We've gotten to the point of peak absurdity where 5.9" is considered "ultra-compact".
I'm in the market for a new phone right now, and it's baffling how ridiculously big most phones are right now. I only use mine for instant messaging and browsing Hacker News. 5" is more than enough for that.
While phones have gotten bigger, screen size is not a good indication of that. It’s more useful to compare physical dimensions because of slightly different aspect ratios and border widths/roundness
This, really. While screen sizes have been getting bigger, the aspect ratio has been getting taller and the bezels/body of the phones has been getting smaller. While I agree that regardless of all of this modern phones are too big, you can't just look at the screen size.
What I find more interesting is that their website focus so much on it being compact, but it's actually just pretty much the same size as the regular iphone.
Yeah, this is ridiculous. Notice how all the models on the page have big to giant hands?
One of my earliest smartphones was 4.2". That was already problematic for my hand. 5" is too large, 5.9" is out of question. I don't want a tablet for a phone. I want a phone that I can use with just one hand and still reach all corners of the screen comfortably with my thumb from a firm grip (i.e. not from the side, but with the bottom right corner firmly tucked in the palm of my hand, if that makes sense). And my hands are not even small.
The phone, or the screen? The Nexus 5S was the last phone I owned that I could comfortable hold and had a 4.9" screen (diagonal), but with a 70.8% screen-to-body ratio (5.43 inches tall). This Zenfone 9 has a 5.9 inches screen (diagonal) but is less than 1cm taller, and exactly as wide as the Nexus 5S.
Phone manufacturers have tried selling small phones. Sony couldn't make a business of it. Even Apple reportedly can't make it go round.
Face it, you're a tiny minority. My wife made fun of my iPhone Pro Max, until she inherited my old one and now she can't go back, it's huge but the screen real estate is really nice to have.
They want a small premium smartphone, and those have been standard features for premium smartphones for a couple of years now. You evidently want to stray further from the premium category, not that there is anything wrong with it -- you make fair arguments.
Yeah, I own a Galaxy S20. Damn thing always prints on my pants when is in the pocket. The bigger screen size is good, but I preffer portability. If I want a giant screen I would by a tablet.
The fit in my pants is honestly the biggest problem I've had too since getting a Pixel 6. The one-handed keyboard/screen mode works fine, the battery life is nice, and the bigger screen I mostly don't care either way about. It's big in my pants though, when I'm not using it, I think only folding phones will really solve this.
Pixel 6a user wanting to know what to do with my phone to actually carry it. Missus hasn't used a handbag in almost a decade, and is now using one just to carry her phone. Impractical.
Apple switched to a larger screen size not because they thought it was better but their phones were losing out in showrooms to the larger Galaxy phones.
Well, when you can't go thinner and lighter without ruining structural integrity and battery life, you go bigger with the screen. Gotta keep people on the upgrade treadmill so they can visually see who is up-to-date, just like the notch.
Except that could easily be achieved by making the phone slightly thicker, instead. When phones are so thin and fragile that a rigid case is practically mandatory, I don't know why "thin" is a selling point.
We could solve two problems at once: get rid of a camera bump and make the battery bigger at the same time by using the extra space of the camera bump to house a bigger battery.
Not sure why it hasn't happened yet or if it has I don't know if it.
My guess is the same reason glossy screens won out over matte screens for laptops: because they look slightly better on the showroom floor, despite the worse real-world performance.
Why does the battery size matter? Do we compare car fuel tank sizes? We typically care about how it affects our use of the product. How long can the iPhone SE last on a charge? How does it compare to other iPhones?
Yes. I can't tell you why they thought it was important, but in my childhood I've heard multiple adults talk about "My car goes <x> miles before a fill-up". Never made sense to me, gas stations are everywhere and filling up is quick.
> Never made sense to me, gas stations are everywhere and filling up is quick.
Gas stations are not everywhere, and can be few and far between on certain routes, and more to the point filling up being quick may be the normal conditions, but if you are old enough (or have lived in the right–or maybe wrong would be more accurate–places even without being that old), you have experience of times when filling up has not been quick, or even, on any given day for any given car, necessarily permitted.
I think it's because more and more people are opting to use phones to consume their media instead of traditional avenues like TV.
Lying in bed, on the bus, in the classroom, etc - less time to sit down in the living room and watch youtube/movies on the TV - especially with the TikTok(/vine?) generation latching onto vertical video formats too.
I think it's just a generational thing - I remember being amazed at how people are consuming vertical video now like it's anything else when 5-10 years ago people would give the cameraman grief for filming this "crazy moment!" in vertical format :P
My last two phones are a Moto Z Play (5.5in) and a Pixel 4a (5.8in). While the Pixel 4a screen was larger, I found the larger Moto Z phone immensely more comfortable to use. The chins meant you could more comfortably reach the inside corners, and the different aspect ratio meant the phone could be used in landscape mode without the keyboard occluding the entire screen. The Pixel 4a, despite its ostensibly larger screen, actually felt like a step down because the keyboard usability is heavily dependent on how square the screen is.
Imho the move to higher than 16:9 aspect ratios has really made it harder to talk about screen size.
It's absurd. I need to buy a new phone (as in, my 6-year old 5" phone is really falling apart and I can't find parts to replace) and my only option is pretty much a used Pixel 2, 3, or 4a.
I don't run spyware OS anyway, Lineage+microg is the bare minimum. I've found unofficial maintainers give better support for their custom roms than manufacturers.
>. I've found unofficial maintainers give better support for their custom roms than manufacturers.
This is so true. Typing this on a Mi A2 Lite released in 2018 rocking a custom A11 ungoogled ROM and squeezing almost 3 days of battery life out of it. It's screen size is 5.84" and it's perfect. I refuse to go any bigger.
Just got a Pixel 6a, which one reviewer called "amazingly small". Uh, yeah, anything but. Got my iPhone 4S out of a drawer to compare. I can only laugh. Admittedly, it is much smaller than the phone I moved from. Not very pocket-friendly though, and the camera ledge gets stuck on the outside of your pocket too frequently.
I have slightly big hand and I don't mind the current sizes, I like them. But I wish all phones were thicker, they just so thin and slick. I alwasy have to add a case to make them ticker and easier to use
Solution in search of an implementation: removable backs allowing for fast battery swaps, and adding a more substantial back that becomes a part of the phone rather than a cheap afterthought. Yes, I'm oldskool.
Height does make phones less comfortable to handle with a single hand, which is what I prefer to do most of the time. They are heavier, lean further back so you have to spread your fingers on the back more, and reaching the top to pull the notifs bar, for example, is harder.
I'd argue height is worse than width in comfort.
The only problem with Asus phones in general, which is also apparent in their ROG phones, is the lack of updates. Their hardware is top-notch, literally; I've never seen faster phones. But, they don't update them consistently enough, unlike Google and Samsung which have pledged multiple years of software support through Android releases.
It’s sad that no phone maker is playing the open and standard platform game. A brand like Asus would have everything to win with this : they already are recognized as a « geek » brand, they could ship updates with no effort and they could get free marketing from the word to mouth of the « geek of the family ».
Instead of that, like any other Android manufacturer in the market, they ship great hardware with shitty or soon-to-be shitty software that will make your premium phone worse than the next Chinese phone.
Critical phone components (or rather, their drivers and/or firmware) are not open however. I would like a platform with x86-level standardization but competitive power efficiency a lot. I don’t see it happening though. It’s not down to the phone makers, but to the component suppliers—like Qualcomm.
Sailfish is interesting, but depending on what you do on your phone, you may find it an inappropriate choice of daily-driver. Just like a PinePhone is interesting with trying different Linux distros, ultimately you will very likely realize that you need battery life, reliability and to stop farting around with your phone actually working and get on with your everyday life.
Android manufacturers, unlike Apple, don't really earn much via the software - so there is really no reason for costly updates which keeps the customers from buying the next phone..
It's unfortunate that lack of updates don't prevent customers from buying the current phone.
It feels like we need consumer protection laws that require companies to prominently advertise the software "warranty". So Google and Apple can put "5 years" on the box and Asus needs to put "0 days". The problem is that it isn't something that most people think about. But when you point it out to them it definitely changes how they evaluate phones when you show them that this one will be dangerously insecure after 1y but this other one is good for 3y.
Sony has an open devices program where some models end up a year or so after their release. Jolla uses this program to make Sailfish releases tuned for select models.
I think it's hard to have easy open-source support by default as ARM hardware needs a model specific device tree and some of the required software might not be fully open.
Asus might not own either all software or rights to release a fully open model themselves, even if they'd like the idea.
I don't think it needs to be fully open source.
Its fine if its even kernel + blobs too.
Since I have choose to use CalyxOS/any privacy focused ROM, I have been locked to pixels, because all the others have some crap in the system that devs don't want to deal with.
The niche brands fall into this, like Fairphone (have one and love it, also for the modularity guarantee of 5 years of OS updates!) or Swiftphone, which very much encourage use of alternative OS.
I own the Zenfone 8 and it has consistently received updates large and small. It came with fairly clean Android and I get the feeling it's not far behind a Google phone when it comes to updates. That includes major updates (got upgraded to Android 12 too). It's a really great phone. The only thing I would improve is the fingerprint sensor, but apparently that's been addressed in the next iteration.
That's a community effort, and from previous experiences some pretty random things can be broken, but if the contributors don't care, they won't even look into it. It's fine, but it's not an alternative to actual updates.
In the same way, mods for games aren't an alternative to the developer just fixing issues.
It is a community effort and it is not uncommon for hardware to be traded between members for establishing some driver or interface with. eBay is part of that.
3 years of Android version updates and at least 5 years of security updates.
But I have to say, Apple's OS version updates are not always quite what they seem. My 2 year old iPad gets OS updates in name only. None of the major new iPad OS features are supported.
That's fine if the hardware just isn't capable of supporting those features. But it sort of muddies the water compared to an Android device that doesn't get a nominal OS bump but still gets security updates and all the new features distributed through Google's Play services.
All security issues are handled on iOS for many years. Yes, feature updates are gated by model because Apple wants to sell new stuff and the new features are a big driver of that.
GrapheneOS on Pixel is probably the best bet right now.
>All security issues are handled on iOS for many years.
Yes, absolutely. I didn't mean to imply anything else.
Google says Pixel 6 will get "at least 5 years" of security updates. We're going to have to wait and see if that's better or worse than what Apple does.
Are you serious? iOS upgrades give you the entire OS experience and upgraded app support with a few flashy features missing.
Compare that to Android where the best case is invisible security updates and guess which causes upgrade anxiety?
I'm an Android developer for a living but I use iPhones because the Android ecosystem is currently optimized for generating e-waste.
SoC manufacturers generally don't make enough money to want to do more than the bare minimum, so unless you're Google making billions off a hundred other angles you don't do OS updates for more than a few years and maybe pay lip service with security upgrades.
>iOS upgrades give you the entire OS experience and upgraded app support with a few flashy features missing.
As you know, Google updates apps and cloud features on a continuous basis while Apple holds back most new features until they release a new OS version. If you look through the list of iPad OS 16 features for instance, you'll see that almost all of them are in fact new apps, app features and sharing/cloud features that Android users would be getting anyway [1].
Of the very few actual OS features, the most substantial one by far is Stage Manager, which is only supported on M1 iPads as esteth has said. This isn't just "a few flashy features".
I'm a bit unlucky with my iPad purchases because this is the second time I'm missing out on the most important new OS features on a new-ish iPad. Granted, nothing of the sort ever happened to me on iPhone. I'm rather happy with Apple's iOS update policy.
Stage Manager will straight up not work on non-M1 iPads.
You cannot keep 4 major apps in memory without seeing an eviction.
Also your comparison doesn't make sense, you're comparing iOS built-in apps to Android 3rd party apps by Google... AOSP's built-in photos and emails apps have barely been updated in the last decade.
All in all if you think iPadOS is letting you down, Android upgrades are a circus that Google refuses to rein in.
>you're comparing iOS built-in apps to Android 3rd party apps by Google
I'm not comparing them, I'm putting them aside for this comparison, because Apple links a lot of regular apps to the release cycle of the OS while Google doesn't do that. That's a separate issue that isn't relevant for the point I was making.
I'm only talking about features that would have to be part of the OS on iOS as well as on Android. There are very few new features of that sort in iPad OS 16. I'm not getting most of them.
I understand that this may be down to hardware capabilities. But Apple does have some wiggle room when it comes to deciding how to implement any new features and how much work to put into making them less resource intensive.
You realize the Gmail app is not the equivalent of the iOS Mail app right? That would be the AOSP email app which only gets updates when Android OS gets updates...
My point is that I didn't get the most important new iPad OS features on my new-ish iPad. Apple simply didn't implement those features in a way that makes them work on relatively recent devices.
>You realize the Gmail app is not the equivalent of the iOS Mail app right?
Yes, but the differences are not relevant to the debate. I'm talking about OS features only, and I'm disregarding regular apps that just happen to get distributed along with the OS for business reasons.
> My point is that I didn't get the most important new iPad OS features on my new-ish iPad. Apple simply didn't implement those features in a way that makes them work on relatively recent devices
Like I said already:
- there was no magical way to make this feature work on your "newish iPad".
- You can even test it yourself: open Safari, open a few productivity apps, and watch the cold starts come flying.
- Stage Manager is not the most important feature, being on the newest development target is since if you're not most updated apps will not support your device in 12 months
> I'm talking about OS features only, and I'm disregarding regular apps that just happen to get distributed along with the OS for business reasons.
So you're arbitrarily deciding which OS features count, cool... you're free to do that... but that's the definition of a strawman.
Apple's approach to an OS places more value on built in apps, so you see a ton of app based features, that use OS level APIs that don't exist until a new OS upgrade.
You're trying to say Apple could just ship them as app updates, but no, they can't. The APIs they're built on don't exist until a new OS version comes out.
>there was no magical way to make this feature work on your "newish iPad"
I don't know how difficult it would have been to support a broader range of devices. There are always trade-offs involved, engineering trade-offs as well as economic ones. Neither of us is familiar with the technical details or with the options they discussed.
Fact is, this major new feature (and others) is not supported on very recent hardware they sold to me. That's disappointing irrespective of the reasons. And it raises the question how meaningful those X years of OS updates really are.
>So you're arbitrarily deciding which OS features count
I'm counting all OS features but not apps that are only linked to OS releases as a sales strategy. Of course they want to show off new OS APIs in their apps when the OS gets an update. That doesn't require syncronising release cycles the way they do. Many if not most new app features do not depend on new OS APIs at all.
Second, _massively increasing multitasking capabilities_ is being given to the models that have _a massively upgraded SoC_ there's nothing artificial about that limitation.
Older iPads cannot not hold 4 arbitrary apps in memory, try it yourself if you want. For anything but the most basic set of apps you'll find something evicted by the time you loop back...
Third, "the" major point of an OS upgrade if any is being on the latest development target. Ask Android devs still targeting versions of Android from 2015 about that...
The Pixel 6 Pro has been update to become a pile of hot trash in my case. The updates have been so bad I'm returning it this weekend, while I received a perfectly functional hone...
I'm sure some will appreciate the (security) updates, because the year or so of OS updates I've experienced have been a constant trend towards the worse.
There's not a single screenshot of the operating system I could see, and I need to unlock the phone and all so assuming this is a custom ROM.
Usually you lose access to things like GPay or certain NFC functionalities, and end up with a not-entirely stable experience anyway. I'd rather a phone that just worked. The half a dozen I had previously at least didn't struggle with the basics!
Google Pay won't work, but everything else has been quite solid for me. Additionally, it is more secure than the stock OS and significantly more protective of your privacy.
My bank decided to abandon their own payment solution in favour of GPay, and the neo-bank or two I do use also uses GPay, while I don't actually have physical cards for these. In short, not using GPay is not an option.
> it is more secure than the stock OS
Maybe, but I don't trust community maintainers (nor auditing) enough. At least Google has a business entity that backs their services, community ROMs have nothing of the sort.
I dabbled in ROMs and the likes previously, but I just want a phone that works like a phone should right now. I've got too many other things to tinker with already.
Re Google Pay, if it's a must-have for you, then so be it.
However, re community maintainers, clearly you have read nothing about GrapheneOS, as security is by far their top priority, at the expense of nearly everything else.
No I do not have the time nor interest to read about every ROM group.
I just want a relible, usable phone, and do not experience safety concerns that would warrant preferring a less convenient experience. I don't think most people do, for that matter.
It might be just me - but my phone battery degrades so significantly after 3 years that the phone isn't worth using anymore, so I'm not that bothered about not receiving updates past that window.
My 5 year old phone is still at 84% battery capacity. I set a charge limit to 80% unless I'm planning to be away from a charger for some time and set it to go to low battery mode at 40%, which discourages me from draining it too low. I wasn't even this careful for the first couple of years that I owned it, and I use the fast charge mode.
You can change the battery in most phones (there are plenty instructions on youtube how to open the case or do it with some service center), that's much cheaper than buying new phone.
On chinese marketplaces there are batteries for almost any phone, might be in your local marketplaces as well, depending on location.
This is a very solvable problem, at least for me. I only charge when I'm running low on battery and my phone tells me to and I never interrupt the charge cycle once it is plugged in.
I've been running a Galaxy S7 since 2016 like that and only now do the first battery issues slowly start to appear.
I own the older Zenfone 6 from 2019, i.e. 3 years old.
I has received frequently updates until now, including the change of the major version of Android, from the one with which the phone had been initially delivered.
It seems like that phone will get 2 major updates (Android version upgrades?) and 2 years of security updates. Nothing more than any other brand will give you.
Before Xiaomi became mainstream they were quite supportive of the dev community. For example they sent a bunch of Poco phones to XDA developers before release.
I feel like Asus would do so much better if they opened up the ecosystem a bit.
Running linageOS 18.1 (Android 11) on a Zenfone Max Pro M1 (fresh install over 16.1 - which received regular updates every 2 weeks i think)
I beleive each model depends on the number of contributors working on image for that model, my phone is quite old yet it is now possible to upgrade (fresh install) to 19.1, which I will eventually get around to. I bought this phone specifically to use lineage. I use the camera, it works fine, and dont have any issues personally with the quality, although i am not really too bothered as long as its not shit, which it isn't IMO
Some phones require extra firmware to get good quality out of the camera that are protected with keys that get wiped when unlocking the bootloader, which is probably what was meant.
samsung apparently also used to have a kill switch on their S22s with the Exynos cpus in EU (the only models that are unlockable...Snapdragons are not). i have a hard time believing this tho if they permitted unlocking at all. most likely it was some signed firmware snafu as you say.
Android 12 has me swearing off updating my phone honestly. It's backwards in every single way. I don't use my phone for anything critical so I am more than willing to trade security for usability.
Do you check your email on that phone? If so, and I pop your phone, I'll have your email credentials, and with that I can probably reset the password of any other account you have.
While some people legitimately blame bloatware on Samsung Galaxy, Samsung's customized Android (OneUI) is good for this perspective. Google sometimes decides weird annoying changes for AOSP but Samsung sometimes just refuses the change and keep their OS sane. I previously liked pure AOSP, but finally I found that it's not the best Android distribution.
I'm in agreement with you. I no longer like Google's UX decisions in AOSP. It's got to the point where I dread finding out what they removed or buried under multiple taps. I have Android 12 on a galaxy tablet, and OneUI with Good Lock makes it sane.
What's stopping people from just running the, say, Google build of Android on this phone? If there is custom device drivers or whatever, can't they just be copied from the custom ASUS android over to the standard android build, while avoiding all the crapware and lack of updates?
It’s a huge pain in the ass. Usually trips up the android safteynet drm and doesn’t give kernel updates because no one has access to the proprietary driver blobs which no longer work with new kernels.
You can often get android api updates like this but not any real security updates.
Nothing. People do that all the time - there is a huge community for aftermarket custom ROMs at places like xda-developers. However, I would guess that is like less than 1% of users since custom ROMs a) are not popular b) require some courage and technical knowledge c) often void the official warranty.
D) Are highly unlikely to support relocking for new keys in secure boot, or are limited to a very small number of models.
The attacks sold to governments fighting such evils as journalists and pro-democracy youth haven't yet been shown to include persistency across reboots, AFAIK, but relatively small percentages of politically active people using insecure boot could encourage them to build those features to more passively monitor a sub-sample as it is relatively easy and makes their work less detectable.
Apps have started locking you out if they detect you have an unofficial build. Even dumb apps like McDonalds. Good luck using mandatory banking apps there as well.
I recall during my android root days that banks would block your phone from running apps if you were rooted - I needed to install a separate app and define which apps I could "sandbox" of sorts, to convince them they were running on a non-rooted device
Are there any workaround apps sort of like this now, or has Google finally plugged all the loopholes for this?
That generally works fine, especially for the same Android version. However, as Android evolves, so do the driver requirements. Yesterday’s driver may simply not work with today’s Android. Only the driver supplier (typically the likes of Qualcomm) could realistically create an updated driver. Otherwise, extensive reverse engineering would be required.
Drivers and support for the features that require said drivers, as its often the case that only first party software has the secret sauce - very often the case for camera apps.
That's not how software works. Software is always buggy. Question is only how severely functionality is impacted and when those bugs will be found. Most bugs are never noticed since they only concern corner cases that you normally won't hit in the field or would even have a hard time driving the system into even if you tried on purpose.
The main issue is with security-related bugs. Especially with mobile phone software, which has an enormous attack surface and has really wide distribution, this is a constant issue. No mobile phone OS ever will be bug free and will always contain security flaws. Over time, more and more of them are discovered, and it's a race between the vendor fixing them and malicious actors exploiting them. That's why the OS (and all the apps) need to be constantly updated. The longer you skip updates, the more you fall behind and the more doors are open that better be closed once they are known.
> needs to be paired with an argument that they ship buggy or incomplete software.
That argument is an easy one to make and everybody familiar with software engineering should be intimately familiar with it. This is not about some button not working, it's about somebody pwning your phone.
Because the hardware can handle updates to the OS, and as the ecosystem evolves, apps start misbehaving or not even functioning on older versions of the OS. And then you've got vulnerabilities.
Not sure what you're looking for, but Ctrl-F "Battery" brings you to the battery sections with a "learn mode" button showing some battery life numbers.
It's thicker, which is bad, but at least that allows for a side mounted fingerprint sensor. A rear mounted one is inaccessible on a phone holder, car or bicycle.
It weights a lot more.
No micro SD slot.
Anything else, I don't care, so I can't find a reason to pay at least 3 times the price. If it were a couple of cm shorter, maybe but probably not.
Software updates are not always a good thing. For instance I have not updated my Samsung in years, because I know the pending update will take away call recording functionality.
their pledge is "Pixel 6 and later Pixel phones will get [updates] for at least 5 years from when the device first became available on the Google Store in the US." where [update] is security and may include features, (and I guess even feature removals) etc.
I have a Pixel 3, which received less than 2.5 years of secure use between time of purchase and time of last security update. I'm looking for a new phone that isn't made by Google, preferably one that has an open platform, because I don't trust Google as far as I could throw their advertising department.
My employer is strict on security for employee's phones to be able to install our apps. Right now they wont allow any android except Pixels, Samsung recently got taken off the list due to lack of updates.
It's not just about snooping. It's also other things like being part of a botnet that's scanning for vulnerabilities or actively hacking or DDOSing or being used in a proxy network
When users are used to updates screwing them over generally, it's not a surprise that we start to find people who don't want to update and disregard the security entirely.
iOS doesn't seem to have this problem, reaching "89% of all devices introduced in the last four years use iOS 15"[0].
iOS generally is less at-risk for these botnet issues since any botnet needs to be actively embedded within a popular app-store-installed app, especially if it wants to run expensive background tasks hitting HTTP endpoints. To add, since apps can't JIT, the apps can't RCE a jailbreak that would allow full system compromise, besides if the exploit chain is possible via a WebKit exploit (which is exceedingly rare[1]).
>I certainly don’t worry about any negatives from an iOS update
Really? I always have issues after iOS upgrades, mostly related to iCloud. But I still update ASAP because as soon as a new iOS version is released, the old version causes even more iCloud problems. Apple and the whole iOS ecosystem just doesn't tolerate old versions (which is mostly a good thing but also has some downsides)
I've never actually noticed any difference after almost all of the updates since I purchased it. I'm assuming they either have all been security, "stability" or features that Samsung already had provided in their fork.
Huawei had the most advanced hardware and best UI in the cheapest, most compact devices that I've seen. I'd gladly let the Chinese spy on me to keep using them.
Detailed and honest? How is this different from all the flashy usual marketing bullshit on a active scroll (or whatever that's called) webpage? Do they mention on that page that SD card support has been removed this year or is it something you have to deduce because CTRL+F 'sd' returns 0 results?
Detailed and honest would be spec sheet, camera samples, couple of standardized benchmarks, basically a Kimovil.com description page.
S*t, now nobody is offering a SD card slot? Neither Samsung nor Apple. Just when in 2022 you can have a large storage AND privacy. I think Huawei is the only one offering a Google mobile phone and storage?
It is good that Apple offers mobile phones with internal storage of 1tb where Samsung ends up in 512gb but in this times of large photos and movies 2 TB should appear soon.
Sony's Xperia line seems to be the last one to still offer microsd support in a high-end phone. They also have headphone jacks, waterproofing, front facing speakers, and no camera notch. I kind of hate sony, but I might end up buying one of their phones next, just because they seem to be the only manufacturer that isn't removing features and calling it progress. On the down side, their commitment to updates is pretty lame.
Right now I'm on a Moto g100/Edgs S, which is a mid-range phone with a microSD slot and a headphone jack, but it has two camera holes in the screen, it's not waterproof and it has a single shitty down firing speaker. However, it was $270 used, so I figured I can live with this until I find something I actually like.
Oh, and both Motorola and Sony make it easy to unlock the bootloader, which is sadly not guaranteed anymore. I'm still a little salty at Google for permanently locking the bootloader in my old Pixel 2 and I sent it in for a repair.
For some reason sd card slot is like audio jack, it's considered a thing for middle tier phones. Xiaomi have a bunch of them (various Redmis for instance), and Samsung at least used to, I haven't checked recently.
Sony seems to be the last manufacturer offering MicroSD slots in their high-end phones. (The last manufacturer that sells phones in the US, anyways.) They also include a headphone jack!
Samsung ditched both of those features in recent years.
I kind of hate sony, but in this instance they seem to be less shitty than everyone else.
If you're in Europe and don't mind a smaller player, the Fairphone has expandable storage out of principle, so your phone can last longer. Thus, you can expect all their future models to have that as well.
I think the best phones are made by Sony. If you want stereo speakers, SD slot, headphone jack and high end performance, it's hard to find other models than these manufactured by Sony.
It's taller than the iPhone SE (2022) and just as wide. It's mush bigger than the iPhone 12 Mini. There's nothing particularly compact about this phone.
... but it's so frustrating to click on some element of the page and then click/swipe back only to find suddenly you're back here on HN. Then, 2nd time around on the page you notice they've redesigned a simple web interface: Not a close button, but a 'minimise' but in a very light font.
It seems they think throwing out tried and true user experience is a good thing. SPA has a lot to answer for.
Also, while I'm on my soapbox... Having a fingerprint reader as the power button just makes sure that my phone is unlocked just as I put it in my pocket, just after I've locked it (by clicking the power button). Just today I've spammed a couple of voice messages to people just because of that. I'll not be buying another phone with one of those again!
Details are scarce so I'm speculating, but it's likely configurable so you can set it to unlock only if actually pressed/clicked rather than just touched, which should solve the problem.
While the phone is on, the power/fingerprint button "also acts as an extra input, allowing you to pull down the notification shade by swiping across the button – or set it to refresh a page, scroll to the top, or control media playback if you prefer." [1]
Will buy this purely for the fact that it has the 3.5mm jack and a separate finger print sensor. Sensor placement on the side is perfect, I've long been searching for a successor for my trusty S10e
My S10e is still going strong, why are you looking for a replacement? The cpu and ram are still plenty to run any app that I've tried.
I've actually underclocked mine, limited the maximum frequency that is, to conserve battery because I don't need all that power. It gets quite hot if you unleash it and do something like have a constantly re-rendering map as you move about (OsmAnd routing). Aside from software problems that are not Samsung's fault (base android just gets more annoying with every version), the "too fast" cpu is the only flaw I've found with it and I'm kind of dreading needing to upgrade in a few years when android degraded further and headphone jacks are entirely unavailable.
My work phone (released 2021) doesn't have a headphone jack. Took a few hours to find a USB C converter where the reviews didn't say "doesn't work with <phone version 7>" (version 6 worked fine, it seems the manufacturer removed support for all the ones that previously worked) or "lots of noise on the mic" or "broke after 2 weeks". Couldn't find one where you could also charge without getting a ton of noise, so I got a wireless charger plus with a simple C to headphone converter. Wireless charging makes it extremely hot and the C converter has a loose contact on the third use. Great success, loving the headphone jackless experience.
I got the Pixel 5A because it's the (last?) Pixel device with a fingerprint sensor AND headphone jack. I really dislike this trend of forcing people to use face unlock... it's nice to be able to unlock my phone before it even leaves my pocket and without having to take off my mask on the subway or similar crowded setting.
I have an S10e as well and the placement & responsiveness of the fingerprint sensor on it is absolutely perfect. Can't believe that subsequent models didn't retain it.
I also want to upgrade, but it's difficult to pick which phones will have equally good fingerprint reading.
Also hoping for eSIM support, in case anyone has suggestions.
Good to know the S22 Ultra has a decent fingerprint reader.
Note that S10 is totally different than S10e when it comes to the fingerprint reader, though. On the S10e, the power button is the fingerprint reader. The position is perfect. Contrast that with phones like Pixel 4 or Pixel 5, where Google think a sensor in an awkward location on the back of the phone is the right move.
I actually prefer the sensor on the back of the phone. I find it to be at least as convenient as on the power button, and with the power button placement, it frequently unlocks right after I just hit the power button to turn the screen off.
However, both of them are leaps and bounds better than the optical in-screen sensors that fucking blind you if try to use the phone somewhere dark. I had a phone with one of those for about 2 weeks before I returned it.
Nowadays when researching a new phone I just immediately go to see if it's got a 3.5mm jack and to my surprise it does! That automatically makes it a step up from all the competition that refuse to let the trend of not including a 3.5mm jack die.
Just a heads-up for anybody considering picking this up soon after it's released:
Early batches of Zenfone 8 started dying after around six months of usage. Even though there were a lot of users complaining on the official forum [1], there was no official statement from Asus except "send your phone in for service.".
Also, recent updates seem to break random funcionality like Face ID [2], the notification pulldown menu [3] and screen casting [4]. Most of those problems are fixed, but in every instance the fix was only issued after a few weeks or a month.
One more problem present from the beginning (IIRC) is a malfunctioning proximity sensor [5] that activates the screen during conversation.
It's a good phone (in my opinion), but I feel that Asus started kinda ignoring it after the A12 release. And of course, I really don't like that they didn't officially comment on the bricking issue, so now I travel with a backup phone just in case.
I guess I've been lucky because I had nothing but a great time with my Zenfone 8. I don't remember smoother sailing for so long with a phone and that includes some iPhones I used to own. I dread the day I will have to replace it because not sure I'll find something that fits my needs so well for a long time.
Same. There is only two things I don't like with mine, and it is the battery life and that swiping left to go back is interfering with dragging left to go to the next panel. Everything else is stellar.
That's Asus for you, horrible software combined with faulty hardware, but hey it has great specs and gets nice reviews since reviewers test it only for couple of days and no need to deal with quality issues after few months...
I have an ASUS zenfone "max pro m2" I got for my wife.
The stock android it came with had some annoying rough edges compared to a google pixel. This is in terms of the audio levels for apps and notifications, basic user level experience stuff, not advanced nerd stuff.
She moved to a google pixel and was much happier. I installed LineageOS on the ASUS and it's been great with this "upgrade"
I'm hoping they put more effort into refining the OS on this phone.
The fact that google so blatantly creates a better version of android that’s reserved for pixel kinda shows how bad the android ecosystem is.
It used to be that people really wanted stock android, now because google spends so many resources (i.e. UI/UX devs) on The Pixel Experience(tm) stock android has slowly become less user friendly and requires significant changes from the OEM partners to get it to a usable state. And of course those changes are not OSS and don’t contribute back to the original code. Plus it further fractures the whole ecosystem.
My hands use the screen, and they're of a certain size. If the screen is too big, I can't use it with one hand. The iPhone SE (the original one) can be used with one hand; if they would convert the bezels to screen I wouldn't be able to. I can't use the new iPhone SE with one hand.
I had a couple of LG phones, both of them ended up getting a hardware fault. Both times I sent them in for service and the only response I got from LG was that somehow I made it damage itself. There was no replace, repair or purchase a replacement option. Just an email saying I was SOL, k, tnx, bye.
I found the phone quality to be bad and customer service to be bad and avoided them. I was not surprised that they didn't survive.
I got an Asus Zenfone 8 mostly because it was one of the smaller Android phones available. It's mostly stock with a few UI changes, and I don't think it had any bloatware apps preinstalled that I can remember.
main complaint is probably that the buttons are too easy to press. every time i pick it up i inevitably press something to wake it. hoping the 9 is better.
Having had a Samsung phone and vowing to never buy another despite how amazing the hardware was (S8) and now having a Google Pixel 5 - I love this scale
The last Android phone I used was a T-Mobile G1, but my employer recently provided me with a S21 FE. My god, the software is so user hostile - two diallers, two messaging apps, two browsers out of the box.
I did S7 > Pixel > S20 and while there's still a few default apps (I counted 9) I'm not using, the bloatware is less invasive than it used to be.
My stock apps live in a Samsung folder I never open and haven't bothered me once since I got it.
How does LineageOS compare to CalyxOS? I swore to myself to never run Google Android, or mostly Google in general, if I can avoid it. Which means Pixel phones that support CalyxOS or Graphene. Nothing wrong with Oixel hardware, but having some additional phone options would be great!
You are technically correct that there is not a formal end-of-life, but rather a point at which you will stop being able to update because there’s no longer a maintainer working on backporting patches for that device.
At the end of the day, lineageos is best effort from volunteers, and you should weigh that fact when you decide what you want to use day to day.
Having had Samsung, Huawei, and bare android (lineageos), I know whose software I prefer... instead of a bare android with no shortcuts on the lockscreen or anywhere, and no customizability of where the back button is (should be under the thumb of the dominant hand imo), I'll have the Samsung or Huawei software please. The only downside is that you can't have microG on stock.
Google is no crapware, Samsung is as much crapware as possible.
Samsung has their own version of every built-in app. Text messages for example, they have a much shittier version of "Messages" (no RCS support at least a few months ago). Their apps get set back to default randomly. Photos/Gallery, email, web browser, you name it.
They then have other junk installed. Their own app store, their own voice assistant, and other useless/niche apps.
You are blocked from uninstalling any of it.
It is the scourge of Android. "Android One" was an effort by Google to curb it, but I think only Motorola signed up (in addition to Google, obviously). OnePlus started on the premise of a clean/stock experience, but have started losing their way (rather rapidly). "Nothing" is a new manufacturer aiming for a stock experience. Asus seems to be doing stock.
If you ever consider moving away from Pixel I strongly recommend prioritizing a stock experience over _anything_ else. Crapware is maddening, full of bugs, and likely full of vulnerabilities.
With Samsung phones, even if you try to disable the Messages app and install, for example, the stock android Messages app, it will pop a very annoying nag screen on your home screen warning you that the Samsung messages app is not the default, and the only way to remove that is to Force Stop the Samsung Messages app, which then restarts... The best thing to do is give the phone to someone who doesn't have a phone with the warning that it is full of crapware.
Depending on who you ask Google comes with it's own crapware. I use calyxos and anything google including their play services is crapware for me. So the scale should be more like Samsung to GraphenOS/CalyxOS.
There were also Nokia (IIRC they still deliver basically stock Android) and Xiaomi who had a few dedicated models for some markets (mostly India but at least two were available in the EU) under Android One.
Samsung being the worst end with many crapware, while Google just shipping stock Android, if you don't count Google's own software (such as the file manager, Phone , Messages, etc not crapware).
I have a side mounted fingerprint reader, and from my experience, I can easily unlock it with either hand - using my right thumb or my left index finger. I think i also have a couple finger tips in there so I can unlock it when it's laying on a desk without needing to pick it up.
I had a Nextbit Robin which was one of the first with a side fingerprint reader, back in 2016. I'm right handed so I didn't use it often but when I did pick up the phone with my left hand my index finger worked pretty well. It was also 3mm wider than the Zenfone 9, so as long as you have an average sized hand and they haven't bungled the implementation I think it would probably work okay.
I switched to the Zenfone series (around 6 or 7) after the HTC ones died a death. I like that they have an SD card and dual SIM. Happy with the Android version too; it's been fine from my perspective. I found them reliable and will probably upgrade my 8 flip at some point soon for this one (or a flip version), if only to try to vote with my wallet to keep Asus making more; we need more competition in the phone space.
I could shill more but that's probably enough for one evening.
I had an Asus probably 5 or 6 years ago and remember they had something called 'parallax wallpaper' or similar which sounds kinda lame, but was honestly trippy to look at and amazed me. Do you know if they're still doing that?
Yeah, unfortunately Asus took that away a couple of generations back. It's the main thing that keeps me away from their more recent phones.
I can sort-of understand omitting microSD support in a "compact" phone that's targeting a more mainstream market, but the part that really boggles my mind is that they've never had a microSD slot in any of their "gamer" ROG phones. Those things are huge, and also sold to a demographic that is more likely than average to want all the storage they can get.
After confirming your country, there should be a popup along the bottom right of the window (at least if you are in the US): "This product is not yet available for purchase. To receive a text message when it's available & other messages from ASUS, text ZENFONE to 278762"
I've never had an Asus phone but i like their direction in nerd-ish niche (maybe not so niche after all?). Having an under 150mm phone with 120hz screen AND a 3.5mm audio jack? If I hadn't bought Xperia 5 iii not so long ago, I'd definetely consider Zenfone 9.
I have asus (rog) pc headphones and mouse and they're both well thought out and functional devices. Same with Asus Zypherus laptop I was looking at recently - 2k 120 hz screen, quite slim, sodimm ram slots, 180 degrees fold so you can use it with other monitor. Hopefully other dumbass vendors are going to compete with Asus
After owning a previous Zenfone I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone ever purchase a Zenfone. Their support was terrible. If you don't mind spending a lot of money on a phone that you know you won't be able to resolve issues with the manufacturer, then maybe it is a good choice. However, if you have any issues and expect their support to be helpful then steer clear.
A friend and I compared my $30 wired headphones to a pair of airpods. They of course has a lot of extra features, but my both of us agreed that my headphones had better audio quality.
Now, I didn't buy them for the audio but for the fact that I lose things constantly. I can't have $100 headphones despite any quality of life improvements that they bring.
I think I might too! I'm still using a Galaxy Note 8 and this is the first appealing phone I've seen in ages. I'll miss the stylus, but don't use it as frequently as I used to.
I had an Asus Zenfone 8 for around a month, and really liked the design and small form-factor. I am a serial phone switcher, and due to the high'ish price ($700) and mediocre battery life, I returned it. Hoping this one does better!
For what it's worth, I use a Zenfone 8 and regularly get 2-3 days of battery life off it. I came from older, sanely-sized HTC phones, and am actually pretty happy with it - I was lucky to get a day off any of the prior three HTC phones (Sensation, M8, 10) that I had.
There are lots of removable battery phones, they just aren’t flagship phones. They’re the phones you find on shelves at retailers and that cost $100 or less. They all have headphone jacks, too. And _awful_ displays.
I have a Zenfone 8 Flip because it's basically the only good phone without a punch-hole display or a notch (those really annoy me) except the Sony ones that are grey market only here. I suspect that Asus won't make a motorized camera version of this one, sadly (maybe behind-the-screen front cameras will solve the issue... I would just buy a phone without a front camera, I never use it).
Same boat as you - only buying notch-free, de-googlable phones.
I'm still happy with my POCO F2 Pro, but if I were to lose it right now I think I would import a Mi Mix 4. Under-display selfie camera is a little downgrade from the pop-up one, but the specs are better and I don't take that many selfies anyway.
The same guy who ported the CrDroid ROM to the F2 Pro also did it for the Mix 4, so I'd be pretty confident of successfully de-googling it.
On the same boat with oneplus 7 pro. Every phone I see with a hole on the screen looks like a downgrade to me. Battery life went very bad unfortunately after so many years.
thanks for the tip. I'll have it replaced cause other than battery life i have zero complaints with this phone. I was even worried originally because the front camera is a "moving part" but even that seems to have outlasted my expectations.
One thing that's really cool but that isn't clear from the copy (or maybe I just missed it) is that the image stabilization is actually moving the entire camera assembly rather than just the optics or just the sensor. I'm excited to see if this results in better low-light and video performance than previous techniques.
Image stabilization is of immense value pretty much whenever you take a photo not in bright sunlight. Any kind of indoor scene benefits from it.
This is independent of any low light modes and does not require second or longer exposure times.
It‘s also limited in that it can’t stop action (meaning if someone moves fast they will still be blurry, though at least their background will be sharp), for that you need sensors where you can really crank up the gain and that‘s not really realistic on any kind of smartphone sensor.
it's gonna be between this phone and the xperia 5 iv when it gets released later this year, if rumors are true.
still, i wish they still made truely compact phones, like 5" (used to have the sony xperia compacts). also, i can live with slower performance and less screen refresh and resolution for much improved battery life.
What? Newest Xiaomi flagship has less than 70mm. Newest Asus flagship has less than 70mm. Samsung flagship is 70.6 mm, Sony flagship is 71mm if you don't need flasghip Xperia 5 III has 68mm, Xperia 10 IV has 67mm.
It doesn't really feel like width would be problem, now jack, SD card or less than 150mm, those are more difficult to get.
I just gave up a few weeks ago and bought a pixel 6, but this phone might make me rethink that decision. It's smallish and has a 3,5mm jack? That's as close to my ideal phone as it's going to get in 2022!
I'm happy I returned my on-order Pixel 6 when the 6a came out... the 6a is the smallest in their lineup and it's still a little bigger than my preference.
I've been rocking an iPhone 7 since it came out - I want a true one-handed, pocketable phone - but nobody tests software on them anymore and things are glitching hard. Plus, battery life is half a day now.
My condolences! I hate this phone so much that I am taking evey chance to shit on it and warn people. I never realized how perfect the pixle 5 and A11 were until I "upgraded".
Exactly in the same boat.
Did a thorough research of the entire market, and pixel 6 seemed like the least problematic choice - so I got it three weeks ago.
How can they claim that it's "ultra compact"? That's just plain misleading advertising. Heck, it's bigger than my current Pixel 3a, which is already a bit too large for my comfort.
I think this design should be comfortable for lefties too. On my Xperia 5 II, it's more comfortable to reach the right-sided fingerprint sensor and buttons when using my left hand.
The scrolling with the side-thumb is game changing. I just tried it on my pixel six w/case and it feels more natural and less stress on my hands in general. Woah!
At least it seems they improved horrible battery life from Zenfone 8 which was also victim of their bad software optimization.
This company just can't do (optimizd/stable) software and (reliable) hardware, but their paper specs are sure nice.
So sadly while I like the specs (especially dimensions) I can't afford to waste my money on Asus phone, because I want phone which works and it's available and not in repair at least once a year.
If you are looking for smaller phone your current options with decent cameras are pretty much only Samsung S22, Xiaomi 12/12X and Xperia 10 IV each with own set of compromises (Sony horible SoC (for the price) with unoptimized camera, Xiaomi no jack/SD, same goes for Samsung plus price).
Been looking for phones recently. The Asus ones looked actually quite good, the only reason I ruled them out (other than price) is they guarantee a pretty low number of updates. I can't find how many they say for this one, but I'd watch out for that.
Any current generation phone that could replace a desktop? From what I see, most of the desktop features are being deprecated, librem like are just outdated tech, and I feel that in 2022, it still a cloud based worklow for this type of feature.
Yeah, I want like a 4 inch 'playing-card' sized smartphone (maybe a flip-phone with double touch screens). Just would love the small "palm sized" format. I'm tired of my fingers muscles and nerves getting strained from holding and using massive phones for hours.
Sony Xperia Z3 Compact is 4.6", but super brittle. The Huawei P10 is 5.1" and has a case that makes it a tank. The SOYES XS12 Cell Phone is 3.0", if you need smaller. Have you searched using GSMArena's phone finder?
The Sony Xperia Z3 Compact is from 2014 and tops out at android 6. The Huawei Huawei P10 Lite is from 2017 and tops out at android 8 (9 for the non-Lite). I hadn't heard of the SOYES XS11, but it looks like it does not support 4g (and 3g support is being shut down by various operators), and tops out at android 6.
So for current small android phones I'm guessing the unihertz Jelly 2 is one of the few remaining.
There are, but tiny volume means price is high, and the people who want small don't want to pay non-mainstream price. Simply put the market is small but vocal and generally price-sensitive.
Bezels have the opposite effect to what you are purporting. The most difficult to reach places on the iPhone 6 are the bezels. A 6 inch phone is not one-handable imo. That is coming from someone with larger than average hands.
I can't say enough good things about them - for $2 they transform even the largest phones to being one-handable. It's miraculous. They make this conversation obsolete without the slightest exaggeration. They systematically prevent fragile holds and - they're cool,
iPhone 12 Mini is 5.4” and a touch larger than I want. Everyone who sees it says they love the size and wish they had one.
The ZenTouch button on this looks great - main complaint with my Mini is not being able access Notification Center easily one handed. Unfortunately it looks to be right hand operable only…
The battery in the mini iPhone is just 2200mah. that's like half the size of the Asus battery. Do you want to charge your phone twice a day just because you want a small one? A Powerbank is not small but you need that if you want to spend a day with such a small phone.
We both know mah isn't all that matters, software and system architecture are arguably more important. FWIW I probably charge my 12 mini less than once per day (not even overnight).
Yes I use a powerbank on multiday backcountry trips, but it stays in my pack, not on my person and especially not in my hand.
I have an iPhone 12 mini. Battery is no issue for someone whose use case doesn’t involve gaming or loads of video. And if you’re doing significant amounts of either of those I pity you, especially on a 5.4 inch screen.
6 is large? wierd. Most phones on the market are larger than six inches since like 2018. I don't think it's fair to expect 2012 sized smartphones with 2022 hardware in them. a 1200maH battery is the max that can fit in those. Also I don't think the new smartphone chips can be cooled sufficiently in such form factors. No one would buy a 600USD phone with a 1000mah battery and a dual core processor in 2022 other than a few nerds on HN and reddit......
Small in this context is not relative. What people generally mean is comfortable to use in one hand. Imo the 5.5 to 6.5 is pretty much the dead zone. You either get a phone small enough to use in one hand or get a phone that is as big as possible while still fitting reasonably in your pocket.
The Zenfone 6 remains the best Android phone I've used since 2019. Stock android, a fingerprint scanner, a headphone jack, a customizable hardkey on the side, notchless display and a great processor that still holds up today. Not to mention having what is easily the best selfie camera in the world (the back camera flips to the front to take selfies).
I only regret getting it in 64GB because after a point, I've run out of apps to delete as every app has gotten bigger - and I can't install to SD card.
A shame that the new Zenfones skip the flip camera.
I had a Zenfone 6 and loved the reversible swivel camera. It resulted in a consistently nice picture quality regardless of whether I was taking a vapid gym selfie or a picture of my cats. I feel like that was the only real unique selling point of the Zenfone, and it's unfortunate that they've moved away from it as I was considering going back to it at some point for that reason.
From a compactness perspective, I now have a Samsung Z Flip 3 and it works just fine for me size-wise. I do always miss that reversible camera, though.
Unrelated: I want physical keys on my phone, and ideally Android. I have used a BlackBerry Key2 for the last few years, but it could break and it is discontinued I think. Is there any alternative?
Indeed, it is not an ultra-compact phone, unless you have huge hands
All the more so if you put it in a case in a while after purchase it will be oversized, I was looking for one that does not overly enlarge the phone and I arrived at thin fit Spigen, it is really shades, shock
https://www.spigen.pl/pl/products/etui-iphone-13-thin-fit-sp...
I've had decent experience with an Asus motherboard, but yea, everything else fits that description.
I had an asus monitor that would freeze if my macbook woke from sleep while connected to it - I'd have to unplug the monitor from the wall power and plug it back in to reboot it.
I also had an asus laptop that I sent in for repair because it had dead pixels. I should have just returned it, because it took them months to get it back to me, and when they finally did, the plastic around the screen was cracked. And, at that point it was too late to return it for a refund.
I am happily using a 6 year old Zenfone 3. It was high quality and very cheap, ~ 200 EURO. It was a good phone to own, but Zenfone 9 is not a good replacement, it costs 4 times more. While some people still want to buy 800 EURO phones, they are a small minority, for people like me phones like Google Pixel 6A will be the next purchase.
This completely wedged my browser and almost wedged my workstation. I had to kill the browser from another window. Just put up a spec sheet, Asus. Make it a pdf if you have to, but we don't need the TV show.
I do like that LineageOS supports several Zenphones. I hope this new model also is amenable.
799, that's a huge bump in price, likely due to having the highest end qualcomm. I think this phone would've been perfectly fine with a lower tier CPU, and cheaper price.
I'm left handed but hold my phone in my left hand. Regardless, it seems like this phone isn't designed for people like us (unless you have much longer thumbs than I do!)
"Unlock your Zenfone 9 by touching your thumb on the conveniently located sensor on the power button at the right side of the phone — it’s as simple as that. Just a touch, and you’re in! We’ve banished the hassle!" Banished my ass...
They could just build one phone with fingerprint sensor on both sides and allow on app chose which side works as unlock button and which one as volume button. I doubt those fingerprint buttons are very expensive. Esthetically would even would look better and more symmetric with 2 buttons on each side - 2 as volume button on one side, one as unlock button, another one custom shortcut, e.g. Open camera
I'm right handed and I too hold my phone with my left hand, but that's because I have to use my right hand to touch the screen. I have small hands and I'm unable to use my 74mm-wide phone one-handed. :(
my ideal phone would be between 5.2 and 5.5", have enough resolution to make reading ebooks comfortable, and have a physical notification LED. i have resigned myself to never having one like that again :(
Are there any other phones that have a gimballed camera? Are they any good? That seems like the most remarkable feature of this phone but there isn't a single mention of it in this thread.
There is another thread on the iPhone SE where a lot of people are commenting on how they miss compact phones. I suspect that is why this was submitted / upvoted. I'm glad it was, didn't know this device existed.
In the past week I’ve noticed a lot of coverage of the Nothing Phone. People seemed really hyped about it, and I can’t figure out why. It’s just a phone with a light on the back.
It’s much the same with this phone. It’s a default phone with a small gimmick.
At least the iPhone ship with new versions of iOS when they upgrade the hardware.
Honestly as long as manufacturer just ships Android as the OS, new phone just aren’t news worthy.
Qi adds weight for coil and shield, and limits what material can be used for back surface that's also tend to add weight. For example, iPhone 8 added Qi and switched back surface material from aluminum to glass. 7 Plus is 188g then 8 Plus is 202g. It's not easy decision to have Qi for lightweight oriented device.
Yeah, perhaps your case don't support Qi, phone coil isn't placed on your Qi tray coil, other metals is on Qi tray so it's stopped for safety, or something goes wrong...
This is really bothering me too, as there's been a couple phones released lately that are as close to perfect for me as I'll get, but no wireless charging is basically a deal breaker for me.
I think maybe it's the resurgence of metal frames on lower priced phones, which maybe doesn't work as well as glass or plastic.
Which is also annoying because I despise glass as a back surface for phones. Makes them slide off every surface.
Overly specific use case: I used to have to reach under my desk to find the power switch of the power strip that my monitor and speakers are connected too. I got a Zigbee-enabled power plug, but I thought needing to open the app everytime is also annoying. So I got 2 NFC cards (transport tickets that usually get swallowed by the machine after use, but if you don't use them then, hey, cheap NFC tags!), and programmed Tasker to talk to a HTTP server on my NAS when my phone notices these NFC tags. The backend talks to the Philips Hue hub to switch on/off the power plug and then sends a Wake-on-LAN to turn on my desktop PC.
Many, many people in UK use GOOG pay (wallet now) to pay for goods and services. A few contort their wrists to show off their Apple watch, but phones are more than commonplace.
That makes sense and I didn't appreciate it was NFC based. Canada was pretty quick to bring in tap credit cards so I've just done this and not set it up.
There's gotta be a bunch of shills out there trying to drive up the "acceptance" of the new flip phones out there. There were lots of nearly identical comments made on a few Reddit threads about this phone.
I'm with the other guy in this thread - the whole bendable screen/flip concept is a total gimmick in its current state. Phones are already fragile enough with most phone makers providing hardly any warranty support for what they deem as "accidental damage", we don't need bendy screens to make them more failure prone.
Interesting, personally I hate the extra mechanical point of failure on a flip phone, but I haven't seen anyone before say that not being a flip phone is a deal breaker for them
While I had a zenfone back in the day I'm a little confused about why this is on the front page. I looked for some special feature that was newsworthy but it looks just like a regular ass android phone?
I'm in the market for a new phone right now, and it's baffling how ridiculously big most phones are right now. I only use mine for instant messaging and browsing Hacker News. 5" is more than enough for that.