Niche smartphones fail to compete with Samsung and Apple because of one major problem

An iPhone 17 Pro and a Samsung Galaxy S25. | Image by PhoneArena

The world of niche smartphones can be a fascinating one, especially when we’re talking about something as cool and nostalgia-inducing as the Unihertz Titan 2 Elite. However, it’s pretty clear that the companies making such cool phones can’t really compete with the likes of Samsung and Apple, and there’s actually a pretty clear reason why.

Niche smartphones held back by software support

In a recent poll, you were asked if poor software support is the main reason for your hesitation when it comes to giving niche phones like the Unihertz Titan 2 Elite a fair shake. Over 63 percent of you said that it was, because you need to be certain that your phone will get a decent number of years of software support.

Around 25 percent of respondents, meanwhile, said that it depended on how good the hardware was and that they’d be open to giving a phone a try despite poor software support if it was spectacularly unique. Only 6.5 percent of voters said that they didn’t mind because they changed phones too often for that to become a problem.

On the other hand, unreliable software support wasn’t a problem in the slightest for a little less than six percent of you because you apparently use custom ROMs and don’t really care for updates pushed by the manufacturer. Are you hesitant to give niche phones a try because of concerns with software support as well?

Reliability still beats novelty

These results point to a very interesting reality of the current smartphone industry: most consumers value reliability over novelty by a lot. Most people, even those frequenting news sites focused on the smartphone market, aren’t replacing their phones each year and would much rather buy a smartphone that is guaranteed to work for years.

Samsung and Apple, with the iPhone and Galaxy flagships, might not offer the best cameras or the biggest batteries, but you know that their phones will work for generations. These phones will receive operating system updates and security patches for a long time, and always on time too.

A simple fix, I hope

The Unihertz Titan 2 Elite will apparently receive five years of software support, a policy that was employed by both Apple and Samsung not too long ago. Whether Unihertz manages to push out these updates in a timely manner remains to be seen, but it is a major step in the right direction to help the company capture more market share.

Niche phones like the Titan 2 Elite are, in my opinion, an integral part of an industry that could fall to stagnation very fast if such devices disappear. For many phone makers, offering seven years of software support isn’t a viable business model because their offerings are a lot cheaper than those from Samsung and Apple.

But if we can hit a compromise between a decent number of years of support and retail pricing, we could see more companies jumping in with unique phones.

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