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These are the top five dumbest phone trends we're seeing these days.
Mobile phones have changed a lot in their lifespan.
They got smaller and smaller, and then smarter and smarter.
But some dumbness has crept in.
Let's get to it.
At number five are manufacturer-specific assistants.
Can we get a roll call of all the different assistants?
Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, Alexa, Bixby, HTC Sense Companion Dancer, Prance and Rudolph, I get that every phone maker wants to make their device stand out, they want to say our system is so smart, buy from us because we have it, but the problem is not every phone maker is great at making smart assistance.
Google and Amazon seem to have the best ones.
Did you hear the rumor that LG.
And they have a dedicated button for its own assistant in the G7.
Maybe the resources these companies are wasting should be dedicated to something else.
Number four, thinness for thinness sake.
The thickness of a phone used to be dictated by practicality.
You know make the case as thin as it can be while holding all the components within the body.
Then camera bucks happened.
Apple, Samsung, Google and others are guilty of this.
There's nothing like putting your phone down on a surface and having the camera assembly touching that surface and the phone doesn't lay flat.
Thankfully some companies have figured out how to shrink their cameras to fit within the body.
What an idea.
And that brings us to the number three dumb phone trend, glass backs.
Hey, I like the look of a glass back, they also offer wireless charging.
The problem is you're slippery, fragile, and pricey to replace.
Way too many manufacturers have moved to the glass back Apple, Samsung, LG.
I know that plastic can feel cheap, but it's generally more durable as a back.
Maybe one day, when we get Gorilla Glass 72 with self-healing abilities, all glass everything will be a good idea.
Bit we're not there yet, so stop it.
On to number two, notches.
These don't look good anywhere.
Essential, Apple, Huawei's disappearing notch.
All slightly different, all fully dumb.
For some reason this trend caught on, and everyone has jumped on board.
One day people will look back on notched phones and realize they are the mallet of the mobile world.
Before we get to number one, it hasn't been all bad.
Let's highlight three of the smartest trends.
Number three, standardized wireless charging.
I've been waiting for wireless charging to take off from the first time I saw it at my first CES over a decade ago.
And number two, USBC, a nice standardized, reversible charging and data port.
Hooray for this on phones.
And the number one, huge screens and smaller bodies.
It's great.
[SOUND] And the number one dumbest phone trend is killing the headphone jack.
It's a feature nobody wanted.
Do we want thinner phones with screens that take up the entire front of the device, with wireless charging, with good virtual assistants?
Yes, every other trend on this list is trying to serve the customer, no matter how poorly executed These phone features are trying to give us things that we want.
Taking out the headphone jack in favor of dongles or Bluetooth is the wrong way to go.
In my raid against dumbness, did I miss a trend?
Let me know somewhere, in the comments, Twitter, on the subway.
I'm Iyaz Akhtar and I'll see you online.
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