Seriously, why did it take so long for someone to do this camera-as-phone instead of simply including another a camera in the phone? Kudos to Panasonic.
That’s one big honking bulge in your pocket… for an everyday carry phone, sure. Is innovation in handsets on the horizon? Handsets can’t get much thinner without neutering the camera. Real battery improvements aren’t out there (yet). The bottlenecks to getting stuff done aren’t going to be solved with new any new chips, or even more RAM or flash storage. Most people probably don’t need 128GB of storage on a phone. This puts most of the constraint at the network level broadband speed, cellular data speed, etc. and the OEMs can’t solve that kind of thing.
So I think the next jump in phones will be more people getting multiple phones.
Not this year, but in 2015 maybe or maybe 2016 or soon more nerds will start loving all over the phablets. But they will also complain about the size of these beasts for their pockets, their sports, or whatever. And the avalanche of so-called wearables? The watches are pricey compared to phones and can’t do X and won’t do X for a while. Some people can justify having a phone and a tablet and a laptop. So why can’t similar people justify an extra phone or maybe two phones and a laptop in the near future?
You’ll swap the SIM or something even easier. Data syncs across platforms and the apps sync within-platform where appropriate. And size is only one dimension to specialize on.
After size, the next dimension to specialize on? Probably, cameras.