# New Razr is garbage



## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

It's totally a failure of phone. Here's why

*1. Name*

Why is it called just Razr? People are always angry when they make no sense in naming, what Motorola did? They made no sense and that's why it's just Razr. Not Razr 2, Razr Revo or Sharpr, just Razr. 

*2. Ungodly ugliness*

OG Razr was a cool phone back in the day, it had a nice metal construction, blue backlight, was super thin, light and small. What is this Razr? Ugly lump of plastic. At over 200 grams, it's really heavy phone. With 6.2 inch screen it's really big. Bezels are pretty bad and that chin is just something that should be redesigned. Where did the metal construction and cool aesthetics go? Looks like they went straight into trash can.

*3. Is that a home button?*

Fuck you, it's not. They put a fingerprint sensor on the chin. Let's just say that it's ugly and stupid trend from 2016-2017, that should have died. But no, of course some retards had to revive it. Why they just didn't put it into Moto logo or in screen? I dunno.

*4. It's already old*

Let's see, it has Snapdragon 710, 6GB RAM, 128 GB of storage, 16MP single camera, 2510 mAh battery. Well, it looks competitive against Galaxy S6. It's only late by 4 years. His old cousin Motorola Droid Turbo actually beats it and that was made in 2014. You just can't say no to 3900 mAh battery and same specs.

*5. It's a corded phone*

2510 mAh battery. It's an antiquated relic that I never thought that we will see in the market again, just 2510. It's a norm to have at least 3500, but 2500 is antiquated. Okay, maybe it's not a corded phone, it's portable phone. You can bring it from one charger to another, looks pretty useful.

*6. It's not going to last*

With sharp design of original Razr it looks like decent construction went into garbage too. Screen already lifts off in the middle of phone and looks like plastic wrap. Compare that to original and new Razr looks terrible. It doesn't have any strength. If something goes under screen and lifts it off, it's fucked. Just dust may be too much for it. We already know what happened to Fold.

*7. Overpriced budget phone*

1600 dollars, that's what they ask for this sad mediocrity. 300 dollars should have been its real price and 400 is already a stretch. But 1600 for such garbage? It makes even iPhone looks like a budget phone and it's just a Motorola.

*8. Do you even Razr?*

1600 dollars, okay let's forget that for a minute and think if it does anything unique and worthwhile that no other phone does not? Well, it flips. That's it. It doesn't offer any additional features. That fat chin could have been used for something more and yet it wasn't. Software is just standard Android affair. Hardware sucks.

*9. Was Razr ever cool?*

Back then we had Nokia communicators (9000, N900, E90), Nokia N93 (camcorder phone), Nokia Sliders (3600), Nokia swiwels (7373), Nokia console (N-Gage), Nokia mp3 player (7380, 7280), Nokia rubik cube (3250), Nokia wtf (6800, 7600), LG rotators (V9000, U900), Sony Ericsson unfolders (P900, P910). So many cool, outlandish, completely ridiculous and at the same time actually good designs. And Razr had to co-exist with all of them. So, was it ever special? No, it wasn't. Sliders were better than flippers and Sony Ericssons were phones to get for anyone into music. Razr only looked kinda nice, but beyond that it was pretty average phone of the time. It's really sad that only such boring designs are remembered and now hyped so much. 

*10. Bezels*

Okay, they aren't huge, but they are so visible and they don't blend nicely with the rest of the phone at all. That's why they look so spartan. And chin... 


I'm pretty convinced that Motorola heads were pretty delusional about making Razr, they only managed to tarnish Moto's reputation with their amateurish actions. That's not what even a mediocre phone of the past deserves. It's just distasteful.


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## Scoobyscoob (Sep 4, 2016)

I never had a Razr, so I'm not nostaglic about the new one, but I think the phone is fine except for the price. You'd have to be on crack to spend that much money on a nostalgic piece of tech. A piece of tech that definitely won't hold its value and has much worse specs than the latest iPhone or high end Samsung/Android.

Maybe I'd feel differently (but $1,600 for mid-range specs, probably not by much) if I had an original Razr, but I remember really liking candy bar phones like the Blackberry Pearl and the LG Chocolate at the time. Although I guess the Chocolate is technically a slider but looks more like a candy bar than actual candy bar phones. :laughing:


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Scoobyscoob said:


> I never had a Razr, so I'm not nostaglic about the new one, but I think the phone is fine except for the price. You'd have to be on crack to spend that much money on a nostalgic piece of tech. A piece of tech that definitely won't hold its value and has much worse specs than the latest iPhone or high end Samsung/Android.


Imagine if Nokia 3310 was 500 dollars instead of 30. And I don't think that Razr should be compared to high end phones. It's barely better than Galaxy A40, which costs 220 dollars. A50 for 300 is already better than Razr. Compare it to cheaper Oneplus and it's DOA. Due to such abysmal specs it shouldn't be compared to anything mid-range or high end, it's a budget phone inside with massively inflated price.

And I don't think that lowering price would solve the problems entirely. Chin is still very bulky, screen is still a reliability concern, battery is abysmal. It's hard to find modern phones with anything less than 3000 mAh. And it's still ugly. No price cut can fix that.




Scoobyscoob said:


> Maybe I'd feel differently (but $1,600 for mid-range specs, probably not by much) if I had an original Razr, but I remember really liking candy bar phones like the Blackberry Pearl and the LG Chocolate at the time. Although I guess the Chocolate is technically a slider but looks more like a candy bar than actual candy bar phones. :laughing:


Sliders were cool and Chocolate BL40 was stunning phone for its time. Nokia 3600 Slide was a powerhouse, it featured 3.2 Megapixel camera (which was really good), aluminum chassis, ran 3D games well, supported any app imaginable, had 512MB onboard storage with memory card slot, so it was a perfect mp3 player replacement. And it wasn't expensive. Pretty much a smartphone without touchscreen. It was actually better than iPhone 2G in many ways.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Gotta add more info on *Naming* stupidity

Turns out that there was Razr V3 in 00s. It was the original. Then there was Razr V3i. Then next generation came out with Razr2 phones and models were V8, V9, V9m. Then there was asian domestic release of Razr3 line with only V13 model. Then Motorola entered age of Android and yet again it was new wave of Razrs. There was Razr Droid (XT 912), Razr XT 910, Razr M, Droid Razr Maxx. Does your head hurt already? And these are probably not all Razrs too, there could be some models that I missed. Like it wasn't already confusing enough, they called their new Razr just Razr, yet people were talking that it would be Razr V4:
https://pcsolutionhd.com/motorola-razr-v4/

In fact concept had way better specs and far more reasonable price. I just think that it would have been a great time for Moto to just drop Razr name and leave it behind as memory of flip phones and announce that they are entering a new generation for real with their new Moto phone

P.S.: Found more models. MS500, V3re, V3r/t, V3im, V3c, V3m, V3x, M702iG, V3xx, Razr Maxx Ve, MS500W, VE20, V6.


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## Scoobyscoob (Sep 4, 2016)

The red spirit said:


> Imagine if Nokia 3310 was 500 dollars instead of 30. And I don't think that Razr should be compared to high end phones. It's barely better than Galaxy A40, which costs 220 dollars. A50 for 300 is already better than Razr. Compare it to cheaper Oneplus and it's DOA. Due to such abysmal specs it shouldn't be compared to anything mid-range or high end, it's a budget phone inside with massively inflated price.
> 
> And I don't think that lowering price would solve the problems entirely. Chin is still very bulky, screen is still a reliability concern, battery is abysmal. It's hard to find modern phones with anything less than 3000 mAh. And it's still ugly. No price cut can fix that.


Thinking back, I seem to recall some no-name Chinese company selling a phone with a foldable screen with an MSRP of $1200 and the Samsung Galaxy Fold's MSRP is $2000. A Razr with a foldable screen for $1600 splits the difference so I don't have a problem with the pricing compared to other phones with a foldable screen. I just wouldn't pay close to $2k for a phone, even if it does have a folding screen.

Well, I think the new Razr is going to sell based on how it looks and how thin it is with its folding screen. I wouldn't buy one because like I said, I'm not nostalgic for a new, folding screen Razr, but I'm sure there's a market for it and those people aren't really going to care about the specs. They're going to care about the way it looks while folded and it looks a lot like the old Raze when it is folded.



The red spirit said:


> Sliders were cool and Chocolate BL40 was stunning phone for its time. Nokia 3600 Slide was a powerhouse, it featured 3.2 Megapixel camera (which was really good), aluminum chassis, ran 3D games well, supported any app imaginable, had 512MB onboard storage with memory card slot, so it was a perfect mp3 player replacement. And it wasn't expensive. Pretty much a smartphone without touchscreen. It was actually better than iPhone 2G in many ways.


I was referring to the original Chocolate. The iPhone was already out for 2 years by the time the Chocolate Touch was released. I don't know much about the Nokia 3600, but I remember the Nokia E90 being cool but I think the iPhone gobbled up the market for Sidekick style phones. 

I did have a Blackberry Pearl for a while and I really liked that phone for its size and texting capability. But smartphones pretty much did away with the candy bar phone too. I'm not sure how much of a market there is for one, and I'm sure Blackberry won't do it, but a quad folding phone that holds like a candybar phone but can fold out into a mid sized smartphone would be hype, imo. roud:


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Scoobyscoob said:


> Thinking back, I seem to recall some no-name Chinese company selling a phone with a foldable screen with an MSRP of $1200


Huawei?



Scoobyscoob said:


> the Samsung Galaxy Fold's MSRP is $2000. A Razr with a foldable screen for $1600 splits the difference so I don't have a problem with the pricing compared to other phones with a foldable screen. I just wouldn't pay close to $2k for a phone, even if it does have a folding screen.


I have one question, what foldable screen does better than regular screen? I see no point in them yet. Motorola read my mind from half year ago and finally did something to reduce the size of phone, when it's folded, but apart from that foldable screens add zero functionality and nearly zero convenience. It's more like because they could do, not because it's actually better.




Scoobyscoob said:


> Well, I think the new Razr is going to sell based on how it looks and how thin it is with its folding screen. I wouldn't buy one because like I said, I'm not nostalgic for a new, folding screen Razr, but I'm sure there's a market for it and those people aren't really going to care about the specs. They're going to care about the way it looks while folded and it looks a lot like the old Raze when it is folded.


At 1600 dollars it's a luxury device, which normies can't afford. Sure there is market for it at 300 dollars, but not at 1600. And the fact that it's barely competitive in 300 dollar market is a final kick in the nuts. Why pay 1600, when phones for 300 are better in many ways.





Scoobyscoob said:


> I was referring to the original Chocolate.


I know, I mentioned that nad later touch model. Both were cool.



Scoobyscoob said:


> The iPhone was already out for 2 years by the time the Chocolate Touch was released. I don't know much about the Nokia 3600, but I remember the Nokia E90 being cool but I think the iPhone gobbled up the market for Sidekick style phones.


It's really weird that iPhone took off, it was beaten by countless cheaper and more capable devices and it initially was very lacking in software. It wasn't a serious competitor for any kind of power user. Where I live, nobody ever talked, mentioned or heard about iPhone until late 3GS era. And even then it was a weird thing to buy. And the fact, that current Youtubers hype the old 2G is mind blowing. It was not a great phone. For years you couldn't even install apps, meanwhile any other phone offered that. It really should have flopped hard, and somehow it didn't. I think that they may have been selling it at loss for some time.




Scoobyscoob said:


> I did have a Blackberry Pearl for a while and I really liked that phone for its size and texting capability. But smartphones pretty much did away with the candy bar phone too. I'm not sure how much of a market there is for one, and I'm sure Blackberry won't do it, but a quad folding phone that holds like a candybar phone but can fold out into a mid sized smartphone would be hype, imo. roud:


What if I told you, that they still make Key 2, an Android phone with physical keyboard. And it's been out for years now and it wasn't unreasonably expensive.


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## Scoobyscoob (Sep 4, 2016)

The red spirit said:


> Huawei?
> 
> I have one question, what foldable screen does better than regular screen? I see no point in them yet. Motorola read my mind from half year ago and finally did something to reduce the size of phone, when it's folded, but apart from that foldable screens add zero functionality and nearly zero convenience. It's more like because they could do, not because it's actually better.


No. It was some no named company.

A smaller form factor for easy one handed use. Plus it feels better to hold onto something rectangular than a flat slab. Those are two benefits to folding phones.



The red spirit said:


> At 1600 dollars it's a luxury device, which normies can't afford. Sure there is market for it at 300 dollars, but not at 1600. And the fact that it's barely competitive in 300 dollar market is a final kick in the nuts. Why pay 1600, when phones for 300 are better in many ways.


$1600 isn't unaffordable if you don't spend money on a lot of other things. I dropped $1k on my old Product Red iPhone 7 and didn't think twice about it. So someone who misses their old Razr and has the money could pay the cost and be happy with it. I also doubt the Razr is going to sell anywhere near its MSRP as Motorolas sell at pretty good discounts when they've been out for a while.



The red spirit said:


> I know, I mentioned that nad later touch model. Both were cool.
> 
> It's really weird that iPhone took off, it was beaten by countless cheaper and more capable devices and it initially was very lacking in software. It wasn't a serious competitor for any kind of power user. Where I live, nobody ever talked, mentioned or heard about iPhone until late 3GS era. And even then it was a weird thing to buy. And the fact, that current Youtubers hype the old 2G is mind blowing. It was not a great phone. For years you couldn't even install apps, meanwhile any other phone offered that. It really should have flopped hard, and somehow it didn't. I think that they may have been selling it at loss for some time.
> 
> What if I told you, that they still make Key 2, an Android phone with physical keyboard. And it's been out for years now and it wasn't unreasonably expensive.


Cellphones have always been kind of status symbols and fashion statements. iPhones sold on being cool and innovative with a great UI. It was also really expensive and distinctive compared to all other phones at the time.

Eh, the Pearl was the first and last Blackberry phone I've had. I got rid of it when I found out that most IT departments didn't want to support the Pearl and nowadays it's pretty much all BYOD so there's no need to buy a Blackberry anymore for better integration.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Scoobyscoob said:


> A smaller form factor for easy one handed use. Plus it feels better to hold onto something rectangular than a flat slab. Those are two benefits to folding phones.


All phones are rectangular and flat. Folding phones are super thick. From what you are telling, iPhone SE would be a better choice if they are still making it.




Scoobyscoob said:


> $1600 isn't unaffordable if you don't spend money on a lot of other things. I dropped $1k on my old Product Red iPhone 7 and didn't think twice about it. So someone who misses their old Razr and has the money could pay the cost and be happy with it. I also doubt the Razr is going to sell anywhere near its MSRP as Motorolas sell at pretty good discounts when they've been out for a while.


Just to put in perspective what 1600 dollars can buy you:
1 years rent of flat
a decent used car + repairs
a high end PC
Over 1000 (2L) bottles of Mountain Dew
64 original Moto Razrs
One semester of university in Europe
1 10th of flat
More than 6 years of non-stop riding in public transport (more than 13 if you get discount)
A decent holiday to foreign country
More than 50 dinners at high end restaurant
80 books of your choice
40 or more PS4 games
Over 50 blu-ray movies
a high end 4K TV

No matter how I look at that, spending 1600 on a phone isn't worth it. Even more so on just mediocre phone. Remember PS1 classic, it was retailing at 100 dollars, but it was pretty shit at what it did. So it didn't sell well and even at 25 people are unwilling to buy them. 

I could critique you for overpaying for iPhone 7 (it never cost 1000), but everyone does mistakes.




Scoobyscoob said:


> Cellphones have always been kind of status symbols and fashion statements. iPhones sold on being cool and innovative with a great UI. It was also really expensive and distinctive compared to all other phones at the time.


Innovative? It's not April fools, man. Not a single Apple device has ever been innovative. They are just good at reviving flops of the past into successful products. Was it cool? Maybe somewhat in USA, but at the time you really were a weirdo to get iPhone 2G. It would have seemed crazy to pay that much for just a phone. There wasn't anything really exciting about iPhone back then. It didn't have apps, it was crazy expensive, camera couldn't record videos, camera sucked, lacked many features, had crappy screen, had big battery (which arguably brought nothing as bigger screen ate it up faster), had interesting input device, had an interesting UI.


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## Anunnaki Spirit (Mar 23, 2018)

As for phones go I am a simple guy with only a blackberry and it didn't cost no where near as much as these high end phones go for these days. For that kind of money one could buy a second hand car.


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

[sighs] how many times must a tell you if it ain’t a apple product you are still in the Stone Age :laughing:

And I’m a boomer for fucks sakeh:


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

VinnieBob said:


> [sighs] how many times must a tell you if it ain’t a apple product you are still in the Stone Age :laughing:
> 
> And I’m a boomer for fucks sakeh:












I dunno, I don't want to use something like that.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Anunnaki Spirit said:


> As for phones go I am a simple guy with only a blackberry and it didn't cost no where near as much as these high end phones go for these days. For that kind of money one could buy a second hand car.


Same here. I never paid more than 300 Euros for phone. In fact I think I failed with upgrading my phone. I had Note 3 Neo, an unnoticed beast. It was a great phone and was 5 year old already. Surprisingly, it was still really fast, battery held charge pretty long, camera was good too. Once something broke in it, it started to discharge like mad, so naturally I replaced battery. It did nothing, so I thought it was a time to finally replace that phone. So after lots of research I ended up getting Galaxy A50 and it was actually a bit underwhelming. UI wasn't as good as on Note, dimensions are too big and after months of usage I still don't find them comfortable (I could use Note with one hand), rear camera quality is actually worse than Note's, because of stupid oversharpening (sadly this same oversharpening is evident even S10's photos, so paying more doesn't fix that problem) and exposure blow out plus some aggressive compression (Note's photos took up around 5 megabytes of space, Note's uncompressed photos took up around 25-30 megabytes of space and A50's photos use only 2 megabytes), I still see no point in abandoning of 16:9 ratio screens, audio dac is surprisingly worse too, removal of touch buttons is step backwards, Android now is hogging even more storage and RAM, yet doesn't do anything more than it did in Android Lollipop days. The only real advantages of A50 is bigger battery, better permission management, more power saving features, it works, it has more up to date Android version and ultra wide lenses are fun. But other than that it feels like a waste of my money. Both phones at their time were worth around 300 Euros, yet somehow old Note managed to be much better. Now I think that I could have got A40, saved about 100 and got nearly the same device, but oh well. Especially when phones this cheap can do anything imaginable, I really don't understand people saying that it's worth to pay more than 300. Maybe reasonable budget could be stretched to 500, but certainly not more. Times, when 300 bought you something barely usable (remember Galaxy Ace, HTC Wildfire or Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Pro?) are long gone. 

And my Note was really no longer worth using, but not because it got slow. From years of use AMOLED screen had some natural burn in, also my fingers polished certain parts of screen, so they weren't slippery anymore. 16GB of storage was claustrophobic with huge updates coming nearly everyday. USB port had some obvious wear. Surprisingly all apps are still supported on it and all of them work great (no lagging or crashing). If it didn't start to malfunction, I would have used it for another year or two. There truly isn't anything it couldn't do.


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## Scoobyscoob (Sep 4, 2016)

The red spirit said:


> All phones are rectangular and flat. Folding phones are super thick. From what you are telling, iPhone SE would be a better choice if they are still making it.


Weird that you didn't understand what I was saying. lol A bar feels better to hold than a flat slab. Does that make more sense now?



The red spirit said:


> Just to put in perspective what 1600 dollars can buy you:
> 1 years rent of flat
> a decent used car + repairs
> a high end PC
> ...


Okay? Someone buying an expensive phone probably already has necessities like food and housing. Probably also already has a high end PC too. 



The red spirit said:


> No matter how I look at that, spending 1600 on a phone isn't worth it. Even more so on just mediocre phone. Remember PS1 classic, it was retailing at 100 dollars, but it was pretty shit at what it did. So it didn't sell well and even at 25 people are unwilling to buy them.


You're not the target market, are you. :wink:



The red spirit said:


> I could critique you for overpaying for iPhone 7 (it never cost 1000), but everyone does mistakes.


The Product Red version was originally only on the 7+ and was $950. A little over $1k with tax. Anyway, expensive phones aren't investments. Like I was saying, when someone spends $1500+ on a phone, then that phone is a status symbol or fashionable device. 

If you only want utility out of your phone then that's why something like the Razr makes no sense to you. Conspicuous consumption is driven by emotion not logic.



The red spirit said:


> Innovative? It's not April fools, man. Not a single Apple device has ever been innovative. They are just good at reviving flops of the past into successful products. Was it cool? Maybe somewhat in USA, but at the time you really were a weirdo to get iPhone 2G. It would have seemed crazy to pay that much for just a phone. There wasn't anything really exciting about iPhone back then. It didn't have apps, it was crazy expensive, camera couldn't record videos, camera sucked, lacked many features, had crappy screen, had big battery (which arguably brought nothing as bigger screen ate it up faster), had interesting input device, had an interesting UI.


I can't think of anything that the iPhone copied or revived from the past. Not as a whole anyway. So yeah, the first iphone was innovative. Also, I remember pretty much anyone who could afford one having an iPhone. It took the place of a cell phone, mp3 player, PDA and an internet communicator. Except for Apple haters, I don't recall anyone hating on the iPhone or thinking people who bought one to be weirdos. 

I liked Blackberrys at the time so I didn't think much of iPhones until I decided to try one with the 7. Apple stuff is okay. It's made for non-tech savvy people and that's why some people hate Apple stuff, but try one. You might like it. :wink: 

Also, you mentioned the Key 2 in your last post to me. If you want to talk about an overpriced and underspecced phone, the Key 2 also has the same deficiencies as what you're criticizing the new Razr for too.  A physical keyboard is a nice to have, but the Key 2 compromises too much for one.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Scoobyscoob said:


> Okay? Someone buying an expensive phone probably already has necessities like food and housing. Probably also already has a high end PC too.


That's not the point if they have necessities or not. I'm just saying how ridiculously much it costs, while translating money to things or services.



Scoobyscoob said:


> You're not the target market, are you. :wink:


True, but the question is if it even has one. If I was rich man, then I wouldn't want some mediocre Moto. 



Scoobyscoob said:


> The Product Red version was originally only on the 7+ and was $950. A little over $1k with tax. Anyway, expensive phones aren't investments. Like I was saying, when someone spends $1500+ on a phone, then that phone is a status symbol or fashionable device.


A high end phones will always keep their value, because after many years they will be memorable devices and historically significant. Low end devices will not be remembered in such way and they will be forever cheap. 

BTW why you were so eager to get 7+? Why not just 7?



Scoobyscoob said:


> If you only want utility out of your phone then that's why something like the Razr makes no sense to you. Conspicuous consumption is driven by emotion not logic.


The only emotion I could feel from flimsy design, horrible battery and less than expected processor for 1600 dollars is dread. I'm not into sadism yet.




Scoobyscoob said:


> I can't think of anything that the iPhone copied or revived from the past. Not as a whole anyway. So yeah, the first iphone was innovative. Also, I remember pretty much anyone who could afford one having an iPhone. It took the place of a cell phone, mp3 player, PDA and an internet communicator. Except for Apple haters, I don't recall anyone hating on the iPhone or thinking people who bought one to be weirdos.


From what you mentioned, what exactly cheaper Nokia couldn't do? It could make calls, play mp3s (remember Xpress Music?), be communicator (whatever that buzzword means), and be okay PDA (iPhone wasn't a PSA, because it had nearly zero professional software and no apps). 

And if we talk about innovations, then there's a lot that can be said about lack of it in Apple. Take for example touch screen. IBM was first with their Simon to offer a touch screen in phone. That happened in 1992. Wasn't overly successful. Then there was LG Prada, first to offer non resistive screen (reacting to pressure only) in phone and instead it was capacitive (a modern touch screen technology). That happened in 2007 (announced in 2006), just a little before iPhone 2G launch in 2007. LG back then accused Apple of stealing their ideas to make iPhone. Functionality of both was very similar, so it made sense. And just remember history, other manufacturers were making phones with resistive touch screens too. So iPhone definitely wasn't the first to make a touch screen phone, which they were hyping a lot back then. Easy to use OSes were also made back then. Those were Symbian, Android (2005), Windows Mobile (okay, maybe not so easy to use). So the question is, did Apple actually introduced anything new to phone market or just lumped together device with stolen ideas into something bit more graceful (pretty much how chinese cloners do their job just that they don't complete it as much)? It's already clear, that it wasn't technologically leading device. It was just one among others.




Scoobyscoob said:


> I liked Blackberrys at the time so I didn't think much of iPhones until I decided to try one with the 7. Apple stuff is okay. It's made for non-tech savvy people and that's why some people hate Apple stuff, but try one. You might like it. :wink:


Eh, I'm not against trying one myself, but when it comes to buying one I just can't find any reasonable argument for iPhone instead of something else. My relatives also don't use iPhones, so there's no chances of me getting a hand-me-down. Also lately they are getting worse and worse. 11 is so ugly with that massive camera bump. It's embarrassing to use that abomination in public.



Scoobyscoob said:


> Also, you mentioned the Key 2 in your last post to me. If you want to talk about an overpriced and underspecced phone, the Key 2 also has the same deficiencies as what you're criticizing the new Razr for too.  A physical keyboard is a nice to have, but the Key 2 compromises too much for one.


No it doesn't. It retails at 500 dollars and pretty much has specs that reflect its price. It has metal frame, big battery, lots of RAM, dual lense camera. Obviously screen isn't as big as on regular phone, but it's because it has qwerty keyboard and would be simply too big with full size screen. And we have to be slightly forgiving, because BB did that in 2018, so it's not like late 2019 phone and ideals were slightly different. Overall, it's definitely not an underspecced phone.


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## Scoobyscoob (Sep 4, 2016)

The red spirit said:


> That's not the point if they have necessities or not. I'm just saying how ridiculously much it costs, while translating money to things or services.
> 
> True, but the question is if it even has one. If I was rich man, then I wouldn't want some mediocre Moto.
> 
> A high end phones will always keep their value, because after many years they will be memorable devices and historically significant. Low end devices will not be remembered in such way and they will be forever cheap.


Well I decided to watch and read some reviews on the new Razr and it's a really good looking phone while folded. It's certainly better looking than the stupidly large and thin smartphones that are the norm these days. Also, it's going to be $1499, so $1500. Yeah, after looking through a few reviews I can see it selling to anyone who wants a compact but large screen smartphone.

Eh, if you want to buy an expensive phone then hold on to it for 20-30 years, you might make some of your money back, but you'd probably get more of your money back if you traded it after 2-3 years instead. :wink:



The red spirit said:


> BTW why you were so eager to get 7+? Why not just 7?


I wanted the Product Red color. Plus buying the Product Red version that gives to charity was the only way I could justify myself into buying an iPhone in the first place. I might go back to Apple again for the 12 next year. In red again of course.



The red spirit said:


> The only emotion I could feel from flimsy design, horrible battery and less than expected processor for 1600 dollars is dread. I'm not into sadism yet.


I'm sure the type of person interested in it doesn't care about specs and just wants a compact and fairly slim phone.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/14/tech/motorola-razr-review/index.html



The red spirit said:


> From what you mentioned, what exactly cheaper Nokia couldn't do? It could make calls, play mp3s (remember Xpress Music?), be communicator (whatever that buzzword means), and be okay PDA (iPhone wasn't a PSA, because it had nearly zero professional software and no apps).


Nokia smartphones were operating on a soon-to-be-dead OS and Apple iOS pretty quickly surpassed Symbian in number of apps. Symbian OS' death made buying a Nokia phone knowing that the operating system would no longer be supported.



The red spirit said:


> And if we talk about innovations, then there's a lot that can be said about lack of it in Apple. Take for example touch screen. IBM was first with their Simon to offer a touch screen in phone. That happened in 1992. Wasn't overly successful. Then there was LG Prada, first to offer non resistive screen (reacting to pressure only) in phone and instead it was capacitive (a modern touch screen technology). That happened in 2007 (announced in 2006), just a little before iPhone 2G launch in 2007. LG back then accused Apple of stealing their ideas to make iPhone. Functionality of both was very similar, so it made sense. And just remember history, other manufacturers were making phones with resistive touch screens too. So iPhone definitely wasn't the first to make a touch screen phone, which they were hyping a lot back then. Easy to use OSes were also made back then. Those were Symbian, Android (2005), Windows Mobile (okay, maybe not so easy to use). So the question is, did Apple actually introduced anything new to phone market or just lumped together device with stolen ideas into something bit more graceful (pretty much how chinese cloners do their job just that they don't complete it as much)? It's already clear, that it wasn't technologically leading device. It was just one among others.


No hardware technology in consumer devices is new. Most everything in consumer tech were invented in the 1960s and some invented even earlier. I remember the LG Prada debate and maybe Jobs did jank the idea for a touchscreen phone + mp3 player from the Prada's design, but the Prada was still just another semi-smartphone with horrible software that was fully controlled by the carrier. Apple did away with carrier bloat with the iPhone and made a product that packaged a lot of technology not found all in one device into one package with an OS that made it so that the phone could constantly improve itself by downloading apps to it. Like a computer. That's where the innovation came from: The device itself, the OS and the software being controlled by Apple and not the cell phone provider.

If you can't see why that's innovation then you weren't around to know how phones were before the iPhone. Rather than the iPhone and iOS itself, I think Apple's biggest success was taking control of software development away from the cell phone provider and developing the software themselves while also allowing app developers to make software for iOS. That was a huge win for consumers and a lot of app developers became very rich from the iPhone as well.



The red spirit said:


> Eh, I'm not against trying one myself, but when it comes to buying one I just can't find any reasonable argument for iPhone instead of something else. My relatives also don't use iPhones, so there's no chances of me getting a hand-me-down. Also lately they are getting worse and worse. 11 is so ugly with that massive camera bump. It's embarrassing to use that abomination in public.


Well, you can easily buy one used off of ebay and try it out for yourself. I think phones are mostly commodity devices now and aren't very interesting anymore. I guess the same goes for tech in general. 



The red spirit said:


> No it doesn't. It retails at 500 dollars and pretty much has specs that reflect its price. It has metal frame, big battery, lots of RAM, dual lense camera. Obviously screen isn't as big as on regular phone, but it's because it has qwerty keyboard and would be simply too big with full size screen. And we have to be slightly forgiving, because BB did that in 2018, so it's not like late 2019 phone and ideals were slightly different. Overall, it's definitely not an underspecced phone.


The Key2 has midrange specs worse than the Razr, has a tiny screen compared to every other smartphone on the market and a bad camera. It's also just another android device but with a physical keyboard. If it were $400 or $350, it would've probably been a pretty good success, but at $500 it's a nostalgia device for people who fondly remember their old 8800 and 8900s. Because it's otherwise overpriced for what it is.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Scoobyscoob said:


> Well I decided to watch and read some reviews on the new Razr and it's a really good looking phone while folded. It's certainly better looking than the stupidly large and thin smartphones that are the norm these days.


The problem with size is that it makes phones uncomfortable to use. Phones can and do look fine these days. Unfolded Razr is exactly what you dislike, thin and big.



Scoobyscoob said:


> Eh, if you want to buy an expensive phone then hold on to it for 20-30 years, you might make some of your money back, but you'd probably get more of your money back if you traded it after 2-3 years instead. :wink:


Old iPhones hold their value. If you have 2G you can expect to sell it for as much as you paid for it when it was new. Old Nokia communicators also hold their value well. 




Scoobyscoob said:


> I wanted the Product Red color. Plus buying the Product Red version that gives to charity was the only way I could justify myself into buying an iPhone in the first place. I might go back to Apple again for the 12 next year. In red again of course.


No, I was asking why 7+ instead of 7?

BTW there's no need to upgrade from 7 to 12. 7 is perfectly fine.




Scoobyscoob said:


> I'm sure the type of person interested in it doesn't care about specs and just wants a compact and fairly slim phone.
> 
> https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/14/tech/motorola-razr-review/index.html


That article literally said that specs are garbage and ignored that in the end. One shouldn't promote dumbass as example (ideal).




Scoobyscoob said:


> Nokia smartphones were operating on a soon-to-be-dead OS and Apple iOS pretty quickly surpassed Symbian in number of apps. Symbian OS' death made buying a Nokia phone knowing that the operating system would no longer be supported.


And that wasn't known in 2007, when Symbian was the most popular phone OS worldwide and there weren't any signs of it failing soon. Remember, iPhone with iPhone OS 1 didn't even have any downloadable software at all and it needed a software update to support that. By the time that happened, HTC Dream came out, which was even more functional and overall better phone (which looked like a brick). Unlike what you would like to believe, Symbian was a decent OS. I have used it myself and saw many other phones. It was perfectly competitive OS. It only started to fall apart, when iOS and Android overtook it in number of apps and somewhat in speed. Some said that Symbian was hard to navigate, which I never understood, because it was easy to use for me. There was enough decent software for it. For a while devices had lower specs than other OS devices and that was a big problem. It gained them a bad publicity. But once budget devices with decent specs came out (like Nokia 500 with Symbian Belle), Symbian was perceived as fast and beautiful OS. It was that they were waiting too long to make that affordable and during that time competition became much fiercer and they just couldn't compete anymore. I gotta say that last releases of Symbian were very ahead of their time. They were stunningly beautiful, they had design elements that are only picked up now. It's easy to ignore Symbian now that you know what happened to it, but if you know its story, it becomes not so obvious.

Fun fact: Symbian phones for a long time were beating competition in screen quality and camera quality. Their best Nokia 808 Pureview can be still considered as the best camera phone.



Scoobyscoob said:


> No hardware technology in consumer devices is new. Most everything in consumer tech were invented in the 1960s and some invented even earlier. I remember the LG Prada debate and maybe Jobs did jank the idea for a touchscreen phone + mp3 player from the Prada's design, but the Prada was still just another semi-smartphone with horrible software that was fully controlled by the carrier. Apple did away with carrier bloat with the iPhone and made a product that packaged a lot of technology not found all in one device into one package with an OS that made it so that the phone could constantly improve itself by downloading apps to it. Like a computer. That's where the innovation came from: The device itself, the OS and the software being controlled by Apple and not the cell phone provider.


In other words stole some ideas from Symbian and I will repeat again. It didn't support any apps until OS upgrade, which came one year later. 



Scoobyscoob said:


> If you can't see why that's innovation then you weren't around to know how phones were before the iPhone.


Apply what you said to yourself. You barely know how other phones actually functioned, that weren't iPhones. During 2007, I had Siemens C75, which was hand-me-down. It could record videos, I could download apps, it had full file explorer, could play music, could record sound. My previous Nokia 3120, didn't have camera, but it also could download apps, ringtones, browse the web. I used what others didn't want to anymore, so there was some lag between what I had and what was available. But still iPhone looks functionally lethargic to me. Sure it would be much better than Nokia 5230, which I had later, but worse than anything else available during those times. When first Galaxy S came out, it was the hottest phone and there wasn't comparison. It was vastly superior to iPhone. When S2 came out it was even bigger revolution and basically everyone wanted it. It was expensive, but somehow even kids managed to get those (and I barely saved up for Ace 2, which was second best Samsung). Where I live iPhone wasn't a success. In fact it was selling worse than Symbian devices, hell even Bada devices too. Even now barely anyone has an iPhone. I'm pretty positive that their market share is like 1-3 percent here. iPhones were never significant where I live, I don't think that it even had any local ad campaigns either. And history tells me, that it wasn't first to do many things. Nor it was particularly good. Obviously, it looks weird that some people think it was great. 




Scoobyscoob said:


> Well, you can easily buy one used off of ebay and try it out for yourself. I think phones are mostly commodity devices now and aren't very interesting anymore. I guess the same goes for tech in general.


Send me money. I ain't spending 100 Euros on something old, that I'm not going to use.




Scoobyscoob said:


> The Key2 has midrange specs worse than the Razr, has a tiny screen compared to every other smartphone on the market and a bad camera. It's also just another android device but with a physical keyboard. If it were $400 or $350, it would've probably been a pretty good success, but at $500 it's a nostalgia device for people who fondly remember their old 8800 and 8900s. Because it's otherwise overpriced for what it is.


I don't understand why you are bitching about BB Key 2. Of course it's a mid-range phone and was priced as one. You literally got what you could have expected. Snapdragon 660 and 710 are very similar CPUs, so it's hard to tell which is better. Megapixels don't mean much, if you only use that to compare cameras. Obviously price is slightly higher due to making phone different and in smaller quantities, but it's entirely justifiable. There's a difference between 100 dollar inflation and 1100 dollar inflation. That BB has memory card slot, bigger battery than Razr 2019, yet is so much cheaper and very unique. It also has better fast charging and second camera lenses, better chassis, lower weight. It's better than Razr at pretty much anything.


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## Scoobyscoob (Sep 4, 2016)

The red spirit said:


> The problem with size is that it makes phones uncomfortable to use. Phones can and do look fine these days. Unfolded Razr is exactly what you dislike, thin and big.
> 
> Old iPhones hold their value. If you have 2G you can expect to sell it for as much as you paid for it when it was new. Old Nokia communicators also hold their value well.


Okay, I guess if you like collecting junk. :laughing:



The red spirit said:


> No, I was asking why 7+ instead of 7?
> 
> BTW there's no need to upgrade from 7 to 12. 7 is perfectly fine.


I already told you. I wanted the Product Red color. It was originally only on the 7+.

I sold it to a girl who really wanted a iPhone but couldn't afford one. That was my one good deed for the next 10 years. :wink:



The red spirit said:


> That article literally said that specs are garbage and ignored that in the end. One shouldn't promote dumbass as example (ideal).


*sigh*



The red spirit said:


> And that wasn't known in 2007, when Symbian was the most popular phone OS worldwide and there weren't any signs of it failing soon. Remember, iPhone with iPhone OS 1 didn't even have any downloadable software at all and it needed a software update to support that. By the time that happened, HTC Dream came out, which was even more functional and overall better phone (which looked like a brick). Unlike what you would like to believe, Symbian was a decent OS. I have used it myself and saw many other phones. It was perfectly competitive OS. It only started to fall apart, when iOS and Android overtook it in number of apps and somewhat in speed. Some said that Symbian was hard to navigate, which I never understood, because it was easy to use for me. There was enough decent software for it. For a while devices had lower specs than other OS devices and that was a big problem. It gained them a bad publicity. But once budget devices with decent specs came out (like Nokia 500 with Symbian Belle), Symbian was perceived as fast and beautiful OS. It was that they were waiting too long to make that affordable and during that time competition became much fiercer and they just couldn't compete anymore. I gotta say that last releases of Symbian were very ahead of their time. They were stunningly beautiful, they had design elements that are only picked up now. It's easy to ignore Symbian now that you know what happened to it, but if you know its story, it becomes not so obvious.
> 
> Fun fact: Symbian phones for a long time were beating competition in screen quality and camera quality. Their best Nokia 808 Pureview can be still considered as the best camera phone.


The Symbian Foundation announced the OS was going to EOL in 2008 or 2009. It wasn't a secret that the OS wasn't going to be supported if you bought a Nokia smartphone. Why do you think Nokia sold their phone division to Microsoft back in the early 2010s?

Also, no one cares about Symbian. You talk about old tech that no one who can afford modern stuff would care about.



The red spirit said:


> In other words stole some ideas from Symbian and I will repeat again. It didn't support any apps until OS upgrade, which came one year later.


Yeah, sure okay.



The red spirit said:


> Apply what you said to yourself. You barely know how other phones actually functioned, that weren't iPhones. During 2007, I had Siemens C75, which was hand-me-down. It could record videos, I could download apps, it had full file explorer, could play music, could record sound. My previous Nokia 3120, didn't have camera, but it also could download apps, ringtones, browse the web. I used what others didn't want to anymore, so there was some lag between what I had and what was available. But still iPhone looks functionally lethargic to me. Sure it would be much better than Nokia 5230, which I had later, but worse than anything else available during those times. When first Galaxy S came out, it was the hottest phone and there wasn't comparison. It was vastly superior to iPhone. When S2 came out it was even bigger revolution and basically everyone wanted it. It was expensive, but somehow even kids managed to get those (and I barely saved up for Ace 2, which was second best Samsung). Where I live iPhone wasn't a success. In fact it was selling worse than Symbian devices, hell even Bada devices too. Even now barely anyone has an iPhone. I'm pretty positive that their market share is like 1-3 percent here. iPhones were never significant where I live, I don't think that it even had any local ad campaigns either. And history tells me, that it wasn't first to do many things. Nor it was particularly good. Obviously, it looks weird that some people think it was great.


Cool.



The red spirit said:


> Send me money. I ain't spending 100 Euros on something old, that I'm not going to use.


What? You're really weird, dude. :laughing:



The red spirit said:


> I don't understand why you are bitching about BB Key 2. Of course it's a mid-range phone and was priced as one. You literally got what you could have expected. Snapdragon 660 and 710 are very similar CPUs, so it's hard to tell which is better. Megapixels don't mean much, if you only use that to compare cameras. Obviously price is slightly higher due to making phone different and in smaller quantities, but it's entirely justifiable. There's a difference between 100 dollar inflation and 1100 dollar inflation. That BB has memory card slot, bigger battery than Razr 2019, yet is so much cheaper and very unique. It also has better fast charging and second camera lenses, better chassis, lower weight. It's better than Razr at pretty much anything.


lol? This is really ironic. You made a thread bitching about a phone and tried to convince me to buy a crappy Key2. Then I told you the Key2 can be criticized the exact same way you're bitching about the Razr and now you're getting all defensive about Blackberry phones, which really should be called TCL branded by Blackberry.

Besides, I already considered the Key2 when it first came out and read and watched the reviews. I happened to agree with the reviewers that it's an okay phone with good build quality, but overpriced and unsuitable for a modern smartphone user. The small screen size was the deal breaker for me.

Yeah, I get that you don't have a lot of money and you have no clue why someone would want a Razr. I had no idea why someone would want the Samsung folding phone either until I saw Linus using his Galaxy Fold in a Linus Tech Tips video. It makes sense why someone would want a folding phone.

So yeah, chill dude. It's just a phone. No need to get so bent out of shape over a commodity piece of tech. :wink:


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Scoobyscoob said:


> Okay, I guess if you like collecting junk. :laughing:


I just don't throw away things that I have used in the past. I don't sell them either. But if I wanted to, I could sell some of them for decent profit. Anyway, most of my stuff wasn't high end, so yeah...




Scoobyscoob said:


> I already told you. I wanted the Product Red color. It was originally only on the 7+.
> 
> I sold it to a girl who really wanted a iPhone but couldn't afford one. That was my one good deed for the next 10 years. :wink:


Okay. Most iPhone sellers are scalpers with lots of old junk.




Scoobyscoob said:


> The Symbian Foundation announced the OS was going to EOL in 2008 or 2009. It wasn't a secret that the OS wasn't going to be supported if you bought a Nokia smartphone.


But even if it was true, Nokia did that job themselves. Symbian Belle came out in 2011 and was supported until 2013 or so. Sadly, Nokia rarely let older phone user to have any major software upgrades, but apps were still developed for older versions. So, even if something like Symbian 9.4 was aged, it wasn't obsolete. Meanwhile, iPhone only got iOS 3 and after that app development for it was quickly fading away. Blackberry OS was already obsolete by 2010. So Symbian had pretty healthy support in comparison. A true leaders in support were those S30, S40 and S60 OSes on feature phones, because even features phones today can run their software and it's still being developed.



Scoobyscoob said:


> Why do you think Nokia sold their phone division to Microsoft back in the early 2010s?


Because Nokia was in tough financial situation for a while.



Scoobyscoob said:


> Also, no one cares about Symbian. You talk about old tech that no one who can afford modern stuff would care about.


Our topic changed a bit. Others are free to talk about Razr.




Scoobyscoob said:


> What? You're really weird, dude. :laughing:


Not wasting limited resources isn't weird.




Scoobyscoob said:


> lol? This is really ironic. You made a thread bitching about a phone and tried to convince me to buy a crappy Key2. Then I told you the Key2 can be criticized the exact same way you're bitching about the Razr and now you're getting all defensive about Blackberry phones, which really should be called TCL branded by Blackberry.


Nobody is trying to sell you a Blackberry Key 2. I was just saying that execution of classic revival can go smoother than what Motorola managed to do and end up being a far more reasonable deal for those, who want that (you know an unusual device with something unique and some actual additional functionality/features).



Scoobyscoob said:


> Besides, I already considered the Key2 when it first came out and read and watched the reviews. I happened to agree with the reviewers that it's an okay phone with good build quality, but overpriced and unsuitable for a modern smartphone user. The small screen size was the deal breaker for me.


Well, I think that 4.5-5 inches is about ideal size for a phone anything smaller than that is painful to use and anything bigger than that is uncomfortable to hold in hands. Obviously, BB has keyboard, so it was just as big as other phones. Just saying that screen size was okay. What wasn't okay was that 3:2 aspect ratio. But now we don't have a luxury of having correct aspect ratios either, so we have lots of weird 18.5:9 aspect ratios, which aren't good either. 



Scoobyscoob said:


> Yeah, I get that you don't have a lot of money and you have no clue why someone would want a Razr. I had no idea why someone would want the Samsung folding phone either until I saw Linus using his Galaxy Fold in a Linus Tech Tips video. It makes sense why someone would want a folding phone.


lol LTT. One of the dumbest tech Youtuber groups on YT. I have money, but I just want to tell others that they shouldn't be wasting money. That philosophy includes getting just exactly what you need and not more or less. A failure is to be imprecise here. Most people are easily swayed by what techtubers say and end up getting lots of overpriced crap that they never needed nor truly wanted. Just look at that gaming keyboard bullshit and you will know what I mean here. Same thing happens in phone industry. A problem here lots of Youtubers, who barely do any proper objective testing and have unreasonable criteria (which mostly doesn't reflect what actually matters in phones). If you looked at older tech magazines, you would understand quickly what good review was. Now you gotta check too many things yourself and don't trust anyone.

Magazines of the time were often ranting about how shit Macs were and I saw that Maximum PC editors rated one Mac (don't remember exact model, but I think it was something from 1999) 1/10. A rating, which is usually given for non-functional devices that cause damage or are dangerous to use. Not in a single Computer Bild review iPhone actually won phone comparisons. iPhone 4, for example, lost to Galaxy Ace 2. It was only fair that it lost. There was a lengthy objective and subjective comparison written.


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## SilentScream (Mar 31, 2011)

Of course it's garbage. Most phones have been garbage since iPhone and Samsung decided to outdo each other with shitty over-priced phones and shaped the entire industry in their image. 

"Hey, if they can get away with selling these stupid mongs shit, so can we!" is the current pervasive ideology amongst phone manufacturers and that's not going to change. It's the pharma industry all over again. Phones are essentially becoming a necessity and people's primary electronic device and they cripple the cheaper phones to the point where the most expensive phones are the only real option people have - especially considering that mobile operators in America specifically do the whole "locked" and "unsupported" BS around phones that aren't flagships. Flagships get full support, but most other phones are intentionally crippled so people who like good phones end up with little choice but to buy the over-priced shit. Of course, even the over-priced shit is basically planned obsolescence so it's really blurring the line between consumerism and outright scamming people. 

I have a $300 Huawei and my Wife has a $1000 Samsung. The Samsung after a year of use ended up with a burned / etched image of her keyboard on her screen (it's physically etched onto it). I'm happy with my Huawei. I have all the same features she does and no hardware/software issues either. Guess which company the US is doing everything in its power including kidnapping people to try to destroy.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

SilentScream said:


> Of course it's garbage. Most phones have been garbage since iPhone and Samsung decided to outdo each other with shitty over-priced phones and shaped the entire industry in their image.


S10 and 11 Pro still have smaller batter than A50 h:




SilentScream said:


> Phones are essentially becoming a necessity and people's primary electronic device and they cripple the cheaper phones to the point where the most expensive phones are the only real option people have - especially considering that mobile operators in America specifically do the whole "locked" and "unsupported" BS around phones that aren't flagships.


That was that way ever since smartphones became a thing. I wouldn't call them a necessity, because absolutely nothing depends on it. Sure you can make it handy for some things and use it instead of something else, but it's not a necessity. If I wasn't a dumbass, I wouldn't need internet connectivity in it. If I didn't need to take an picture of some university papers, I wouldn't need camera either. Besides those two functions, even a dumb phone would be okay for me. Everything else is just for fun. I honestly haven't used bluetooth for at least a century. Same deal with wifi direct, radio, front camera, bokeh camera (aka depth sensor). There are many things that many people don't use in phones and many of them aren't even aware of some function existence. Most people shouldn't even care much about CPU, GPU, because phone isn't a workstation nor a serious business tool. Fast CPU is probably the most useless thing in phone. They should focus on lower power consumption instead, because it matters much more. Anyway, my point is that people don't even utilize 20% of what phone can do and 50% of functionality may never be touched. Ironically, chief editor of Maximum PC in 1999 wrote about how many things PCs can do and yet people don't do as much stuff. Basically speaking hardware rarely holds us back, it's us that hold machines back.

I dunno about locked crap. Here in Europe it's hard to find locked phones. I heard that it's hard to get unlocked phones in US, Japan, UK and some other countries. It's a very region specific thing. Honestly, I still don't understand why would anyone want a locked phone. 

Android version doesn't really matter much nowadays. To some people it may be important, but for most not really. Most apps still work on Android Jelly Bean (4.1) and until 2017 even Gingerbread (2.3) was getting modern apps. Besides app support, OS upgrades matter very little. Basically any modern phone will get new apps until and after the point when those devices would be too frustrating to use. Something like Galaxy S3 is probably getting new apps and app updates, but would you want to use it now? Most likely not.


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