Tomorrow, if all goes as expected, we’ll see the introduction of the next iPhone. Unless the surprisingly large number leaks have pointed us the wrong way, it’ll have a taller screen, somewhat better battery, and faster LTE capable radios. Maybe it'll have NFC, but probably not. Whatever it comes with, one thing is for sure: it’ll be an incremental improvement on the theme. Evolutionary, not revolutionary. Cue the inevitable whining from some, but as far as the hardware is concerned, we’re in a progressive improvement cycle here until somebody figures out how to put ten times the power into the same battery space.
No, the next revolution in smartphones won’t be in hardware. I don’t think it’ll even be in the software, although I do expect more progress on that front. Where I expect the next revolution is in the relationship of how our devices connect to the Internet.
Follow me for a moment here: Nobody loves their mobile provider. Certainly not here in the United States. Yes, things have gotten better of late. Buying data in blocks is better than trying to guess how much you’ll use or face massive penalty charges. And while the latest shared plans better serve those using multiple devices, the pricing you end up with them isn’t any better. In fact, it still feels off-base, mostly because of building in unlimited talk time and SMS—two things that are becoming less meaningful over time, especially since on modern networks, it’s all just bits.
It could be simpler. What it should be is the following: You want a SIM? Great, that’s a $5 or $10 one-time fee, likely included in the price of your device. Once you’re online, data should be something like $5-10 per GB whether or not its from browsing the web, sending messages, or speaking. That’s it.
You know what else could be simpler? Not dealing with AT&T or Verizon contracts or whatever else when you buy your next phone. Put all the history of why we have contracts and mobile plans like we do today aside and imagine a best-case scenario for setting up your next phone. You’d pull it out of the box, turn it on, tell it who you were, and boom, you’d be online—possibly after giving your credit card information to pay for access to the carrier of your choice.
Does it sound fictional? Maybe. But it shouldn’t be. All the technical bits are already there. The iPhone has hardware onboard to talk to all the providers and network provisioning already runs over the air. The only impediment: current practice and whatever business relationships are in place that would have to be undone to enable a simpler customer approach. Oh, and the fact that the network providers are doing everything possible to avoid a fate of being simply an ISP instead of looking forward to a business model that could possibly let their customers like them.
That’d be a revolution. I’m not holding my breath on it happening anytime soon, however. Certainly not tomorrow.
Notes:
- Where’d I come up with those prices? Partly from current US data pricing and partly from experience buying prepaid data plans overseas. Last year, I bought a prepaid SIM in the UK for £5 and a GB of data access for another £5. This summer, I did the same in Greece. €5 for the SIM and €5 for a 500MB data plan that was bumped up to 2GB on summer promotion. Sure, different countries have different economic realities. But you can extrapolate from this info what data should cost within a certain ballpark.