Beautiful Phone Design is not enough, you need innovation tech too

The failure of Nokia’s Lumia 900 phone to get off to a good sprint has shown that it’s not enough simply to produce a beautiful phone. As I previously mentioned, they should have spent more on the hardware too.

This is important for the whole market, because even if you don’t intend to buy a Windows Phone, at least you can benefit from competitive pressures on your chosen supplier to create a better phone.

That’s why it’s heartening to see in this article from Business Insider that Samsung is innovating with its processor technology for its next smartphone, the Galaxy S III.

The most impressive feature is the ability to play video at full 1080p HD. That’s going to look really nice on the phone’s big screen. Images and 3D gaming graphics will look a lot better too.

Source: Business Insider

EXCLUSIVE: Mobile trends that place you ahead of the curve

Receive this insight by signing up to our email newsletter. Enter your email address here:

http://twitter.com/lyndonJJ Lyndon Johnson

Innovation – or the perception of it – is the key differentiator that Apple has over the competition.

I was watching a BBC documentary about Steve Jobs and, I think it was, Stephen Fry made a very interesting statement about design no longer being just what something looked like, but also how it worked. The big problem for all Apple competitors – in the cellphone, tablet and – to some extent – computer market is that there is the perception that its products do all of the critical functions well. Whether or not it is true, this is a stroke of genius by the Apple marketeers… in my industry there’s a saying that perception IS reality. The handset manufacturers not only need to come up with a new killer app for their devices, but also beat Apple at how they market their products.
- http://twitter.com/DigitalPoss DigitalPossibilities
  
  Lyndon,
  
  It’s very interesting how you describe it. Here’s the thing, good design needs to be omni-present and needs to be pervasive in all aspects of a product. Apple has managed to do that very well – I think in large part due to Steve Jobs consideration of how important this is.
  
  Apple designs great ads – they are often very original, very high quality and very elegant. That creates a perception about their products. Then you touch their products that are very elegant, very original – the same goes for their software. Where I consider their thinking to be different from other suppliers is that they think along the customer experience rather than at just one point in it. So you can have a really fantastic experience going along a few core paths, and if other experiences are meuh; well the good ones trump that. I think you were saying the same.
  
  Yet, they do make mistakes – sometimes their software fails, iPhoto for iOS is not very well designed; but in the globally they do hit the mark.
  
  Competitors seem to think more about individual items; and not very well about the whole and the path experience; so they end up with products that have few very good paths…
  - http://twitter.com/lyndonJJ Lyndon Johnson
    
    I agree – it’s the same in what I do… the focus often is on delivering particular elements, rather than looking at the overall design of a campaign. Apple makes mistakes, but rather than getting hung up on them it minimizes the issue and moves on to something else it does well – a technique known as bridging [when used in interviews].
    
    I get the impression that Apple starts with the experience and works backwards… rather than trying to fit many different, disparate details across the hardware, software and UI to a single experience.
    
    I’m about to write a blog post about the one [and perhaps only] thing Apple can do that will halt its continued dominance! It’s not specifically about innovation or consumer experience, but is connected in many ways!