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Comment by ronnier | Hacker News Reader

Maybe phones are becoming feature complete? If they add to much to quickly, they'll have nothing to put out for the next model :D

If you could magically ship something with the iPhone 5, what would it be?

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An NFC chip. Apple already has Passbook - imagine if that were NFC-enabled. I want to be able to use my phone to enter my home and workplace, to board transportation systems, and to pay for everything. And it isn't as if I would have purchased an iPhone if they had included NFC, but more that Apple has such a widespread and mainstream user base and such collaborations with Passbook-supporting businesses that "NFC everywhere" might stop being a dream.

Seconded. I can't think of any huge, groundbreaking features that have been included in, say, new laptops over the last 10 years. Faster, thinner, lighter, better battery life, nicer displays, what more do you want? It's turning into a software game.

I would say SSD replacing disk drives has been the most jarring performance improvement. It's really a night-and-day, sudden difference. But yes, that's not a new feature, per se.

Thirded. And I think is the year smartphones finally reached something like feature and quality parity with each other. Sensor sets are mostly universal, few cameras embarrass themselves anymore, battery life is all in the same ballpark, etc...

The market is in no way stalling out, but really, the next "obvious" hardware feature isn't so obvious anymore. Putting these in the hands of five billion people is what's next.

According to this report from Fox News, the iPhone 5 has a laser keyboard and holographic display. That would have been pretty cool! ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6668cxupH98&feature

The fact that nobody at Fox questioned it before the reportage aired is a sign of two things:

1. Fox News isn't the pinnacle of journalism, to put it mildly (seriously, how can the whole team miss the almost over-published iPhone 5 announcement details and instead find a old mockup video?).

2. Technology has come a long long way when holographic images are just considered a "cool new feature" by the average Joe. It's amazing how fast technology has changed our lives, what was total magic just ten tears ago is almost taken for granted now.

Well if I pick one thing it might seem a little silly - if I was apple I'd want to have implemented something and found it to have worked and be ready to go with it. But I think speed to access is a big deal, so maybe wake on swipe and or voice. Perhaps an api for lock screen apps - not so much a hardware thing, but I don't think Apple should care about that.

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