British smartphone users couldn’t care less about gimmicky features like curved displays – they care more about basics like battery life and reception
Forget the curved screens and eyeball trackers – just get us a phone with a battery life worth having. This is the message smartphone users have for manufacturers, according to a new survey from price comparison site uSwitch.
Wacky features abound when smartphone manufacturers launch their flagship models, with Samsung unveiling a curved display in its latest Edge phone, and LG presenting a bendy model in Flex.
Read more: Samsung slashes flagship prices after disappointing sales
But it seems what British mobile users really want are handsets that are easy to use and have good reception.
Only four per cent of those surveyed thought curved screens were a useful feature in a smartphone. Eyeball tracking and flexible phones weren't much more popular, attracting interest from just seven and eight per cent of users, respectively.
Two in three users are worried that manufacturers are too busy fitting in “gimmicky” features like eyeball trackers or curved screens, and that they’re forgetting about the basics.
Read more: Are smartphones making us dumb?
Ernest Doku, mobiles expert at uSwitch, comments that smartphone users are “wise to gimmickry”:
While mobile makers need phones that stand out from the throng, they sometimes forget that a phone is primarily a phone, and it still needs to do all the basics extremely well – such as make calls and not run out of battery.
Not all innovations are bad, though: With mobile payments such as Apple Pay on the rise, three in four surveyed agree that mobile security is more important now than it was a year ago.