These have an actual perceivable difference even if subtle. Hires audio, however, is inaudible by humans.

Always has been.

Big numbers go brrrr.

Not exactly what you are talking about, but slightly related: the company Fairphone makes phones with parts that can easily be replaced. The philosophy is that you will not have to buy a new phone every 3 years. They do have some customized options aswell (i.e. ram, storage, models) but its limited.

But going full on optimization with phones, laptops and tablets, similar as a desktop, is just incredibly hard due to the lack of space in the device for the components. As such it makes more sense to offer a wide variety of models, with some customizable options, and then have the user pick something.

I wish a company would build 4.5"-5.5" and 5.5"-6.5" flagship phones, put as many features that make sense in each.

Then when you release a new flagship the last flagship devices become your 'mid range' and you drop the price accordingly, with your mid range dropping to budget the year after.

When Nokia had 15 different phones out at a time it made sense because they would be wildly different (size, shape, button layout, etc...).

These days everyone wants as large a screen as possible on a device that is comfortable to hold, we really don't need 15 different models with slightly different screen ratios.

RIP Project Ara

Your talking about project Ara. Google bought it out and killed it roughly ten years ago.

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Then don't buy them? With better screens coming out the ones you do want to buy get cheaper.

Back in the day 144hz screens cost a premium, now you can have them for cheap.

Minimum for me would be 120hz, i've been using 120hz since 2012 (12 years... man) and anything less feels like a massive step backwards. My old S10+ and my cheapie laptop feel sluggish in any animated / transmission scenario.

I'm sticking out with IPS until MicroLED matures enough for me to afford.

OLED was never designed to be used as a computer monitor and I don't want a monitor that only lasts a couple years.

Researchers just designed a special two layer (thicker than current OLED) that doubles the lifespan to 10,000hours at 50% brightness without degrading.

I'm totally with you on good HDR though. When it works, it's as night -and-day as 60 -> 144hz felt for me.

Well, not really, because television broadcast standards do not specify integer framerates. Eg North America uses ~59.94fps. It will take insanely high refresh rates to be able to play all common video formats including TV broadcasts. Variable refresh rate can fix this only for a single fullscreen app.

I mean the 240 I use already does that. So would 360 or 480. No clue why you fixate on 600.

This tech trickles down to mainstream in a few years. That's always how it is.

I went from 1080p60 as my standard for literal decades to 3440x1440 @144hz over the last 2 years and I can't go back, mostly for non-gaming activities, find the ultrawide better than multi monitor for me, would love a vertical e-ink display though for text. I also limit my fps to 120, I don't like feeling like my PC is going to take off and the place I rent is older so the room I use for my office is smaller, heats up quickly.

Minecraft actually gets better FPS when you don't limit its FPS. When I play at 60 fps, it usually dips into the 50's and 40's, while when its unlimited, there are no noticeable dips.