized we were seeing the new standard for data speeds. Rightfield straight off, Verizon is dominating the data speed wars with the Thunderbolt, the first phone to run along the carrier's new 4G LTE network. Many consumers are like a sho choosing the Bombshell concluded other phones simply because of the connection speed.

Simply we also know that one way or another the other carriers will begin delivering download speeds in that 10 mbps-plus domain, probably sometime in 2020. At that point data speed could cease to be an important distinguishing feature of one service over another. The fact that Newsboy A offers 20 mbps speed and Carrier B solitary has 15 won't be that important in my decision between Carrier A's call and Attack aircraft carrier B's.

For people like Pine Tree State WHO depend happening a smartphone and wish a good one, the purchasing decision might get pretty deadening because all the phones and accompanying data services will be pretty such like. And the prices of the phones and the plans will be almost identical, as they are in real time.

Of course of instruction in that location will forever comprise niche phones like Sony's Xperia Play gaming speech sound. And there will ever be the low-end grocery store of cheaper Humanoid phones.

Next year, when we will likely be down to three large carriers after AT&T swallows T-Rotatable, and if there is nonmoving whatever drift among the carriers to compete, they will have to compete along price if they can't compete happening phones features or network speed.

But where could this impetus to compete come from? Non from AT&T-Atomic number 42 and Verizon, I'd indicate. Each would love to tell apar Wall Street that it had stolen customer from the other. But history shows that they don't want to perform this so badly that they would lower prices. This would win them more customers just IT would also lower profit margins, which would make investors scream bloody slay.

So information technology's up to Sprint. If Sprint is still close to a yr from now it will be upbound to them to pull round a shooting war. Sprint leave have to find a way to vie sharply against the two giants happening price. Exclusive then can the entire grocery be punished for the sameness of their goods, services and prices.

Lone then might the $90 slice up of my payroll check that I invite out my telephone service every month be brought descending to a more level-headed level.