The Perfect Smartphone

Smartphones. The thing in your pocket. Or in your hand right now. Fascinating, aren’t they? How it just takes one company to totally change the style of them, one company’s idea that changes the entire smartphone market until another company comes with a new design.

The first iPhone. It was the phone of its time. The pinnacle of evolution. It set the market for such devices. Then came the iPhone 6. A massive change in design, moving from the older and boxier design to a newer sleeker one. This major change is what made the iPhone 6 and its variants the most sold Apple smartphone ever.

In 2018, we were given two new designs. The notch by Apple, and the Infinity Display by Samsung. While the notch has been criticized for apparently throwing off the image with it being in the center, the display introduced on the Samsung S8 received only compliments. The Samsung S8 was a total new design, with a newer 18:9 screen aspect ratio compared to the old 16:9 aspect ratio. This was an excellent design that definitely would have shaken the smartphone market, hadn’t it been for the copyrights on the design imposed by Samsung. Which is what allowed the iPhone X to have a larger impact on the smartphone market. Although the size of the notch on the display was heavily criticized for being unnecessarily too big, the idea was received with more support than criticism.

The idea of having wireless charging was there since 2013 with the Google Nexus 5, but since it was rather expensive and really slow, the idea didn’t catch on until the Samsung Galaxy S8 came around. By introducing the idea of having a glass back instead of a metal one, it allowed the wireless charging process to be much more efficient, and significantly faster. This was a weird move for some, who were worried that by having a glass back, the overall strength of the phone would be heavily weakened, but Samsung was able to make a surprisingly sturdy phone, even while using a glass back design.

Anyways, back to Apple. They have a habit of changing the design of the smartphone design, regardless of whether it’s for the good or not. The iPhone 1 brought the idea of a smartphone, the iPhone 6 made the phone from a clunky box-like design to something more appealing to the eye, and the iPhone X (or 10) brought the notch.

Enough of the History lesson. Now to the modern world.

The problem that Apple has always maintained, is severe overpricing of their devices. Regardless of the features, or the cost for iOS, they take too much of a premium for their devices. And this is affecting them pretty harshly. The iPhone X started from 1000$. This huge cost, even for a premium phone, affected their sales, and made the iPhone X the lowest earning phone from Apple ever. The Samsung Galaxy S9 starts from 650$, and the S9+ is for 800$.

Now let’s see where Apple messed up.

First, the screen. Despite a person paying a premium of 1000$, Apple didn’t stop there from trying to burn a larger hole in one’s pocket. For replacing its screen, it would take 280$ regularly, and 550$ in case there was any other damage which wasn’t a manufacturing defect. One needs to get AppleCare+ to reduce the screen cost to 30$. And you have to pay for that yearly. Not cool!

Next, the battery. For such a premium, many expected fast charging to be a part of it. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. It takes around 3 hours 50 minutes to charge it from 0 to 100. The Samsung Galaxy S9+ takes 2 hours at the most. Which is a serious bummer if you want some quick juice. The battery is also mediocre at 2,716 mAh.

Third, the absence of a headphone jack. For those who don’t want to charge the phone wirelessly, they have to get a pair of Bluetooth headphones. If they don’t have that, then they can’t listen to something and charge their device at the same time. Which gets annoying as you have to then invest another amount of cash into a pair of good headphones.

Fourth, the notch itself. While the idea is Apple’s decision, the sheer gigantic size of it leaves nearly no space for any other icons. This is frustrating as one then has to continuously swipe down so as to check the majority of the icons that aren’t visible.

Now, on to other ideas.

What would be the ultimate smartphone?

Here is a list of features and design choices that I liked from certain phones, and how they can be successfully be implemented to make the ultimate experience.

1-   The screen from the Samsung Galaxy S9. Period. No doubt it is the best looking screen in a long time. It’s just really refreshing to see in the world of notches.

2-   The size of the screen would be around 6.09 inches. It’s the perfect size for a nearly all screen device, and won’t be too big or too small for some people.

3-   The back look of the Google Pixel 2 XL was nice. The idea of having two contrasting colors was innovative. The idea in my mind is that the upper portion would be smaller than the lower one, and would be of an opaque material. The lower and larger one would be glass, which would facilitate wireless charging. The color options for the opaque part would be Midnight Black, Gold, Rose Gold Silver, Burgundy Red, Lilac Purple, and Bright Blue. The Glass color options would be Midnight Black, Silver, Rose Gold, or Burgundy Red.

4-   A battery size of around 3,500 mAh would be nice, as that would be more than enough to last a typical user a day, even with moderate to heavy usage on it.

5-   The display ratio would be 19:9 so as to truly exploit the large screen size successfully. There would be stereo speakers- 2 at the bottom and one at the top

6-   The phone would have a dual lens rear camera of 24 MP and 20 MP respectively, and 2 front forward cameras, each of 20 MP. The rear cameras will be arranged in the same way as in the Samsung S9+, and would have a varying aperture between 1.5 and 2.4 aperture.

7-   The device will have a fingerprint scanner on the back side of the device.

8-   The port of connection would be USB-C. The headphone jack would be there, and the phone will support 2 SIM cards, and a micro SD card.

9-   The display would be an AMOLED panel, with a resolution of 3040x1440p, accounting for the screen aspect ratio.

Moving to the internals:

1-   The phone will pack a SnapDragon 845 CPU with an Adreno 630 GPU for full power.

2-   The RAM options will be 6GB and 8 GB, with the 6GB variant getting 64GB of standard storage and the 8GB version getting 128GB of it. The storage can be upgraded with an external SD card.

3-   The OS would probably be Android 8.0 with Oreo or OxygenOS.

Now to the features inside the phone

1-   Bluetooth v5.0 will be there so that the Bluetooth signal is the most optimal for the modern systems.

2-   The top left corner of the phone will have an LED indicator for showing the notifications.

3-   The always-on clock will not be there so as to save battery. However, in the settings, one can turn it on.

4-   The phone will have a custom app for backgrounds, which range from static to moving ones.

5-   The methods of unlock will be passcode, fingerprint sensor, and a facial recognition software.

Image not to scale)

Now come the clarifications.

1-   I didn’t suggest using the notch since I found it to waste screen size. I also didn’t use iOS since it was limited only to Apple and there would have been too many complications if I did so.

2-   I also didn’t consider using a tri-lens as used in Huawei since the third lens takes up WAY too much space and it also looks really goofy. Like, the P20 Pro from them looks pretty weird from the back. It would have been better to have it in a triangular arrangement but that also takes too much space on the back.

3-   I opted against having a full glass design as they nowadays are extremely common and well, boring now. The half matte, half glass design would be more refreshing compared to the all glass or all matte design.

So... This is my idea of the perfect smartphone. If anyone has any input or idea, feel free to let me know in the comments below.