Flagship season is upon us again, with the usual suspects making their rounds, showing up at Barcelona to go through the motions of yet another huge launch event spree. The rumor mill is now slowing down and leaks are drying up, but the question remains, will they be good phones?
On this note, I want to personally explore the topic of what makes a good smartphone. Now, I won’t go into what makes the perfect smartphone — a typical thought experiment many like doing, usually resulting in an impossible Frankenstein device of almost impossibly hacked-together components. Rather than shoot for the extreme, utopian or implausible, I want to focus on what’s sufficient and, really, what’s more than enough to make a smartphone that could very well be the best.
This past year, I’ve owned and tested several devices, including but not limited to the Note 3, 4 and 5; the ZenFone 2; the OnePlus 2; the Nexus 5 and Nexus 5X; the Honor 5X, the Xperia Z5 Compact. All of these phones gave me a wide variety of experiences: big screens, small screens, premium materials and plastic, stock Android and its Korean antithesis. And what I realised is that, while many of these top their respective strengths, it is really only their pitfalls that stood out in my user experience.
We often hear the phrase “Android phones now work pretty much the same”, typically as a justification for the current trend of design over specifications. I don’t think they work the same, and their UI and resulting UX is still very much a deciding factor for me. So without further ado, here are my thoughts on Android’s variability and what exactly are the sweet spots, or all it really takes, for a good phone — what won’t give you trouble and you wouldn’t want out of reach.
Software
It turns out that making a phone with good software is not that hard, at least not amongst enthusiasts. Why? Because, as the general consensus seemingly goes, all you need to do is leave Android alone. We’ve seen phones that carry impressive specs, sometimes borderline jaw-dropping hardware for the price, yet the user experience on these phones is bloated, cramped, even bogged down. All of this makes for a less-than-stellar user experience, yet as the Moto G has proved way back in 2013, a slim stock Android ROM can do wonders even on budget hardware. Now that Android has been thoroughly optimized, implemented better camera APIs, and allows for fingerprint scanner and many features that previously required OEM hooks, phones don’t need nearly as many bells and whistles to give a lovely user experience.
The Moto X 2013 taught us what thoughtful Android additions really looked like
Take the case of HTC: their Sense UI became one of the more conservative (or rather, self-restricting) skins out there, with thoughtful changes leading up to their Lollipop release, which prompted them to change their design to accommodate the Material paradigm. With Marshmallow and the A9, Sense was trimmed to the essentials, left as a bit more than a theme and certainly less than what it had been. Sony, too, makes minimal changes to the UI: apart from the launcher and icons (settings included), the general structure and feel of the Xperia UI is similar to that of Stock Android, and it’s worth noting it was Sony who offered some of the first theming options in mainstream releases, and also contributed to the theming capabilities within current Android.
Power users love stock Android — the Nexus line is often picked over others because of the Stock base, and because it gets Stock bases before the rest. Yet Motorola Lenovo is also praised for its thoughtful yet minimal alterations to Android in Moto phones, and Sony and HTC offer some of the most pleasant UIs out there as well. Sure, TouchWiz and LG have their place, and they certainly offer features that aim to justify the price-points. But remember, this piece is about what it takes to make a phone good at a minimum and without going overboard, and unsurprisingly, an Android left alone is sufficient.
Hardware
The OnePlus One remained a great option long after its hardware was surpassed.
While we are always craving faster processors and bigger batteries, the notion that one doesn’t need the latest and greatest to enjoy Android is more popular now than ever before. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that hardware, and processing power in particular, is unimportant — it remains crucial for any phone to succeed, especially flagships. But a look at the lower-ends of the market today reveals that you can do well with yesteryear specs, just not all of them. This doesn’t apply just to processors, however.
A look at the Note 4, S6 and even Note5 reveal that the camera sensors haven’t improved as dramatically as the software, which allowed for refinements (for example, the S6’s enhanced low-light capabilities). Newer hardware is still something worth looking forward to, but the camera kings of 2015 didn’t carry the best hardware available at the time.
The latest Nexus phones, however, did pack Sony’s latest sensors, and even with a slight bump to the traditionally-lame Google camera software, it delivered truly impressive results.
As far as battery life goes, it’s worth noting that the size doesn’t matter nearly as much as the efficiency of the overall sum. The latest AMOLED panels, for example, are significantly more power-efficient than what was found on the Note 3 (a battery king of its time), despite having a much higher resolution. The processor is also key — when taken to the extremes, as we saw on the honor 5X, power-saving cores can truly deliver spectacular results. I’d say that sound, though, only needs to be ‘good enough’ for most people, and as long as there is no notorious noise crackling or unusually low volumes, this category is fair game. Hardware, then, is arguably easy for OEMs to do well in, because it’s a buffet of components rather than a monument to ingenuity. The flagships rounds of each quarter typically sport the latest in silicon, if not the second best, with plenty of power to drive any current application. They also share camera sensors quite often, with Sony’s optics typically making it into the heavy hitters. Screen is one of the aspects with the highest degree of variability, not of resolution but of overall quality (color accuracy, contrast in the case of LCD, power consumption), but we are seeing many fair AMOLED panels on flagships lately. And battery size is one of the factors OEMs have plenty of control over, with the main limit being imposed by the designs they themselves choose for their phones. As long as OEMs do their best to stick to the tastiest of each section in the buffet, though, hardware is a matter of deals and money, with software and design being built upon or around it.
Design
Smartphones come in all sizes, shapes, and even materials. Glass, leather, wood, metal, kevlar… the plastic of old has been relegated to the “budget” category, and we have many options to choose from. What’s important is, of course, a consistent design, one that feels good and catches the eye in all the right places. This isn’t to say that any material and chassis combination can make it work. Samsung, in particular, nailed 2015 by going with a redesign that they are seemingly sticking with throughout this year as well. LG is also coming with a new look, after iteratively improving the G line’s design with slight deviations in material and finish. While it’s important to keep things fresh, it’s also important to stick to what works, and to what both consumers and critics (who hold an unnerving grip on certain OEM trends through the art of criticism and/or tantrum) want to see next, upon what was seen before. This is, I think, why the M9 ultimately failed in its design, despite the M8 receiving praise. It’s important for companies to stick to their tradition whilst expanding on their strengths and patching flaws
Today’s phones can look good and pack plenty for very little.
Samsung, for example, lost enthusiast appeal by moving away from their power user tradition on the Note5, even though they did improve upon some of the shortcomings of previous years (which frankly were mostly software-related) and brought new, shiny things. This appeal was lost precisely because of the design they chose — as stated in sections above, the design of a phone delimits the amount of technology it can pack, and how it is packed within it as well. There are various ways to go about this; some OEMs start with the design, while others build around their internal hardware. Whatever is the case, a phone’s design ultimately needs to be good-looking while still allowing for the hardware that everyone has come to expect out of tradition, and the one consumers look forward to given current trends. This balance is painstakingly difficult if one pretends to achieve the best in every metric, and it thus became major source of criticism towards various phones — the ones that are too thin to accommodate for better hardware (batteries, for the most part), and those that do a bad job and end up too big for their respective screen sizes. In terms of design, I think it’s important to respect what users come to expect out of a phone, but also to listen to what they want next.
Power-User User Power
Ultimately, and as is the case with every successful product, the factors above need to be tuned around the demands of the aimed markets. And with an Android community so large and vocal, OEMs have plenty of constructive criticism to listen to and address. This isn’t to say that we enthusiasts hold the key to success — we are a small section of the market, after all. But what we have is knowledge, experience, and the ability to criticize fairly, objectively and thoroughly, as well as suggest things that make sense and benefit not just us, but everyone. This could be understood as a responsibility, given that many OEMs do actively engage with the vocal enthusiasts who want to shape a better user experience for themselves and everyone. Some companies with big followings, like Xiaomi, do engage with their communities, yet growth can eventually lead to the abandonment of said practice.
So, it’s clear to me that many of today’s best-received phones are not the over-the-top experiences with the absolute best hardware and feature-crammed software. A perfect example would be the Nexus 6P, which didn’t pack the best processor of 2015 (even though it was produced by Huawei, which put out the Kirin 950), north the best memory solutions in storage, RAM and expansion, nor the highest-quality viewing experience, nor the most widely-appealing design… you get it. It was the overall sum – a simple, optimized, well executed sum – that caught the eyes and hearts of enthusiasts, critics, and even the general consumer.
The Paradox of Choice might be an unavoidable phenomenon, particularly when larger OEMs decide to stop listening to its original base; but the power user has user power in the form of an educated voice, influence among peers (after all, I am sure you are the “tech guy” of your friend or family circle), and a wallet that shells out frequency and on the vanguard. Those things are powerful, and I think the Nexus 6P is a nice symbol of that — you don’t need the best of each to best every other, and a blind lust for the perfect phone is unnecessary when so many phones are so good.
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