I agree 100%. And when people inevitably claim that the reason for eliminating the headphone jack is so you could have a phone that could withstand being dropped in water, I think back to the Samsung Galaxy S5 that I bought 10 years ago. It has a headphone jack, a microSD slot, and a user-removable battery, plus an IP67 rating.
I'll also add that the S5 was a much more convenient size than the enormous phones they make these days, some of probably wouldn't even fit in my pocket.
> The Galaxy S5 is very good about reminding you close your charger door snugly and make sure your battery cover is snapped on COMPLETELY before continuing. This is a message you shouldn’t dismiss (although it allows you to) because the reminder is a good one. I can say with confidence that during both water tests my phone back cover and battery port were completely secured.
> Somehow, though, water snuck its way into my battery.
To offer an alternative data point, I don't really want any of the above. Just make it cheaper, smaller, and with guaranteed security updates for as long as possible.
The only wired headphones I own are high-impedance """audiophile""" headphones, that a phone couldn't really drive in the first place.
As for storage, I don't do a whole lot on my phone except for messaging and looking things up on-the-go, none of which needs much in terms of storage space. I've had my current phone (iPhone SE3, 128GB) for over 2 years, and I've never even had to delete anything (and when the day comes, I'll transfer the contents of the photo gallery over to external storage).
I've got a Sony Xperia phone from last year. It's got a headphone jack and sdcard slot, waterproof, latest chipset etc. Plus a very close to vanilla Android. Yet they sold so few that Sony are pulling out of the US phone market. It seems to me that folks who say they want those things don't actually want them that much.
Sony hasn't been relevant in the phone industry since the transition to smartphones. Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo and others sell millions of phones with these features, but the flagship models still exclude them.
The early Sony Android phones were available in stores. I remember the first smartphone I got was a Sony, and, compared to a friend's Samsung, it was really lovely, great screen, better feeling build quality. Maybe they never competed on price? I didn't even think about the brand back then, just chose the nicest one in the store.
I definitely do, I have never bought a phone without a headphone jack. I feel like that will end soon though, as the line of phones I'm using seems to be dying, and it's the last of its kind.
Nobody wants a high-end android cameraphone where the camera firmware self-destructs when you unlock the bootloader.
For better or for worse, the android world is reliant on custom roms if you want long-term software support. Wiping the camera firmware is unacceptable given that reality.
Again, the whole custom rom thing is a bandaid patch on a shitty, user-hostile OS model that makes it nearly impossible to perform a vital function of the computing system (updates). The inability to deliver updates effectively is itself a symptom of a product defect here. It would be better if we could require all companies to provide useful first-party support lifecycles for the products they release.
But sony is deliberately gutting the device’s functionality to prevent you from unlocking it and that’s unacceptable even among android devices. If you’re going to do this shitty custom rom model, vendors that decide to kill even the ability to try and use that bandaid are going to suffer poor sales.
I would love a high-end cameraphone, the Xperia lineup was a serious consideration when I bought my last phone. But I could never get over the hump of buying a device that would have less than 2 years of updates by the time I got it, and that would deliberately self-destruct if I attempted to extend it beyond that.
I got an iPhone instead. Much less user-hostile. Forcing me to use a custom rom is already user-hostile, but to then punish me for doing it is unconscionable.
Oddly enough, there’s not nearly as much emphasis on banging the EU’s door down to stop that kind of waste and really honestly intentional/malicious damage, as there is about whatever apple thing people are whining about this week. Oh no the pelican case full of oem phone repair tooling that apple lets you rent (or buy) is too big/heavy… or Sony phones deliberately self-destruct themselves when you unlock the bootloader… somehow the “we can do both!” reply-guys never get around to doing both. Curious.
> I got an iPhone instead. Much less user-hostile.
Umm, that’s backwards. You can’t install your own software or unlock the boot loader. As soon as Apple decides the phone is e-waste, you can’t do anything about it unless there is a jailbreak. It just so happens that Apple offers software updates slightly longer than competitors, but this could easily change, as we have seen on macOS where 6 year old Intel macs no longer receive OS support. That is the pinnacle of user hostile.
No, I find the vendor deliberately self-destructing the firmware to be more user-hostile than having to set up altstore once.
It is something that shouldn’t even be required in the first place, the android support model is incredibly user-hostile at the best of times. So if you punish me for trying to keep my device up to date after your shitty 2 year support window expires then I’m not going to buy it. And I know a few brands have adopted longer lifespans but most android phones sold are not from those brands.
Moreover, I think this is a perfect example of the way the anti-apple crowd has glommed onto all the terminology and appropriated it as solely meaning the things that favor their brand. There’s more to right to repair than component-level replacement for example - oem parts availability and OS support lifespans are key factors in waste generation too.
You don’t get to tell me what I find user-hostile or not, and user-hostility certainly isn’t a phenomenon that is only restricted to brands that whatever group of fanboys like or not. There are many user-hostile aspects of the whole android package and distribution model despite the fact you can sideload or install a rom (maybe, if the vendor doesn’t delete the firmware while you do it).
Even in the narrowest possible sense of “treating the user as an attacker”, I’d feel pretty damn attacked if my phone deleted its camera firmware because it thought I unlocked the bootloader! But that doesn’t count of course, because user-hostility is narrowly defined to only happen on platforms that android people don’t like. It’s all just very tedious, and when I hear endlessly about the battery throttle (that you can turn off!) but not the android phones that delete their own firmware when the user wants to unlock the bootloader it’s hard to view the whole “user-hostility” thing and right-to-repair more generally as being anything other than a bad-faith ploy. There are actually important issues there that get lost in the sea of brand warriorism and financially-interested parties.
When you are playing with language and narrowly defining things to mean only the things that don’t happen on your platform, you aren’t being serious, you’re being a fanboy.
Like if only there were some word for the process of using language to reshape the discourse, by redefining words to include the aspects you want and exclude the ones you don’t. One might argue that without the words to express it, people’s thought processes themselves might be affected.
There should be a word that conveys the problems that induces in a discourse! It’s literally… something!
;)
Again: I consider a phone deleting its firmware when it thinks I’m unlocking the bootloader to be pretty damn user-hostile too! I think if you’re saying that’s the diametric opposite of user-hostile the only reasonable explanation is you’ve got something seriously wrong with either your language or your sense of reason is being drastically affected by your parasocial attachment to the issue. Because that’s literally so far from reason that we are talking terms like “Orwellian”, yeah.
It’s a shame the word is so loaded that it has lost its ability to be (correctly) used in less-loaded situations but there it is.
Maybe that’s more than you meant to imply by objecting to my point about android’s user-hostility, saying that I had it “backwards” and that apple is the “pinnacle” of user hostility instead but yeah, absolutely imploding the firmware to keep the user from unlocking the bootloader is extremely user hostile, there is very little reason to disagree with that statement except some kind of abject processing error or malicious ploy in the discussion.
Of course in this scenario it’s probably people echoing carefully focus-grouped strategies from google. “Right to repair” cleverly avoids talking about other e-waste issues like phones with self-destructing bootloaders and pathetic OS support lifecycles etc. Google focus-grouped that every bit as much as their RCS and so on (which they care so deeply about that they still haven’t implemented it themselves in google voice even 15 year on!). They know what resonates with you guys, and there is a kernel of truth to it - right to repair is an admirable goal, and who could oppose reducing e-waste? Which is why it’s selected as a marketing strategy!
But that doesn’t make it not Orwellian either. At this stage of the game, if you disagree that self-destructing firmware isn’t user-hostile and that it’s actually the opposite and apple is really the pinnacle of user-hostility… it’s working, it’s successfully reshaped your language processing, and your thought processes have followed. They successfully redefined user hostile to mean “only apple” for you.
Ok. I paid more than that. What you're saying is I want x y and z, and also to be this cheap. But they're obviously catering for a niche market so you have to compromise and can't then just comment with "why can't they..." They would bring those features to cheaper phones if people were buying expensive phones for those features. You don't think it's worth the extra, so they don't think it's worth the effort.
I'm happy to pay a bit more, I use my phone all the time. I would like a folding phone but I don't consider those ready yet, but I'm not posting that all phones should be folding for $200 because they can do it in that model for 1800
3.5mm jack, microSD and removable batteries is the holy grail.
The only reason these aren't included anymore on flagship phones is because companies think they can upsell you on BT headphones, cloud storage plans and extended warranties. They're building for shareholder value, not the customer.
Plenty of midrange and low end phones still come with the jack and microSD, but removable batteries seem to be extinct.
Sony is making high end phones that have all these features, like the xperia line. The UI is a little wonky, and you have to degoogle the phone, but after that its pretty solid.
How about the option to totally remove google without installing a custom rom.
you start your brand new phone and a pop up appears:
Would you like to remove google and all the other bloatware to start with a blank phone and choose to install exactly what you need and want.
Please click here.
I would then seriously consider buying a new phone instead of slightly older phones I can install custom roms on.
now that would be a thing.
In a perfect world
I have an old Samsung S4 2013 (android 11) and an old Motorola G3 (android 11). I keep the G3 to listen to FM radio as modern phones dont have the FMradio.
My main phone is a onplus 5T with android 14. A superb phone, 8 years old and still runs better than any modern phone my friends own. Cost me £75
Protip: You can use GSMarena's Phone Finder to find phones with specific features. For example here are phones from 2024 with a headphone jack, SD card slot, FM radio, infrared port and 5G:
My Librem 5 has a 3.5mm jack, microSD slot, removable battery, even removable modem and smartcard, and an OS I fully control. Couldn't be happier. The only thing that bothers me is that it's soon going to be 5 years old and there's still nothing better on the market, and even though it's still usable it's at a point where I expect it to start showing its age rather sooner than later.
My librem 5 has about 3.5mm of dust on it because the phone is unusable. I appreciate that they made a linux phone, but they didn't make a phone people would actually want to use. Abysmal battery life where "carry a 2nd battery" is actual advice for every-day use. Very slow user interface. So large and heavy that I could murder someone with it. Questionable cellular support where the modem randomly disconnecting in the middle of a phone call can happen.
The battery lasts up to a single day, which is short but enough for me. I recognize that it's not a phone for everyone and it has its quirks, but "unusable" is not how I'd describe it after daily driving it for years. Overall I see more advantages than disadvantages when compared to mainstream devices, which is why I continue to use it.
> where the modem randomly disconnecting in the middle of a phone call can happen
Well, that bug has been squashed. The one I run into more often [0] has not. I own a L5, I daily drive a Pinephone Pro. I agree with you, though - I only switch back to my previous phone because I miss the keyboard every other year or so, in a "grass is always greener" kind of way.
I love bluetooth headphones for listening to video or even talking, but it has too much latency for realtime music performance (e.g. music making apps, or using your phone as a MIDI instrument with a controller). Having the wired headphone jack without the latency that (any) wireless protocol necessarily introduces is a huge deadlbreaking feature and I never see people defending bluetooth headsets mention it.
"sounds" being the operative word. I don't consider being able to erase something on a photo, or add something to be a compelling enough use case. The AI demos I've seen have been pretty pathetic relative to the hype they're trying to build.
I agree for the most part. I'm pretty bearish on most AI stuff, I was not interested in the Apple Intelligence stuff announced at WWDC beyond having a Siri that might be able to answer a question directly instead of sending me to a Wikipedia article.
I have so many tablets and cheap phones that don't have the storage to play high-end mobile games, it would make a difference to me if I could expand my memory easily. (Edit: some folks got excited because I said "memory" when I meant "storage")
SD cards do not increase the memory available to user applications. They are storage devices, even if the technology behind them has the word memory in the name.
It's not the memory that's the problem, it's that games like FGO require 10GB or more of flash storage which is most of a 16GB device particularly when you consider overhead for software updates. It's not like the game has high memory requirements but it sure has a lot of levels, textures and stuff.
It's amusing the the IBM Mainframe world still uses the word "storage" to describe RAM.
Not that I use android smart phones that much any more in the capacity to replace what a laptop might do, since google's ugly head all too often places too much hindrance on the apps I prefer to use, however I do still use unencrypted microSD for times when bluetooth isn't doing what it's supposed to do to transfer photos or it's just faster to put the card into a reader and look at the contents on a laptop.
AI might seem useful - but sadly on a phone and prepackaged, I only see it becoming a minder in a short time - no thanks.
Thinking like this is how we end up with gadgets that can be barely be called pocket computers.
Thank God that the computer industry came of age before iOSsification began. Need to connect to wired headphones? Buy a dongle. Need more storage? Pay for iCloud. Want to program on your iPad? Jump through a million hoops and end up using a remote desktop solution.
I can understand the upgrade required for extra storage and AI subscriptions, but what revenue is earned from the elimination of the headphone jack? I can only see the marginal costs of adding one in, but for consumers who want it, it'd be a sales tactic.
I recently bought a NOS Samsung Note 10 Lite. A quarter the price of the S24, has the wonderful S-Pen and a headphone jack. And even though the battery is ostensibly not user replaceable, it is an easy job that can be done in five minutes without risking breaking anything else.
Similarly, I now have a Samsung Galaxy A52, which has a headphone jack and a microSD slot (but no user-replaceable battery).
I'm not particularly price conscious, so I feel like Samsung lost out on an opportunity to sell me a flagship phone because those no longer have these features I care about. Luckily, this much cheaper phone still has the two that are most important to me. When they stop offering them at all, I'll be done with Samsung.
You just explained something that I've been noticing more and more lately. A decade ago, the early adopters and nerds would have the flagship phones, and everybody else would have the cheap phone. Today the power users are using the absolute cheapest phones and the general public has the flagships.
Alternative in what sense? I think most, if not all, modern Xperias have both headphone jacks and microSD slots. I'm not sure how they are when it comes to android updates though.
The 1 VI yes, but there's also a cheaper 10 VI. Seems like it is supposed to get 4 years of security updates [1] too, but I suppose only time will tell how that actually plays out.
Huh, the reviews I read seemed to say that the camera was a huge step up. (But maybe they were mostly comparing to the A53, which seemed uniformly to be regarded as a regression.) If not, then I feel quite stupid for paying the extra to "upgrade" to an A54, instead of an A52, from my A50.
(Also, though it's easy for me to believe this random search result is dodgy, and with the understanding that benchmarks don't mean much, Googling around for a chip comparison turned up https://gadgetversus.com/processor/qualcomm-sm7125-snapdrago... , which seems to suggest that the Exynos 1380 in the A54 wins over the Snapdragon 720G in the A52 in many benchmarks.)
Nope, that is completely unnecessary to me nowadays. No need for extra storage, m headphones are wireless and the possibility of AI will make me so much more productive. You need to update yourself sir.
This was the defining feature of the best MP3 player I ever owned. (I believe it was a Sanyo Sansa.) I wound up using it way more than the MP3 functionality. I was spoiled, living in NYC at the time, but there was/still is so much good content out there, if you spend the time to look (college, community, pirate, etc.).
It's depressing that such functionality is missing from modern devices. Entertainment value aside, it can be a lifeline in times of crisis/emergencies.
I don't know if we need 8k video, but if it's going to be a feature it sure feels like we should have sd cards. This write-up is talking about 33GB/hr. Given the dinky ass 128GB that seems to be common, and given that the base install is often 30GB+, like, yeah, we need more storage. https://www.androidauthority.com/pixel-9-8k-more-storage-346...
MicroSD cards are fantastic & I'd want them anywhere. But man it's just so preposterous that they have so drastically outpaced phone's builtin storage. 0.5 or 1TB are basically unheard of on phones, but there's plenty of whole SSDs with far more components and cost selling for $50 or less. It's wild. What a supply side economics setup, so many companies all keeping the whole mobile market back, deliberately.
I think Apple's aware of the storage limitations with 8k recording and so they won't bother to ship it in software for another couple years.
The utility gap between 4k and 8k video is tiny. I was eager to move from a giant 1080p TV to a giant 4k TV, but I have no desire to buy 8k.
Neither 8k TVs nor 8k monitors have occupied a meaningful amount of the market, and there appears to be not much demand for them. On the gaming side, the latest graphics cards still can't max out settings on most AAA games at 4k/60fps.
I'm going to side with Apple on this one. Transistors are basically free and ports are expensive and unreliable. I'm happy they've been moving to eSIMs. I'd be fine if my next iPhone only supported wireless charging.
I've certainly have had ports fail, but software is worse, and bluetooth is a lot of software. My spouse's phone was able to connect to our van for some time, then a phone software update broke it, and it took 3 months for them to push a new one that fixed it. If it was a wired 4-pin connection for handsfree audio and either port failed, it would probably take less time to get it fixed. (Yes, a 4-pin connection probably leaves out features from Bluetooth, but no agency to fix problems is worse)
I've yet to have a SIM fail on me, and I don't see why I would want to lose out on the convenience of removing the SIM from old phone, and inserting it into the new one. Moving an eSIM requires interaction with the carrier as I understand it.
If they weren't burning cash on AI, they'd be burning it on something equally useless. Smartphones have been more or less feature-complete for years now.
Then why is it only Samsung that has Dex, a feature they don't even advertise, that lets you use a phone as a computer? Pixel is just getting HDMI out with 8. Every android rom can easily be bundled with code for a chromebook style desktop.
What about and IR camera as one of the 3 cameras? I don't need a telephoto camera with 5x zoom on my smartphone. IR camera is super useful to see things like pets in the dark, see hot or cold spots in the house, e.t.c
What about integrated sub ghz 2 way radios? In busy areas like concerts or areas without cell reception, the phone is next to useless.
What about better lights? I don't want to burn battery with the flash led. Simple lower power led option means I can actually use the light for extended period of time.
What about laser distance measurment? Often times I find myself measuring distance. Can't do it accurately with camera to as high resolution as you can with a laser.
What about low power wifi hotspot mode? Just run the phone in hotspot mode, without taking up battery for screen or background processes.
There are also things they can do in software. For example, old phones are next to useless. There should be no reason why I can't install a linux distro on it, have it boot directly to that, without having to jump through hoops or deal with android, and have a mini server at home.
"Some people say give the customers what they want, but that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, 'If I'd ask customers what they wanted, they would've told me a faster horse.' People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page."
Yeah but how does Google/Apple make money off of cloud storage when you don't need it?
In some ways it's better to just get a usb-c fob for this functionality...have a problem with your headphone jack or microSD slot? Throw it out and replace it.
