I want phones to be exciting again

Recent iPhone releases have been getting boring compared to past years and I wish they would spice things up.

Written by Andrew Paduano

Once upon a time, it was 2007, I was only in preschool, and the world was about to completely change. 

The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs went on stage in San Francisco to announce a future only Apple could dare to create at the time. A future most people did not see coming – or think they needed – and yet it would become deeply integrated into almost everyone’s lives. A master of presentations, Jobs led up to the big moment, “An iPod, a phone and an internet communicator. An iPod, a phone – are you getting it?" And thus, the iPhone was born. 

The past

It was not until around the iPhone 4 in 2010 when the “smartphone” really took off like a supersonic jet, but the iPhone product itself was the catalyst for the modern world today. Yes, we had flip phones, the Nintendo DS, the iPod, the internet, etc., but the iPhone synthesized it all in a way that just worked. 

Even though I did not have a smartphone until 2016, I could feel the excitement around each new iPhone release. There were fun advertisements on the TV and my cousins all talked about the new features and apps on their iPhones. Today, people roll their eyes if a new app comes out. In the past, if you got a new iPhone for Christmas, everyone would want to know about it. Whether it was the introduction of the voice assistant Siri in the iPhone 4S, the colorful iPhone 5c, the removal of the headphone jack with the iPhone 7, there was always something interesting and new. 

I especially remember the iPhone X release in 2017. It was the first major smartphone to let you unlock your phone with your face and it slimmed the look of the entire phone’s screen, leaving it with the iconic “notch” at the top (it was a master marketing technique if nothing else). It was also the phone to start pricing at $1,000, instilling a sense of luxury into the product. 

Fun fact, at the time of writing this, you can buy about 200 Shrek DVDs on Amazon for the same price the iPhone X was (and the iPhone 16 Pro is today).

In 2019, we got the iPhone 11 Pro with three cameras, and later the Dynamic Island to replace the notch on the newer phones’ screens, but the excitement has slowed down dramatically. All the iPhones since have been too similar. Just throw in slightly better specs and photoshop the camera layout 90 degrees, and there you go, new iPhone.

The present

Now, I’m not here to say this is a horrible thing. I love my iPhone 15 Pro and besides the boring (still beautiful) design and some software bugs, I really enjoy it. Apple probably knows what they’re doing since they’re one of the largest, most successful and influential companies on the planet. They have done a lot of great stuff like adding health and emergency services on their devices. 

Obviously the current, smaller iteration model each year is working in terms of business, but it’s not fun and it’s not interesting. It doesn’t get the average person talking about the iPhone. The rest of the tech industry always follows what Apple does. Other large smartphone companies have been following similar, boring iterations. And, no, goofy folding phones don’t count. 

Apple’s current CEO Tim Cook likes giving people too many product options. He is an excellent business and logistics man, but it’s not exciting. Right now, just the iPhone 16 lineup alone has the regular iPhone 16, the iPhone 16 Plus, the iPhone 16 Pro, the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the just recently unveiled the iPhone 16e in February. The differences are extremely minor and may confuse the average consumer. Instead of making the iPhone 16e a fun, new, affordable design, they opted for a slightly cheaper iPhone 16 with slightly less features. It will probably sell well, but it’s not interesting. No one truly knows what Jobs would think, but personally, I think he’s rolling in his grave. 

And then there’s AI. I understand that it will definitely be useful in many ways going forward, but its execution across the board seems to be more of a burden for the average consumer. Apple was known as the company who does everything perfectly before releasing products, but people have been noticing slip ups lately. 

Apple’s “AI” is called Apple Intelligence. It has some good potential and they marketed their entire iPhone 16 lineup with this, but most of the big features haven’t come out yet. Basically, all we got now are simple writing tools and image/emoji generation that no one uses. No one is talking about these new generative emojis now. When the iPhone X came out the animated emoji you could record with the iPhone’s face scanner, Animoji (now referred to as Memoji), was plastered all over fun advertisements and it was a big fad at the time. 

As the tech YouTuber Marques Brownleee often says, “Never buy a product on the promise of future features.” 

There’s a delayed Apple Intelligence feature that was supposed to come this year where Siri was upgraded and could perform multiple actions at once, all integrated throughout the entire phone, with one simple prompt. Imagine being able to plan all aspects of an entire vacation accurately, with just a simple voice prompt. This sounds extremely futuristic, but it must be implemented in a way that gets people to actually use it.

The future

Obviously, this is my personal opinion, formed from what I see online and hear people say around me, but I believe it is also how many other people feel. Personally, I want to see Apple – and other major smartphone creators – really go crazy. I’m not a business expert, but I think as long as they have a basic, safe model each year, they can go crazy with more expensive ones and cheaper ones.

Give us a very tiny phone, a phone with a battery that lasts a week, change up the entire design, give us more exciting colors or rearrange the camera layout dramatically. Give us something people don’t ask for, but will need when it comes out. The specifics are for Apple to use their innovation powers for. Rumors are that there will be new iPhone models in September, one of which will be very thin and have a different type of camera, so maybe this will be the next exciting thing. One can hope.

I will always be excited for new iPhones and tech no matter what, but I want other people to be excited too. I want to share my excitement with them and see Apple really push the envelope more. We shall see.