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> I wonder how things will look 20 years from now. I'm sure raw specs will continue to improve and make my shiny, new S24 Ultra look as dated then as it does my 6600 today.

Not happening. We are very close to various limits imposed by physics. I don't even believe SGS 44U will be more than 3-4 times faster than SGS 24U in ST mode, if not less.

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I guess, efficiency and batteries will improve, so the devices will last much longer than now. Maybe even efficiency will great enough that the whole energy can be harvested from movement or environment and we don't have to charge the devices at all.

Type of user interfaces might also be improve a lot. Think about a device that maps "images" directly in your visual cortex, so no need for displays anymore.

Or holographic projections instead of screens.

Much sci-fi today but potentially reality in 20 years.

Also the way we communicate with the device will drastically change. We already have AI language models and good speech recognition but these are in a very early state. I assume such things will improve a lot and will be integrated soon in consumer devices.

The thing I'm most sad about the humane pin is all the engineering work that went into that display, only to be locked away.

This has been a refrain for a long time now. And yet…

To be honest, my current smartphone doesn't feel at all that evolved compared to my 300€s Lumia 920 from 2013..

Pics are slightly better, but I've never cared that much about photos and the Lumia 920 made amazing ones.

In fact, if anything, my phone feels slower, more intrusive with ads and notifications..Battery life is much worse too.

Things that got better are:

- apps supported. Windows mobile was killed by developers sabotaging the ecosystem entirely, many banks/etc just ignored it even when Lumias were outselling iphones globally

- screen: albeit it really shows in a very light environments (like at the beach)

- external hardware support such as Bluetooth earbuds

It was Windows Phone, not Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile long worked on resistive touchscreens and had a piece of the cake there. Apple iPhone (with Google Android following up) was innovative with regards to capacitive touchscreen. Which is much more user friendly when using the input device always with you: your fingertips, as opposed to a stylus. It also allowed for bigger interface and more appropriate font size, helping all those 40+ aged people.

Back then (Ballmer era) I still didn't trust Microsoft at all. Or: I trusted Google and Apple too much. I'd much rather have seen Sailfish succeed. Especially as I used the predecessors in '00s (Nokia N810, N900). N9 was a great direction but Elop and Ballmer killed it off. But sabotage, it is more a chicken egg problem of network effect. Cause, many devs tried.

I still believe Windows Phone had a clean UI with those limited default colors.

As developer that invested into WinRT, Microsoft did most of the work killing it.

Starting by the whole WP 7 to WP 8 reboot.

Multiple rewrites of WinRT, requiring us to yet again rewrite the application, between 8, 8.1 and 10, across the various deployment targets, phone, tablet and desktop.

Replacing C++/CX with the junk tooling of C++/WinRT, back to the ATL glory days.

Ah, the broken promise that all WP 8 devices would be compatible with WP 8.1.

And this doesn't cover the remaining mess on the desktop, that carries on with WinUI 3.0.

Eventually we stop caring, and moved into more trusty platform holders.

The way you make ST faster is by moving more to hardware.

Instead of computing CRC32 or AES one instruction at a time according to their algorithm, you just have a hardware CRC/AES instruction which does it in one go.

Same for decoding movies, or running neural-networks.

AMD/Intel still deliver 10-15% ST improvement with each generation. Compound that over 20 years and it's way more than 3-4 times faster.

Phone case technology is an underrated area for development. Pop sockets are the most innovation we've been able to mass market.

We’re hampered by the limits of engineering, not those of physics by a long shot.

But it will have AI.

Which will show you the ads you really want, generated live to match your personal psychology and trigger your spending instincts.

The biggest difference between the Nokia and the Samsung is that you use the Nokia, the Samsung uses you.