That’d be great. Currently 90% of my feed is /c/memes and while I do find them entertaining, I also miss a ton of posts from smaller communities related to my hobbies that I would engage with more.
So your argument is that consumers expect their batteries to be glued inside the phone because it’s “something different?” That doesn’t make much sense.
How is “consumers used to buy x when it was all that was available so obviously they must prefer it over y” anywhere close to a rational argument?
That’s the argument you made in your previous comment, that people are buying up phones with sealed batteries because that’s what they want even though that’s the only option available. I’m still waiting for your examples of two comparable phones being sold at the same time, one with a sealed battery and one without and the sealed phone selling better. I suppose you skipped over that because it’s never happened.
The s21 ultra has a much bigger battery in a smaller footprint.
You claimed that phones are thinner now because they’re sealed. The S21 Ultra is larger than the Note 4 in every dimension. It has a larger footprint to accommodate the larger battery.
If any manufacturer were deliberately making their phones worse, other manufacturers would be capitalizing on that and taking their market share.
Based on what? There is barely any competition these days. Two companies control a majority of the market.
Phones are easier to repair today than they were 3-5 years ago
So what? Phones were much easier to repair 5+ years ago. Why did you choose 2018 as your cutoff when smartphones existed for an entire decade prior to that?
Phone firmware is no more locked down now than it has been in the past
False. Most phones can’t be rooted these days when it used to be a common thing.
the steel bezels and flat glass on iPhones since the 12 pro make them FAR more durable than any phone I’ve used.
Well based on your prior comments, I’m assuming you’re fairly young and didn’t have a smartphone prior to sometime around 2018. I’ve had smartphones since the original Android on the HTC G1 and it wasn’t until getting my S21 Ultra that I’ve had to buy a case since Samsung and Apple decided to encase their phones in glass. I’d hate to break it to you but glass is not in fact a durable substance. I still have my 9 year old plastic and aluminum Note 4 running with zero damage and it never once lived in a case and has been dropped hard enough to leave gouges in the aluminum. That isn’t possible with glass encased phones regardless of how much you want it to be true. Deformed aluminum was an issue with the iPhone because they cheaped out on the materials and made them so thin that you could fold the phone in half with your fingers.
I think smartphones are getting worse because I’ve been using them for 16 years and can tell the difference. I’m sure if all you use your phone for is checking social media and snapping photos of your lunch for Instagram, you wouldn’t notice the difference, but some of us actually want more out of a $1500 computer.
Sealed phones consistently sell waaay more than non-sealed phones
OEMs make sealed phones instead of easily disassemblable phones because consumers buy sealed phones instead of disassemblable ones when given the choice.
Give some examples of the phones you’re referring to here because I’d bet you’re referring to recent phones like the XCover Pro which use ancient hardware that appeals to nobody.
For 30 years, manufacturers sold phones with replaceable batteries and consumers gobbled them all up with nobody demanding that they instead glue phones together.
You claim phones are thinner when glued yet my Note 4 from 2014 is thinner than my current Galaxy S21 Ultra even though the former had a removable back and replacable battery.
The reason why they’ve all gone to sealed phones is because they ran out of innovative ideas years ago with the yearly release cycle and have now resorted to raising revenue by making phones harder to repair yourself, removing accessories, locking down firmware, and building them with more fragile materials. It’s the same enshittification that we’re now seeing in social media and streaming services. Don’t fall for the marketing propaganda that these companies are pushing because it’s all bullshit.
Implying manufacturers want us to be able to repair our devices more easily yet can’t design them that way because of some impossible feat of engineering required to add an o-ring and some screws? Give me a break dude. None of this is groundbreaking territory.
I was more referring to green card holders, but that’s exactly my point. By excluding people based on whether they can vote or not, you get inaccurate results and make the whole process pointless.
You’d have to eliminate children and immigrants too if you did that, but those new numbers wouldn’t reflect reality in most communities with so many people being excluded from the census.
Gaskets, o-rings, and screws exist. The waterproof argument is a weak one that doesn’t hold water. There’s no reason why it needs to be glued together and past phones have had waterproofing with a removable back and replaceable battery.
Your iPhone is the same and requires you to take it to a service center and pay someone else to do something that we’d been doing ourselves in 5 seconds for the previous 30 years.