Phone design and innovation stopped years ago.*
*camera being the exception
Discussion
I find that perspective completely disingenuous.
First of all we should recognize these things as mobile computers. At least the iPhone keynote made the distinction that it encapsulated three distinct devices and ran OS X, but then the complete discourse got hung up at that useless phone categorization.
Second, the form factor derives from human anatomy. If you want to innovate human anatomy, take it up with the laws of biology and physics. Phone design made enough mistakes by messing with the device size.
Third, only recently, phone design completely overhauled the enclosure construction, advanced glass types, aluminium and steel alloys, fewer mechanical elements, even Titanium, notoriously difficult to machine, appears to enter the mix more prominently soon.
Then recent devices completely overhauled wireless connectivity, UWB, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi revisions. 64bit chips, secure enclave, dedicated machine units, advanced biometrics, laser scanners, advanced camera optics, advanced speakers, wide color, HFR, color temperature adapting screens.
PCs have had no comparable innovations in decades, yet no one seems to lament this for sake of self congratulatory rambling.
If you avoid to look past the trivial surface, you will find anything dull pretty fast.
Yes, year over year devices get better but from my perspective, as someone who was on the iPhone team at apple, things have become iterative and incremental vs lacking true innovation.
Hard to argue with your direct credentials here, of which I admittedly knew nothing when I wrote the post.
However, I hope I could lay out somewhat credibly how and why I disagree.
Regarding incremental, even if I perceived it like that, I go with the James Joyce quote “In the particular is contained the universal”.