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"It might sound unlikely, but flip phones and sliders could once again adorn the shelves of our retailers\u2019 finest emporiums in the near-ish future. Quite why is anyone's guess.\r\n\r\nSince the launch of the first iPhone and its runaway success, all the cool kids have wanted full touchscreen phones. And rightly so, in my opinion. Now it\u2019s not just cool kids, it\u2019s everyone.\r\n\r\nWhile some people bemoan touchscreens for being unwieldy or are overcome by an innate resistance to new technology, the devices do in fact provide a far more fully-featured and user-friendly way of communicating. Providing the battery isn\u2019t dead, which is one thing the traditional candybar will likely have over smartphones for a long time yet.\r\n\r\nHowever, with full touchscreen smartphones now ubiquitous in most developed markets and accounting for most major handset makers product line ups (certainly at the top-end), there is now a sea of uniformly rectangular black screens looking up from any given retailer\u2019s shelf space.\r\n\r\nYou could argue that \u201Cwell, they\u2019re all just screens, of course they mostly look alike\u201D and you\u2019d be wrong, or at least partially wrong. Just because they perform the same job and share similar characteristics doesn\u2019t mean they have to look quite as similar as they do.\r\n\r\nThe problem, however, is that while smartphones are now everywhere, hardware innovation at the high-end is at an all time low, at least in terms of form factor. You\u2019ve pretty much got one option: \u201COne slab of glass please\u201D.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nInstead of differentiating on hardware (HTC has even shunned the megapixel wars with the cameras in the\u00A0One and One Mini) or chassis, phone makers have become software houses in a bid to stand out from the deafening crowds. And then they just make 'Mini' and 'Max' versions of the same device in the hope of appealing to the masses. That's 'choice' now.\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, it seems, no one is happy. Software houses have been forced to become hardware makers too, just think of Microsoft\u2019s Surface, or Google\u2019s $12.5bn purchase of Motorola. Microsoft is actually a pretty good example, its Surface tablets haven't been the runaway retail success the company would have hoped (certainly not the RT version) but it did its job in terms of forcing other manufacturers to up their game.\r\n\r\nWhichever pool you play in, it's clear you need to know how to do both nowadays.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s unsurprising then that devices have reached a middle ground, an innovation plateau in a design sense, that revolves around delivering predictable hardware with differentiating (often gimmicky) software features.\r\nWe've been here before\r\nIt seems like Samsung and BlackBerry might well have noticed this too.\r\n\r\nRecent rumors suggest that Samsung could be working away on an Android powered flip phone, while CrackBerry reports that BlackBerry is working away on a portrait slider, perhaps even two. Indeed, BlackBerry never stopped, provided you're happy to buy an older version of its operating system that isn't inter-operable with the apps on the new one.\r\n\r\nI applaud both companies efforts if the rumors are true. There hasn\u2019t been enough visible concerted effort going towards different form factors (even if they are old, tried and tested ones) for far too long now, and if Apple had released its first iPhone as a traditional T9 candybar, we might not be where we are now today.\r\n\r\nI don\u2019t think either would do particularly well, though.\r\n\r\nAs noted, both form factors would be a return to old, albeit with a modern spin, and it\u2019s not like there haven\u2019t ever been slider or flip smartphones, they just didn\u2019t do so well. Microsoft\u2019s Kin must be the most notable flop, having survived just 48 days on the market before Redmond pulled the plug.\r\n\r\nWhat the smartphone industry needs is something it doesn\u2019t know it needs yet. It needs a mad-hat inventor with deep pockets, someone that believes in doing things a different way for experimentation\u2019s sake, rather than purely for the bottom line. It needs someone like Elon Musk who can think of something that sounds so implausible, and then can make it happen.\r\nHyperloop of the phone world?\r\nTo digress for a second, in a few days, Musk has promised to unveil a vision of mass transportation for the future that\u2019s cheaper, safer, more reliable and much, much faster than anything we use today. He described it as \u201Ca cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table\u201D. It's also called\u00A0hyperloop, which is a pretty cool name.\r\n\r\nNow that sounds pretty exciting, right? Now, what was the most exciting innovation you heard about in the smartphone world recently? Essentially, being able to activate Google Now without pressing a button on the Moto X? It doesn't quite compare.\r\n\r\nIt doesn\u2019t matter to me whether Musk succeeds or not (though he has a good track record of proving naysayers wrong), what matters is that he can think in that \u2018big\u2019 a way. It matters that the conversations take place and the considerations are, well, considered.\r\n\r\nPerhaps the closest it does have is Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, the company looking to deliver its same core Ubuntu platform across tablets, PCs, TVs and smartphones.\r\n\r\nThis month, Canonical is trying to crowdsource more than one million dollars per day to kickstart development of the first actual hardware that\u2019ll run the platform. Right now, it just looks like any other phone, albeit one that runs Ubuntu for Android alongside plain old Android.\r\n\r\nBut what it could be is an opportunity for a device maker to strike out against the norm and deliver a phone that quite literally defies expectations. It doesn't need to be bizarre or outrageous, I just want it to amaze me. How? I don\u2019t know, but that's really the point.\r\n\r\nHowever, I don\u2019t think that Samsung\u2019s rumored flip phone or BlackBerry\u2019s rumored slider will be the ones to deliver the next evolutionary step in mobile.\r\n\r\nFeatured Image Credit - Thinkstock"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2013/08/05/with-talk-of-flip-phones-and-sliders-returning-what-we-need-is-the-elon-musk-of-smartphones/>