# Bad smartphone trends



## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Phone market seemingly changes its face every year and that never stops. Lately I feel that there have been many absolutely crappy trends that ruin them and in some cases makes new phones inferior to older smartphones from 5 years ago. So here's a list.

*Screen size*

I really think that it stopped being a problem once we got out of really awful sizes like 3.2" or 3.5". Pretty much ideal sizes of screen for me seem to be in 4.3-5.5 range and there are no phones with such sizes at all. All what bigger screen does is just makes gripping of phone worse. Not only that, but you also can't put it into packet anymore. Definitely fun and phone manufacturers are still using old nonsense like "bigger screen, better viewing experience". Yeah... Except phone will never be as good as TV or monitor and this tabletification should just stop. A phone is a phone and it shouldn't try to be something that it simply isn't. I still remember when Galaxy Mega launched. Those things were giants, but now they are average sized phones. And back then nobody bought them nor understood how is it good to have a phablet instead of phone.


*Obsession with resolution*

Seemingly all manufacturers try to cram more pixels into screens and go beyond full HD, quad HD. Some even managed to cram a fucking 4K screens in there. And you know what, it makes phones generally worse. Resolution increases only matter when they work for reducing obvious pixelization. And as long as it is impossible to see them anymore, then adding more is just plain dumb. And limit at which eyes can't really see any more is around 300/350 ppi (pixels per inch). So why is it bad to cram more than needed? Because it only makes your device suck more battery juice and makes running games harder on GPU, again leading to worse battery life. The only use for those crazy pixel densities is with VR and honestly almost nobody uses that.


*Aspect ratios*

I still don't get what was wrong with 16:9 aspect ratio. All this bullshit with 18:9 or 18.5:9 or other non-standard aspect ratios are bullshit. When you go on Youtube there's zero content for those and you have black bars on the sides. You want to watch a movie, an anime, a serial or even a TV and everything will be in 16:9 aspect ratio. Sometimes in 21:9. I certainly don't see a point in making screen bigger only to make it as useful as a smaller one. Besides that, phones got so long that you can no longer reach the top corners with your thumb and I was able to do that quite well with my previous 5.5" 16:9 phone.


*IR blaster*

Okay, this was never a big thing on phones, but it was legitimately a nice thing to have. Phones are supposed to advance and yet Galaxy Note 3 has IR blaster and yet S20 doesn't. Why? TVs still use IR remotes often. Besides that you may have a blu-ray player too, which will use IR remote.


*Thin bezels*

I will make it brief. It's dumb, because it just makes phones harder to hold. And they are already fucked up by various aspect of awful screen design. It's a trend, that will soon be ancient. Why? Because what we consider thin now will look bulky 5 years later. And besides that, it doesn't necessarily make phones attractive. Just look at Sony phones. They are somewhat outdated, have chunky bezels and looks great. 


*Notification LED*

Very useful if you wanted to see if you received an SMS and you have to keep your phone quiet. Now you very likely to not have that at all. Only certain phones retained this feature. My phone had one and it was legitimately a great thing


*Crappy batteries in flagships*

Flagships used to have one of the best batteries in 2011 and in 2014, but only recently it became acceptable to put around 3000 mAh batteries in flagships. Yet mid-range phones not so rarely have 4000 mAh batteries and sometimes even 5000 mAh beasts. It's weird to see Moto G7 Power chopping S10 in battery life by a long shot and one costs less than 200 Euros, meanwhile other costs somewhere around 1000 Euros. Some manufacturers have been so delusional, that they put less than 3000 mAh battery in kinda higher end phone. I'm talking about Sony Xperia 10. Also Razr has shitty battery too.


*The jack*

The only reason why they are removing is that phone manufacturers make more money by selling their own headphones. That's why Samsung has been working with AKG and other manufacturers did similar collaborations too. It's only to suck more money out of dumbasses. That's why this problem is mostly with high end phones and lower end phones more often have a jack. 


*Bazookas*

Talking about really crazy camera set up on the back. Xiaomi, Huawei and Nokia made the worst "bazooka" out there. Then Apple, Samsung and Google joined this "bazooka" race. And while these things actually add some functionality, they are often way over the top and either look ugly or hideous. After 5 or 10 years we will be laughing our arses off from such awful designs.


*Punches, notches, motors, chins*

All this crap just because "front camera doesn't fit". I don't understand what was wrong in Galaxy S9's design, when there were black bar on top and on bottom. It looked sleek, nice and finished. But now every is so eager to make the biggest abominations possible. The only good design is rounded waterdrop notch, but even then why not just put that camera under screen or just get rid of it entirely? Not everyone is interested in selfies and those cameras are security nightmares anyway. All those notches and other crap are definitely very visible and obstruct a visible screen estate. Besides that, in 90% cases it looks ugly as hell too.


*Assistant buttons*

Still remember the outrage that Bigsby button caused. It was bullshit. Even Google Assistant isn't all that great. All I don't get is why would anyone actually need that. After all phones have screens that you can interact with and you still need to touch your phone for that fucker to work. So using phone in shower, car or somewhere where you can't use hands just isn't viable yet. That and voice detection is still not great. Assistants may be nice for some so there's that, but what is beyond saving are those separate assistant buttons. All they do are just accumulating accidental presses and launching some bloatware on your phone. Thankfully they are being rectified, but it was dumb from the start. Even worse is that you couldn't remap it to do something else, because Samsung was too lazy to develop software for that. It would have been great to have a dedicated screenshot button or camera button.


*Truly awful software*

Two big names Huawei and Xiaomi. One is known to have backdoors and spyware, other is known for putting ads in OS itself. I would like to add Samsung there too for adding bullshit like Galaxy themes instead of simple theme app. And crappy software has been there for ages. What wasn't acceptable is a literal spyware or adware. I have no idea how it is remotely acceptable to do that or actually buy a phone with that. That's still a biggest reason why Huaweis and Xiaomis are crap. All those great specs go to the shitter, when they have that software bullshit. At least Xiaomi launched some phones with completely clean Android, Mi A3 (lite) I think.

Besides that security nightmare some phones come with preinstalled "booster" apps, some really bogus antivirus software, and apps that used to be better but got so much worse. New Samsung camera app is complete pile of poo compared to Touchwiz era camera. New app lacks many options. No recording resolutions besides 1080p and 720p (on A50), no actual settings, no nothing. and many apps that used to be there and more functional are now dumbed down or in other ways gimped. 


*AI*

I guess it looks cool in ads, but really it's noting more than than just automation in fancy "dress". They are making a big deal out of literally nothing. Also there's a lot of bogus with "processors". DSPs, camera processors, AI processors, audio processors... And all this is mostly bullcrap anyway, because your phone only has CPU, GPU and maybe a dedicated security chip.

That wouldn't be too bad if they weren't actually malicious. If you open a camera app, the most of the time a new phone has some enhancement crap enabled. Beatify filters, software HDR, fake bokeh and etc. Nearly always this makes photos look worse, unrealistic or in some way undesirable. Those things end up being disabled instantly by me and new phone. I tried them and they still suck. So manufacturers are basically marketing an undesirable feature as something cool. And in reality it's just more bullshit to avoid.


*Black fronts*

Pretty much any phone color that you could possible want is now available, but front of the screen as a rule is always black. The whole screen frame is always black. Not even iPhone has the same color front as the rest of the phone. I always loved white phones, but now I'm forced to avoid them, because they look like trash with black fronts. And it never was a challenge to make a front colored, many phones used to have colored front and some even had nice patterns. Note 3 was a great example of that. Even cheapest phones had colored fronts. I have no idea why that is abandoned and why nobody cares about it, but I definitely don't enjoy this new trend. I wish that it dies soon, but seemingly it will stay. But until that happens to me it just doesn't make any sense to get a phone that isn't black. I just want a finished and refined device, not some glued together junker. I bought a black phone and the color is just very depressing.


*Backs*

Chinese phone makers lately launched many crazy coloured backs. Seemingly anything imaginable was done. Rainbows, rays, iridescence, metal feel... There's no end to those crazy colors. But if you just want something serious it gets harder to find a phone like that. While more choice is always welcome, I think that all those crazy backs often look tacky or look great only for a few days. After initial excitement wears off, you want to hide that shame with non-transparent silicone case. It's a thing that I just don't think, that it really has a potential to hold up.


*Glass, metal and gorillas*

So much hype for resistance and premium materials. Don't get me wrong, strong components are great, but I'm starting to think that manufacturers are making phones for actual gorillas, which throw phones every day, salivate them, try to eat them or shove them down their asses. I used phones, which only had simple plastic screens and never managed to scratch them. My phones even after years of use often looked nearly as good as they were new. Ironically, when I got my new phone with gorilla glass it arrived with obvious scratches and I couldn't return that, because it's not something that is covered under warranty, so I decided to just live with that. And it makes me think that screens just didn't really get stronger. Also phone drops still often shatter screens too. So it feels like they just never got actually stronger.

What again I dislike is that manufacturers think that adding metal or glass backs is good or premium. But to me it just doesn't feel like it. Glass is very fragile and metal is cold as fuck to touch. Both don't feel as good in hand as just plain glossy plastic and both are less durable. So how is that even premium? I still remember when LG made some cool backs with leather and in G2 they used self healing back, which could be scratched a bit and it would heal. Now that's cool, but glass and metal? Nah.


*Overheating issues*

Not as common as they were 2-3 years ago, but they are still way too common than they should be. It's a very obvious design flaw, that should have never left labs. And yet many high end phones overheat and throttle. So that new fancy CPU can never meaningfully reach its full potential and amaze you with spectacular performance, which was so heavily advertised. 


*Software updates*

Most of them are just patches and yet they are massive, barely do anything, take up your time and require restart. They add very little value and are nearly useless. Also on Android at least, the version of Android matters very little. Android 5 still supports pretty much everything imaginable on Play store. Mostly it doesn't matter what Android version you are running. Big changes in Android were from 2.3 to 4.1. Later was just polishing and finishing up the same thing. Somehow after claims that Kitkat could run well 512MB of RAM, RAM usage skyrocketed to over 2GB of RAM and yet OS still feels mostly the same as it did a long time ago. Also, in past you would be lucky to get 2 or 3 Android version updates and now you are getting shit ton of patches. And here's a difference. Back then they changed Android version, now they are just patches mostly for perfectly functioning software too. So why they are being patched? They say it's for security and better functionality, but not even once I felt that there was a meaningful update for my phone. And they spend so much time and resources to make this happen, yet very likely there won't even be an update from Android 9 to 10 on my phone and on many others. That just makes all talks about software updates meaningless. And very likely Android 9 will have a perfect software support even after 5 years. 


*Fingerprint and face scanning*

Both are quite awful security measures and often make phone ugly. Some phones have fingerprint scanners on the back and while it may be convenient, they are ugly and uncovered by case. Face scanning is currently complete garbage. It just takes a pictures and tries to match it later. Only some special phone have something better than that and in the end that doesn't matter. Because while it is convenient and often fast, it's not secure. Imagine your phone is stolen and somebody can gather your highly personal face or fingerprint data. Both are easy to bypass. Both are easy to be gathered by 3rd parties and used for malicious purposes. So in many cases it's actually more secure to not have any locking mechanism at all. Remember, if your phone isn't in your hands you are seriously fucked. Even more so if you have that data saved inside. Many designs of those sensors are gaudy and the only reason I got a phone with in screen fingerprint sensor is that it wouldn't be on the back being ugly and unprotected. Many of them don't even work all that great either. Some are slow, inaccurate. Mostly that is dependent on software and not hardware used. Knowing how Android updates are rolled out, it's pretty clear that it's one of the things that will be neglected and not fixed for as long as possible. And when software updates will be cut off, it will be common to have forever glitchy or buggy fingerprint scanners. This is bullshit as your lazy should have just used long password in the first place. PIN is okay too, but less safe. Pattern is finicky, but better than nothing.


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## NeonMidget (Aug 7, 2017)

I'm looking forward to the iphone se 2 for its size and hopefully more upto date features without the as insane price tag.


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

Reminds me of when I had the Google Pixel 3. I had just bought it so it was on a year old firmware I guess. So I went to software update, and I updated me to the firmware a few months newer. Then I did a double check, and it came back and asked said there was another firmware update available from a few months after that. I think I ended up going through the entire update and reboot process three times before the firmware was actually updated to the most current version. Whoever designed that update system is a fool.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

NeonMidget said:


> I'm looking forward to the iphone se 2 for its size and hopefully more upto date features without the as insane price tag.


I upgraded my aging Note 3 Neo to Galaxy A50. And still after a whole year of use I sometimes go back to Note. You see both phones cost around 300 Euros at the time of purchase and it would seem like a newer device should have been highly superior and it just simply wasn't. Sadly, not even highest end devices have what it takes to beat that old Note. They are too big and uncomfortable to use. Oh and airview is super cool and pen and multiple windows. Oh...

I was really surprised that Apple launched SE. Many people dismissed it as idiotic move, but I fell in love. It was a high end phone with comfortable dimensions. The only bad thing about it was initial lack of software polish. Many UI elements just looked bad and poorly ported to a smaller screen. Not sure if that was fixed. Anyway, Apple did a very good thing and I'm pretty sure that it sold well in Japan (a massive iPhone market with small hands).

Galaxy S10e was almost anew SE, but I just feel that it was still too big to truly be comfortable. I certainly miss Xperia compacts, those things were like Honda CRXs, lightweight rockets. One of the coolest phones from Sony. They managed to cram nearly every high end feature and okay battery in small chassis. Pixel 3a was almost a great smaller phone, but again it's not really small.

And still it's really disappointing to see companies not having guts to release something smaller. A phone at around 400 Euros, 5.2" screen with 16:9 aspect ratio from LG would be a great thing. Why LG? Because they recently have been making V30 and their G series phones and they are known for trying unusual designs (Optimus 3D, LG Prada, G2, G Flex, G5). Or Nokia, because it's so easy to design a sturdy smaller phone rather than bigger phone and Nokia fans would love a comeback of sturdy phones.


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## Xool Xecutioner (Jul 8, 2018)

To add onto this diatribe of phone having unnecessary features or losing necessary ones, I miss that phones (at least flagship phones) aren't having removable backlid and thus removable battery and/or removable flash storage. I find them useful in whatever a phone is screwing up and because of the battery, or you would like to increase storage and not have it static (like with my Galaxy S9 that I'm having). All of that going away because phone manufacturers don't want to pay a few bucks to build/accommodate those features.


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## Anunnaki Spirit (Mar 23, 2018)

Here I am the one hipster in the thread who still uses a Blackberry passport. :smug: I don't do any mobile gaming and generally don't do much other than calls, texts, and reading around online.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Xool Xecutioner said:


> To add onto this diatribe of phone having unnecessary features or losing necessary ones, I miss that phones (at least flagship phones) aren't having removable backlid and thus removable battery and/or removable flash storage. I find them useful in whatever a phone is screwing up and because of the battery, or you would like to increase storage and not have it static (like with my Galaxy S9 that I'm having). All of that going away because phone manufacturers don't want to pay a few bucks to build/accommodate those features.


While removable battery was a cool feature, I wouldn't agree on SD card slot. The only reason why it existed in the first place was that phone storage was abysmally tiny. Later storage expanded and space is generally not a problem. Let's not forget what shitshow it was on Android if you wanted to install apps on SD card instead of local storage. It was only fixed when it was way too late. Another problem is that SD card speed mostly remained the same and it's not so good. Not only that, but you are at mercy of phone's card reader speed. I don't think that there's much to lose, when midrange phones have 128GB storage and low end phones have 64. It's a lot, almost too much. But hey it's cheap and they are giving it us, so okay. To this day I have no idea what all those gigabytes could be used for. Perhaps 4K videos, perhaps heavy torrenting, perhaps a whole damn wikipedia saved for offline reading (it's around 70GB file if you are curious). And knowing that storage will only get bigger and cheaper I just don't see any future for memory card readers anymore. 




Anunnaki Spirit said:


> Here I am the one hipster in the thread who still uses a Blackberry passport. :smug: I don't do any mobile gaming and generally don't do much other than calls, texts, and reading around online.


Mobile gaming is completely overrated imo. I tried to get in and it was cool to see the evolution of ever growing phone capabilities, but it was never truly about actually playing them for fun. They are ass to control in many cases or simply way too watered down or riddled by gambling mechanics. I don't think that I played any mobile game in last 2 years, they are not cool anymore. We aren't seeing games like Riptide GP, Gangstar, GTA SA. Nobody is interested in making AAA level games on there and that just makes perfectly fine platform decay. 

As to Blackberry I have no idea how they are surviving now and how many times they have changed their heads, but they are still selling Key 2, which is an interesting phone. IT HAS BUTTONS and Android. And it seems that privacy/security lovers enjoy it too. It's weird to see it being so obscure, despite being such an interesting phone. Instead media raved about Razr reboot, which was complete garbage for price and kinda mild garbage overall. I think that Sony should make Xperia X10 Mini Pro reboot or Nokia should make their communicator phone reboot. After all they made that Pureview monstrosity with 5 or 6 cameras on the back.


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## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

You are surprisingly passionate about what is essentially an optional purchase. If you really want them like they were made back in the old days I suggest you buy one of the phones you have mentioned, or keep on using whatever it is that you have.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

succ said:


> You are surprisingly passionate about what is essentially an optional purchase. If you really want them like they were made back in the old days I suggest you buy one of the phones you have mentioned, or keep on using whatever it is that you have.


Not really it's an optional thing anymore. I must have a camera, that takes photos quickly. 

A things with buying old stuff is just that it was good back then, but now is worn out, nearing obsolecence, in many other ways deficient, in all cases doesn't offer good battery life and etc. New tech is superior here, it's just that nobody makes a phone with certain goals that I would appreciate. Also old phones at this point are less reliable. My old phone has screen burn in (normal for aged AMOLEDs) for example, also area on screen where I usually scroll feels different, I think that there are weird battery drain problems

And I find it ridiculous that older phones were so much more functional, at any cost tried to improve, experimented with various tech things (remember phones that could display 3D content without glasses, phones that could take 3D videos or phone with dual screens?) and quite often they were just limited by how unadvanced internals were. CPUs were weak, storage was abysmal, RAM was lethargic, batteries were always awful. And still somehow even budget phones offered something interesting. It was truly about how much can you afford. Now that tech finally caught up, all that is gone and question is how you can accept of being ripped off. People are forgetting that something so great once been a thing and slowly start to accept mediocrity. And the only reason why that happens is that people are no longer excited to buy phones (well that's very obvious why) and they are becoming more like commodities, so manufacturers to keep being profitable now can't rely on being innovative too much. Now they have to make the best things for average buyer. And average buyer is likely not tech savvy, budget conscious, doesn't really care much about tech. Thus boring or outright awful trends in phones exist. They are mostly about how phones look and that to enthusiastic buyer doesn't matter much. Instead development of great tech in phones is extremely slow. 

Pretty much explains why I see way too many people having phones that don't suit their needs or buying them because of not tech-related reasons. That's why my mom has S9 just to play candy crush and open several news sites, that's why my grandma now has A30 and has no idea how to use it or what it can even do (she didn't really understand flip phones either), that's why some seemingly abysmally underspecced phones become best sellers sometimes and that's why some girls are stupidly fixated on some brands (well it's Apple). Pretty much the same shit what happened when computers became more mature and common.


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## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

The red spirit said:


> Not really it's an optional thing anymore. I must have a camera, that takes photos quickly.
> 
> A things with buying old stuff is just that it was good back then, but now is worn out, nearing obsolecence, in many other ways deficient, in all cases doesn't offer good battery life and etc. New tech is superior here, it's just that nobody makes a phone with certain goals that I would appreciate. Also old phones at this point are less reliable. My old phone has screen burn in (normal for aged AMOLEDs) for example, also area on screen where I usually scroll feels different, I think that there are weird battery drain problems
> 
> ...


This doesn't make any sense to me. Old phones were literally demon spawn and everyone tried to upgrade to the latest thing just to get something that's easier to live with. Nowadays you can get a midrange phone and it will do all of the basic tasks flawlessly. Displays are large and sharp, batteries bigger and ram more plentiful. You can get a pocketable phone with a >5.5 inch display. I don't get your problem? 

You say that you had a note 3. Yeah, that phone was great, but it was also literally the most expensive samsung phone at the time. Not surprising. It is also what was once considered a phablet, meaning that you have contradicted yourself. I can't make sense of any of this and frankly I think I'm going to pop a paracetamol.

post-script
Okay, I think I know what you're trying to get at. You are disappointed that manufacturers have finally stopped cramming superfluous features into smartphones that nobody used more than once or twice. boo-hoo.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

succ said:


> This doesn't make any sense to me. Old phones were literally demon spawn and everyone tried to upgrade to the latest thing just to get something that's easier to live with.


Really? That didn't seem that way to me at all. Galaxy S2, LG G2 were super desirable. Xperia Arc and X10 were very cool at their time. Galaxy S2 at least in my country was a revolutionary phone. Everyone wanted it and it was the best of the best. S3 was also awesome, but not as much revolutionary. 

There were of course dozens of shitty phones from Motorola, low end phones were crappy and Google phones were a whack generally. Nokia made some cool phones too, but their lack of focus in which OS to use hurt them. They were juggling between Symbian v3, MeeGo and Windows Mobile 8. HTC was pretty good too, but soon started to become crap.

Generally I could agree that most of phones were kinda crappy like Galaxy Y, Xperia X10 Mini, HTC Wildfire, but many phones also offered something really cool. Galaxy S2 was screen, camera, sleekness king. Xperia X10 Pro gave us keyboards. Motorola Defy gave us waterproof phones. Xperia Play gave us PS in phone. HTC EVO 3D/LG Optimus 3D gave us 3D. Nokia N9 and Nokia 808 Pureview gave us exceptional cameras. Even mid rangers like Xperia Sola gave us finger tracking when it was lifted off (or maybe it was other Xperia). Galaxy Note introduced concept of phablet and whole new possibilities with pen. iPhone 4s gave us style and speed. Some Prestigio phones introduced 8 core CPUs in phones. Galaxy Beam gave us projector in phone. LG G Glex gave us curved phone. LG G2 gave us buttons on back and self-healing plastics. LG G3 gave us 2K screen. LG Optimus 2X gave us first dual core CPU in phones, revolutionizing performance on mobile handsets. Motorola Atrix TV gave us TV in phone. Kyocera Echo gave us two screens. Sharp Aquos Crystal gave us glimpse into completely bezelless displays (minus chin of course). Huawei Ascend P series gave us a glimpse at first flagship killer with unrivaled slickness at less than 8.6mm.

You see, if you have money you could buy even the craziest dreams. But now if you have money you can only buy the same thing but better. There aren't as many options and that sucks. Seemingly all phones try to don't deviate from a singular accepted form and thus they end up lacking their own personality. Only lately Samsung with their A series started to rival their own S series. Others started to experiment a little bit, but it's nothing compared to early 2010s breakneck innovation pace. 



succ said:


> Nowadays you can get a midrange phone and it will do all of the basic tasks flawlessly. Displays are large and sharp, batteries bigger and ram more plentiful. You can get a pocketable phone with a >5.5 inch display. I don't get your problem?


Pocketable phones with big displays are not a thing. I have A50 now and it doesn't fit anywhere. And 4000 mAh battery in it is more exception than rule. S10 didn't even have battery this big and that Snapdragon definitely sucked it in no time. A50 that I have lasts me two days with average usage, 3 days with light usage. No flagship currently can reach those numbers. 

And a thing about displays is that they were nice and sharp for a long time. My Ace 2 had 230 PPI, my Note 3 Neo had 270 PPI. Many other phones had PPI exceeding 300 for years and increasing PPI beyond that just sucks battery faster and makes work harder for GPU. Increasing resolution beyond visible limits is just not smart, unless you use your phone for VR. 



succ said:


> You say that you had a note 3. Yeah, that phone was great, but it was also literally the most expensive samsung phone at the time. Not surprising. It is also what was once considered a phablet, meaning that you have contradicted yourself. I can't make sense of any of this and frankly I think I'm going to pop a paracetamol.


You are making two mistakes here. I have Note 3 *Neo*, which was like Note lite series now. Back then it was technically more similar to Note 2, but had newer software and external design. Also it was priced as mid-range phone, which was around 300 Euros. And finally, Note 4 was already released when I got Note 3 Neo. So neither it was most expensive, neither it was super high end. Despite its size I could use it with a single hand really well. It's actually smaller than A50. Note 3 Neo was really unpopular model at the time and yet it had so much inside. AMOLED, high end Wolfson DAC, S Pen, LED indicator, IR blaster, great camera (which is also better than A50's new camera), CPU with brand new big.LITTLE technology, S Voice, 3100 mAh battery... It really had anything, but many people said that resolution of screen was low. It was 720p, but what they were ignoring is that it was near 300 PPI resolution and thus meaning that in practice it looked as good as Apple's retina displays (actually better because it was also AMOLED).

All this for just 300 Euros. And 5 years later I get a phone for same budget and it's not really beating my old one at everything. Neither it has some actual new exciting tech inside. It's just a slab of plastic with cut down functionality. I miss LED indicator, air view, smaller form factor, 16:9 display, IR blaster, good settings app, no good options for white color (my Note was white and I wanted white phone). Now I have notch, chin, horrendous photo processing and forced image compression, useless patches, fingerprint reader which doesn't work well, no capacitive buttons, still 1080p camera recording, in many cases worse stock software (especially camera app), just as awful face unlock (yeah it was since Android 4 and nobody cared). And besides all this Galaxy A50 is one of the best phones for this price. There's nothing really better than it.

And if I was crazy rich and bought S10 it still wouldn't have good battery, still shitty software and heavy processed cameras, still no LED indicator, no IR blaster, no air view, no pocketable size, still unfinished color changes... That's Samsung. There's no HTC left now. Sony is effectively out of phone business. LG only makes V and G series of phones and their reliability has been very dodgy. Huawei has backdoors. Xiaomi has awful software with adware. Oneplus is good, but they only make upper mid rangers. Apple is still rotting. Google phones are still too close to Nexus phones, meaning crappy battery life, various manufacturing flaws, generally spartan software, more Google shitware pre-installed (had Nexus 7 and it was biggest POS ever, RMA refused to fix problems). Blackberry is now dead. Nokia isn't too bad, but they only make low end phones, their midrangers are lacking and I don't like copper accents. Motorola is pretty good now, but still their phones are clunky, cameras aren't great (G7 Power was the only phone worth something), still that's pretty good. Asus still has shoddy software and poorly engineered hardware. Sharp, Panasonic, Kyocera aren't available. 

Also most phones now just don't offer anything new. But if you want me to be more positive I can say that there were some innovations. Ultra-wide lenses, 5000 mAh batteries, underscreen front facing camera, Huawei's super zoom cameras, 1TB storage (that's literally more than in my SSD-only computer), integrated in-screen fingerprint readers, mass produced foldable screens (they were a thing since 2007 but it took them a while to put them into production and even then first devices are notoriously unreliable), HDR, 4K recording (soon 8K) and more importantly 1080p at 60 fps recording, fast chargers, wir... (wanted to say wireless charging, but it's not wireless if you connect a slab of plastic), higher refresh rate displays, reverse wireless charging (ironically more useful than "standard" wireless charging). 

Sadly, most of those features are mostly useless irl or are just expected evolution of specifications. I think that only 5000 mAh batteries, ultra-wide lenses and [email protected] cameras currently matter. Everything else is just not very useful or practically viable. Some of them require downgrades to work properly (120 Hz displays can only work with 1080p resolution instead of native resolution). Also nearly nothing will reach people, who simply don't want to spend 1000 Euros on phone. Some things like fast charging or 5000 mAh batteries were actually made much earlier, but didn't gain traction.




succ said:


> post-script
> Okay, *I think I know what you're trying to get at*. You are disappointed that manufacturers have finally stopped cramming superfluous features into smartphones that nobody used more than once or twice. boo-hoo.


No, you don't get it.


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## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

The red spirit said:


> * *
> 
> 
> 
> ...


ok, you have made a point. But in the end it comes down to buyers remorse, doesn't it? I was looking for replacements myself not too long ago and I have shortlisted:
the xperia 5 has a 21:9 aspect ratio which is kinda idk it appeals to me personally
iphone 8 plus but somehow the xr is a better deal? honestly this is not the time to be buying a smartphone thats why I postponed this altogether until further notice. none of the phones I mentioned have 5g and I guess I'm out here sitting it out until a 5g iphone comes along.

why iphone? updates.

why not samsung? dismal software support, no updates past 2 years. e-waste. 

to me thats what it comes down to. I couldn't bring myself to hate an ugly notched overpriced phone if it can last me 5 years with me not having to worry about replacing it. Undoubtedly the battery life will become half of what it once was by then but I always carry a power bank with me out of habit so really I don't care. 

I have even considered ditching smartphones altogether. I would carry a burner with me and be unbothered. Technology and modern society failed me. 10 years from now I will be running from tribals in some exotic location no doubt the way things are headed.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

succ said:


> the xperia 5 has a 21:9 aspect ratio which is kinda idk it appeals to me personally


Okay, but Sony only makes phones with those screens now. They actually make some special models for Japanese market only and in my country many places are still selling their older phones like Xperia X, XA, L2. Still, new Sony line-up is depressing. If you wanted Xperia 5 or 10 you would need to pay a lot, RAM and storage are way smaller than on similarly priced phones. Battery is awful too. Some reviewers couldn't get through a day with those things. 



succ said:


> iphone 8 plus but somehow the xr is a better deal? honestly this is not the time to be buying a smartphone thats why I postponed this altogether until further notice. none of the phones I mentioned have 5g and I guess I'm out here sitting it out until a 5g iphone comes along.


5G will not be a thing for a a year or two. Infrastructure is non-existent, there is a format war and poor reliability of signal is making 5G highly unpractical. Wouldn't be surprised if 5G just simply died.



succ said:


> why not samsung? dismal software support, no updates past 2 years. e-waste.


That's actually respectable to even have a single major Android update at all. Either way they don't really matter. My Note 3 Neo currently has Android 5.1 installed and all apps are supported. It's a 6 year old phone now. Nexus 7 also has Android 5 and it's from 2012. It's 8 years old and everything would work on it too. It took a while for Android 2.3 to be cut out of any kind of support and it's more than decade old. If you want Android phone, updates shouldn't matter too much. Just don't buy old phone, which won't be updated. No joke, but I have seen some ancient phones with Android Jelly Bean being sold as new in 2019. I think it was some old Motorola or HTC of that era. You can still get new Galaxy S7. Those are phones to avoid at this point. They are also selling for the same price as they were launched.




succ said:


> to me thats what it comes down to. I couldn't bring myself to hate an ugly notched overpriced phone if it can last me 5 years with me not having to worry about replacing it. Undoubtedly the battery life will become half of what it once was by then but I always carry a power bank with me out of habit so really I don't care.


That's totally doable. My Note 3 Neo lasted me that and I could still use it if I wanted to. Battery bank wasn't needed (later I bought one because I had to go far away from home, but nearly never actually used it). I got new battery for it too, but surprisingly it performed identically to the old one, so degradation of battery wasn't a thing or was negligible. 

I always turn on power saving mode, because I never saw any performance difference with it on and it helps to preserve battery. Disabling permissions, getting rid of Google's bloat, disabling background data, restricting background tasks help a lot and have no impact on anything else. If you want phone to last get a black silicone case (doesn't yellow over time), avoid AMOLED screens (burn-in). Of course there are many things more to look out for, but if you do this then even a low end phone will last you 5 years. Xiaomi made Mi A2 Lite with clean Android for 160 Euros. It has everything you need and definitely was a strong budget phone. Now they made new models named Mi A3. Again cheap and they have everything. Those are ultimate budget phones, that will last. Actually specs are similar to iPhone Xr, sometimes even better. Gorilla Glass 5, 6 inch AMOLED 720p screen, Android 9, Snapdragon 665, 64GB storage and 4GB RAM in base model, Top model has 128 GB storage and 6GB RAM, triple cameras with 48MP main shooter, 4K recording, USB Type C, fast charging, 4000 mAh, still has a jack. All this for 200 Euros. 




succ said:


> I have even considered ditching smartphones altogether. I would carry a burner with me and be unbothered. Technology and modern society failed me. 10 years from now I will be running from tribals in some exotic location no doubt the way things are headed.


Don't be so gloomy. This thread was mostly about retarded trends on high end phones, but low end and mid range phone market is lit right now.


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## Neetee (Sep 24, 2019)

*Size of Wikipedia*



The red spirit said:


> I don't think that there's much to lose, when midrange phones have 128GB storage and low end phones have 64. It's a lot, almost too much.


Too much? My last two audiobook files were 930 MB and 855 MB (Amazon Audible, 30 hours each; file size for 1 hour of audio: (14.4 MB)/28.8 MB = (32 kbs)/64 kbs), and there are already 95 GB of audiobooks from other sources. Music, photos, videos, Maps (HERE We Go: about 40 GB)? 



> perhaps a whole damn wikipedia saved for offline reading (it's around 70GB file if you are curious)


*Q: What is the total size of data in Wikipedia?*

*A: Benny Lin, Wikipedia editor since 2004, admin in Indonesian Wikipedia, answered Nov 3 2018 (Quora)*

I’ll try to answer this from a different perspective that hasn’t been addressed: Multimedia. 

As you know multimedia takes a lot more space than text. And a substantial part of the encyclopedia is their pictures and other media (audio, video, etc.) So how big is all the media in Wikipedia? Maybe you’re thinking of downloading them all.

Well, if that’s the case, you might want to think again. It’s approximately 200 TB of images, video and audio in all Wikipedia projects. But let’s break it down that answer.

1. First of all, Wikipedia is not a single project, a single website, or a single community, it has been mentioned in another answer that Wikipedia (think www.wikipedia.org) consist of more than 280 language versions (think en.wikipedia.org, de.wikipedia.org, etc.) and each of them host unique articles, and unique media.

If we limit the scope to only English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org), then it hosted about 879 thousand files or 161.9 GB of media and 5.73 million articles or 28.2 GB of text. (For other Wikipedia editions, just change the language prefix (‘en’) with the language of your choice.)

2. But, in reality, the media used in English Wikipedia is far more than mere 162 GB. And many of the media is shared between different Wikipedia editions, because they’re not language dependent. So, Wikimedia Commons was made for this purpose. Wikimedia Commons serves as the media server for all wiki (even non-Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects) that are looking for Creative Commons and Public Domain licensed files.

By October 7th, 2018, Wikimedia Commons hosted more than 50 million media files about 191.8 TB large. You see, the text and media hosted in English Wikipedia (0.19 TB or 0.1%) is like a drop in the bucket compared to Wikimedia Commons.

3. There’s no comprehensive data on all media in all Wikipedia projects combined. So you need to comb and add each projects to get the total. But I doubt it’s more than 8 TB needed to round up 191.8 TB to my estimated 200 TB. Even when you added all the texts.

On the other side, even though Wikimedia Commons hosted that much media files, not all of them ended up being used in Wikipedia articles. Most of them would just sit there waiting for somebody to stumbled upon them and add them to the relevant articles.

So, how big is Wikipedia? Either in terms of entries or data.

Wikipedia in total has more than 46 million articles and 50 million multimedia files totaling about 200 TB of data.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Neetee said:


> Too much? My last two audiobook files were 930 MB and 855 MB (Amazon Audible, 30 hours each; file size for 1 hour of audio: (14.4 MB)/28.8 MB = (32 kbs)/64 kbs), and there are already 95 GB of audiobooks from other sources. Music, photos, videos, Maps (HERE We Go: about 40 GB)?


Well, I pretty much only use YT for nearly all my audio needs, so storage for that isn't needed. I take a lot of photos, but they are 2MB each and I had like 3000 photos on my last phone. They only took few gigabytes. I don't shoot any videos. Maps depend on country, several hundred megabytes for mine. Even Russia's map shouldn't be bigger than few gigabytes (it's the biggest country in whole world). Just checked the size of Russian map, it's 5.3GB. You don't need to download all offline maps.





Neetee said:


> *Q: What is the total size of data in Wikipedia?*
> 
> *A: Benny Lin, Wikipedia editor since 2004, admin in Indonesian Wikipedia, answered Nov 3 2018 (Quora)*
> 
> ...


Okay, who cares about that? Kiwix English wikipedia file with media is a bit bigger than 70GB and that's way more than you will ever read. Remember encyclopedias on PC? Latest Encarta (2009) fit on DVD, same for Encyclopaedia Britannica. My point was that it was a lot of data.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

The red spirit said:


> While removable battery was a cool feature, I wouldn't agree on SD card slot. The only reason why it existed in the first place was that phone storage was abysmally tiny. Later storage expanded and space is generally not a problem. Let's not forget what shitshow it was on Android if you wanted to install apps on SD card instead of local storage. It was only fixed when it was way too late. Another problem is that SD card speed mostly remained the same and it's not so good. Not only that, but you are at mercy of phone's card reader speed. I don't think that there's much to lose, when midrange phones have 128GB storage and low end phones have 64. It's a lot, almost too much. But hey it's cheap and they are giving it us, so okay. To this day I have no idea what all those gigabytes could be used for. Perhaps 4K videos, perhaps heavy torrenting, perhaps a whole damn wikipedia saved for offline reading (it's around 70GB file if you are curious). And knowing that storage will only get bigger and cheaper I just don't see any future for memory card readers anymore.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I play supertux out of nostalgia to get some exitement and solitaire for a challange on the buss when I get bored or too tired for homework. But I also like to listen to music or watch tutorials a lot, or study some language in duolingo.
You said you didn't like fingerprint security. I find it works pretty well while in school or on the buss, because I don't like to use my pin where others can see it but I still got more security then nothing. My phone is a Galaxy a70. I like it but I find it's got a pretty bad picture resolution and it's a bit too big for my hand, and it's too difficult to turn of the sound in emergency cases, and I also wish I could remove the battery more easily. Also the bad thing with the beautiful screen, is offcourse when I accidently break it. A new screen repair costs 2/3's of a new phone I think.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Electra said:


> You said you didn't like fingerprint security. I find it works pretty well while in school or on the buss, because I don't like to use my pin where others can see it but I still got more security then nothing.


I can understand if it's in such place, but even then security of such thing isn't great. You can watch this video to learn more:





Anyway, smartphone is definitely not a place to keep highly sensitive data. In fact this applies to any portable device. I confess that I'm stupid with my phone's security and I don't use any locking mechanism at all. I find it super annoying to deal with any of them and I think that in many practical situations they just hold me back. 



Electra said:


> My phone is a Galaxy a70. I like it but I find it's got a pretty bad picture resolution


Samsung recently is very aggressive with photo compression, exposure and oversharpening. I almost want to add this to bad trend list, but it's Samsung only issue. Even S10 was affected by it. Hopefully they will fix that. I wonder if rooting and custom camera software could fix that.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

The red spirit said:


> I can understand if it's in such place, but even then security of such thing isn't great. You can watch this video to learn more:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


:shocked:

Good thing I'm not a millionaire roud:
Someone once told me I'm safe because I'm too poor and ugly to be hacked :laughing:h:


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## incision (May 23, 2010)

IMO, the smartphone/interweb phenomenon is a mistake. People have stopped living life.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

incision said:


> IMO, the smartphone/interweb phenomenon is a mistake. People have stopped living life.


it sure helps for things like ADHD and probably also a lot for people with dementia and such challanges.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Electra said:


> :shocked:
> 
> Good thing I'm not a millionaire roud:
> Someone once told me I'm safe because I'm too poor and ugly to be hacked :laughing:h:


It doesn't matter if you are ugly or poor, the thing about security is that lack of it can rob you off anything. In this scenario it's the identity of yourself. Once that is hacked, then the whole thing that you understand as your own personality can be attacked too. Cybersecurity is a very depressing field if you ask me. There's no such thing as complete safety, only tools and techniques to help one avoid big misfortunes. Even knowing that it will never be perfect, one still has to respect it. 

If it helps you to understand cybersecurity can be compared a bit to natural disasters. You can never be complete safe from them, but that just simply doesn't mean that you should ignore precautions.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

incision said:


> IMO, the smartphone/interweb phenomenon is a mistake. People have stopped living life.


Just think about it giving more possibilities. And whatever you think about it, it's there to stay. I'm pretty sure that such phenomena one day will be written in history books as one of the biggest changes or steps in human societies. And while past may have been better or sweeter, you can't live in it. Yet you can live in a present and do something in it.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

The red spirit said:


> It doesn't matter if you are ugly or poor, the thing about security is that lack of it can rob you off anything. In this scenario it's the identity of yourself. Once that is hacked, then the whole thing that you understand as your own personality can be attacked too. Cybersecurity is a very depressing field if you ask me. There's no such thing as complete safety, only tools and techniques to help one avoid big misfortunes. Even knowing that it will never be perfect, one still has to respect it.
> 
> If it helps you to understand cybersecurity can be compared a bit to natural disasters. You can never be complete safe from them, but that just simply doesn't mean that you should ignore precautions.


That is true indeed. But I think she was only joking  roud:
At least I hope 
:laughing:

No, but even if it is true, if someone faked being me, they could do a lot of harm. I find such things to be very interesting. For example I read a book of Joanne Harris where the main character was a person who claimed dead persons identity by stealing their letters and valuable documentation right away after their death. it is called "The girl with no shadow" or "the girl with the lollipop shoes." This person was allmost like an actor, trying to merge her self in to the role of the dead :mellow:





> "The Girl With No Shadow," also published under the title "The Lollipop Shoes," is a sequel to Joanne Harris's best-seller "Chocolat." It is a gloomy story about the double threats of bullying and identity theft against a woman and her children. "


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

You poor pathetic fools:laughing:
Iphone, iPhone, iPhone
Once you go Mac you never go back:laughing:
 just kidding r.s.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

Meh, I'm good roud:


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

VinnieBob said:


> You poor pathetic fools:laughing:
> Iphone, iPhone, iPhone
> Once you go Mac you never go back:laughing:
> just kidding r.s.


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

I saw the title and thought: all the peer pressure to get more and more apps and soon you have way more than you need or can handle.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

@succ

Not sure how much you are interested in Android phone longevity, but since I wanted to see my Ace 2 again and come back a little into era of small phones I decided to boot it up again and tell you about what it can still do.

Before that just for context, the phone was released in 2012 and it runs stock Android 2.3.6. OS was released in 2011. Ace 2 also has official update to 4.1.2. Back in the day I was able to find a stable Cyanogen mod ROM, which was based on Android 4.4 and I saw some Android 6.0 roms. Now there are even Android 9 roms. 

So, Gingerbread (2.3) no longer supports Google Play store, Youtube app and some old Samsung services like Galaxy store. Ever since the start phone had some nice software features like Voice commands, video chatting through any app, in-built photo editor, Polaris Office. There are some Samsung exclusive things like Game hub, ChatOn, Social hub. Google services were fully functional until 2019.

And it might seem that phone is really useless without newer OS, but that's not true. I have Firefox 47 installed on it and it still supports pretty much everything on web. Mobile Youtube webpage works well (actually better than native app ever did) with video resolutions not higher than 360p. It can play 720p videos too, but then there's a delay between audio and video. Otherwise it's not choppy. If you want apps, you can get them from various sources online. Just like in my Nokia 5230 days, you download an app package on your PC and transfer it to phone via cable and then install it there. Works with Android too, just that it's harder to find still supported apps or correct versions. There's functional Google Translate, Opera Mini, Takoboto, Aldiko, My Boy! Free, Voxel Rush and many other things. If you want music or videos, you get them on PC first and then transfer via cable. Everything works with stock software. Android has fully functional file explorer too. If you want, you don't even need a PC for that. And while many methods and programs are ancient, it's surprising how far you can go with old version of Android. On software side, Android 2.3 can satisfy most of my needs. 

After all those years screen quality is still great. Cameras are not great, but just sufficient and good enough even for taking photos of documents (Some photos look better than on Galaxy A50). Battery life also more or less is the same as it was (it wasn't good even when it was new, but survives several hours of heavy use and I think it would survive a day of realistic usage). Battery is removable and there's micro SD card slot, which you will definitely need. Phone has a simple glossy plastic chassis and plastic screen, however I used it without a case and screen is in nearly pristine condition, except one small scratch, which isn't even visible while screen is on. Chassis itself is still glossy and has lots of microscratches, still that's just normal for any glossy plastic phone. Many phones from that era looks like they were drove over a tank. Even a brittle chrome painted plastic is mostly fine, only one spot is starting to unpeel. Of course phone has a jack. Best feature of glossy plastic is that it made phone surprisingly grippy, it feels similar to Samsung's new material called "glasstic".

On my three homescrens there are several widgets with old services. Accuweather still works, Yahoo News doesn't work (however it shows some really old news, one of them is about some idiot, who swallowed his iPhone 5), Email works, Yahoo Finance doesn't work. That's not too bad, pretty much everything Yahoo doesn't work anymore. 

Out of Google stuff what is left working are Maps, Navigation (yep, it was a separate app), Local. Not great, but the main issue that Google Play framework isn't detected. And it's not detected, because it's too old. The only way to upgrade it is through Google Play store (which is formerly known as Android Market) and it doesn't work because of framework missing. 

Android 2.3 at this point is like Windows XP. It was people's favourite version of Android ever, lightweight, feature rich and still is highly functional despite being horribly out of date.


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## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

The red spirit said:


> * *
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Oh I would know. Trust me, I use a galaxy s3. It obviously still works. What I'm really concerned about is security updates. Samsung offers any kind of software support up to 36months I believe and that's really nothing. Now I do know that android receives some sort of security updates through google services since android 5 I think and thats really amazing actually and indeed app support on android is really great I mean my s3 still has facebook messenger, spotify, chrome, maps, youtube, etc. 

That's all well and good. 

However, on the iPhone, apple often supports devices for a very long time with actual os updates for better or for worse, and despite the iphone 5s not receiving any further software updates, it will retain support until march 2021. That is 7 and a half years of support. Quite remarkable. This means that your phone is pretty much fully up to date, and you don't have to rely on community support. It's more reliable. 

Why is this more important than ever on a smartphone? Payments. So if you want to take advantage of mobile banking you really have to have a phone that is officially supported by the manufacturer. Otherwise it won't work. Perhaps samsung supports samsung pay on devices that have otherwise lost support, I wouldn't know. What I do know is that apple keeps sending out updates to devices still capable of running the newest version of iOS, and I know that iPhones don't immediately lose half of their MSRP value after 6 months of use. iPhone 8 still sells for about 2000pln in poland.

It's a matter of what you value more in a phone whether it be customizability or simplicity. I've had both and admittedly I would rather keep my s3 4g over an iphone 5 but an iphone 5s would have been a quantum leap forward.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

succ said:


> Oh I would know. Trust me, I use a galaxy s3. It obviously still works. What I'm really concerned about is security updates. Samsung offers any kind of software support up to 36months I believe and that's really nothing. Now I do know that android receives some sort of security updates through google services since android 5 I think and thats really amazing actually and indeed app support on android is really great I mean my s3 still has facebook messenger, spotify, chrome, maps, youtube, etc.


S3 is much newer than Ace 2 and it has way newer Android version too. Ace 2 at best had official Jelly Bean, but it unusable POS. And by such hard judgment I mean it had various problems. RAM management was way too aggressive and apps only had 430 MB RAM from 768 available, that wasn't sufficient and phone often killed apps even system apps. Battery life was literally two times worse, idling was poor too. Software was unfinished and often crashed, sometimes bringing whole OS to forced reboot. A minor complaint is that OS was also slow as fuck and that's really nothing compared to other problems. That lead me into experimenting with custom roms. I loved MIUI rom, Cyanogen was stable. Tried some others and reflashed stock Gingerbread once I upgraded to Note, because I wasn't intending to use it for a long time and if I ever wanted to use it again I wouldn't want to look through some shutting down websites. Even back then I wasn't able to find exactly the same region stock rom, so I flashed Russian rom instead. Sadly it has some Yandex crap and some shitty Java games pre-installed. I didn't want to root phone again, so it is as it is (or maybe I no longer could find Gingerbread root files).

S3 was not even close to Ace 2, in fact S2 despite many similar specifications was very different from Ace 2. S2 had 2-3 times faster CPU, maybe 2 times faster GPU, AMOLED, 1080p camcorder (with those sweet 8 megapixels and a big chunky flash), battery was better, storage was much better (faster and bigger). S3 was times faster than S2, had even bigger battery, screen and better cameras. Upgrades used to be that massive, but not anymore.



succ said:


> However, on the iPhone, apple often supports devices for a very long time with actual os updates for better or for worse, and despite the iphone 5s not receiving any further software updates, it will retain support until march 2021. That is 7 and a half years of support. Quite remarkable. This means that your phone is pretty much fully up to date, and you don't have to rely on community support. It's more reliable.


Well, I have heard that iPhones without latest OS version quickly lose app support and you won't see anything like iOS 4 running latest Facebook app. That and complete lock out from using any third party sources of apps. There are many smaller things about support, but for a long time I thought that iPhones are absolutely horrendous for any actual longevity. Just imagine trying to find one of those old style Apple "dock" cables if one broke. Oh and I have heard that Apple deeply integrated Safari's web engine into OS, so all browsers have to depend on it. Android also has similar nonsense with Chrome, but at least you can use Firefox just fine.




succ said:


> Why is this more important than ever on a smartphone? Payments. So if you want to take advantage of mobile banking you really have to have a phone that is officially supported by the manufacturer. Otherwise it won't work. Perhaps samsung supports samsung pay on devices that have otherwise lost support, I wouldn't know. What I do know is that apple keeps sending out updates to devices still capable of running the newest version of


I guess it might be really important for you, but anything that touches banks and money shouldn't be on a phone. I only let phone to use SIM car money to occasionally buy an app (that happens like once in 2 years for me). Other than that there's zero infrastructure for direct phone payments. Even situation with bank cards sometimes isn't perfect, so you can only imagine how much I care about features like that. 

Unlike PCs, phones in general feel much safer and apps are monitored by Google Play or Apple store. Online viruses for phones aren't common. Straight up malware is extremely rare. Many apps that claim to be antiviruses or antimalwares are ironically exactly viruses. Also it's rare for anyone to ever mention any sort of software vulnerabilities in Android or iOS. I heard more about those in iOS and in certain Android phone makers (Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE), but Android itself without third party "help" seemingly is safer. 

Besides phones, I'm probably the only weirdo on Earth, who doesn't use his own wallet and puts money into pocket. Also I plan even a small purchases, so I just have what I need and then head straight to the shop.

If I was living somewhere in Japan, where payments with phone or payment cards are basically a necessity at this point, I would likely care more about mobile security and updates, but even then it just seems like the only things you can do is be dependent on phone maker for updates and use privacy hardened Firefox (or Tor browser, which is Firefox fork). And if you go full Snowden, then you can start removing cameras, microphones bluetooth and cellular antennas from your phone and then use wired internet and cable for apps, preferably root your phone and use custom rom.




succ said:


> and I know that iPhones don't immediately lose half of their MSRP value after 6 months of use. iPhone 8 still sells for about 2000pln in poland.


I really don't care about that, in my eyes used, old and obsolete phone either goes to museum or to special trash can/recycling. At that point I accept that a phone is economically completely worthless thing. And the only reason why Apple phones seemingly hold their value is likely due to their "premium" status, doesn't matter if it was actually worse than other flagships. Or maybe because Apple buyers are just more willing to pay more, thus are charged more.




succ said:


> It's a matter of what you value more in a phone whether it be customizability or simplicity. I've had both and admittedly I would rather keep my s3 4g over an iphone 5 but an iphone 5s would have been a quantum leap forward.


You have a nice mindset. You are able to see them as more or less equal things. Many people are horribly biased or too strongly brand attached.


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## JessicaCampbell74UWZ (Sep 16, 2020)

I completely agree with your entire list. I used to have a Huawei and Xiaomi and these have really awful software...After a while, I bought iPhone anyway. Speaking of which, what do you do with your phones when you want to buy a new one? I buy a new iPhone model after release every year, and for a long time, I didn't know what to do with the old iPhone. I found a great site where I can sell my iPhone and get good money for it! The most interesting thing is that there you can sell your phone in any condition and any model starting with the iPhone 5.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

JessicaCampbell74UWZ said:


> Speaking of which, what do you do with your phones when you want to buy a new one?


Put old one in its box, remove battery if possible and keep it.



JessicaCampbell74UWZ said:


> I buy a new iPhone model after release every year, and for a long time, I didn't know what to do with the old iPhone


I don't have such problems


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## Flabarac Brupip (May 9, 2020)

Smart phones? I know nothing about them. I never had one, and I don't want one!


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