The new Samsung Galaxy S4 is starting to hit consumers in the United States, and although the smartphone is going to be an instant success, maybe all that hype is backfiring a little. Could the same thing happen to Nokia's Lumia 928 and Apple's iPhone 6 / 5S when they hit?
To be fair, all the Galaxy S4 reviews still say Samsung created a powerful phone of high quality, but they also seem far less willing to proclaim the new device "The Next Big Thing." Considering Samsung wants to be seen as breaking out of Apple's shadow, the Galaxy S4's reception could be a bit underwhelming.
This isn't just a Samsung problem, though. The iPhone 5 is a pretty fantastic smartphone, but people are already claiming Apple "needs" a "killer feature" for the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6 (whatever they release next) in order to combat the Galaxy S4's momentum. The Lumia 920 series, too, needs a big showing from the Lumia 928 in order to convince users to switch and boost Nokia's Windows Phone 8 momentum.
That may be much easier said than done. As Jason Perlow writes over at ZDNet, "the buying public has certain basic expectations of what needs to be in smartphones, and that water mark is already pretty high, and may have been reached as much as two years ago."
"You expect the rear-facing camera to take high-quality stills and video, you expect a front-facing HD camera for doing video chat, and you expect the device to have a high-resolution screen regardless of size that produces sharp, crisp video and has excellent color saturation and luminosity. And you expect the phone to be 4G LTE capable.
"That's basic expectations, from any OEM, on any platform."
The simple race for more features has caused some mixed results for the Galaxy S4, with some reviewers lauding the sheer amount of them while others criticize Samsung for offering too many gimmicks.
The iPhone 6 / 5S, meanwhile, is rumored to feature a revamped user interface for iOS 7, but chances are the phone will likely be similar to its predecessors. Nicely designed, with a clean Apple-like layout, but hardly revolutionary. Microsoft's Windows Live Tile overhaul definitely caused a stir when it first came out, but for many, Perlow notes, Windows Phone 7 is perfectly fine, and no upgrade to Windows Phone 8 is necessary.
"The smartphone industry needs to come to the conclusion that MOTSS (More of the Same Stuff) no longer cuts it," he wrote. "Neither does the never-ending pursuit of thinner and lighter and throwing more testosterone at the SoCs and onboard memory and GPUs either. We want innovation. We expect innovation.
"Otherwise, why not turn in the smartphone in for an upgrade when the carrier eventually offers it for free, or when it finally dies out of contract and the carrier insurance plan refuses to replace it with a refurb? Why pay more than the bare minimum, if virtually every smartphone on the market meets basic expectations?"
The whole conversation reminds me of something Google CEO Larry Page said in January: That continually innovating by 10 percent rather than aiming for 10 times that amount leads to irrelevance. We might be reaching that point with smartphones, and it may be time for someone to really blow things open with some truly new ideas.
