Sure, but the Fairphone 5 is €700 and, ease of repair aside, you can get a better phone for less than half the price. Repairability doesn’t mean much when buying a cheaper (and otherwise better) phone and fully replacing it ends up being, well, cheaper.
I get your point. But it’s also about support for the phone and the fair production. I know they are not perfect, but someone needs to start somewhere. I needed a new phone anyway and invested in this one.
It’s the difference between sitting down for 20 minutes unscrewing various components to get to the damaged battery you need to replace, vs. popping off the back cover and simply swapping out one dead battery for a charged one anytime you run out of power. The former is replaceable. The latter is swappable.
This. Like ten years ago, when Samsungs had swappable batteries, they were super proud of it. They would advertise it as a feature that Apple doesn’t have.
When I was at a festival, Samsung had an activation where you could tweet at them with your phone model and location and they would send someone with a full battery to trade you for yours. It was an amazing free service that I used so many times, and every time, the jealousy on the faces of all the iPhone people was palpable. Then one year, they quietly removed the swappability from their new phones.
Swappable batteries are such a huge feature that most people don’t even know that they want.
Maybe, but swappable =/= replaceable, in my opinion. I could be wrong, but I’m not sure that EU legislation says that phone batteries should be swappable, only replaceable
“ Portable batteries incorporated in appliances shall be readily removable and replaceable by the end-user or by independent operators during the lifetime of the appliance, if the batteries have a shorter lifetime than the appliance, or at the latest at the end of the lifetime of the appliance. A battery is readily replaceable where, after its removal from an appliance, it can be substituted by a similar battery, without affecting the functioning or the performance of that appliance.”
So we see here that batteries must be replaceable without affecting the function of the device. Yet waterproofing is important. What seems more likely to me is that batteries need to be replaceable without opening the entire device and therefore destroying liquid protections as per the proposed law. Easiest way to do that would be something similar to a SIM card tray where a hidden button is pressed to release the battery to swap it. The designers would have to go out of their way to make this process difficult, which the EU also doesn’t want, to avoid making them swappable. And that feature is attractive. Knowing Apple though, it’ll be harder on the base models or batteries will cost too much.
The snippet “if the batteries have a shorter lifetime than the appliance” worries me. Seems to me that modern engineers are capable of making their crap’s lifespan just barely shorter than the projected batty lifespan, and people might just be stupid enough to still buy it.
I mean, the disposable vape market is an extreme example, but somewhat relevant I think.
That being said, if the processor on the LG G5 had kept up with the market better, I don’t see how that couldn’t have been a starting point.
As for waterproofing, my GoPro stays waterproof but the side door opens to give access to the SD card, battery, etc, so it’s absolutely possible.
Nope, that EU legislation only requires batteries be replaceable, not swappable. In other words, you probably won’t need a heat gun to replace it, but you’ll probably still need a screwdriver.
Almost all my inside phone batteries I’ve had in cheaper knockoff phones have been replaceable. It’s not as easy as pulling the back cover off and instantly swapping it, but it’s not THAT much harder. It’s doesn’t exactly require microsoldering. Which is the reason why I know my last three have been replaceable despite being in-house.
Manufacturers really just need to make better and more secure charge ports. Having to resolder my last two blu phones and a Samsung because the charge ports go bad is just annoying.
Never had issues with a battery in all my years of using smartphones though.
I used to have a similar problem - even if well reviewed, budget and midrange bluetooth earbuds would not last while budget-midrange wired earphones would last forever.
Think it’s just build quality for bluetooth buds. I got a set of Galaxy buds, 1st gen, roughly 3+ years and still running strong to this day. Was not cheap though.
All Most of the ones you can get nowadays actually have a sound chip inside the cable (in the flat part behind the USB-C). So they’re pretty much a USB-C soundcard with just a headphone out. So it’s worth shopping around to find one that has a good soundcard built in.
A good alternative is getting a decent portable Bluetooth audio receiver to plug your regular headphones into. Can get a better headphone amp that way.
There are phones that output analog audio over type C so you can have a type c to jack adapter with no dac inside, just wires. That is possible through Audio Adapter Accessory Alternate Mode.
My huawei tablet works with such an adapter, but when I try it with the samsung s10e which has a jack, it gives an error and doesn’t work.
Type C alternate modes are cool, too bad they are not advertised, they should be clearly labled and easily distinguishable. Type C has so many features yet it’s so hard to know what’s available without actually having the devices and connecting them. It’s both a blessing and a curse.
Thanks for the correction. I had thought that only some of the early Motorolas had that feature, but it looks like there are quite a few more phones that support analog audio out via USB-C.
And that why you’ll never get it back. You’re clinging to brand loyalty and hung up on arbitrary crap rather than just trying competing phones. Have you actually used any of those “suck” phones, or are you just going with the usual iPhone/high end android circlejerk?
As I mentioned in another comment, if you’d bothered to read it, I have particular needs that mean I can’t really replace my phone with something else right now. I have absolutely no loyalty to brands, and I’m not clinging to something arbitrary.
What I don’t understand is why the notification LED was removed in the first place? It can easily be put under the screen.
The LED was so helpful, and it’s so annoying when I don’t see an important message for hours, because I haven’t used my phone.
Yet there are often warnings that even with OLED AOD eats a lot of battery, not so with a notification LED.
The absolute newest OLED that can do 1Hz refresh are better. But that doesn’t change that the removal of the notification LED was detrimental to the functionality of the smartphone.
Someone else posted an app that gives the feature back. If you turn off other aid features and just use the app it won’t use more battery than a notification led.
it won’t use more battery than a notification led.
If the screen has 60hz or higher refresh, I’m pretty sure it will. The screen itself may not use much, but the DAC will still use power.
I haven’t seen this actually tested, but many claim the difference in battery life is noticeable. I don’t think it matters much what app you use, many phones come with an AOD app, and I seriously doubt a third party app is better.
If the screen has 60hz or higher refresh, I’m pretty sure it will.
It’s supposed to drop down to 1hz. The CPU refreshing a pixel of an OLED screen or a notification led is the same power usage. That is even if you have a notification led, the CPU could still be stuck refreshing it at 60 hz.
AH ok that makes a lot more sense. ;) As I understand it, it’s only the newest top displays that can go down to 1 Hz. Or maybe it’s just when in use they can’t for some reason. I find the 1Hz capability to be extremely cool, so it would be great if it’s a more general feature of AOD.
OLED AoD eats a lot of battery because there’s still quite a lot of information(and thus, pixels turned on) shown on the AoD. A single pixel blinking on and off would at most use the same power as a dedicated notification led.
I used to have a custom ROM that would allow me to change the color based on which app had the most recent notification: FB was Blue, SMS was Green. Let me be prepared ahead of time if it was going to be important or not.
Ironically I was grateful for a custom rom to turn off the light. It was useful but I hated it at night because at least on my phone it was stupidly bright
I used to have a custom ROM that would allow me to change the color based on which app had the most recent notification
Even more than that, in early versions of Android this setting was baked in. I had colors set based on text messages, emails, etc. I think around 2.x was when the option was removed.
I don’t know about the original, but I rocked a Droid 4 for the longest time. It’s probably my all time favorite phone. I really miss how quickly I could type and the extra screen space I got from not needing the software keyboard.
I’m guessing… they don’t want us deciding whether to engage with our phones, they want us looking at them more. If that means less convenience for us we can get fucked
I think you may have a point, It’s kind of weird how the first 10 years of smartphones, was an ever higher climb for better phones, driven by competition.
But now that everybody are dependent on the phones, they all agree on taking useful features away???
It’s probably also a little safer with only system apis accessing system hardware. If you look at how the camera assembly is one piece and apps basically access the whole thing securely.
Oh, in some cases the notification LED is physically there, but is disabled in software. At least I know that was the case with a bunch of Motorola phones, including my Moto G5s Plus.
I have no effing clue. Maybe to get us to actually look at the damn phone more often? Because of the people who’re drowning in spam? Makes not THAT much sense. Probably to save a cent in circuit-design, because only the nerds were using the stupid LED? I really would like to know too.
It’s very much a mid-range device but so was the price. It was still an easy decision since it is literally the only modern smartphone in existence that matched my minimum requirements. I’m coming from LG V20 so I still had to let go of FM-radio, optical image stabilization, IR blaster and the hi-fi DAC.
Of course not by default, that’d be dumb. Every app that wants it pops up a Y/N-dialogue. That’s how I want it. It’s my phone, goddamit. I might’ve phrased that a bit misleading :-)
Some Windows devices do come like that! Windows Home S is a stupid fucking thing that I am sick to death of family members bringing to me.
It’s free to bring it out but you need a Windows account to download the package to remove the S from the device to make it your own.
There was also the RT version like the Surface RT. Which was actually worse because I don’t remember there ever being a way to remove the RT and go to full Windows….
I was lucky i found this store that sells second hand devices from big companies that have bought too many? ( dunno how it actually works), but the quality is sometimes fully new, or have been used briefly; much cheaper and older models like my S10E, which I think it’s from 2018.
I tend to break phones rather often unfortunately (very clumsy, small hands and lack of pockets) so I want to have something like this still available. I do use screen and case protectors and all that. It still lands on the floor quite often :/
Forgot my bluetooth headphones the other day on a long trip and the 3.5mm jack saved my rear end.
Just needed to stop at a shop briefly for some cheap plug-in buds and I was no longer listening to babies screaming on the journey. As a bonus, it also didn’t interfere with me charging my phone
I’d like bluetooth earbuds a lot more if I could find some that aren’t “smart.” If I put on a beanie, I bump them. If I remove one earbud to converse, I bump it. I’ve not once intentionally used a gesture-based control on an earbud for anything else other than undoing the situation I’ve caused by bumping them. Otherwise, I control everything with my phone. If I’m working out, I just select my playlist, mute notifications, and I don’t have to touch anything after that. Gesture-based earbuds are not for me.
I really don’t think there are dumb bluetooth earbuds, though. At least, I haven’t been able to find any.
I have the Samsung Galaxy Buds Plus and their app has an option to disable touches, so that’s what I do, because I’m the same as you. I bought them used and have been using them on a daily basis for at least three years and they’re still working well. Might be something to look into. I hope you find something that works for you!
Could always get one of the beanies that have bluetooth speakers in 'em. It’ll solve your problem of bumping your earbuds, (though not through a necessarily “good” option). Or, you could use the wired bluetooth headphones like these.
As another alternative, there’s the apple airpods, which, as far as I can tell, have not gestures but some weird-ass pseudo capacitive button that makes a sound when you press them. I did just realize though, that if you have an apple device they’ll automatically pause playback when you take a headphone out (I think), so that may not be your cup of tea. However, if you have an Android, this addition won’t work unless you have an app like CAPods (which you can turn on or off in the app, so no worries there). There’s also the downside of not having access to many features like toggling through the different modes (active noise canceling or whatever other bullshit like that), not being able to natively see the battery of the case or earbuds (though, like with the aforementioned feature, using an app like CAPods you can see it), and some others that I can’t recall at the moment.
Sorry about the length of this reply, I was originally just going to mention the bluetooth beanies as a joke, but I have nothing else to do at the moment, so why not share my experiences? Anywho, that’s my two cents, this could help, it could be utterly useless, you could already know all of this, you may not even read the wall of text, etc. etc… Do as you will with this.
You don’t happen to know if there’s some open-source software for Android that might be similar to CAPods? Tbh I’m probably never going to buy either airpods or the brand-name Samsung ones, but I’d imagine there might be a more universal solution?
Yeah, I don’t actually recommend buying airpods unless you got them for free if you’re an Android user (that’s the only reason I’m using airpods atm).
As to open source, I believe CAPods is, unless you’re referring to an open source app for most headphones (which upon second thought you probably are).
As to that question, CAPods, according to their GitHub page, supports a few Beats devices, this app for Galaxy Buds on Windows/Linux devices, and this one for Huawei Freebuds device(s?).
Overall, the closest I could find was GadgetBridge, which has support (partial or full) for a few Samsung devices, one Nothing, a few Sony, and Bose(?), though, I did keep running into internal server errors, so it might be out of date.
I have a pair of cheap Skullcandy’s that have physical buttons instead of touch sensors. The buttons are basically impossible to use without smooshing the earbud into your ear trying to click it, but it also means it’s really hard to accidentally click them. Probably as close as you can get to dumb Bluetooth earbuds.
Not really, it’s mostly only budget phones that have it nowadays. The S10E(which stands for ‘essential’ btw, not ‘enterprise’) is almost 5 years old, not exactly representative of the modern phone market.
People keep going on about that and I get it from the point of not having to charge headphones all the time. But to me that is a very mild inconvenience compared to having to deal with those fucking cables all the time. I hate cables so damn much.
For me I’m just very attached to my earphones. I had tried out different earphones for a long time when I was younger before I discovered these and I’ve been using them for over 8 years now. I don’t really want to switch to a different pair of earphones.
Oh, my problem isn’t with charging them. They actually hold a charge for a super long time.
I’d like bluetooth earbuds a lot more if I could find some that aren’t “smart.” If I put on a beanie, I bump them. If I remove one earbud to converse, I bump it. I’ve not once intentionally used a gesture-based control on an earbud for anything else other than undoing the situation I’ve caused by bumping them. Otherwise, I control everything with my phone. If I’m working out, I just select my playlist, mute notifications, and I don’t have to touch anything after that. Gesture-based earbuds are not for me.
I really don’t think there are dumb bluetooth earbuds, though. At least, I haven’t been able to find any.
And I don’t mind cables as much as you do. I think my favorite earbuds would be those that are connected to each other by a cable, but again – only if they were not smart.
For most of these, turning off touch controls means that when you accidentally trigger the touch commands, it plays a little jingle and pushes a notification telling you that youve disabled touch controls and you need to reenable them.
Completely defeating the fucking point of turning off touch controls, and making me want to wrap my hands around the throat of the idiot who designed that
I’ll look into it. The only bluetooth earbuds I currently have are an off brand called SYNRGY. Maybe there’s some setting that I’m not aware of to disable touch controls too. I’ve also considered applying a few coats of clear nail polish. Maybe that would work?
I actually don’t know anyone who has the official Samsung ones.
This might sound crazy but apple earbuds would be good for you. I actually like having pause and skip buttons, and apparently these do have controls when you touch them, but that’s never worked for me. I think it’s intentionally broken on android which in your case makes them good.
You can get them used thanks to apple fanboys inherent need to get the newest version. There’s lots out there due to that. But I get it if you don’t like the idea of used headphones.
It’s more than just having to charge them I wouldn’t even really consider that much of a downside with how long they last. I haven’t yet ran out of charge before I was ready to take mine out. The actual downsides are- Wireless earbuds are expensive. The batteries in them wear out over time and you have to buy all new ones which is wasteful. Bluetooth adds a noticeable delay that sucks when watching video. My car doesn’t have bluetooth so I need a headphone jack for AUX. I have both and like wireless ones when I’m on the go but if I’m stationary wired don’t cause any problems.
I have like 5. It still doesn’t make it less inconvenient. I use my earphones for my laptop for work and my phone when I’m commuting so I have to attach the dongle, plug it into my phone, get to work, unplug the dongle plug it in the laptop and do the whole process again when I go home and repeat every day. It’s a pain. Not to mention the occasional times where you want to charge your phone while you’re listening to music.
Oh that charging thing is a major pain when we have to take a roadtrip. Whoever came up with the cloaca design for phones really did not think things through.
This going away has just make the Tiktok tide that much more horrendous. I work in a school. The hallways are nothing but that horrid shit blasting out of hundreds of bad speakers.
You don’t think it’d still be the same even with the headphone jack still there? Wireless headphones and converters for wired headphones do exist, they just don’t care.
I switched to duck duck go who knows how many years ago. Haven’t looked back.
Can’t even remember when I started using Firefox, but that was probably around the time when Opera became popular. Before Crome existed, I was already on FF and never regretted staying there. At that point, I was already somewhat aware of privacy matters, so switching to Chrome seemed completely stupid to me.
I switched to the 2022 iPhone SE for this last year only for the EU to pull the usb-c thing toward apple (who of course requires the Apple certified cables now anyways so it solved nothing). and after that happened I know the writing is on the wall for this phone one day because of its design. I’m going to be using it until the very bitter end when not a single app is supported anymore. I will be a physical button warrior to the end.
I agree with all but hand crank drills. If you own a battery drill it’s probably stored with it’s battery and with keyless chucks (that don’t work on a hand crank drill) getting a battery drill ready for work is faster than a hand crank, and it will do the job faster too.
Agreed and that was also my one exception to that comment.
If someone’s really worried about having a super compact kit for smaller, light duty jobs, the 12v (and under) options from any major tool manufacturer will fit the bill nicely.
I have a framework 13 and absolutely love it. Not used a Fairphone yet, and I believe the latest model might have sadly scrapped the 3.5 headphone jack, but will still be a strong contender when I next need an upgrade.
My induction hob, my extractor fan, a light above the countertop… All of these things just in my kitchen don’t have physical buttons and I hate it. Physical buttons are so easy to use and in so many ways superior to these “touch” buttons.
You can still readily get crank hand drills, I have a (vaguely) modern one that I use for situations where I want the control/tactile feedback and/or have restricted access or the like. It covers a different set of problems than the standard cordless.
Mine is Fiskars branded and a little plasticky (and not the version they sell currently). I like it enough that I’ll get a nicer one if I kill it.
Headphone jack, bigger batteries, front facing speakers, SD card slot, IR blaster, magnetic field to let you use your credit cards at check out from your phone (MST) - THROUGH THE ACTUAL CARD READER SO THEY DIDN’T NEED GOOGLE/APPLE/SAMSUNG WALLET WHATEVER THE FUCK. I also agree that I miss the light too lol
That said, here’s what I can’t stand in newer phones: camera bumps. Unless you’re a droid x or Nexus get that rocking on any flat service while I’m trying to type shit outta here. I don’t give a shit about my cameras but if they need to be that fat and advanced, just make the rest of the phone that fat and give me the extra battery instead of making a tiny stovetop in the corner. Fuckin weird and dumb. Also camera cutouts in the screen, put that shit under the screen or set it next to a front facing speaker on the bezel. Also bezel-less phones, I know we’re trying to fill our phones with screens but my fat palms don’t care about that when I’m accidentally touching everything on the side while holding it
It was MST, I know some Samsung phones had them, and it was used at credit card checkouts for stores that don’t have the nft/tap to pay. As far as I know it literally spoofed the magnetic field your credit card makes, so the credit card reader would think you swiped it. Super handy at stores that aren’t caught up with the tech when you didn’t have your wallet lol
I was going to mention the IR blaster. I had one on my LG G4 & G5 if I remember correctly. It was so cool! I was so bummed when they stopped having it.
Some phones still have em, most Xiaomi phones do but then you gotta put up with their software or be comfortable flashing a custom ROM.
I love having an IR blaster in my phone mostly cause my work doesn’t trust us with air conditioning remotes but also I never have to stress about finding the right remote for everything since I’ve got anything I might interact with daily that uses an IR remote programmed into my phone.
THROUGH THE ACTUAL CARD READER SO THEY DIDN’T NEED GOOGLE/APPLE/SAMSUNG WALLET WHATEVER THE FUCK
That’s not an issue, I’m assuming you mean the establishment didn’t need it, but just to cover my bases I’ll give you both scenarios:
either you’re talking about your phone needing an app, which was still the case for the magnetic card thing, but I doubt you were talking about this.
or more likely, you are talking about the place you’re paying needing a new PoS for receiving NFC based payment. In this case the issue is from the retailers trying to get another cut of the money by making you go through their app, when they can receive that payment via tap to pay which is also a thing on new cards, I have used them both in my country without any issue because we don’t have those ass backwards retailers, there’s an issue of the person taking payment being unaware and trying to enable another mobile based payment method instead of just setting it to card based payment.
I’m talking about MST, which was actual hardware on the phone used in conjunction with software to fool card readers into thinking you swiped the actual card, even if they didn’t support nft. It was super handy and easy for the shops that haven’t upgraded yet.
I know, but that’s not really an app issue, that would be equivalent to complaining about cards without magnetic strip which only rely on NFC. It’s a result of new technology and not some bad idea trying to do things in a different way. It’s like complaining about touch screen tech because you can’t do things the exact way you used to on flip phones.
That’s like saying it’s ok that they removed the headphone jack because Bluetooth is newer technology? And I know it’s not an app issue, I was complaining about a hardware removal? I’m so confused after this comment lol
The magnetic thing was only ever a Samsung thing and it wasn’t as secure as NFC, NFC works basically the same as the thing you’re talking about, its only flaw would be that it doesn’t work with the old style card readers.
I never claimed otherwise? OP asked what a nifty feature on old gadgets was that’s not on newer gadgets, and I said that. That’s an old feature that’s not on newer gadgets, and it was very handy at the time because very few stores had adopted tap to pay. Would it be AS handy today? Certainly not, but there have still been times I’ve missed it when a store doesn’t have tap to pay.
Yes it’s outdated. Isn’t that the whole point of everything in this thread??? I just keep getting more confused lol
Edit: to clarify, the phone I had had BOTH MST and NFC. NFC had actually already been around and MST was the new thing at the time. It was simply a cool additional feature.
I suspect that the magnetic feature you desire is pretty unique to the usa. Anywhere else I’ve been in the world was chip or tap. Swiping the card would throw an error to use the chip only. So that country is just really far behind.
I was so frustrated when we switched to chip cards in the US, but did chip and signature, instead of chip and PIN like the rest of the world. WHY WHY WHY!?
The US was actually one of the first places the feature was removed, because (according to Samsung) there’s not really a need for it anymore since so many places adopted tap to pay so early. So we are actually just too far ahead in that regard for my taste lol. It’s also probably good to note that I haven’t seen this feature since the S20. (Also I definitely think Samsung exaggerated that and it was just cheaper to get rid of).
Still a very handy feature that I miss, there’s ALWAYS places you go that are still behind tech-wise XD
100% of this. It’s not just that I don’t need the screen space, it’s that my hands are not capable of holding my s22 without touching the screen because they had the fucking stupid idea to wrap the screen around the sides. I’m convinced the engineers at samsung are running an experiment to see how fucking stupid their phones can get without losing sales.
My current phone has all the things you listed except MST (never heard of that before though), and I bought it specifically for those reasons. Made by Xiaomi who still seems to want to give users features for some reason. Unlocked, rooted, custom rom, the whole shebang, I’m very happy with it.
It does still have a small front camera hole and a big back camera bump, but I don’t mind those personally. Though I do wish the camera bump wasn’t off centre. And like someone mentioned, I do wish it had an indicator led somewhere.
My personal pet peeve is pre-installed, un-removable software and apps. My current mobile phone for example has apps that link to twitter, facebook, amazon etc. none of which I will ever use, but you can somehow not delete them. Why do I need to have that virtual junk in my phone?
Honestly this irks me to no end. We now have thousand dollar phones with all the speed, Ai capabilities, design, cameras, speakers, etc. Everything you could’ve wanted at its best in terms of performance, picture and camera quality, AI features… Except now you’re missing headphone jacks, replaceable batteries, Ir blasters, SD cards, extra Sim slots… Like, really, a thousand dollars for a phone and it has less features than a 200 dollar phone? Less features than phones from 6 years ago? Why the fuck have we sacrificed so much?? We had the chance to have a long golden era of long lasting, everything capable phones, but instead we’re stuck with boring bricks that do less than before, last less due to batteries wearing out, and come bloated with shit that you don’t need and can’t remove.
We seriously need some phone company out there to spec the fuck out of a high end phone with all these features, AND which meets GrapheneOS requirements and lets us flash the phone with whatever the fuck we want. We’ve gone completely backwards on phones, and it’s becoming more and more pointless to upgrade, you’re just changing phones for the batteries these days.
Well I haven’t owned one since college, but I was a cell phone salesman, so I loved it too. And I’m glad I already knew about that and used a comma as punctuation after “lol,” but thanks for the info I guess? Fair warning, this is the Internet, and you might run into more people like me :o
By far replaceable batteries. You used to be able to purchase physically larger and higher capacity batteries to get insane battery life, but because they would include a larger rear plastic for the phone it would still look normal. Now we have to waste space and lose efficiency with external power banks.
Pretty sure phone cases with external batteries exist that are literally identical to what you are describing (“purchase physically larger or higher capacity batteries”). Also current phones do a lot more than the old phones you’re describing as “having insane battery life.” Sure, a cell phone of 2005 could be left on for probably two days straight without needing a charge but you were only getting an occasional text message and maybe calling someone once or twice and maybe playing Snake during that timeframe.
External batteries are not the same as there is substantial loss in transmitting the power to the phone, particularly with the many “magsafe” compatible wireless ones. The wired ones add substantially more bulk for similar battery size and although the standard for battery life is much better now, for many otherwise great phones it’s still not amazing (aka every pixel prior to this year’s).
Being able to quickly swap a battery or simply replace it with a 10000mAh cell for only a few mm more thickness (my preferred method) simply isn’t an option now.
Physical buttons in cars for radio and environment settings.
There used to be a time when I could have my hand on the gear shifter and just reach out with my fingers to change radio stations or adjust the heat or a/c without needing to look down at all.
Now with modern touchscreens in cars, you can’t do any of that. I have gotten used to playing with the radio via the steering wheel buttons, but anything else requires hunting around, looking for the correct spot to touch the screen.
And yet they say, “don’t take your eyes off the road!”
Yeah you can preview this cycle by looking at Cadillac. They were among the first to go touch-only with Cue in the early 2010s, started fading back in physical buttons with new models in the late 2010s, and on their newest models now have a full set of very nice custom buttons not shared from the GM parts bin.
Physical buttons do everything better and are safer for drivers since they require less attention to be taken off the road.
I will continue to refuse to buy any car that has internet connectivity or touchscreens. They’re unsafe and unnecessary, only allowing for more tracking of our personal lives
Im with you on the always online automobiles and the importance of tactile feedback for important and commonly used buttons, but a small screen for a back-up camera is very nice.
Im not against screens entirely, just ones that are touchscreen and hide critical buttons behind menus.
A screen that does nothing more than GPS, Music and Backup cameras is pretty much the extent of what I’d need, and there’s a bunch of 3rd party accessories that do that.
Some car companies are going back to physical buttons. A screen for everything is still my most hated thing about modern vehicles. I wanna look like I’m operating the millennium falcon or a Gundam when I’m driving, gimme back muscle memory.
My 2021 VW GLI is mostly buttons. There’s a big touchscreen for the infotainment, except volume. There’s a “tuner” knob but it doesn’t really so anything (I don’t listen to am/fm radio). HVAC controls are all buttons and knobs. Steering wheel controls are also buttons and switches.
My CX5 is similar, buttons for all things not entertainment. There’s only one out of place design on the car that irks me - it doesn’t have a setting to change whether the mirrors fold or not. Why is this useful? I’m in the Midwest and in the winter they can get stuck overnight due to ice. So they have a convoluted process (without an audible or visual confirmation mind you) to disable or enable. Ignition on, lock the windows. Press all three passenger window buttons on the driver’s door down for 3 seconds. This would have been so much nicer to be in a menu off of the entertainment system, similar to say the lighting timing upon exit etc.
I just got a 2018 Honda Odyssey and it’s great. It has the touch screen, but also has physical buttons for almost all of the climate and radio stuff. That’s how it should be IMO. Just give us both!
You’re lucky (or smart) to go with the 2018, my gfs 2016 Honda Accord does have physical buttons for the climate, but for some reason has a weird touch pad thing instead of a volume knob. It drives us both up the wall. The car is near perfect besides that but that one issue is enough to convince me to never buy a Honda of that generation.
Our 2021 Hyundai Kona has physical buttons for most things, and some advanced functions are accessible through the touchscreen. Maybe it’s an exception
I’m a school bus driver and some modern buses have the switches for operating the doors and the 8-ways (the amber and red flashers at the top corners) on the steering wheel and they drive me up the fucking wall. The problem is that you often have to stop for kids after making a sharp turn one way or the other, so the wheel is not in its normal position and you have no idea where the switches are and have to look down to see them. If they’re on the left fixed panel (their “normal” location) you can reach for them without having to look.
That’s just terrible design, the only buttons that should be on the steering wheel are ones you are likely to use while at speed and there should always be backups on the dash. It’s more expensive to run wires to the wheel and they’re more likely to break.
Real keyboards where overrated, swiping is so much quicker. My s22ultra now lights up around the intire edge so again better than a single light. I have had this phone for over a year now and never even noticed it no longer has a headphone jack until lookingfor one at this moment. I will agree with the replacement battery as I would have continued using my note 5 and then my note 9 if the battery hadn’t worn out.
Yeah swiping is nice if it exists in your language. Seems like a basic feature, but Apple doesn’t mind being 10 years behind everyone else. Still waiting for that awesome swiping feature to roll out. Probably not going to happen any time soon.
Ya, after reading a bit about the notification light and thinking back to older phones, I’ll agree. The edge lighting is neet but not continuous. It also does not change color depending on the type of notification. A back version is also a good idea.
I have had this phone for over a year now and never even noticed it no longer has a headphone jack until lookingfor one at this moment
Why do you believe your use case and your habits are a relevant argument against the necessity of the jack? People who want it actually use it, what difference does it make if you personally don’t need it?
My personal conspiracy theory is, SD card slots were removed from phones so Google, Apple, and Samsung can more readily push their cloud storage subscriptions
This seems fair - especially when you start looking at how Google seems to be continually further hindering file access in Android in the name of Security. I use my file system a fair bit on my phone and it just keeps getting worse with every new android release.
There are several advantages to not having them: without all the extra parts needed to support these features you can make the phone thinner (thickness is traditionally a key marketing point for smartphones) and cheaper to make.
Additionally, it seems that a lot of people no longer need these features, making them prime candidates for exclusion: Bluetooth headphones have become very common, internal storages have become large enough, and people buy a new phone often enough nowadays that battery wear is not as much of an issue.
Of course, if you are one of the people who still do want these features you’re pretty much out of luck. Which sucks.
The idea that people don’t need headphone jack seems pretty weird. Phones removed the 3.5mm jack, so people had to buy Bluetooth headphones, because now there is just 1 port on the phone.
And now, because of this change, you’re looking back and saying that that’s a not needed feature.
I mean, I love my bluetooth headphones but also bluetooth sucks. Anyone who says bluetooth is a reliable spec we should longterm trust our ability to connect audio devices together with is horrifically deceiving themselves. Bluetooth is an absolute train wreck of a technical spec, and it can be further broken at any point because it is just software that can be “updated” with “new features” that break backwards compatibility.
To call bluetooth a replacement of the 3.5mm jack which has a stunning, decades long established compatibility with other devices is a slap to the face of consumers even if most of those consumers don’t use their 3.5mm jack anywhere as much as bluetooth audio. The point is there is NO good reason that device makers had to take away the option of a 3.5mm jack other than to take away an alternative option. How much does it cost to stick an audio jack in a phone? Does it add like… what $1.25 to the cost of the phone all totaled? People are way to willing to believe tech companies removing features is an innocuous side effect of progress rather than a constant probing to see what bullshit they can get away with in order to introduce monetizable friction into the experience of using a device.
Also just to transfer pictures to a laptop for editing and to clear space for taking more pics on the phone. I know cloud exists, but I want to control my own data.
There are several advantages to not having them: without all the extra parts needed to support these features you can make the phone thinner (thickness is traditionally a key marketing point for smartphones)
I’d be pretty happy with a phone that’s 1.5x thicker than normal if it has a 6000-7000 mAh battery.
without all the extra parts needed to support these features you can make the phone thinner
I don’t think the 3.5mm jack is the limiting spec on how thick phones are. The latest iphone (15) without the jack is 7.8mm thick, while my phone that has one is 7.9mm. The 15 pro is 8.3mm. Thickness may have been a selling point in the past but I don’t think people care anymore bc essentially everything’s pretty thin these days–size concerns are way more focused on length/width.
Bluetooth headphones were very much useable when we had headphone jacks. Now your only option is overpriced Bluetooth devices that will not last.
Internal storage on your phone is not that big. What they want to do is sell you cloud storage. iPhone 15 Pro, to get 1TB of internal storage is $1500. The cheapest Samsung is ‘Galaxy S22 Ultra, 1TB’ @ $1600. And the Google Pixel 8, your looking at $1200. Each option basically costs about $500 for that 1TB option. But I could buy a 1.5TB card for $150 on Amazon…
Phone’s being thinner is the dumbest marketing point. It’s counterproductive to everything you want the phone to have. Like a decent sized battery, proper cooling, and features… And make it so that the phone isn’t flimsy. To say that people no longer needed these features is also just dumb. You know who decided people no longer need these features, someone in Apple’s marketing department who realized you could sell $150 headphones instead of giving away quality $20 headphones.
You need to realize that the reason people keep buying new phones isn’t because of the new features (which there are none) it’s because their phone now sucks because it’s aging out because they can’t replace anything. Imagine being able to recycle the battery instead of creating just a bunch of e-waste every couple of years.
without all the extra parts needed to support these features you can make the phone thinner
The Galaxy S4 from 2013 has a removable battery, headphone jack, and sd card slot. Its no thicker then a modern smartphone.
cheaper to make
I’d rather pay more for something that lasts me longer. If users can replace their own batteries easily and expand their storage, they can hold on to the device for longer. That way they’ll buy less phones and won’t care that the product was minorly more expensive.
Bluetooth headphones have become very common
And have flooded landfills with batteries. Wired headphones don’t have batteries that will degrade or need charging.
internal storages have become large enough
Not really. I have a 64gb phone and need an sd card to store my music. If I wanted more storage I would literally have to buy a different device. I’d rather just have an sd card slot.
people buy a new phone often enough nowadays that battery wear is not as much of an issue
battery wear is part of the reason people trash their otherwise working phones. People buying phones more often is a symptom of not having right to repair.
people buy a new phone often enough nowadays that battery wear is not as much of an issue
battery wear is part of the reason people trash their otherwise working phones. People buying phones more often is a symptom of not having right to repair.
Also, buying an extra battery and charger meant you could carry a fully charged battery in your pocket and if you were out hiking or something, you could just swap batteries instead of needing a power bank and a whole bunch of charging time.
IR blaster for smartphones. I still have one on mine and I can use it for tons of stuff, not just as a TV remote.
I even worked for a company who made lots of IR based products (taps/faucets, accessibility stuff) and it was amazing how many people had to buy the dedicated remotes for these products for extra money.
When I asked them if their phone has an IR blaster, so they could just download a free app and use it instead. “I have an iPhone” was the most common answer.
I don’t know about the ID and drivers license, but banking is no problem as you do not root the phones anymore. You can even use the google wallet if you want. I think the only thing not there is the google safetyNez verification, even tho you can install apps through the playstore. So I don’t know if the apps can determine if there on an official build or not.
Edit: Please take my words carefully as I’m only in the experimentation phase myself. All I really can say is: my banking app and PayPal work no problem
I agree the software is bad. All my phones bought after nexus 4 was made by Xiaomi. They give option to unlock bootloader and flash custom rom.
Not all the phones get official lineage os support, but almost all snapdragon versions get custom rom support.
I gave my Redmi Note 4 to my mom, which is 6 years old and running latest OS with recent security patches. None of the other OEMs were supported upto this period (just give exception to Samsung Galaxy 2).
I do have a Xiaomi phone and as I mentioned I am actively using the IR blaster, but the majority of regular users will not even think about checking the specs when buying new tech.
They will just go for the latest iPhone or the current trending android bestseller.
Check out Silverstone cases, they have a few that are understated, and make them in a variety of form factors if you wanted to do, say, a custom NAS, server or media center build.
All of that exists, don’t by an iPhone and don’t buy the latest and greatest nvidia graphics card. Buy a used 3060 for example. I am wirting this from a rooted zenfone 8, with notification light, headphone jack and on the second battery. Get a fairphone if you want to flip them in the fly.
For the smartphones I mostly agree. Even Pixels, although easily unlockable and rootable, make you jump through hoops if you want to use things like banking.
For PCs, there are still options available. Fractal have cases with no RGB and even metal side panels (as opposed to tempered glass ones) if that’s your thing. Noctua and be quiet! still make non-RGB fans and coolers.
For the smartphone, what do you mean by software unlocked parts? For the rest I’m in total agreement.
The high end graphics card market really needs more clean RGB free stuff. My 3090’s lights didn’t turn on despite it functioning just fine so maybe that counts :) ?
As for case I know you had plenty of answers already, but I recently got a Corsair 4000D my latest build it’s sleek and has no inbuilt RGB lighting.
By unlocked parts, they may be referring to how Apple serializes parts in iPhones so that you are forced to pay for repair at the Apple store. Part serialization means that if you took two real iPhones apart, swapped every component with each other, and tried to use the phone, certain features just stop working… Here is a demo from Hugh Jeffreys, who has demonstrated this problem with many recent iPhone models: youtu.be/dbRKQ0OjQeE
I just hope android devices never adopt this anti-feature like has happened many times in the past with Apple’s anti consumer design choices.
Kinda surprised that no one has mentioned the FM tuner. For reasons I never really understood, a lot of companies continued to build the hardware into phones but then wall it off with firmware.
My first MP3 player had one, my TV had one, there were even watches and lots of other devices that had one. People still listen to radio, so why don’t they give us a tuner?
Are you sure the hardware is still there? I only ask because given the number of hackers out there, I’m surprised someone hasn’t come out with a patch or something to make it more ubiquitous.
It’s not strictly there as a separate feature. Modern radio chips in phones are universal programmable radios, they can catch and process any wavelengths if you install correct code into them and plug a correct antenna. The same radio chip processes your 5G, Bluetooth, WiFi and everything else.
What phones are missing are FM antennas and radio firmware with FM support. This FM support is a paid feature for phone makers, so they don’t add it.
i think I recall that the Bluetooth hardware is essentially an FM tuner. Just needed a wired headphone to use as an antenna. My Moto Stylus 2022 still has it.
Mostly because they needed a wired headset to act as the FM antenna since it needs a decent length to capture FM compared to the much higher UHF and GHz frequencies that the mobile network uses.
Mostly because they needed a wired headset to act as the FM antenna since it needs a decent length to capture FM compared to the much higher UHF and GHz frequencies that the mobile network uses.
My point is that any sort of radio would be immediately drowned out by the massive amounts of EM interference as soon as you tried to charge.
In fact, professional audio devices often have to take extra precautions to avoid their power cables from becoming accidental antennas; Anyone who used a cheap set of computer speakers back in the 2000’s and 2010’s will know the distinct buzzing pattern that preceded a text message or phone call. That’s because cheap speakers would use unshielded power sources, and simple circuitry which didn’t bother to isolate the amplifier from the power.
I currently use a FP3 which has 4 out of the 6 features above, which I feel is the best we’ll get right now.
Admittedly the Heart rate monitor is more of a gimmick nowadays, especially that it’s standard and automatic on most smartwatches and sports watches. Back then when stuff like the Sony Ericsson LiveView and LG W100 watches were popular, they did not have heart rate sensing built in
And then they completely bork the file system with separate storage for every app. Nobody needs a dozen different folders for storing pictures, with no way to combine them.
IR blaster! Iiss that feature. When my wife was sick in the hospital they had a TV with 10 stupid channels. But I found that the TV had a USB post. So I used a flash drive and my phone as the remote to let her watch TV shows while she was stuck in bed.
IR blaster was the shit. Back then, there was an app called beep and go (I think) that held the barcodes for your loyalty cards. For someone that collected them like baseball cards, it was really handy.
Anyway, Samsung actually had the ability to transmit the barcode via the IR blaster which some scanners could read if they couldn’t read the barcode on the phone.
It was awesome!
I agree that the heart rate monitor was a bit of a gimmick though.
Everything. We’re down to barebones and marketing now focus solely on camera software updates or phone materials (“now with titanium!” How fucking sad is that?) And they are all selling the same phone.
Some of the most important loses…
Swappable batteries changed travel for me. Always having two extra charged batteries in my backpack, that you could swap top 100% in 20 seconds, made me ONLY use my phone as a free and completely useful tool without any planning or restrictions on my use. Otherwise, you can’t take too many pictures or videos, stream music or video or make video calls too long or you might be fucked when you need phone, GPS, payment or to get a rideshare to where you’re staying.
Audio jack similarly meant freedom. Bluetooth headphones out of battery, broken or one earbud lost? Have a pair of wired in the backpack always add backup. Also better audio quality through wired with DAC on certain models and less daily device load to charge/babysit
secondary screens LG V10 had a bar on top, they also had the T shaped dual screen phone and the secondary screen phone case. There was just creativity and attempts at innovation.
microSD expandable memory, again less and less available and this was about freedom - fuck your cloud storage add its data leaks, corruption and redaction. I own my data, you don’t control it.
I also very much miss the removable batteries. I spent 8 years with my old phone simply because I didn’t want to give up it’s easy swap ability but I have to say that the headphone jack is the thing that really affects and annoys me the most. For years and years I literally carried a pair of wired earbuds with me everywhere I went (coiled up and carried in the small pocket of my jeans). No matter where I was or what I was doing, I could literally be ready to go music mode at any time. I absolutely loved it. Being saddled with the bluetooth buds now and their annoying battery life is not at all ideal for me. I often take very long daily excursions that end up seeing my headphones die on me frequently now and I miss my wired headphones nearly every single day.
My new android phone is waterproof, rugged, has 5 days of battery life, 2 microsim, 1 microsd (up to 1TB i think, for apps and/or photos depending on partitioning via adb), headphone jack, no stupid notch or hole in the display and a notification light for $100. Sure I only get 4GB of RAM, a 24MP camera without stabilization, 64GB of slow-ish flash and an 8 core mediatek cpu. But if Google or HTC won’t give me what I want, I’ll buy the Doogee S51 with the fake 2nd wide angle camera that is just a dummy lens.
I was really baffled when I got a November 2023 security OTA update. Didn’t expect that. Also it isn’t loaded with crapware like a Samsung or Lenovo. Overall I am quite satisfied with price/performance.
I think the reason why you get the OTA is because Doogee uses mostly non modified Android software, making the official releases available for your phone with ease.
Swappable batteries are coming back in 2027 because of the EU.
Under the legislation, consumers must be able to "easily remove and replace” portable batteries used in devices such as smartphones, tablets, and cameras.
I just tried a Pixel 8 for a few days after years of using a Pixel 6 - it is legitimately a worse phone. Even with its higher frame rate screen (which is considerably smaller), all the phones animations look like garbage because the CPU struggles to keep up. I found some menus that I tested side by side on the pixel 6 and 8… the 6’s reaction was instant and smooth, while the 8 took about half a second to register that it had been touched, after which the menu’s animation was glitchy. My wife tested one too, and was having issues getting her fingerprints to save.
Is there even an option for a decent modern android phone that doesn’t have bloatware (i.e… Samsung)? I was hoping the pixel would be acceptable so I could use Graphene OS, but it doesn’t look like that is going to be happening. Is there another device that works well with Lineage or something similar that would be a decent alternative to a Pixel with Graphene?
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