- 0 Posts
- 31 Comments
10 years ago, all I wanted was a brick-sized phone with a battery that won’t quit. Now that we have cheap and reliable portable power banks, it’s dropped down on my priorities list.
I guess a 22Ah battery would have a longer effective lifespan, too. I mean, if it drops to 50% capacity after a few years, that’s still more that double most phones. So that would potentially solve my longevity issue.
Typically, I use a slow-charger overnight (a plain ol’ USB type-A charger, which I think means 5W max), then top-up as needed during the day with USB-PD fast chargers. I generally do not top up to 100% during the day. I have adaptive charging enabled in settings.
That said, I’m a heavy phone user, and I’ve never had a phone that reliably lasts me a full day. According to aBattery, my current phone is at 750 charge cycles, which is just about 1 per day since I bought it. I’m not up to date on all the latest developments in battery tech, but I think it’s normal for a battery to drop to 80% of its original max charge after 500 cycles. I don’t think I have a dud on my hands, just an ordinary battery that is aging as expected. Like I said, it’s still “fine”. It hasn’t started unexpectedly shutting off or anything like that.
I still have my old Pixel 2 (now 7 years old) that I occasionally use as a wi-fi device. I used that phone heavily for 2 years and very lightly for the remaining 5. I’m lucky if the battery lasts half an hour at this point; it’s basically a desktop device now.
Yeah, I’ve replaced phones in the past that were perfectly fine except the battery was terribly degraded. With an iFixIt repairability rating of 2 stars and a new battery costing more than the phone was worth, it just didn’t make sense to fix it.
My current phone is only two years old and while it’s still “fine”, the battery life is noticeably lower than it used to be. I doubt it’ll remain useful for another two years.
Many brands now provide software support for longer than the hardware will remain useful (thanks to non-removable batteries). Strange times!
Consumers partly killed replaceable batteries by demanding things they couldn’t deliver. Waterproofing
Ehhhh…no, not buying it. We had water-resistant phones before the switch to non-removable batteries. For example, the Galaxy S5 (the last Samsung flagship with a removable battery) had an IP67 rating. The current Galaxy S24 has an IP68 rating. Go ahead, ask your average consumer what the difference is between IP67 and IP68, and how much they care.
Oh yeah, and the S5 also had a headphone jack and SD slot. You can do all these things and still have water resistance, so let’s all please stop perpetuating these myths. If you’re not on Apple’s or Samsung’s payroll, you do not need to lie for them.
Basically Xperia or bust if you don’t want to compromise on any of that. See the search results here: https://m.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2022&nWidthMax=71&nRamMin=4000&chk35mm=selected&s4Gs=0&s5Gs=0&idCardslot=1
If you are willing to compromise on size and get a bigger phone, your options open up a bit with low-end phones from various brands, like the Moto G line and Samsung Galaxy A line. For some insane reason, high-end phones lack the useful features of low-end phones like card slots and headphone jacks.
I want it to be consistent dammit!
YES.
In tech terms, “intelligent” or “smart” usually means inconsistent and unpredictable. It means I need to do extra work to verify that the computer didn’t “helpfully” do something I never told it to do.
I understand autocorrect on phones, because phone keyboards suck very hard. I am still shocked that both Apple and Microsoft have decided to enable it by default on desktops and laptops with full keyboards. No, Apple, believe it or not, the username field in web sites is not supposed to have a capitalized first letter. If I wanted that, I have three whole keys on my keyboard that I could have used to do that. STFU and let me do my own typing. (Why usernames are case-sensitive in certain places is a whole other matter, one that’s far outside my control.)
English Dictionary Offline: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=livio.pack.lang.en_US . Still unbloated after all these years.
Librera (ebook reader): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/ . The pro version is free on f-droid, or you can buy it on Google Play if you want to support the dev.
Fossify Gallery: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fossify.gallery/ . This is a fork of the old Simple Gallery from before it got bought out. Same deal with Fossify File Manager and the other Fossify apps. Just no-nonsense functional apps.
On the one hand, I’m not even running 4K yet, and it is vanishingly unlikely that I will own a >4K display within the lifetime of my PS5, so this makes no difference to me.
On the other hand, I would like to see blatant false advertising punished every time it happens. “Nobody really cares” isn’t much of an excuse when they clearly thought people cared enough to put it prominently on the box. Being able to play high-end video 10 years down the line is a legitimate selling point for a gaming console that doubles as media box.
I feel you. It’s not practical to buy a phone that doesn’t have some aspects that I hate (like a notch or punch hole, glass back, or an absurd overabundance of cameras).
Same deal with small phones. There hasn’t been a viable option in close to a decade. So yeah, I’ve bought some stupidly large phones. What’s the alternative? A “compact” phone that’s still too big to comfortably use one-handed? Not much of a choice.
Reminds me of the tiny or non-existent pockets that are so common in women’s clothing. Yes, there are some options, but they are few and far between, and it’s not like pocket size is the one and only priority.
Similarly, this old tweet: https://twitter.com/GirlFromBlupo/status/982156453396996096
Dear Amazon, I bought a toilet seat because I needed one. Necessity, not desire. I do not collect them. I am not a toilet seat addict. No matter how temptingly you email me, I’m not going to think, oh go on then, just one more toilet seat, I’ll treat myself.
Naomi Wu, AKA Sexy Cyborg, talked about how this vulnerability could leak chats in secure messaging apps last year. It got her a visit by the Chinese police and she can no longer post videos online.
See: https://www.hackingbutlegal.com/p/naomi-wu-and-the-silence-that-speaks-volumes
“Ok for those of you that haven’t figured it out I got my wings clipped and they weren’t gentle about it- so there’s not going to be much posting on social media anymore and only on very specific subjects. I can leave but Kaidi can’t so we’re just going to follow the new rules and that’s that. Nothing personal if I don’t like and reply like I used to. I’ll be focusing on the store and the occasional video. Thanks for understanding, it was fun while it lasted.” –@RealSexyCyborg, July 7, 2023
Fairphone 5 stands alone as the phone that is most built to last. Its repairability rating on iFixIt is a perfect 10. They’ve committed to software updates until 2031.
Not sold in the US, unfortunately, but I think it has the correct 4G/5G bands for US networks if you want to import it.
You might also be interested in iFixIt’s repairability overview here: https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/smartphone-scores#smartphone-scores
This is more or less how I feel. I haven’t rooted in years, though I have installed non-root ROMs to extend support.
Google’s SafetyNet stuff is simply unreasonable, and a shameless power-grab. I’m so tired of software and websites trying to control what I do with my own goddamn hardware and software “for my safety”.
It’s gotten to the point where the “security” features actively hamper my security, because they leave me unable to improve it. e.g. my banking app would rather I be on an unsecured wireless network than have me use a reputable VPN. Their web site would rather have me expose myself to malvertising than run an ad blocker. They’d rather have me running an outdated OS with heaps of known security vulnerabilities than run a fully patched LineageOS. They’d rather I use my carrier’s unsecured DNS than DOH. And heaven forbid I block trackers!
Nevertheless, I stick with Android because there are still lots of things I value that I still can’t do on an iPhone. No, I don’t download torrents on my phone very often, but I’ve needed to in the past and will likely need to again at some point, so I’m not going to buy a phone that doesn’t let me install benign apps just because I might use them to download things they don’t want me to download.
The whole industry is user-hostile, but Android is still less hostile than iOS.
No.
If you eliminate the removable battery requirements, there are only 9 released since 2020, mostly in China. See https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2020&nYearMax=2023&chkFrontPopup=selected&chk35mm=selected&idCardslot=1
If you care more about the removable battery than popup camera, there are more options, but still mostly from China. https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2022&nYearMax=2023&chk35mm=selected&idCardslot=1&idBatRemovable=1
With the iPhone 14 line, Apple decided that $800 isn’t enough to get you the top-of-the-line SoC anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Android world follows Apple’s lead yet again.
Samsung is already focusing more on their Ultra. Maybe the S24 will just be a recycled S23, and only the Ultra will get a performance upgrade.
It’ll be a hard sell for me though. Why would I pay full price for a 2024 8G2 phone instead of buying a 2023 8G2 phone at discount?
My recent upgrade path was Pixel 2 -> OnePlus 7 Pro -> Pixel 7. Previously I used Nexus phones as well.
All of Google’s phones seem to have at least one glaring issue. In the case of the Pixel 2, it was the skimpy RAM and low max brightness.
With the Pixel 7, it’s the crappy fingerprint scanner, poor GPU/CPU performance, and surprisingly, the UI. I used to favor Google phones specifically because they had clean UIs with no bullshit, but holy moly, Google went off the deep end with Android 13. The wasted space everywhere is absurd. You can’t even read text in the quick settings because they have such enormous empty borders on all sides. They literally use marquee scrolling, like it’s a 1990s GeoCities page. I had to change my screen DIP settings in developer options to make it tolerable.
The nav bar is stupidly large. Even the gesture bar is stupidly large, sitting permanently at the bottom of my screen while doing absolutely nothing.
The performance is noticeably worse than my last phone. I was not expecting a speed demon, but I was certainly expecting an upgrade over a 3-year-old phone. Gaming performance is bad, and made even worse by the fact that Google only allows 90fps on specific hard-coded games, with no way for the user to override it. Games that run smoothly at 90fps on my old OnePlus 7 Pro stutter at 60fps on the Pixel 7.
Aside from that, it’s a great phone. Battery life is fine. Screen brightness is good. GPS and 5G performance is good. I can still recommend it as a phone for casual use — you can’t beat the price for what you get. But it’s definitely not a phone for power users.
My next phone will likely not be a Pixel. It’s been a while, so I might give Samsung another shot next time. If I catch a good sale on an S23 Ultra I might even upgrade this year.
Simple: price. I think that is true for the majority of users. When there’s a $200 foldable out there, people will try it just to see what the fuss is about. But that’s not even on the horizon.
For me personally, they need to come wayyyy down. Like 1/3 of the current price. That would put them in competition with budget flagships like the Pixel 7.
Sync is pretty good but its font options are awful on my phone. If I set the comments font size to “huge”, it’s still smaller than e.g. the clock in the notification bar. And then it’s an unreasonably large jump from “huge” to “header”.
It needs a simple font size slider instead of preset mystery values. As it is, it’s just uncomfortable to use.
Not sure if Sync for Reddit had the same problem since I used other clients more.
Same. I still try to buy phones with ROM support in case something goes sideways, but I haven’t used a custom ROM on my daily phone since 2016 or 2017 — and if I were to flash a custom ROM today, I still likely wouldn’t root it. Things typically work well enough that jumping through hoops to un-break SafetyNet for banking and mobile payments and even some games is too much trouble.
To get a real answer, you’d need look at the security patches that you’re missing out on. Here’s a brief write-up of the July Android security patches: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/android-july-security-updates-fix-three-actively-exploited-bugs/
So this month, you’d be missing out on some pretty severe fixes if you are running a phone with a Mali GPU (which includes many phones with chips made by Mediatek, Samsung, and Google) if your phone is not receiving timely security updates. I’m not aware of any vendors besides Google who commit to monthly security patches (please let me know if there are any), so this is a problem even on actively-supported models.
There’s also a patch for a bug in a graphics library. While that was previously patched in Chrome, other apps using the system implementation would still be vulnerable.
Historically, I recall some very severe bugs that had no real defense except “pray that nobody targets me”. For example, I ditched my Galaxy S7 specifically because Samsung went months and months without integrating Google’s security patch for Blueborne, which made it possible for anyone in your general vicinity to potentially gain full control of your device. I was not comfortable giving up Bluetooth entirely, and not comfortable leaving my device wide open to attack.
We need a lock before the lock screen to deal with all the functionality you can now access without unlocking it.
Sometimes I accidentally turn on the flashlight when the phone is in my pocket. I call it asslighting.