And what if I don’t want to watch “stuff” on my phone? My phone is supposed to be a portable “swiss-army-knife” of digital tools.
They made tablets for the other “stuff”
I think most of the population are on tiktok and that crack, need big screen for maximum experience…
I’ll never forget circa 2005, my friend was at the Montreal jazz festival or something. He told me about it and he said he took a video. He whipped out his phone that was basically a really thick pen. He showed me a video of another friend doing goofy stuff. Even on this tiny phonewith a tiny screen, it was really enough. I miss the time when someone took out his phone and you actually had no idea what to expect.
They got bigger so there was more room for ads.
We didn’t “realise” we could watch stuff; we got touch screen technology, wifi and mobile data became cheaper as we got 3G, 4G and 5G. The we *could *watch stuff, and browse the internet - this was always the obvious course of phones even in the 90s when bricks were still around. Meanwhile battery tech hasn’t moved forwards much, so these big screen, wifi, Bluetooth & 5G connected,video playing devices need bigger batteries to keep going all day. Ironically a bigger device - even with a bigger screen - will have a longer battery life because you can physically fit a bigger battery in.
Also this chart stops at 2015 - and thats still accurate. Mobile phone tech has plateaued. Time was, iPhone launches each year were a big deal because Apple was good at bringing previously out a of reach tech into the mass market. Now all the changes are minor and phone launches are dull. iPhones are now just popular because they’re iPhones. Chips are getting a bit more energy efficient pushing the capabilities a bit; but cameras, screens, storage and connectivity are probably as good as they’re going to get for now beyone incremental changes.
We’re now probably in the enshittification phase where companies try to justify ever increasing prices but can’t - iPhone prices have been largely static for 5 years because Apple can’t find a compelling reason to increase them. Whether there are stupid notches in the phone display, or expensive accessories like wireless headphones or now trying to up-sell people on software / services - ultimately a phone is just a phone now. The manufacturers latest hope is that somehow AI will allow them to charge more but it’s looking like AI in it’s current form has little value to consumers. Apple has delayed it’s changes to Siri because it’s struggling to make something that isn’t basically just another unreliable overhyped LLM.
Realistically the next real leap in phones will probably only come if and when battery tech improves; if smaller high energy density batteries come then that really will unlock a new revolution. The AI bubble doesn’t look like it’s going to deliver.
Realistically the next real leap in phones will probably only come if and when battery tech improves
I don’t think so. The real thing is just ergonomics. They want as big a screen as they can and human hands are only so big. They won’t retreat in form factor.
If anything they’ll are toying w bit with folding screens to make devices scale up and still be hand friendly.
The next big step is going to have to be wearable, to produce arbitrarily large content hands free. Don’t know if social norms will tolerate it, but that’s really the possible evolution from the status quo.
Before full touch screens came out I bought a small windows CE full screen device and put a few videos on it on a card (can’t recall if it was sd or something more primitive) and watched anime in between calls at work.
I always wanted this, and phones getting better at it just meant less devices. I am partial to phablets and fold phones because I like to read books,light novels,and manga on a bigger screen while being portable. I have in the past used both a tablet and phone before I got my fold, and when the inside screen of my fold failed after a couple years I am now back at both until I can afford a replacement.
I know not everyone wants this, but that’s why we have options, and dumb/feature phones can still be purchased, even from large carriers (though price of plan may be wasted on those). These memes act like there are only smartphones now, but dumbphones were always an option.
I remember back in 1990ish, there was a guy involved in the local music scene who got interviewed on AM radio (Right before the rise of conservative talk radio, when there were still local hosts talking about local issues.). This guy wasn’t a big shot and not a musician, just a guy passabout music. tmusic. He went by the moniker Jim Clevo, I had the fortune of meeting him once. Anyways, he had insight as to where the music industry was headed. In the interview, he told how in the future we would be listening to music through our phones. At the time high tech was a cordless landlines with an answering machine built in. He sounded crazy, i couldn’t figure out why he thought we would all be holding phones up to our ears listening to music, I never had anything but a corded phone at the time. Not sure why I’m rambling about it other than this post reminded me of him.
Was he frank zappa?
https://www.grunge.com/139089/rock-stars-who-freakishly-predicted-the-future/
I mean as soon as cassettes were a thing, mix tapes by holding the cassette to the radio became a thing right? Why not phones?
Hell back in the 80s, before the breakup of Yugoslavia, they went a step further: they had a home PC that could be built from parts available at electronics stores. It used a cassette recorder for a HDD.
A local radio station started broadcasting software, pc owners could record the audio of a program on a Walkman, then put the tape in their PC.
There’s a past we never got where a radio-based internet existed alongside the landlines based one.
They got a lot smaller than that.
*ads
Would love a slightly thicker phone with a huge removable battery
Do you feel like magsafe batteries scratch that itch?
Nah, specially after a couple of years and the phone’s internal battery doesnt last a full day
also we have to encase our phones in cases because they’re not durable enough to survive day to day life. they could be made more rugged from the factory
Nah, I’d prefer to have a case I can swap once it becomes too damaged vs a phone chassis whose damage I have to live with until I buy a new phone. I’m trying to keep my phone for a long time, so the former is definitely better for my use case.
there’s no preventing us from having thinner cases and thicker phones for such scenarios (and is probably the route i’d want to take, too, since i’m extra clumsy)
are you still alive, Nazi?
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This is a good idea. I’ve had to learn how to disassemble and fix phones for the wife mostly and me leastly. She broke a camera glass - and a glass coated back plate. My issues were battery replacement and a USB port replacement and one headphone jack replacement. All things I managed to learn how to fix to keep our 5 to 7 year old phones going until we were damned ready to get a new one. Durability is crap for a reason.
What are you all doing with your phones that you need to put them in cases? I feel like this is the equivalent of covering a high-end car in bumper stickers.
You’ve never damaged a phone ? You would be in the minority I think.
dropping them accidentally occasionally.
are you still alive, Nazi?
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Ehhh the one phone I didn’t put a case on happened to be the one phone I broke a screen on. Maybe it’s just pure chance, but I started doing cases and screen protectors again after that
I think most phones are plenty durable, people are just paranoid.
And repairs are too expensive/risky. I think more repairable phones is a better aim than more rugged ones.
oh! so we’re clear i’m not advocating against repairability. we absolutely must have that. but i’m tired of how easy it is to destroy an unfixable phone. we should have repairable phones that are designed to have long service intervals
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Just so I’m clear as well, I disagree with you on that most phones are easily destroyed :) People are just overly worried about destroying their phones, which is pretty unlikely to happen, because repairing them is annoying and expensive. So they use a case, but it really isn’t all that necessary to do so.
I’ve had my phone caseless (with screen protector), and dropped it plenty of times, for 4 years and haven’t broken it once. I’m also not too worried about breaking it though because it’s easily repairable. If all phones were I think people would forgo a case more often.
are you still alive, Nazi?
That’s mostly because we care about aesthetics. My work phone is some Samsung flagship model from two years ago, I don’t have a case for it (because I don’t give a shit his it looks). Its with me on all factory visits in dirty production environments and what not, dropped it multiple times, stored in my pocket or just thrown in my bag. Screen is not cracked, sides and back are scratched and dinged up, but nothing is broken. They’re plenty durable if you don’t care about minor cosmetic things.
oh man your experience is so different from mine 😂
any phone i drop brings it a little closer to being completely non functional as long as it’s not in a case.
but i do agree with you about one thing: it is all about aesthetic. there’s tons of phones out there made with less shatterproof/scratch resistant glass, or think enough outer shells to protect their innards because when you buy a phone in a store you find the slim ones sexier
They’re experience is different than pretty much every single person on the planet. Hell I keep my phone in a case covered and I still crack the screen even with screen protectors on it.
How do you guys crack screens so easily? I’ve had it happen on one phone and I’ve dropped all of them, sometimes without a case, mostly without a screen protector.
The one that did crack was from like the tiniest drop after 2 years of use but it was a cheap phone without gorilla glass IIRC
I have an 1800$ phone, and have cracked it by just using it.
Is it like a foldable or something? Otherwise I don’t get why a 1800$ phone should be so much more fragile than an iPhone a bit more than half that price. Or any of the <1000$ Androids I’ve owned before I switched over.
You might like the king kong mini 2
I do like that phone, but it’s 5 years old now. Do they even make it any longer?
There’s a pro version and the king kong mini 3 too, both more recent.
There’s a mini 3 but it’s taller so not as small
Sadly that would cost me 1000 USD and I cant afford that haha
This looks too good to be true, especially from aliexpress
A friend got one. A few months in it works flawlessly. It even has a projector built in!
It really is a tank.
It’s Chinese. Will it spy on you? Maybe, but so does Google, maybe the govt, the meta app has been proven to listen even when supposedly not active.
Maybe the least invasive option is Pixel with graphene.
I use a Xiaomi, fwiw.
Lots of “stuff” in my homework folder.
I think the 170 weight on the right is larger than the 170 weight on the left… That’s all I can look at
I wish 2g and 3g weren’t being dismantled. I want to go back to using my old razr
we
could watch stuffcould watch adsAnd porn
I really want to know now if people somehow still managed to get porn on their old Motorolas. Must’ve taken ages to download but probably worth it. Maybe.
2000 star tac flip phone…you were perfection. beam me up Scottie!
That Motorola RAZR in the middle, god that was an awesome phone. So sleek. Satisfying to close!
lol that was dope. When ads on TV used to be longer than 15–30 seconds, eh.
By stuff you mean animated GIFs of big breasted horse hung transgender anthropomorphic lions being violated by giant alien tentacles, right?
Just say porn
That’s so obvious I didn’t think it needed to be said. Who doesn’t watch animated GIFs of big breasted horse hung transgender anthropomorphic lions being violated by giant alien tentacles?
Maybe if you’re a kinky pervert you’d watch .mpeg of big breasted horse hung transgender anthropomorphic lions and giant alien tentacles doing missionary in a committed exclusive relationship exclusively for having kids, but nobody is that depraved.
I absolutely hate that phones got so darn big. Im stuck with iPhone 13 mini even though I hate iOS with no clear upgrade path
