Why do smartphones today look alike?

The development history of the phone once recorded a special period, in the middle of the period after the 'brick' was gradually wiped out and before the iPhone came out. At that time, it seemed that every sense to design a smartphone was fully utilized, making the market have all shapes of smartphones and colors.

Nokia fans must not forget the N-GAGE model, a smartphone running Symbian platform with a design like a sci-fi movie. Folding phones, sliding bodies, specialized music players or models with somewhat bizarre, lifestyle . all debuted in that period.

Maybe not all of them are a combination of fashion, unique design and trendy features, but each has its own attraction that makes users feel excited to own. Meanwhile, modern phones have become more and more powerful as a computer, but they begin to become boring in appearance and look alike.

In the beginning, phones were born just to serve the needs of making calls. They have big antennas, small screens . As technology evolved, phones were not as expensive as they used to be, more people could buy them, manufacturers started thinking about the factors. like portability, design and 'cool', 'cool'.

So is a new era starting with foldable phones aimed at female customers, colorful devices for young customers, many useful gadgets for enthusiasts, and specialized messaging phones for People like to socialize or model with proper design suitable for business people . Whoever, who belongs to any group, certainly on the market will have the right model for you. But by 2007, the story once again changed.

2007 marked the birth of the iPhone, a turnaround smartphone game from Apple. This American company has shown the world what the phone of the future will look like. Before the iPhone, there were many smartphones, but both the bulky interface and the work-oriented and conservative in aesthetics pushed users to new brands.

BlackBerry and Nokia did not give up, continuing to maintain their position thanks to the BBOS and Symbian platforms but then also had to lose their breath before the iPhone. Soon the most improved phone became the most copied model, and whether copyright lawsuits or not, the iPhone began the era of phone consolidation.

As for Symbian, WebOS, Bada or BBOS, they all became 'defeated' and retreated to memory, giving the playing field to the two strongest guys: Android and iOS. Not only has the software throne, the hardware 'throne' has also been 'stolen from the touch screen' by the touch screen.

The competition of smartphones quickly became the battlefield for models with increasingly larger screens, providing a better experience for users. Touch interface makes all operations easier on phones than the old-style design machines (physical keyboard, small screen). Network speed is improved on each machine, the content of online viewing is increasingly closer. Phone cameras have also entered an evolutionary phase.

The bigger screen, the more pixels lead to high demand for battery capacity. The touch screen makes the front and back of the phone just two rectangles pressed together, so manufacturers don't have many design choices. They started a race to develop devices with screen sizes as large as possible, to the point where people now call smartphones with a new word, Phablet (Phone-Tablet, a hybrid device between a phone and a device). tablet).

The final screen is just a screen, but it dictates the design. The screen is too big while the demand for equipment is increasingly thin and light, so engineers cannot produce models with many different shapes as before, forcing to follow the rectangular shape to be as compact as possible. According to Phone Arena, when phones have 80% of the screen design, 80% of smartphones in the market are similar in appearance.

The manufacturer has also squeezed to the last drop of inspiration to bring a 'difference' such as the slightly curved 2.5D screen at the edges, the ultra-thin screen bezel or the 'notch', ' water drops, '' 'mole,' depending on how you call each person based on the design of each carrier.

There was a time when the market was 'wobbly' with a 'modular' design (phones made up of different parts) but this was hard to come by and people didn't even notice. The unreleased module phone was 'covered up' and forgotten. In the end, the phone is still rectangular, every machine is similar.

First of all, the design to eliminate the screen edges and the large battery capacity is really attractive, but at the same time, the limiting factor for creativity. The phone is basically only designed to cover the screen border and battery, there is no room for other changes. Users also only like the high-end things they are familiar with, so the manufacturer decides to choose a safe plan. This is why smartphones are now mostly made of glass and metal (or replaced with plastic for cheap machines).

Today's keyboard designs are obsolete (BlackBerry is best demonstrated when it still tries to stick to tradition and the models that come out of it can't stay on the market), while testing design changes like modules or device personalization are all about paper projects.

Users also only have two major mobile platforms to choose from: Android and iOS. Every iPhone has the shape of an iPhone, while Android the back looks like a model first.

Most importantly, copying has become a design language. No company is ashamed to pick up the features or elements of another company's design to put it on its products.

Gradually, users fall into a vicious cycle. Smartphone manufacturers give customers what they need and want, but doing so for a long time makes users familiar with large screen phones, multiple camera systems on the back . So familiar that these customers feel No need to change, not even notice the boredom in the day-to-day products that are identical.

Still, there are still engineers behind the door of the lab who think it's time to change, ending a period that has lasted more than a decade. That may be the reason why flexible screens were born.

Flexible screen technology has been in reality for a few years and finally comes a time when the manufacturer decided to make a step change, potentially risky. And since then, the foldable flexible phone phone was born. 2019 is the highlight when commercial products with foldable screens are launched, marking the first truly significant change in smartphone design after nearly 13 years. Of course, this appearance is still inspired by the past (clamshell folding phones) and gave birth to another definition of a folding tablet (becoming a smartphone).

The market has yet to see the success of this design, and whether users really need a smartphone design different from the current rectangular era is still a question that cannot be answered immediately. But more and more manufacturers are taking part in the game of flexible screen smartphones with serious and long-term investment, showing positive signs of a design change in the future of smartphones.