Reaching a progress ceiling – AI and other tech

Smartphones have reached the peak of progress just like LLMs are no longer progressing with the same pace OpenAI set in the first few weeks/months.

Mobile phones are now “AI-empowered” and launching new hardware models with no incremental improvements over their previous generations.

I’ve been criticizing Apple for nearly A DECADE, living in the past, but this is now becoming common with Samsung’s S series, Pixels, and other flagship phones.

As an early tech adopter, using my smartphone for work completely justifies rocking the latest model.

But my S22, released in Jan of 2022, is not really different from the Galaxy series featured two weeks ago.

AI improvements are a software update; even cameras stay the same today, minus some visual corrections (for good or bad).

Product marketing is a byproduct of product managers unable to capture consumer priorities or dive into what truly matters.

We all bash against battery life. Why isn’t this getting prioritized?

What about solar panels to increase battery life in the mix?

Or styluses for other phones but Samsungs (where business users don’t need to carry their tablets with them)?

If batteries are now sealed “for water proofing reasons”, how come phones get wet and screens aren’t usable under water? I still need to bring my GoPro with me when I travel.

This, and a thousand other reasons to incrementally improve existing models.

The latest generation of OpenAI and Gemini models – announcements held publicly – hasn’t brought a lot of practical progress out there.

While reasoning may be theoretically better, solving for practical business and marketing cases still ends up spitting “harness” or “unleashing” generic headlines and value propositions, hallucinating on data sources mixed up (some genuinely hilarious and outright incorrect outputs fetched on a daily basis by the latest models).

Innovation is not just about “the latest feature”, but incremental improvements.

Phones aren’t getting improved lately. It’s the same hardware in the same old case – what we have seen in laptops and desktops for a decade, minus the latest CPU upgrade.

LLMs are launching new numbers, but not feeding practical data for practical use cases. If LLMs are getting funding for taking jobs, they fail at rendering videos, generating images, or creating captivating content.

This hybrid illusion we live in needs a full reset.


My name is Mario Peshev, a global SME Business Advisor running digital businesses for 20 the past years.

Born in Bulgaria, Europe, I gained diverse management experience through my training work across Europe, North America, and the Arab world. With 10,000+ hours in consulting and training for organizations like SAP, VMware, CERN, I’ve dedicated a huge amount of my time to helping hundreds of SMEs growing in different stages of the business lifecycle.

My martech agency DevriX grew past 50 people and ranks as a top 10 WordPress global agency and Growth Blueprint, my advisory firm, has served 400+ SME founders and executives with monthly ongoing strategy sessions.


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