The S5 will be one of the year's biggest phones
The 2014 smartphone wars have kicked into overdrive at MWC 2014 this week, but this year’s battle will not be fought on the specs front network provider Three has suggested.
Speaking with TrustedReviews during the Barcelona-based conference, Three has hinted that 2014 will see leading handset manufacturers look to move away from the specs race and compete to provide consumers with the most desirable user experiences.
“The main trends for 2014 will be that your main vendors, so HTC, Sony and Samsung, they are all changing,” Brendan Arndt, Three’s Portfolio Manager told us.
He added: “It used to be a bit of a spec war and now it is much more about the experience that customers are getting on the phone.
“That’s definitely one of the trends between all of the vendors.”
As an early sign of Arndt’s predictions, the Samsung Galaxy S5 was officially unveiled earlier this week with relatively minor hardware updates joined by added focus on user security, fitness tracking and software-introduced camera enhancements.
Suggesting that consumer demands are changing as smartphone specs hit heights unnecessary to most general user cases, the Three manager has stated consumers are becoming less willing to trade off overall performance for one new hardware feature.
“I’m an early adopter and I love tech but I’ve changed because I’ve seen so much of it. For me it is much more about the experience now,” he told us.
Looking to the coming year of smartphone evolution Arndt stated: “One vendor might have a 2K display and one vendor might just have a Full HD display. For me, that doesn’t really make a difference because I can’t really tell the difference.
“It is definitely better, the 2K, but knowing what I know technology wise it’s a question of do I want the battery to be poor or do I want a really nice experience.”
Would you rather previously unseen hardware features or an improved overall experience on your next smartphone? Let us know via the comment boxes below.
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