This new concept reminds me of a time when phones were exciting

Smartphones have been around for so long now that they’re, dare I say, getting a bit boring. They all look the same, generally, and they’re all good. It’s one of the reasons I’m absolutely desperate for a folding iPhone and it’s why I once considered getting a Samsung Galaxy Fold. Only once, mind you.

But this latest concept, dubbed iPhone M1 and packing a funky anti-notch, has me reminiscing for a time where new iPhones were exciting. New smartphones in general were exciting. And it seems so long ago.

See, we know that this year’s iPhone 13 will be a slab of metal with pieces of glass on the front and the back. The whole thing will be a rectangle with rounded corners. And that’s as much as we need to know. But remember when Apple’s iPhone 4 leaked and we all saw the company move from rounded humpback plastic affairs to something that looked like it was from the future? When will that happen again? When will we get more than a change in the edges of an iPhone and call it “new?”

I’m brought back to the folding iPhone idea, to be honest. I can’t see how we get away from these very familiar smartphones without bending them in the middle. Unless this concept is actually something Apple could make which, if we’re being honest, isn’t even close to being the case.

Apple could choose to make an iPhone revolutionary by putting an M-series chip into it, as it just did with its iPad Pro lineup. But I’m very unsure about what that will bring to the table and that’s doubly so when you look at iPhone.

All of this is to say that I’m struggling to get too excited about iPhone 13 later this year. I’m sure it’ll be an excellent phone. But what new stuff will it offer? Probably not a lot. In fact, I’d suggest we might all be better served by finding the best iPhone deal we can and just getting last year’s model.

I know, I know. Who am I kidding? We’re all buying iPhone 13 handsets this September, aren’t we?