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I love how this articles doesn't even discuss phone size and headphone jacks, which are my 2 prerequisites before I even consider a phone.
I'm convinced that tech reviewers live on a different planet than us. They're always fretting over trivial things that would be nice to have but far from dealbreakers for the average person and then ignore or barely mention the stuff a regular user would need
People talking about phones on Lemmy don't represent the average user though. Most people just don't care about headphone jacks, SD cards, etc. These complaints are made nearly exclusively by enthusiasts who don't make up enough of the potential sales to be pandered to.
I'm not saying it's wrong to complain btw.
It absolutely discusses phone size - in some detail both in the intro and as part of the reviews.
Yeah. Unfortunately there's not much to chose from. They're all huge glass slabs without ports nowadays.
What bugs me about this is THEY ARE ALL THE SAME! Flat rectangular phones with no buttons and few ports. Where is the innovation? Where is the experimentation? Where are the different form factors?
Go back to like 2003 and you had all kinds of variety in the market. Some phones had slide out keyboards, some had physical keyboards like blackberries, they were all kinds of different expansion ports and slots and interfaces, and occasionally something totally different like Compaq had a gadget that took different backpacks that bolted on the back to give it extra capability.
Skip 20 years ahead to today, and every phone is the exact same fucking form factor. And so we obsess over millimeters and megapixels and software. There's no innovation here. There's no variety here.
The only even slightly interesting development I see is the new flip and book phones, but that technology is being used in the most boring way possible. I want to phone the size of a Snickers bar where I pull the screen out of it from the side and it unrolls as far as I want it to. I want a phone that flips open like a laptop to reveal a keyboard. Or even simpler, I want a phone that's 4 mm thicker and has a battery that lasts all week. Give that phone a headphone jack and wireless charging, put a little rubber around it to make it indestructible, then you'll have something interesting.
Until that happens, you have like six manufacturers that are basically building the exact same product. Boring.
Part of the issue is that the biggest smartphone manufacturers are all sister companies to each other. Oppo, OnePlus, xaiomi, they're all different companies under the same banner, so they're bound to share hardware specs and manufacturing.
Personally I think nothing phone is the only phone brand that's innovating on design with the candy bar style phone, but even that's hard to justify. Samsung has been repeating the folding phone designs and refining them year after year and Google has been pretty lazy with the pixel phones in regards to hardware.
It's a weird time for smartphones, can't push more power without destroying batteries, can't really innovate with batteries because we've hit a wall that only software can help mitigate. Not only that's we all apparently want bigger and bigger phones, and the only way to realistically get that is with folding display tech, which again chews up battery power.
If you're into it you can watch tech youtubers go to those big conferences where they show off prototypes of their newest tech, earlier this year they were demoing rolling and pull out screens on phones and laptops, among other stuff.
For the batteries your outta luck for now due to a SOB called physics.
Companies make what sells, and flat candy bars sell. All the companies you mentioned went out of business (at least in the smartphone sector) due to not selling iPhone clones. I'm not saying that's a good thing btw. I wish we had hoverboards & holograms too dude.
I'm pretty content with my folding phone for now though.
So right. The last Blackberry I used with BB OS had micro hdmi port, hardware keyboard and completely different OS that was able to run android apps. Fast forward 10 years and you can't get any of those any more except maybe from some weird Chinese brands.
The public voted with their purchases and this is what they wanted.
Eventually most products settle into a baseline normal and innovation slows dramatically. It's not just phones that do this.
There are plenty of phones out there that are weird and different but most people ignore them and they don't get the same attention. Think rog phones, flip and fold phones, fair phone, sony's camera focused phones no one wants to buy.
Not too mention this list is for what you should buy, which is really the word experimental phone.
It's a strange mentality that almost everyone time phone are brought up people so for absolute innovation. A full on game changer. Most of these already do exactly what we want incredibly well. There isn't much room for a game changer. Innovations will be less dramatic, more subtle.
No one is going to buy a round phone, or a squiggly phone, and curved screen edges or curved phones never did well. So rectangular it is.
Enthusiast features rarely stick around cus most people don't need those features or the features get rolled into something else. Headphones jacks and HDMI and so on can ask be integrated into USB C and for most that's good enough.
I've got a Pixel 6 Pro and if Google keeps providing current updates for it, I can see myself using it for three more years. It's just a solid piece of tech.
And you can always go Lineage/DivestOS/Graphene after that and it'll run faster than new.
GrapheneOS support stops along with Google stopping their support. My 4a is now EOL. Not sure about the other roms. Hopefully someone puts in the effort.
Switch to e/os/ or something else that still supports it. I will admit that Graphene is amazing
If you enable developer options and then disable animations, your phone will feel 1000% faster on any OS.
My wants:
- ROM-friendly w/ active development
- flagship specs
- No hole-punch
Seems I can get two of three, but not all three with the latest phones.
EDIT: I currently rock a Oneplus 7 Pro running crDroid 9 (Android 13).
Sony is very ROM-friendly. Main issue is price, which affects active development. My wishlist is similar to yours, I ended always going with Xiaomi. While their 7 days wait to unlock bootloader is annoying, the ROM scene is very active, with great GCam ports.
I love Sony phones but I don't see active ROMs for the Xperia 1 or 5 series.
I'm not familiar with Xiaomi. They have a flagship without a hole punch?
Google, maybe Motorola and Nothing. Those seem to be the only choices remaining in the US
https://en-us.support.motorola.com/euf/assets/docs/Bootloader-Legal_Agreement_and_Warning.pdf
Caution : Warranty is voided after bootloader unlock, and Motorola may deny any waraanty repairs.
Choices?
- Pixel 8
- Galaxy S23
- Galaxy S23 Ultra
- Galaxy Z Fold 5
- Nothing Phone 2
What a goofy list.
[Consumers in the US] donβt get nearly as many of the options as youβll find in Asia and Europe β brands like Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor, and Oppo just arenβt available here.
Is this true? I thought only Huawei was banned / not doing business in the US.
Iβve limited this guide to the devices Iβve personally tested in depth β¦
So the 'guide' doesn't cover phones by four of the big six manufacturers. That's like making a guide of the tallest mountains in the world, but excluding the Himalayas and the Andes.
In the states the only way to get an Honor, Oppo or Xiaomi phone is to import.
On the other side of the foldable spectrum, the OnePlus Open is a welcome addition to the mix with the best screen format on a book-style folding phone. Itβs thin and light, and the software includes some thoughtful approaches to multi-tasking β a crucial part of the folding phone experience. At $1,700, itβs just $100 shy of the Pixel Fold and Galaxy Z Fold 5 and misses a couple of key features that both of those other options include: wireless charging and an IPX8 rating.
Does anyone really care about these though? Wireless charging is really niche and worse than wired in every way, and water resistance is one of those things phones love advertising but nobody ever notices.
[β¦] water resistance is one of those things phones love advertising but nobody ever notices.
Water resistance is something I do not want to notice because if I notice it, it means it has failed. Do I trust it completely? Hell no. Do I prefer to have it? Hell yea!
Couldn't disagree more. Both are huge selling points for me, and have virtually no downsides, unlike other phone features.
Wireless charging has huge downsides. What do you even mean? Slower charging, huge energy waste, heats up like mad
For the price manufacturers are asking it better have everything.
I used to think the same way until my wife's phone stopped charging via cable because the USB port failed. The fact that it can charge wirelessly has kept the device usable.
Same here. Wireless charging kept my Galaxy Note 8 going long past its USB port failing, along with my mom's LG G7.
Both have been must-haves for me over the past number of years. It's nice being able to drop the phone onto a charging stand at the desk or in the car. Also nice being able to rinse the phone off or use in a bath/shower without worry.
I've only had 1 phone in the last 10 years that didnt wirelessly charge, and there's zero chance I'd buy a phone without it again. And I'm really hoping qi2 starts appearing in phones next year.
I don't understand the need for super fast charging, like it's handy if you're on the run and forgot about it, but I need more charging than my phone does, so it's no issue to just plonk it on a stand when I'm resting....