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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/emma-brockes-column/2014/jun/19/amazon-fire-phone-feature-creep
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| Why do we buy phones with so many features, then only play Candy Crush? | Why do we buy phones with so many features, then only play Candy Crush? |
| (2 months later) | |
| When Amazon launched its much anticipated new smartphone, the Amazon Fire, on Wednesday, most of the marketing emphasis revolved around feature creep – the exciting and potentially useless extension of the frontiers of phone innovation. | When Amazon launched its much anticipated new smartphone, the Amazon Fire, on Wednesday, most of the marketing emphasis revolved around feature creep – the exciting and potentially useless extension of the frontiers of phone innovation. |
| Among what Forbes magazine called "an alluring ecosystem of apps and content", the Amazon smartphone's new features include: cameras in all four corners of the device; "face-sensing" technology to track your head and eyes as you use it; 3D images; and something called "Firefly", a tab that allows users to point the phone at "over 100 million" items to bring up information about what it is "seeing". | |
| The phone will, said Jeff Bezos, also feature the Kindle's "Mayday" option, which enables a one-touch video connection to an actual person who will give tech – and possibly emotional – support whenever the operating system overwhelms you. At this point, the least impressive part of the package is the blundering human attached to one end. | The phone will, said Jeff Bezos, also feature the Kindle's "Mayday" option, which enables a one-touch video connection to an actual person who will give tech – and possibly emotional – support whenever the operating system overwhelms you. At this point, the least impressive part of the package is the blundering human attached to one end. |
| The question is: so what? | The question is: so what? |
| It's already an axiom of modern manners that most of us spend longer on our phones than is strictly polite. They sit, like an extra fish knife, within reach on the table; they glow on the night stand. This week, while grabbing dinner in the park with a friend after work, it seemed to me no big deal to pick up my phone and make a call. While I was talking, she took out her own device and started listlessly scrolling. | It's already an axiom of modern manners that most of us spend longer on our phones than is strictly polite. They sit, like an extra fish knife, within reach on the table; they glow on the night stand. This week, while grabbing dinner in the park with a friend after work, it seemed to me no big deal to pick up my phone and make a call. While I was talking, she took out her own device and started listlessly scrolling. |
| In spite of this obsession, if you monitor the way in which you regularly use your phone, you will probably find you're drawing on a fraction of what the device is technically capable of. Has anyone ever actually taken slow-motion video with her iPhone 5S? Or willfully used its "touch ID fingerprint sensor"? Or programmed it so that the flash goes off to signal an incoming call? | In spite of this obsession, if you monitor the way in which you regularly use your phone, you will probably find you're drawing on a fraction of what the device is technically capable of. Has anyone ever actually taken slow-motion video with her iPhone 5S? Or willfully used its "touch ID fingerprint sensor"? Or programmed it so that the flash goes off to signal an incoming call? |
| As the New York Times reported this week, it's more than most of us can do even to listen to voice mail. (This is because only parents leave voice mails, typically taking 30 seconds or more just to ask you to call them back). And yet when the 5S came out, most of these features were touted as breakthrough advances in technology. | As the New York Times reported this week, it's more than most of us can do even to listen to voice mail. (This is because only parents leave voice mails, typically taking 30 seconds or more just to ask you to call them back). And yet when the 5S came out, most of these features were touted as breakthrough advances in technology. |
| Innovation for its own sake has been the subject of harsh review for some time now – most recently and comprehensively in Jill Lepore's much blogged-about jumbo piece in the New Yorker this week. | |
| Lepore takes on Clay Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation (outlined in his business bible, The Innovator's Dilemma) and confronts his admiring view of new technology as a prerequisite for success with the counter-view that disruption for its own sake is "devastatingly dangerous". It is a persuasive piece – barring the slightly baffling characterization of Buzzfeed as the al-Qaida of startups. | Lepore takes on Clay Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation (outlined in his business bible, The Innovator's Dilemma) and confronts his admiring view of new technology as a prerequisite for success with the counter-view that disruption for its own sake is "devastatingly dangerous". It is a persuasive piece – barring the slightly baffling characterization of Buzzfeed as the al-Qaida of startups. |
| Anyway, Lepore writes: | Anyway, Lepore writes: |
| Even people who cherish the idea of progress, and point to improvements like the eradication of contagious diseases and the education of girls, have been hard-pressed to hold on to it while reckoning with two World Wars, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, genocide and global warming. Replacing "progress" with "innovation" skirts the question of whether a novelty is an improvement: the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer. | Even people who cherish the idea of progress, and point to improvements like the eradication of contagious diseases and the education of girls, have been hard-pressed to hold on to it while reckoning with two World Wars, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, genocide and global warming. Replacing "progress" with "innovation" skirts the question of whether a novelty is an improvement: the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer. |
| She goes further than this, ascribing a moral crusade – an evangelism, effectively - to advocates of disruptive innovation: "disrupt, and you will be saved". | She goes further than this, ascribing a moral crusade – an evangelism, effectively - to advocates of disruptive innovation: "disrupt, and you will be saved". |
| This may be hyperbolic, but Lepore's point about newness and abundance for its own sake is a reiteration of something we've known for decades: while the world's major religions continue to pay lip-service to the idea of thrift as a virtue, every other cue in contemporary society reassures us that the more stuff we have, the better people we become. | This may be hyperbolic, but Lepore's point about newness and abundance for its own sake is a reiteration of something we've known for decades: while the world's major religions continue to pay lip-service to the idea of thrift as a virtue, every other cue in contemporary society reassures us that the more stuff we have, the better people we become. |
| The technology may be new, but the promise implicit in the Amazon phone – that it will make you faster, sharper, smarter, more desirable – turns on a simple and age-old question of salesmanship. It doesn't matter if the only features you use are text, email, Facebook and Candy Crush. (And maybe the map.) Neither does it matter that you already have multiple devices to take care of streaming music / watching video / reading e-books / processing reality on the go, including two eyes and a brain. It is new and therefore must be worthwhile. | The technology may be new, but the promise implicit in the Amazon phone – that it will make you faster, sharper, smarter, more desirable – turns on a simple and age-old question of salesmanship. It doesn't matter if the only features you use are text, email, Facebook and Candy Crush. (And maybe the map.) Neither does it matter that you already have multiple devices to take care of streaming music / watching video / reading e-books / processing reality on the go, including two eyes and a brain. It is new and therefore must be worthwhile. |
| It's a little known fact, but apparently it is possible to function in the world without many of these smartphone technologies. According to research by Pew, only 58% of American adults own a smartphone of any kind. | It's a little known fact, but apparently it is possible to function in the world without many of these smartphone technologies. According to research by Pew, only 58% of American adults own a smartphone of any kind. |
| I have experience of this. When I go back to England, I'm too cheap to pay roaming charges for my US iPhone and so rely on a pay-as-you go mobile that looks like a suppository and has no features at all. It costs £12. It doesn't even have voicemail. Technologically, it is about as advanced as a plastic cup with a piece of string at one end, and yet, miraculously, I have never missed an appointment, been unable to find my way home or died from a lack of news updates while out in London and reliant upon it. I have, however, spent a lot less time staring at a screen. | I have experience of this. When I go back to England, I'm too cheap to pay roaming charges for my US iPhone and so rely on a pay-as-you go mobile that looks like a suppository and has no features at all. It costs £12. It doesn't even have voicemail. Technologically, it is about as advanced as a plastic cup with a piece of string at one end, and yet, miraculously, I have never missed an appointment, been unable to find my way home or died from a lack of news updates while out in London and reliant upon it. I have, however, spent a lot less time staring at a screen. |
| The iPhone 6 is rumoured to be coming out in the autumn. Perhaps it is time for a little disruptive innovation on the part of the consumer. After all, who else has the power to re-write the rules of engagement and say no? | The iPhone 6 is rumoured to be coming out in the autumn. Perhaps it is time for a little disruptive innovation on the part of the consumer. After all, who else has the power to re-write the rules of engagement and say no? |