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.
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.
Id disagree about bluetooth these days. I have a pair of headset I use daily between my computer and phone. Quality is there, ive done side by side conparisons via 2.4ghz dongle, bluetooth and wired (headset supports all) and I cant hear a difference.
There may not be a difference when you’re sitting in front of a computer but Bluetooth quality can go way downhill if you’re trying to listen to earbuds while your phone is in your pocket or a bag or similar, especially if you’re moving around and/or there’s a lot of electronic interference in the area. My city commute is when I really miss wired listening.
Bro how shit are your bluetooth headphones?? I’ve had busy city commutes plenty with even cheapoid wireless headphones, iphone 6s, phone in pocket or bag…
Dude, I live in a faraday cage (lath & plaster with chicken wire embedded in it) and I can walk around my house with little to no issues. Bluetooth 4+ has been rock solid for me. At most my phone disconnects but thats my phones issue. Bluetooth to my PC is perfect an never had any dropouts.
Really? Something that has a range of 30’ (9m) and use it for a fucking concert and use the same frequencies as 1000’s of atendees?
Bluetooth is a short range low bandwidth (at least vs wifi, 3/4/5g) protocol. Using it for something well outside its capablilites is stupid. Like taking a mini mudding or hammering in nails using a rachet
You hypothetical situation is just pointing out the very well known flaws of the bluetooth protocol. So once again, what a stupid line of questioning
Dude, I miss the LG G5 and the V20. Had some pretty good ideas for the time. I liked how the V20 had a tiny always on display so the main display could power down. Although OLED dont have the power drain problem that LCD have when using AOD
Bluetooth audio can’t be bad, it’s digital. I would understand it drops packets or is choppy but quality should be given. What can suck is DAC on your headphones, which is the likely culprit.
Because chances are your device has Bluetooth version 5.2, as all newer phones have and standard has been out for almost a decade now. That version supports both aptX and LC3 codecs. Both of which are significantly higher quality than default inital SBC. In fact aptX has been around since 2009. In 2009, Senheizer released first ever Bluetooth headset with aptX support. Later in 2016 we got aptX HD.
Even Sony’s proprietary LDAC codec has been added to Android in version 8 and was officially supported by all Android devices since then. That codec can push 32 bits/96 kHz, which is more than enough quality.
Of course with all digital protocols, like Bluetooth is, received data is the same as transmitted data. If your headset audio quality is lacking, that is on headset, not protocol itself since Bluetooth supports high quality audio for decades now. Only time when Bluetooth will revert back to old codec which was “reasonable quality” as they describe it is if your headset doesn’t support better codecs.
Relying on a codec, which intrinsically plays priority on the basis of specific frequencies, is intrinsic to the limitations of using low-energy radio waves in the UHF range. Codecs are for phone calls and data packets, not full spectrum audio. That doesn’t solve the issue, it just slaps a bandage on it so it’s less noticeable. If I need a larger spectrum, rather than a patch of bass and treble, Bluetooth continues to fall dramatically and irritatingly short.
I’m glad it works for your purposes, though. I do not mean to come off like a jerk; I just prefer dedicated bands for anything wireless that cover a wider range.
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.
If you’re on Android, I think this still works. Try setting an alarm for 5 minutes from now and turn your phone off. It should turn back on for the alarm.
Edit: Just tried it and it worked on the native OnePlus clock app, but not on the Google clock.
You mean hardware alarm on the phone that works while the phone is off (meaning an alarm running on the RTC of the phone), or actual physical alarm clocks? Because the latter still exist.
My Sony Xperia 10iii still has that light as well as a heaphone jack, SD card slot that can be removed by hand (no ejector tool needed) and full waterproofing. These are literally all the features missing on newer phones. Plus it has a genuine 3 cameras: wide, ultrawide and telephoto - no fake “macro” BS here.
Best of all it’s successor the Xperia 10v can be bought on the UK Sony site for just GBP299! Incredible price. But alas I don’t live there but if one had a friend there you could have them order it send it to you via courier.
I’ve had an Xperia for years. It’s indestructible I swear, never had it in a case and it’s been dropped, kicked, smacked, and generally knocked around for all of those years with hardly a scratch on it. I want to say I’m due an upgrade so I could think about a newer one, buuuut… Honestly it’s just such a trooper I don’t see why I’d bother. The XZ1 is nearly 7 years old now so the camera frankly sucks, but that’s it.
The battery is always on the bottom while the notifications are in the middle or the top. It’s charged if the bottom portion (or the portion closest to the USB cable) has a green icon on it.
Personally I would rather have the screen off a lot of times for various reasons. Why should i have to have the entire display on instead of having tge ability to just have a little notification light?
With OLED and especially LTPO OLED that’s not exactly an issue though, since it’s only the icons that make up the active parts of the display, while the whole black area of the display is literally off.
Except that my screen isn’t an OLED and I don’t want to leave the display on. It’s too distracting, it needs to be off especially at work. A little dot isn’t too intrusive as a notification.
LCD fanboys have lost the mobile space. Pretty much all the mid-range to flagship phones have an OLED screen by now and we start to see OLED on laptops and desktop monitors as well. Don’t you think it’s time to move on at this point?
So much this. I’d love Blackberry Passport but with modern Android. I don’t mind it being wide, I just need a good keyboard which I use far more than designers think.
How hard is it to get into the phone game in terms of regulatory stuff? Like if I had the device designed and manufacturing ready to go, what legal hoops would I have to jump through to become a phone maker?
Is it a closed space? Can I enter it? Do I need to register with FTC or get other huge corps to cooperate with me or anything?
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?
I rented a Corolla to driver Uber with. What I did for liking songs on spotify was memorize where I’d have to rest my hand in terms of landmarks outside the screen on the dash, so that just dropping my finger down would tap on the heart to like a song.
If you have an Android phone then you can enable a feature called TalkBack that reads up screen content and lets you control your device with touch gestures, so you can use the phone without having to look at the screen.
This combined with wireless earbuds is a real game changer for cheating in school.
Asus Zenphone? I’m not sure if it’s absolutely top notch specs but every review I’ve ever seen for it loves it. And it’s tiny. I love my phones as big as possible so I’ve never tried it but I’ve always wanted a bigger version of it so that I could.
Software support is quite a downside though. Asus is not great at supporting their Zenphones in comparison to other manufacturers. You only get around 2 years of OS updates (and 4 years of security updates? I guess it differs for each phone a little) The hardware looks great, but this was the reason to not buy it for me as I usually use phone for 4-5 years.
I went with the Pixel 8 Pro, I do really love the extra camera features, but the phone is just so big. I was using a regular Pixel 8 the other day and it was so comfy.
Of course it depends on body size and style of trousers you prefer. If you rock Cargo pants you will have no issues for sure :D Ask a female friend for example, i guess lot of them cannot fit a modern phone into there pockets
When was the last time you saw a dedicated front facing flash? I think most of the time these days it’s a quick increase and brightness and your screen turning white.
it’s a small led that flashes if there’s a notification, you could customize it for only certain notifications or even different colors. it’s pretty much been replaced by AOD.
For me the Galaxy Nexus was the peak of enthusiast phone joy. Notification LED was bright and colorful, replaceable battery (to be fair, this was necessary because battery life was so short), unlocked by default, slightly curved front glass made it a pleasure to use as a phone. I also liked the ceramic back of the Essential Phone. The back fingerprint sensors on most phone models were so much more practical than the in-screen options and provided a handy way to lower the notification tray. I miss the litltle touch navigation nubbin on my Droid Incredible, which was handy for scrolling around without touching the screen.
I also miss how open Android was; Google has been gradually cracking down on enthusiast use cases in the name of “security” like text backup no longer being possible for Play Store apps, email access locked down (requiring a security audit for apps to access GMail), scoped storage screwed up a lot of use cases as well.
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