• RedEye FlightControl@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Fixed battery and removal of headphone jack and SD card slots were 1000% anti-consumer practices designed to cost you more money and make your device lifespan as short as possible. I don’t see the battery problem going away - why enable your phone to last twice or three times as long when they can just force you to have to buy a new device when the battery is shot? At least we got our card slots and jacks back (mostly).

      I am also salty that phones USED to have IR blasters and they don’t anymore. IR LEDs cost next to nothing, another feature that was amazing but thrown away to save 5c per unit.

      • tal@lemmy.today
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        2 months ago

        battery

        I don’t think that this is a conspiracy by phone manufacturers to force purchases of phone hardware.

        • All kinds of devices use fixed batteries these days, not just smartphones. It’s cheaper, lighter, makes the device stronger, avoids them having to deal with “User X bought a counterfeit battery that then caught fire” – that’s a real issue for lithium batteries, unlike traditional alkaline/NiMH-type removeable batteries. Virtually the only device class I can think of where removable lithium batteries are the norm is high-end flashlights – anything on [email protected] probably supports removable 18650s or similar. I have gone out of my way to get a lot of devices that use AA batteries or maybe 18650s, but there are just tons of products, including in highly-competitive, low-barrier-to-entry industries like gamepads, where it’d be impossible to form a cartel to refuse to offer a device with removable batteries. And yet they’ve mostly moved to fixed batteries. There is no industry convention for removable, BMS-enabled, lithium batteries the way AA or the like were traditionally used in devices.

          If there were a cartel driving this against consumer wishes as a whole, you would have just smartphones doing the fixed battery thing, not the consumer electronics industry as a whole.

          If it were cartel-driven, I’d also expect to see, in a situation like that, manufacturers making hefty use of price discrimination – like, think of how some laptop vendors charge a premium for devices with a lot of RAM when they have soldered RAM. But in the market today, the differences in battery size are minimal. Google makes a “large” version of the Pixel, and they barely bump the battery up, even with a slightly larger screen.

          Instead, it was associated with the shift across consumer electronics to non-removable batteries with the move to lithium batteries, which is what you’d expect if sketchy batteries were a problem.

        • Phones in particular have a space and weight premium, so compared to a lot of devices that aren’t held in your hand, using removable NiMH batteries or the like is more of an issue.

      • AlternateHuman02@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I was super stoked to find out my OnePlus Open has an IR blaster! I missed it on my old galaxy note 4. It is surprisingly convenient, and doubles as a fun way to mess with TVs in public spaces.

  • kyub@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 months ago
    • No good operating system preinstalled by default
    • No headphone jack anymore
  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    My fingerprint scanner was on the back, but now it’s on the front, and can’t identify me as regularly as it did before.

    I’ve gotten used to the new location, but I can’t forgive making it less accurate than it used to be.

    • DesolateMood@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      My god, I upgraded from an S9 to an S22 and seeing the fingerprint scanner on the front baffled me. With a screen protector on I unlock it on the first try maybe 25% of the time

      • GreatRam@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        There’s a setting you can turn on that increases the sensitivity, which should fix the issue. It works perfectly fine for me with a screen protector

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      2 months ago

      I assume that it must be cheaper or something. I really preferred having it on the back too; was more ergonomic.

      ponders

      I guess that the front is maybe easier to use a thumbprint or something on.

      That being said, regarding accuracy, it might also have a lower false-positive rate, which is maybe something that you’d want.

  • Zak@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’m relatively content with my Pixel 4A running LineageOS (with root), but that’s an experience that’s really only suited to very technical users, in large part because some apps actively resist running in an environment the device owner actually controls.

    My complaint is with the smartphone ecosystem as a whole: it’s designed to empower the OS vendor and app developers over users. The entire tech world (outside Microsoft and maybe some corporate IT types) saw Microsoft Palladium as a nightmare scenario a couple decades ago. Now we’ve let Apple and Google do the same thing with barely a grumble out of the mainstream tech press.

    • lobut@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      I don’t need a headphone jack all the time, but I really do fucking want one when I need it. Dongles suck.

  • ChillPill@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Least favorite things? Hmmm…

    Things that I want on my phone:

    -headphone Jack

    -user replaceable battery

    -micro SD

    -good camera

    I know the specs would be terrible nowadays, but in terms of physical features and overall design, I think phone design peaked around the Samsung S5.

      • ChillPill@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I was looking at that at one point. Looks nice, but pretty expensive for what it is and software support is not great (last I checked they only had like one major android version update). Honestly I just want a Pixel a series with the above features. Likely to run GrapheneOS on my next phone.

  • 1stQ@feddit.org
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    2 months ago

    Missing status LED. I’d like to deactivate the always on screen feature.

    • derpgon@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      I remember using an app on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus where you could set every notification to a different color, for every app. Cost me like $2. Last phone that had a notification LED (dunno if it was the Note 4 or Note 8) had only some basic configuration and the app was no longer maintained. Now, I don’t have the LED anymore. Sad.

      Maybe if I could have always-on display, but only with a virtual notification LED, I’d be happy.

  • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    It’s too big. I couldn’t get a phone the same size as my old one without sacrificing the micro sd slot so I ended up with something bigger than ideal

    • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      I don’t even want removable anything, I just want more small phones.

      The last iPhone mini was a good size but I couldn’t stand iOS. My Pixel6a is a little too big for my tastes.

  • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Battery life

    Keeping too many things running in the background, making things laggy. (I do close out apps when I’m done using them, and I solve laggy times with the Optimize widget. I just wish it would automatically optimize)

    • davidgro@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I have the opposite issue with background apps - I have 12 GB of RAM (16 on the tablet) and it still closes utilities sometimes and forces me to relaunch them (in some cases going back into settings and re-enabling accessibility services for example. That should never happen, in case it’s Really for accessibility)

    • reddig33@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Makes we wonder what OS you’re running. Most modern phone software “freezes” the app state when it’s in the background and frees up the memory for the frontmost app.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      My phone is almost six years old and I’m so happy it still lasts all day, if I’m using it with screen on it lasts most of the day (7-8 hours of full screen time)

      Looks like I’m finally upgrading it this year and the idea of 30 hour video playback is fucking BONKERS to me.

  • technomad@slrpnk.net
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    2 months ago

    The fact that it’s got a dedicated hardware button that is locked to something useless/arbitrary (bixby…)

    • criticon@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      Which phone? You can change the bixby button behavior in the galaxy and Z phones