But yeah, memory is a commodity in the same way that nails are- one DDR4 8G 2400mbps chip is just like another, but they aren’t interchangeable with other sorts of DRAM chips, just like a 6d nail isn’t the same thing as a 4d nail.
I guess I was thinking about more modern phones, not ancient burner phone stuff when it comes to phones. You’re right in that burner phones ARE smilar to a commodity- they’re interchangeable and all have the same feature set, and aren’t being purchased because of those features- a Samsung, a Nokia and a Motorola are all the same thing to the end users.
I think my point, and perhaps for others as well, is that smartphones equipped with a certain base feature set are moving in that direction as well. Maybe not quite there yet but not far off.
That may be your preference but for many others, any lag you notice would be imperceptible. Inevitably, as the technological rising tide floats all boats it’ll soon enough be down a point where, even on the cheapest phone, it’ll be irrelevant for a large majortiy of users. A lot of people don’t care much past the point where a phone is good enough.
(I confess as a cheap android phone user I haven’t come across any apps closing when I open google maps, my wife has an even cheaper model than mine and nor does she)
I’m not convinced that’s the same phenomenon- I think it’s a matter of technological convergence driven by market forces, rather than some sort of creeping sameness that’s reducing smartphones to commodities.
In other words, ALL smartphones have cameras, because if yours doesn’t, nobody will buy it. Same for GPS (and advanced GPS in a generation or two of phones), heartbeat sensors, 5G capability, etc… People are definitely paying attention to the specs when it comes to smartphones, whereas if you’re buying a burner phone, you’re buying a cheap phone that only needs to make calls, and presumably for a limited time, before being thrown away.
It’s like saying cars are becoming commodities because every car is now coming with a stereo, automatic transmission and air conditioning.
I’m not sure 5-figure sums are ever likely to be treated quite like a commodity but as smartphones come down in price and go up in features (they can be had for under £50 in the uk) I think they are approaching that point.
I think once the manufacturers quit advertising them heavily and they’re something that can be bought at every corner store, discount store and gas station for a nominal fee, then you’ll be right.
But when they’re upwards of $1000 each, and every year’s new model is relentlessly promoted and new features enumerated and defined, you’re about as far from commoditization as you can get.
I mean, do you actually know people who just wander into a store when they need a new phone and just buy any phone based on what’s cheapest, under the assumption that they’re all the same? You can do that with a bag of sugar or a box of 6d nails, but smartphones aren’t there yet. Maybe burner phones are, but definitely not smartphones.
I wonder if there’s a term for what’s happening- it’s not commoditization, but rather that as the new models come out, the older/cheaper ones become less valuable and more fungible. You see it with things like sunglasses and watches- there’s still a huge market for expensive ones, and there’s also a market for super-cheap ones where the primary draw is availability and price (gas station sunglasses, for example). Most people’s purchases of these things are somewhere in the middle.
Smartphones may not fall into that model actually; most people I know don’t buy mid-range or value phones in my experience, they buy the latest and greatest or maybe a model back, and replace somewhat less often than they otherwise could.
High end phones won’t be commodities until we hit physical limitations (like cameras that are better than our eyes) or a move to another category of communications devices, like implanted wearables.
I went to some design meetings during the early days of cellphones, and one of the points was that while size reduction is usually good in electronics, there was no point in reducing the size of phone electronics to be smaller than the keypad. So we went thinner, not smaller.