Martin Cooper was responsible for the invention of the cellphone, and doesn’t think Apple’s latest iPhone 6s is anything to get excited about.
Cooper used to work for Motorola, and first demonstrated his invention in 1973 when he made the first ever cellphone call from a sidewalk in Manhattan, reports GeekWire. He recently spoke out on the current state of smartphone design.
Smartphones like iPhone 6s are still not essential, says Cooper
He told GeekWire that the new iPhone 6s is “boring” because improvements to its design have still failed to make the smartphone “essential.”
“They’re struggling each generation to come up with something interesting. It’s a little bigger, has more pixels, more megahertz and people couldn’t care less. I think the future is the software. They have to figure out ways to make the phone essential,” said Cooper.
Although the iPhone 6s may still not be strictly essential, it appears that there are enough Apple loyalists for the company to see strong sales each time a new model is released. The company announced this week that sales of the iPhone 6s had broken previous records.
Cooper believes that further evolution in smartphone design is still to come. “The cell phone attempts to do all things for all people, but doesn’t do any of them optimally. I think it’s going to evolve into a bunch of optimal devices,” he said.
Smartphones continue to evolve
He went on to say that the iPhone 6s and smartphones in general are still something that people use out of convenience rather than necessity.
“We’re still in the game stage. Even though you can’t get along without your smartphone, there are not many essential services on your smartphone. They’re mostly convenience; you could live without it. Essential means you die without it. A gadget that warns you’re about to have a heart attack — that’s essential. We’re about to go into that phase with smartphones,” continued Cooper.
Some existing smartphones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S6, have heart rate monitors built in, and health technology is a fast growing sector. However Cooper seemed far more excited about the progression of virtual reality technology during his meeting with GeekWire.
He believes that virtual reality will become a huge part of computing, and says that developments in the field are moving faster than the early days of cell phones.
