Things like large 1” camera sensors, SiC batteries that offer 6-8k mAh, and other cool tech that would improve phones a lot. It’s not just Chinese brands either (e.g. Sony has an optical zoom camera on their flagship, Nothing has some excellent budget to midrange offerings).
It seems really weird, Apple/Samsung/Google are massive companies with so much money, yet they don’t try to offer this kind of tech on even their most expensive phones. In contrast, other phone makers have budget to midrange phones with insane battery capacities, Ultra models with innovative cameras, etc.
To me, it makes sense that Apple isn’t offering these kinds of things. They’re already extremely profitable and have the whole walled garden ecosystem that draws people in. Google focuses more on software rather than hardware, and their cameras are helped by software magic.
What surprises me is that Samsung isn’t trying to get better hardware to get more market share. If they had huge SiC batteries, large camera sensors, or other cool tech, it would definitely help sway buyers from Apple and other brands.
Especially since Samsung is struggling against both Chinese competition and, to a lesser extent, Indian competition. And in the U.S., they certainly want to steal market share from Apple.
What is with the reluctance of these massive tech companies from using the latest tech in their phones?
To be fair, Samsung’s new Fold 7 does seem to be very thin (and surprisingly keeps the same battery capacity with the Fold 6), and Apple Silicon has always been very good.
But things like larger camera sensors, ridiculously large SiC batteries, superfast charging speeds (Samsung does have 45W, which is probably enough for most people, but Apple unfortunately does not have fast charging…), and high-value budget to midrange phones (e.g. Nothing’s latest ones are awesome with clean software, and of course all the Chinese ones like Redmi, Oppo, Poco, etc. that usually have bloaty software) the big brands don’t really have anything that competes with the other smaller brands.
One comment already pointed out that Samsung would rather use their own sensor and are probably developing their own 1" sensor (as well has better sensors for the ultrawide and telephotos). A whole bunch say that the big brands usually play the long game and see how the latest tech develops before implementing it in their own smartphones. Another says that Apple and Samsung produce way more phones than the smaller brands so they have to wait for the tech to scale. So Apple and Samsung certainly have legitimate reasons to wait.
A bit off-topic, but I think it’s kind of crazy that Huawei and Xiaomi were able to develop their own cars. Pretty wild.