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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Smartphone makers are vomiting a torrent of new phones, and we're sick of it [digitaltrends.com]

As the dust settled on Huawei's Mate 20 event, we were left wondering about the death of the traditional release cycle for smartphones. The Chinese company unveiled three new phones in the shape of the Mate 20, Mate 20 Pro, and the surprise Mate 20 X, all coming hot on the heels of the recently released Mate 20 Lite. This wave of new flagships comes just six months after Huawei unveiled the P20, P20 Pro, and Porsche Design Mate RS. Sifting through these phones to decipher the differences is a confusing exercise. Has anyone taken the time to figure out who each model is supposed to be for? It doesn't feel like it.

This new scattergun approach to smartphone release seems to be infecting much of the industry. And it's joined by a growing tendency to update phones more frequently, immediately rolling out incremental improvements that would have previously been held over for an annual event.

[...] LG has been releasing perplexingly small updates, going from LG V30 to V40 ThinQ, by way of the V30S ThinQ and V35 ThinQ, in just a year, during which it also found time to release the LG G7 ThinQ. [...] It's not just the expensive end of the market that's doing this — perhaps the worst offender over the last year is Motorola, now under Lenovo. We've seen the Moto E5, Moto E5 Play, Moto E5 Plus, Moto G6 Play, Moto G6, Moto G6 Plus, Moto Z3 Play, Moto Z3, and the Motorola One.

[...] The idea that more options can have a detrimental impact on our ability to choose has been confirmed in lots of research over the last few years, but an interesting study published [sciencedirect.com] [DOI: 10.1016/j.jcps.2014.08.002] [DX [doi.org]] in the Journal of Consumer Psychology in 2016 tried to break it down further. This comprehensive study analyzed prior research and identified four key situations when less choice boosts sales.

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