Microsoft is already trying hard. My poor mom did not notice all her files are on OneDrive. Now she has two laptops with everything remote on OneDrive. It's has some advantages, but it's annoying in so many more ways.
There's a setting in Onedrive to keep a copy of everything on the device. It will still get stored in the cloud too, but it means that everything will be available if the internet goes down.
A few years ago my ex got a new laptop and it had onedrive enabled system-wide by default. She didn't realize until after she had been using it for months, I had to spend several hours backing up her files and defenestrating onedrive. It not as simple as just turning it off because it was even on critical system folders, you have to go in the registry and remap the those folders manually one at time before you can disable it.
additionally I exclusively use local windows accounts. Passwords are to keep your nosy parents, partners, or kids away from your machine, if a hacker has physical access to your computer it's jover, no amount of microsoft accounts will save you
I didn't think this would be controversial, but apparently it isn't widely known. Win10 Iot Enterprise LTSC 2021 is a version that gets security support until 2032 but will not receive feature updates, ads or any other those things. It's essentially what windows should be.
I didn't criticize anyone, I didn't disrespect anyone, so it's surprising getting this many downvotes and answers.
Still, it's your opinion, and I will still share mine.
Local backups have their flaws, just like cloud backups.
I have 1TB storage using my school account. I am constantly changing between devices, and I like having my files always accessible.
Everything important, I keep in two local backups (external HDD and SSD).
The only thing I dislike about onedrive, is the sync of desktop, documents and images folder. I have turned that off, but my docs folder still appears to be syncing with onedrive.
Besides that, it's the best thing for me. And like I said... "Peace of mind".
Just because you don't like that, it does not mean it is a bad solution.
I'm surprised your post didn't get deleted by a moderator. Lemmy is weird about dissenting opinions.
I don't like OneDrive. I particularly don't like how it integrates into everything without an easy way to turn it off. But I see the value for regular people to be forced to back up their data by default.
But, after getting downvoted, I searched for better solutions.
It appears that a good option would be to encrypt my files (using 7-zip or veracrypt) and upload them to a more privacy focused cloud storage provider.
However, paying for cloud when I have it for free does not make sense.
But, I already started encrypting every file with 25 char password (randomized and saved using bitwarden).
So, better than nothing, right?
Google photos made it difficult to download or delete your pictures on purpose. You have to manually select them. There is still a way to get them and it was because of GDPR, when you ask google for the whole data of your account they include the pictures and video from google photos.
Oh Christ. You've just triggered a premonition in me–the Galaxy S32 Ultra will be the first smartphone with no physical buttons or ports. You can turn it "off," but that will only turn on a sort of extreme power saving mode. It will still ping your location once every few minutes, and will keep the fingerprint scanner active. You will "turn on" the device by holding your finger on the fingerprint scanner for four seconds. They will advertise the "quick startup" as a new feature. Volume will be controlled by sliding your finger along the right edge of the phone, which the screen will wrap around all the way to the back. It will be impossible to hold the phone without touching some part of the screen.
It will only allow wireless charging. You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards. In reality, this will be to prevent you from using ADB to remove apps that come with the phone. You cannot turn off mobile data. You cannot turn off location. You cannot use a third party SMS application. You cannot choose your own wallpaper. You cannot set a private DNS. You cannot install applications that haven't been approved by Samsung. You cannot block ads. This is all covered on page 74 of subsection 32(a) of section G8 of the terms and conditions that you agreed to when you set up the phone.
They will meet the physical limitations of how well a small lens can focus light. Zoom will cap out at 150x. Nevertheless, there will be seven cameras.
Some manufacturers are already eyeing an exemption for batteries used in "wet conditions" to opt out electric toothbrushes and possibly wearables like earbuds and smartwatches. The exemption is "based on unfounded safety claims," states Thomas Opsomer, policy engineer for iFixit, in Repair.EU's post.
Despite the coming up regulation on batteries and waste batteries by the EU Council batteries in water-proof devices will probably be exempt from being replceable, because the water proof feature of the device cannot be guaranteed. This undermines the right to repair and manufacturers can hope that customers replace their entire devices soon. Making phones water-proof is a loophole to seal off the device so that it is not to be repaired, at least without keeping the water-proof features after repairing.
I dropped several flip phones in water ranging from bath, to sink, to ponds and creeks in the mid 00’s to mid teens before getting a smart phone. Out of probably 10 phones used only one was ever ruined by the water, the rest all dried out fine when taken apart and left to dry for a day or two.
nahhh you'll be able to choose your own wallpaper, the average user will eat up all of those "feautres" but god forbid Keighleeeigh can't put her little baby Xaileeyn as her screen saver
I know, right? I mean, does he seriously expect virtually every smartphone manufacturer to put holes in his screen and take away his headphone jacks, removable sim cards, SD cards, replaceable batteries, and IR blasters, and switch to an aspect ratio other than 16:9? That would be ridiculous. They never make user-unfriendly changes!
And which of the changes he listed would the 95% figure you mentioned care about? By your definition, short of literally turning each feature into a micro transaction, there's no such thing as user unfriendly changes - and knowing the general public, not even then.
I switched to Chinese brand phones, they still have all this and they're dirt cheap, currently rocking an Ulephone power armor 18t, which also has a flir infrared camera and a microscope for some reason. No I'm not joking, they work surprisingly well and have come in handy more than I thought they would!
That was the first thing I missed when I went to a Galaxy S22. But aodNotify works great as replacement (you can make your own notification light this way and customize it, not a lot of battery drain either due to the OLED screen). But yeah, removing the notification light sucked.
The Nexus One had this, the trackball had an RGB LED inside it. With custom ROMs it could be customised to flash different colours and patterns for just about anything.
How did you buy this? It pretty much had everything I want! Big battery, good screen, SD card, waterproof. Any bugs on it day to day? It does seem to have some shitty Chinese android skin.
Aliexpress, or Amazon if you want to pay a bit more but get it faster. I've had it a few months, no bugs i've noticed, it runs essentially stock Android.
The notification LED became a bit obsolete with AOD. I don't need a bright flashing light, the notification being visible when the screen is off is enough.
With my old Note, I had an extra battery that came with case/charger combination. If my battery on my phone died, I could swap the battery in 10 seconds.
It states that any battery should be removable and replaceable by the user. So this slap on tactic will only work if your device has no internal battery.
I also noticed this is for all batteries. Not just phones, but also cars etc.
EDIT: As any EU law there is a lot of nuance and exceptions. I dig a little further and found the following:
The regulation introduces requirements that say that portable batteries should be easily removable and replaceable by the end-user and LMT batteries and cells in LMT batteries should be easily removable and replaceable by an independent professional.
So what is LMT?
The regulation defines five battery categories depending on how the battery is used:
Portable batteries
Light means of transport (LMT) batteries
Starting, lighting and ignition (SLI) batteries
Industrial batteries
Electric vehicle (EV) batteries
I couldn't find any concrete wording for "easily removed and replaceable". But I sure hope it means no more glue for the portable batteries.
"Replaceable by user" has a lot of wiggle room. It could still be a 20-minute process that risks damaging other parts and requires specialized tools.
If phones are to keep their water resistance, they almost certainly won't be tooless, and will involve swapping out gaskets. It'll be something you can do to replace a failed battery, not a quick swap because you went camping for the weekend and threw an extra battery in the bag since there are no outlets.
Could you read and understand the information behind the link before replying with nonsense?
FYI: there were waterproof phones before replaceable batteries disappeared. Also the Fairphone for example IPS rated for resistant, so not perfect, but it's possible.
Usually legislation is intentionally vague like that, ultimately courts will decide what that really means in practice.
It will end up being just reasonable. Any person can have a reasonable expectation that they will be able to replace the battery with a reasonable amount of time and effort, with readily available tools, with a reasonable amount of guidance.
If you were a judge would you say that it's reasonable to expect people to be able to replace soldered components on their phones?
What do you mean only if it has no internal battery? This will make it so they can't fuse a battery in place and call it internal. It has to be removable.
I agree. I used to carry a spare at all times as well. So nice to be able to swap as soon as you get close to empty. I'm hoping we'll get back there eventually.
No. This law keeps being misquoted, and people are going to be disappointed if they go into 2027 thinking we'll be able to pop out batteries like the good ol' days.
It does not necessitate battery removal like that. Only that it not be too difficult to change out for a repair (i.e. stuff like gluing it in place with a strong glue, or necessitating removing the display before the battery). That's still a good change, I'd be happy if it were something like removing 4 screws then unplugging, but it's not the same as what everybody makes out.
It also doesn't apply at all for batteries over a certain capacity, or so long as the battery retains 63% capacity or more (presumably this means throughout the warranty period, but I'm unable to find a timeframe for which this standard gets applied) from 2027, or 73% from 2030.
There's also a 2 year grace period after the law comes into effect where it won't really be applied.
No. This law keeps being misquoted, and people are going to be disappointed if they go into 2027 thinking we'll be able to pop out batteries like the good ol' days.
I know. While I didn't read the full legal text, tech news sources are saying it needs to be replaceable by an independent third party or the customer themselves with regularly available tools. I'd love to have easy slide in/out batteries, but I know this is not that.
It also doesn't apply at all for batteries over a certain capacity, or so long as the battery retains 63% capacity or more (presumably this means throughout the warranty period) from 2027, or 73% from 2030.
I didn't know about this clause. That's too bad. :(
This goddamn camera built into my screen instead of above the screen pisses me off so fucking much. So often I have to move a picture down to read the top of it.
IT'S BLOCKING MY MEMES GOD FUCKING DAMMIT MY MEMES
Hey man, I know this is a rant, but in case you didn't know there should be a setting to resize things to make a black bar at the top. Google it for your phone, but for samsung it's something like "full sceeen apps".
That seems like a weird thing to want. You'll have less screen space because the notification area is now using your useable screen area instead of being up in the unusable dead space.
Not actually how it works. There's two options. One of them has the notifications in the "dead space", but the content never gets eaten up.
(Pinging @[email protected] , just in case you didn't know about this!)
I wouldn't use this myself. Most apps are designed so content fits underneath the camera hole so nothing gets eaten, and even if it does get eaten, the camera is so small that it's not an issue for me
Edit: this is what you have to enable, by the way.
People look at me like I'm fucking insane when I get as upset about the blighted notch on my screen as I do. This screen technically has more real estate than my Razer Phone 2 back in 2018 did, but between the obnoxiously tall aspect ratio and the fucking notch, it has like 75% of the usable screen space. You know what was really nice? Watching TV shows on my RP2, with the 6" screen, all of which was used for the video. You know what sucks? Having a half inch of black bars on either side of the screen so that the 16:9 aspect ratio video can fit on the 18:9 aspect ratio screen. And it's even more ass than that, because the top and bottom of the video look like shit because the screen wraps around the fucking sides.
If the FBI could hear what I have to say about the engineers at samsung, I would have been arrested years ago
If you're talking about physical buttons, please no.
Gesture navigation is an incredibly useful feature for those with short fingers like myself, who have problems with reaching the "Recents" button without weirdly tilting the phone and then stretching their thumb to the point that it gets painful over time. And while it's technically possible to use gesture navigation on phones with physical buttons, it would definitely be weird.
Not to mention that it's also wasted space, because physical buttons obviously can't just disappear when needed like on-screen buttons do, so you can have a bigger and more efficiently used screen.
There are a lot of things that are dumb to remove from phones, pyhsical navigation buttons, in my opinion at least, are not one of them. I can't even think of an advantage physical buttons would have over on-screen buttons.
If you meant that you want to keep the option for on-screen button navigation, I'm all for it. Can't hurt to have more options :)
Well i meant physical buttons but i also think phone displays should be 5 inches, 5.5 at absolute most. Also, by the by, the main advantage of physical buttons is a) useabilty while gloved or with wet/dirty hands and b) being able to know precisely what button you're on by touch
Thx. It's more about versatility in my eyes. A smartphone should be, above all else, practical. So a perfect phone for me would be something like Fairphone but with a 3,5mm jack, physical front buttons, and 2 cameras on the back (wide and normal/narrow lens). Mby additional sensors like a barometer, assuming that can be scaled down or done digitally/electronically.
That's another thing they ruined! Oneplus had amazing gestures, but then Google enforced using their gestures only, and they're so much worse! I especially hate that back is swiping in from an edge, which is in conflict with every side drawer and cropping tool in every app ever!
With Oneplus gestures back was swiping up from the bottom left or right. So much better. And the screen-off-gestures with drawing the pause symbol for play/pause or < or > for jump back/forward in a podcast or song. I miss them.
Same. I've used the 3.5mm port for my truck daily for the past 10 years. Don't need it as much now that I got a new truck, but I still use it when I ride my motorcycle. Bluetooth earbuds just don't fit under my helmet.
It's not better, it's more convenient. Bluetooth earbuds are basically not repairable and they're more expensive than their wired counterparts if you want something decent. The call quality is also worse due to bluetooth's limitations.
Both types of headphones have their pros and cons and both can coexist. Don't be dumb, don't defend companies taking away options for no good reason other than planned obsolesence.
The IR blaster needs to come back. They were mostly on phones pre-smart device where they had super limited usage. With a smart device, they could practically do anything. I wanna use my phone as a universal remote, damn it.
I want a 0hysical.keyboadd too. Touch screen sucks.
Oh man, I wish I still had this. I miss the days when I could mess with a friend's device and watch them lose their mind. Definitely a fun game as long as everyone else in the room knew it was a harmless prank.
I love it when uninformed troglodytes complain about a hole in the screen. They didn't add a hold in the screen. The hole was already there. They just wrapped your screen around it for more screen. 😅
I spent 6 hours on google to find a phone with a screen smaller than 6 inch. I did find none (except an old iPhone, but I want android), so I had to buy one 6 inch. It is too unwieldy. I am annoyed.
There is a serious market for people like me. Do not look away. Somebody will buy these phones.
Also, by the way, it's not bad if the phones are a bit thicker.
Do many people know that there is actually a patent for the idea of an advertisement that plays to a certain point... and then does not end, will not let you skip it, until you as the user, via a camera and microphone, can be verified to have assumed a pose, made a facial expression, and/or said a specific phrase?
The actual patent shows a smart tv 'owner' standing up and saying McDonalds! in order to like keep watching Netflix.
We quite literally have the tech and the legal framework for 'Drink Verification Mountain Dew Can' to actually be a thing.
Though it should be kept in mind there's thousands of patents that were never actually applied, and this one was filled back in 2009.
This is genuinely a good thing, then. If you patent something and "accidentally" never use it, it prevents other companies from using it legally. Screw over advertisers and save the consumers from their terrible ideas by hoarding patents and working with a patent troll firm :)
It takes 20 years for patents to expire, and you can't commercially use the patented invention until then. If I "invent" and patent 50 different methods to track viewer attention during video advertisements, that's 50 fewer ways that some company would be able to achieve it.
It would be impossible to cover every possible method to achieve the same thing, but the risk of violating a patent held by a highly litigious patent troll might be a good enough deterrent to stop the whole idea from making it to market for a couple decades.
Yes, but after 20 years you're not at square one, others have free reign to use and abuse your expired patent. Sure, you can tacticize patents in a way where you make a starting patent, then before it's about to expire "expand" it with a new one in a way which invalidates use of the previous, but I don't know if that "loophole" is patched and if not, how it looks in real life.
That is an entirely valid concern, and I see where you're coming from with that. It would be short-sighted to introduce something revolutionary, only to open the floodgates for everyone else to start implementing it two decades later.
I was thinking of using patents more along the lines of "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks." Rather than trying to come up with every conceivable method for tracking user attention and patenting those, the hypothetical patent troll would create and patent hundreds of different smaller, novel processes that may or may not be needed as part of a larger system for tracking user attention. The overall goal being to make it likely enough for one or more of those patents to be violated that a company would consider it too risky to go anywhere near the idea of commercializing attention tracking software/hardware.
It's the SD card for me. We are getting phones with 1tb now, so that will work. But with the phones that do offer it, you have to get the most expensive version for it. Meanwhile if they just give me an SD card slot, I can have that fixed myself. Just take the one out of my current phone and plop it in the new phone.
If you want the rest of the specs to be decent, then that day is fast approaching or already here.
I had to jump from a phone that had about 5.5 of the features on that list to one with none of them (although I do like the 3 rear cameras) and I hate that I had to do that.
But I kept "Easily rootable" and that's what really matters to me.
I hate the loss but just buy a bunch of USBC to headphone adapters, stick them on all your headphones/aux cables, and forget you don't have a headphone jack on your phone.
You know what else they've taken from us? Actually unique designs for phones. When I look at modern day smartphones, for some reason they look like clones of each other. Where's all the spunk that these manufacturers used to put in their devices?
Fuck you, minimalism. Ever since you've ruined my iPhone back in 2013, my life has never been the same.
For the physical part? A couple cents per phone sold.
But it's also one less part for for the circuit board designers to accomodate in their ever-shrinking layouts, one less part to inventory, track, and warehouse, one less behavior to verify by Q&A, one less SW and/or HDL code module to maintain, etc etc etc. When you look at the entire design, verification, and manufacturing process, multiplied by millions of units, every part and behavior carries a cost.
There are plenty of valid reasons to crap on the major phone manufacturers, especially when they take away features and capabilities we like. But "it's just one small part" usually isn't one of them.
OLED displays certainly could, but there is no baked it app that wakes up the screen only if you have a message, blink in different colors or frequencies depending on the message and use the low power always on display api.
Yeah, you can glance at your always on display and make out the little symbol. But that's not an adequate replacement to the notification LED. If I had to guess, it was removed to drive up engagement with your phone.
I wouldn't call the "always on display" some kind of innovative technology that makes notification LEDs obsolete... AOD is a battery draining complement to notification LEDs, not a replacement -- we just don't have the latter anymore because of corporate greed and consumer mentalities :/
There are notification apps to replicate the feature. A single pixel lighting on an OLED screen uses no more energy than a physically separate led. The CPU isn't sleeping to update the notification led either way.
Appreciate the response. Figured this was "easily" do-able, but I honestly remember not being able to find anything pre-implemented for this a couple years ago when I last checked. Maybe my search, then, idk... Anyways, yeah, physically separate LED do sound a lot more obsolete with that in mind
Controversial: it was much easier and safer to text while driving with a physical keyboard. You could type with one hand, hold the steering wheel with the other, all while still looking at the road because you could feel where the buttons were.
Back in the flip phone days that raised 5 let me text behind my back in class. I mean, I have no need for that now but it was pretty fucking sweet back then.
Controversial: Drinking while driving was easier and safer with a beer helmet since you can just sip directly from the straw instead of looking down to pick up the can.
I still remember the extended conversation I had with the cell phone man on the day I realized that time had moved on, and it wasn't even possible for me to buy a third-party phone that still had a keyboard and then hook it up to their network anymore. I was just going to have to poke haplessly at the glass and get letters wrong for the rest of my life.
IT'S MY MONEY, LET ME BUY THE KIND OF PHONE I WANT
This is why I like the audible haptic feedback on a cell phone keyboard that everyone else seems to hate. I gotta know that I pushed the button, otherwise in my mind, I didn't push it. At least when I have a physical keyboard I could feel it.
Who doesn't use all the cameras on their phone? Is there like a specific focal length you never use? Or are you unaware that zooming in the camera app switches lenses?
Yeah, the extra camera is the main reason I got a higher end phone to begin with.
Let’s just say that after some shitty times I have learned to put more priority on filling my life with things that I enjoy enough that I want to photograph and video them.
I might've used all of them at one point, but again I'd be fine with just one - after all it's a smartphone, not a dedicated camera. Personally it annoys me that manufacturers have started shoving multiple cameras not just into high end models (for which it's kind of understandable) but also into midrange and even low end ones - whatever I pick, I end up paying for stuff I don't necessarily use. I'd be happy to buy a high end device with just one camera with normal or wide-ish lens - but nobody is selling that.
I think people believe they need to use special settings or apps to activate each of the different cameras. I don't understand why people argue about tech they have obviously never tried.
I miss my Pixel 1, which had a fingerprint reader on the back that I could easily touch with my index finger, and which was able to respond to up- and down-swipe gestures. For example, to open or close the notification shade.
The fingerprint reader sat right in the middle of the back horizontally, and maybe one third from the top. Right where your index finger naturally rests if you grip it with your thumb on one side and fingers 3–5 on the other.
I think capacitive ones were too good tbh. Kept accidentally unlocking my phone in my pocket. I've assigned the screen one to my thumb, with always on display on, unlocking feels natural. I also find it works better with wet hands, which capacitive was absolutely hopeless at.
I'm on pixel 6 btw, which apparently had a bad reputation as well
Honestly, I'll take having to try a few times until it works than being blasted by maximum brightness if I dare touch the phone wrong when waking up in the middle of the night.
Sony does a lot of things right, but I'm not spending €1200 on a phone that gets a measly 2 years of updates. With that hardware and that price tag there's no excuse for that bullshit.
I'm still on the Xperia 1 III. I've sworn by Sony phones for years. The price point does put off a lot of people, but it's worth it IMO.
That said, unlike a lot of people, I don't care for the 3.5mm jack nowadays. I've had wireless noise cancelling headphones for long enough that I actually forget this phone has the jack. 🤷🏼♂️
And the cameras have to be quite possibly the best on the market!
DRM Battery, you can only refill it the X amount of times that is paid for. Don't worry you can have it serviced for an exorborant fee, that will become another subscription.
Be honest with yourself, are they really that stupid? If they were they wouldn't be making as much money as they do. They are very capable of thinking up new ways to extract money from others. I would argue that what they lack is empathy and sense of community.
genuinely dont understand the logic behind having that many cameras. Surely it would just be better to have a singular better sensor, and some additional hardware for it?
I am never buying an expensive Smartphone again. Just something that works for emergency calls and 2FA and lets me buy a ticket for public transport. I am not gaming on it, I rarely listen to music with it, I only have about 6 apps on it in total. Give me a long lasting battery and let me replace it. The only thing that I need is a big screen, because I am handicapped and have bad eyesight and it is easier to see and use the software if it isn't too small, otherwise I would prefer a smaller size and I give a f*ck how slim or thick the phone is or how water proof, non of my phones ever got even a tiny bit wet. In the 7 years I own my current phone I have taken about 50 pictures and 48 got deleted shortly after. I also do not need a lot of storage.
I must be a fkn weirdo because I just don't care about any of these things.
Replaceable battery is an exception - but that's coming back anyway.
I don't have any devices that use infra red
I don't need a microsd because the on board memory is so much I don't even have to think about capacity any more
I much prefer bluetooth
I much prefer a larger screen instead of buttons.
They didn't really cut a hole in my screen, they expanded my screen around my front facing camera. You can disable that expanded portion of the screen on most phones ?
I hate both phone types horribly. On screen keyboards are complete trash. Not only did Android take the SD Card, but even if you happen to have a manufacturer who still includes it Google has made it horribly inconvenient to use so you buy their shitty cloud storage that loses people's data. Among many other issues.
If this hasn't been done already, being able to unlock the bootloader
Adding "AI" integrated into the OS with vague benefits even though the processing is done on the cloud (like Windows) just so the OEM can spy on you better
Forced volume limiters: The phone won't let you stay at max volume for more than 5 minutes a day, even if connected to a BT device set at substantially under max volume
Making it take more clicks to disable Internet, Bluetooth, other connected features
DRM built into Android itself
Being able to sideload
Ads within the OS
All of these are already on their way to being implemented:
Already the case with the vast majority of phones
Pixels already have this. Samsung is focusing on this in 2024. Several Chinese OEMs already have some version of this.
This was an idea Google attempted to implement in Android 14. Seems like it didn't go through that year, but there's always this year.
Google already made it harder to do this in Android 12. Apple also does this with the toggles only disabling WiFi/BT until tomorrow. Other OEMs are good for now.
After widespread disdain for Google's Web Environment Integrity BS, Google is quietly pivoting to this stupid change.
Google is now making it harder to do this on all Android phones. Now, you can only sideload apps targeting an Android version at most 8 behind the current one. This disables lots of little FOSS projects that were light on system resources.
Most Chinese OEMs already do this, although you can usually turn it off. Samsung used to do this, but backpedaled. Also bloatware exists.
User serviceability is intentionally not a focal point especially when it comes to anything a person has to use day to day. Any kind of tool or appliance- and especially electronic devices, forget about it. Luckily there are off the beaten path companies like framework and fairphone, but these are hard to market to regular joes and some are unavailable in a lot of regions.
Tech enthusiasts like presumably a lot of this comment section is are lucky there's at least something out there.
While I'm all about options because everyone has different use cases, I've found that over the years as these features have been removed, I haven't really missed them
They're going to make the experience "better" by forcing you to talk to their AI to get anything done.
Walking around with new phone: "How do I turn on the flashlight? There no flashlight button in the pulldown menu anymore... OK Google how do I turn on the flashlight?"
"To turn the flashlight on or off you have to say, 'OK Google, turn on the flashlight' or 'OK Google, turn off the flashlight.'"
It'll start with small things but eventually they'll want to stop paying developers to add GUIs so they'll just force us all to use the AI.
What's next? Pay per text/call. Soon your mobile plan will just be a bill for hardware and any communications will come with a large fee. I picture it like virgin mobile prepaid was back in the early 00's with 10¢/text & 25¢/minute on voice.
I don't understand why everyone hates the notch, or especially the hole punch camera now. You could just disable the pixels next to the notch going back to a regular screen, and if you don't it's only extra screen space. Even more so with the hole punch. Why more screen bad?
plastics dont break, are cheap to replace, don't get hot or cold with weather, don't interfere with wireless charging, have much more grip, and can be made into any texture (matt or glassy).
I don't understand why anyone would prefer metal/glass phone besides for the reason "look at me, ma, my phone is pretty".
Nope. I'd rather have a plastic or rubber shell and rubber mounting for the screen. They've made fragile as a marketing gimmick so you'd have to replace your phone sooner.
Personally, water damage on the phones I had always was a rare edge case. The only time I ever water damaged my phone was when I accidentally put it in the washing machine and I'm sure no phone would have survived that.
That's just an excuse. Yes, a waterproof phone is easier to manufacture if it has less holes, but in practice only around half of the phones are waterproof, and even those that are are rated at like 1 m / 30 minutes max.
Nearly all phones nowadays still has buttons and a USB-C port, and nearly all of them are waterproof. Having ports and being waterproof is not only NOT mutually exclusive, but it is so easy that most manufactures can do it.
People don't care. They buy whatever marketing tells them to buy. Lines around the block for the first iPhone when it was vastly inferior to the other phones of the day. Couldn't even use custom ringtones. Knew then that people really are sheep.
I don't understand how we're still whining about notches. We got extra screen and people choose to focus of the notch even 5 years later? Talk about glass half empty mentality...
I'm whining cause I miss having bezels. Having a spot on the screen I can reliably touch that isn't touchscreen was nice.
The notch is plain ugly and took away screen real estate for notifications and system icons. The pinprick ain't too bad, don't notice it much, but looks fuckbad on full-screen videos and games.
Last phone I owned genuinely did. It could only show like three notification icons before it was filled. The pin prick is better, but I want my bezels back.
I mean, yeah you can make all kinds of bad design choices. But a simple cutout like the Pixel works just fine -- I even add a ring around it to see media/download progress, so it functions as a system icon itself.
Who tf used an IR blaster? And what sane person misses the flimsy plastic back on phones with removable batteries? They didn't cut a hole in your screen, they removed a half inch of dead useless space at the top and bottom and gave you more usable real estate while also cranking the resolution and refresh rate to 11. Buttons? WHAT BUTTONS EXACTLY? The single enormous one that ate up nearly 25% of the phone and all it did was GO BACK?! And don't even mention the cameras. Your five cameras you didn't ask for are why you can film yourself in 4K doing whatever brain dead tiktok fad you saw on your enormous HD screen, and why you can pretend you had front row seats to a concert you sat in the nosebleeds for.
Headphone jack is fair, no argument. I use Bluetooth headphones but I get the rationale. Everything else is stupid.
Your argument against removable batteries is that they had a "flimsy plastic back"? seriously prefer being unable to change the battery when its capacity decreases, being unable to carry a spare battery around, and having to pay dumb service fees, all just to not have a back that you barely even notice is made of plastic?
Also removable storage is extremely useful as well, not only for being able to cheaply increase space when needed, but also to minimize the effort of swapping devices or sharing large files more quickly.
Modular is always better. The only good argument against it is shareholder profits.
It doesn't even need to be plastic. The battery could slot into the side of the phone on a tray with a gasket to try and seal it.
Personally I don't think the battery needs to be as easily replaced if it lasts longer. Lithium ion cells degrade too quickly but a lithium iron phosphate cold last for 10 years before dropping below 85% charge capacity.
The only drawback is they have about 30% less energy density but imo making the battery 30% larger is not a big deal. Phones have obsessed with being pointlessly thin for so long. Basically just remove the dumb camera bump.
I do miss removable batteries, they had the added benefit of having a heavy mass (the battery) get thrown out when the phone falls. That helped save the display from getting damaged because a lot of the momentum was transferred to the battery popping out
I've been trying to acclimate my Dad to digital stuff-- get him reading the news online for when the local rag finally goes weekly or closes.
He would have an easier time with a device with 5% less screen, but always-present physical home/back/menu buttons.
I'm not sure what the ideal device would be for him; I've set him up with a Kindle Fire with the Play store and a handful of prevetted apps because I had it handy and it seemed more approachable than a 6" phone or a laptop with keyboard and trackpoint. But I'm all but sure the right device is NOT a new phone.
Next will be memory. They will say everything you meed should be stored online for a subscription fee.
Microsoft is already trying hard. My poor mom did not notice all her files are on OneDrive. Now she has two laptops with everything remote on OneDrive. It's has some advantages, but it's annoying in so many more ways.
There's a setting in Onedrive to keep a copy of everything on the device. It will still get stored in the cloud too, but it means that everything will be available if the internet goes down.
I fell victim to that :(
A few years ago my ex got a new laptop and it had onedrive enabled system-wide by default. She didn't realize until after she had been using it for months, I had to spend several hours backing up her files and defenestrating onedrive. It not as simple as just turning it off because it was even on critical system folders, you have to go in the registry and remap the those folders manually one at time before you can disable it.
It is possible, but it fucking sucks.
It's not annoying at all. It's peace of mind. People are just not used to it
additionally I exclusively use local windows accounts. Passwords are to keep your nosy parents, partners, or kids away from your machine, if a hacker has physical access to your computer it's jover, no amount of microsoft accounts will save you
Get windows 10 iot ltsc, it won't do that
I didn't think this would be controversial, but apparently it isn't widely known. Win10 Iot Enterprise LTSC 2021 is a version that gets security support until 2032 but will not receive feature updates, ads or any other those things. It's essentially what windows should be.
Here is my source: https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links.html
if you want peace of mind, make your own backups and when you need them, you can pull them from your drawer, not from us-east-1 (currently on fire)
I didn't criticize anyone, I didn't disrespect anyone, so it's surprising getting this many downvotes and answers.
Still, it's your opinion, and I will still share mine.
Local backups have their flaws, just like cloud backups.
I have 1TB storage using my school account. I am constantly changing between devices, and I like having my files always accessible.
Everything important, I keep in two local backups (external HDD and SSD).
The only thing I dislike about onedrive, is the sync of desktop, documents and images folder. I have turned that off, but my docs folder still appears to be syncing with onedrive.
Besides that, it's the best thing for me. And like I said... "Peace of mind". Just because you don't like that, it does not mean it is a bad solution.
I'm surprised your post didn't get deleted by a moderator. Lemmy is weird about dissenting opinions.
I don't like OneDrive. I particularly don't like how it integrates into everything without an easy way to turn it off. But I see the value for regular people to be forced to back up their data by default.
Didn't knew that.
But, after getting downvoted, I searched for better solutions.
It appears that a good option would be to encrypt my files (using 7-zip or veracrypt) and upload them to a more privacy focused cloud storage provider.
However, paying for cloud when I have it for free does not make sense.
But, I already started encrypting every file with 25 char password (randomized and saved using bitwarden). So, better than nothing, right?
No, its kidnapping your data to keep you trapped as their customer. If you want peace of mind, you can make your own backups.
Google keeps trying to back up my non existent photos. It's annoying.
Google photos made it difficult to download or delete your pictures on purpose. You have to manually select them. There is still a way to get them and it was because of GDPR, when you ask google for the whole data of your account they include the pictures and video from google photos.
You don't need to request all account data, you can request only the Google photos data
This is Apple already.
Oh. You can only afford 4GB iPhone? Not to worry, for only $10 a month we can store stuff for you.
Also we got rid of photo stream and if you delete the file from the cloud then we remove it from every device
They'll take away volume control (SW/HW buttons) and replace with dynamically adjusting "magic volume" so that you can't mute ads.
Oh Christ. You've just triggered a premonition in me–the Galaxy S32 Ultra will be the first smartphone with no physical buttons or ports. You can turn it "off," but that will only turn on a sort of extreme power saving mode. It will still ping your location once every few minutes, and will keep the fingerprint scanner active. You will "turn on" the device by holding your finger on the fingerprint scanner for four seconds. They will advertise the "quick startup" as a new feature. Volume will be controlled by sliding your finger along the right edge of the phone, which the screen will wrap around all the way to the back. It will be impossible to hold the phone without touching some part of the screen.
It will only allow wireless charging. You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards. In reality, this will be to prevent you from using ADB to remove apps that come with the phone. You cannot turn off mobile data. You cannot turn off location. You cannot use a third party SMS application. You cannot choose your own wallpaper. You cannot set a private DNS. You cannot install applications that haven't been approved by Samsung. You cannot block ads. This is all covered on page 74 of subsection 32(a) of section G8 of the terms and conditions that you agreed to when you set up the phone.
They will meet the physical limitations of how well a small lens can focus light. Zoom will cap out at 150x. Nevertheless, there will be seven cameras.
correction a bit, you can use adb via wifi. That's what I do to sideload an app to my Android TV
Making devices water-proof is also a marketing scheme to avoid replaceable batteries :
Despite the coming up regulation on batteries and waste batteries by the EU Council batteries in water-proof devices will probably be exempt from being replceable, because the water proof feature of the device cannot be guaranteed. This undermines the right to repair and manufacturers can hope that customers replace their entire devices soon. Making phones water-proof is a loophole to seal off the device so that it is not to be repaired, at least without keeping the water-proof features after repairing.
Yeah pretty sure the Fairphone 5 and its predecessors have a pretty good IP rating, despite their ability to have the battery removed.
The Galaxy S5 did it first :)
(for a competent smartphone that is)
I dropped my phone in the bath once, so it's worth it 🤣
I dropped several flip phones in water ranging from bath, to sink, to ponds and creeks in the mid 00’s to mid teens before getting a smart phone. Out of probably 10 phones used only one was ever ruined by the water, the rest all dried out fine when taken apart and left to dry for a day or two.
nahhh you'll be able to choose your own wallpaper, the average user will eat up all of those "feautres" but god forbid Keighleeeigh can't put her little baby Xaileeyn as her screen saver
Obligatory, "The rise of -leigh, -lee, and -den names":
But Keighleeeigh will happily pay for it.
Or her baby daddy, Jaxxon
This is when I go back to having a "dumb" phone 🫡
Why are people up voting this? This is such ridiculous FUD that I can't take it seriously.
I know, right? I mean, does he seriously expect virtually every smartphone manufacturer to put holes in his screen and take away his headphone jacks, removable sim cards, SD cards, replaceable batteries, and IR blasters, and switch to an aspect ratio other than 16:9? That would be ridiculous. They never make user-unfriendly changes!
They're not user unfriendly changes if 95% of users just don't care.
And which of the changes he listed would the 95% figure you mentioned care about? By your definition, short of literally turning each feature into a micro transaction, there's no such thing as user unfriendly changes - and knowing the general public, not even then.
That's when I go flip
Just so you know, this comment is visible on the internet for anyone to see, and has been for 2 years.
When they actually introduce all these fantastic new features, we will know who to blame for the idea.
Oh jesus christ I think you're right
These people need stabbed.
Don't forget the RGB notification led!
I switched to Chinese brand phones, they still have all this and they're dirt cheap, currently rocking an Ulephone power armor 18t, which also has a flir infrared camera and a microscope for some reason. No I'm not joking, they work surprisingly well and have come in handy more than I thought they would!
Not sure I'd consider £600 "dirt cheap" but the thermal camera is definitely cool.
They have frequent sales, i got it for under 300
That was the first thing I missed when I went to a Galaxy S22. But aodNotify works great as replacement (you can make your own notification light this way and customize it, not a lot of battery drain either due to the OLED screen). But yeah, removing the notification light sucked.
All except the IR blaster, right?
And optional microscope connects to the phone, looks like.
Yeah, missing the IR blaster unfortunately! It does have an accessory port for microscope/endoscope, I just got an endoscope but haven't tried it yet.
Post pics of colon
Why do you need a custom accessory port? They have had USB endoscopes for years.
What do you use the IR blaster for? Controlling TVs?
controlling anything that uses a remote to be controlled TV, Projectors, ACs, etc...
I suppose there were universal remote apps?
The Nexus One had this, the trackball had an RGB LED inside it. With custom ROMs it could be customised to flash different colours and patterns for just about anything.
How did you buy this? It pretty much had everything I want! Big battery, good screen, SD card, waterproof. Any bugs on it day to day? It does seem to have some shitty Chinese android skin.
Aliexpress, or Amazon if you want to pay a bit more but get it faster. I've had it a few months, no bugs i've noticed, it runs essentially stock Android.
I never had one of those, that I can recall.
The notification LED became a bit obsolete with AOD. I don't need a bright flashing light, the notification being visible when the screen is off is enough.
At least removable batteries will be mandatory in EU by 2027.
There are different categories of removable.
With my old Note, I had an extra battery that came with case/charger combination. If my battery on my phone died, I could swap the battery in 10 seconds.
It states that any battery should be removable and replaceable by the user. So this slap on tactic will only work if your device has no internal battery.
I also noticed this is for all batteries. Not just phones, but also cars etc.
EDIT: As any EU law there is a lot of nuance and exceptions. I dig a little further and found the following:
So what is LMT?
I couldn't find any concrete wording for "easily removed and replaceable". But I sure hope it means no more glue for the portable batteries.
Source: https://www.intertek.com/blog/2023/08-17-battery-regulation/
"Replaceable by user" has a lot of wiggle room. It could still be a 20-minute process that risks damaging other parts and requires specialized tools.
If phones are to keep their water resistance, they almost certainly won't be tooless, and will involve swapping out gaskets. It'll be something you can do to replace a failed battery, not a quick swap because you went camping for the weekend and threw an extra battery in the bag since there are no outlets.
Could you read and understand the information behind the link before replying with nonsense?
FYI: there were waterproof phones before replaceable batteries disappeared. Also the Fairphone for example IPS rated for resistant, so not perfect, but it's possible.
"User replaceable" just means that they have to make it possible, not easy.
Usually legislation is intentionally vague like that, ultimately courts will decide what that really means in practice.
It will end up being just reasonable. Any person can have a reasonable expectation that they will be able to replace the battery with a reasonable amount of time and effort, with readily available tools, with a reasonable amount of guidance.
If you were a judge would you say that it's reasonable to expect people to be able to replace soldered components on their phones?
None of that addresses his point that "removable by the user" is not clearly defined. I didn't see any definition for it in the link you posted.
Yeah, Apples replacement kit requires like 11k deposit and comes in two 75 pound pelican cases.
What do you mean only if it has no internal battery? This will make it so they can't fuse a battery in place and call it internal. It has to be removable.
That is what I meant?
That it is nice the op has a battery-case for their phone, but that it will not fly under the new law unless the phone has no internal battery.
You mean an internal battery in addition to a main removable one? Sorry if I'm being dense.
I agree. I used to carry a spare at all times as well. So nice to be able to swap as soon as you get close to empty. I'm hoping we'll get back there eventually.
No. This law keeps being misquoted, and people are going to be disappointed if they go into 2027 thinking we'll be able to pop out batteries like the good ol' days.
It does not necessitate battery removal like that. Only that it not be too difficult to change out for a repair (i.e. stuff like gluing it in place with a strong glue, or necessitating removing the display before the battery). That's still a good change, I'd be happy if it were something like removing 4 screws then unplugging, but it's not the same as what everybody makes out.
It also doesn't apply at all for batteries over a certain capacity, or so long as the battery retains 63% capacity or more (presumably this means throughout the warranty period, but I'm unable to find a timeframe for which this standard gets applied) from 2027, or 73% from 2030.
There's also a 2 year grace period after the law comes into effect where it won't really be applied.
I know. While I didn't read the full legal text, tech news sources are saying it needs to be replaceable by an independent third party or the customer themselves with regularly available tools. I'd love to have easy slide in/out batteries, but I know this is not that.
I didn't know about this clause. That's too bad. :(
This goddamn camera built into my screen instead of above the screen pisses me off so fucking much. So often I have to move a picture down to read the top of it.
IT'S BLOCKING MY MEMES GOD FUCKING DAMMIT MY MEMES
Hey man, I know this is a rant, but in case you didn't know there should be a setting to resize things to make a black bar at the top. Google it for your phone, but for samsung it's something like "full sceeen apps".
Just looked. Not a thing for pixel 6A :(
Googled it, try this
https://mashtips.com/hide-display-notch-and-cutouts-on-pixel/
Holy crap that did it! Thank you!!
That seems like a weird thing to want. You'll have less screen space because the notification area is now using your useable screen area instead of being up in the unusable dead space.
MY. MEMES.
Not actually how it works. There's two options. One of them has the notifications in the "dead space", but the content never gets eaten up.
(Pinging @[email protected] , just in case you didn't know about this!)
I wouldn't use this myself. Most apps are designed so content fits underneath the camera hole so nothing gets eaten, and even if it does get eaten, the camera is so small that it's not an issue for me
Edit: this is what you have to enable, by the way.
People look at me like I'm fucking insane when I get as upset about the blighted notch on my screen as I do. This screen technically has more real estate than my Razer Phone 2 back in 2018 did, but between the obnoxiously tall aspect ratio and the fucking notch, it has like 75% of the usable screen space. You know what was really nice? Watching TV shows on my RP2, with the 6" screen, all of which was used for the video. You know what sucks? Having a half inch of black bars on either side of the screen so that the 16:9 aspect ratio video can fit on the 18:9 aspect ratio screen. And it's even more ass than that, because the top and bottom of the video look like shit because the screen wraps around the fucking sides.
If the FBI could hear what I have to say about the engineers at samsung, I would have been arrested years ago
I drift through this world in a mood of indifference, frequently moving into disgust.
But at times I read a comment like this and see that there is still beauty in the world. I love you.
I'm sorry but I think we should just be friends
You don't need a navbar if you switch to gesture controls
Fuck gestures, gice me back my buttons
If you're talking about physical buttons, please no. Gesture navigation is an incredibly useful feature for those with short fingers like myself, who have problems with reaching the "Recents" button without weirdly tilting the phone and then stretching their thumb to the point that it gets painful over time. And while it's technically possible to use gesture navigation on phones with physical buttons, it would definitely be weird. Not to mention that it's also wasted space, because physical buttons obviously can't just disappear when needed like on-screen buttons do, so you can have a bigger and more efficiently used screen. There are a lot of things that are dumb to remove from phones, pyhsical navigation buttons, in my opinion at least, are not one of them. I can't even think of an advantage physical buttons would have over on-screen buttons.
If you meant that you want to keep the option for on-screen button navigation, I'm all for it. Can't hurt to have more options :)
Well i meant physical buttons but i also think phone displays should be 5 inches, 5.5 at absolute most. Also, by the by, the main advantage of physical buttons is a) useabilty while gloved or with wet/dirty hands and b) being able to know precisely what button you're on by touch
I don't think this is a common use case for most people, but I can see how that might come in handy for some, so you've got some good points.
Thx. It's more about versatility in my eyes. A smartphone should be, above all else, practical. So a perfect phone for me would be something like Fairphone but with a 3,5mm jack, physical front buttons, and 2 cameras on the back (wide and normal/narrow lens). Mby additional sensors like a barometer, assuming that can be scaled down or done digitally/electronically.
That's another thing they ruined! Oneplus had amazing gestures, but then Google enforced using their gestures only, and they're so much worse! I especially hate that back is swiping in from an edge, which is in conflict with every side drawer and cropping tool in every app ever!
Yeah, I have the most problems with it in Thunder. I avoided using gestures for so long but they've grown on me.
With Oneplus gestures back was swiping up from the bottom left or right. So much better. And the screen-off-gestures with drawing the pause symbol for play/pause or < or > for jump back/forward in a podcast or song. I miss them.
How often do you come across tall pictures? Most pictures sit well below the camera for me
At least a couple times a day
THEY TOOK MY SLIDE OUT QWERTY KEYBOARD!
They're going to bring back an ABCDEF keyboard instead!
Bringing back the t9 typing perhaps?
This is indeed the biggest crime. I miss my Google G1!
I use Colemak, so I kinda welcome the on-screen keyboard, as the layouts can be switched.
They removed my slide out keyboard, too.
I just want my physical keyboard back, damnit!
They now sell it as an addon in a phone case
Ew
That looks so wrong to me.
They should include a slide out controller now instead
how to reinvent the ninetendo DS in five easy steps.
More like Gameboy SP but yeah
RIP Sony Xperia play
That but with a joy stick
Fxtec still builds phones with slideout keyboards. And Unihertz embraces the old Blackberry form factor.
I still have an S9 with a notification LED.
From my cold, dead hands.
still using the 3.5mm on my S8 every damn day
Same. I've used the 3.5mm port for my truck daily for the past 10 years. Don't need it as much now that I got a new truck, but I still use it when I ride my motorcycle. Bluetooth earbuds just don't fit under my helmet.
Bluetooth intercom with helmet speakers are a game changer!
Can also keep earplugs in, which is good to avoid worse tinnitus than what I already have...
Aye, super happy with my Cardo and plug combo!
It's not better, it's more convenient. Bluetooth earbuds are basically not repairable and they're more expensive than their wired counterparts if you want something decent. The call quality is also worse due to bluetooth's limitations.
Both types of headphones have their pros and cons and both can coexist. Don't be dumb, don't defend companies taking away options for no good reason other than planned obsolesence.
The phones with a headphone jack also had Bluetooth support though.
This isn't an either/or
I miss this so much. It is extra annoying cause my phone has a similar LED it uses for other things.
Maybe https://github.com/Chainfire/HoleyLight will be up your alley.
Wouldn't those be warm hands? Pretty sure the S9 was the one that caught fire all the time? Or was that the S7?
The IR blaster needs to come back. They were mostly on phones pre-smart device where they had super limited usage. With a smart device, they could practically do anything. I wanna use my phone as a universal remote, damn it.
I want a 0hysical.keyboadd too. Touch screen sucks.
I had it on my Xiaomi around 5 years ago, amazing stuff. Could turn on-off air conditioning anywhere, great party trick
my POCO has it, one remote is great feature, and it's easier to find when it can be pinged.
Oh man, I wish I still had this. I miss the days when I could mess with a friend's device and watch them lose their mind. Definitely a fun game as long as everyone else in the room knew it was a harmless prank.
I love it when uninformed troglodytes complain about a hole in the screen. They didn't add a hold in the screen. The hole was already there. They just wrapped your screen around it for more screen. 😅
Smartphone manufacturers, if you're reading this:
I spent 6 hours on google to find a phone with a screen smaller than 6 inch. I did find none (except an old iPhone, but I want android), so I had to buy one 6 inch. It is too unwieldy. I am annoyed.
There is a serious market for people like me. Do not look away. Somebody will buy these phones.
Also, by the way, it's not bad if the phones are a bit thicker.
Do many people know that there is actually a patent for the idea of an advertisement that plays to a certain point... and then does not end, will not let you skip it, until you as the user, via a camera and microphone, can be verified to have assumed a pose, made a facial expression, and/or said a specific phrase?
The actual patent shows a smart tv 'owner' standing up and saying McDonalds! in order to like keep watching Netflix.
We quite literally have the tech and the legal framework for 'Drink Verification Mountain Dew Can' to actually be a thing.
The illustration of that patent practically a meme, many on Lemmy should know it.
Though it should be kept in mind there's thousands of patents that were never actually applied, and this one was filled back in 2009.
Do patents necessarily have to follow the law?
This is genuinely a good thing, then. If you patent something and "accidentally" never use it, it prevents other companies from using it legally. Screw over advertisers and save the consumers from their terrible ideas by hoarding patents and working with a patent troll firm :)
Not really. Patests expire and then they can just read the specs in your idea. No reverse-engineering effort required.
It takes 20 years for patents to expire, and you can't commercially use the patented invention until then. If I "invent" and patent 50 different methods to track viewer attention during video advertisements, that's 50 fewer ways that some company would be able to achieve it.
It would be impossible to cover every possible method to achieve the same thing, but the risk of violating a patent held by a highly litigious patent troll might be a good enough deterrent to stop the whole idea from making it to market for a couple decades.
Yes, but after 20 years you're not at square one, others have free reign to use and abuse your expired patent. Sure, you can tacticize patents in a way where you make a starting patent, then before it's about to expire "expand" it with a new one in a way which invalidates use of the previous, but I don't know if that "loophole" is patched and if not, how it looks in real life.
That is an entirely valid concern, and I see where you're coming from with that. It would be short-sighted to introduce something revolutionary, only to open the floodgates for everyone else to start implementing it two decades later.
I was thinking of using patents more along the lines of "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks." Rather than trying to come up with every conceivable method for tracking user attention and patenting those, the hypothetical patent troll would create and patent hundreds of different smaller, novel processes that may or may not be needed as part of a larger system for tracking user attention. The overall goal being to make it likely enough for one or more of those patents to be violated that a company would consider it too risky to go anywhere near the idea of commercializing attention tracking software/hardware.
Eh? Do patents necessarily have to follow the law?
...no? They are ideas.
They are also a legal construct to organize business uses and control of ideas around.
Hence a patent and the patent system are a legal framework.
Legal frameworks are often involved in things that later end up being determined to be illegal.
Large businesses usually like to set up some kind of comprehensive legal framework before they roll out a new product or feature.
Not saying they will. I am saying setting up a legal framework is usually groundwork before you do though.
The day I can't find a phone that has an headphone jack is the day I go feral and become a hermit in the woods.
It's the SD card for me. We are getting phones with 1tb now, so that will work. But with the phones that do offer it, you have to get the most expensive version for it. Meanwhile if they just give me an SD card slot, I can have that fixed myself. Just take the one out of my current phone and plop it in the new phone.
And 113GB used by system
If you want the rest of the specs to be decent, then that day is fast approaching or already here.
I had to jump from a phone that had about 5.5 of the features on that list to one with none of them (although I do like the 3 rear cameras) and I hate that I had to do that.
But I kept "Easily rootable" and that's what really matters to me.
I hate the loss but just buy a bunch of USBC to headphone adapters, stick them on all your headphones/aux cables, and forget you don't have a headphone jack on your phone.
Adapters are not a solution.
I don't like it either but they are a solution.
You know what else they've taken from us? Actually unique designs for phones. When I look at modern day smartphones, for some reason they look like clones of each other. Where's all the spunk that these manufacturers used to put in their devices?
Fuck you, minimalism. Ever since you've ruined my iPhone back in 2013, my life has never been the same.
Physical keyboard? Notification LED?
I miss the LED for sure. How much money could that have possibly saved?
For the physical part? A couple cents per phone sold.
But it's also one less part for for the circuit board designers to accomodate in their ever-shrinking layouts, one less part to inventory, track, and warehouse, one less behavior to verify by Q&A, one less SW and/or HDL code module to maintain, etc etc etc. When you look at the entire design, verification, and manufacturing process, multiplied by millions of units, every part and behavior carries a cost.
There are plenty of valid reasons to crap on the major phone manufacturers, especially when they take away features and capabilities we like. But "it's just one small part" usually isn't one of them.
The notification LED is the only feature I truly miss
OLED displays have obsoleted notification LEDs. And phones with physical keyboards don't sell.
OLED displays certainly could, but there is no baked it app that wakes up the screen only if you have a message, blink in different colors or frequencies depending on the message and use the low power always on display api.
Yeah, you can glance at your always on display and make out the little symbol. But that's not an adequate replacement to the notification LED. If I had to guess, it was removed to drive up engagement with your phone.
No they don't.
Also, keyboard phones don't sell because they don't make good ones.
I wouldn't call the "always on display" some kind of innovative technology that makes notification LEDs obsolete... AOD is a battery draining complement to notification LEDs, not a replacement -- we just don't have the latter anymore because of corporate greed and consumer mentalities :/
There are notification apps to replicate the feature. A single pixel lighting on an OLED screen uses no more energy than a physically separate led. The CPU isn't sleeping to update the notification led either way.
Appreciate the response. Figured this was "easily" do-able, but I honestly remember not being able to find anything pre-implemented for this a couple years ago when I last checked. Maybe my search, then, idk... Anyways, yeah, physically separate LED do sound a lot more obsolete with that in mind
Controversial: it was much easier and safer to text while driving with a physical keyboard. You could type with one hand, hold the steering wheel with the other, all while still looking at the road because you could feel where the buttons were.
I'd still prefer you didn't do that
Ditto lol
Back in the flip phone days that raised 5 let me text behind my back in class. I mean, I have no need for that now but it was pretty fucking sweet back then.
My car has T9 input which is much better than a full touchscreen keyboard, especially since I have a ton of practice from the old Nokia days
Controversial: Drinking while driving was easier and safer with a beer helmet since you can just sip directly from the straw instead of looking down to pick up the can.
For me it's the small size. They are so big now I can't fit them in my pocket or use them with one hand.
I miss the FM radio
My current Motorola still has one.
We don't even have FM here anymore. They'd need to implement DAB+ for my region
Seriously? That's horrible!
Give me back my goddamed physical keyboard
I still remember the extended conversation I had with the cell phone man on the day I realized that time had moved on, and it wasn't even possible for me to buy a third-party phone that still had a keyboard and then hook it up to their network anymore. I was just going to have to poke haplessly at the glass and get letters wrong for the rest of my life.
IT'S MY MONEY, LET ME BUY THE KIND OF PHONE I WANT
This is why I like the audible haptic feedback on a cell phone keyboard that everyone else seems to hate. I gotta know that I pushed the button, otherwise in my mind, I didn't push it. At least when I have a physical keyboard I could feel it.
I tried to enter some text on someone else's phone and it had no haptic feedback, only sound. It was almost impossible to use.
https://www.androidauthority.com/clicks-creator-keyboard-hands-on-3401952/
You remind me of this guy.
The fact that we literally cannot vote with our money screams monopoly.
Who doesn't use all the cameras on their phone? Is there like a specific focal length you never use? Or are you unaware that zooming in the camera app switches lenses?
I rarely use the camera at all.
I barely use my camera.
Yeah, the extra camera is the main reason I got a higher end phone to begin with.
Let’s just say that after some shitty times I have learned to put more priority on filling my life with things that I enjoy enough that I want to photograph and video them.
I might've used all of them at one point, but again I'd be fine with just one - after all it's a smartphone, not a dedicated camera. Personally it annoys me that manufacturers have started shoving multiple cameras not just into high end models (for which it's kind of understandable) but also into midrange and even low end ones - whatever I pick, I end up paying for stuff I don't necessarily use. I'd be happy to buy a high end device with just one camera with normal or wide-ish lens - but nobody is selling that.
I think people believe they need to use special settings or apps to activate each of the different cameras. I don't understand why people argue about tech they have obviously never tried.
I feel like this is just a ploy, by the phone company, to figure out what they should deprive us of next.
Stop giving them ideas!!!
that's what happens when a product is designed only for 95% of people.
Here's my take on what phone companies will do next: replaceable batteries are back! With an inkjet twist:
1- You have to buy them precharged
2- You can no longer recharge them
3- The phone will explode if it detects a 3rd party battery
They removed many useful features that benefited users but spyware only increases
They took the fingerprint scanner out and put a really bad one behind the screen...
My Samsung still has the fingerprint reader in the power button. Works 10x better than the behind-screen fingerprint readers.
I miss my Pixel 1, which had a fingerprint reader on the back that I could easily touch with my index finger, and which was able to respond to up- and down-swipe gestures. For example, to open or close the notification shade.
I'm picturing it and it sounds like that would be asking for an rsi, but maybe in but picturing it correctly
The fingerprint reader sat right in the middle of the back horizontally, and maybe one third from the top. Right where your index finger naturally rests if you grip it with your thumb on one side and fingers 3–5 on the other.
I'm trying it on my phone and it doesn't feel great... Feels like I'd have to really hold the phone steady while doing it
Pixel 2 xl same... Was so great, then I jumped to a note 10+.... can't use it as it's on the screen now. It's terrible design.
I think capacitive ones were too good tbh. Kept accidentally unlocking my phone in my pocket. I've assigned the screen one to my thumb, with always on display on, unlocking feels natural. I also find it works better with wet hands, which capacitive was absolutely hopeless at.
I'm on pixel 6 btw, which apparently had a bad reputation as well
I'm on a refurb Samsung A5 and fingerprint scanner still works great. Just have to wipe it with thumb real quick
At least it's not as bad as the one in your power button. That shit doesn't work 30% of the time.
Honestly, I'll take having to try a few times until it works than being blasted by maximum brightness if I dare touch the phone wrong when waking up in the middle of the night.
My oneplus has been wonder full with the screen scanner to be honest. I love that it's behind the screen.
Me too, no problems with the under screen one on my oneplus
Oooh, the replies you have here are interesting.
I had multiple phones with a dedicated fingerprint scanner and never used any of them.
That's one thing I personally don't miss at all.
I bought a Sony Xperia 1 V mostly because of this. No hole on the screen, it has a 3.5mm jack and tooless access to its SD/Sim card tray
Sony does a lot of things right, but I'm not spending €1200 on a phone that gets a measly 2 years of updates. With that hardware and that price tag there's no excuse for that bullshit.
I'm still on the Xperia 1 III. I've sworn by Sony phones for years. The price point does put off a lot of people, but it's worth it IMO.
That said, unlike a lot of people, I don't care for the 3.5mm jack nowadays. I've had wireless noise cancelling headphones for long enough that I actually forget this phone has the jack. 🤷🏼♂️
And the cameras have to be quite possibly the best on the market!
DRM Battery, you can only refill it the X amount of times that is paid for. Don't worry you can have it serviced for an exorborant fee, that will become another subscription.
Now I pray that nobody of the executives see your comment.
something like that would 100% be yeeted from Europe in a split second
If a random person on Lemmy thought of it, odds are an executive has as well.
Pick one
Be honest with yourself, are they really that stupid? If they were they wouldn't be making as much money as they do. They are very capable of thinking up new ways to extract money from others. I would argue that what they lack is empathy and sense of community.
Apple already does it.
we need to make open source wireless communications infrastructure.
how?
idk the FCC is the major block as long as it's funded by telecom
HAM radio have been around for decades.
genuinely dont understand the logic behind having that many cameras. Surely it would just be better to have a singular better sensor, and some additional hardware for it?
Man i used my samsung galaxy whatever's IR blaster SO MUCH and I miss the fuck out of trolling my friends by turning their shit on and off
Current smartphones are just vehicles to harvest people’s data. I hate the current smartphone market.
No screen. Just AI conversation.
All I want is no front camera, single rear camera and no glue to get to battery.
A sixth camera is the obvious answer
The EU is mandating easily replaceable batteries from 2027.
I am never buying an expensive Smartphone again. Just something that works for emergency calls and 2FA and lets me buy a ticket for public transport. I am not gaming on it, I rarely listen to music with it, I only have about 6 apps on it in total. Give me a long lasting battery and let me replace it. The only thing that I need is a big screen, because I am handicapped and have bad eyesight and it is easier to see and use the software if it isn't too small, otherwise I would prefer a smaller size and I give a f*ck how slim or thick the phone is or how water proof, non of my phones ever got even a tiny bit wet. In the 7 years I own my current phone I have taken about 50 pictures and 48 got deleted shortly after. I also do not need a lot of storage.
Profit motive is the enemy of quality.
In a utopia, everything's designed for compatibility and longevity.
They'll fucking sell the phone and box separately
Sell? That's a weird way to say lease
Leasing phones is pretty popular over here these days due to the edge to upgrade every year
I must be a fkn weirdo because I just don't care about any of these things.
Replaceable battery is an exception - but that's coming back anyway.
I don't have any devices that use infra red
I don't need a microsd because the on board memory is so much I don't even have to think about capacity any more
I much prefer bluetooth
I much prefer a larger screen instead of buttons.
They didn't really cut a hole in my screen, they expanded my screen around my front facing camera. You can disable that expanded portion of the screen on most phones ?
I use the rear camera on my phone all. the. time.
While I do miss those things, my S23 Ultra takes fucking amazing pictures.
But imagine if you got a cheapish phone and a 1000 dollar camera.
You have to carry much more and fragile weight to always be ready for a beautiful photo.
But I can imagine that there are people that could profit from that.
Then I'd never have my camera with me.
Then carry around a portable IR blaster, FM radio, thermal camera and headphone jack dongle
It's weird how people want better pictures but then complain about the technical details needed to get better pictures.
"I'd buy a new phone if it could take better photos of my kids."
Here is a phone that does it.
"I'm angry! You were supposed to give me better photos without adding a different lens!"
Next is making one phone with all the bells and whistles and locking them behind subscriptions
A Slide out keyboard, but you have to give it $2 a day to use it.
You can still remove the micro sd, it's just hidden now.
My phone doesn't have micro SD at all.
I hate both phone types horribly. On screen keyboards are complete trash. Not only did Android take the SD Card, but even if you happen to have a manufacturer who still includes it Google has made it horribly inconvenient to use so you buy their shitty cloud storage that loses people's data. Among many other issues.
Most of these gripes are solved by simply not buying the flagship and instead purchasing the $200 unlocked version.
Now the battery, that's the one that pisses me off the most. But at this point we've been doing it for 10 years.
Making them increasingly difficult to hold ("but design!" They cry) so you "accidently" have to buy a new one again.
All of these are already on their way to being implemented:
User serviceability is intentionally not a focal point especially when it comes to anything a person has to use day to day. Any kind of tool or appliance- and especially electronic devices, forget about it. Luckily there are off the beaten path companies like framework and fairphone, but these are hard to market to regular joes and some are unavailable in a lot of regions.
Tech enthusiasts like presumably a lot of this comment section is are lucky there's at least something out there.
Dey took 'er jerbs!!
They killed his dawg
They ...
80 cameras and nothing to do and no where to go
If you want the good camera, you need to get the giant version of the phone.
If you want a phone that fits in human hands, you can only choose from subpar cameras.
Unstoppable full screen ads you have to watch before you can answer a call or view a text on your own phone
Subscription to the camera on your own phone, capped # of photos per week and only basic adjustment/editing features for the entry tier.
Google is already doing this with their photo editor app. All the new features require a subscription.
They'd make bank on influencers.
I don't use the ultra wide camera but I absolutely use the telephoto camera
My phone has two cameras. I hardly use 1.
One must recognize that if those changes were truly not popular they would not have stuck.
The only things I need from my phone are:
Anyone who provides me with an alternative can just take my entire phone, fuck it.
They played us. They ducking played us.
So what look at that beautiful Phantom Silver S21 Ultra uhjhj
-send by Silver S21U
Second 8" screen.
I use all four cameras. (one is a sensor)
Maybe their just trying to get you to spend more time with your family and friends?
While I'm all about options because everyone has different use cases, I've found that over the years as these features have been removed, I haven't really missed them
They're going to make the experience "better" by forcing you to talk to their AI to get anything done.
Walking around with new phone: "How do I turn on the flashlight? There no flashlight button in the pulldown menu anymore... OK Google how do I turn on the flashlight?"
"To turn the flashlight on or off you have to say, 'OK Google, turn on the flashlight' or 'OK Google, turn off the flashlight.'"
It'll start with small things but eventually they'll want to stop paying developers to add GUIs so they'll just force us all to use the AI.
What's next? Pay per text/call. Soon your mobile plan will just be a bill for hardware and any communications will come with a large fee. I picture it like virgin mobile prepaid was back in the early 00's with 10¢/text & 25¢/minute on voice.
They also remove the tv receiver on higher end phones, but my bet is that they will remove custom launcher support.
I don't understand why everyone hates the notch, or especially the hole punch camera now. You could just disable the pixels next to the notch going back to a regular screen, and if you don't it's only extra screen space. Even more so with the hole punch. Why more screen bad?
They also gave us those things before they took them away.
Remember: you're beholden to the whims of capitalism until it's gone.
They removed 3 ways water could get inside the phone
just don't get your phone wet dingus
They made it a thin piece of glass that slips out of your hand.
still better than plastic
plastics dont break, are cheap to replace, don't get hot or cold with weather, don't interfere with wireless charging, have much more grip, and can be made into any texture (matt or glassy).
I don't understand why anyone would prefer metal/glass phone besides for the reason "look at me, ma, my phone is pretty".
Nope. I'd rather have a plastic or rubber shell and rubber mounting for the screen. They've made fragile as a marketing gimmick so you'd have to replace your phone sooner.
Personally, water damage on the phones I had always was a rare edge case. The only time I ever water damaged my phone was when I accidentally put it in the washing machine and I'm sure no phone would have survived that.
I had one of those really tiny phones in the early 00s and forgot it was in the pocket of my swimsuit.
However, the ability to take slow motion video underwater is pretty neat
That's just an excuse. Yes, a waterproof phone is easier to manufacture if it has less holes, but in practice only around half of the phones are waterproof, and even those that are are rated at like 1 m / 30 minutes max.
Nearly all phones nowadays still has buttons and a USB-C port, and nearly all of them are waterproof. Having ports and being waterproof is not only NOT mutually exclusive, but it is so easy that most manufactures can do it.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 would like to have a word with you.
People don't care. They buy whatever marketing tells them to buy. Lines around the block for the first iPhone when it was vastly inferior to the other phones of the day. Couldn't even use custom ringtones. Knew then that people really are sheep.
Who even used IR?
I loved this feature on the Galaxy S4. You could literally change the channels at sports bars.
Amazing for turning down obnoxiously loud tvs in doctors offices / etc. I miss this
I did. I was able to control the AC and any tvs just using my phone and it was glorious.
In addition to using it as a remote control you could also use it as a modem... It was slow but I used it occasionally.
Me.
"Cut a hole in your screen"
So we still don't grasp how this works, huh?
I don't understand how we're still whining about notches. We got extra screen and people choose to focus of the notch even 5 years later? Talk about glass half empty mentality...
I'm whining cause I miss having bezels. Having a spot on the screen I can reliably touch that isn't touchscreen was nice.
The notch is plain ugly and took away screen real estate for notifications and system icons. The pinprick ain't too bad, don't notice it much, but looks fuckbad on full-screen videos and games.
That's the point -- no it didn't.
Last phone I owned genuinely did. It could only show like three notification icons before it was filled. The pin prick is better, but I want my bezels back.
I mean, yeah you can make all kinds of bad design choices. But a simple cutout like the Pixel works just fine -- I even add a ring around it to see media/download progress, so it functions as a system icon itself.
Aight I have to admit, a progress ring around the camera is pretty cool. I still stand by my preference but that is undeniably cool and useful.
It's ugly and it'll never not be
Phone nerds are such losers.
You're a loser
People attachs phones to their personal values are losers. they are fighting towards a selfish and superficial goal.
People who seek to improve consumer electronics to preserve consumer right and the environment is not. They are fighting for all of us.
Who tf used an IR blaster? And what sane person misses the flimsy plastic back on phones with removable batteries? They didn't cut a hole in your screen, they removed a half inch of dead useless space at the top and bottom and gave you more usable real estate while also cranking the resolution and refresh rate to 11. Buttons? WHAT BUTTONS EXACTLY? The single enormous one that ate up nearly 25% of the phone and all it did was GO BACK?! And don't even mention the cameras. Your five cameras you didn't ask for are why you can film yourself in 4K doing whatever brain dead tiktok fad you saw on your enormous HD screen, and why you can pretend you had front row seats to a concert you sat in the nosebleeds for.
Headphone jack is fair, no argument. I use Bluetooth headphones but I get the rationale. Everything else is stupid.
Your argument against removable batteries is that they had a "flimsy plastic back"? seriously prefer being unable to change the battery when its capacity decreases, being unable to carry a spare battery around, and having to pay dumb service fees, all just to not have a back that you barely even notice is made of plastic?
Also removable storage is extremely useful as well, not only for being able to cheaply increase space when needed, but also to minimize the effort of swapping devices or sharing large files more quickly.
Modular is always better. The only good argument against it is shareholder profits.
It doesn't even need to be plastic. The battery could slot into the side of the phone on a tray with a gasket to try and seal it.
Personally I don't think the battery needs to be as easily replaced if it lasts longer. Lithium ion cells degrade too quickly but a lithium iron phosphate cold last for 10 years before dropping below 85% charge capacity.
The only drawback is they have about 30% less energy density but imo making the battery 30% larger is not a big deal. Phones have obsessed with being pointlessly thin for so long. Basically just remove the dumb camera bump.
I do miss removable batteries, they had the added benefit of having a heavy mass (the battery) get thrown out when the phone falls. That helped save the display from getting damaged because a lot of the momentum was transferred to the battery popping out
I've been trying to acclimate my Dad to digital stuff-- get him reading the news online for when the local rag finally goes weekly or closes.
He would have an easier time with a device with 5% less screen, but always-present physical home/back/menu buttons.
I'm not sure what the ideal device would be for him; I've set him up with a Kindle Fire with the Play store and a handful of prevetted apps because I had it handy and it seemed more approachable than a 6" phone or a laptop with keyboard and trackpoint. But I'm all but sure the right device is NOT a new phone.
For real? I use the IR blaster every day when the wife/kids have misplaced the TV remote or CBF getting up to grab it