Reply to post: New Features

Smartphones are becoming like white goods, says analyst, with users only upgrading when their handsets break

a_yank_lurker

New Features

Bargain basement smartphones have all the features users want. Other than photo and video, they are just as capable as their more expensive brethren at the core functions of a phone (phone calling and texting). They may lack the horsepower to run something Orifice well (memory and cpu limitations mostly). But if you are not running something like Orifice on your phone there is no pressing need to update your phone when new ones are released. And in some cases a mid range phone may have enough horsepower to run something like Orifice.

The high end phones are (over)sold based on their photo and video capabilities. Physics basically limits the photo and video capabilities for 2 reasons. The lens are fixed focal length. The sensors are very small. Both force the phone manufacturers to rely on more processing to make up for optical deficiencies of the camera which usually does a very acceptable job. So the phones need more horsepower for efficient optical processing.

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