Don’t forget the RGB notification led!
I switched to Chinese brand phones, they still have all this and they’re dirt cheap, currently rocking an Ulephone power armor 18t, which also has a flir infrared camera and a microscope for some reason. No I’m not joking, they work surprisingly well and have come in handy more than I thought they would!
Not sure I’d consider £600 “dirt cheap” but the thermal camera is definitely cool.
They have frequent sales, i got it for under 300
The notification LED became a bit obsolete with AOD. I don’t need a bright flashing light, the notification being visible when the screen is off is enough.
How did you buy this? It pretty much had everything I want! Big battery, good screen, SD card, waterproof. Any bugs on it day to day? It does seem to have some shitty Chinese android skin.
Aliexpress, or Amazon if you want to pay a bit more but get it faster. I’ve had it a few months, no bugs i’ve noticed, it runs essentially stock Android.
That was the first thing I missed when I went to a Galaxy S22. But aodNotify works great as replacement (you can make your own notification light this way and customize it, not a lot of battery drain either due to the OLED screen). But yeah, removing the notification light sucked.
All except the IR blaster, right?
And optional microscope connects to the phone, looks like.
What do you use the IR blaster for? Controlling TVs?
controlling anything that uses a remote to be controlled TV, Projectors, ACs, etc…
I suppose there were universal remote apps?
Yeah, missing the IR blaster unfortunately! It does have an accessory port for microscope/endoscope, I just got an endoscope but haven’t tried it yet.
Post pics of colon
Why do you need a custom accessory port? They have had USB endoscopes for years.
Don’t forget the RGB notification led!
The Nexus One had this, the trackball had an RGB LED inside it. With custom ROMs it could be customised to flash different colours and patterns for just about anything.
I never had one of those, that I can recall.
You know what else they’ve taken from us? Actually unique designs for phones. When I look at modern day smartphones, for some reason they look like clones of each other. Where’s all the spunk that these manufacturers used to put in their devices?
Fuck you, minimalism. Ever since you’ve ruined my iPhone back in 2013, my life has never been the same.
I don’t use the ultra wide camera but I absolutely use the telephoto camera
This goddamn camera built into my screen instead of above the screen pisses me off so fucking much. So often I have to move a picture down to read the top of it.
IT’S BLOCKING MY MEMES GOD FUCKING DAMMIT MY MEMES
I drift through this world in a mood of indifference, frequently moving into disgust.
But at times I read a comment like this and see that there is still beauty in the world. I love you.
I’m sorry but I think we should just be friends
Hey man, I know this is a rant, but in case you didn’t know there should be a setting to resize things to make a black bar at the top. Google it for your phone, but for samsung it’s something like “full sceeen apps”.
Just looked. Not a thing for pixel 6A :(
Googled it, try this
https://mashtips.com/hide-display-notch-and-cutouts-on-pixel/
Holy crap that did it! Thank you!!
That seems like a weird thing to want. You’ll have less screen space because the notification area is now using your useable screen area instead of being up in the unusable dead space.
Not actually how it works. There’s two options. One of them has the notifications in the “dead space”, but the content never gets eaten up.
(Pinging @EdibleFriend@lemmy.world , just in case you didn’t know about this!)
I wouldn’t use this myself. Most apps are designed so content fits underneath the camera hole so nothing gets eaten, and even if it does get eaten, the camera is so small that it’s not an issue for me
Edit: this is what you have to enable, by the way.
MY. MEMES.
How often do you come across tall pictures? Most pictures sit well below the camera for me
At least a couple times a day
- the home button now being a part of my screen instead of… a button.
You don’t need a navbar if you switch to gesture controls
Fuck gestures, gice me back my buttons
If you’re talking about physical buttons, please no. Gesture navigation is an incredibly useful feature for those with short fingers like myself, who have problems with reaching the “Recents” button without weirdly tilting the phone and then stretching their thumb to the point that it gets painful over time. And while it’s technically possible to use gesture navigation on phones with physical buttons, it would definitely be weird. Not to mention that it’s also wasted space, because physical buttons obviously can’t just disappear when needed like on-screen buttons do, so you can have a bigger and more efficiently used screen. There are a lot of things that are dumb to remove from phones, pyhsical navigation buttons, in my opinion at least, are not one of them. I can’t even think of an advantage physical buttons would have over on-screen buttons.
If you meant that you want to keep the option for on-screen button navigation, I’m all for it. Can’t hurt to have more options :)
Well i meant physical buttons but i also think phone displays should be 5 inches, 5.5 at absolute most. Also, by the by, the main advantage of physical buttons is a) useabilty while gloved or with wet/dirty hands and b) being able to know precisely what button you’re on by touch
I don’t think this is a common use case for most people, but I can see how that might come in handy for some, so you’ve got some good points.
Thx. It’s more about versatility in my eyes. A smartphone should be, above all else, practical. So a perfect phone for me would be something like Fairphone but with a 3,5mm jack, physical front buttons, and 2 cameras on the back (wide and normal/narrow lens). Mby additional sensors like a barometer, assuming that can be scaled down or done digitally/electronically.
That’s another thing they ruined! Oneplus had amazing gestures, but then Google enforced using their gestures only, and they’re so much worse! I especially hate that back is swiping in from an edge, which is in conflict with every side drawer and cropping tool in every app ever!
Yeah, I have the most problems with it in Thunder. I avoided using gestures for so long but they’ve grown on me.
With Oneplus gestures back was swiping up from the bottom left or right. So much better. And the screen-off-gestures with drawing the pause symbol for play/pause or < or > for jump back/forward in a podcast or song. I miss them.
People look at me like I’m fucking insane when I get as upset about the blighted notch on my screen as I do. This screen technically has more real estate than my Razer Phone 2 back in 2018 did, but between the obnoxiously tall aspect ratio and the fucking notch, it has like 75% of the usable screen space. You know what was really nice? Watching TV shows on my RP2, with the 6" screen, all of which was used for the video. You know what sucks? Having a half inch of black bars on either side of the screen so that the 16:9 aspect ratio video can fit on the 18:9 aspect ratio screen. And it’s even more ass than that, because the top and bottom of the video look like shit because the screen wraps around the fucking sides.
If the FBI could hear what I have to say about the engineers at samsung, I would have been arrested years ago
Give me back my goddamed physical keyboard
I still remember the extended conversation I had with the cell phone man on the day I realized that time had moved on, and it wasn’t even possible for me to buy a third-party phone that still had a keyboard and then hook it up to their network anymore. I was just going to have to poke haplessly at the glass and get letters wrong for the rest of my life.
IT’S MY MONEY, LET ME BUY THE KIND OF PHONE I WANT
The fact that we literally cannot vote with our money screams monopoly.
This is why I like the audible haptic feedback on a cell phone keyboard that everyone else seems to hate. I gotta know that I pushed the button, otherwise in my mind, I didn’t push it. At least when I have a physical keyboard I could feel it.
I tried to enter some text on someone else’s phone and it had no haptic feedback, only sound. It was almost impossible to use.
Unstoppable full screen ads you have to watch before you can answer a call or view a text on your own phone
… and they still won’t connect two people when they try to call each other.
Next is making one phone with all the bells and whistles and locking them behind subscriptions
A Slide out keyboard, but you have to give it $2 a day to use it.
Do many people know that there is actually a patent for the idea of an advertisement that plays to a certain point… and then does not end, will not let you skip it, until you as the user, via a camera and microphone, can be verified to have assumed a pose, made a facial expression, and/or said a specific phrase?
The actual patent shows a smart tv ‘owner’ standing up and saying McDonalds! in order to like keep watching Netflix.
We quite literally have the tech and the legal framework for ‘Drink Verification Mountain Dew Can’ to actually be a thing.
The illustration of that patent practically a meme, many on Lemmy should know it.
Though it should be kept in mind there’s thousands of patents that were never actually applied, and this one was filled back in 2009.
We quite literally have the tech and the legal framework
Do patents necessarily have to follow the law?
Eh? Do patents necessarily have to follow the law?
…no? They are ideas.
They are also a legal construct to organize business uses and control of ideas around.
Hence a patent and the patent system are a legal framework.
Legal frameworks are often involved in things that later end up being determined to be illegal.
Large businesses usually like to set up some kind of comprehensive legal framework before they roll out a new product or feature.
Not saying they will. I am saying setting up a legal framework is usually groundwork before you do though.
Though it should be kept in mind there’s thousands of patents that were never actually applied, and this one was filled back in 2009.
This is genuinely a good thing, then. If you patent something and “accidentally” never use it, it prevents other companies from using it legally. Screw over advertisers and save the consumers from their terrible ideas by hoarding patents and working with a patent troll firm :)
Not really. Patests expire and then they can just read the specs in your idea. No reverse-engineering effort required.
It takes 20 years for patents to expire, and you can’t commercially use the patented invention until then. If I “invent” and patent 50 different methods to track viewer attention during video advertisements, that’s 50 fewer ways that some company would be able to achieve it.
It would be impossible to cover every possible method to achieve the same thing, but the risk of violating a patent held by a highly litigious patent troll might be a good enough deterrent to stop the whole idea from making it to market for a couple decades.
Yes, but after 20 years you’re not at square one, others have free reign to use and abuse your expired patent. Sure, you can tacticize patents in a way where you make a starting patent, then before it’s about to expire “expand” it with a new one in a way which invalidates use of the previous, but I don’t know if that “loophole” is patched and if not, how it looks in real life.
That is an entirely valid concern, and I see where you’re coming from with that. It would be short-sighted to introduce something revolutionary, only to open the floodgates for everyone else to start implementing it two decades later.
I was thinking of using patents more along the lines of “throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.” Rather than trying to come up with every conceivable method for tracking user attention and patenting those, the hypothetical patent troll would create and patent hundreds of different smaller, novel processes that may or may not be needed as part of a larger system for tracking user attention. The overall goal being to make it likely enough for one or more of those patents to be violated that a company would consider it too risky to go anywhere near the idea of commercializing attention tracking software/hardware.
Next will be memory. They will say everything you meed should be stored online for a subscription fee.
This is Apple already.
Oh. You can only afford 4GB iPhone? Not to worry, for only $10 a month we can store stuff for you.
Also we got rid of photo stream and if you delete the file from the cloud then we remove it from every device
Google keeps trying to back up my non existent photos. It’s annoying.
Google photos made it difficult to download or delete your pictures on purpose. You have to manually select them. There is still a way to get them and it was because of GDPR, when you ask google for the whole data of your account they include the pictures and video from google photos.
You don’t need to request all account data, you can request only the Google photos data
Microsoft is already trying hard. My poor mom did not notice all her files are on OneDrive. Now she has two laptops with everything remote on OneDrive. It’s has some advantages, but it’s annoying in so many more ways.
There’s a setting in Onedrive to keep a copy of everything on the device. It will still get stored in the cloud too, but it means that everything will be available if the internet goes down.
Drake in the first picture: marketing.
Drake in the second picture: surprise, we signed you up without asking. You’re welcome.
I fell victim to that :(
A few years ago my ex got a new laptop and it had onedrive enabled system-wide by default. She didn’t realize until after she had been using it for months, I had to spend several hours backing up her files and defenestrating onedrive. It not as simple as just turning it off because it was even on critical system folders, you have to go in the registry and remap the those folders manually one at time before you can disable it.
It is possible, but it fucking sucks.
It’s not annoying at all. It’s peace of mind. People are just not used to it
Nah, fuck off. The cloud is a place you don’t have any control over. I remember getting angry when Windows 10 LTSC got an update that added an online backup system. I do not pay them to take a copy of my important work and documents, they should pay me for that privileges. Furthermore, it’s an absolute disgrace to see that on an LTSC copy to begin with, it’s meant to be the barebones OS that you purchase at a premium for minimal updates and changes as well as extended service lifespan.
Fuck OneDrive, I store locally and I make local backups. What I own is mine without exception.
additionally I exclusively use local windows accounts. Passwords are to keep your nosy parents, partners, or kids away from your machine, if a hacker has physical access to your computer it’s jover, no amount of microsoft accounts will save you
I was recently refurbishing a laptop for a friend and I got frustrated that I had to make sure it doesn’t connect to internet during the OS setup or I’d have to start the install over again. Online accounts only stop forgetful owners from getting in, does nothing helpful.
Get windows 10 iot ltsc, it won’t do that
-
Press X to Doubt
-
Eww, Internet of Things, so Gross, why don’t I just install a real bridge next to the drawbridge over the moat around my house? Welcome all the attackers in!
I didn’t think this would be controversial, but apparently it isn’t widely known. Win10 Iot Enterprise LTSC 2021 is a version that gets security support until 2032 but will not receive feature updates, ads or any other those things. It’s essentially what windows should be.
Here is my source: https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links.html
That’s exactly the same as what Windows 10 LTSC claims to be, except with IoT included. They’re virtually the same product.
-
I didn’t criticize anyone, I didn’t disrespect anyone, so it’s surprising getting this many downvotes and answers.
Still, it’s your opinion, and I will still share mine.
Local backups have their flaws, just like cloud backups.
I have 1TB storage using my school account. I am constantly changing between devices, and I like having my files always accessible.
Everything important, I keep in two local backups (external HDD and SSD).
The only thing I dislike about onedrive, is the sync of desktop, documents and images folder. I have turned that off, but my docs folder still appears to be syncing with onedrive.
Besides that, it’s the best thing for me. And like I said… “Peace of mind”. Just because you don’t like that, it does not mean it is a bad solution.
I’m surprised your post didn’t get deleted by a moderator. Lemmy is weird about dissenting opinions.
I don’t like OneDrive. I particularly don’t like how it integrates into everything without an easy way to turn it off. But I see the value for regular people to be forced to back up their data by default.
Didn’t knew that.
But, after getting downvoted, I searched for better solutions.
It appears that a good option would be to encrypt my files (using 7-zip or veracrypt) and upload them to a more privacy focused cloud storage provider.
However, paying for cloud when I have it for free does not make sense.
But, I already started encrypting every file with 25 char password (randomized and saved using bitwarden). So, better than nothing, right?
if you want peace of mind, make your own backups and when you need them, you can pull them from your drawer, not from us-east-1 (currently on fire)
Fuck that bullshit.
Google is also piece of shit about it.
I don’t have google photos’ backup turned on but still it randomly asks if I want to turn the backup on, hoping users will slip and click ok.
I started using Aves Libre for photos.
No, its kidnapping your data to keep you trapped as their customer. If you want peace of mind, you can make your own backups.
Profit motive is the enemy of quality.
In a utopia, everything’s designed for compatibility and longevity.
The day I can’t find a phone that has an headphone jack is the day I go feral and become a hermit in the woods.
If you want the rest of the specs to be decent, then that day is fast approaching or already here.
I had to jump from a phone that had about 5.5 of the features on that list to one with none of them (although I do like the 3 rear cameras) and I hate that I had to do that.
But I kept “Easily rootable” and that’s what really matters to me.
It’s the SD card for me. We are getting phones with 1tb now, so that will work. But with the phones that do offer it, you have to get the most expensive version for it. Meanwhile if they just give me an SD card slot, I can have that fixed myself. Just take the one out of my current phone and plop it in the new phone.
And 113GB used by system
I hate the loss but just buy a bunch of USBC to headphone adapters, stick them on all your headphones/aux cables, and forget you don’t have a headphone jack on your phone.
Adapters are not a solution.
I don’t like it either but they are a solution.
Making them increasingly difficult to hold (“but design!” They cry) so you “accidently” have to buy a new one again.
Who tf used an IR blaster? And what sane person misses the flimsy plastic back on phones with removable batteries? They didn’t cut a hole in your screen, they removed a half inch of dead useless space at the top and bottom and gave you more usable real estate while also cranking the resolution and refresh rate to 11. Buttons? WHAT BUTTONS EXACTLY? The single enormous one that ate up nearly 25% of the phone and all it did was GO BACK?! And don’t even mention the cameras. Your five cameras you didn’t ask for are why you can film yourself in 4K doing whatever brain dead tiktok fad you saw on your enormous HD screen, and why you can pretend you had front row seats to a concert you sat in the nosebleeds for.
Headphone jack is fair, no argument. I use Bluetooth headphones but I get the rationale. Everything else is stupid.
Your argument against removable batteries is that they had a “flimsy plastic back”? seriously prefer being unable to change the battery when its capacity decreases, being unable to carry a spare battery around, and having to pay dumb service fees, all just to not have a back that you barely even notice is made of plastic?
Also removable storage is extremely useful as well, not only for being able to cheaply increase space when needed, but also to minimize the effort of swapping devices or sharing large files more quickly.
Modular is always better. The only good argument against it is shareholder profits.
It doesn’t even need to be plastic. The battery could slot into the side of the phone on a tray with a gasket to try and seal it.
Personally I don’t think the battery needs to be as easily replaced if it lasts longer. Lithium ion cells degrade too quickly but a lithium iron phosphate cold last for 10 years before dropping below 85% charge capacity.
The only drawback is they have about 30% less energy density but imo making the battery 30% larger is not a big deal. Phones have obsessed with being pointlessly thin for so long. Basically just remove the dumb camera bump.
For real? I use the IR blaster every day when the wife/kids have misplaced the TV remote or CBF getting up to grab it
I do miss removable batteries, they had the added benefit of having a heavy mass (the battery) get thrown out when the phone falls. That helped save the display from getting damaged because a lot of the momentum was transferred to the battery popping out
I’ve been trying to acclimate my Dad to digital stuff-- get him reading the news online for when the local rag finally goes weekly or closes.
He would have an easier time with a device with 5% less screen, but always-present physical home/back/menu buttons.
I’m not sure what the ideal device would be for him; I’ve set him up with a Kindle Fire with the Play store and a handful of prevetted apps because I had it handy and it seemed more approachable than a 6" phone or a laptop with keyboard and trackpoint. But I’m all but sure the right device is NOT a new phone.
They removed many useful features that benefited users but spyware only increases
They’ll take away volume control (SW/HW buttons) and replace with dynamically adjusting “magic volume” so that you can’t mute ads.
Oh jesus christ I think you’re right
These people need stabbed.
Oh Christ. You’ve just triggered a premonition in me–the Galaxy S32 Ultra will be the first smartphone with no physical buttons or ports. You can turn it “off,” but that will only turn on a sort of extreme power saving mode. It will still ping your location once every few minutes, and will keep the fingerprint scanner active. You will “turn on” the device by holding your finger on the fingerprint scanner for four seconds. They will advertise the “quick startup” as a new feature. Volume will be controlled by sliding your finger along the right edge of the phone, which the screen will wrap around all the way to the back. It will be impossible to hold the phone without touching some part of the screen.
It will only allow wireless charging. You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards. In reality, this will be to prevent you from using ADB to remove apps that come with the phone. You cannot turn off mobile data. You cannot turn off location. You cannot use a third party SMS application. You cannot choose your own wallpaper. You cannot set a private DNS. You cannot install applications that haven’t been approved by Samsung. You cannot block ads. This is all covered on page 74 of subsection 32(a) of section G8 of the terms and conditions that you agreed to when you set up the phone.
They will meet the physical limitations of how well a small lens can focus light. Zoom will cap out at 150x. Nevertheless, there will be seven cameras.
This is when I go back to having a “dumb” phone 🫡
Why are people up voting this? This is such ridiculous FUD that I can’t take it seriously.
I know, right? I mean, does he seriously expect virtually every smartphone manufacturer to put holes in his screen and take away his headphone jacks, removable sim cards, SD cards, replaceable batteries, and IR blasters, and switch to an aspect ratio other than 16:9? That would be ridiculous. They never make user-unfriendly changes!
They’re not user unfriendly changes if 95% of users just don’t care.
And which of the changes he listed would the 95% figure you mentioned care about? By your definition, short of literally turning each feature into a micro transaction, there’s no such thing as user unfriendly changes - and knowing the general public, not even then.
You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards.
Making devices water-proof is also a marketing scheme to avoid replaceable batteries :
Some manufacturers are already eyeing an exemption for batteries used in “wet conditions” to opt out electric toothbrushes and possibly wearables like earbuds and smartwatches. The exemption is “based on unfounded safety claims,” states Thomas Opsomer, policy engineer for iFixit, in Repair.EU’s post.
Despite the coming up regulation on batteries and waste batteries by the EU Council batteries in water-proof devices will probably be exempt from being replceable, because the water proof feature of the device cannot be guaranteed. This undermines the right to repair and manufacturers can hope that customers replace their entire devices soon. Making phones water-proof is a loophole to seal off the device so that it is not to be repaired, at least without keeping the water-proof features after repairing.
Yeah pretty sure the Fairphone 5 and its predecessors have a pretty good IP rating, despite their ability to have the battery removed.
The Galaxy S5 did it first :)
(for a competent smartphone that is)
I dropped my phone in the bath once, so it’s worth it 🤣
I dropped several flip phones in water ranging from bath, to sink, to ponds and creeks in the mid 00’s to mid teens before getting a smart phone. Out of probably 10 phones used only one was ever ruined by the water, the rest all dried out fine when taken apart and left to dry for a day or two.
correction a bit, you can use adb via wifi. That’s what I do to sideload an app to my Android TV
That’s when I go flip
nahhh you’ll be able to choose your own wallpaper, the average user will eat up all of those “feautres” but god forbid Keighleeeigh can’t put her little baby Xaileeyn as her screen saver
But Keighleeeigh will happily pay for it.
Or her baby daddy, Jaxxon
Obligatory, “The rise of -leigh, -lee, and -den names”:
