By Matt Holden
Things just keep getting better. Apple's latest iPhone – the X – has glass on the front AND the back.
Even if it is "the most durable glass ever in a smartphone" as Apple claims, it looks more suited to sitting untouched on a clean hot-desk in an airconditioned cube farm than being jammed in pockets, passed from sweaty hand to sweaty hand, tapped, swiped, stroked and prodded however many thousand times a day it is we do that now.
The latest iPhone has double the glass to accidentally smash.Credit: Bloomberg
Like human beings, smartphones are becoming progressively more gracile, and exponentially easier to smash.
And a new model comes out every year. What other product costs more than a thousand dollars and is obsolete before it's even out of warranty (if you haven't broken the screen and voided the warranty first)?
There has been close to 20 versions of the iPhone since the original 10 years ago.Credit: Bloomberg
Six, 7, 8, X – the tech companies have us hooked. Apple on the upgrade merry-go-round, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat on their calibrated dopamine feedback loops.
The Silicon Valley engineers who figured out how to get us addicted are bailing on the whole show in numbers: sending their kids to no-screen schools, wiring their own homes to switch off automatically and generally repenting of what they have wrought with their smartphones and their social media.
Meanwhile, we're left swiping at cracked screens and waiting for contracts to expire so we can "upgrade".
I dropped my phone in the supermarket queue the other day. There was a collective "ergh" as it clattered to the floor, and a group hug when I picked it up, screen intact: you know the feeling when someone drops their phone but it doesn't break. I've no idea what it's called, but it's the opposite of schadenfreude. Solidarity or something.
Except it was broken: the sensor that dims the screen when you hold it to your ear (so you don't hang up with your face) was suddenly not working.
So I took it to the repair guy who had already replaced a shattered screen twice (between me and my teenage daughter, we should have a monthly subscription).
"Only $69 to fix," he said, which sounded a whole lot better than signing on for two more years to get yet another new phone. Forty-five minutes later he charged me $79 and said, "Your battery is expanding," (who knew that was a thing). "It's on the way out."
That evening the battery expanded past its theoretical limit, giving the phone a charge life of five minutes: meagre, even for an iPhone. And right on cue, two months out of contract.
I dropped my phone in the supermarket queue the other day. There was a collective 'ergh' as it clattered to the floor, and a group hug when I picked it up, screen intact.
No, they don't make phones like they used to: of sturdy bakelite, in any colour you want as long as it's black, and with a nice curly cord to remind that you're wired all the time.
Matt Holden is an Age columnist.