Though the modern smartphone provides Thai consumers with what amounts to a computer in their pocket, major changes from release to release have been few and far between.
The new phones that manufacturers announce each year tend to be modest upgrades over previous versions -- there may be a better camera, more memory and other improved specs, but at its heart it's still the same phone.
There's none of the sense that we are seeing something truly revolutionary, as when Steve Jobs strutted on stage to introduce the first iPhone in 2007.
Is there still room for innovation in smartphones that will lead to a new leap forward? There is certainly no shortage of imagination. Consumers, tired of buying phone after phone with seemingly minor upgrades, saw promise in the idea of modular phones as early as 2013. Modular phones would unpack the closed system of most smartphones into something that was open and flexible.
You could individually replace the different parts of the smartphone as you wished. Want to take sharper photos? Replace your camera with a newer model. Want better phone life? Swap in the latest battery. Or you could make no changes, until technology came out that moved you to. Such was the beauty of this idea: you replaced parts, not a phone, as you pleased.
But have you ever seen anyone with a modular smartphone? The idea has not taken off among consumers, in part because true modularity is difficult to achieve. The smartphone you have in your pocket is highly optimised for space, as with other similar devices (Steve Jobs famously pointed to the air bubbles that surfaced when he threw an iPod prototype into an aquarium as evidence that it could be made even more compact).
Producing a modular phone that would allow for differently shaped and sized modules was a design constraint that would be difficult for any company to meet. In any case, there are genuine concerns about whether consumers even want to create their smartphones piecemeal. Not everyone, after all, has the patience of a do-it-yourself hobbyist.
Other reimagined versions of the smartphone as we know it have had more traction than the modular smartphone. The US manufacturer Light, for example, has thrown out the assumption that we even need a smartphone, proudly making what it calls a Light Phone.
The idea behind the Light Phone is that we spend too much time glued to our little screens. The next natural evolution, then, is going back to phones that minimise what we can do. The Light Phone is not exactly dumb, for it runs a stripped-down version of Android, but it has its limits by design.
The Light Phone -- now gearing up for its second iteration -- only allows for calling and nine preset numbers, as part of its bid to help owners "go light". The company has sold more than 10,000 units of its original model. Huawei and Kyocera have since announced similar devices.
Another reimagining of what the smartphone can be, or should be, comes from right here in Asia. Indonesia-based Pundi X is launching the XPhone and deploying 100,000 of its Pundi XPOS devices across the world as part of its mission to make transacting with cryptocurrency as easy as buying a bottle of water.
The XPhone is the world's first blockchain-powered phone and can be used without a carrier or mobile subscription for calling and messaging people through blockchain nodes. It is powered by the blockchain system Function X, which will also boast a new transmission protocol in FXTP that will enable users to send and receive data.
Pundi X co-founder Pitt Huang has predicted that Function X will do for the blockchain what the browser did for the internet. Like the Light Phone, the operating system of Function X is based on Android OS 9.0, making it easy for developers with Android experience to create DApps on the Function X blockchain. The XPhone's expected release is in the second quarter of 2019.
Perhaps, then, the next evolution of the smartphone will not veer towards the extremes of modularity or simplicity, but towards decentralisation: the phone we hold in our hand will be powered by the blockchain and everyone on it who believes in its capacity to change how we communicate.
Floi Wycoco is the founder of The Global Filipino Investors, a group dedicated to promoting financial literacy and security in the Philippines.