The HTC One has a gorgeous chassis and a ton of camera tricks, the Samsung's Galaxy S4 pauses and unpauses video when you avert your gaze, and in the Lumia 920, Nokia was the first to introduce wireless charging and an ultrasensitive screen you can control while wearing gloves.
Yet compared with the real meat of what you do with a phone -- things like communicating with people, browsing the Internet, snapping photos, and playing games -- today's top phones are mostly all on par. Software and hardware extras that extend beyond the basics, while impressive, convenient, likable, and even useful, still amount to fancy filler.
All of today's technology will certainly improve: cameras will get sharper and clearer, processors faster, screens stronger, and batteries longer-lived. But in tomorrow's tech world, that "filler" may be the more compelling story.
With his shaggy, sandy blond hair and a 5-o'clock shadow, Mark Rolston, the creative director for Frog Design, has studied technology for the better part of two decades. As he sees it, smartphones are just about out of evolutionary advances. Sure, form factors and materials might alter as manufacturers grasp for differentiating design, but in terms of innovative leaps, Rolston says, "we're at the end of gross innovation for smartphones."
That isn't to say smartphones are dead or obsolete. Just the contrary. As Rolston and other future thinkers who study the mobile space conclude, smartphones will become increasingly impactful in interacting with our surrounding world, but more as one smaller piece of a much large, interconnected puzzle abuzz with data transfer and information.
We'll certainly see more crazy camera software and NFC features everywhere, but there's much, much more to look forward to besides.