Product elitism is dumb.
It was fun before… like 20 years ago. Now it’s just… eh. Apple users don’t care about any of that. They want a device that “just works” and has their ecosystem. They’re trapped in it, but eh, what’s the point. They aren’t going to convert, and after converting some people you learn you just become tech support for them.
Seriously, does anyone think Apple users care about unlocked bootloaders and LDAC codecs? They want whatever the new iOS features are and their AirPods to work seamlessly.
I have an Android phone and an iPhone, and they both do pretty much the same thing. I can do some things with Android that iOS can’t, but it’s nothing an average user couldn’t do without, or even know they’re missing.
They’re also all made by heartless megacorps anyway. None of the companies are really ‘good’ just different forms of terrible.
I’m gonna sound like an Apple fanboy but, I would say Apple is the least worst of them all. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still terrible and all the shit they do but, they at least seem like an okayish company. But I still hate the whole closed ecosystem, and the stupid non-repairability but, almost every phone is now like that sadly.
Apple installed nets on the roofs of their factories because too many workers committed suicide jumping off them.
To be fair i do care quite a bit about that. Phones just make bad computers to me. Small screen and half is used by a keyboard.
They seem designed to frustrate me so “it just works (most times)” is the only way i can stomach owning one.
I have a dream where apple is forced to make ios fully open source and where screen/input devices can freely stream any system/OS from a dedicated server.
Iphones are so “cleverly” dumb it makes them usable.
I dunno, I had iPhone in my hand for app development, and I wanted to shoot it out of the cannon into the sun.
You have to understand the thinking process behind the UI, and it’s not ‘intuitive’ to everyone.
And I just couldn’t use it, it drove me crazy.
Switching OS is a pain. And when you aren’t using it as your daily driver, it just makes it worse. It took me a couple of weeks of exclusively using iOS for it to become comfortable. If I were using Android at the same time I doubt it would’ve ever stuck and I’d still be annoyed rather than quite comfortable and agile now.
Not being able to do some things is the biggest blocker.
Sideloading for instance. Photos disappearing inside the Photos app and not being in files is also weird. It just felt like I was a moron who couldn’t handle my own files.
where screen/input devices can freely stream any system/OS from a dedicated server.
I experimented with that, you can kinda do it with Android and an Android emulator. It was decent on the local network, ok with good cellular signal, and terrible when cellular wasn’t the greatest
I think even the average users are becomming aware because of how inferior iOS is. For example, all these things I’m going to mention below are doable on any Android (no root or bootloader required) since 2015 or even older versions while iPhone cant do shit:
iPhone cant temporarily disable apps, can’t prevent apps from using networks, cant disable system apps, cant open multi apps in mutli windows, cant location spoof, cant disable any system app or feature, cant customize themes or control anything in comparison.
Yes but 99.9% of users don’t care about any of that, that’s what others were saying in this conversation.
Just to bring my personal pov: I’m a tech guy and I couldn’t care less about any of those features. My phone is an appliance like my dishwasher, i only need it to do well the few things it does for me and the iPhone does them incredibly well. Productivity work and fun is done on real computers. I don’t care if android phones can purr or do somersaults.
If you like to do complicated stuff on your phone then those things matter to you and you will deem iOS inferior, and that’s fine. But realise you are planets away from the average user.
You can uninstall a lot of Apple’s apps that come preinstalled on an iPhone. Not all of them, but a surprising amount.
I’m using both iPhones and Android phones (vanilla and rooted), the only valid point you make is about using themes. I belong to to the 99,9% of users who don’t bother.
You forgot some important feature that Android phones have: They don’t pester you too much about privacy: they allow apps per default to use the GPS, message you, etc. Also they come with a lot of unneeded apps preinstalled, some of these being impossible to deinstall
Except when the shitty ecosystem fucks with everyone else. Eg. when trying to get files from an iOS device to another phone. You need to use 3rd party software, which is almost exclusively shit on iOS and (at least in my school) no iPad kiddie managed to use local file sharing websites. The real kicker? Sharing stuff from the teachers iPad to the students does not work reliably either. Never. 20 students, and Apple can’t manage to transport shit. We resorted to uploading it to Teams - so much for Apple’s nice ecosystem for easily sharing files, which ends up taking 15+ Minutes.
I‘ve used Android and iPhones for multiple years. Now I am using an iPhone and I am very happy. Main reasons are build quality and software. It just works. And the main advantage is primarily if you use multiple Apple devices. And since Android phones are expensive as fuck, too, I don’t care about the price anymore
They’re trapped in it
Oh my god, you really believe that.
They are as trapped as people are requiring Adobe products even though they fuck them as hard, or even harder, as apple.
Well I’m trapped in it (purchased software, connected devices). The fence is knee-high at most though.
They want a device that “just works” and has their ecosystem.
i have friends that struggle to pay rent and they’re forced to pay apple’s extortion-esque prices when something goes wrong or when purchasing their phones and equipment.
witnessing them suffer like this hits close to home for me because i grew up poor enough to ration out the government cheese & powdered milk along with asking extended family and begging neighbors for food so that we could stay alive until next payday and also because i’m tech savvy enough to understand how unscrupulously apple has behaved at creating this well designed trap of an ecosystem that’s actively easy to fall into and passively difficult to leave; locking my friends into a seeming perpetually repeating cycle of new iphones and government cheese.
i think that the icing on this shit-cake is that they’re all atleast vaguely aware that apple is screwing them over; but they still accept it because it either “just works” or it’s “all they know” and that blows my mind because 5-year-old-me HATED government powdered milk in my cereal enough to switch to oatmeal for breakfast if it were an option.
Weirdly, a lot of them seem to care a whole lot about the color of their speech bubbles in their sms app
I’ve seen people spend money on less I guess
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This isnt elitism, this is trying to show apple users they are being scammed. Sure, most of them are happy that way, but maybe some of us should have higher standards for ourselves
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Youre right, unfortunately the popular alternatives are not great, either.
So you dislike Apple, then? All they do is product elitism.
Yeah.
And yet every time Apple announce a new product or feature, Android fans are here with their ‘welcome to the past’ memes.
mAh is a stupid way to measure batteries. Wh is more relevant.
It also tells nothing about the efficiency of the device. You can add a 50kWh battery to a device but it doesn’t matter if it uses 2kWh at idle
I’d argue Wh is a complete waste. Just use J, which is the much more established unit.
I disagree. Joules are really hard to understand to laypeople. Watt-hours directly relate to the power of a device without conversion, and can even be really translated in terms of power bill.
3.6 megajoules? Eh, I guess that’s maybe a lot? Or not?
1000 watt-hours? Oh, like running a microwave for a whole hour? Dang that’s a LOT!
A 4Ah battery at 5V would be a 20Wh battery, drop the kilo. Electronics draw power at idle, not energy. 2kWh is meaningless without an idle duration. What are you saying?
Wh may be better for determining total energy storage across differing cell chemistry. mAh is standard for electronics and makes more sense at the design level as the battery voltage is chemistry dependent and known to the designer.
i don’t think any manufacturer publishes the voltage their devices run at, could be anywhere from 3.3 to 5V. so i don’t know how an end-user is supposed to compare battery sizes between devices.
They would also have to give current draw which isn’t really possible since each end user has different apps and behavior. So you more often get standby time or video playback time which are based on an “ideal” (probably non-bloated) clean OS. That’s more useful to an end user but also subject to marketing fudging the figures.
You can often look up the battery chemistry or use an app to access sensors btw.
At the end of the day battery capacity is only one factor of many in battery/charge life and is generally just marketing in the context of phones.
What? They draw power, not energy?
Energy is just the product of power and time. And just like amperage, the power draw of a device varies.
And this should be obvious, but what makes more sense to an electronics engineer doesn’t matter one bit to the end user. And the end user doesn’t know anything about milli-amperes or volts (except maybe their wall outlet voltage).
Yes power is a rate. As you said energy is the time integral of power. So it’s meaningless to state an “energy draw” without a duration implied or explicit. E.g. what does drawing 2kWh at idle even mean?
I agree about end user sentiment. I was trying to suggest as well. The only way to know which battery/phone is going to have a better battery life is to identify reviews with similar usage to your own or cross-compare metrics across devices you’re familiar with. In general, phone A with a 4000mAh battery won’t necessarily outlast phone B with a 4500mAh batt.
Well you don’t say it draws 2 kWh at idle. You say it draws 2 kW at idle. While that is incredibly inefficient, it means that for every hour the device is idle, it draws 2 kWh of energy.
Oh yeah battery size isn’t sufficient to fully gauge battery life. You need to know power draw to calculate that. And it’s good to get battery life ratings from reviews. Great. It helps a lot.
But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get good, comparable physical specs.
Kinda like processors. Gigahertz and core counts are far from telling you everything, but it doesn’t mean it should be abstracted into some weird unit.
Per the kW vs kWh, see top level reply.
Yeah a metric would be nice but it would need a standard test. That’s why idle time and video playback time makes a good amount of sense. But it’s not entirely clear how that would translate into usage for example in back country (where cell network drains power harder) or travel. So it’s not perfect. But it is probably the best measure guven hardware and usage vatiation. In any case it’s subject to marketing dudging the numbers in various ways.
you can optimize your android device battery in ways iphones cant. For example you cant disable or remove any system app consuming your battery in iPhones, but that is instantly doable in Androids
Try disabling google play services.
To be fair, you can do pretty much anything on a rooted Android.
But I wouldn’t say “instantly” since you’d have to root it first.
Settings, apps, Google play services, disable. Very easy. Nobody is saying “you can disable any app you want on android and your phone will magically just keep running perfectly as though it’s not dependent on it” just that it is possible to do so. Yes, I understand disabling Google play services will cripple many features. It is however possible, and you’ll still have a functional phone afterwards. The same cannot be said about iPhones.
You can take background permissions from system apps on iOS
iphones cannot temporarily disable apps, cannot prevent specific apps from accessing network, cant spoof live location sharing, cannot even multi-window several apps at once. those are 4 simple examples which I personally find very helpful which all androids can do for more than 10 years already while iphone cant.
I believe it actually has to do more with historical conventions in electronics or math. (This is just what I remember from heresay when I was in university as an electronics engineer), but there is also a mathematical reason.
history hearsay theory
The easiest way to measure power draw is by measuring current draw (voltage across a sense resistor) way back before there were affordable, quality ICs to measure voltage and current and pretty much joule count.
To add to this, current sensors are much easier and cheaper than test machines that do the calculations for you.
When lithium batteries and NiCAD batteries became standard compared to the earlier lead-acid (which are measured in Wh), they had an extremely flat voltage curve compared to lead acid. They could be considered to be at a constant voltage.
Now cheaper electronics were being made and if a designer wanted to know how long a battery would last, they could take the nominal battery voltage that the battery would be at a vast majority of the time, and they could just measure the current draw over a short time of the circuit, 10s of calculations, and you have your approximate battery life. There is a joke that engineers approximate π to 3.
Even designing electronics today, everything is specced to current draw, not power draw. ICs take X current in mA during Y operations. Your DCDC converters have Z quiescent currents and from there you can calculate efficiency. It is much easier to work in current for energy running through the circuit.
Math units
Ah is a measure of electrical charge.
Wh is a measure of energy
Batteries and capacitors hold charge so are measured in Ah, generators that power the grid generate energy and use of that energy is measured in Wh (it also isn’t a “constant” voltage source like batteries as it is AC)
The thing is, it does not matter how much charge the battery holds, it does matter how much energy it holds. Without knowing the Voltage the Ah is useless.
Sorry, but you are simply wrong. Simple math says that you are wrong.
You can buck or boost convert nearly any voltage to any other voltage.
Then measure the current output of the battery, boom you have battery life.
Also electrical charge can be used in many, many very valuable calculations without involving voltage at all.
Let’s take an arbitrary example with an arbitrary battery powered device. Let’s say the battery is somewhere between 1V and 10000000V. You can’t measure it because you might blow up your multimeter.
You know that the battery is 5000mAh. You can safely measure that all of the circuitry is draining 1000mA because sense resistors or contactless magnetic current measurements don’t have anywhere near dangerous voltages. You know that the battery will last about 5 hours. What is the voltage? Doesn’t matter.
Yes, charge and the flow of charge is not the entire story, but to say it is useless or does not matter is just a straight lie. It is fine if you don’t understand electronics, but then don’t spit out misinformation.
Yes Watt-hours would give a more complete picture to slightly tech-inclined consumers (makes 0 difference for 99% of consumers), but then it returns to not mattering because you can do the 5s calculation yourself because single cell lithium batteries are overwhelmingly 1 nominal voltage.
Literally 90% of calculations related to efficiency are JUST as valid using mA as W.
Your device uses 12mA at idle with a 5000mAh battery has the same relevance as your 18.5Wh battery using 45mW at idle.
I am ONLY speaking from a consumer position and for those Wh is more useful.
The consumer looks on device a and on device b and then determines how often he can recharge its device. With Ah you cannot do this unless you know the Voltage, with Wh you can make this decision without any further knowledge.
Yes this does not include battery life or conversion of efficiency. But a cunsumer measures nothing he looks at the lable.
It is fine if you don’t understand electronics, but then don’t spit out misinformation.
Btw. no need to insult me. I have never put out misinformation, I may have not stated enough that I am viewing this as a consumer.
Please explain to me what the difference is between battery life if you have a 5000mAh battery and an 18Wh battery.
Please state the calculation that you would use to “determine how often you have to recharge” that is valid for Wh and not for Ah. I am all for it. If you can cite a single source where the manufacturer gives a specification that would give battery life in Wh, and not in Ah, I will concede the entire argument and say that you were right the whole time in every comment make a note that you were right. Please show your calculation work.
The thing is, it does not matter how much charge the battery holds, it does matter how much energy it holds. Without knowing the Voltage the Ah is useless.
This is patently, objectively misinformation and completely false. That is a direct quote of your words, today. That was your last comment. I have already laid out multiple examples of how Ah is a useful measurement and what you can do with it. Therefore, it is misinformation. It is not disinformation, but stating untrue things as fact is misinformation, even if you have no idea you are wrong.
If you can cite a single source where the manufacturer gives a specification that would give battery life in Wh, and not in Ah, I will concede the entire argument and say that you were right the whole time in every comment make a note that you were right.
Basically every Laptop manufacturer.
Primary Battery
3-cell, 54 Wh, ExpressCharge™ Capable, ExpressCharge™ Boost Capable
Lol, you literally quoted me, didn’t actually read what you quoted, and then did something completely different.
Do you know that battery life ≠ battery capacity? That is not the same measurement as I have already tried to teach you 3 times.
Please state the calculation that you would use to “determine how often you have to recharge” that is valid for Wh and not for Ah.
What is its idle power draw? What is its power draw under load? Playing video? Sleep mode? That source gives nothing which determines battery life. All it gives is a nearly useless capacity number, just like all other manufacturers. So not valid at all. You still have exactly 0 more information about battery life.
If I am wrong, please state your calculations of what the battery life is with that 54Wh battery.
Your entire argument was “Ah is useless and Wh gives consumers the information to determine battery life” So go ahead, determine the battery life.
How is this any different at all if they said that it is a 5.8Ah battery? They don’t give any current or power draw.
As an exercise:
can you tell me the battery life difference between an arbitrary Laptop A with a 54Wh battery and Laptop B with a 27Wh battery?
Yes. I really wish all batteries used watt-hours. All it’d take would be for someone to design a phone that runs at a different voltage and their battery numbers would stop being comparable.
That’s why you watch performance tests on YouTube
I guess it comes down to whether we want to primarily communicate battery size in terms of charge (Coulombs = Amps * Time) or energy (Joules = Watts * Time).
The first metric you multiply by your operating voltage to get the second metric, whereas the second metric you have to divide by your voltage to get the first. Depends on what comes easier to most people.
With the increasing abundance of electric vehicles people are getting used to (k)Wh as the unit for battery size. It would make sense to use the same unit for smaller electronics as well, IMO.
That Sony retailed for $1300 when it launched
The iPhone goes for $800
The 13 Pro which released around the same time also had USB 3.2g2 and 120hz display. The Pros are clearly a better comparison.
That’s not to say Apple’s done good or anything, just a super expensive Android device vs the entry iPhone doesn’t seem like the best comparison
in 2021
The iPhone 13 was 2021.
op’s post was making the point that a lot of specs of the 2024 iphone 16 were already found on the 2021 sony xperia 1 III. I don’t really care about either, and you could use a lot of different 2021 android phones as a comparison. I don’t even think the comparison is entirely fair, but to ignore the fact that apple is clearly lagging behind android on certain aspects while hiding behind marketing is just misguided. Also, their phones are just overpriced because of price, and the innovation argument is getting old.
Thanks for the clarification!
goteeeem
Was gonna ss with the 16 as comparison but it doesn’t show pricing. 15 is still $eu600 or greater REFURBISHED. The xperia is $eu 400 REFURBISHED. (SS shows the cheapest on amazon for both.)So, iPhones retain their value better?
€
Ty
No one cares. Just use whatever phone you like. This post is extremely cringey.
use whatever phone you like
wrong. Use a fairphone
Buy a phone and keep it for as long as you can, and in general, just buy less phones. Don’t upgrade each year, that’s extremely stupid.
agree 100%. One way to buy less phones is to buy a repairable phone.
Repairability is definitely a factor, but don’t forget considering how long a company will support software updates for the device, how the device meets your needs no only today but 5-6-7 years from now, and your options for repurposing the device once it reaches EoL.
That won’t solve the software side. My previous phone was still working, but then Google fucked up the software. The first because it required some new ssl standard for all connections that the phone didn’t support. The other one because google added a whole lot of local Infos, pictures and features to the map that could not be disabled, therefore rendering my Navi to a unresponsive, slow and battery draining app I could no longer use. And then there where some apps that would not run because my os was to old.
True! fairphones are at least okay-ish there too. They actively cooperate with devs that make open source android OSs. But yeah Google still has way too much power in the entire android ecosystem. Many banking apps don’t work without Google Wallet, which doesn’t run on degoogled OSs.
My iPhone is repairable and supported until 2028. And because Apple is refusing to make more mid-size phones, I will be using this one until 2028 at minimum.
Lol “repairable” as long as it’s just the battery, can’t even change the screen without breaking functionality because “security” and you’re more likely to need to replace the screen than anything
I will never understand if some people are rich or simply stupid to buy a new phone every year, especially iphones since there is almost to nothing in terms of upgrades to the hardware.
Thought this exact thing
With T-Mobiles JUMP program you can just turn on your phone and they wipe out the remaining EIP in exchange for the new EIP each year (and for awhile every 6 months). If the new phone is not more expensive then your bill doesn’t change at all, if the new phone is cheaper then the bill goes down. They refurbish and resell the turned in phones, which also means the catch is you have to keep the phone in good condition.
I upgraded every year, then broke the tradition for my current longest streak of 2.5 years with the OnePlus 8T because no other phones excited me except for the Foldy phones, but at the time only the Samshit folds were available on TMO so I waited for the then rumored Pixel Fold. (OnePlus stopped selling in all Carrier stores in the US during this time, so noe OnePlus Open for me :( )
I have resumed the tradition as I am awaiting my delivery of my Pixel 9 Pro Fold tomorrow lol
It’s honestly been a fun journey that started with the Nexus One
Then to the Motorola Backflip (Cool phone, miss it dearly)
To one of the first phones with a fingerprint scanner (Motorola Atrix 4G, it was called a “gimmick that wouldn’t last” at the time LMAO)
To the Nexus 4
To one of the first waterproof phones in the US, my beloved Sony Xperia Z which then broke 6 months later (think I dropped it) which led to the Nexus 5
To my first and LAST Samshit phone the Galaxy S5 (Which I hated and upgraded away from as soon as I could)
To the Nexus 6 and then 6P when the “Phablet Wars” started,
To the OnePlus 3T (one of the only phones I bought outright)
To the second phone in the US to sport a “shatterproof” screen, the Moto Z2 Force (pretty fun phone, I tossed that thing around like crazy lol)
To the OnePlus 6T (Iirc the first phone they started selling in carrier stores) which led to the 7T and then 8T which led to the “Great Waiting” of 2.5 years for Google to hurry the fuck up with their Pixel Fold
To the Pixel Fold and now finally, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold
Lots of firsts, and experimentation in that list, lots of memories, root experiments, custom kernels, over clocking, pushed most of those phones to their limits in the year I had them. Hell, I would have probably been among the first with a Foldy phone if it wasn’t for the fact the first foldys were Samshits…
would be nice if they shipped outside of europe…
do they not? That is disappointing
Yes, good recommendation for a phone with a chip that was underpowered at release. Good luck for the next 7 years (amount of time you’ll get software updates on a flagship phone which costs as much as the fairphone and very rarely fails)
cringe
You seem to imply that to use a fairphone means using a phone you don’t like
good point
Correct, you could buy one fairphone for the price you’d pay for an iPhone over several years
The OP cares very much, for some reason.
not only OP, look at how many replies this has
Not even what it was once close to being unfortunately on the android side either.
Android users have also been losing features every year.
Flagships have seen the removal of:
-SD card expansion - what we could once count on to use phones like mirrorless cameras is now gone so they can rip you off for higher non expandable storage (128GB SD? $10. 128 -> 256 GB base? $200)
-
3.5mm - why buy cheap wired headphones when you can force people to spend 10x as much on wireless! Coming up with a solution to a problem they invented.
-
IR blaster - yes I used it since it worked on TV, receiver, DVD player, air conditioner, etc. Also super convenient if you have used stuff you bought without the remote
-
FM radio - yes I used it again since no data needed! Can also be fun to listen to campus radio or when travelling
-
notification led - The RGB led was pretty good when you had binds foe each app to know who texted you and why. Always on OLED draws substantially more power than the LED did
-
Always unlocked bootloaders - the custom ROM scene was pretty big at one point, but has shrunk as more manufacturs have begun locking bootloaders ‘for safety’
-
removable battery - phone no longer holding a good charge? $15 fix. Was also super convenient since I bought a spare that I kept charged and in my bag, meaning I could go 0% to 100% in 2 mins… better than fast charge!
List could go on for longer. Maybe it’s just nostalgia but I do miss some of those days.
This is what Android users get for pining after Samsung despite them being first in line after Apple to remove most of these. JFC they made a phone that exploded and they STILL lead the market.
(yes, I use android too)
JFC? I don’t know that brand.
They make jicken
no no, they come from jentucky
Jeantucky?
it has free children
yeah thats why we dont buy samsung. isnt it great that we can just not buy a flagship and just get a better phone for less money.
- Losing SD Expansion sucks; they should bring this back. Only reason they stopped this is greed.
- Yet another Nice-To-Have that is gone; but I’ve never seen any phones that weren’t Samsung with this. This one doesn’t really even affect waterproofing; or phone size so they have no excuse.
- I certainly miss this one; but the FM Radio was present back on my 2020 Moto G6 Power. It was present on my 2020 Moto Edge. This one got stolen from us because we lost the 3.5mm Jack too…they used the wire from your wired headphones as an FM Antenna lead.
- This is nice; but I ended up having to root my Nexus 6 to make this work properly and use all the colors the LED could perform. I don’t really miss it with Bezel-less phones.
- I hate that bootloaders are frequently locked; but it’s been less necessary to root Android as it’s improved over the years. There are still a few pain points; but not quite as many that require root.
- This is another case of greed. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have removable batteries for phones that aren’t IP67 or higher. If it ain’t waterproof; there’s no reason to seal the battery in…and replaceable batteries is a benefit when they accidentally ship units that become “spicy pillows” when the batteries swell due to bad batteries. It also simplifies disposal of phones; which don’t need disassembly if they’ve got a removable battery.
My old HTC one had an ir blaster. It was great.
The newest HTC phone had a headphone jack and expandable memory. Hopefully they keep going down that route and keep up the software support and I might have to consider them.
IR blasters are very common on Chinese brand phones even today. It’s easily the feature I miss most from my Huawei.
Ah; I don’t use Chinese branded phones at all. Never have.
Phones in the US market do not usually have them, unless they’re Samsung branded, and since I don’t include Chinese made phones in that “group”, what I’m saying is true for the US.
I’m based in the US and that’s where I used my Huawei phone until recently. OnePlus is among the manufacturers that still do IR blasters, and it looks like the OnePlus 12 has one and is easily purchased from their US store page.
As far as I can tell Samsung hasn’t released a phone with an IR blaster since 2015 either. Essentially, IR and Samsung hasn’t been a thing for a long time. If we are going by total volume then I would agree that the most common manufacturer in the US that has/had IR is Samsung. If we are going by new phones available today, then Samsung isn’t even in the conversation.
I’m not entirely sure what this comment is in relation to yours, I don’t think I disagree with you, I think I’m just adding some context or nuance.
- Losing SD Expansion sucks; they should bring this back. Only reason they stopped this is greed.
Fuck that noise. SD expansion was a terrible idea and I’m glad it’s gone. There are so many problems introduced by removable storage, it was a terrible PITA to deal with as a developer. One of Google’s dumbest ideas in early Android. Good. Fucking. Riddance.
I have honestly never heard this take but it makes sense. If you feel like elaborating more on why it’s a pain for developers I would be interested. But like, I also have google if you don’t feel like typing it all out lol.
Several things that made the SD card annoying to developers.
First: you could not install an APK on the SD card (probably due to DRM reasons). So if you had a larger app and you wanted users to be able to take advantage of the additional storage offered by the SD card you could not do this simply by having a large APK. (Note that this also was true for phones that had no removable SD card but had internal memory that presented itself as ‘external storage’).
On some phones the normal storage was so small that any larger app had to leverage the external storage to be able to even fit (we’re talking 10+ years ago). The way to do this was using so-called ‘expansion files’. These were additional data files, up to 2GB a piece, that could be installed on the external storage. These came with some additional difficulties.
- They were pure data files, so they could not contain any executable code. They were just big binary blobs, so none of the Android built-in mechanisms for loading assets depending on screen density, screen size and all that stuff worked. You had to do it all by hand.
- Since they were just binary blobs, you had to do any organization inside the files yourself. For example, they could be large ZIP files but you had to do all the ZIP handling yourself. Compared to normal APKs that are also ZIP files but where you can just load stuff from the APK archive and it’s all handled by the framework.
- The expansion files were separate from the APK. The Play Store did try to automatically download them if your app had expansion files, but this was not guaranteed. Furthermore, because they live on an SD card they could disappear at any moment. Your app needed additional logic to deal with this, code to re-download the files if they were missing, code to handle errors during the download, UI to show the download progress, etc.
Another problem with SD cards was the huge variety in quality of SD cards. Phones internal storage is reasonably fast, but you never know what kind of cheap-ass yanky SD card the users installed in their phone. This caused all kinds of performance problems in more demanding apps and as a developer you had to deal with the fall-out (bad reviews, support requests, etc.)
Thanks for all the info. That’s really interesting. I remember those phones that had like 2GBs of internal storage and 1.5GBs was taken up by the OS so you could have like 5 apps and 1 video on there before you needed an SD card. Those were a huge pain.
I also remember not being able to move certain apps to an SD card as it was restricted by the software. I used to wonder why, but that actually makes a lot of sense now lol.
Also, are you saying my SpamDisk 150TB SD card I got on wish for $0.93 is not good enough for you? Elitist.
Uh, No. Hell to the fucking no. Bring back SD expansion. Treat it like the data storage device it was.
Your beefs with Google are misplaced; because they were trying to mess with what folders were used; and with trying to protect user privacy because applications were misusing storage to violate their user’s privacy.
Yeah @PM_ME_SNEKS_IN_HATS@lemmy.world - this is a first! Also curious to hear more.
I’m conviced LG (do they even still make phones?) and Samsung removed the IR blaster so you connect their ACs, TVs and other shit to the internet
Bought a new phone and still find myself searching for the audio plug every time i pick up my headset…
-
As a person who has worked in telecom for over 15 years…shhhhhhhhh…
You like android better? Cool. You like IOS better? Cool. They do essentially the same thing in different ways with different pros and cons. What works best for one person may not be for someone else.
In 2024 if you’re arguing on the internet (or perhaps worse, in real life) about which phone is better you need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and take an assessment of your priorities.
Also, because I love downvotes apparently, this also applies to windows/linux/mac OS. Unless I’m on my Mac like “Gee I sure wish this was more open source, if only there was an alternative.” I don’t need you telling me to switch to linux bro.
It’s a relevant topic to talk about. You wrote so much yet said nothing except I don’t like seeing people talk down to apple users. Which i agree with a little but people will talk about relevant things like smart phone choice whether you like it or not.
Also have you tried switching to linux?
What about the need to tell others how to and what to discuss in their free time with their social circle? Can I do that?
Someone should saw off the legs of the techbros that came up with the idea of removing the headphone jacks from phones. Just like the headphone jacks, legs are technologically “superseeded” by cars and electronic wheelchairs.
Most people don’t care, don’t use it and it saves cost and thickness. I think they are smarter than you on this.
You are not their target audience, they know there’s not enough of you for it to make a difference.
It saves an amount of money so minuscule it literally makes no difference.
As for thickness, the iPhone 15 is 7.8 mm thick. You cannot in good faith believe that a 3.5 mm headphone jack can’t fit in it.
Wouldn’t they have to sacrifice like three* minutes of battery life or something though? Everything packed sooo tightly.
*or 10 or 30, somebody here probably can make a really good educated guess
Depending on the internal design of the phone, maybe.
But batteries are rectangular and they can’t put them EVERYWHERE. There are places (such as near the USB port) where you can’t really put battery no matter what because there have to be things that would interfere with the rectangular battery.
So it might have an effect, but not necessarily, depending on design, and it might be smaller than you’d think.
Phones are so thin now that people are crying back the thicker ones…
Wouldn’t be surprised if they have trackers on the iPhone to survey if ppl use the headphone jack 😂
Think they do it to save like 10 pence on tens of thousands of phones, but that’s what happens when you are legally required to chase profit and the only way to do it is to enshitefy your product
And then you can sell USB-C -> Jack converters (which break after a while - I’ve dismantled one for recycling for my Raspberry Pi, later I might make one epoxy potted for my phone), easy to lose wireless earbuds, etc.
If the fucking usb c audio was at least consistent, but no, the dongles are different and the phones are different, good luck trying to not blow up ypur phone by buying the wrong accessory (I blame the spec, not that I’ve read it)
Best if you get one of those USB DACs. Those even work on a PC with a converter.
They did it to improve water resistance and to sell the more expensive wireless earpods.
which don’t really matter unless the difference allows your phones to survive a full cycle in a washing machine. So far many phones which removed the headphone jack still does not.
That is an added benefit or apple and google
I’ve literally never used the headphone jack on a phone in 10 years.
And I wonder how many would still want it back if they realized the phones then were bricked after getting submerged in water like they used to.There are many phones with a headphone jack that have an IP68 rating which invalidates your whole point. If the headphone jack was so compromising then Apple would have needed to remove the charging port as well.
many phones with a headphone jack that have an IP68 rating which invalidates your whole point
Typing on one right now.
A sick and twisted part of me wants to see charging ports removed too. Every port! Make it IP69+ compliant. Maybe then the careless kids I know might keep a device alive for more than a year. Ultimately all that would do is barely solve one problem and introduce a whole lot of other problems.
Phones became waterproof before removing headphone jacks became a trend. You’re talking nonsense.
Headphone jacks can be waterproofed, manufacturers are just lazy.
About 10 years ago I used headphones daily, now I do so just frequently enough that it’s irritating to realize I need to purchase a dongle just to do so and go “well I guess I’m not listening to music/podcasts right now”
What I learned when working for a phone manufacturer is that the headphone jack usage varies by product segment. Cheaper phone users use the headphone jack far more frequently than premium phone users, so they’d keep it on the budget models but drop it on the higher end models. They also did similar with NFC and wireless charging which was interesting…
Most people don’t use them and never did, all the people downvoting are just salty because they’re not the target audience.
People are downvoting because the comment is flat-out wrong.
There is no right or wrong, it’s all subjective opinion.
Nope.
if they realized the phones then were bricked after getting submerged in water like they used to.
This is not subjective, it’s objectively false.
it objectively depends on the design of each individual phone
So we agree, you were wrong about it “all being subjective opinion.”
I’ve literally never used the headphone jack on a phone in 10 years
We understood that as soon as you said “literally”.
I’ve not used on*star, a fire extinguisher or a #2 pencil in a while either, but I bet they’re important. Beware false consensus.
I do. I don’t use wireless headphones, and the dongle sucks. And hate having earbuds with a proprietary jack I can’t use elsewhere. Plus I used my iPhone as a synth/drum machine and needed to charge and play at the same time.
I don’t remember the last time I needed/missed 3.5mm
I wouldn’t mind if they replaced TRRS with a better connector. I get that the jack is a large part and it’s difficult to seal against water ingress. The wiper contacts on it are also unreliable, and the plug doesn’t release well when your cord snags.
Multiplexing headphones with my one and only charging port is absolutely the worst possible answer.
(Did i forget to mention that I want it to be an open connector? One that any vendor can make without Apple’s permission?)
(Did i forget to mention that I want it to be an open connector? One that any vendor can make without Apple’s permission?)
Apple ditched Lightning last year. All iPhones from the 15 forward are USB-C.
Lightning and USB-C are both equally terrible headphone plugs.
Sure, in that the port is far more versatile than it needs to be for audio output. I’m not arguing otherwise.
Meh, I haven’t really missed it as much as I expected. The one and only (pretty minor in my case) issue I’ve run into is not being able to charge the phone while connected to the car’s stereo. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if you could just use a usb-c splitter to do that.
Fair point, at least they should give us two USB-C ports, at least on the flagship models.
I did a arm chair calculation and the money saved on not having a headphone jack at 0.10pence per peice, and found that they didn’t spend 200,000 quid on headphone jacks. (I read that since iphones after 6 don’t have it, so that’s 28 models of phone, that’s millions of phones, so I guessed 2million phones multiplied by 0.10 which gave me 200,000.)
Wow, to see an Xperia phone being used as an example instead of a bloody Samsung.
Good day to be an Xperia user.
If they had used a Samsung, half the android’s features would be missing.
Xperia is in my opinion the only phone left worth buying. It has all the bells and whistles you expect from a flagship phone + a headphone jack, SD card slot and very good camera.
I love being able to manually do what ever I want in the camera app and having the camera button is just nice.
Had the Xperia Z3 back in the day after my beloved Sony Ericson Xperia Play died. Loved both phones. Switched to Samsung for a few years and are now back to Sony (Xperia 1 IV) since 2023. Words can’t describe how happy I am being back. :D
I miss my Xepria Z from 2013 :( one of the first waterproof phones in the US and I loved the novelty of taking it into the shower LMAO
What you doin’ with your phone in the shower >.>
I love Z3. I still mourn the loss of it to this day.
However, I must admit that Xperia quality hasn’t been the greatest in the recent years, with the light lines issue plaguing the 5 series from mk II onwards, and now the 1 VI has similar issues too.
What do you mean with “light lines issue”? I haven’t had any major problems with my Xperia so far. Sometimes it reboots after being on for a few months, but that’s about it.
This one. My 5 mk II is completely unusable due to this. It’s a well documented issue on the Xperia sub on reddit.
Do they offer that in Vader?
If you consider pink close enough to red.
Oh wow that sucks. :( Haven’t seen that yet, but damn shame that it is common issue.
Does it appear after some time, or mostly DOA? Does Sony replace the broken devices?
It appears after some time. And no, Sony doesn’t acknowledge this issue, so you have to pay out of pocket if your warranty is over to replace the phone.
Oh wow that’s really shitty.
Thanks for the info! :)
Dunno about other Androids, but just hitting the “power” (or wake or whatever it is) button 3 times on the Pixel pulls up the camera app. Even if the phone is currently locked. I think you can set it up so one of the physical buttons takes a photo as well but not 100% sure.
Yeah, the Sony phones do that as well. The special part of the camera button is that it acts like one on a proper camera. If you half press it (you can feel a slight change in resistance when you hit the spot) it engages the focus and then you can press it fully to take the picture.
I was able to program the Bixby button on my Samsung S10+ to take pictures as well, but it lacks the half press feature.
Ya hear that?!
DOZENS!
How does this belong in memes??? thete isn’t a single meme able thing in this image, it’s not funny or interesting either. It’s brain dead fanboy fullshit, as many in the comments have shown.
Lame as fuck
S24, Pixel 9, iPhone 16: 7 years of is support
Sony: 2 years
Confirmed: my six year old iPhone gets the new version of iOS this month. Runs amazingly. Battery lasts all day still. No complaints.
Kernel source code released so you can support it indefinitely yourself?
Only Sony.
Google and Samsung do this too
But good luck maintaining the kernel by yourself.
It’s actually 4 years now. Still terrible for the price, of course.
I would have shared the hell out of this meme on Facebook when I was ~18 years old.
Why doesn’t this post mention the price? It is an extremely important factor.
Imagine thinking about price on a new iPhone, app charge a lifetime savings for the shitest phone
Buddy if you think the entry iPhone is expensive you should take a look at the price of an Xperia flagship
This misses the point completely, I have tried both Android and iOS in the last five years, and to me iOS is just better, it works like I want it to.
The point is that Apple pushes out phones with outdated hardware at a premium price. That point is well illustrated here.
I am confused, this is the second reply I get on a comment I deleted just after posting it.
I did so as I realized that I didn’t have the energy to debate my smartphone preference with random people online
By adding ‘this misses the point’ at the beginning you yourself made this a debate about the post, not your preference. You can spend whatever you want on stuff you want, but many people arent aware that apple is charging them twice what the device is worth, just because of their monopoly, and that was the point.
Correct, which is why I regretted posting it as soon as i did.
It doesn’t look deleted to me.
How would one go about reading the logs on how federation worked in this case? I’m thinking lemmy.ml either missed it did not honor the delete from lemmy.zip
Maybe whatever app you’re using isn’t really deleting comments? It’s still showing up fine for me and gaining votes.
It looks deleted to me, I am using Voyager when I am on my phone, so a well known app, I suspect that the comment I wrote made it to the sync queue, I then immediately deleted the comment, which deleted it on lemmy.zip but didn’t clear the comment from the sync queue, but did generate a delete request to be synced.
Then as a sync request probably would be smaller than a comment and probably has a higher priority than a comment, it got processed before the comment was posted, creating the situation we have.
I have no indepth understanding of lemmy, but as an IT guy, this makes sense
This is happened to me before. I’ve noticed a delay in the federation such that sometimes comments recently deleted will still get votes or replies for a time. I speculate it’s because the deletion doesn’t get processed until the comment has finished being shared with other instances.
outdated hardware
I think they prefer the term “time-tested.”
I switched to iOS a few years back because I tried it for a week when my Pixel died, maintained a pros/cons list, and decided iOS works better for me.
The most eye-opening part switching “sides” is how cringe these types of Android users are. Just use what works for you and enjoy life.
I like the idea of Android stealing enough market share that Apple is forced to be more open.
The one that really blew my mind was the Find My network. Android tried to cooperate with Apple, and Apple stalled and dragged it out until Android gave up.
The effect was that Android got “Find My” about a year later than it would have otherwise, and the networks won’t be compatible. But isn’t Find My network compatibility relatively better for Apple? At worst there are places where Android and Apple devices split market share evenly. In most of the world, Android has the larger network/market share. Apple was willing to sacrifice that win to stall Android rolling out a major feature for a year.
Exactly, which is why I deleted the comment just after I made it as I realized I didn’t have the energy to debate the issue
What point?
You’re lucky because, if it didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to change a single thing.
Ah, but for only $200 more you can get USB 3.2, which is (…checks notes…) seven year old technology 😂 😭
You mean like, with a cable? Eewwwww gross!
This but unironically. Can’t remember one time when I needed or even thought about using a cable in my iPhone tenure.
