'It's Time to End the Yearly Smartphone Launch Event' (vice.com) 224
Owen Williams, writing for Motherboard: Thursday, at a flashy event in New York, Samsung unveiled yet another phone: the Galaxy Note 9. Like you'd expect, it's rectangular, it has a screen, and it has a few cameras. While unveiling what it hopes will be the next hit, it unknowingly confirmed something we've all been wondering: the smartphone industry is out of ideas. Phones are officially boring: the only topic that's up for debate with the Galaxy Note 9 is the lack of the iconic notch found on the iPhone X, and that it has a headphone jack. The notch has been cloned by almost every phone maker out there, and the headphone jack is a commodity that's unfortunately dying. However, the fact that we're comparing phones with or without a chunk out of the screen or a hole for your headphones demonstrates just how stuck the industry is.
It's clear that there's nothing really to see here. Yeah, the Note is a big phone, and it has a larger battery too. It's in different colors, it's faster than last year, and it has wireless charging. Everything you see here is from a laundry list of features that other smartphone manufacturers also have, and the lack of differentiation becomes clearer every year. It's the pinnacle of technology, and it's a snooze-fest. This isn't exclusively a Samsung problem: Every manufacturer from Apple to Xiaomi faces the same predicament. The iPhone's release cycle that Apple trained the world to be accustomed to, with splashy yearly releases and million-dollar keynotes, is clearly coming to an end as consumers use their existing phones for longer every year.
It's clear that there's nothing really to see here. Yeah, the Note is a big phone, and it has a larger battery too. It's in different colors, it's faster than last year, and it has wireless charging. Everything you see here is from a laundry list of features that other smartphone manufacturers also have, and the lack of differentiation becomes clearer every year. It's the pinnacle of technology, and it's a snooze-fest. This isn't exclusively a Samsung problem: Every manufacturer from Apple to Xiaomi faces the same predicament. The iPhone's release cycle that Apple trained the world to be accustomed to, with splashy yearly releases and million-dollar keynotes, is clearly coming to an end as consumers use their existing phones for longer every year.
It's your own fault for paying attention. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's your own fault for paying attention. (Score:5, Interesting)
But the smartphone market is unique! No other major product has an annual update of existing products that's pretty much the same as what went before. *cough* cars
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Re:It's your own fault for paying attention. (Score:4, Insightful)
But the smartphone market is unique! No other major product has an annual update of existing products that's pretty much the same as what went before. *cough* cars
Color. Anytime the marketing droids introduce colors, Colors, COLORS!!! it is a dead giveaway that the market has matured.
Re:It's your own fault for paying attention. (Score:5, Funny)
True. Also cupholders. Just wait.
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iPhone had colors, and marketed that you had a choice of colors. Now they're boring again these days. Because boring is the new black.
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I'm sure there's hundreds, if not thousands, of people out there that have no idea what to buy for Christmas unless Steve Jobs (now Tim Cook) tell them at the annual iPhone minor upgrade party.
As for me, I'm still content with my iPhone 6s+. There's just not enough incentive to get a newer phone. None are a significant enough upgrade - CPU speeds don't matter since I don't game, no larger storage for my music, no bandwidth speed increases. Why *should* I bother? Hmm, Apple? Samsung?
What is so special about
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Everyone who is cool and with it does this. If you don't, you self-select as an old fogie, out of touch with the cool hip people.
You're never going to get ahead in life if you keep pulling out that hunk of aged plastic the size and shape of a deck of playing cards.
Re:It's your own fault for paying attention. (Score:5, Interesting)
I’m using my 6S till it dies.
What was it - last year? - when Apple officially threw in the towel by spending 2/3 of the event demonstrating their $1200 smartphones killer feature was... animated cartoonish faces which mimic your movements. If that doesn’t scream “we’re out of ideas”, nothing does.
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I just got a 6S. Old android phone died suddenly so went shopping. All the newer android stuff they had was overpriced and oversized. So looked at the prepaid iphones, which were cheaper and with a cheaper monthly rate (again showing a reason to head back to the phone store every year and demand to know if you're overpaying or not).
It makes phone calls, the primary concern for me as an old fogey. The phones basically got good enough several years back, there's not much reason to expect much else. Too s
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... (and the odd phone call from older relatives) ...
That phrase can be interpreted two completely different ways - so I picked the funnier one.
We've reached peak Bells & Whistles (Score:5, Interesting)
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Surprised it's lasted this long. The reason we're not seeing "innovation" is because a smartphone is a smartphone is a smartphone. We're pretty much topped out on what the useful purpose a smartphone is for. Everything else is just maybe nice to have, but not absolutely necessary. However, I'd like to see more advancement on the camera side. Like a real optical zoom in a reasonably sized package.
You sound like a luddite... Not that I disagree, I'm a luddite too..
I used to think, who wants all this stuff on a cell phone? when the iPhone came along. I also thought "Who in their right mind would pay that much for a phone? But they sold and made money for their makers. I've decided that, if the manufacturers can sell these things doesn't mean I have to buy one.
Manufacturers will stop doing this yearly hype thing when it stops being profitable. Personally, I don't think innovation in smart phones is
Whatever happened to liquid lenses? (Score:3)
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They're probably a couple years away from market. They'll be coupled with those batteries with 10x capacity that charge to full in 5 minutes that are a couple years away from market.
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Everything is always a couple of years from market. Sometimes the news might say it's a decade away from market but with an influx of capital it will soon be just a couple years away from market.
Re:We've reached peak Bells & Whistles (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting how you can date a TV episode or movie by the tech. My wife and I have been working our way through all twenty seasons of "Midsomer Murders" and have reached the point where their cars look more modern than ours (they have built in GPS touch screens) but they're still using flip-phones. I'm pretty sure that season was shot in 2008.
The phone form factor thing is fashion, not function. I wouldn't be surprised if the huge, razor thin, bezel-less phone looks as dated as 1970s bell-bottoms in a few years. They're not really comfortable to use or carry, and the thinness drives all kinds of design limitations.
Re:We've reached peak Bells & Whistles (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a shit ton of stuff that can still be added to a phone, but it's not "innovation", rather "improvement".
Some time in 2017, mobile phones have reached a point (in terms of power) where they can indeed be used as "pocket desktops". There's enough raw power in them to act as such. All we need is the required improvements, and most of those are software-based, rather than hardware-based.
A couple months ago I played with a Samsung S9+ for a couple of days, and when I needed to charge it I once plugged it into the USB type C of a Lenovo port replicator. It so happened that I had an USB stick connected to the port replicator, and I was amazed to find out the phone detected the port replicator, knew it had audio output capabilities and also detected the USB stick. It could read data off the USB stick but errored out when writing on it.
That got me thinking: the protocol worked. The hardware was compatible. The proper software implementation of all the possible features was missing. So there's the slew of opportunities right there: develop software to leverage your phone's power in the desktop application area. Yeah I sound like a marketing dude but I'm not, I just really look forward to see that happen. Unfortunately, politics and agendas might get in the way, but wouldn't it be cool to come hone, slam your phone into a dock and have a mouse, a keyboard and a couple monitors linked to that dock, complete with Internet access, LAN access, etc.
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...but wouldn't it be cool to come hone, slam your phone into a dock and have a mouse, a keyboard and a couple monitors linked to that dock, complete with Internet access, LAN access, etc.
Motorola did that about 8 years ago, but it never really took off. With the CPU and RAM improvements since then, I wonder if anyone will give it another shot.
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It was too early. I still vividly remember the Dell Streak. It was beautiful (for that time). Sadly, it was way ahead of its time, Android 1.6 was full of bugs and issues and the phone, despite its amazing hardware capabilities (for that time), suffered from "the market is not ripe enough" disease.
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I don't hate it at all, as a matter of fact I am saddened by its demise (to be, but still).
As I stated earlier, the problem is nor the hardware, neither the concept. The problem is the software.
Microsoft are (were?) one step forward compared to Apple and Google from a platform integration perspective, but three steps back from an ecosystem health perspective. With a horrible "Store" (this is an entire story of its own), lack of vision (again, software-point-of-view) and murdering of Nokia (rather than colla
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wouldn't it be cool to come hone, slam your phone into a dock and have a mouse, a keyboard and a couple monitors linked to that dock, complete with Internet access, LAN access, etc.
Asus have a couple of different options in that space. E.g.
https://www.asus.com/uk/Phone/... [asus.com]
The Mobile Desktop Dock gives ROG Phone unprecedented expansion capabilities. Connect to an external 4K UHD monitor, mouse and keyboard while using ROG Phone as an auxiliary display, hook up to a wired gigabit LAN and use the S/PDIF output to drive your 5.1-channel surround-sound system.
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...and, with all accessories, costs more than a gaming PC and a good, modern smartphone... combined! The phone itself costs $1300+ and all accessories cost around $700+ more. See, this is another problem: the alternative is way more expensive than the status quo.
More issues with it: requires a complex, overly expensive and specific dock to work. Would most likely not work with any of the existing USB-C port replicators out there.
Re: We've reached peak Bells & Whistles (Score:2)
For fun, I once plugged a floppy drive into a Samsung S7.
It worked fine. And why wouldn't it? It's just a USB host device running Linux, with a mostly Android userspace. It can do all of the things a normal computer can do.
But nobody wants them to do these things.
Two reasons: A capable computer is a very inexpensive thing and using it never takes over your communications device.
And by the time you build a dock with a screen and a keyboard and a bunch of ports, you've got all of the inconveniences of a lap
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[...]wouldn't it be cool to come hone, slam your phone into a dock and have a mouse, a keyboard and a couple monitors linked to that dock, complete with Internet access, LAN access, etc.
Yes, it would be cool, but how do i use my phone then? Do i need another phone-form factor device that wirelessly connects to my phone? :)
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How do you use it when driving? Hands-free had existed for a long time.
Re:We've reached peak Bells & Whistles (Score:4, Interesting)
Surprised it's lasted this long. The reason we're not seeing "innovation" is because a smartphone is a smartphone is a smartphone. We're pretty much topped out on what the useful purpose a smartphone is for. Everything else is just maybe nice to have, but not absolutely necessary.
However, I'd like to see more advancement on the camera side. Like a real optical zoom in a reasonably sized package.
I can't wait for the innovation of the thicker phone. Give me a thicker phone- give me more bezel... if it means you can fit a battery in it that actually lasts a full 24 hours- give me a nice thick bezzelly phone WITH A REAL CHUNKING HUNKING POWERFUL BATTERY.
That's the innovation I want.
Re: We've reached peak Bells & Whistles (Score:2)
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iphones have apps to measure room dimensions
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Ya, lasers. I could use some good thermal lasers in my phone.
THANK YOU! (Score:2)
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The smartphone manufacturers have been "out of ideas" for years.
Since the advent of around the 801 snapdragon (and others) every
year we get faster, more cameras/megapixels, flashy colors and overly
expensive phones.
But, as long as consumers are ignorant enough to continue year after
year of dumping good phones for new ones, you think the manufactuers
will change?
The only innovation is making the phone thinner by gradually removing more and more space for a battery.
Um... no (Score:3)
It's bad enough somebody wrote this let alone greenlit it.
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There's not much you can do to a simple rectangular phone to make it look more stylish.
Oh come now, surely it could me made thinner and slipperier.
Wrapping it in a new case is simpler and cheaper.
Well, yes, but at least Apple owners know that it is more "beautiful" underneath that case. It gives them a warm glow ...
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that's now how selling stuff works. You sell new stuff each year so people will buy it. You make it an event because that's what marketing is. You wouldn't say "It's time to end yearly car launch events" because cars are only seeing incremental improvements.
If car companies were making a big splash every year for every model without any substantial improvements and just for making the splash then maybe. Car models now usually have "generations" of six years with a mid-generation refresh, in effect they're throwing a launch party every three years. The year-over-year tweaks rarely get much publicity. Marketing is about generating hype but if you overdo it then they can start trash talking your new model for simply not being much of an upgrade. But it's pretty h
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Yep. The simple answer is for motherboard to not waste their cash sending a journalist who's going to be bored senseless and end up writing utter shite because he lacks the imagination find excitement in yet another product release.
These yearly events are vitally important (Score:3)
I need to know when a phone gets a notch [cnet.com], or moves the clock to the left [androidpolice.com] side of the status bar.
wow / so innovate / much phone
[insert picture of shiba inu]
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Wao. Much impress.
Headphone jack and no stupid Notch (Score:2)
Why is it bad if your new phone is a snooze? (Score:5, Insightful)
If your phone needs to be exciting, you need to get a life.
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It just means the market matured .... (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, a lot of the new features added to iPhones, even several versions back, were relatively small UNLESS they affected you directly. For example, they added phones with the ability to use the additional frequency licensed to T-Mobile. That was a big deal for those of us on T-Mobile ... important enough to justify reselling an existing phone and upgrading, even if nothing else had changed. (I mean, you're paying out all that money each month for the service, so any handset that lets you use more of the service's own capabilities is kind of important.) But anyone NOT on T-Mobile didn't care a bit.
At the end of the day? I carry my cellphone so people from my work can reach me, and for the conveniences it offers me like locating things using GPS mapping applications, or browsing the latest news while standing in line somewhere. It also doubles as my camera, whenever I didn't bring my big SLR along, and for talking to or texting my friends. Yearly updates really aren't necessary to keep doing any of those things with the device. Yearly updates were a sign of a marketplace that hadn't matured yet, so kept throwing more cool ideas out there left and right, as they realized things they forgot to add in previous phone releases.
I'm glad to see it all slowing down.
Last gasp before they become a commodity (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we're about to see a hasty retreat in the average smartphone price.
My girlfriend recently picked up a Nokia 6.1 - it's fast enough, it's got a good enough camera, a good enough screen, enough memory and it's a pretty good looking phone. It's $250. Certainly there are people who'll have some need for the top-of-the-line, but for the vast majority of people that's a perfectly good phone.
I really think that's the direction things will trend. The "entry level" phones will steadily advance and the "flagship" ones will argue about screen notches and stuff like that. I can't see myself buying another flagship one, and I'm sure i'm not alone.
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I tried that. https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/p... [bestbuy.ca] [Just search for Alcatel Go Flip Phone]
I was very specific when I told the rep that I don't need a super computer in my pocket. Texting and calling more than sufficiently does it for me, and even then, I ignore most my calls since they're either unknown #s or clear robocalls. They can leave a message if it's important.
Anyways, the phone was GOD AWFUL. It calls, and texts, sure. The moment I had 20 texts saved into my phone for a single contact, it would take S
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My 2 cents. Might've gone off-topic a bit though... Sorry about that.
--
I tend to rant.
At least you know. And that's half the battle, isn't it?
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Eh. Yeah I tend to write a lot of TL;DRs
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My comment isn't to suggest that there aren't shit phones out there.
If i wanted a non-smartphone i'd totally go for the Nokia 3310. It's around $50 and seems to get solid reviews.
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I can't see myself buying another flagship one, and I'm sure i'm not alone.
I've never bought a flagship phone... I was fairly late to the smart phone game with my first. A galaxy 2 (I think 4 was out at the time). I've never spent more than $200 on one of mine- most expensive was a Moto X Pure 18 months ago $200- I've spent more on my wife- her last one was $400, but won't spend that much on myself.
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>"[...]t's $250. Certainly there are people who'll have some need for the top-of-the-line, but for the vast majority of people that's a perfectly good phone. [...] The "entry level" phones will steadily advance and the "flagship" ones will argue about screen notches and stuff like that. I can't see myself buying another flagship one, and I'm sure i'm not alone."
You are not alone. My last phone was a Nexus 5. I used it for something like 4 YEARS (replacing the battery once). Now I have a Moto G5 plus t
Re:If commoditization would only happen... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd argue that they mostly have. You can get a reliable new car for around the $20k mark. Land has certainly gone up a lot, but i think the actual cost of building a safe well insulated home has been pretty stable.
Obviously against a background of controlled inflation they've continued to rise in absolute dollars/euros but that's true of everything.
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I never said we were making progress.
I merely said that if you look at cars the ones you can buy new now typically cost about the same (adjusted for inflation) as they have done for decades. Now people are choosing to move to larger, heavier vehicles which has certainly increased the typical price paid.
A 1985 Toyota Corolla started at $7,133 (which is about $17,038.47 after inflation) and one today would start at $18,700. A slight increase, but you'd be getting a car that's faster, more efficient, safer and
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http://www.longtermtrends.net/... [longtermtrends.net]
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...for cars and homes, I'm all for it. But the prices seem to keep going up and up. When will they become commodities?
Cars became commodities decades ago, so now you're mostly just seeing the prices increase alongside inflation.
If by "homes" you mean purchase of an existing house, then what you're really talking about is purchasing the land, not the structure itself, and that is by definition not a commodity.
well ... (Score:3)
... you could try competing on price. Lower price, not higher price.
You could try competing on user freedom. "Hey, buy our phone, you can actually delete crap apps that you never wanted in the first place."
It's time to change a world operating system... (Score:3)
... that only works, and even then only for a small percentage of its user base, as long as ridiculously stupid things keep happening like companies successfully trying to sell people new smartphones (new cars, new TV's, you name it) all the time, without the new item being better than the last one, without that person really needing a new item, possibly without needing any such item at all.
(Personally, by the way, I've just prolonged my aging Motorola phone's life by paying a local repair shop a very modest sum for a battery replacement which my aging self didn't volunteer to do himself.)
Good thing (Score:2)
This is a good thing. Hopefully this means we'll see more meaningful and interesting stories around here instead of endless boring stories on smartphones. Yeah, they're great. Can we get over that now and onto something more substantial?
Go Backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
How about releasing a smartphone with a removeable battery (include a spare with the cost of the phone), a headphone jack, and *gasp* a clamshell slide out keyboard!
What's old is new and what's new is old!
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It sure worked wonders for Blackberry...
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If the battery was removable then the government would be able to track and listen when the device was "off". ;)
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Good- I don't want any more of what is recently called "innovation." I am ready for CHOICE instead. Give me a SMALLER, not LARGER phone. I don't care if it is a bit thicker because I want better battery life and serviceability.... and would be happy to have a replaceable battery at that. Give me a headphone jack and no buttons or sensors on the back. Give me regular UPDATES to fix annoying bugs and security flaws.
If giving me that is "boring", the boring is great. Bring it on.
I don't want to lose all my connectors, nor have a huge phone, nor a fragile/ultra thin phone with poor battery life and impossible to service batteries, nor a 100MP camera, nor notches, nor stupid OS mods and forced bundled crapware, nor something that costs twice as much as it should.
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The problem with a "smaller" phone is that most consumers will expect it to also come with a smaller price. a 3" phone basically costs the same thing to produce as a 6" phone, and will be sold at the same price.
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with a "smaller" phone is that most consumers will expect it to also come with a smaller price. a 3" phone basically costs the same thing to produce as a 6" phone
Seeing as how an iPhone X has a 64% profit margin (>$360 to make, retails for $1k), it should be easy for a 3" phone to cost less and still maintain a healthy profit margin. Don't know why people were so excited about Apple reaching $1T, part of the reason they got so high is because they massively overcharge for their products.
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Well.... The iPhone does come in a "small" size. I assumed you were talking about Android phones, which almost all > 5"
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Still more ideas/features they could add (Score:2, Interesting)
They could add infrared cameras, laser distance sensors, air quality sensors, and maybe a better way to adapt accessories to the phone such as a low powered connected hardware keyboard designed and produced by the manufacture.
Re:Still more ideas/features they could add (Score:5, Informative)
They could add infrared cameras, laser distance sensors, air quality sensors, and maybe a better way to adapt accessories to the phone such as a low powered connected hardware keyboard designed and produced by the manufacture.
The Caterpillar S61 [catphones.com] phone does a number of those - FLIR camera, air particulate sensor, and a measuring app which does way more than just give you distance. It also has incredible battery life (mine has been sitting for over a week and still has over 50% battery), and is ruggedized to MILSPEC for being dropped (5' to concrete) and being underwater (10 feet for over an hour). In fact, you can even go into "underwater mode" which deactivates the touchscreen, and modifies the camera for underwater use.
Disclaimer: I love that fricking phone!
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Was pretty interested until I scrolled down and say the price tag...
$999...
Damn... Wouldn't be bad if they had dual SIM, but then that reverse notch they got going on the top there is a bit strange
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This is why I think Motorola's mod solution is pretty great. If you think there is a market for those things, you can build it. I have a Moto Z2 and a 360 camera mod. It's really a game changer. I wish Motorola would opensource their "mod" developments so the program could really bloom.
There's plenty of room to differentiate (Score:2)
There's a huge amount of same-ness in the high end phones. They're all water-resistant (i.e. glued-together) glass and metal, 5.5 - 6.5" devices with 3 - 4000mA non-replaceable batteries and 4 or 6GB RAM. Maybe the OEM puts an SD card in one or maybe they do something extra with the cameras. Samsung or Apple might claim that their digital assistant is in some way better than Google or Amazon's. So maybe that's a feature. The huge phones sometimes come with a stylus. Yay.
Is anyone making a high end phone wit
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Can we get a high-spec phone with a plastic back so the damned thing doesn't feel like a hot brick if you happen to have the GPS on or be recording video?
Perhaps we can get one once you provide a robust answer to the following question: Where else, other than the back, should the SoC be dumping the waste heat from processing related to GPS or recording video?
Inductive charging through aluminum (Score:2, Insightful)
Does Qi inductive charging [wikipedia.org] work through ridged aluminum?
The Note series is a joke (Score:2)
Same hardware as the S9+, cost more, launch 4 months late. You must love the pen.
At least this time they increased the battery size. But the display is almost the same size, not worth the difference.
At least they could have gone small, mid, large with S9, S9+, Note. Something like 5", 5.7", 6.4" would have offered more choice instead of their current large, larger, slightly larger 5.8", 6.2", 6.4".
Oh and please drop the curved edge screen. We get it, you are better than your competitors because you can make
Reminds me of Windows Phone (Score:2)
The question is, what will that shift be? Wearables? Implantables? A cool triangle shaped thingy on your red shirt?
I'm sure someone smarter tha
Hardware is secondary (Score:5, Informative)
The main distinguishing feature for me in a smartphone is plain stock Android. No non-removable bloatware from marketing partners, and no manufacturer's customizations for the sake of customizations. I don't want to learn Samsung's way of doing the same thing, and then re-learn Motorola's way of doing the same thing, etc.. You can't avoid Google apps with Android, but I can avoid all other crap on my phone, so until Samsung/etc. can offer a decent phone that runs plain stock Android, I'm sticking with the Pixel line.
Also it has to support Project Fi. Fuck all cell phone carriers combined, the less I have to deal with any of them, the better.
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My Nexus 6p will be with me until it (or I) dies.
If they want me to buy a new phone it would have to have better life (thicker is fine with me) and less crap.
The bezel can be larger ( a little) as I'm tired of trying to one-hand the phone and accidentally triggering some function.
Then there's the price.
I'm not paying close to $1k for a phone and don't really want to pay a quarter of that.
I paid almost full freight for my 6P but I'll only do that every five years or so.
To get me do bu
Moto is the only ones doing interesting things (Score:3)
The Motorola Z is the only interesting hardware out there. The shatter-proof screen and the mods make it a wildly under-rated device.
All of the rest are barely innovating on anything hardware wise.
Not out of ideas... (Score:3)
Just unable, yet, to deliver
Folding screens, for instance, will transform the industry's high-end, but since they have priced current top of the line phones at the market limit (which is after all economics in action), and is there a market for folding-screen phones that makes them feasible? I dunno, I wanted one but the probable price makes me say 'wait'.
A truly capable desktop-able phone is within reach probably, though the software may not be. Samsung keeps trying.
Most of the innovation will be in software. When I can get our my car, disconnect the display from the dash screen, walk in my front door, and my phone takes a corner of my TV to announce 'it's home', voice commands move to my in-home assistant, and it all works without me having to say or do anything, then we're getting some innovation. Let it ignore my kids' voices, even better, and take only mine, perfect...
Software. Phone shape is a battle won.
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Ohh! The new ${prefix}Phones are here! (Score:2)
Reminds me of a story from a few years back. Homeless guy in San Francisco was sleeping in the doorway to an Apple store. People walking by assumed that it was the beginning of a line for a product release and stood in a line behind him.
Who is Owen Williams? (Score:2)
Does Owen Williams own a cell phone company? Does he know better than Samsung how to run Samsung? Does he have valid market data that shows that launches are an expense that don't generate additional sales?
Because it seems like he's just some dope talking out his ass on the Internet and Slashdot is wasting our time with uninformed opinion.
Still improvements to be made. (Score:2)
There are still things I'm waiting for smartphones to do, so it's not like the companies can just stop releasing new smartphones and keep everyone happily on the Galaxy S4 for 8 years at a stretch. Until they've solved the things I want out of my smartphone, there's still work to do. Let me see...
Foremost has to be battery life. I'd like to see smartphones with much better (week-long at least) battery life, even while actually using it (most high figures for battery life are if you keep it in your pocket).
I
The industry is ripe for disruption (Score:2)
Time for a Smartphone with a SD Card slot and a User-Replaceable Battery.
Or how about some battery solution that can be fully recharged in 5 seconds by putting a pair of holes on the
phone to attach tubes to for flushing out the battery with a fresh squirt of fully ionized electrolyte liquid?
Certainly small upgrades lately (Score:2)
I for one have a very old phone and am waiting with anticipation for the new models this year - knowing it is silly to buy today since the price for "last years" model is going down soon. However, I'm not sure I'll make it to the finish line as the battery is expanding and has literally pushed the glass off the front - it's holding on by rubber band and light leaks out the sides.
Innovation is possible. We're all jadded - we want something way-out there, space aged, something we can't imagine what it is.
Holo keyboard (Score:2)
--Give me a multi-touch holographic keyboard and a bigger display for SSH and X window compatibility, and you'll have my interest. Till then I'm stuck with my Wifi-only Nexus 7 and a separate Bluetooth keyboard.
Heresy!! (Score:2)
How would we keep this [tmgrup.com.tr] wonderful growth area?/p?
Re: writing for Motherboard (Score:2, Insightful)
But it's not entirely true. Last year, Apple came out with FaceID, a phone that has a unique screen shape, a phone with no home button that normalized gestures as the primary input method, and they raised the bar on prices and proved that people would pay for more features in the iPhoneX.
Oh, and it had more cameras, a faster CPU, a better battery, and all the rest of the usual stuff. And that was the most recent keynote. People are upgrading, which is why in its last earnings report, Apple posted record sa
Re: writing for Motherboard (Score:4, Informative)
OOOH ! a new shape ! Is this better than their famous rounded corners ?
OOOH ! Face recognition ! Something like Facebook and Google have had for years in their photo suites ?
New high price ! Now there is real innovation ! Proving that people are suckers !
Re: (Score:2)
But it's not entirely true. Last year, Apple came out with FaceID, a phone that has a unique screen shape, a phone with no home button that normalized gestures as the primary input method, and they raised the bar on prices and proved that people would pay for more features in the iPhoneX.
Oh, and it had more cameras, a faster CPU, a better battery, and all the rest of the usual stuff. And that was the most recent keynote. People are upgrading, which is why in its last earnings report, Apple posted record sales for the quarter, to the tune of 40+ million sales of iPhone, the new one (X) being the most popular.
Just because Samsung is in a me-too funk with the rest of the android ecosystem, doesn't mean the industry is done innovating. Evidence points out that Apple certainly isn't. Their last keynote was a smashing success.
Faceid is a feature of ios, not the iphone hardware. There's lots of new features in the latest Android, too.. but other than marketing hype, it has no place being discussed at a phone launch event.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just software it has its own specific sensor for it.
Re: (Score:2)
a phone that has a unique screen shape
If you're referring to the notch, Essential came out with that unique screen shape first.
Re: (Score:2)
This is of course if we suppose the benchmark is representative and is equally optimized on both platforms.
Any benchmark using 4 GB RAM would run faster on the Note 9.
At this point I'd take more RAM over a faster CPU.
Re: (Score:2)
AFAIK Apple removed the headphone jack with the excuse that it was too thick for their increasingly thin phones. Well that would have been as simple as replacing the 3.5mm plug with a 2.5mm plug.
Honestly I have better things to do than carry lithium ion batteries on my hears:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/... [engadget.com]
I think the next steps forward will come with flexible displays and improved printed circuit technologies or better circuit integration.
Re: (Score:3)
Is this post cleverly disguised as a troll to get yet more comments going about a anddroid/iphone religious war?
LOL.. Yea, I miss the Emacs / vi debate too. Nothing lasts forever, but many things just have the names changed when they get recycled....
Re:So the post is one long complaint about phones (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this post cleverly disguised as a troll to get yet more comments going about a anddroid/iphone religious war?
LOL.. Yea, I miss the Emacs / vi debate too. Nothing lasts forever, but many things just have the names changed when they get recycled....
Ya, but at least vi died a well deserved death of obscurity.
You know what I really miss on Slashdot? John C. Dvorak articles. Here's one: The Traditional Laptop is Dead [pcmag.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Today's PCs do not appear to out perform 11 year old ones if you go by screen size and processor clock speed. Assuming you can find the spec at PC world. "Ideal for general home use" is not a spec - it is a speck of information.
My Thinkpad T61 will be old enough to go to secondary school in September!
Re: (Score:2)