Not a feature but I do miss phones having side bezels. You could firmly hold your phone and not disturb the content on your phone. I can barely use youtube now because i keep touching my screen apparently
I don’t feel that way about side bezels but i do think that chunky top and bottom bezels like those of the Xperia are better than a notch and also has room for better speakers
Rainbow vacuum cleaners are built to last and since they don’t use a traditional grab bag you’ll never have to worry about finding replacements. But I don’t know if they got any Roomba style ones.
Chronological. Completely uncensored. Allow easy blocking of others, including blocking posts/comments from your personal feed using categories or keyword recognition.
I initially rejected this idea with a reason like “You seem to forget how vile certain parts of the internet can be,” but the more I think about it the more I agree, given a few conditions. Namely that children should not be allowed access.
Forbidding children access to the internet would solve many problems, such as social media addiction (potentially leading to depression), the spreading of misinformation, and the general amount of child exploitation online. I don’t deny that such an action may introduce other issues that I have yet to consider, but I still feel that the main points are very compelling.
I am also aware that such a system is not perfect and that people will undoubtedly circumvent it, but a much larger number of people will not (if it is made difficult to do so). Unfortunately, the only conceivable way to do such a thing is some kind of age-verification system, which I am against for various privacy-related reasons.
The low end Roomba is simple to repair. There are lots of YouTube videos you can watch about disassembly and gearbox cleaning. The battery is easy to replace as well. The only bad thing about its design is it’s made from plastic. In eight years or so you might need to replace the brush cage or a similar part. Plastic loses its flexibility and gets brittle over time, so some parts like this might split or crack.
I just did a quick search on Printables and there are quite a few mods and replacement part designs out in the wild. After looking at my Roomba, most of the major parts look easy to reverse engineer and reprint if needed.
I forget which Samsung galaxy model it was, maybe S6, but it had a universal IR blaster built into the phone which was super convenient for controlling all of my devices. I did however often abuse the shit out of it by flipping the channels on bar tvs or turning off the stereo receiver and nobody was ever suspecting it was me on my phone. I guess that’s probably why they removed it lol, but it was fun while it lasted.
Unsure about the S6, but my S5 (which I still have and currently use as a dashcam in a pinch if I’m not in my usual car) definitely has an IR blaster and yeah, it was so good to just flick on the TV in the living room, or notice that my parents TV was still on while they were sleeping and I’d just turn it off from my phone.
Got an IR watch in high school before universal remotes were a known enough technology. That teacher must have really hated that day. Sorry Mrs Desgagné if you’re out there.
I wonder if there might not be an add on that might have an IR blaster they connects via USB-C and has an app to run it… If it was good I might consider getting one.
Aren’t notification LEDs somewhat obsolete now that we have always on displays? One advantage could be that they are less power hungry than keeping the screen / touch panel alive all the time. But in theory one could just create a permanent “notification LED” with an always on display, then it’s the same thing from a user’s perspective.
Smartphones are already insanely energy efficient. But instead of tuning them for longer battery life, companies kept pushing for faster processing, higher resolutions and refresh rates in the last few years. Now there’s diminishing returns (imo 4k on a 6" device is just absurd) so I expect future devices to double down on energy efficiency. But then maybe companies just end up decreasing the battery’s capacity for lower weight…
Seperate fingerprint sensors, which were fast, reliable, and accurate, in contrast to the shitty in screen sensors, which are slow, inaccurate, and sometimes just dont work. I would like to kill all people who were part of this shit
Varies wildly from phone to phone. I prefer the in screen detectors, since they work great when your phone is on your desk or in a phone dock/charger. They need to be implemented well though.
The one on my Huawei P30 was fantastic. The one on my Pixel 6 was ass, the one on my Pixel 8 is good.
The one on the 6 was ass even without a screen protector, the one on the 8 is good even with one.
Eh. First fingerprint sensors were useless, inconvenient, unreliable garbage. I hated the one on my galaxy s5 where you had to SLIDE your thumb over it just so for it to work. Then the tech was improved and we got nice sensors that work well. In-screen sensors are going through the same process. Once they’ve matured, they’ll be better than the separate fingerprint sensors.
They wont be, moreover in screen sensors are totally useless, and inconvenient things. I need to directly put my finger on it, while on my old phone the sensor was on the back side, where i naturally hold my phone! So i didn even need to think about unlocking my phone when i took it in my hand, to use it, ive unlocked it. This cant happen with screen sensors, as those arent there where you touch your phone, and the screen above it will always limit its capabilities.
Counter: I absolutely hate fingerprint sensors on the back and think that’s easily the worst place to put the sensor. They get thrown off by phone cases leaving them in a deep pit where finger contact can become unreliable, and they’re completely unusable when the phone’s lying on its back on a surface. I strongly disagree that the back of the phone is a more natural spot than where your thumb most naturally touches the screen.
My last phone was in a very hard plastic sturdy case, to stand dropping when riding motorbike, but the fingerprint sensor on the back was in a 3 mm deep pit, it was no problem to touch it without thinking about touching the sensor. How can you use the phone on a surface? Even with face unlock, i barely can do anything with it if its not in my hand. You can hold and use the phone reliably, only by touching its back, so the fingerprint sensor if there is. I touch different parts of the screen, not that single point where the sensor is, also i need to hold itt differently, to make that crappy in screen sensor work. If it works at all, as since a month it barely does, sometimes it even disappears from the menus too. One of my friends just replaced his samsung s20 too as the fingerprint sensor was barely working, just as my huawei’s sensor. I also see many fingerprint sensor problem topics across the net, all phones mentioned have in screen sensors.
I sometimes think that mine is working alright, and then I try and use it in the dark and it fails 3 times in a row because it turns out it usually gives up and uses face recognition.
And this is a proper Google phone. What must the shit brands be like?
And the only advantage is that you have more screen space which is now covered with indicators for back, home, etc, because you can fuck off if you think I’m using gestures for that shit.
Lots of phones still have those. Notably all Redmi phones have a SD card slot, and Redmi still sells new phones with IR blaster, and most have a headphone jack too.
I’ve looked into those phones, the specs look nice but they don’t work in my region, unfortunately rural areas of the US don’t have Tower support for those style models(yay refusal to upgrade any sort of infrastructure). many of my friends that are overseas have stated that they love the phones though.
Yeah but they’re all the lower end phones, all the major flagships removed the features three or four versions ago, I don’t want to have to sacrifice camera or screen quality in order to have features that should be built into phones by default
That’s really that is why I went with the phone I have, out of the phones that I looked at all of them were a downgrade for the screen, and generally camera. Or lacked the tower support in my area since we barely have LTE
I’m going to say that today, even on lower-end phones, the screen, processor and camera are all pretty decent.
I have a Motorola G31, which cost about 200€ one year ago, when I got it. It has a Micro SD Card Slot and a headphone jack. The screen is plenty good (1440p,60hz) (why would you need 120hz or 4k on a phone) And the camera is also quite nice. It has no fancy features, but it takes pictures and that’s all I need.
From my perspective, flagship phones are impractical and overpriced to say the least.
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