Very sad. I found the perfect smartphone for me - the V20. It almost feels like a smartphone that happened by accident and will never return in its glorious form again. Dont know what else to use if it dies. Already have a spare Screen and its 4th Battery ready to be used.
The second screen is just the perfect solution for having an allways on display without a real (and stupid) notch. I love this feature. Also knock to power on is super convenient. Battery is replacable. The Screen is super sharp. Its thin despite its very accessible inner parts. The amp and music quality is absolutely awesome. The camera is awesome as is the sound recording quality. The IR Blaster ist just super convenient. Also the FM-Radio is a very nice addition. The camera-app is just awesome and i have yet not managed to find something simmilar. Also i like the gallery app. And the sound recording app. Its also fast, has enough power still to this day. And the SD-Card Slot combined with the internal memory gives me 640GB Storage. Also Dual SIM is nice.
Really it is such an awesome phone that im not sure how this phone happened in the first place. As each Smartphone does at least 2 things stupid or hase some dumb features no one asked for.
Its allways the same with me - as soon as i find the absolute perfect hardware - its already legacy and nothing like it is buyable in the future ...
The V20 is like the perfect tool. No stupid features only used for sales, no shortcuts, just a very nice package. Two things i would change: Cameras should never stick out and the volume buttons should be on the back like on the G4.
My first (and apparently last, now) LG phone was a V30. It's currently my main driver and I have no plans to get rid of it.
It has expandable storage, a headphone jack, a full screen with a very thin chin and forehead, a decent camera, loud speakers, a good fingerprint reader, FM radio, a battery that still gets me through a full day easily, and almost everything I want from a phone at what was a very competitive price.
The only thing it's really missing for me is a software update. If there was any hope for that before, there is certainly none now.
The only thing that appears to come close to being a suitable replacement is the ROG Phone 5 but it's expensive, lacks expandable storage, and I've heard bad things about ASUS's software support.
As excited as I am for the PinePhone and Linux smartphones in general, I don't see that being a viable main driver for at least three or four more years - probably longer. Maybe I can keep my V30 going until then...
You should make plans to replace it because it's quite likely updates for it will end soon. Corporations are well known to bail early when a profit center is axed. You don't want to end up hacked.
How sad is this industry that it's typical that a perfectly functional, $800 device has to be replaced after just three or four years because it stops getting security updates.
Mine unfortunately got stuck in a bootloop last Thursday, so I'm going to have to go looking for new phones again - I'm considering just getting another V30, however.
It's worth noting, though, that I felt the same about my OnePlus X when it died ("no other phone will ever be good enough!") - perhaps I like the V30 mostly just because I've used it a lot.
I've thought about trying LineageOS. I tried and failed to get it running on my old Galaxy S3, though. It wasn't a big deal because I long-since stopped using that phone. But I'm a bit more cautious about trying to do that with my main driver, especially since LG phones probably aren't supported as well as Samsung phones.
How is the software though? I tried it years ago because of the audio quality and ended up going HTC 10 because the LG version of Android was horrendous. Less bloat than Samsung sure but still horrible
I also have a V20 and am quite satisfied. The replaceable battery, SD card slot, headphone jack, and LOS support make for a great overall package. I pray this device lives for many moons.
I'm still using a V20 as well. It's one of the last phones manufactured with a replaceable battery and a headphone jack. It'll be a sad day when it croaks.
I've appreciated LG's adventurous moves. The one I liked the most was LG Optimus 3D, which provided a naked-eye 3D display similar to that of Nintendo 3DS. The most recent LG Wing, I was hopeful.
But LG also left a bad taste in my mouth. The last LG phone I used, Nexus 5X, died all of a sudden, but after months of despair, I could revive it using a freaking hair dryer.[1] Yeah, some of you who are well versed to soldering may not be surprised by this, but the fact that such a huge company makes such a minor mistake completely turned me down. My reaction might be irrational, but after the incident I could not get close to newer LG phones anymore.
My iPhone 4S had broken WiFi chip which I revived with hair dryer as well. Should I draw conclusions about Apple? Every device has a possibility of defects.
If it was a car you would have just taken it to the local repair shop and hopefully it's an affordable repair but phones don't have that and so when they die, and they all do, it's quite harrowing (unless you are super rich).
What's the typical income in this country, in America if you're talking about a $700 phone, and you make $70,000 a year it's not completely unreasonable to replace it every year.
But if you're making $15,000 a year, spending $30 to repair your $700 phone makes much more sense.
Average salary is $6,000 a year. But those numbers are according to the official statistics and I don't think those are true because of huge gray economy sector. I think that it's more like $3,000-$4,000 a year for most people (but those numbers are after all taxes, we usually don't pay taxes from our salaries, our employer takes care of that).
I agree that's one of the reasons that repair is more common. Very few people would darn torn socks, because those are cheap enough just to buy them.
This is actually a bit fascinating to me, so do people tend to buy much cheaper phones to begin with. I know in many parts of Eastern Europe iPhones aren't nearly as popular due to the expense.
I've had to replace a battery once ( on a Nexus 4)and I will never go through that again.
Generally people tend to buy cheaper phones. But iPhones are kind of exception, some people are so obsessed with iPhones that they're trying to get loan to buy iPhone. It's not really logical decision, they just want to look more wealthy than they are, it's kind of luxury item.
You also have bizzario phone deals where if you pay 2 to 3x as much for service you can get a free IPhone. I personally buy a phone for 300$ or so every year or 2. Right now I pay about 30$ a month for 2 lines, but you can definitely spend 150$ a month for 2 lines plus financed phones.
Americans love ZERO down deals, so you can get you and your partner IPhones and worry about paying em next month.
The LG G4 (which I had) was also plagued by a similar issue, you could put the logic board into an oven for half an hour and if you were lucky that would resolve the issue. For me, it only helped for 5 minutes or so, then it broke again. The support did not help at all because I had unlocked the bootloader, even though it was an hardware issue (I was in Spain back then).
My G3: SIM card reader error. I had inserted the SIM card once, at the AT&T store when I bought it. It was days out of the one year warranty and LG wouldn't help at all.
Wife's G3: Video chip error. Same source as the above failure: solder fails. Broken solder joints on BGA chips and card readers. Hers was just within warranty, but they had no G3s to offer, so she was given a G4. Guess what happened to the G4? Same failure. No further help.
In contrast, my Samsung Galaxy Victory from 2012 still works fine (carried it for two years). My Samsung S8+ works fine after carrying it nearly four years. My Moto G3 works fine after five years and having carried it for two.
What I find most sad about this is that LG appears to be the only manufacturer who makes phones with both wireless charging and a headphone jack. Somehow these features seem to contradict themselfs for other manufacturers. Wireless charging is seen as a premium feature, while headphone jack is seen as a budget feature. I unfortunately have gotten so used to both that I don't want to give them up. I love my wired headphones and my phone is pretty much always at 80% (Battery limiter) since it always charges when I'm at my desk. Right now I don't see a reason to upgrade my V30 but when that time comes I hope someone makes a similar phone (my biggest hope is Sony as they at least appear to be interested in headphones, now they just need to add wireless charging)
Yeah, I unfortunately finally gave up the headphone jack. My phone broke and I couldn't find a good phone that had wireless charging, a headphone jack and a micro SD card slot. I went with the S20 FE since it had 2 of them. The budget galaxys seem have headphone and mcicro sd but not wireless charging. I almost bought an old S10 since that's the last galaxy with all three, but figured since it'd be losing update support soon I had better pick which feature to lose.
I'm kind of regretting it already. I don't have portable bluetooth headphones right now, had to order some and I kept wanting headphones over the weekend since they haven't arrived yet.
I was kind of leaning towards and LG, but everyone online was saying this was going to happen soon.
Genuine question: isn't a "Bluetooth" "DAC" an oxymoron? The only way I can imagine I'm getting the quality level I'd expect for $100-$200 is if I were sending it uncompressed audio. Which Bluetooth definitely doesn't have the bitrate for.
You can use GSM Arena's Phone Finder tool to search for phones with specific feature sets. In this case released 2019 or newer, 3.5 mm jack, and wireless charging[0]. As of now there are 26 phones that match those criteria and 10 of them are from LG. Three are from Huawei which means they are basically useless outside of China. Looking at high end devices you are left with the 3 year old Samsung S10[+], the Motorola Edge+ from last year, and Sony's Xperia 1 II. Sony has an announcement on the 14th where they will likely announce the Xperia 1 III[1]. I would look forward to that to see if it retains the headphone jack.
I'm currently in the research phase of switching back to a smartphone and have been using GSM Arena a lot for comparing specs, but didn't realize their search tool could be used like that. This is exactly what I needed to see right now, thank you!
> only manufacturer who makes phones with both wireless charging and a headphone jack
May be the you should mention "flagship" because there are many android mid-rangers with both headphone jack and wireless charging, but this too is not true because sony's flagship xperia 1 mark 2 still have both headphone jack and wireless charging + sd card support that the others have abandoned.
Are there any services that will strip off bloatware using ADB for you? Would be happy to pay $100 for it to just reliably work out of the box then spend a bunch of time reading forums and worrying that something will break.
I have a list of packages that can be safely removed from modern Samsung phones (I'm not missing anything at least, updates still work). Email me at <my_profile_name>@imap.cc if you're interested
Honestly you don't need to remove anything. You can just hold the icon and uninstall virtually anything nowadays. There may be a few megabytes of shim left behind but that doesn't really matter and will never affect your life.
I can only think of a few reasons that LG couldn't make it, and none of them are enough to sink a brand:
* Lack of updates
* Occasionally non-flagship hardware
* That Nexus issue many years ago
Their UI is better than Samsung. They're less intrusive than samsung. Their flagships are usually pretty good and come at good discounts soon after release.
I have an S21 now, and the number of bloatware samsung apps has me wanting to move back to Oneplus or even Apple, maybe. I only bought it because I wanted a flagship high-refresh phone under 6.5".
I'll miss LG a bit, it isn't as if we need fewer competitors in the Android space. It's Chinese brands, Samsung, and Google now pretty much, no?
The Samsung boatware is outrageous, but LG's was also pretty bad. The reason I got an LG, which I've been mostly happy with, is that they offered an Android One certified model (the LG G7 One) that came with nearly stock Android.
Sadly, the Android One program looks to be nearly dead. G7 One owner, don’t want a larger phone, so looks like the Pixel line is the only remaining option for my next phone.
I ended up with a Nokia 7.2. It worked fine until an Android OS update.
Now it works mostly fine but some minor issues regarding Adaptive Brightness, Bluetooth laziness and camera not saving pictures when running from locked screen. Maybe these can be fixed with app-data wipe or permissions fiddling, but I can't be bothered as they impact me little.
But Nokia seems to keep going with Android One. I will end up buying another at this rate.
Yes, this is my exact situation too, and if I want a headphone jack then I'm stuck with the Pixel 4a which has only 128GB of storage and other deficiencies :(
If you want minimal bloatware with Android, why not get a Pixel? I've the Pixel 3a for 2 years now. It's the longest-lasting smart phone I've ever had, and there are no indications that it is falling over.
Because Pixel is not available in most countries, including more than half of Europe. I had the Nexus 5x, I wanted a Pixel and the only option was the gray market at double the price.
It is Google's decision. I guess it may be related to consumer protection laws in Europe that sets the minimum warranty to 2 years; I had 2 defective Nexus 5X (boot loop), fixing or replacing it is costly for Google. I replaced one on warranty, it was bought locally, the other one was bought from USA and I could not RMA it.
Yeah I think the only thing it shares with the historical company is the name and the patents they got along with it. I would consider it owned by the CCP at this point and act accordingly to what you consider acceptable as far as security if you have one of their phones (remember software update backdoors can be nearly as bad as hardware backdoors)
Wondering if the Android phone market can be still considered a Google-led mobile "ecosystem" when Samsung is the only big player left with competitors dropping out or struggling, and the big Chinese manufacturers being forced out.
Not meant as a snark (owned HTC phones in their heyday and also Samsung S5 and S8); just wondering if Samsung shouldn't aim for a larger influence on Android or even fork, for better or worse.
This appears to be an american centric view. In the rest of the world samsung is really far from the only big player. And i dont see the chinese flag ship sellers dropping at all either. Oppo is growing faster than an other phone company right now. Huawai is dominant for years now too.
Can't say I blame them. Phones are really close to being commodities. Samsung and Apple have the top end on lockdown. Xiaomi will obliterate you on the low and mid range. So your only real option is to dump huge amounts of cash into top photo and app folks and try to fight with the big two.
I read somewhere that the Galaxy A51 was the biggest selling mid-range phone globally. It's about 30% of the price of a flagship, but there aren't huge compromises on performance and camera quality like there is on the A20, A10 series.
Huawei has nothing to do with Xiaomi as far as I am aware. Yes same country of origin but that's all. Perhaps you can cite a reliable source to back up your claim?
Shouldn't the government own the majority of the shares for it to be a state sponsored enterprise? Or does it just have to offer tax breaks and subsidies?
> Or does it just have to offer tax breaks and subsidies?
I wish the definition included this, there are so many shitty corporations which depend on subsidies and tax breaks but happily privatise every penny they can.
Can manufacturers do a wedge like design with a thicker top & tapered bottom edge? That way there is no camera bump & the device sits flat on a desk & a bit raised towards you as well.
Bonus camera points coz the lenses are along the same axis horizontally & closer to the centre of the device than in one corner, likewise for the front facing camera too, which could just be shoved into one corner without leaving a hole-punch or notch at all.
I don't mind a camera bump if it is symmetric horizontally. But most of the ones I've seen have the bump on one corner, which ruins the use case you mentioned of setting the device flat on a desk or table.
My Note 8 and a friend's Note 9 don't really have a camera bump at all, other than a barely raised ridge around the camera section. But unlike many other phones, this ridge is symmetric: it extends equally to the left and right. Even if this were a raised camera bump, it would still work for setting the phone on a table.
The iPhone I got from work is quite different: it has a rather thick camera bump on one corner. So when it sits on a table, if I tap on the display the whole phone wobbles.
That is very poor design, but now Samsung seems to have copied it! The newer Samsung phone have bumps in one corner just like the iPhone, so they would be just as annoying to use on a table.
For the moment I am hanging on to the Note 8 for dear life, until I find a newer phone with a good camera and either no bump or a symmetric bump. Are there any high end phones like this any more?
(Regarding a sibling comment about cases, that is one solution, but I don't use one and don't plan to.)
> But most of the ones I've seen have the bump on one corner, which ruins the use case you mentioned of setting the device flat on a desk or table.
Unfortunately I don’t think this is a high priority because most people use a case, which means the camera is either flush or even slightly recessed depending on thickness.
I don’t use a case on my phone so this annoys me just as much as it does you, but for 99% of people I doubt they even think about it.
The mobile phone ecosystem is sick, and I don't see it getting better.
The fact that there is not a third choice is maddening. Even in the worst parts of the Microsoft era we had Apple as the underdog. Apple products had issues, but Apple die-hards at least could rest easy knowing that they were buying into a company who stood for something.
In the mobile space the underdog is Google; a company who sees dealing with people as an unfortunately necessity on the way to get to gobbling up more data.
I can't but feel that Android has sucked the oxygen of the space. I can't go out and buy a Tizen or Windows phone in large part because of Google's pathological Android licensing. Google force carriers to choose between their, supposedly open, ecosystem and shipping alternative OSes.
You are blaming the wrong company. Qualcomm is the company that makes it hard to do alternative software platforms for mobile. Even apple still licenses their solutions (they are working on their own modem but have not shipped that yet). The issue is to get your hardware + software solution certified for use on mobile networks. That's very hard and it's not a very fair game. It requires a nod of approval from operators and intellectual property from Qualcomm.
Apple simply plays the FOMO factor. They do deals with operators. And the deal is typically "take it or leave it and watch your customers jump to your competitors". When they first did that, a few operators were smart enough to say yes. The rest has since learned to do as Apple says. But even so, Apple pays the Qualcomm tax.
The rest of the phone industry plays this game by just sharing a lot of components (Google's Android, Qualcomm's hardware, Samsung screens, Sony camera sensors, etc.). Google has tried to get into that market directly by buying Motorola at some point and by doing their Nexus and Pixel phones. But they never really became a dominant manufacturer. Google is a supplier of mostly software in this space.
Out of all that stuff, Qualcomm is the one that has the keys to the ecosystem. You need 4G/5G compatibility, which they provide via their hardware and software. And you need to get your solution certified. Without that you have an interesting device that does not talk to a mobile network. Even if you manage to build your own version of that (which is hard, but e.g. Apple is doing it), you still need to get it certified and then after you succeed with that, you need to license a lot of patents from Qualcomm to actually ship it. The price of entry to the market is very high. Long story short, there are not a lot of alternatives in the market and a few that have issues being allowed in mainstream markets like the US for IP licensing reasons.
>>“I can't go out and buy a Tizen or Windows phone in large part because of Google's pathological Android licensing. Google force carriers to choose between their, supposedly open, ecosystem and shipping alternative OSes.”
I don’t understand how such a licence can be legal. Surely it is monopolistic practices? Yes, Apple exists at a consumer level, but at the level of phone manufacturers google has a monopoly on licensing mobile OS to manufacturers. This is abuse of their dominance to prevent competition from android forks.
Could the difficulty be around the duopoly? We mostly have laws about monopolies, there can be some push-back against monopolies, but with a duopoly everything "seems" right.
I see so many discussions on the internet, also on HN, following the same ritual. Apple does something bad, and people say "Just choose something from the competition, like Google". Then Google does something bad and people say "Just choose something from the competition, like Apple".
Writing legislation is hard enough for a monopoly, it’s probably near impossible for a duopoly. Especially when the consumers want to use what everyone else is using and network effects come in play.
I actually meant ignoring the consumer level and look at the manufactures as the customer. If you are looking for an OS to put on your new phone you are manufacturing, what choice do you have? Apple doesn’t license iOS. Linux isn’t a feasible product yet, Windows is out. That means surely Android is a monopoly at this level no?
How much is Google still investing in Android? The Android ecosystem feels stagnant since at least 2 years. It seems Google is content with Apple taking most of the hardware profits and them taking the ad dollars.
I wonder if this will backfire soon. Wasn't LG the OEM for some of their Pixels? Who is replacing them?
What about Apple's mobile processors outclassing Android?
Ugh, no followup to the Stylo 5, then. Got mine in 2019 shortly after it was released, and it's been rock-solid. Aside from the inevitable non-removable battery, I've had no complaints, and to be fair to the battery, I still get outstanding life from it.
I really don't want a phone that's all-glass. I know it's trendy, but, hard pass for me. The aluminum frame and plastic back are things LG got very right with the Stylo 5. Please put enough of a bezel on it that I can actually grab it without triggering something inadvertently.
And, yes, that 3.5 mm jack is important. Music-making apps are basically impossible to work with when your audio path includes Bluetooth delay.
If they are mechanical, they are probably some special sauce not quite USB-C ports. USB is digital, TRS is analog. (Yes that means standardized adapters have to include a DAC). The delay should be minimal, though.
There is a mode that's called "Audio Adapter Accessory Mode" that makes use of the USB 2.0 data lines and a few others as analog audio lines for the headphones.
My understanding is that many USB-C adapters limit voltage, which screws over good headphones. Also from experience of using a DAC via USB-C everyday for many years, they're really really unreliable.
3.5mm on the other hand just works and is (was? ) ubiquitous.
There are passive and active dongles. With a passive dongle, the DAC is built into the phone and the analog signal is simply passed through the connector. Active dongles are essentialy tiny USB DACs, they communicate with the phone digitally via USB.
LG had good phones. But while most other phones allowed some minor cracks in their glass, the earlier LGs did not. One minor crack and the touch UI would stop working (they fused the touch sensor to the glass or something). They insisted on this "feature" for longer than most competitors I believe, and for every customer that experienced it we would 1) Never by an LG again, and 2) Bitch about it to others. I'm sure this was a factor to their downfall as well.
Maybe it's a statement about how difficult it is to be profitable in the industry, and how much support/development effort it takes to keep up.
If this is true, I might suggest that people who wonder "can't we just make our own open source phone" inject some realism into their estimates about how much work is needed to make an alternative that people actually want to use.
On the contrary, what drives LG to leave smart phone also enables the open source smartphone: the lowering of manufacturing puts more emphasis on software reconfigurability to the targeted audience of open source smartphone.
LG cannot sustain because they don't have a strong software product to make their smartphone profitable.
And open source smartphone is about open source anyway. It should not be compared to mass market products anyway.
This is sad because LG was the one of the last 2 android phone makers with both headphone jack and SD card support in their "flagship" the other being Sony.
I can't really blame them. Ever since the LG G4, they haven't really been relevant, which is unfortunate. They have the capability to experiment outside of the box, like the Wing, but a business is a business.
I'm still amazed at how well the LG G3 holds up today (with custom roms). That era of LG phones was great.
It's too bad that they started to concentrate all their efforts on coming up with the dumbest gimmicks possible (like that ridiculous second screen on the V20)
Sometimes it seems like Apple owes much of its success to the bizarre fact that all their competitors are completely incompetent.
I think you and the GP are disagreeing with each other. You are criticizing LG's gimmicky adventurous choices, which are the exact reasons why the GP liked LG.
This is actually very very bad. Google's lack of focus/vision w.r.t Pixel all but guarantees that Samsung can eat up the whole high end android phone market. Samsung's desire to stuff so much garbage unto their phones that they are molasses-slow even with the fastest mobile SoCs available to them all but guarantees that for most users, android will remain a huge mess.
I dunno. I think Google's new focus on the mid range is where it is at. Got a Pixel 4a 5G and it's a great phone (after the major missteps of the 3 and 4 with their hopeless battery life).
To me, I don't see what I'm missing going up from the 4a to a high end Samsung at twice the cost. Maybe a 90Hz display and a slightly faster CPU/GPU, which seem very marginal.
I think if Google doubles down on its mid range strategy (again) it's on to a winner.
Fwiw I feel similar about the iPhone SE, especially if apple refresh it at some point without a home button and better res OLED screen. Feels we are reaching the end of the S curve on smartphones.
I had a Pixel 3. Great phone - no battery life issues until 2 years (which was very annoying).
Pixel 4a and 5 were very disappointing to me. I could accept the mid-range hardware, but the lack of a camera update and especially better zoom camera options made me abandon them.
I believe why Google choose mid SoC in 2020 is because of Snapdragon 865 doesn't have integrated modem but requires external 5G modem. It makes phone design difficult and bad for battery life.
Exactly this! I find it bewildering -- they're by far the best in every respect that matters to me, and yet most people I meet are surprised to hear that Sony even makes phones, even when they express interest in mine. SD card, excellent camera, waterproof, durable, excellent battery life, headphone jack, quick, mostly vanilla Android OS, and most of all, the smallest form factor that I can still find in a phone.
Their branding is terrible though. Their naming scheme is without any pattern, making it hard to tell which phones are their budget/flagship/new/old models, and so on. And they're hard to even get at all in Canada.
Like most thing Sony the Hardware is good but the Software (and its support) is very crappy though. It looks flashy on the comparison table but falls short in real usage and support, and probably why with more exposure than LG (afaik) they seem to not catch on.
I've only ever owned 2 smartphones in my life: Samsung Note2 and my current Sony Xperia XZ. Until now I've never experienced the touch screen go broke after an Software update, and that the temperature limit of the camera set so weird that 10min continuous usage leads to a warning popup (that can be removed without hardware damange, if you root the phone).
Their lack of customer support is also not doing it any favour for getting respect.
The story you linked is a bit more complex than the headline. It's kind of appropriate for the deeply confusing and paradoxical experience of shopping for a Sony phone.
And it confirms the GP's thesis that Sony is committed to keep making excellent phones while redoubling its efforts to ensure they're ignored.
What the article really says is that Sony is going to stop marketing and selling their phones in many regions, which means if you want one you might have to order it online from a reseller in Hong Kong or something. And then it may or may not be compatible with your local wireless spectrum. If it is, you'll have an excellent phone, and if it's not, you'll have an expensive pocket camera.
Probably what they've found is that outside of Japan, they can't compete against Apple's and Google-Pixel's mindshare (despite having far superior hardware than the latter, in my opinion).
> Xperia is by no means dead to the world and the company is actually redoubling its efforts with that brand in a bid to grow amid the spending cuts in regions where it will now be appointing its focus. The Sony Xperia 1 marked the start of that and is actually the result of those cost-cutting measures.
The Sony designs seem pretty interesting and divergent from the rest of the market. I don't know why they're not getting more attention, but I assume it has to do with carrier deals.
Yes, I think a Microsoft Android phone could do extremely well. The Surface hardware is good.
As someone else pointed out, the real problem with the Android ecosystem isn't so much the hardware imo it is the absolutely appalling software everyone but Google seems to ship (I definitely include Samsung in this). Microsoft could do a good job of this and has the $$$ to throw at marketing (plus could leverage the cloud streaming Xbox stuff).
Agreed. I think leveraging Xbox brand as a gaming service with some kind of gaming enhanced hardware could get them in the door. Partnering with other big US names might be required. Comcast TV over 5g live package is what I am thinking. I just don’t think MS or Google can sit back and watch Apple build out a full ecosystem that pretty much rocks in most measurable ways. Too much on the line for these guys in the US market
Isn't OnePlus starting to eat the share that LG, HTC & Motorola once served? They seem to be the only ones that reliably update their software, don't have horrendous hardware issues and consistently have good LineageOS support.
I am sure they will. I just mean over time MS and Google will cut deep into this as well. Portable gaming and TV over 5g will be a bit part of their hardware lineup. This is longer term 5+ years thinking though
Why are google brands[0] featured so prominently on Microsoft's phone. Is it a requirement for phone Android phone vendors to keep google on the homescreen?
The original quip was an application of Conway's law, in that if you have a rigid, hierarchical organization with lots of bureaucracy, you're probably not going to get great software out the other side.
At least for consumer devices. You might make exemplary software for other rigid, hierarchical enterprises.
It's nothing against Koreans. It's everything against how Korea has organized its corporate culture, even if it's making efforts to change that.
I wish I could be more sad about this. LG lost a lot of trust during their bootloop era, around the time of the G4. They had some interesting ideas with their V series, but I just couldn't bring myself to trust them after my G4 died in less than 18 months.
I have two nexus 4's with bootloop, Nexus6P faced bootloop too but that's because Qualcomm messed up S810,S808 so bad that it had physical core separation. Both LG & Google had to face settlements for it. There were reports of Pixel devices facing bootloops too. I've decided not to buy flagships until it's at least a year in the market.
Btw, Nexus6P bootloop can be fixed in most devices by disabling the 4 Big. Cores and the phone can be used for less-demanding tasks with the 4 Little Cores. My Nexus6P has been resurrected this way[1].
I don't know what model of phone it was, but I had an LG phone lockup after a system update. I called support and they said it was out of warranty and I could send it in for repair at my cost. I never bought an LG phone after that.
It's just not possible for a company to push out a software update that bricks your phone and refuse to fix it in a competitive market.
I never understood why Samsung phones were constantly receiving praise by tech reviewers while LG got crapped on.
Samsung always wanted to do things their way -- different (shitty) UI, Samsung versions of all the core Google apps (but worse), reorganizing preferences for no reason, the stupid bottom button placement, non-remappable Bixby button, aggressively killing apps for power management and breaking widgets, etc.
LG always seemed a lot closer to stock Android, and was good at staying out of your way.
I had a Samsung Galaxy S4, then an LG G5, and now an LG V35. I hated the S4 and loved the G5 and V35. My fiance had an LG V20, and now has a Samsung Galaxy S20+ and feels similarly -- loved the V20, is super annoyed by stupid Samsung software quirks, even on this latest model.
Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances? Why is Samsung considered the flagship of flagships? Build quality beyond the V30 is basically identical.
Because at large people don't select their phone based on what you mention. What does matter I believe is marketing.
I think most importantly is Samsung's image presence vs LG. Can't remember the last time I've seen a TV advert for LG. Or a billboard in the city center, or youtube hype from influencers, etc. While Samsung is everywhere.
Second is the cool factor. LG has none while Samsung have this as a priority. From the design of the phones to their special physical presence in malls.
People often ask me (as an IT guy) to recommend a phone. But they always have their mind made up by the time they ask and Samsung is the choice. The other options don't look as good, are considered a risk vs a known, and are also seen as a budget choice for those who can't afford a Samsung. Sometimes I feel they would be even ashamed of having people see them with anything "less".
My nephew asked me what my phone was. I said a OnePlus 7 Pro. He said "is that a Samsung?" My anecdote suggests there is only iPhone and Samsung that people choose between. Of course many know there are other options, but that seems like the mindset of the masses.
serious q: OnePlus looks *great* but I'm concerned about the Chinese government and the de facto cyberwar with the US.
Example: I have security sensitive US clients, and I'd be concerned that (in the future, let alone present) I'd be labeled a security risk for carrying a "chinese cellphone."
How do you mitigate this concern? (serious replies only please)
Most people don't recognise what cell phone someone has, and I've never had a conversation organically turn to phone models unless someone is buying a new one.
I think if you put a case on it, the make/model of your phone will be brought up exactly 0 times in life.
Small aside: I used a Oneplus X for more than 5 years, but these days I'm not sure what positives OP have over other manufacturers. Early phones were great value but the recent releases just seem like other flagships. And the Nord for my usage is just a Pixel 4a but worse.
If this is a real concern then why not pay attention to
it? I believe Apple has the best track record in security and not embedding Chinese gov spyware.
This is the exact same reason I can't go for a OnePlus myself. I would look elsewhere.
edit: even if you flash the phone with open-source ROMs and firmware, the closed-nature of cellphones in general make it nigh impossible to know what hardware backdoors the manufacturers are forced to put in.
OnePlus seems to have same kind of marketing aura as Samsung. I remember when they first came out and my co-workers were bragging about the great features OnePlus had. It turned out that Nexus 5 had all the same stuff.
OnePlus was great when they hit the market because their phones had all the same stuff... but for cheaper to significantly cheaper.
They were never really sold as competing with a Nexus 5, and most people weren't buying a Nexus 5. (Even so, it was still ~20% cheaper.) People were looking at a OPO against a Galaxy S4/S5 and the other flagships that were all more than twice the price.
It was "marketing aura" in the sense that they took a phone that would have normally only appealed to developers/phone geeks and managed to market it to the masses to some extent.
But it wasn't _just_ marketing aura just because there was one other phone on the market that could compete with it. It was a legitimately good offering at the time when a Samsung cost twice as much and their offerings in that price range had seen so little care and attention as to be barely functional in many ways.
Oneplus just isn't the same anymore in my opinion. My two year old OnePlus 6 launched at $530 with flagship specs and a headphone jack. The 9 starts at $730 for the same screen resolution, same storage, and it even loses the headphone jack and OIS.
They've actually promised OxygenOS 11 all the way back to the 6. That said, rumors are that we won't get even a BETA until August meaning it will be more than a year after AOSP release and be out of date before it even ships :(
Hello fellow 6T owner. I got it just about three years back, the battery is in perfect shape and the phone doesn't have a scratch on it. If I take off the protection, it can genuinely pass off as new.
I'm never getting a phone without an armor again. That thing has fallen so many times on hard concrete and is completely untouched.
It is a legit concern of mine. I've been asked for phone recommendations from family as well, but they only focus on the main brands with a strong preference for Apple as the status symbol and Samsung as the slightly less pricey option for people who want a phone they can do a bit more with (which is to say they see Samsung as the phone I like because it isn't locked down). Even after explaining there is more to Android than just Samsung they don't seem to care because their view seems to be based on what advertisements they watch.
I'm afraid too much critical thinking has been off loaded to corporations through advertisement. Sure, it is just a phone, but for many of these people the $1k price tag is a major part of their disposable income and I don't think enough thought is being given to the far cheaper alternatives.
Not only has it been reduced to two options, the two options have become two of the most expensive options. I don't think this was by chance.
> Even after explaining there is more to Android than just Samsung they don't seem to care because their view seems to be based on what advertisements they watch.
Fashionistas see you the same way when it comes to clothes. Car people see you this way about cars. Furniture people about furniture. Photography nuts about photo gear, knife people about kitchen knives, restaurant critics about restaurants, and the list goes on. Let’s not even get into what audiophiles think of most of our speaker and headphone choices ...
Life is too short to be an expert at everything. Too short to even care about most purchases when good enough is plenty.
that's fine, but why bother asking someone knowledgeable if you're just going to ignore their advice? an audiophile will be disappointed if you ask for a headphone recommendation and say your budget is only $50, but they will probably still suggest a good model for the price.
Most non-technical people I know opt for iPhones because they know they can use them for 5-6 years with 1-2 battery swaps (that costs 30 EUR where I live). And for display quality.
I keep hearing this adage of "iPhone as a status symbol" and I have legitimately never in my life seen it. Only ever saw people on the internet talking about it.
It might not be a status symbol in the US and Europe but in the rest of the world it definitely is. I’ve lived in the uk for a while and no one cared that was wearing an iPhone. But as soon as I moved back to my home country everyone thinks I’m rich. And they’re right to think this way as the price of iPhones in my country is completely absurd.
Everyone thinks an 800 pounds phone is expensive?
Imagine if you had to pay almost double of that. In a country that receives less than 200 hundred pounds of monthly minimum wage.
I would never buy an iPhone while living here. It makes no sense unless you really want it as a status symbol.
I work remotely so to me the local average wage bears zero relevance.
I buy an iPhone for a number of reasons. I recognize it's expensive but it's usually at least a 3-year investment and to be fair, the cost per annum is basically the same for most Android flagships, only that Apple users switch devices less often.
This can likely be endlessly contested by the frugal folk but I am not here for that.
My reasons actually are highly irrelevant. I shared an anecdote about very regular non-tech people. They keep telling me the same stories after they switch from Android to iPhone and that's not accidental.
But again, cost of living in the country of residence doesn't mean much if you work remotely.
> It makes no sense unless you really want it as a status symbol.
You could have just said: "I am an Apple hater" and it would have saved us both time and keystrokes. :)
And I likely used mine for much more activities than you used yours.
But if you’re convinced that your choice is superior then you do you. I’m not here to argue, only to provide info of what I did and what many others I know did as well.
One of the best phones I ever had was a $500 Sony Xperia (amazing battery life). The other best phone was a Nokia 920 (?) Windows phone (zero cognitive load). Tech superiority and user experience are not market defining factors, clearly.
I think both Samsung and Apple are trainwrecks compared to their earlier offerings. This because of a lack of competition now.
speaking of "Tech superiority," IMHO...
I still think that the Palm OS Centro that I used so many years ago was simply the best. The Nokias of that era just didn't compete.
I don't remember the cost but I really don't think it was at all expensive. I do remember that I could anything and everything with little gem. Sometimes I say I'd buy it again in a heartbeat if it had today's processing power.
Ah, the good ol' days....
- two major phone manufacturers (Apple and Samsung),
- two main internet browsers (Chrome and Firefox),
- two mainstream cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin and Ethereum),
- two major home internet providers (Verizon and Comcast)
- two ...
There are exceptions of course, esp. in the retail market and fast food industry, but I'm afraid the good-ol' times choices in many areas are mostly gone.
Samsung absolutely decimated the other manufacturers in marketing - including Google.
I remember seeing GQ articles that were interviews with celebrities that was kind of a "30 questions" thing where each celebrity was asked the same set of questions.
One of them was: "iPhone or Samsung?"
It didn't matter that the answer to every single one (in that issue) was iPhone. It didn't surprise me that celebrities would be 100% iPhone users.
But as a discerning high-end android buyer gravitating between flagship Google Nexus devices, HTC, and LG, the implication that the alternative to iPhone was "Samsung" was BEWILDERING to me.
When 6-year-olds use Samsung as a synonym for Android, you know that Samsung's marketing is crushing it. Which is a shame considering how poor their overall software quality is.
FWIW I've had good experiences with recent Samsung devices. The OS is fast and stable and adds some useful things to stock Android. Their bundled apps aren't terrible either. I use their mail & notes apps. At this point I'd rather have a flagship Galaxy phone than a Pixel since Android doesn't bring that much in terms of new features with major releases these days.
its election time in my home state in India and my 6+ year old asks me who will win the election? I was surprised at the question and the fact that she is able to articulate the political party names. At her age i didn't even know what a political party is. I then realized she sees lots of Television now ever since she moved to her grandama's house during covid.
She goes and names three top parties herself and predicts that one particular party will win. I was surprised.. Asked her why she think so and says she sees more ads of that particular party more than others.. i was beyond words.
I have stricter no screen policy at my home. But since she is staying with her grand parents now (due to reasons beyond my control) and they are used to watching TV, she ends up watching it too. And its really difficult to avoid ads, you get that in all the channels.
Parent has a point. Even if it's difficult, teach her to mute and ignore them. Seriously, my parents taught me some disgust against ads, and it's one thing they did right.
I remember when we went to my grandmas house, and the media was talking about a ‘major crisis’ in the White House, like they do every day.
Our seven-year-old suddenly got concerned and has to be calmed down, because she is so rarely exposed to American media.
I feel bad for this generation, and I’m not surprised that almost half of our senior high school girls (at least on one sports team) are on anti-anxiety medication.
That really depends on the parents I would say. My kids watch about zero linear ad riddled TV and YouTube, because we don't have a TV. They do get to watch Netflix, NextTube and Disney+. And various educational programs that are streamed ad free online. That at least limits their exposure to advertising, though some shows are basically advertisements for cheap plastic toys (paw patrol, fireman sam) and we disagree if they are allowed.
It is a demonstration of how well advertising works since they (presumably) don't have much knowledge about mobile devices or branding. Calling everything an iPhone is the telling part. If branding wasn't a thing, they would simply call it a phone.
Not sure why this is getting down voted, I think one can articulate why giving children unfettered access to advertising content is probably bad parenting advice.
Advertising is almost always a thread of a lie, so reducing exposure to that until children are more mature is probably a good idea.
I think it stemmed from their dominance in quality TVs for a while. These days I see no reason to pay Samsung's rediculous TV prices and they do puy out some real garbage screens now but for a while it was Samsung or some peasant trash.
It's not bewildering if it's literally always been true.
A few points:
Samsung is not cool. Or rather, maybe a little bit among some very middle/lower class people.
Selling mobiles is done primarily through carriers - this is not about Samsung direct advertising mostly, by and large, it's through the deals made with carriers.
Google has never taken their phone and it's manufacturing/distribution as seriously as Samsung.
Carriers may have also specifically not wanted Google to win, because it gives G too much power, they hate Apple and don't want to have to be told what to do.
Samsung has always had a huge variety of phones, a much bigger and broader approach.
They have always led with a kind of crappy, thrown-together feature, but it was enough to put some wrap a bad campaign around good enough for a bulk of the Android community.
The US is a pretty large market, plus carrier bundling is quite common in Europe too. You are usually free to choose a non-bundled phone as well, but I have no ideas what the numbers are.
Within the bundled packages, my impression is that Samsung is very dominant as well among the Android phones.
New Zealand is outside the US and it's not unusual for people to buy their phones from their carrier alongside signing up to a plan especially if they are spending a lot of money. Phones purchased directly from the carrier are guaranteed to have the correct LTE bands which makes it easier to be sure you will get the best performance. Also carriers offer sweet interest-free deals with free stuff throw in which makes it more appealing than buying a phone outright. It's usually people buying cheaper phones that may just pair up an cheap phone from an independent store with a cheap plan often from a virtual operator.
This is so underrated as a comment, but so true. Samsung just kept at it with incremental updates to a single series and an occasional separate model if they wanted to try something new.
LG was constantly shifting markets. I had a G2 and really liked it. I would have bought other devices from them, but the things that appealed to me about the G2 disappeared in most future products.
Constant shifts in focus gained share but also lost share at the same time. They really needed a cohesive line.
This is what I tell my family who keep saying they have fantastic ideas for products. No advertising budget means hardly anyone is going to use their Facebook clone.
There seems to be large regional variance. I live in South Korea, LG definitely advertised a lot. I recommended LG phones to a lot of people who asked me, and no one complained.
Edit: For example, people love LG's KnockON feature.
Here in New Zealand, I see Samsung advertising everywhere. TV, billboards, in store, digital, etc. Whereas LG has very little advertising and usually not for their mobile phones. LG is a South Korean company so I guess they advertised heaps domestically but not internationally?
> With Knock ON you can set the phone to turn the screen on by quickly double-tapping the screen. Double-tap an empty area in the Home screen, Status Bar, or Lock screen to turn the screen off.
LG was one of the first to add the feature back around 2013. Now it's more commonly known as dt2w (double-tap to wake) and is a feature on a lot of stock roms, as well as pretty much any custom rom.
I believe it is, it's just never activated. My guess is they are saving that for a later upgrade when they can't add more cameras. I loved my LG with knock on, would still use it if it could handle today's apps...
I loved that feature back on the LG G2. I think I never stopped expecting phones to behave like this, and it seems even Apple agrees somewhat, the iPhone 11 Pro I now use turns its display on when tapped once.
Introduced by Nokia in Symbian but I forgot when, maybe around 2008? I have to assume Nokia patented the feature as it's super useful but was missing from all non-Nokia phones for the longest time.
I think for Samsung the key was to build a loyal customer base by copying the iPhone at a lower price point. Thier designs have now departed significantly from those of Apple but the core customers have stuck around.
Except Samsung's prices now rival the iPhone. The Samsung S21+ without a trade in is $1199. The iPhone 12 Pro Max is actually $100 cheaper at $1099.
Flagship prices seem completely ridiculous these days for minor improvements over the previous year's models or even their second-tier offerings. But consumers put such a premium on having the newest shiniest thing that the previous year's model can frequently be had for less than half the price.
Looking at unlocked iPhone retail prices for the iPhone 4 in 2011, flagship pricing has increased 3-4x the inflation rate for the same period of time.
You may be on to something here. The comparison isn’t in 2020, but in 2010-ish. I’d say the distinction then was much more pronounced, and Samsung gained a lot of good will in that era.
I think it's simply that people that buy LG don't buy a lot of phones. Samsung so shit you need to buy the new model to get rid of the annoyances of the last. S3 and note were really their only winners. LG hits it out of the park at every price point almost every generation.
Same goes for HTC. Buy once, cry once, hodl that shit for half a decade on the short side.
Is that feasible when the device is only supported for 3 years max? This is a serious question. Just bought a new pixel 5, because the pixel 3 I had bought refurbished 2 years ago will lose support in October. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the pixel 3, it's literally the same phone with slightly older innards and no wide angle camera.
My guess is it is a self fulfilling prophecy. If a lot of people have older devices, application developers have to support the older API levels.
For example, a store called Safeway decided to cut out an older version of Android. However, they reversed less than a month later.
Speaking of marketing, I think LG does market quite a bit inside the Republic of Korea. I saw a show called oh my ghost and everyone had an LG phone in the show.
Nobody I know who isn't seriously into tech even realizes that phones need security updates.
The problem is compounded by the fact that every manufacturer has their own schedule for security updates. Just because Android got a widely publicized security patch doesn't mean that their phones will get it any time soon. By the time they do, nobody remembers what it's for.
I'm not sure there's any phone provider that has security updates available the same day that Google releases them, or very quickly at all. I remember the last Samsung phone I had, S7 edge, I went months without updates. Unfortunately, if security is a top priority, your best choice at 1st party phones like Google's Pixel or the iPhone.
I used to use Xiaomi's flagship and it seemed to have fairly regular updates, but every time I installed one it would replace all of my preferences and default to using their own replacements apps instead of stock Android apps that I preferred. I finally had to get rid of it way before the end of its useful lifespan because there there seemed to be a whole lot of issues surrounding its customization of Android. The deal breaker was after an update when I stopped receiving text messages reliably. Sometimes they'd come through immediately, sometimes a few minutes late, and a few days a week they wouldn't come in at all until either 1) I rebooted 2) I lost and then regained cell signal 3) I airplane mode on then off.
I tried all sorts of work arounds, suggested fixes from browsing forums, etc., nothing worked. I liked the phone, but it just got too stressful for work: My boss is respectful of normal business hours, but during the day still relies heavily on text messaging for requests, urgent issues, etc.
I was pissed off at having to put out money for a new phone so early, so I went with the budget Pixel 4a, and honestly I don't see much of a performance hit at all, even though it's about 25% worse on CPU specs. And even though the camera specs are much lower, it takes much better photos. At this point, I'm a convert to 2nd tier Pixel phones.
I am sure you'll end up retiring your pixel 4a far sooner than it will become unusable due to wear and tear due to Google's ridiculously short support term :/
I believe my next phone will be a glorious fruit device, probably a second hand one.
It's good for a minimum of 3 years of updates and tech support, or 18 months after it is last sold by Google, whichever is longer. That's plenty for me, I usually flip my old phone on eBay and use that towards a new one ever 1-2 years.
It may be plenty for you, sure. But you're flipping the phones. I take it there's a market for people who want phones without security updates. That's certainly not me though. I find it despicable that the phone I bought almost 2 years ago (Pixel 3) will not receive any updates after October, and as such, I will no longer use it. But there's literally nothing wrong with the phone, cosmetically it's in near perfect condition, all the hardware works, and it's still plenty fast. As it stands, to get the max 3 years of support, you literally have to buy the phone on day 1. This is pathetic. My next phone will be an iPhone.
Even in Korea, everyone knows what the latest Samsung phones are, but few people keep track of LG's product cycle.
Here, LG is best known for household appliances and the Gram line of ultralight laptops. It's a running joke that even Samsung stores use LG air conditioners. Samsung appliances are for people who can't afford LG. When it comes to phones, though, it's the other way around just like in the rest of the world.
Few people care about it, especially since the devices don't make noise about but just stop getting updates at some point. Apps tend to be conservative about axing support for old versions too, so little pressure from there.
(And given how little many people actually install new apps etc, I wonder how large the attack surface really is - but I have no data on that)
Samsung was also much more aggressive regarding incentives/commission for salespeople. At a Verizon store an employee might make $50-100 on selling a Samsung flagship vs $5 for an iPhone.
I'm pretty amazed Samsung can pull this off. Anyone who is the least bit brand conscious is buying Apple everything. Android's big appeal to me is power features and value and Samsung is the worst on those facets. I've had a few LGs and they were really nice.
"It's just marketing" is an age old refrain from tech people. As a group, we still haven't figured out that marketing works and matters. Nor have we figured out the kinds of features that lead successful products.
there's a lot of tradeoff in samsung phones, from thermal envelop to installed crapware, but their success is not just marketing, they usually come with top of their price class camera, and that is something a lot of people care about.
especially mid range a lot of phone produces washed, sad mockery of pictures unless you're under the sunniest day conditions, and even then skin and faces get garbled by the ai-thingy lot of them sports. this does matter to a lot of consumers.
I mean honestly looking at the Linux or alternative phone offerings, I'd love to jump on it, but the cameras are ages behind. And my phone has become my main camera.
1. LG are crap at discovery ( Sales and Marketing ) and distribution. Something which despite HN is a forum from VC and Startup, pays very little attention to.
2. LG's phone QA were never really as good. This has been the case since pre-Smartphone era.
3. LG WOLED, something they tried to get it work on Smartphone but never worked and their AMOLED panel were inferior, which sort of have a knock on effect on their brand.
4. They were just never as aggressive as Samsung, I dont mean Samsung Electronics and LG electronics, I mean the whole Samsung vs LG. I guess someone from Korea can chime in on that because I know LG is competitive in South Korea.
5. Samsung are great at making Smartphone. Their whole Business Model. If you think you know Flywheel because you know Amazon. Take a look at Samsung.
6. On a Hardware level, Samsung is way ahead of LG on Spec. Which is what nerds and Tech reviewers likes to focus on. UI and Software tends be subjective. And stock Android is like the year of Linux on Desktop.
7. You would have thought they could built some synergy with LG OLED from TV. Nope.
They are still abysmal to work with. I'm working on a webOS TV app and some of the updates require their certification, and their QA team is unbelievable...
I had an idea for one of those but absolutely bailed when I saw the joke of an “approval process” they had. I remember something like having to fill in a presentation (!)... The only item missing from the list was “fly to Korea and take the team out for dinner”.
Yeah! We have to create the app presentation each time we submit for certification, and if even one of the text elements from presentation differs from the app it's cert failure... I mean, what the hell LG?!
One time they've sent us cert feedback for another (big) application, instead for our app. All that with their presentation file, login details, and other stuff.
I had an S4 then a G4 and then a S8 and never looked back. I'm now on the S20+. The jump from the S4/G4 to the S8 was such a massive one it felt like it was a whole new experience. The only thing that would convince me to switch from Samsung is if Google got its act together and built a real flagship complete with all the bells and whistles.
Samsung, for me, just works. It's a bit obnoxious to have doubles of apps, but otherwise I don't have a lot of problems. It's funny you mention Bixby key because none of those phones you listed have one - I supposed you could argue the S20 does, but the first thing I did was remap (using Samsung's built in controls) it back to the power button and I was on my way. I'm only reminded that Bixby is a thing when people complain about it.
This mirrors my experience. I had an S3, and my experiences with that and having to deal with the S4 for work turned me off of Samsung entirely.
Later on I ended up upgrading from my HTC One M8 to a refurbished S8 (it was one of the only phones on the market that was small enough for my tastes), and honestly I love it. All the flashy aesthetic stuff I had scoffed at Samsung for (curved screen edges, etc) ended up feeling really great once I was using the phones, ignoring Bixby gives me a free extra hardware button, the Samsung apps stack up pretty nicely against the stock Android ones, UI themeing works better than it ever did for me on other phones, and accessory availability is excellent due to their popularity.
Honestly, more phones should start adding extra remappable hardware buttons.
I've had an S8 for two years. For a phone that's four years old, it's by far the best and most performant one I've had. Past phones I've had seemed to slow down noticeably, but with the S8 you barely notice it at all. I'm hoping to hold onto it for a few more years, and after that I'd love to continue down the Galaxy line.
I've also had an S8 for the past 2-3 years. I remapped Bixby button (home button, or double click+hold for flashlight, even when locked). I also use almost none of the Samsung apps. I use Novalauncher which is better than any other launcher I've tried: lets me hide everything I can't otherwise uninstall, and with ability to set grid spacing/sizing lets me have a single (non-scrolling) page of "all apps I care about" I can swipe up to get to.
I'm not especially pro-Samsung, and I'm just one consumer and I'm sure that for every unhappy one, there's someone who loves LG or loathes Samsung, but I will never buy any LG product at all if there's something else available which is about equivalent.
They sold me their top-end phone, years ago, for a top-end price, on the basis that they would update Android in the next three months. It was a nice phone, but three became six, which became a few years - three or four or five.
Eventually they did offer the option, of course by then I was not using the phone, but I tried to upgrade anyway, and my phone would not upgrade. There was no support when I asked apart from 'download it and it should work'.
So in answer to your question, it's not about Samsung, it's about LG for me - and they destroyed all credibility with me - I don't believe claims on build quality, I don't believe claims about support, I don't believe any of their advertising. And I actively advise friends not to buy their products, when asked.
I have a Samsung phone that used to be their top of the line. I have never updated it because I know the next update disables call recording. I believe any subsequent phone has non-working (probably not in every region) call recording so that is a deal breaker for me.
It seems like they got lobbied by insurance companies who scam people over the phone (they promise options that turn out to be a lie) and you can't really prove it unless you record them. Call recording saved me few times from losing money. You can also record calls with your parents, so you can listen to them forever.
>It seems like they got lobbied by insurance companies who scam people over the phone (they promise options that turn out to be a lie) and you can't really prove it unless you record them.
Seems like a weird conspiracy theory to me. What leverage do insurance companies have over google? Moreover, isn't it trivial to record with a second phone?
In most of the customer support calls I make, I speak up right after connecting that I'm recording the call for legal purposes while the IVR plays. It's a bit tricky for marketing calls received, but I try nonetheless.
LG G6 is my favorite phone ever. I like it physically, it’s waterproof, it has a headphone jack, it has a fingerprint reader, it has NFC, it does NOT have a notched camera, and Spigen made an awesome inexpensive case for it.
And I bought mine for $360 CAD (about $240 USD) at the end of its cycle. That’s hard to beat. Samsung makes crappier, more expensive phones IMO.
I have a Spigen case too, but for my iPhone. It's this really simple black case, and I haven't been able to discover a single disadvantage. It's sturdy but not too thick, it wraps tight but not overly, etc.
I'd like to get a new case, just for variety's sake, but they're bound to be worse -- so I don't.
LG has arguably the best design in the Android pact, it's elegant and slick, while Samsung looks like things cobbled together to the sole purpose of avoiding patent wars with Apple, and Huawei is just Frankenstein.
1. LG did not have one thing they stood for. At a time it was repairability (the LG G5 and LG V20 is one of the best older Android phones with an exchangeable battery), sound quality, supporting modules to extend the phone (but almost never releasing any), one release had a great camera, last year they released one with a cross display. There is no common theme, no follow up on their experiments. Quick, what's the newish LG Velvet about? Even I don't know, and I read the reviews (checking again: There is nothing special).
2. Product names suck, with them all colliding together over time. Samsung also does that a little bit, but not as much with their S line.
3. Repeatedly releasing phones at high prices, putting them in direct competition with almost flagship phones, and cutting them a week after release by several hundred dollars. Instead of cutting the price immediately and getting better reviews by thus being in competition with cheaper and worse other phones.
4. Not supplying reviewers with review models, at least in the US.
No surprise really. I would have loved a modern G5 at some point in the future. But now LG is gone, and the phones they released in between had nothing to do with what made the G5 and V20 good anyway.
This is part that is aggravating to me. I know you are right, but why does it have to one thing. A discerning consumer should be able to determine if a given product works for its use case.
I thought that argument was strong. If a brand or at least a product line has one characteristic, it can find customers that value it and it becomes their goto choice. Without that, the product has to find new customers each time. Gets ridiculous with cult-like followings as with Apple, but in essence it does not have to be a bad mechanism.
I am a s10+ user and recently I ditched all the different google version of my phone apps. I decided to use samsung's version of the calculator, calendar, files and contacts apps.
They seem solid enough for me and some of them present better integration with the Samsung ecosystem . Those apps are also integrated with different third party providers including google .
I still despise bixby but I'm very satisfied with the rest of the phone.
At least the Samsung Gallery app works just fine if you block the network access with a firewall. The Google Gallery app does strange things and is not usable at all behind a firewall.
Recommend another keyboard that will let me switch quickly between the five languages that I have installed, supports swipe in all those languages, has cursor navigation, and does not promote the use of emojis in conversation, has rich set of characters including diacritic marks for Hebrew and Arabic. If it pops up my selected text as an autocomplete selection that would be nice too.
I would be willing to pay for such a keyboard. Alas the free Google keyboard does all that. For me, the only feature missing is language selection when attaching a hardware bluetooth keyboard. I have to switch to the default Samsung keyboard to be able to switch languages from the hardware keyboard.
IMO, Samsung drastically improved their phones from S5 -> S7. (I have an S10e)
The S7 onwards, Samsung phones have been superior to all other traditional android competitors at providing a fully rounded flagship experience. (vs Sony, Htc, LG, Xiaomi, Huawei, Pixel).
The new OneUi 2.0+ experience has dramatically improved my impression of Samsung devices. Samsung phones now allow you to hide all the bloat away and the unremovable parts are quite pleasing. My phone hasn't lagged once in my 2 years of owning it and the basics (Screen, Camera, Battery, Smoothness, Updates) remain near the top of the line, despite its age. There is no reason for stock android to be considered superior to OEM skins. It just so happened that for majority of its iterations, OEM skins ruined more than their improved. However, when done well, an OEM skin can absolutely be superior to stock android. (HTC & Sony back in the early days of Android). I believe, One UI 3.1 is currently superior stock android. (As long as I can swap out the bearably terrible app drawer and remap the unbearably terrible bixby to google)
Now the S20 devices are 3rd in line on Samsung's flagship ladder. Fold > Note > S20. So, if you are really craving top of the line, then the S20 ain't it. Personally, I can't wait to get my hands on the Z-fold-3 whenever it comes out.
Yes, because I don't find Samsung annoying. Back in the Nexus days and a few years after, stock Android was king. Since then, Samsung cleaned up TouchWiz and then made OneUI with an even better accessible UX.
I say this with the caveat that no phone UX is perfect. I can see flaws in all of them. But right now, I prefer OneUI and it's level of out-of-the-box customization over stock. (Ex: You could hide the on-screen navbar and make all apps immersive with/without gestures)
I'd even argue Samsung has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting of adding new features to Android. Google frequently adds features that were previously only available on Samsung (and sometime other vendors) for generations. I've noticed when Google adds the same features, I find the UX to be a downgrade from what I was used to. This is because Samsung then adds the Google flavor (more taps!) and removes their own. I'm still annoyed at the latest camera UX and multi-window.
Then there's Samsung's hardware. The Wacom EMR S-Pen has become a must have for me. Also I've come to rely on Samsung Pay, which WAS the best mobile payment app (more on that later). Samsung has hardware in their devices that allows them to write to any magnetic strip reader on any POS system. This works everywhere NFC/Google Pay/Apple pay aren't available.
All that being said, I like Samsung a lot less than I used to. As of last year, ads have suddenly clogged up their software. (Want to pay for groceries using your phone? Look at this ad first!) Also Samsung Pay is being removed from newer devices, probably to make room for 10 more camera lenses. Sorry, NFC is still not everywhere.
Between the ads, removal of Samsung Pay, removal of features in general, and the lower screen resolutions of S20/S21s, I won't be upgrading to a new Samsung any time soon. There's also this homogenization of Android becoming more Apple-like and Apple becoming Android-like. At this point I'm seriously considering Apple, especially if they make a smaller Apple pencil to be used on phones.
This was so painful. Samsung Pay was genius. A perfect app at what it did.
This is the same time Google released incomplete two feature god-awful google-pay apps. Now I'm hurting to find something as good as the old Samsung pay.
Generally I felt LG was stuck between Samsung and cheaper Chinese brands. Samsung flagships had slightly better specs for people that wanted the latest and greatest. Also they were well known so had purchase inertia. While people wanted budget and willing to try something new went the Chinese brands where for a little less phone, or not sometimes, it's cheaper. Also LG would release at high prices and then drop not too long later chasing volume. I always felt they needed to sacrifice margin for a few cycles to get volume and release at the soon to be markdown price. Kinda how pixel phones have shifted on their last release. Same goes for Sony who have some decent phones too.
I'm kind of surprized that the Pixel line isn't considered the "flasgship of flagships" by more people given that it's literally the flagship first-party manufactured device by the OS creator. It's the closest thing to the iphone experience with android. If you use Fi, messages mimics imessages (in that you can use it online) and your service, device, and OS all come from the same company and you get the most out of the box google-intended Android experience.
> If you use Fi, messages mimics imessages (in that you can use it online) and your service, device, and OS all come from the same company and you get the most out of the box google-intended Android experience.
That only has appeal to purists. Why would Joe Schmoe care that their phone is made by the same people who make the OS? And why would someone buy Android for the iPhone experience?
To be clear that appeals to me, but I'm not the average consumer. And despite that appeal I have a S20+ because when it came time to upgrade Pixel was still stepping all over itself with poor battery life and weird features that I didn't need. The 5's now offers no "flagship" option, which are the phones that appeal to me. I hope that they can get things sorted for the next time I want to upgrade.
Samsung has marketed well and makes high quality phones. It hit the ground running with Android and hasn't been afraid to reinvent itself (OneUI was a greatly improved experience).
LG phones have often suffered from a number of issues: really poor displays (bad calibration and/or poor power profiles due to LG's in-house displays lagging far behind); poor camera hardware and software (Samsung has definitely made a number of missteps in this area, but LG blew it generation after generation); and bad battery life. I agree that Samsung has the upper hand (and gets the benefit of the doubt) through massive mindshare, but it's not as if LG has been churning out better quality phones year after year and not getting any traction.
My anecdotal experience: My wife and I both had LG phones, Nexus 5x, for about 9 months before they stopped being usable. Dealing with poorly made equipment and terrible warranty service was more than enough to ensure I wouldn't be buying any more LG products.
While I don't like a lot of their software, my experience with Samsung's hardware, and their warranty service for that matter, have been much more pleasant.
edit: On a somewhat related note, I recently bought a new Samsung TV. True to Samsung form, the software is terrible but the hardware has been very solid.
Samsung is very aggressive in marketing and penetrating markets. If you make a very good phone, it won't sell without 1. letting people know your phone exist and 2. making it possible for people to buy your phone.
Samsung aggressively installed itself in even the most remote places. When you go through a small city (my parent's home) and find that Samsung has an official office with actual Koreans in it, it makes sense that people from that place will conduct business with Samsung.
Same can be said with Apple. For example, Apple is aggressive when it comes to international warranty. In my opinion, they understand that a good size of their products are sold/smuggled in the black market. When you offer international warranties, it gives you an advantage over other brands since now the Apple product is as cheap as Samsung's. Where I live, the official-partner Apple store is basically a warranty repair shop. Most people buy their products off-market.
Yeah, I like the Samsung UI. I think it's brilliant to have the scroll area in the below half of the screen initially, to make it easy to touch the first few items of the list.
I even like some of their apps. Samsung Health is, in my opinion, infinitely better than Google Fit. The latter doesn't even let me delete mistakenly input data. I'm not sure what Google's strategy on this app is.
This. AOSP feels so annoying to use, while OneUI is incredibly comfortable, especially showing its advantages on large screens. I swear, I often wish more apps would follow OneUI in their design, that's how comfortable in use it is.
I'm using a mix of Samsung's navbar gestures and "One Hand Operation" GoodLock module gestures and my thumb barely ever needs to reach outside of my "comfortable grip" reach area on my 6.4" Galaxy A50, even when accessing notifications/quick settings drawer.
And I could go on and on about how good their hardware is in the midrange shelf, though it seems to me flagship pricetags usually don't seem to bother HN users.
Also: if you use a Samsung, try out GoodLock apps, they're great. I don't think any other manufacturer supports completely changing things like the recents tab or sound controls without rooting or installing custom ROMs.
At least in the places I've been in Asia distribution is a huge part of it. Samsung phones are available in every shop and they have their own dedicated stores in the bigger shopping malls.
The asia ive seen was at least 50% oppo shops and 30% fake apple shops and only like 20% for everything else. Thailand, cambodia and malaysia about 5 years ago that is.
I've noticed the same here in New Zealand. My local mall is not a particularly large/important mall but it still has a Samsung store. Even if that wasn't there, all the carrier stores sell Samsung. All the electronics stores sell Samsung. Hardly any LG mobiles to be seen!
I disagree with your take on the Samsung. While it's not perfect, it's the best (and sometimes only) option for most people who want an top end Android phone. Google sells it's phones in only a handful of countries, same with Oneplus, LG and Sony and all of them have their own compromises. So in many parts of the world, its either Samsung or a Chinese manufacturer like Xiaomi.
I find Samsung apps to be much better than their Google counterparts. Samsung Health, Internet, Calculator and Notes are examples. Besides, they fit the UI really well along with the menus and other things. And whatever annoyances you've experienced can be tweaked since the UI is highly customisable (bar none).
In terms of long-term support, Samsung also provides 3 years of upgrades and 4 years of security updates. That's the best from any company bar Apple and it extends to their midrange devices too.
I would love to buy a Sony, because my previous phones were Sony, but a year ago when I needed a new on no Sony phones were available, and now they are only making 21:9 phones, which I think is just absurd. They look so tall, that I would be afraid of putting them in my pocket, fearing they will snap in half. Where is a man supposed to carry these phones, which are so tall that they don't seem to fit in jeans pockets? I wish they would stop with that sillyness.
> I never understood why Samsung phones were constantly receiving praise by tech reviewers while LG got crapped on.
> LG always seemed a lot closer to stock Android, and was good at staying out of your way.
> Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances? Why is Samsung considered the flagship of flagships? Build quality beyond the V30 is basically identical.
Well, knowing them only through my purchases of a Nexus S, Nexus 4, and Nexus 5:
The Nexus S is still around.
The Nexus 4 suffered from battery inflation.
The Nexus 5 suffered from a catastrophic failure that caused me to lose a year's worth of message history.
So all I can say in response to the news "LG is getting out of the mobile phone business" is "good riddance, they should never have been there in the first place".
Which one is "closer to stock Android" is a non-issue if you run stock Android anyway.
I had two Motorola phones back to back and really liked them, hardly any bloatware, performed well and the second one had a impact resistant screen that wasn't glass, didn't need a case and tooke some awful banks but never cracked even though it had some dents.
Are you talking about the home button? I actually love that and it's the reason I got the S4 and then S7. I've been putting off buying a new phone because all the new phones are digital buttons and I really like having the physical ones.
I love it too and that's also the reason I am sticking with the S7. Its fast. It's popular enough so that if it ever becomes obsolete, I'll easily switch to LineageOS. And I never had to buy an expensive new phone, second hand cheap s7 are everywhere.
Disparition of physical buttons is a good example of "backwards progress" : another area where it drives me crazy is all those induction hobs that have touch buttons that never work properly when wet (which happens all the time it's a kitchen ffs). I get it, it's easy to clean, but it's a pitn to use.
> I never understood why Samsung phones were constantly receiving praise by tech reviewers while LG got crapped on.
Samsung phones work well, they have one of the best cameras, the best screens, the best batteries, usually the most features. LG phones are famous for boot-looping.
> different (shitty) UI
It is a matter of opinion. I much prefer Samsung's UI over the garbage that is google's, and even slightly better than iphone.
> Samsung versions of all the core Google apps (but worse)
Every Samsung app that replaces a google app is 2x better. The browser is faster, better than chrome. The contacts app is so much better. The dialer is like 10 years ahead. Gallery is at least 10x faster and less buggier than google photos. I always try to delete as much google bloatware from my phone as possible, and use the samsung apps.
> the stupid bottom button placement
What button? There are no buttons on Samsung phones for the past 3-4 years. The navbar is fully customizable (unlike google), and hidable.
> non-remappable Bixby button
Similar to the non-remappable squeeze button on pixels and siri button on iphones?? And the bixby button is remappable with an app nowadays.
> aggressively killing apps for power management
Samsung is hardly the worst offender here. And I can't blame them for trying to fix the clusterfuck that google has created with android.
> Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances?
I can't speak for others, but your "annoyances" are useful features for me. The alarm app turns on my bedroom lights in the morning automatically. Bixby routines automatically cranks the brightness and enables auto rotate when I play a video. Samsung health auto-tracks my sleeping schedule and tells me which apps are keeping me awake. Samsung browser blocks all ads and has an automatic dark mode for every website. Samsung pay lets me pay with my phone at any credit card terminal, not just the ones with NFC.
Also, it's a phone dialer - like the functionality of a phone dialer has been well defined since the early 2000's (also having used PalmOS, webOS, Windows Mobile 6 and 7, Early Android, and iOS from 2012 on I've never desired additional functionality here), so like what makes a phone dialer "like 10 years ahead"? - I'm not trying to snark, it's a genuine question.
For a long time stock android didn't have T9 contact searching from the dialer (and, astonishingly, iOS still doesn't), something present since the Galaxy S1.
This is the first time I've heard of T9 being used since we moved on from the old Nokia phones that pioneered T9! Bring back fond memories of my Nokia 3310 and 8210. But yeah it's odd to see T9 in the context of a touchscreen phone...
I think it's a pity it's gone. I've developed https://typenineapp.com for iPhone, since I couldn't get used to the small buttons on the qwerty keyboard. I would dare to say I type almost twice as fast as regular qwerty phone users, and even without the tactile feedback I can do so without looking.
I've had about 60.000 downloads, and I almost never see a bad review, so I'd say T9 on a touchscreen has a place.
Why would you need T9 on a touch screen? You can just display a full keyboard. That was the defining aspect of the keynote that launched the first iPhone, even.
Because the T9 keyboard is already displayed, and the full keyboard isn't. It is a very fast way to search through your contacts directly from the dialier when I want to call someone, which is the primary use case of the dialer (calling someone already in my contacts).
Sure it does. Right side button, hold it and it triggers siri. Single click locks unlocks the phone. This is identical to how the unlock/Bixby button works on Samsung.
That’s optional, and opt-in -- it asks you during phone setup whether to enable Siri.
It does try to nudge you into enabling it, but if someone kept pressing that button and invoking Siri accidentally, they could open Settings and search for “siri” to disable it, which I think is reasonably discoverable.
On my S10, there is a seperate Bixby button on the left side, so it's not shared with the unlock button. The best thing about the Bixby button is that I can freely remap it with third party applications, meaning I have a dedicated, customizable, physical button, something all phones should have.
You can enable it in Accessibility > Side Button > Press and Hold. It appears to be enabled by default for me — Siri shows up in less than one second of holding the power button.
I have the iPhone 11 Pro Max, since launch, with Siri enabled since launch. It's only ever worked with 'hey siri', and apparently my button is off. I didn't even know the button existed until the other reply to my comment!
Samsung users makes it sound like they are activating Bixby constantly, while Siri can’t be activate when not enabled. So is Samsung allowing users to disable Bixby? It sounds like they’re not.
Samsung lets you disable Bixby fully. Users complain more about Samsung because Android users are not used to being forced by the device they paid $1000 for, it's a new experience for them, unlike Apple users.
I have the s20+ and tried to disable bixby as much as possible, but it cant be uninstalled (short of adb hacks that can get lost with updates), and even after disabling everything i could it kept popping up asking to update, though that thankfully stopped after a month or so of regular annoying popups. Probably going stock android next time
Samsung does not have the same setup. They added a separate button mapped exclusively to this feature. The iphone has an alternate mapping most aren't even aware of for a multifunctional button
Samsung added a separate hardware button for Bixby, Apple did not. That is not identical. The only buttons on the iPhone are power, volume, and the silent switch. There is no separate Siri button. I’m not sure what you’re disagreeing with here?
There is no separate Bixby button either on Samsung phones. It is a side button that locks unlocks the phone and activates Bixby when held. It is identical to how it works on iPhones.
> There is no separate Bixby button either on Samsung phones.
Huh. As a longtime Samsung owner, I’m surprised that the dedicated Bixby Button added alongside the existing power and volume buttons with the S8 generation is an illusion.
> Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances?
Switched to a Samsung A71 after having an Apple 7+. Gave my 7+ to my daughter who previously had a 6+.
I'm about six months in and I'm going back to Apple or OnePlus. My iphone had a few quirks that I could deal with. Nothing major. The A71? OMFG every single day I'm dealing with constant issues with the phone:
- finger print scanner is the worst I've ever had bar none.
- All the Samsung apps continually turn on and fight with the Google apps for preference, even after I've turned them off
- The Samsung apps constantly run and drain my battery. A brand new phone, with a non-power user and it can't make a full day on a full charge? Unreal.
- I had to turn off all the notifications. It seemed like every 5 minutes a new system notification would pop up. Like: "Your wifi is unprotected! Use Samsung VPN to protect it!" Even when I'm already running a VPN??
There's a ton more that happen less frequently, but dealing with these every day has soured me completely to Samsung products. I had a OnePlus before my iPhone and loved it. Stock Android, no frills, battery lasted forever, no bloatware.
I just can't use Samsung phones ever again - no matter how good their marketing is.
For the most part I like the Samsung software. At least the bits that I do use. DeX in particular is a nice option to have. I had a Pixel 2 and replaced it with an S20. I actually prefer the Samsung software over Google's customized Android. I may be the minority online but given the relative sales figures I suspect people like me may be more common than you think.
You’re missing something. Samsung has a large enterprise customer base. Apart from Google’s semi-working enterprise stuff, theirs is probably the only successful Android enterprise solution to date. Samsung Knox is not to be underestimated. They really did a marvelous job there and Google borrowed a lot of ideas from the Knox standard.
Counterpoint: I have a rather good experience with Samsung. I bought flagships devices some time after their releases (I had S2, S4, S8 and now a S10e from work) and they lasted me a long time (S2 and S4 both lasted for four years).
The big advantage is that they were powerful devices with a removable battery and a SD-card slot.
Downside was a tendency to overheat a bit (this was particularly bad on the S2 at some point, though I recall subsequent software updates helped a lot).
In all cases, the devices kept being updated to the latest android while I was using them.
The Samsung Android additions are pretty much useless except maybe one or two good ideas, but they also don't get in the way. I just spend 30 minutes to disable things when I get my phone.
Also I don't know if you've looked at real stock android (e.g. fire an emulator from Android studio for instance) but that stuff is real ugly (shouldn't be a big consideration - it can be themed quite easily, but I felt I needed to make this point).
I genuinely enjoyed my S2 ( I9100 ) and I only given it away to my sister since she kinda annexed it during my trip to the old country. It was a solid device for the time. Since then I also used asus zenfone ( interesting features there ) and now LG v20 ( prolly last android phone with changable battery ).
I honestly don't get why people are so addicted to a brand. I used to drive Acura when 2004 models were still good. I wouldn't buy one today.
Still, LG failing does seem like a marketing loss. My experience with their hardware was not bad.
I don't have much experience with LG phones, but my experience is exactly the same as you mention with Samsung vs. HTC, Samsung vs. Sony, and more recently, Samsung vs. Huawei. All of these four brands are or have been prevalent in my family and close friends and I have tried at least 4 or 5 of each.
To me, Samsung's UI has always been the clunkiest and worst of all I tried, plus their phones have a tendency to degrade fast in terms of battery consumption and lag (I don't know if due to hardware or software updates). And yet, the press has always praised every Samsung flagship while often lambasting the competition.
Honestly my hypothesis is that they just devote a lot of money to buy reviews.
Consistent stylus support ( they call it S-pen) for one thing! Comming from PalmOS and N900 the lack of stylus support was the biggestregression to me on modern smartphones.
Being able to take notes, draw simple pictures, use denser UIs again is just so refreshing! Also new stuff like on-hover translation overlay or stylus button actions.
Really, Samsung is preatty much the only vendor that cares about stylus support these days andvthat's sad. Also if you want to draw on the go, the only usable mobile drawing tablets come from Samsung, unless you want to lock yourself into the overpriced dumbed down closed nightmare that is the Apple ecosystem.
The G3 did receive multiple Android updates. See here: https://www.gsmarena.com/lg_g3-6294.php - they updated it from 4.4.2 to 6.0. If that did not arrive for your phone it might have been your carrier blocking it.
The G3 can also run Android 10 via LineageOS 17.1, it is an officially supported device, see https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#lg. I don't know whether it will get 18.1/Android 11 though. LineageOS 17.1 worked well with the G3, I did test that recently.
I hated my S3 back in the day and loved the S6, S7 and S10E (my current phone). The UI has been de-bloated significantly over the years in my opinion and is actually sleek and pleasant to use.
Since getting my first LG I have not gone back. I just picked up an almost new LG v40 for 125 bucks on ebay and there is no need for nything faster in my opinion. It will be sad to see them go. I mean in a month or two you can get the v60 for 259 I bet. Probably not after they stop making their phones. I have two LG televisions in my home that are over ten years each and they still work perfectly also. In fact, I m using one for a monitor I am typing to right now.
There's a lot to love about LG phones. They're way better on features than Samsung, and friendlier to people who want to use a custom ROM or root their phone.
Their POLED screens killed it for me, though. I haven't seen a single phone that didn't have horrifically uneven colors, usually with the bottom half of the screen shifting to green. I kept hoping they'd fix it, and I bought and subsequently returned a V30, a V35, and a V40 before giving up on them.
You should see the RealMe cameras. The marco mode is fine enough to photograph the hairs on a spider's legs. I've not used an iPhone to compare it too, but the device costs about 1/5 the price of an iPhone locally.
Sharp has very nice screens but beyond that it's HMD garbage and bricks easily if you root it. Good hardware is worthless if the software sucks or even if the phone is obscure (meaning no support, no mods).
OLED screens are the single most important reason I've chosen Samsung since 2011. They were the first manufacturer adopting and developing them, and they maintained a consistent edge over the competition.
It sort of depends on the bubble you live in. In the US, things might be very different, but in rest of the world, Samsung isn't the only known Android phone manufacturer.
This. Samsung always was only one of many options here in central europe. Never appeared to be the “main choice“ either, except from people who look for the cheapest phone replacemt with their carrier and end up with a galaxy light product
> I never understood why Samsung phones were constantly receiving praise by tech reviewers while LG got crapped on.
Samsung pays for reviews [0] and engages in other scummy behavior that is given a pass anti-Applers see it as the sole champion against the Tall Poppy:
I dont like my LG G8 ThinQ... the fingerprint sensor stops working constantly until I reboot and I had to send it twice for repair because the USB-C plug was defective... and although I dont use it very much, the 1/8 audio port is also defective (too loose and the wire falls out very easily). And in addition to that, I cant install LineageOS.
I don't like Samsung's UI compared to LG, but in terms of hardware quality I've had bad luck with LG, with two phones (LG Nexus 4, LG G3) bootlooping before they reached two years. Never had that issue with Samsung (S5, S7).
I switched to Motorola since, the UI is quite close to the Pixel and the price range is reasonable.
Knox and Dex are why I'm locked into Samsung. I like LG's new Wing and want it, but I'm too used to having my Knox security features (like secure folder) and Dex to lose them. Do I like everything Samsung does? Not really, but the things they got right, or closer to right, have me hooked.
I personally found samsung software to be very feature rich and reliable.
I never considered LG because they do not offer software support. You might get 1 year worth of OS updates and MAYBE 2 years of security. Meanwhile samsung offers 3 years of OS updates and 4-5 of security updates.
The samsung of today is pretty far from the S4 days. They toned down the crap a lot starting on the S7 I think and personally I love a ton of Samsung-only additions. Some of the quirks are annoying but the amazing hardware+great additions balances it out.
Could this be an mostly american thing? I only ever witness this sentiment online. IRL most people i know dislike samsung because of their shitty android modifcations and mediocre hardware. Even oppo seems way more popular right now here in switzerland
LG was the best Android option. Glad I switched to Apple. I still miss the back button though, yikes. Samsung is particularly bad. I swear folks buy their phones because they oversaturate the colors on their screens.
Because tech reviewers don't know how to review software. They just measure camera megapixels and dynamic range, screen nits, processor speed, etc, then say it they like it or not.
I switched from Samsung to Pixel for the same reasons. Samsung's additional bloatware and their penchant for installing new things I didn't ask for drove me nuts.
I personally can't stand most Samsung phones. I've had a few, going back as far as an old white Samsung flip phone. They come with so much built in crap, they've by and large lasted less time than any other brand of phone I've bought and the price is always higher than equivalent phones from other brand.
>LG always seemed a lot closer to stock Android, and was good at staying out of your way.
Motorola was always my go to for that, but I picked up an LG for the first time since my very first cell phone back in 2005 and so far, I've been pretty damn impressed.
It did come with a bit of extra prebuiltin crap, but it was actually possible to uninstall it, not just disable it like on Samsung phones. The unreprogrammable hardware button that does nothing but open Google assistant is kind of annoying, but I don't think that's an lg specific thing? Or maybe it is? I couldn't really tell when I was looking up if it could be changed to do something different.
Fun fact just because:
Samsung and LG also both make engineered stone for countertops, by and large the LG stone outsold the Samsung stone at the shop I worked at by a large margin.
LG Cirrus was like the third most popular engineered stone we sold after caesarstone and silestone.
We occasionally had some Samsung stone jobs, but they were pretty rare.
TouchWiz bears minimal resemblance to Samsung's newer UIs, to be fair. Most seem to find the newer OneUI iterations to be significant improvements because they make for a far more full-featured device than stock Android with a more consistent UI experience and without the slowdowns that people complained about with TouchWiz. I'm curious how you'd find it as someone who preferred TouchWiz.
Google Apps aren't gold standard. I own a Samsung phone I have replaced launcher (MS launcher) /SMS (SMS organizer). Contacts and Phone app maybe Samsung's but they never troubled me. Only Settings search is unexplicably slow which annoys sometimes.
In terms of hardware/updates Samsung is good enough. Only Chinese phones may give better value for money but they come with too many software quirks, which I don't like.
Years ago I used to use the MS Launcher, however I noticed strange behaviour when in low 2g signal areas...Apps would take longer starting up. I'd tap on an icon, nothing would happen and the launcher would appear frozen, few seconds later the app would open.
I noticed the launcher was sending traffic whenever I started an app and it was affecting app start times when in low and slow signal areas.
I didn't dig in to it, but I suspected it was sending app usage analytics and the launcher was blocking until its usage data was transferred.
Another MS app "Your phone companion" is also sus. Preinstalled on my S10, it uses 20mb of data a month and I don't use it at all. Receives very frequent updates, its changelog is "Not provided by developer", and it has many permissions.
Recently I wanted to try out a new launcher on my phone. I've installed 3-4 different launchers and they all had a huge privacy policy page about the large amount of data they would exfiltrate from the phone.
So your experience definitely doesn't come as a surprise.
All of you complaining about trafic caused by launcers and privacy concern should just try an open source launcher from fDroid. I settled for Lawnchair2. It does it job well enough.
Thanks for the suggestion. I usually roll with the default LineageOS Trebuchet launcher. However the last time I upgraded there wasn't a large enough warning that installing the micro gapps would overwrite the Trebuchet launcher, and also make it unavailable for switching.
I'll give your suggestion a try, takes less time than reinstalling LineageOS :)
If you want a lightweight launcher with few features and an atypical UI, try https://kisslauncher.com/ (available in the Play Store and in F-Droid). It shows your apps in a "frecency"-ordered, scrollable and searchable list.
OnePlus has decent value and while being Chinese it doesn't have a lot of quirks and is geared towards western markets.
Motorola also has some decent phones in the budget category. Pixel a series are also great value.
I got a Samsung last generation and gave Samsung ecosystem a go (smart watch, buds, TV). They do great hardware but they should just leave software alone - tizen os is a major PITA on TV and Watch (lacks apps, Bixby is retarded).
I had one plus before this and I'll probably go back if I stay on Android - software is just much better
Honestly, the Samsung OneUI on phones has little, if nothing, to do with Tizen. Have you tried a newer Samsung Galaxy phone?
As someone who now has a Pixel, newer Samsung devices come across as far more full-featured (I think this might be objectively true?) with a more consistent and pleasant UI (IMO) than stock Android. I don't use it because of bootloader/ROM support, but if that didn't exist I'd probably prefer the device that takes stock Android and adds some polish and thoughtful features along with better quality hardware.
There's a reason why Google has often integrated Samsung features into stock Android with a delay of a year or two. Obviously, the reverse is true and Samsung benefits from Google development, but I think that's already a given when Samsung advertises an update to a new Android version. OneUI also seems to avoid the general slowdowns of older Samsung UI experiences such as TouchWiz.
Yep - I'm using an S10 right now and have been for the last 2 years.
Some problems I have with it :
Bixby is garbage and I don't know why they haven't killed it yet - there is 0 chance they will ever develop anything usable let alone competitive.
It comes preloaded with bloatware I cannot uninstall, custom app store it uses to update it's own system apps, it's own apps are spamming me with notifications constantly.
Supposedly it has good integration with it's ecosystem devices, but unlike Apple - nothing actually works well, SmartThings craps out, Health keeps spamming me when I stopped using the watch, the watch doesn't have Google assistant or Maps out of the box.
Overall the hardware is quite good, base OS is decent (I replace the launcher with Nova), but the apps and software ecosystem is garbage. Apple is miles ahead it's not even funny. I really don't want to get an iPhone because the iOS is so locked down and I want to go back to a Windows machine after the disappointments with MBP thermals for years and outdated design at this point. But Apple ecosystem just works 95% of the time.
I mention Tizen as an example of Samsung trying to pull off their own thing in software and sucking at it (like Bixby). All Samsung devices would be better if they used a competing OS stack. One UI is the shining example of something that works but frankly I don't see the value add over stock.
Thanks for the reply. That's definitely very fair criticism that I generally agree with.
I suppose I personally don't mind the inconsistent and lackluster device ecosystem support because I currently prefer an outdoor watch over a "true" smartwatch. The OneUI additions were therefore what stuck out to me the most, especially from the perspective of a Pixel user. While I would appreciate the privacy and consistency aspects of iOS, I really don't like the often confusingly obscured UI elements, and the limited feature-set is the deal-killer for me as I at least occasionally depend on having decent file management, FTP/SSH, etc.
Yeah Oneplus is a good option, but their pricing is now ~flagship, while I stick with low-mid end. Right now I'll go with A52 if I have to replace my phone. I don't use Bixby/Google and have ungoogled my life by lot, maybe one of the reason
I mean, the 9 starts at £629 which is actually really cheap for the specs. The only way to get the Snapdragon 888 any cheaper is to go for something like Oppo or Xiaomi, which are not available everywhere.
And yes, their prices have been increasing over the years, but 3 years ago I paid £550 for the 5T, so now paying £629 for the 9 doesn't seem like such a huge leap.
Sony phones too seem to be quite underappreciated.
The Xperia X line came with amazing built-in noise-cancellation, which only required a special purpose made $20 NC31E earphone with a 5-pole connector.
The performance of this combo to my surprise was amazing! It matched WH-1000XM4 and Bose QC20 in home-office environments. Not having to carry around yet another earphone that needs charging was radical.
Sadly, the whole line failed, and the feature was removed in the following series.
People think that "survival" is proof of aesthetic and functional superiority (we've seen this in all sorts of things - from programming languages/OSs to philosophies to races to religions).
I love this combo! Since the NC31E were pack-in earbuds, they were dirt cheap on the grey market. I purchased my pair for ~20CAD just before Covid. They work well with my XZ1 compact. After the XZ1, they removed the special 5 pole jack so new Xperias lack the feature.
The implementation is clever too. The wired-noise cancelling doesn't require extra chips. Sony used the built in noise-cancelling feature on the Qualcomm audio chips.
The chips also support a "transparency mode" like feature, but there is no convenient way to use it in software.
> Sony phones too seem to be quite underappreciated.
Their phones are excellent, but their not available at all in many marks (they left Canada recently). Xperias are very expensive. For example, the Xperia 10ii costs twice as much as the Moto G8. Both phones have the same SDM665 SoC and budget eMMC storage. On paper, many people would cross shop them.
Since I've owned my XZ1c, I've come to appreciate the durability of Sony phones. I've dropped it, caked it in grease and batter, and generally abused it with no case. It works fine, just some chips in the paint. Based on this I would recommend Sony. They use thick Gorilla Glass 6 and even the cheaper models are IP68 rated. Cell phone durability doesn't translate well to a spec sheet or tv ad very well though.
Sony also doesn't quite catch on in Thailand, and they (somewhat) exited this market for years now. When I need to get a replacement for XA1+, I have to chase around some carrier retailers known to have one, cause it's just won't be around ordinary phone retailers anymore.
Sony was quite a justified spec of its time (though the low battery capacity is my biggest complaint), but more players have emerged with a more competitive spec, and I also have to switch accordingly.
I had the Sony 6.3 inch phone with common glass cracking problem, and mine cracked. Sony denied it was an issue, but it was endemic on that model. In that case it was designed to fail which is the very opposite of durability.
I do find many Sony items to be durable, but clearly not all - do your research first. Also Sony Australia store are bandits but that's another story!
Sony as a company has shown so many times what their perspective on customers is (installing root kits on customer devices, the whole PS3 + Linux debacle, etc.), that I try to avoid Sony products as much as I can.
Thank you for mentioning this. It is also the reason why I avoid Sony phones and at the time, their e-ink devices. I'll buy their dumb headphones, but nothing with a microprocessor from that company.
This. I bought a Sony smart TV because it had much, much better picture than competition at the same price level. In the first firmware update they added SambaTV. Now it's best to just keep it disconnected.
I may be in a minority here but that simple UI/UX design is the one of the main features that gravitate me towards stock android. I like the simplicity of that UI and all other themes look like chaos on my screen (that's just me). One point that I agree on is Google should definitely add useful features in their stock android. The sweet point is something like Oneplus's OxygenOS. It is close to stock android with added features and some UI tweaks (though they're going off that route lately). But, from UI perspective I think it is atleast top 2 for me (other one being OxygenOS).
I've harbored the suspicion those who prefer "theming" their phones are not detail oriented. That or they're fine with the trade-offs.
For example I've always noticed inconsistencies and jankiness with anything that's not close to stock Android. Be it Samsung's TouchWiz or others, all are like a cheap veneer of dross over stock Android. They all just feel so tacky.
Samsung TouchWiz has been dead for several years now, their OneUI is in what, third iteration now? From aesthetic and usability point, it is indeed nicer than stock android.
i suppose thats a matter of taste .. i moved from stock android to s20+, and i agree its not as bad as previous samsung touchwiz era :)
but then i declined most of the samsung apps - google already has all my data and i dont want to share it with samsung on top of that, and then samsung also included third party services such as a dialer app which i didn't use because of the (lack of) privacy policy
overall i'm looking forward to getting back to stock android!
I prefer Samsung apps over Google's for the simple reason that they do not insist on uploading my stuff anywhere.
E.g. Google Photos had two choices for the cloud service: start uploading now or upload later (and nagging meanwhile). There's no option for not interested, don't bother me anymore. Samsung Gallery asks for OneDrive once, but is fine with declining and not bothering me anymore.
Yes, the dialer does use third party service for screening the calls; it asked you about it, and when you declined, it respected your choice (I've declined as well).
There's a dark mode in the last 2? 3? versions? The main problem with Android wrt visual jank is now that lockscreen doesn't respect the night light, that night light fades in after unlock instead of being on immediately and that the automatic brightness has feedback loops that make brightness spike when display turns on or changes to white content (sensor detects phone light as ambient and turns up the brightness, over and over).
> It is so ugly from UI/UX perspective, that almost everyone ends up installing a theme anyway.
Sources? Because I see no substantial difference and I deliberately bought phone with stock Android as it has just Google garbage, rather than both Google garbage and phone manufacturer garbage.
Most "tech" youtube reviewers often say that an Android customization is good because it is minimalist and is close to stock Android.
It is often praised also because it adds only a few features that stock Android doesn´t have. But over the years these missing features have often been integrated.
I use an iPhone, but in my opinion the stock Android looks and feels much better than the launchers that manufacturers put on. Especially the latest versions of Android look great.
What does Samsung audio do better than other phones? I still own a mp3 player because not even those shitty beats phones did a close to clear sound experience.
Ps: i never used a theme. All i want is stock android o.O
Samsung Pro Audio used to be the only low-latency audio API on Android devices. AFAIK it was a very thin wrapper over JACK. Of course, using it often crashed the app, and then Samsung first declared it deprecated and then didn't port it to 64-bit runtime.
Is AAudio really low latency, or "low latency" in the same sense as low latency modes in Android Audio and OpenSL ES? It's surprisingly difficult to find actual numbers that would compare between these three.
It could have been removed too because app developers didn't use it, because they couldn't make it stable or because they couldn't make it work together with mic permissions.
Anyway, I'm interested in numbers, and specifically whether switching from Android Audio or OpenSL to AAudio brings any significant improvement.
It's a name that's sometimes used for AudioTrack, AudioRecord and related classes under android.media. Does that collection have an official name? I would also suggest that you learn some manners.
Android phones used to offer unique and useful features like removable batteries, headphone jacks, IR blasters, SD cards, etc. Now it seems that Samsung and Google are obsessed with copying whatever Apple does, even their controversial decisions like removing the headphone jack, even after making fun of Apple for doing it. No thanks, why would I buy a shittier iPhone with a worse OS?
When my LG V20 bites the dust or becomes obsolete I don't know what I'll replace it with. I hope that the Linux phone ecosystem matures by then otherwise I might buy an iPhone.
I agree that the hardware omissions are blatant copy from Apple as the way to have more markup and revenue from accessories, software services but I like to differ on the OS front.
Android's power user ecosystem couldn't be matched in iOS. Even without root, Tasker can automate every single aspect of the OS - Want to send and receive WhatsApp messages over email?[1], Want better accessibility e.g. Voice summary of news?[2], Want a butt triggered pomodoro timer?[3]. Termux runs a Linux container and it can run complete Linux distribution inside it with PRoot[4]. Best of all, Tasker & Termux can communicate with each other for endless possibilities.
Of course Google can mess it up with their policy/API changes for Playstore, but that's where 3rd party app stores like f-droid comes in and can ensure open-source apps like Termux can be published without hurdles. Not to mention the privacy focused apps on f-droid.
And if one doesn't want anything to do with Google, LineageOS has proven itself to be a viable replacement for stock android.
> Even without root, Tasker can automate every single aspect of the OS - Want to send and receive WhatsApp messages over email?[1], Want better accessibility e.g. Voice summary of news?[2], Want a butt triggered pomodoro timer?[3]. Termux runs a Linux container and it can run complete Linux distribution inside it with PRoot[4]. Best of all, Tasker & Termux can communicate with each other for endless possibilities.
Does anyone actually care about any of these things? I'm a long time Android user and I've installed both Tasker and Termux. Never found anything useful for them and uninstalled them.
I work in a software company, with lots of people who experiment with home automation etc - the kinds of things where this could be useful.
Instead everyone uses RPis, and controls them with apps from their iPhones.
I'm sure there are a few people who actually do this stuff. But in my experience they are the kinds of people who enjoy working around barriers, so would find a different way to achieve the same things anyway.
> Does anyone actually care about any of these things?
On HN, sure. The other 3.6 billion smartphone users out there? No. The top voted opinions on HN are niche and don't represent the general population in any way. You can see this effect on other threads. Here are a few classic examples.
- Everyone on HN hates Facebook, and yet 2 billion+ people use it every day.
- Privacy is a paramount concern on HN, more important than anything else, and yet billions of people don't care as long as their dick pics are safe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRWxk7o-QlI).
- HN users hate ads and would happily pay for the privilege of eliminating ads. In the real world? Youtube has 2 billion monthly active users, only 1% of whom pay to eliminate ads.
- The ideal HN smartphone is one that has software support for years, is rootable, can have it's OS changed on a whim, can install any app from any app store. Hardware should be modular, with a swappable battery, camera etc. So Fairphone, basically. Units sold - 200k in 5 years. iPhone, the exact opposite of this in every respect (except software support) - 1 Billion in 5 years.
What I've said is so obvious it's self evident. But now and then people do get surprised and maybe annoyed when they find the world doesn't reflect the gospel truth preached on HN. At the time of this writing, your comment is actually downvoted ... for implying that the general population might not be Tasker-Termux installing, life automating power users.
I agree about the HN bubble, but not every comment has to reflect the larger market; The comment is about the power users and it reflects the significant portion of HN. Just like content on Computer Science is preferred on HN, it doesn't mean just because not everyone is a CSE/Computer Scientist in the real world, CS content is not valuable.
The problem with this logic is that with millions of people, everything can happen.
When someone says "never/no one" in a casual conversation, they don't mean "it's physically and mathematically impossible for this to happen, I'm sure the chance of this is 0%". They mean: "the vast majority of people".
Techie communities can be tiresome with all the nitpicking.
I swear that if I posted a comment saying "nobody puts their dick in the vacuum cleaner shaft" while discussing the best vacuum cleaner design, somebody would feel the need to object and say they did it.
The issue is not that HN users have different preferences or that they signal those preferences. The issue is when they are surprised and annoyed that the ordinary folks in the real world don't make the same superior choices that they do. Why do they keep buying iPhones instead of Fairphones? Why do they keep using ad supported services instead of paying for it? Why do hundreds of millions of them eat at McDonald's?!
This lack of understanding of the general population is the issue.
I'm arguing that Tasker/Termux users aren't really your normal power users at all. Instead they are hackers, and would be satisfied by any form of stitching bits together to accomplish some task.
If Tasker/Termus didn't exist they'd be equally happy accomplishing the same things with custom hardware sensors or carrying a RPi around or whatever. They aren't actually doing anything useful with the software that couldn't be accomplished slightly less conveniently in other ways - the joy of the hack is the accomplishment.
When you view it like this, the market satisfaction argument looks different.
I agree, but I think this case is even more extreme.
I'd be surprised if there are more than ~10 people (even on HN) who use the ability of Tasker and Termux to communicate with each other - and I bet those 10 people would be equally happy using some other solution they hacked together.
I think it's the act of hacking a solution together that they like, rather than it being a truly useful thing that can't be accomplished equally well in other ways.
The Fairphone has really crappy specs otherwise. Abysmal camera, low RAM, etc. That is an important reason power users don't buy it. Instead one could have some old phone with good hackability which is better and even cheaper.
I see too many posts like yours here, so I do not imagine most of the HN think like you describe. Unfortunately.
What's wrong with working around barriers? I find Tasker useful for fixing things I don't like about my phone that are otherwise beyond my ability to fix. For example...
1. By default my phone remembers the last media volume level used with headphones. This does make some sense, but it is easy to accidentally get maximum volume blasted in your ear. I use Tasker to automatically reset the volume to a safe level when I plug in my headphones.
2. I find that the automatic screen brightness on my phone doesn't work well at all. In a dark room, it would not set the brightness to its minimum level. It also would not turn the brightness to maximum even in direct, bright sunlight. I prefer to just set the brightness manually, and avoid the poor guesses of the automatic brightness algorithm (which is claimed to be "smart" and aware of my preferences). The only problem with manual brightness control is that it's common to end up in bright sunlight with a very dim screen. It is impossible to use the phone under such conditions. So, I used Tasker to add a gesture. If I shake my phone relatively hard, twice, in an up and down motion, it sets the screen to maximum brightness. I use this all the time.
Your comments are interesting in terms of the iOS/Android comparison: both of those are things which just work on iOS without needing to find and configure a separate app. This dynamic shows up constantly in these discussions because HN is full of people who enjoy tinkering as a hobby and have strong opinions about things should work whereas from the perspective of most normal people it’s easier to pay $400 for a noticeably faster iOS device rather than spending time puttering around trying to find the right combination of apps to compensate for an unmotivated device vendor and hoping that you didn’t just install malware in the process.
That is true. I prefer an experience that's more fiddly and annoying overall, but that can be customised to fit my preferred usage if necessary. I would not be happy on an iPhone, stuck with what they have chosen. I like to install my own launcher and such. That's why I use GNU/Linux on the desktop, and Android on my phone. Both of these ecosystems are very fragmented as well. For example, my old Android phone had neither of the problems I mentioned.
To be clear, I think this is entirely legitimate. I used Linux on the desktop for years, drove a car with a manual transmission, etc. so I totally understand being in a spot where the broader market is moving in a different direction. I feel like we’re losing something with less control over our devices but totally understand the security & support dynamic which got us here.
does ios remember the volume for every bluetooth device though or is it just headphones? i have tasker set a different volume for my car's bluetooth than my bluetooth headphones.
another thing i have tasker do is write down the hours i work every week by detecting the bluetooth tv in work and then the times my car stops in the morning and starts when i head home. then on friday if there are any hours that haven't been sent, tasker puts them into an email and i review it before sending.
i often think about switching to an iphone for the camera or some other reasons, but then i think about all the stuff ive made in tasker and how i probably won't be able to replicate it all on ios
I haven't tested that many Bluetooth devices but it seems to be per-device — e.g. my wired headphones are different than either of my Bluetooth speakers or the built-in speaker.
Apple's Shortcuts app supports a number of automation scenarios — for example, I would implement the feature you mentioned with a rule which tells Toggl to start an entry when my location is within a certain radius of work and stop it when I leave. You can also create or add to a note, send emails, etc. Since I have the Pythonista app, that could even extend to running arbitrary code.
Did you mean way out of Google Play Store due API 29? As that's why I mentioned f-droid and f-droid doesn't require API-target restrictions. Termux is being updated only on f-droid because of those changes.
If you meant Termux on Android 11, Here's the quote from the developer-
>"Most of things work on Android 11. Only few packages have issues (including zsh) and restricted /proc/net which renders network information utilities like netstat unusable without root. Rest seems working correctly unless hit by some known issue not related to Android 10+."[1]
Sorry that doesn't make any sense. The whole point of Termux is to make GNU/Linux tools available on Android without root by compiling it for the Termux environment, to run those packages from the user directory it needs exec(). You seem to suggest that it rather be android packages, for that you don't need Termux in the first place.
It makes perfectly sense, Android OS is not GNU/Linux, the Linux syscalls never were or will ever be part of the public API.
The public API is based on Java and a couple of NDK APIs, clearly enumerated by Google as stable APIs.
They can either adapt themselves to this reality, make use of those APIs in a mingw like way, creating wrappers, or die in their faith that Android is Linux, alongside countless attempts to GNU/Linux phones.
So they can either put in a monstrous effort to end up with a worse product or not be on the Play Store. I know what I'd choose. The kind of people who want Termux are capable of downloading an APK, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
With the governments waking up on big tech, it is very possible that you won't even have to root to have the Google Play UX with fdroid, like automatic background updates.
Used to be you had to jump through hoops to get other stores at all and now it's just a few clicks away.
The amount of work & installs you have to do for all that is laughable though.. assuming you can get a jailbroken iPhone.. the terminal app is easy to install.. small install & full on posix compliant terminal is right there w/ a more normal pkg manager to boot. I dunno shortcuts & a jailbroken iPhone is equally powerful & there’s far less tinkering involved imo. But I’m sure you’ve not used an iPhone enough to realize that.
>But I’m sure you’ve not used an iPhone enough to realize that.
Was that ad hominem necessary? I've used iOS devices regularly w/o Jailbreak since 2010 until last year. I've spent several thousand dollars personally and my business money on Apple products. My comment was purely regarding the technical nature of the OS and was not directed against any brand. I know people are religious about brands, but private businesses don't deserve such dedication and I feel it's unhealthy overall.
Having to jailbreak an iPhone is what makes the iPhone more work -- Termux is a single install and works on stock Android, and comes with a package manager
Well like I said, assuming lol. But generally speaking if I am on the terminal of iOS vs the terminal on Android I feel more confident that I can bring in whatever packages I want as it was really designed to be a full desktop class citizen underneath it all. Android in contrast is extremely locked down in other ways that simply require you to use abstraction layers to run pretty much anything.
To me it's the difference between installing a full linux OS on a chromebook vs running it in chroot (crouton) or google's new virtualized method. They both have their trade offs while running a full linux OS pretty much has 0 trade offs. That's all that I was getting at. Of course there are pros to having a more locked down model at the expense of performance or being able to run something directly on metal at times. iOS is a strange combination of either being insanely secure or not so much, but in either case the raw performance and stability is almost always there in comparison.
It's not that Samsung n' co is copying Apple, it's that Apple is making the right design and tech choices for the right reasons and Samsung is figuring this out too and making the same choices.
Samsung has led the way in many respects. Higher refresh displays, multiple cameras, always-on displays, in-screen fingerprint readers, much larger phones, etc.
Doesn't this just come down to them being able to put emerging technology in their devices faster due to not having the same insane supply requirements that apple has?
I think it has more to do with the fact that better and more innovative hardware is the only way Samsung can differentiate from other Android vendors and that they don't have the sticky ecosystem that Apple has so they need people to keep upgrading.
With fast charging, removable batteries aren't that important now. IR blaster is too niche. SD card, headphone jack are still available in lot of phones, but again aren't deciding factor for most people.
IPhone is an aspirational brand with awesome marketing, so things like notch which don't make much sense are copied by everyone.
It’s not like a battery is soldered there, you can still replace it and it’ll cost you much less than getting a new phone. AFAIK I can still get a new battery on my iPhone 7 which is 4.5 years old.
Replacing iPhone battery feels like reassembling a mechanical watch. It isn’t soldered, but it’s glued in weird way requiring applying heat. To change battery, you have to disconnect 4-5 tiniest connectors, looking like LPT for fleas, extremely fragile.
Changing the battery is an operation that you likely only do once in the phone's lifetime. It doesn't make sense to have design constraints just to make that operation super-quick.
Currently it takes an hour at most to do at any repair shop. It's good enough. What matters is that it's possible for a reasonable price.
Well yeah, I've replaced the battery and the button on my iPhone 4s myself back in the day. Handling those tiny connectors feels like you're performing an open heart surgery if you're not doing it for a living. But let's be honest, personal computing devices are going to get smaller and more intricate in the next decades. The days of replacing the battery yourself are long gone.
Maybe, but I haven't seen this issue with ~3 year old, Lumia, Xiaomi, Oneplus and Samsung phones in my family. Battery life may have gone down a bit but not as a practical deterrent. We aren't heavy users so that may be the reason.
Phones that do fast charging properly (e.g. heat generating components in the charger not in the phone) like Oneplus phones, will experience fat less battery degredation than an iphone or samsung phone.
My phone is from May 2019, so just under 2 years and I am still seeing basically the same battery performance from when it was new - something I didn't get with my earlier devices that had a removable battery.
Besides, getting a battery replacement for an iPhone costs sub 80 bucks, which is probably about the same as we would have had to pay for batteries for the older models - and they were more likely to break because you can't get waterproof phones with replaceable batteries.
That used to be a top reason I bought android phones. Then I found myself throwing them out every two to three years because they stopped receiving software updates.
Fast charging has been around for quite some time now and battery degradation hasn't become more of a problem than it already was 10 years ago. Apple just had its battery degradation and throttling controversy only and that was for a set of phones that didn't even have fast charging.
LG V20 is a fantastic phone. It feels so much better than every other device I've ever owned. Space-age frame with such core ruggedness, great screen, great for it's day camera, sd card, sweet audio.
And! And! Someone managed to unlock the bootloader. So there's a variety of decent roms one can run on it. All aging now, a little bit too old at this point, but this 2016 device was swinging mightily until it became utterly bereft & unsupportable.
It's just so pathetic that we rely on these shitty ass vendor OSes. The v20 is a case study in how amazingly awesome devices are when consumers have any right what-so-ever to maintain & work with their devices. By hook here! One uses the "dirty santa" exploit (with pixelated santa junk) to unlock the blasted thing. And with that it is a semi-modern, loveable device. By community effort. By contributor effort. No thanks to Google nor LG.
But modern phones are more impervious. This 2016 device is one of the last devices that (unintentionally) allowed access. After this, everything slid downhill. Everything went to shit. Android collapsed into a pitiful shitmound. Libre was squeezed out. Consumerism & obsolescence are enforced in firmware now, almost ubiquotously. What a pathetic trash heap Android is. John Deere tractors have nothing on the disposable technology that Android levers against it's users. It's a vile situation. Unlock the bootloaders you frigging jerkwads. This is hell you perpetuate against your users! Stop this madness.
OnePlus ships phones with unlockable bootloaders. They're great!
However, when you unlock your bootloader, you lose access to things that demand devices be trusted by Google. So Netflix no longer even shows up in the Play Store, you can no longer use NFC pay, etc. And ROMs are not what they used to be (though the update process being lighter and quicker is a nice change).
I never used my old xiaomi with anything else than lineage os and I used NFC payments and a bank app all the time with my phone. You're mileage may vary I guess...
Android SafetyNet[1] is supposed to exist to give developers protection against users/"threats".
A very popular Android modification tool Magisk has been waging a long running battle against Android to try & get by SafetyNet & other validations. However the increasing securitization at a hardware level is leaving less & less possibility[2][3] for users to access their devices as they would like.
I can't remember what movie it is, but I keep thinking about some movie with a person trying not to get kidnapped, and the victim being told early on: "if anyone says 'you're safe and secure' don't trust that person", which, sure enough, latter gives way to the believed-good but actually-bad guys driving off with her saying this & her appropriately freaking out. We are secure all right, secure against ourselves. What we are doing- creating ever more perfect anti-user enclaves- is vile. The security world has such a ferociously ruthelessly absolutist view on security, is so ready to declare threads & build bigger moats & walls, but users & freedom keep getting screwed. Such woe.
They realized people use their phones as fashion accessories and don't care about specs? Removable batteries create bulk, make the phone ugly. Headphone jacks? Added width and makes it harder to sell the consumer bluetooth headphones. IR blasters/SD cards? Nobody cares.
They charge much faster now, which is good for sales because a battery that charges fast is very convenient. So it progressed.
Fast charging degrades the battery slightly faster than slow charging but it's not the end of the world in my opinion. I'm guessing it's much better to not keep your phone battery at a high state of charge for a long time, much of the chemical reactions that degrade the battery happens at high state of charge, than avoiding to fast charge it to 80%.
Amen. Best phone I've had, because it flawlessly hits the only things I care about in a phone: Stock Android, an SD card slot for my music library, a screen big enough to read shit on, a biggass battery, and cheap enough that I don't feel too bad when I inevitably lose or break it.
Samsung hasn't copied Apple any more than Apple has copied Samsung. The most notable thing recently is that Samsung phones kept supporting Fingerprint ID. It was a tremendous PITA having to enter my passcode at night because of the move to Face ID without continuing to support Touch ID.
The way I see it, WWDC has been full of 2 year old Android features for 3 years now, and the iPhone hardware is always strictly less featured than that year's Galaxy phone. Certain changes sweep through the industry like the notch or no headphone jack etc, but you can always fine some Android phone with the mix you want.
If it wasn't for the Apple silicon (and the advantage is clearly Apple's) it would be just come down to whether you preferred iOS enough to overcome the obvious feature advantages on the Android side.
I remember Samsung flagships from 2013-2014. That thing had eye tracking, ie it scrolled the page for you as you read it. That’s just one example, the phone was packed with those. How many of those features are useful in daily life though? It’s as if Samsung is trying to pack as many features as they can to compensate for something.
All passively cooled thin highend phones can't run highly loaded games longer, due to GPU makes massive heat, so actually fan is practical for such use case.
"Water cooling" is just a heat transfer method, so you need water, pump and external fan or large heat sink. I believe just a fan without water is enough unless you're LTT.
Possibly you mention about some manufacturer that advertises vapor chamber as "water cooling". I don't like their advertisement because it's just a improved heat pipe.
Wow, you know what water cooling is. The next step is that you need to read up on building gaming rigs and understanding that setting up water cooling for cell phone is just the right level of absurdity.
Plenty? In what way? There seems to be one company that makes a keyboard phone with outdated CPUs and other hardware, to make ends meet and be able to produce such a phone economically.
Interestingly enough, that was sort of one of the things I occasionally used my WinMo6 HTC Tilt for JUST A LITTLE.
Back in 2007 there was a period where I was doing a lot of work on deployed standalone application servers at remote client sites, some of which had little to no internet connection.
We'd audit servers before I traveled and send me with the "right software patches", but it didn't always work out perfectly and tethering was pretty primitive back then.
I loved being able to call someone, have them check something out of sourcesafe, then throw it up on one of our servers, where I could SSH in from my phone, grab files, edit them, then shove them on my MicroSD card, pull that, shove it in a USB adapter and patch an install for a server with no internet connection.
SUPER hinky by today's standards, but it felt pretty amazing at the time.
Haha, same, when I got my very first Android phone (HTC Dream) with that hardware keyboard, I would sometimes ssh into servers and run commands. There was also a python app on play store that lets you write scripts and run locally. I still sometimes do but it's much hardware with software keyboard.
There's decent reasons behind most of those, or at least consistent ones, a lot is around slimness which drives strength and material decisions.
> removable batteries
Those usually require relatively flimsy backs that slide fit onto the phone. This has problems with water proofing and it's a part that can wear and eventually fit poorly or fall off. It's a lot easier to waterproof/resist a phone when you can seal the whole back of the phone off from the outside world. It also allows using soft polymer batteries that can eek out a bit more volume without the protective bits removable batteries need to be safe(r) to handle.
On the more cynical side maybe they figured it'd induce people to replace their phones more often though I don't have data showing how much of a factor bad battery is in replacing a phone versus other stuff like better performance or FOMO.
> IR blasters
Honestly don't think I had a phone with one of these since my Palm Centro in high school and college and I don't think I ever used the IR feature on there. The only real use I see is slow data transfers (better accomplished with Bluetooth now) and controlling TVs. The latter isn't a huge draw for most people I bet because people generally either have one remote (that more often can control everything if setup properly either through ARC and HDMI control signals or the cable box remote also sending the TV signals when needed) or many remotes and are willing to spend money on a nicer universal like a Harmony. There's probably still some out there today but it seems like an extra part that most people won't care about so the extra fractions of a cent + to include it gets wiped out to increase profits over a few million phones.
> SD cards
This one is maybe a little more cynical. There's some justification for reducing the number of intrusions in the waterproofing seals and increasing the internal volume available to squeeze more battery in. I think another reason is to induce people to buy the more expensive version of a phone. If you include SD card expansion storage it's harder to upsell people on the larger more expensive storage options because usually SD cards are cheaper than the equivalent sized storage in a phone
> headphone jacks
This one I think is a mixed bag. Including the jack sets some hard design limits on the shape of the edge of the phone and it's a pretty large hole to plug against water and other intrusions. I think Apple might have had more coldly calculated reasons for doing it with the close launch of their own AirPods. Some phone companies have similar offerings where you could see a calculated plan to increase profits.
I think we're maybe also just reaching the more mature phase of the smartphone design. There's a basic set of features most people care about and optimizing for that pushes companies in a pretty similar direction. There's some margin for small experimentation around the edges but those induce compromises in the core features people judge on so that limits the market and profit of making those choices.
There's technology like foldable screens that might shake things up but they're pretty new with some big compromises at the moment so they haven't really hit the core incentives and forces that are corralling phones into the same tight design and feature list.
The traditional approach to an SD card is to put it in the tray. The OnePlus line of phones had its second SIM slot also accept an SD card. That is, one tray, one waterproof gasket, with the tray long enough to accept two cards. This is the same on the Note 10+, and is in fact an upsell feature from the Note 10.
Headphone jack needing to be waterproofed is a bit of a lie, as there have been IP68 phones with a headphone jack. It's simply wanting to cut down on prices.
Yeah it's a small increase in the gap for waterproofing because of the additional lanes required but it's a decent sized hit to the internal volume taken out by the longer tray. I'm not trying to say these are rock hard laws just a set of reasons a lot of phones have removed certain features.
> If you include SD card expansion storage it's harder to upsell people on the larger more expensive storage options because usually SD cards are cheaper than the equivalent sized storage in a phone
Another argument against SD cards is that a lot of stuff people do on their phones requires a certain baseline performance, e.g. 4K60 video recording, burst photography etc.
Other stuff like fast loading of apps from disk isn’t necessarily required, but reflects poorly on the phone if it’s slow. It could also cause issues for games which might expect to be able to stream a lot of data from disk.
Of course, it’s perfectly possible to buy SD cards which are plenty fast enough to support this stuff but:
a. SD card speed classes are a bit of a nightmare even for techy people
b. 99% of people will just buy the cheapest card they can find on eBay, which is likely to be some knock-off crap
Throw in the fact that no expandable storage forces people into a purchase-time upgrade with a hefty markup applied and it’s not hard to imagine why it’s all but disappeared.
I had a Galaxy S2 that had an IR blaster, you're right that it wasn't particularly practical. But as a late teen/college student who enjoyed some occasional mischief I remember having A LOT of fun with it. It was the perfect storm of an era where it wasn't unusual to have your phone out constantly but it wasn't really common knowledge smartphones had the feature, or to be aware of the explicitly-for-mischief "TV Off" devices.
Yes. Quite many of these phones without headphone jack or replaceable battery are, in fact, not waterproof. Removing a "niche feature" such as a headphone jack for a niche feature (no quotes) like waterproofing seems like a bad excuse to plug the DRM hole, save cost and sell bluetooth headphones, to be honest.
What is taking advantage of that feature? You still probably aren’t going to go swimming with your phone but you’re a lot less likely to ruin it when you accidentally drop it in the pool.
I find people enjoy the novelty of taking photos underwater or when in the pool/lake/sea. I often have to point out that their phones are also waterproof and they run off to grab it for underwater (or just around the water) photography.
Yes - even a splash of water won't concern people as much. If they had a way to secure from the screen not cracking, well that's something most people would appreciate.
I've replaced three phones to battery expiration and one phone to water damage (dropped in a mud filled puddle - it turned on again after drying out but didn't trust it seeing corroded battery/sim contacts).
I'm especially curious how rain has damaged phones - I use them in Ireland where you can just say "scattered showers" and have a 50% chance of an accurate forecast. Never thought twice about using any in the rain, and never bought a "waterproof" phone. I always assumed the puddle/pool scenario was what the waterproofing fuss was. Or are people using phones in hurricanes or monsoons or something?
> Or are people using phones in hurricanes or monsoons or something?
I don't know about those, but we get fairly heavy rainfall every now and then here in Norway. The kind where your underwear gets soaking wet for no other reason than being outside.
I keep my phone in the front pocket of my pants, and after losing two phones to such events I decided that was enough for me.
Now I can check when the bus is due or take that call even if it's raining (heavy or not) and I don't have to think about it.
>removable battery
It's not really worth the extra few mAh for a battery you can't replace, considering that in a few months it will wear out and you quickly lose that advantage. User replaceable batteries allow you to put in a fresh battery every year, meaning you can take full advantage of the battery capacity regardless of how old the phone is.
>IR Blaster
The IR blaster is one of the most used apps on my V20. It can control anything from my circa-1980s stereo system to my modern surround sound AVR. And all without any proprietary apps which never get updated or having to connect to WiFi! I've put all my remotes in a drawer and forgot about them because I can do it all from my phone. I think this feature would get a lot more use if it was included on more phones, considering an IR LED is about $0.01 to include. Why do "smart" devices resort to overcomplicated and insecure Bluetooth/WiFi control interfaces when we had this problem solved since the 80s?
Waterproofing is a poor excuse. Most phones that removed these features are not waterproof. Samsung themselves proved that you can have all these things in a waterproof phone with the Galaxy S5.
Indeed, I have one. And yet (apart from a few days when I first got it) I've not used it. Although that is largely due to the awful IR apps I've tried--perhaps there is scope for improvements in this area.
I suspect this is right: protecting against that requires heavier construction which adds size, weight, and costs more in a field where all of those are highly competitive. I value the sound quality and reliably perfect latency of 3.5mm headphones but it’s really easy to see why industrial designers might make other choices.
Honest question, who are the people who need more chargers? Definitely being anecdotal but everyone in my circle is drowning in generations of random usb adaptors, myself included. I’ve been very supportive of removing wasteful redundancy but again, this is subjective
While that's true right now, it might not be true a few years in the future if manufacturers stop including them. Also, people are more likely to use dangerous counterfeit chargers (Amazon sells plenty!) if they don't get one included in the box. Considering how many devices run off USB nowadays, having a couple extra laying around the house isn't that big of a deal.
I have tons of chargers because I have had a smart phone for ten+ years. Most of the chargers are usb, not USB-C, so that won't help me if I buy an iPhone, although I have an old cable so that would be fine.
However anybody buying their first phone, anybody selling the old phones or anybody wanting to take advantage of fast charging would need a new(er) charger they might not have.
Many people who hoard chargers still hang on to old chargers that only do the 5W standard. For modern devices fast charging is very useful especially for high battery capacity devices. I've recycled all chargers that don't support any of the fast charging standards.
I now have tons of USB C to lightening cables laying around the house with nothing to plug them into. So I either have to go buy USB C chargers or toss what I have. While the idea was a good one, the execution has been complete BS
> even their controversial decisions like removing the headphone jack
I love wireless headphones myself. But you’ve got to admit that it’d be much harder to sell those if phones had 3.5mm jack. It’s as if corporations do anything to increase revenue...
They're obsessed with making money. No 3.5mm means you're more likely to buy bluetooth earbuds. No SD? Cloud services. Battery? You'll get a new phone after 18-24 months. No charger? Wireless charging pad.
Apple can "get away" with it because to a lot of people it's a luxury/lifestyle brand. Android vendors copy them because they want to create new revenue streams by removing features/out of nothing too!
Then why wasn't there massive commercial success for the phones that kept these features, like a headphone jack an SD card? Samsung tried to market it for a few years, but eventually surrendered to the same trends like the rest of the market. If this was really so bad for consumers, they would've chosen the alternatives that were available at the time.
I would speculate that for some people, while the feature that they removed was preferable for the consumer, it wasn't necessarily a deal breaker. So in the same vein, if they included that feature, it wouldn't be a deal maker either.
With all these features they are removing, I personally can't ever see myself buying a device solely based off of that one feature and so I compromise.
I'm not happy with having to compromise but it's not a perfect world and I'm not so set in my opinion that I would consider not buying it based off of X feature (to an extent)
I own 3 LG G6 phones. I like the SD slot and headphone jack. I like the display. I like the lack of gimmicks. The camera is mediocre quality-wise, and slow to load and snap a photo, though. The OS is falling out of date, and Google's apps have bloated enough that it's annoying to navigate and listen to youtube music at the same time.
The G6 has some reliability flaws around its USB port and camera focus mechanism. I bought two of them used, and the 3rd new because it had a 2 year warranty. The warrantied one I sent in twice under warranty. The 2nd time, they sent me back an "upgraded" G6+ with amazon branding and a locked bootloader, which was unacceptable to me. I politely asked for the G6 or another phone with an unlockable bootloader, and a month later they sent me another G6+. It took 3 months to get that straightened out, but I ended up with a like-new refurbished G6.
LG definitely lost money just on the one phone I bought new due to the reliability issues, and probably burned through $100+ in unnecessary stupidity with their warranty process.
I tried buying a used V20 (I think) at some point, but the display had severe burn-in, and I was able to return it.
I think LG just went slightly too mediocre on each of their phones to optimize costs, missing the forest for the trees. The G6+ would probably be a nearly perfect phone that I would happily pay money for, if it wasn't bootloader locked and infected by amazon. The only reason I have an itch to replace my G6 right now is because of the mediocre camera; I miss so many precious toddler moments that my wife's pixel doesn't. I'll bet every G6 ever made complains about "moisture in the USB port". The V20 clearly has a screen burn-in issue.
I bought a used-but-modern mid-range Samsung tablet to mount on an exercise bike, but it turns out none of the biking apps support it. I was annoyed at first because I hate consumer electronics without a purpose, but it turns out it works well as a tablet and I use it all the time. I've owned other tablets over the years, and they all sucked. Clearly Samsung has some idea of what they're doing.
I'll be interested to see what happens with Samsung's decision to drop SD. They did that once before with the Galaxy S6 and brought it right back with the S7 after disappointing sales. Personally, I just purchased a Note20 Ultra (at a heavy discount) because it looks like it might be the last phone with microSD that gets long term updates. In theory they sell phones with larger amounts of storage, but they rarely seem to drop below MSRP or are always out of stock if they do.
The transition was very quick. My experience (replace phones every 3-4 years), I got one phone to pick from where only apple and Google pixel lacked the headphone jack then the next where only the pixel a and some xiaomi devices had a headphone jack
Vendor lock in. People might be upset at Apple for removing features, but all their pictures are on iCloud and all their friends are on iMessage, etc. They'll stick with a mediocre iPhone because the friction to switch is too high.
That's why I try to buy used phones when possible, and repair them when seemingly wrecked to eek out a bit more life (going as far as re-flowing BGA ICs and bypassing damaged PCB traces with enamel wire).
The LG G6 was a great phone to buy used, and it's not too horrible to open up to repair. Probably has something to do with LG giving up...
they make money because the product sells and as others have pointed out, these features have advantages and most consumers appear to appreciate them or not care about them
A lot of those design decisions can be explained by Apple’s push towards smaller, more waterproof and more durable devices. Like you mention, these choices do make Apple money. But, they also lead to a superior product.
>more durable
I disagree. Lithium cells wear out over time, they're a component that needs to be regularly replaced to maintain peak performance much like the tires on a car. A lot of iPhone users put up with this for some reason, lugging around external batteries as their phone ages which defeat the point of the space savings anyways. With my LG V20, I just buy a replacement battery every year and never have anxiety over finding a charger since it lasts all day even with heavy use.
As for waterproofing, the Samsung Galaxy S5 proved that you can have both a removable battery/SD card and maintain waterproofing. Plenty of action cameras have removable batteries too that don't compromise waterproofing.
At this point there are basically no non-Chinese mobile phone makers aside from Samsung and Apple. And even those devices are still manufactured in China, right?
Apple – American
Samsung Mobile – South Korean
Nokia Mobile – Finnish
Google Pixel – American
Sony Mobile – Japanese
LG – South Korean
BLU Products – American
Lava – Indian
Sharp – Japanese
Fairphone – Dutch
Philips Mobile – Dutch
Yotaphone – Russian
BQ – Spanish
Acer – Taiwanese
Asus – Taiwanese
HTC – Taiwanese
Essential Products – American
Cherry Mobile – Philippino
DoCoMo – Japanese
Panasonic Mobile – Japanese.
Afrione – Nigerian
Mara Phone – Rwandan
Librem – American
Thanks, but you've listed where those companies are headquartered, not where their devices are manufactured or where their main suppliers are located.
I wasn't able to track down the country of origin for many of them, but at least Fairphone is open about it, and 75% of its components are manufactured in China[1].
Apple devices are still mostly produced in China, with some smaller scale operations in India[2].
I would like to see Fairphone levels of transparency from all manufacturers, but until then it's safe to assume that any electronics are partially sourced from countries with existing manufacturing facilities and cheap labor such as China. It's a cost cutting measure that makes it unfeasible to move production elsewhere, even for giants like Apple, and downright impossible for smaller companies.
> Thanks, but you've listed where those companies are headquartered, not where their devices are manufactured or where their main suppliers are located.
Indeed, I forgot about that. $2k is an exhorbitant price to pay for those specs, and I consider the non-USA version expensive as well, but it's the cost of local manufacturing and I applaud Purism for the effort. Hopefully that overhead will start to diminish once more manufacturers start doing the same.
Micromax in India assembles phones locally. Parts and design however are sourced from China.
Yotaphone is primarily a carrier/networking tech company. The mobile arm that created the Yotaphone e-ink/LCD phone went bankrupt in 2019. Their last device was the China-only Yotaphone 3 in 2018 [0].
Well that explains why I got my LG G8X ThinQ for 50% off, with a free dual screen case, $100 gift card rebate and a free 2 year warranty with proof of purchase. I got this phone just over a year ago. It's a great phone. Fantastic battery life, and it has a headphone jack. It's a shame - I felt a little weird getting an LG phone but I literally asked for "the best phone for the cheapest price" and LG/the dude at the Sprint store definitely delivered. I would have definitely considered an LG phone for my next purchase, but I'm hoping that won't be for another few years.
From following other companies in the LG group it seems that the company is very slow to innovate compared to it's biggest rival Samsung. Comparing stock prices is almost surreal as Samsung grows in 10x multiplier over the last 10 years.
LG will also be pushed out of the home electronics business as more manufacturers from Asia increase their output and capabilities. I think they will eventually become like Philips with focus only on B2B specific product lines like displays, batteries and EV components.
Obviously, I am disappointed by that outcome: I've used several G-line phones and currently using V30 (I was slightly disappointed by it compared to G6, but it's still much better than anything else I could find). And, honestly, didn't consider switching, because despite how much I dislike LG phones, I hate all other phones I know much more.
But what's more important, I very strongly suspect it's a wrong decision. Yes, they don't care about making me happy, they care about making money, and it's a fact, that their mobile division only loses money. And I do understand, that my phone preferences might be somewhat different from average, so I accept the hypothesis that these aren't "best for everyone". But either way, these are not bad phones. Especially if you skip the weirdest models like G5 (which I also skipped). In fact, their weirdest decisions always seemed like am attempt to answer the question "what are we doing wrong?". And it still seems obvious, that the only possible answer is marketing. Uber-popular samsung flagships never were really better than LG flagships (and for me they are actually worse), but the real and obvious difference were huge samsung billboards all across my city. And I honestly don't remember a single one by LG. Not to mention (obviously) sponsored reviews and posts on all meme-websites like 9gag every time Samsung made a new phone. No surprise they were selling better even at higher prices. And even today I saw a lot of "TIL: LG had a mobile division" posts.
So if I am right, and the problem is their marketing, getting out of mobile business must mean that they didn't learn the lesson. And if so, what good should we expect from whatever new divisions they'll make?
Good. I swore to never get an LG phone again after my terrible customer service experience sending in my G4 for fixing their serial bootloop issue. Sent the phone in, took two weeks for it to get fixed, and then got lost on the way back to me. I then had to fight DHL to get some of my money back. Their customer service line threatened me with their legal department should I write about this online.
Every company that leaves a business should be obliged by law to release detailed documentation, bootloader keys and dev kit/tools. There's no other way to guarantee that costumers can own the devices they paid for without this.
Are customers entitled to that but only if they purchase a phone from a failing company? I've had Samsung drop support for one of my phones after ~no time, but they're doing fine.
I still have my Nexus 4 (LG manufactured) in a box somewhere. This was actually my first smartphone, and it turned out to be a great purchase. It was affordable, simple, and somewhat close to open. Rooting in place was as simple as could be, and with “Xposed” I was able to get features on my phone that wouldn’t be widespread on stock Android or iOS for many years.
It’s hard to point to anything very wrong with that phone. It even had an Amoled always on display, which was ahead of its time. Reviewers thought that front and rear glass was an awful design decision, and they may have been right, but look where we are now?
The camera. It was shockingly bad. Otherwise, I agree. It was a pleasure flashing custom ROMs on to it, as you didn't need to go through the rigmarole required to get an an alternative bootloader running. There was a ton of development happening on XDA-developers then as well, so every week the distros would get better and more stable.
All weaknesses aside, I always liked LG for their adventurous attempts to challenge the market.
There was a "dare product" every year, something noone has done so far but with the potential to push things forward in the industry.
Unfortunately, the lack of sales (and marketing) caused those leaps to get smaller every year...
They will be missed. In a world of ever-increasing smartphone conformity, they were the ones reliably rattling the cage by placing a screaming punk of a product just in the middle of the worldwide white-collar market...
I don’t know that much about mobile development aside from as a user, but I guess the disappearance of a manufacturer is somewhat similar to the disappearance of a web browser, but probably worse because you also loose all the hardware possibilities, and I always thought that LG had some interesting phone designs, especially the dual screen devices, a bit experimental, but it seemed though at some stage one of them would lead to something really novel.
I had an LG G3 and it heated up so much that the shell separated from the screen/body. It was literally painful to hold your hand in the middle of the screen with heavy apps open (like Snapchat at the time...)
I sent it for warranty repair three times, and every time they "repaired" it instead of giving me a new one, and it would happen again. The fourth time it happened I just gave up.
I never had an LG smartphone, but I have many fond memories of my old LG VX4400 dumbphone that I had from 2003-2007. It was built like a tank, easily fit in my pocket, and the battery lasted for 4 or 5 days. Sure it didn't have a web browser and the only available apps were BREW, but I didn't really need any of that stuff at the time.
They do now. We have all became acutely aware of Google and Apple having too much power over the mobile ecosystem. Windows Phone 8+ didn't offer any differentiation other than UI design and they were charging for Windows mobile at first. Windows never got the critical mass of apps. It wasn't open source. Microsoft is just another tech giant. But if they piggy backed off the TV market success of WebOS they could have a truly open source alternative to Android that other organizations could have more influence over.
That isn't going to happen. There is no room for another smartphone OS. Look at how much cash Microsoft threw at the problem, and they still couldn't succeed.
People don't like their TVs because they have WebOS (which sucks big time btw), they like them because they make the best quality OLED panels for reasonable prices. The CX is a phenomenal TV or monitor replacement (in 45 inch configuration)
%$#@!. LG was an early innovator - their touchscreen model slightly predated the iPhone - the G2 was a classic phone, and they have very good headphone/audio tech, having decided to keep it rather than ditch it.
Their modern phones are good and simple, alas, the company never recovered its image following the G3/G4 fiascos.
Hoping the upcoming sequel is worth the wait, no longer produced by TCL, but OnwardMobility. Considering no product design folk are listed on their team page, I won't get my hopes up.
My last phone was LG V20 which was a beast, but LG went the Motorola Atrix way and decided to fuck the customers and not update the phone, so now I'm happy with my Note 10 Plus receiving an update each month.
Fuck LG and every company that decides to don't give a shit about their loyal customers.
That's surprising. They make one of the best devices. What else is there, Sony? I have no interest in Samsung in the least. I don't find it "incredibly competitive" when the number of decent options is approaching zero.
I guess mass market junk approach pushes good options out.
They should improve their marketing campaign instead of getting out of the industry. I remember using my LG G4; it was the flagship phone of LG at that time. It was worth it, but the mainstream would instead choose between Apple and Samsung over other brands.
My last experience with LG was with the LG Nexus 5X. I loved it until it lasted. After 2 years of daily usage it stopped working completely while I was calling someone. The phone went black and it never woke up again. I had to trash it.
LG should've gone out years ago. Hindsight is 20/20 but it just wasn't worth it after G6 in my opinion. Obviously, G4 was when they should've really stopped but that's much harder to predict.
As a reminder the Iphone one wasn't actually the first full tactile, "wide" screen smartphone, it was the LG Prada.
However the Iphone was still innovative, especially on the software side.
BB's last phone was the Priv in 2015. All phones after that were built and sold by TCL, who licensed the Blackberry name. They weren't bad phones and the 2018 Key2 is actually something of a a cult favorite. But it's Blackberry in name only at this point.
I remember announcement that Samsung pulls out of the laptop market, yet they still seem to be doing those.
At the time I had a Samsung laptop which was an abomination.
No difference to the situation before: LG never really bothered with updates or even security updates. That is also the main reason the G4 was my last LG phone... And I hope it was the reason they stopped making phones.
In another lifetime ago, back when I was much younger, had a lot more hair, and phones weren't very smart; the cell phone store I was working at had a customer come in with his LG flip phone. The users primary complaint was that it was shocking him on his face while using it plugged into the charger and on a call.
After plugging the phone in we called it from the store phone and sure enough not long after answering the thing gave me a nice big zap on my hand.
I had LG G8 thinq and it made me get an iphone after it. My previous 2 phones were pure android motorolla phones. G8 thingq one was very bloated, i had to drag an app to the screen before i can bring it up. I cannot see list of apps and just run it. I have samsung tablet the ui seems to be ok, not too much bloat.
The mobile phone market is no longer rational. That is why we are seeing such weird things happen like LG exiting. I blame apple.
There are basically three markets nowadays.
1. Ultra luxurious $1000+ phones. These phones are bought purely based on brand name. As a result they generally have a smaller set of features and put the users through some amount of pain. For example, the latest iphone does not have headphone jack, does not come with a charger, does not have expandable memory, does not have a fingerprint sensor, has outdated 5 year old-looking screens with a huge notch, etc. You cannot compete in this category with good, technically sound products. People will pay $1200 for a brick with an apple logo on it, but not for a genuinely advanced phone packed with features, just because it ain't from apple.
2. Mid tier phones. These phones are bought based on a mixture of features and brand value. It is possible to compete here because the customers are making some sort of logical decisions. That is the reason Oneplus is able to gain significant share here. But these also have started falling into the trap of removing features and making users suffer a bit for the brand.
3. Cheap commodity phones. These are extremely cheap, the software is barely acceptable and the hardware is decent. Once again, it is difficult to compete here because these customers will buy the absolute cheapest phone there is with the set of features they want. They will entirely disregard any software polish, any brand association, anything that requires attention to detail. As a result, chinese manufacturers are absolutely killing it in this space.
So the only place for LG to fit here is the 2nd one. This is a downgrade from earlier when they used to be in the flagship game, before apple fucked it up. I guess they are not able or ready to adapt to the new reality of the market. Sony did the same. I respect the decision on some level.
Can someone enlighten me on why manufacturers who have experience with software, such as Microsoft, don’t create their own OS for their mobile phones? I recognize that it’s easier and faster to iterate to just use Android with some sprinkles on top, but even if it meant spending 4-5 years developing it, the potential market share is absolutely massive. I can see the first year or two would not be great since app developers would need to build their apps, but after that initial hurdle, then I’d imagine it wouldn’t be as bad. After that, it comes down to sales, marketing and mindshare adoption.
To me regarding LG, I was never a fan of their phones, but less competition is always bad in my book.
Edit: Yes I remember the Windows Phone and it’s failures, was thinking more of starting a newer OS these days rather than several years ago.
And there was also WebOS which I know was used in atleast one tablet, maybe some phones too, and which is currently owned by LG.
Just think about how manufacturers are struggling to find success with their own smartphones. Imagine trying to do that with the added burden of developing a custom operating system.
And before Bada . And Samsung had a bad history of promising stuff for users of Bada and Tizen, that never got shipped. This is one of the reasons that I would never bought a Samsung phone again.
Microsoft, of course, famously did create their own phone OS. It wasn’t bad either, but among other problems they were a little late to market and there were no apps for it. A real chicken and egg problem. Not worth the engineering effort to build an app for a tiny marketshare and no one wants a smartphone that can’t even hail an Uber.
Having developed for windows phone 8, 8.1 and 10 i can say with certainty that it was bad in a plethora of ways and microsoft's constant over promising and under delivering made it worse.
Compared to competing OSes at the time? I don’t remember any being particularly fun. (But also I didn’t spend much time in the Windows Phone ecosystem)
But I think you’re right that MS lost focus on developers on mobile. Ironic given "developers, developers, developers" was the literal mantra.
Just to expand on Windows Mobile: For the problems it had (probably the biggest was trying to enter a duopoly), I have yet to hear of anyone who had one who didn’t like it. I never used one, but those who did seem to have liked it better than iOS and Android.
Microsoft tried; they weren't able to capture that market share. Much of that probably comes down to it being tough to catch up to the 3rd party app ecosystem Apple and Android each have.
I believe Hauwei is being forced to develop their own OS due to the threat of US sanctions. However, I think it'd be a losing battle to try to steal enough market share of IOS/Android. They'd simply copy (or one up) your competitive advantage leaving you little room to compete.
I mean, "fake it till you make it" is a good strategy (although you probably shouldn't lie). It is a sound engineering decision to rewrite Android piece by piece, like replacing Linux with LiteOS.
The second screen is just the perfect solution for having an allways on display without a real (and stupid) notch. I love this feature. Also knock to power on is super convenient. Battery is replacable. The Screen is super sharp. Its thin despite its very accessible inner parts. The amp and music quality is absolutely awesome. The camera is awesome as is the sound recording quality. The IR Blaster ist just super convenient. Also the FM-Radio is a very nice addition. The camera-app is just awesome and i have yet not managed to find something simmilar. Also i like the gallery app. And the sound recording app. Its also fast, has enough power still to this day. And the SD-Card Slot combined with the internal memory gives me 640GB Storage. Also Dual SIM is nice.
Really it is such an awesome phone that im not sure how this phone happened in the first place. As each Smartphone does at least 2 things stupid or hase some dumb features no one asked for.
Its allways the same with me - as soon as i find the absolute perfect hardware - its already legacy and nothing like it is buyable in the future ...
The V20 is like the perfect tool. No stupid features only used for sales, no shortcuts, just a very nice package. Two things i would change: Cameras should never stick out and the volume buttons should be on the back like on the G4.