I still won’t buy a phone without a microSD slot.
GET OFF MY LAWN!
What phones even still do? Sonys? Low end Samsungs? Fairphone?
My Motorola does
Crazy how every time someone asks what brand even supports some previously-normal feature, the answer is always Motorola. Headphone jack, FM radio, SD card, stylus…
They have been surprisingly good devices in past few years. No nonsense software, pretty good hardware for very acceptable price and like you said none of the good things missing.
Their cameras are always garbage, but other than that I’ve been always buying them since the Nexus line went dead because they’re always the best for the least amount of money.
If I’m expected to buy a new phone every two years my working thesis was that I’ll pay very little for it. A lot of their phones are pretty decent for like $50-$150.
I’ll admit I caved a bit and bought a Motorola razr last Christmas though. It’s much more like the phones I usually don’t buy: no headphone jack, no microsd slot, a bit expensive, etc… But I wanted a phone that would actually fit in my pants comfortably for once.
Yeah, cameras are not usually comparable to high end stuff, but they are good enough for me. For my use case camera is just and after-thought. A good convenience to have at hand, but not a necessary one, especially not necessary to have 6 of the damn thing.
Why
Because the march of time terrifies them.
If demanding better features means you’re old, then fuck being young.
That’s the ultimate irony of being young now - satisfied with awful tech experiences. Watching videos on a tiny screen and listening to music on earbuds or even worse, a cell phone speaker.
I recently saw an Amazon review where someone couldn’t believe how much better full size headphones were than their apple airpods. A whole review blathering about why a speaker 25x larger sounded better. “Never imagined such a difference!!!” Funny af
And the tech companies absolutely know this.
Because they want more storage? I honestly don’t understand even asking the question lol
Also, I’ve got an entire music library and several movies I can just pop into my next phone
Storage for what though? That’s why I asked. My device storage is 256 and I’ve only used 100, that’s with 700 songs downloaded. I’m curious what you need a ton of storage for.
Pics of yo momma.
As far as I understand, Europe will push for removable batteries by 2027.. So we might actually get back to those glory days.
It didn’t have a removable battery, but I used to use an older Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL that really kicked arse.
It had cards slots, a headphone jack, a built in radio that used wired headphones for signal, and the damned thing was as reasonably waterproof as I could imagine a smartphone to be. It’s camera was pretty great for the price, too.
Well, one day it fell very hard on a sharp rock, and the screen shattered. The crack made a hole a few milimeteres deep, and it was about a centimetre wide. It might not sound like much, but the crack in the screen was very much there. My happy arse managed to then have it fall out of my pocket and right into the flush of a high-powered toilet.
I left it to dry for one day, and it worked almost like new again. It still powers up today, but the since security updates stopped years ago, i don’t use it anymore. IIRC, it wasn’t too expensive, but I forget if there was a sale going on at the time.
I hope I can find another phone like that around that general price point one day. I can dream haha.
What the fuck is a high powered toilet? I want one of those!
I remember when my mom had a phone with a removable battery, she would drop it a lot and it would separate into a gazillion components but it wouldn’t break. I miss the days
The only valid reason is waterproofing. If the phone isn’t waterproof, it’s only to limit repairability… Also one factor in that was, I believe, the thinness war, but that’s pretty much over now as they all got to the practical limit I guess.
My casio watch is waterproof. And it has a user replacable battery. With a gasket inside and cool looking screws. (yes, I consider screws to be cool) Also, it costs less than $20
Screws are an incredible wonder. Itty bits of metal with fine threading to attach two things? And we just produce like billions of the things? Truly amazing.
I’d love to have a phone with 8 screws and a gasket in the back cover instead of the fixed plastic latches that the Fairphone and others have. Easily more water tolerant and love the industrial feel.
Your Casio watch also has a manual with a warning inside saying it won’t be waterproof anymore after a battery replacement unless you send it in to Casio to replace the battery.
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Casio watch warranty period: 24 months
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Casio watch advertised battery lifetime: 10 years
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My Casio watch actual battery lifetime: 5 years
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I didn’t have to open it until 2x the time of official warranty.
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The gasket had gunk in it on the outer side, so I cleaned it, but I could have gotten a replacement from one of the local Casio stores.
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The strap has broken 2 times until now (yeah, I’m kinda rough on it) and replacing that doesn’t void any warranty.
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The standardised nature means, I can get either Casio branded straps (even from other models if my model is discontinued) or other generic straps.
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I am nearing the point at which it might require another battery change, but either way it’s worked pretty well.
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I take hot water baths with it and even though I never used it up-to 100m (I’m not really into diving), I haven’t seen rust or moisture in the inside.
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Of course, if you open the stuff and change something yourself, it’s up to you to warranty it. You can’t expect them to trust every tom, dick and harry who might:
- Not tighten the screws well enough
- Not place the gasket back in place
- Do any other random stuff
and officially say that they will cover that. I know I wouldn’t.
The point is, they let you do what you want and help you at a reasonable price (the replacement straps were priced appropriately).
I can’t say the same for the fancier models though.
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I’m not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded (at the sacrifice of battery life) if the mfrs hadn’t pushed it as a selling point.
In the flipphone days I didn’t know many people who didn’t have at least one spare battery, so they could swap to a fresh one on the go without having to charge, or bought extra thick batteries with higher capacity, extending the back of the phone.
Then when smartphones had removable batteries, lots of people still did those things. And all during that time I remember many reviewers and consumers reacting to many of the “thinness” claims with “I’d really like a bigger battery instead.”
I also remember it being proven that apple’s removal of the headphone jack impacted neither waterproofing nor thinness, despite their claims. (But then of course one by one others started following suit.)
I think it’s better for mfrs and that’s the only reason. It saves them money on mfr, or gets phones tossed in the bin faster. Possibly both.
I’d still take 2 or 3 more mm of thickness for an amazing battery.
About thinness: I also like my phones bendy and snappy (iPhone 6), as well as exploding batteries (Galaxy Note 7 or 10, I don’t remember the exact model tbh).
Or you have to ‘hold it right’ (OG iPhone).
These were all huge issues that could be fixed without sacrificing the thinness.
Thinness shouldn’t be used as an excuse for otherwise shitty phones, since it’s clearly a non-sequitur.
Well, there’s another change that made it more viable - back then people had spare batteries cause they needed them. Now most devices will last a full day of normal use, so the ‘average user’ doesn’t care much about swapping batteries.
My gripe was physical keyboards. Until they basically disappeared entirely, I tried to buy exclusively devices with physical keyboards. I liked my T-Mobile Sidekick except it could stand to be thinner.
You can have ip68 removable battery phones. Check out samsung xcover
Unfortunately we still see too many people push the “but my IP rating” narrative without realising that engineers are perfectly able to design gaskets for all kinds of applications.
Some phones with removable batteries even had them and were (to a certain degree) waterproof.
The ONLY reason phones are no longer servicable is profits. Why extend a product’s lifespan if you can just frustrate the consumer to the point where they will just buy another one?
I want to know what all these people are doing with their phones… I’ve needed a phone to be waterproof exactly one time. 20 years ago when I got chucked into a pool with my flip phone in my pocket. I’ve had about a dozen batteries stop charging properly and needed replacement since then.
I have this habit where I try to squeeze every bit of use out of a device until something forces me to get a new one.
My latest two phones have both lasted for 7 years, and I’m still not planning on upgrading until someting breaks.
In all those years I have never encountered a situation where I would have benefited from my phone being more waterproof than just basic ingress protection. Higher IP ratings are only helpful for those who don’t want to be conscious of their possessions and want insurance in case of accidents instead of preventing the situations outright.
If we truly want to reduce our impact on the use of natural resources, we should start with eradicating the mindset that things being disposable is somehow fine.
Some still do. I just started working at Walmart, and they give you a Samsung phone to do your job. You use the camera for scanning tags, shelving, check item status, and a bunch of other shit. It’s a modern phone, with USB c, fingerprint sensor in the power button, android 13, stupid hole-punch camera, etc. And when I pulled off the otterbox case they gave me with it, I found that the back pulls off and the battery pops out, like all of my phones used to do back in the day. I assume that’s so they can more easily keep these phones in use, as they can pull out a failing battery and pop a new one in without having to send the phone sent off for servicing.
That’s actually making a comeback because the EU got pissed.
I think it is because the EU listened to the people. This is what you get when elected representatives are not bankrolled by big business, and are allowed to enact legislation that doesn’t only benefit one side.
Capitalism removed!
Capitalism removed!
I wish capitalism was removed.
“There removable, see all you need is 7 specialized tools!”
“We cant have users replacing there own batterys what if they puntchure or swallow the battery?”
“Making the battery removable would make the phone more bulky and limits innovation”
-Companys BS reasons
They also had keyboards that worked well and there was even real competition for on-screen keyboards until Google bought out and dissolved the best keyboard because they really want your ducking typing data.
A lot of anti-user design choices were first introduced by the iPhone. As someone who has owned iPhones since the iPhone 3G, I blame myself.
Computers were not stopping you from running any software you want, until they got small enough for people to forget they are still computers.
EU to the rescue
It was stopped because Apple wanted you to deal with their service technicians in their stores using their parts directly. They make zero dollars if you replace your spicy pillow with a 3rd party amazon battery.
Having worked in the industry at that time, there were 2 main reasons they did it like that
- batteries were quite unreliable and failed often
- mfgrs couldn’t afford to have one year warranties and send out field replacement units for a battery
And the reasons they stopped doing it…
- batteries got better
- battery contact failure was higher than battery failure.
- replaceable batteries compromise waterproofing
I think they should still be replacible, but they should have better connectors that are sealed off from the rest of the device. It costs a tiny bit more to do that engineering though.
mfgrs
Muthafuggrs? Or what’s that supposed to be?
Basically. Manufacturers
