What Did the Smartphone Swallow, and Will AI Swallow It?

Shipments of digital cameras, according to data from the Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) reported by PetaPixel, exceeded 120 million a year at the peak between 2000 and 2010. PetaPixel reports that shipments fell about 94% between 2010 and 2023, and that member companies shipped only 1.7 million fixed-lens cameras in 2023. The data alone do not prove the cause, but the likely explanation is that the camera moved into the pocket at no extra cost.

What did the phone swallow?

That can be explained, and this is our explanation rather than a measured result, by the idea that a specialised device declines when a single device in the hand gathers many functions. On that logic the question arises: will a device come that gathers what the phone gathers and adds AI to it?

Will the story repeat?

The numbers say the answer is not near. Companies shipped about 1.26 billion phones in 2025, according to IDC. Display-less smart glasses grew 167% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, to about 2.25 million units, and Meta holds about 69% of the smart-glasses market overall. IDC projects shipments of 13.6 million units in 2026 and 27.3 million by 2030; these are projections, not facts. Even if the first figure is met, it equals about one per cent of the volume of phones.

Consumers do not seem in a hurry either: Omdia estimated that the average phone lasted 4.2 years before replacement in 2025, up from 3.6 years in 2020, and expects about 4.7 years before the end of the decade, owing to inflation, costlier memory and small differences between models. So the popular claim that a phone is replaced every 18 months is not supported by this source.

We found no documented source that estimates a date for the end of the smartphone or for a "post-screen era", and labels such as "the Fifth Industrial Revolution" have their own debate (see the article "Industry 5.0 and AI: Is Putting People at the Centre Enough?"). It is likelier, God willing, that in the coming years AI will seep into the phone and the wearables around it, that all of them will coexist for a time, and that this remains an inference, not an established fact.

And what about harm?

The Communications, Space and Technology Commission says in its Saudi Internet Report 2025 that 61.3% of users spend seven hours or more online each day, and that 45.2% use AI tools. That puts habits at the heart of the matter.

But fear should rest on evidence. A 2023 Cochrane review of 17 randomised trials concluded that blue-light filtering lenses may give no short-term advantage in easing eye strain, found no evidence that they protect the retina, and could not say whether they affect sleep. A marketed fix does not replace governing one's use, and blaming the device alone for everything lacks rigour.

Habits that hold whatever the device

These are practical suggestions, not experimental results:

• Keep times for family, the table and prayer free of screens.
• Switch off non-essential notifications; attention is a resource to be managed.
• Use the AI assistant to complete a defined task and then close it, not to pass time.
• Rest your eyes with regular breaks away from the screen, and review your sleep.

Devices change, and a person remains answerable for their time, their sight and their presence with their family. God is the one whose help is sought.