Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care much more about battery life - 9to5Mac
https://9to5mac.com/2024/10/25/smartphone-buyers-meh-on-ai-care-much-more-about-battery-life/Open linkView original on lemmy.world603
Comments144https://9to5mac.com/2024/10/25/smartphone-buyers-meh-on-ai-care-much-more-about-battery-life/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
They also keep taking away features, like removable storage (microSD) and headphone jacks. There's a few phones that have them, but it gets more difficult to find them as time goes on.
Create a problem, sell a solution. It's so annoying.
headphone jack -> sell bluetooth headphones
microSD -> sell cloud storage
Late stage capitalism
Under the guise of "innovation"
Sony Xperia flagship has both. I think it's the only Snapdragon 8g3 phone that does.
@Zerthax They’ll say they are responding to consumers who “want cloud storage and wireless headphones,” but options are always better, in my opinion.
@Zerthax @AbsoluteChicagoDog some people just refuse to live in the now and would prefer to stay in 2014. What a shame.🤦🏻♂️
*folds phone in half*
That's two batteries for the price of one.
More like two batteries for the price of two phones; foldables are still expensive AF
Two half-size batteries for the price of three full-size phones coming right up
I would like colourful phones back though, they were so much more fun compared to the sea of black/white/grey + ONE option in the blue-purple spectrum we have today.
Can we get that AND bigger batteries?...bigger colourful batteries even?
And cameras! Don't replace 12mp 2x telephotos with 48mp 1x digital zoom cameras pls
Steve Jobs proved that consumers don’t actually know what they want until you tell them. And it’s the manufacturers job to tell them what they want and deliver it.
Since Apple doesn’t want a bigger battery that means no one gets a bigger battery.
jobs was an ass. and smelled like it
Nah man, everyone around him must have been smelling something else. He was on the all fruit diet.
fruit. that explains it
@AbsoluteChicagoDog @Alphane_Moon nobody has been asking for bigger batteries, people already cry about the weight as is. Apple switched to using a titanium frame just to drop a few grams of weight because people were crying about the weight. So, no, people haven’t been asking for bigger batteries, they have been asking for devices that last the day and then some, which we currently have. You also have the ability to recharge your battery to full in about a half 1 🧵
Literally just give us phones that can do what they could do 10 years ago, with modern batteries.
this. put the sensors, audio jack, notification led, ir blaster back!
And fuck off with the ai!
LED notifications and physical keyboards. I miss my Blackberry
God me too. I feel like such a luddite whenever I bring this up. Touch screen keys even with swipe to text are terrible
It can be helpful when you use multiple keyboard layouts
I just want both the Touch ID and the Face ID on my damn phone…
I want it to be like the glory days of the Note 8/9. You want a FP reader? Its on the back and it works really well! You want Facial recognition? How about iris scans as well! Notification LED, aux jack, and a Pen built right in! Not enough storage, pop in a MicroSD. Only thing that was missing was easily swapped batteries! It all went downhill from here imo
That's an interesting take. Thinking about it, I think I agree with you.
You know, almost every phone still has an ir blaster... It's just not made Available to you.
(Auto focusing in cameras is largely done via an ir blaster and corrisponding receiver)
My ideal would basically be a modern version of the lg v20 - give me that removable battery, headphone jack, microsd slot, etc and just give me the current gen on chipset, screen, camera, etc.
No AI, no preloaded nonsense I can't get rid of, I don't care that it could be 0.000004mm thinner without the jack.
Its never been about what the consumer wants, its about driving "features" that will make more profits.
If it works with some custom software like GrapheneOS I'd buy this in a heartbeat
Not even out.of the box, just run nexus style - unlock if you want but support is now your own problem.
Which works for me regardless.
You know what would be good? Headphone jack, and great batteries yes, but how about something easily self repairable? Or shit replaceable batteries would be nice too.
It feels like yesterday some guy was arguing against me here on Lemmy about my personal choice of wanting a longer battery life.
WELL LOOK AT ME NOW BRO
No bro, it's totally better to get 5-6 hours of battery and AI cause like it's so incredible bro
Your battery's still short of 4 hours. 😁
Battery usage:
That's what I currently have with close to no usage. With usage it's around 10 days in total. When using GPS it depends.
Wait, your phone battery lasts 18 days?! Is it a Nokia flip phone?
It's an Oukitel.
Wow, that's nuts! I have never heard of them, but that is super cool, and I'm glad I know about them now. Thank you!
There's a lot of rebrands of these phones. If you get a rugged phone from an unknown brand it's very possible it's an Oukitel rebrand.
I've had a few but I mostly take one that doesn't look too rugged. Enjoyed every one of them. They are also pretty easy to repair. (If you are able to remove the screen)
People have been asking for thicker phones with more battery for years. Wth
I think the battery system that's best for everyone would be user-replaceable batteries. That way you can have an extra battery on hand to swap in as needed, or even extra-capacity batteries that make your phone a little thicker for people who are okay with that.
Those of us who do actually prefer thinner, lighter phones can still have them (maybe with a slight increase in thickness to accommodate the attachment mechanisms). Plus bigger batteries are a huge waste of resources if the capacity isn't going to be used.
that was a thing in the early days. most clamshells had em and a few flat panels (called candybars)
First few galaxy phones. Pretty much all of the first few generations of smart phone except apple
yep. first one i had with a non removable battery was the lg v30. battery was removable but you voided the warranty to do it and it required opening the entire case with a knife edge
In fairness the removable battery came with a pretty significant tradeoff.
Water resistance.
Many would happily take a reduction in water resistance for replaceable batteries, the problem is no one gives us the choice
EDIT: inaccurate statement. Fairphone offers removable batteries
There are phones that give you this choice. The Fairphones for example. The back cover is easily removable and you can pop out the battery like in the ol' days. It has an IP55 as far as I know.
That sounds sweet, I'll consider Fairphone once my current android dies its not so noble death
@sekki @copd if my device only cost around $500, that IP rating would be fine, but when you’re paying three times that, you want it to be fully waterproof, sorry, resistant.
For the kind of money flagship phones go for these days, I want that bastid waterproof down to 300 meters AND last a week.
I don't know what a Fairphone costs where you live but where I live the Fairphone 5 starts at 550€ and the model with more storage and memory is 629€. That is no where even in the near of three times the price.
@sekki I didn’t say it was. I said at that price, a lower IP rating wouldn’t bother me. My device cost $1,600 so it better have the best IP rating available.
@copd @Sam_Bass here’s another aspect these people aren’t thinking about, wireless changing. That Qi pad is usually glued to the top of the battery or in some way attached that would make switching out batteries cumbersome at best.
Most batteries also get through the day and the ones that don’t, usually have fast charging, which makes giving up your ingress protection to remove a battery, that much more silly.
It’s not 2014. 😝
At that point I think many would just get a decent powerbank. I'd prefer a larger capacity battery, 7000-10000mah even if the phone is slightly heavier and bigger. Especially for travel.
I disagree, swappable battery > power bank.
Used to have a swappable battery. It was great, you could have like 3 of em and instantly be able to get back to 100% without having to be attached to a cord. I wish I could do the same for my SteamDeck now, it would be great :'(
yeah and with a swappable system with a couple battery sizes you could do that. and I could choose a slimmer battery.
yeah I agree those are a good option too, but that doesn't solve the issue of replacing a worn out battery. that's why I think we need swappable batteries.
When I replaced my 5 year old phone the only two benefits I saw was OLED screen (never going without again) and the battery life going from maybe a day to like 40 hours
I just replaced my iPhone older than six years old with a 16 Pro Max… OLED to OLED, but now 120hz. Magnificent. And yeah, the battery lasts forever now.
Maybe your old phone's screen sucked. I switched from flagship 2021 OLED phone to mid-tier IPS 2020 phone. I prefer IPS, because it crisper and have more neutral colors. And more important, it doesn't have stupid waterfall edges.
My old phone screen was fine, I just hate bright lights and OLED gets way darker.
My new phone doesn't have waterfall edges, presuming that's a curved edge thing. Flat display on all sides, no side bullshit.
Another benefit of OLED, at least in my case (nothing phone 2a) is there's no polarisation layer so I can wear my sunnies and look at my phone on any angle I please, instead of rotating it making the screen vanish. Laptop still does that and it's super annoying, if I'm outside watching videos on it I just can't use sunglasses.
I like AI and my phone to be separate. Chatgpt is just an app, it shouldn't be a core feature
Oh wow shocking, people actually cared more about usability than trashy feature? That's unheard of
I don't get what those companies try to achieve by automating writing (by spewing statistically probable prose), reading (by badly summarizing text cobbled from excerpts without the ability to make any sense of it), art, photography, music, all standardized to the lowest common denominator.
I'm not buying a new device that will try to impose any of this hype. For now, Apple has decided to "punish" the users in the European Union by holding the Apple Intelligence features hostage. FINE BY ME!
edit: typo/phrasing
Yea. There are very few machine learning driven features that would actually improve my life in a meaningful way. I feel much more „punished“ by the omission of iPhone mirroring on mac than any Apple Intelligence feature.
Serious question: What would you do with iPhone mirroring? Because I have it, and I have no idea what to do with it.
Having it open on my mac while I’m working on it so I can access message apps that don’t work on the desktop without having to take out my phone.
In all fairness, it’s not really necessary, but it‘d make my life a little easier for a use case I actually have.
I’m guessing you are using 3rd party message apps? If so, that makes perfect sense. Work smarter, not harder.
Yea. Although I do use iMessage with a few people, it’s not really a big thing here in Germany, so I also do use different apps. The main app, that requires me to get out my phone, is Snapchat, as there’s no desktop app and the webapp sucks.
How about making a phone that's a whole millimeter thicker just to make the glass thick and strong enough that it won't break if you drop it?
Great idea! Unless of course the replacement of parts and broken phones is a core part of the business model.
Rubbish. If my phone isn't so thin that it can double as a knife, it's not worth buying.
Even if it were thicker I'd still slap on a sacrificial glass screen protector atop it. I've dropped my phone only a handful of times, and so far have only ever broken the protector.
Just slap a shield on it, there's your added thickness and better drop resistance all in one!
There are a few ruggedized phones out there. I bought some cheap Oukitel phones to use as an order pad in restaurant I used to run, because I was fed up with two waitresses dropping and breaking pads. When I sold the business, I kept one. I use it mainly in my boat, as GPS, plotter, speedometer, weather...
The thing drops, gets wet, handled without care.
These phones exist. They are not top performance dogs, but can be quite decent. Why arent they in the front line? Because demand
Do people here actually use AI? And if so…for what?
I use AI for what Google used to be able to do: Finding answers to simple questions. Usually about tech but sometimes movies or music. Like how do I add a physical volume to LVM, or what are the specs of this little fan model? Or who was that actress in a movie about kids buried in a collapsed building? Things like that…
But does it actually link the source or does it just say a basic answer and you have to take a leap of faith?
It links to the original article it found so you can check its work, which is nice. It’s perplexity.ai if you’re curious. I find it quite useful. And as much as AI makes shit up I wouldn’t trust it otherwise.
Cool. Yeah I think the best use case of AI is just gonna be better search of unorganized that. Having said that though, it would never be as good as a good search engine with organized data.
Summarizing, drafting things, understanding complex things that are filled with jargon, etc.
So here's the path that you're envisioning:
Someone wants to send you a communication of some sort. They draft a series of bullet points or short version.
They have an LLM elaborate it into a long-form email or report.
They send the long-from to you.
You receive it and have an LLM summarize the long-form into a short-form.
You read the short form.
Do you realize how stupid this whole process is? The LLM in step (2) cannot create new useful information from nothing. It is simply elaborating on the bullet points or short version of whatever was fed to it. It's extrapolating and elaborating, and it is doing so in a lossy manner. Then in step (4), you go through ANOTHER lossy process. The LLM in step (4) is summarizing things, and it might be removing some of the original real information the human created in step (1), rather than the useless fluff the LLM in step (2) added.
WHY NOT JUST HAVE THE PERSON DIRECTLY SEND YOU THE BULLET POINTS FROM STEP (1)???!!
This is idiocy. Pure and simply idiocy. We send start with a series of bullet points, and we end with a series of bullet points, and it's translated through two separate lossy translation matrices. And we pointlessly burn huge amounts of electricity in the process.
This is fucking stupid. If no one is actually going to read the long-form communications, the long-form communications SHOULDN'T EXIST.
Also neither side necessarily knows the others filter chain. Generational loss could grow exponentially. Not only loss but addition by fabrication. Each side trading back and forth indeterminate deletions/additions. It's worse than traditional generational loss. It's generational noise which can resemble signal too.
So if I receive a long form then how do I know if the substantial text is worth reading for the nuance from an actual human being. I can't tell that apart from generated filler. If a human wrote the long form then maybe they've elaborated some nuance that deserved long form.
On the flip side of the same coin. If I receive a short form either generated by me or them. Then to what degree can I trust the indeterminate noisy summary. I just have to trust that the LLM picked out precisely the key points that the author wanted to convey. And trust that nuance was not lost, skewed, or fabricated.
It would be inevitable that two sides end up in a shooting war. Proverbial or otherwise. Because two communiques were playing a fancy game of telephone. Information that was lost or fabricated resulted in an incident but neither side knows which shot first because nobody realized the miscommunication started happening several generations ago.
Yep, pretty much every single “good” use case of AI I’ve seen is basically a band aid solution to enshitification.
You know what’s a good solution to that? Removing the profit motive.
if you believe that ai summary, i have a bridge that i'd like to sell to you.
do look up the "forer effect" and then read that ai summary again.
The problem is basically this: if you're a knowledge worker, then yes, your ass is at risk.
If your job is to summarize policy documents and write corpo-speak documents and then sit in meetings for hours to talk about what you've been doing, and you're using the AI to do it, then your employer doesn't really need you. They could just use the AI to do that and save the money they're paying you.
Right now they probably won't be replacing anyone other than the bottom of the ladder support types, but 5 years? 10? 15?
If your job is typing on a keyboard and then talking to someone else about all the typing you've done, you're directly at risk, eventually.
Mostly stupid stuff involving sailor moon for me, using the lie machine for anything but funny pictures seems like maybe a bad idea at the moment:
I use it to summarize things for me. Or rewrite something I’ve written a bit better. I usually need to spot check it, but it’s still nice to have.
Woah, that’s the biggest bummer of a reason I’ve seen for it. If you read good stuff and write stuff you’d get better at it.
It’s just like any tool.
I use photoshop for instance to edit photos rather than editing them in paint.
Sure I might be able to do the same thing without it, but it makes the process much faster.
Can we please stop calling LLMs artificial intelligence?
No. Strictly and technically speaking, LLMs absolutely fall under the category of AI. You’re thinking of AGI, which is a subset of AI, and which LLMs will be a necessary but insufficient component of.
I’m an AI Engineer; I’ve taken to, in my circles, calling AI “Algorithmic Intelligence” rather than “Artificial Intelligence.” It’s far more fitting term for what is happening. But until the Yanns and Ngs and Hintons of the field start calling it that, we’re stuck with it.
Where intelligence in spitting out samples from big data vaguely related to prompt?
Let's just settle on SI, Schrödiger intelligence.
I like your definition. Algorithmic intelligence fits much better. And thanks for giving me a rabbit hole (AGI) to dive into.
Approximate Intelligence fits just as well me thinks
I know more humans that fit that description than language models.
I see that
If you don't think this counts as AI, can you give us an example of some function or behavior that you would consider AI?
Reasoning, sentience, and the ability, over time, to improve. There’s more, but that’s the top three.
It would be mice to have better battery life.
2008 and onwards.
Edit: was so confused about the answers til I noticed the error :-p
Still got to feed the mice if you want to keep your battery topped off. 😉
I always drop breadcrumbs on my mousemat for this purpose.
Logitech 'pebble' with an AA battery.
No! I don't care about battery! I want to become more dependent on advertising companies to arrange my daily life!
I barely use my phone as anything more than a glorified pager. I don't need fucking AI.
yeah but you can't set inflate your stock value based on hype about battery life.
people forget that these features aren't for users. it's for idiots who invest in ridiculous shit hoping it to be the next big thing.
Give me a phone that’s 1.5 cm thick (before the camera bump) and lasts two days and I’ll buy fucking 10 of them.
JUST STOP. MAKING. THEM. THINNER.
They have. The iphone 6 was I think the thinnest iphone at 6.9mm thick. The X was 7.7mm, and the 15 is 7.8mm thick. And at least for my use I do get 2 days of battery life. Even with the 80% charge cap.
No, they want a thicker phone, not thinner
Overall phones have been getting chunkier, larger too. I dislike the size, but like the added battery life from the thickness is nice. My pixel 8 is perfect in both regards for me :)
Edit: just saw the sub. Don't really know a lot about apple phones specifically.
Smartphone buyers care more about that thing that they've been begging for, for years? You don't say... And mobile phone manufacturers are again and still going to ignore what people actually want in favor of expensive and non functional vaporware, like they always do?
You don't say!
They're pushing AI so hard but most people just see it as a gimmicky thing. The only people who care are the investors.
Also I want my OS to be an actual OS with root access. I want Linux in particular.
Like you know, you can setup a file share to back up files. You can back up your phone and get a new one easily. If you lost a phone you can bring it back. Your files organized the way you want and not some things here and done things there like the apps want.
I just bought two brand new three year old phones to replace the identical broken ones we currently have because the current models have less functionality for more than we paid for these.
To get the same functionality cost twice as much.
And we still get three years warranty..
I really hope the AI hype dies off
The features customers actually want vs what the shareholders tell them they want.
I still would take an extra mm for more battery life. At this point it's no difference if it's a bit thinner.
I totally forgot it even had that. The people I talk to only talk about the new side button.
"The only thing we bothered changing in the new model is we added a robot that hoovers even more of your data and then lies to you confidently!"
Give me back my physical keyboard, and I'll be happy alongside better battery life (or removable batteries).
The last thing I want is a phone I can mistake for a table mat when I'm tired, which I feel is how phones are going. What's the new average screen size now? 27" or is that next year's model?
Meh, phisical keyboards are a pain if you think how much hardware failure you add. At least now if you know what you are doing, you can keep alive a phone for a decade with custom roms
I just want a persistent number row. There's plenty of room. Why can't I have that, Apple? What possible benefit is there to anyone, of you holding that back?
I miss the formfactor of my Nokia E7....
My favourite keyboard was on my BlackBerry Bold 2.(9700 I think was the model number). The keys were shaped in a way that made touch typing an absolute breeze with the perfect amount of tactile feedback.
In the Blackberry range, the 9700 is damn cool, I have set up many of those with email through a Blackberry server, the one thing I missed was dedicated buttons for the Swedish characters ÅÄÖ, which the E7 has depending on the layout.
I believe the E7 is the coolest smartphone design ever, it's like a mini laptop, combine the design of the E7 with apps like Putty touch and a Linux server with screen irssi and you will look like a hacker...
Screen irssi... That's something I have not heard in a long time.
Fuck Siri with ChatGPT. I just want third party app notifications to actually play a sound and vibrate on my watch again. I really hope the next iOS update will fix that. I'm not the only one with this issue currently.
I just got a 16 Pro. I still have my 7 Plus. Form factor of 7 plus is still the best of any of the iPhones, for my money. It feels THE best in-hand.
I got a 16 pro max and it’s horrible without a pop socket.
With a pop socket, it’s the best sized phone I’ve ever had.
Prefer no AI, require high battery life
I’m staying on iOS 18.0.1 without the AI Apple crap
AR needs to kill the smartphone screen soon. Make my phone a keyboard and an external processor for my wearables.
yeah gewgull added the gemini bullshit to their sms app with the last update. disabled as first act
Welcome to the Luddite convention here.
It's so gimmicky compared to something actually useful, like better battery.
Insanely true, I didn't give a shit about 90% of the features on my new phone once my old one broke down and I got a Pixel 8, but I was delighted to go from a worn-out 12 hour battery life to a 64 hour battery life. I would actively like to uninstall any sort of current AI function from my phone if it could increase my battery longevity by even 1%.
Also: ew, Apple.
Edit: Really annoyed it doesn't have a headphone jack though
I'd actually be willing to accept a loss in battery life to not have a device be infested, but luckily that's not a likely trade-off
Kinda dumb to post in an Apple enthusiast community with your bullshit tho
Nobody's ever accused me of being smart! But hey, at least I'm honest
@Alphane_Moon someone wanna tell them that AI can be used to increase battery life? 😂
In this context it's more about generative ai etc... in the operating system.