Stuff that mostly has nothing to do with Satya Nadella or Microsoft's Difficult Decisions *SPAWN*

This is actually where MS can do well. Reason to buy another Android phone or iPhone is lacking when the one you own is very serviceable. But a shift to a new ecosystem is reason to buy a new device. It wouldn't last, of course, but MS might find themselves in a boom if they execute on Windows perfectly as people transition to Windows devices.
 
Also I forgot the simple fact that as mobile devices that are pretty much always with us, phones are broken a lot more often and easily than any other electronically item we own. Broken, scratched or anything that would make us buy a new one.

Phones are the only pieces of technology I can think of that everyone needs these days and everyone replaces every so often.
 
A major issue with replacements is I think people will be more wary spending out on big items (unless they claim on insurance) after breaking one or three phones, and will tend to buy cheaper. Which are becoming increasingly competent, so less need for a top-end phone. In fact it's likely just the advance of tech has people satisfied with the lower end phones and the flagship models are no longer profitable. If Apple sold a £150 handset, they'd probably lose a lot of customers to that iPhone instead of the super lucrative top-end one.

Having significant margins on cheap handsets would be a great place to be in. Don't think there's any way to work that. Which is why you want to be on the software. Google don't give a doodoo over Samsung's flagging sales because the handsets everyone already owns are still making money for Google.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
If Apple sold a £150 handset, they'd probably lose a lot of customers to that iPhone instead of the super lucrative top-end one.
Click to expand...

Whenever Apple have offered a cheaper/lower-end version of ANY product, it has never sold as well as the high-end alternatives and there is a lot of sales data to support this.

I think Apple's market is distinct enough (less users by volume, far more ecosystem spend and nobody really understands why other than the speculated reason that Apple's customers are more affluent than those of their competitors) from the 'general rules' of smartphone buyer behaviour to just ignore.
 
Thinking wrt Win 10, no point in MS releasing new high end phones until that lands. They wouldn't sell. Once MS (probably) flesh out the range again they might start seeing some kind of growth in profits ... or at least reduction in losses.

Personally, I tend to hang on to phones until they die. My trusty (and back in the Jurassic period, top end) dual core Lumia will hopefully bring home the bacon yet again with the free Win 10 update.
 
I've owned two smartphones. A cheap and cheerful Galaxy Ace, and then I upgraded to an S3 Mini because it's memory was too small and I wanted something with a little more beef for development of games, plus it's OLED. I don't see the value in top-end phones as lower end are very functional. I'll only upgrade for a better screen, and want possibly to switch to Windows. Which is actually something of a dilemma. If Windows devices don't get the best OLED screens, I'll just keep waiting and waiting...
 
Shifty Geezer said:
A major issue with replacements is I think people will be more wary spending out on big items (unless they claim on insurance) after breaking one or three phones, and will tend to buy cheaper. Which are becoming increasingly competent, so less need for a top-end phone. In fact it's likely just the advance of tech has people satisfied with the lower end phones and the flagship models are no longer profitable. If Apple sold a £150 handset, they'd probably lose a lot of customers to that iPhone instead of the super lucrative top-end one.

Having significant margins on cheap handsets would be a great place to be in. Don't think there's any way to work that. Which is why you want to be on the software. Google don't give a doodoo over Samsung's flagging sales because the handsets everyone already owns are still making money for Google.
Click to expand...

There's no evidence that Google makes much money from Android.

In fact, they said iPhone was their top platform for mobile revenues.

There's some belief that Android is more insurance policy for them, to make sure their services and products aren't locked out of mobile. I think their initial fear was Microsoft dominating mobile and thus locking Google out.
 
London-boy said:
But a phone will never, ever have a camera that gives the same quality as an A7 or any camera that has a full or even half frame sensor. That's just physics. No amount of super duper technology will ever, ever make up the reality that a DSLR or equivalent have a sensor that's an order of magnitude larger (or more?) than what we can fit in a camera phone.
Click to expand...

That's true...unless they design a new type of sensor! I had read elsewhere for example that at one point Sony patented a curved sensor which would give it more surface area and hence more light gathering ability without requiring as much space for a typical flat sensor. Something like that would be great for a phone where space is at a premium. Their new A7R Mark 2 I believe is the first camera to use a backlit sensor, again to help with light gathering ability, I assume that'll trickle to phones one day. Along with those is that better OIS is needed to help compensate for the sometimes longer shutter speed that is needed in really low light scenarios. Add that all up (more light gathering + better OIS) and it could potentially mark the end of the blurry phone shot! Anyways I definitely don't expect them to ever match my A7S (epic camera for the record) but I think as long as they could eliminate the scourge of blurry shots then that would go a long way to improving the pictures people normally take on their phones. At least I hope so anyways because I don't have the steadiest hands around lol.
 
Pretty sure smaller sensors have been 'backlit' for quite some time. It wasn't as needed a feature on bigger sensors because bigger sensors don't need as much help. They're massive, compared to the tiny camera sensors.
So if anything, the technology trickled down from phones to cameras where the same improvements were felt but on a much bigger scale.
 
wco81 said:
There's no evidence that Google makes much money from Android.

In fact, they said iPhone was their top platform for mobile revenues.
Click to expand...
Doesn't really matter. Point is they get their revenue from software, not hardware. Hardware is a mugs' game!
 
joker454 said:
That's true...unless they design a new type of sensor! I had read elsewhere for example that at one point Sony patented a curved sensor.
Click to expand...
Yep. Should simplify lens design and cost.
Their new A7R Mark 2 I believe is the first camera to use a backlit sensor
Click to expand...
Sony have had backlight for ages, since ExmorR, 2008. AFAIK all Sony sensors are backlit because they own the patent, and that's one of the reasons companies like Sony sensors = 30% better low light performance.

The main limit for mobile phones is lens length. You're stuck with wide-angle and that limits what photos you can take. Mobile replaces the fixed-zoom compact of yesteryear, but can't replace enthusiast+ level cameras. If we ever get tiny zoom lenses, that could change. The good thing regards digital photography is that as technology progresses and shrinks, the laws of physics stay the same. Eventually we may (should?) get to a point where a tiny lens is very capable.
 
London-boy said:
Pretty sure smaller sensors have been 'backlit' for quite some time. It wasn't as needed a feature on bigger sensors because bigger sensors don't need as much help. They're massive, compared to the tiny camera sensors.
So if anything, the technology trickled down from phones to cameras where the same improvements were felt but on a much bigger scale.
Click to expand...

Yeah BSI sensors are not new in phones. Full frame BSI is a new thing.

We'll see if the reviews on the A72R indicate that it makes a difference.

Sony did announce curved sensors but I believe it would be for general photography. Curved sensors wouldn't save space over flat ones.

Even if they got a great sensor in there, you don't have room for great optics in a phone. So a couple of companies are making cameras you can pair to your phone and these have larger sensors as well as quality optics.
 
Yeah, there's been a lot of improvements to smartphone sensors since BSI. We have Stacked Sensors, phase detect AF, local frame buffer. The tech starts on small sensors and trickle up (down?up?) to bigger chips as it becomes possible.

This year the leap from Sony was having Stacked for 1" compact cameras, and BSI for full-frame. Stacked have raised the sensitivity even more, and it's a lot faster since it can have more transistors on the circuit plane. They put a frame buffer RAM directly on the sensor. The new RX100 can do 960fps.
 
wco81 said:
Yeah BSI sensors are not new in phones. Full frame BSI is a new thing.
Click to expand...

Ah, did not know that. I've mostly been following their higher end stuff.

wco81 said:
Sony did announce curved sensors but I believe it would be for general photography. Curved sensors wouldn't save space over flat ones.
Click to expand...

I believe the idea was for a curved sensor to net an extra stop or two of light, so faster shutter speed could be used hence less chance of blur in your pictures. It's all just on paper though at this point.
 
There's a lot of expensive glass elements in a lens design which sacrifice other aspects just to get a relatively flat field. The compromises to solve the field curvature are eliminated with curved sensors.

Curved sensor allows wider aperture, improved resolution, lower aberrations, much simpler lens design, less transmissivity losses, smaller size, and lower weight. It's not a minor problem, it's one of the reasons quality wide aperture lenses that are sharp edge-to-edge cost many thousands with lots of aspherical elements and fluorite glass.

The problem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petzval_field_curvature

A more thorough explanation:
https://photographylife.com/what-is-field-curvature

Sony's lens designs for curved sensors:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20150077619.pdf
 
May not be any use for people already with a decent set of lenses, but it'll dramatically reduce the cost of ownership of decent cameras. One of the main reasons not to get an interchangeable lens camera and instead get a compact/all-in-one is the sheer expense of the lenses. You can buy a Sony camera for under £350 with an epic zoom, whereas you can't even get an epic zoom for that price as just a lens. A compact camera system with interchangeable lenses that don't cost hundreds each would be a great competitor.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Yep. Should simplify lens design and cost.
Sony have had backlight for ages, since ExmorR, 2008. AFAIK all Sony sensors are backlit because they own the patent, and that's one of the reasons companies like Sony sensors = 30% better low light performance.

The main limit for mobile phones is lens length. You're stuck with wide-angle and that limits what photos you can take. Mobile replaces the fixed-zoom compact of yesteryear, but can't replace enthusiast+ level cameras. If we ever get tiny zoom lenses, that could change. The good thing regards digital photography is that as technology progresses and shrinks, the laws of physics stay the same. Eventually we may (should?) get to a point where a tiny lens is very capable.
Click to expand...

You are out of date.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=iphone dslr lens&es_th=1

However, I find the premise of someone wanting to carry around a lense or lenses but has a problem with carrying the camera itself, pretty odd.
 
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