Will we ever be wowed by mobile operating systems again?

The smart phone has been a fun ride. We’ve watched touch navigation grow from an annoying way to find information using a shopping mall kiosk to the fastest growing method of interacting with technology. Going along on this ride, has been the development of operating systems to support this ever growing interaction method, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, etc…

It’s been an incredible time to be an interaction designer, watching these platforms try to keep up with the way people use their touch devices.

In the last 12 months though, I feel like things have begun to stagnate...

New phones and tablets seem to have the same set of improvements:

• Fast processors
• Nicer screens
• Better cameras

Occasionally, someone like Apple brings out a feature like a ‘fingerprint scanner’ that everyone tries to copy as fast as they can, but all-in-all doesn’t really change the way you use the device. Phone and tablet operating systems have moved from revolution to evolution, continually refining their software, but rarely changing.

It feels like mobile operating systems have reached the point Windows and OSX reached about the early noughties. An agreement that ‘this is pretty much how our operating system and we’re just going to tweak it’.

It leaves me a little empty to think that might be it. I’m sure someone will down Windows 8 ‘metro’ style overhaul, but I get the feeling it will be few and far between.

I have a glimmer of hope that the mythical Android v5 and Ive’s OSX will prove me wrong, but at this stage, I’m not holding my breath…