Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> They've made every size of phone between a stamp and a tablet. There's nothing left to do.

Really? My dream phone doesn't exist yet. I want a phone that is reliable, that lasts more than a few days on a single charge. I want one with two USB connections. I want one with a proper headphone jack, and a speaker that is loud enough to hear properly while driving (without a mount). For these features I am willing to trade size/weight. This phone doesn't exist yet. Until it does there remains room for improvement.

View on HN

I'm sure you've realized your dream phone will never exist, it sounds more like an older ultrabook than a phone. What's the reason for a USB port, much less two of them? Every new vehicle the past few years has bluetooth, so why a loud speaker?

I have yet to see a bicycle with bluetooth. (electric bike is not the same thing). My car doesn't have bluetooth - it is only 13 years/250000 miles out so it has plenty of life left (most people replace their cars long before they are worn out, I drive mine into the ground). I haven't seen a leaf rake with bluetooth either, and most lawn mowers still don't have it either.

I'm well aware that the dream phone may never exist. That doesn't mean I don't want it.

You can get a Bluetooth speaker that'll clamp onto your bike for $20, or some earbuds. Expecting a phone to blast out high-decibel music that you can hear while mowing the lawn seems like an insane ask.

My 2010 car didn’t come with Bluetooth either.

I fixed it by replacing the head unit with one that supports Bluetooth and CarPlay. An easy DIY project or you can pay a small fee to have it done for you by an installer.

Right, or I can just get a phone with a loud enough speakers in the first place. I've outlined a number of situations where I want loud noise from my phone. Having the phone solve the problem is more convenient than fixing it in each situation separately.

I don't know if it is possible for the phone to provide this, but it is on my want list.

Slightly off topic, but for power tool work / lawnmowers I can heartily recommend 3M Worktunes. It's like $50 bucks and you get decent bluetooth speakers with ear protection, and the battery lasts all day.

(I assumed they just meant two USB-C or micro-USB ports, not big desktop-style ones)

Two USB sockets is like two SIMs. It sounds crazy to most people who’ve never had them, but for a lot of other people they are / would be amazingly useful.

Bluetooth is not always an option. I often travel/work (military) where i must keep it in airplane mode. Wireless headphones also arent an option. 2 usb ports means when one snaps the phone isnt bricked.

You can definitely use bluetooth on airplane mode

Avenir manufactures a variety of devices (licensed under the Energizer brand) that might intrigue you: https://www.energizeyourdevice.com/en/mobiles/catalog/ . I think they're only sold in EU markets, though.

Wow, those phones look good. Do you know how easy it is to root those phones?

No idea, unfortunately.

Why do you need a loud enough speaker to hear it while driving? Can't you just tie your phone into your car's audio system? Bluetooth, Aux Cable, or otherwise??

an aside: i'm always amazed at the number of people in new/late-model cars driving while holding their phone to their face.

why aren't these people connecting to their car? if they care enough to drive and hold a phone up, it seems likely they know about bluetooth.

I've got a recent Corolla and the Bluetooth integration is buggy, frustrating, the microphone's bad enough people struggle to hear me, and it doesn't much like deciding between multiple phones in the same car.

Why do you want your phone charge to last more than a day? Can't you just charge it while you sleep?

Sleeping in the middle of nowhere to enjoy some stargazing perhaps?

Stuck in an airport overnight?

Long term local power outage?

There are nice things about long lasting batteries.

And for all of those things, external battery packs exist that you can carry with you.

To anyone who complains that they won't be happy until the perfect device exists that meets all their needs and nothing they don't and doesn't need adapters or dongles to do it: I still use serial cables at least once a month. Do you hear me complaining that I can't find a laptop that includes a serial port? No. Because I recognize that my need is niche and adapters exist to fulfill that need. It doesn't need to be baked into a mass-market device. I'm an adult and can solve my own problems with readily-available tools.

<satire> I still use PDAs when I need a portable computer. Do you hear me complaining about that? No. Because I recognize that my need is niche and PDAs exist to fulfill my need. It doesn't need to be baked into a mass market device. I'm an adult that can bring both a phone and a PDA. </satire>

> To anyone who complains that they won't be happy until the perfect device exists that meets all their needs and nothing they don't and doesn't need adapters or dongles to do it

I think the point of frustration is that phones used to address most or all of these needs, and now they don't. So it can clearly be done.

Yes, phones used to satisfy the multi-day battery life needs. Smartphones never did, at least not mass-market smartphones. There were some smartphones that offered massive battery life but they didn't sell well enough to make it profitable to keep making them.

Same with two USB connections. Maybe one existed, but it wasn't a big seller so it was discontinued. Headphone jacks still exist, but phones without them aren't really selling worse so who knows what the future holds.

You know what sells? Mass market phones that meet everyone's needs and accessories that meet everyone's desires. Want longer battery life? Get any off-the-shelf mass market phone and pair it with a portable battery pack. Done. Want louder speakers? Get any off-the-shelf mass market phone and pair it with a Bluetooth speaker. Want a serial port? Buy any mass-market off-the-shelf laptop and a serial port adapter.

Because the next stop after "I demand a phone with loud speakers, multi-day battery life, and a headphone jack" is "no, that one is too expensive" or "no that one is running the wrong OS" or "no that one doesn't have a big enough screen" or "no that one charges with the wrong cable". The next stop is the millions of reasons to not buy exactly what you asked for. People here demand every product be exactly perfectly tailored to their own desires and no one else's and get offended when a device fits their needs but misses one or two of their desires, but also get offended when a product is released that fits someone else's needs and desires because it doesn't perfectly fit their own needs and desires.

"It can clearly be done" so why aren't you using a Moto G7 Power with its massive battery? Because this reason and that reason and the other reason because there is no way to make a device that satisfies every one of your desires. So why are you pretending that there aren't accessories available to satisfy every one of your desires... unless one of your desires is to just endlessly complain about modern technology?

> You know what sells? Mass market phones that meet everyone's needs

Yes, but as of late, those don't exist. At least, none that meet many of my needs.

> why aren't you using a Moto G7 Power with its massive battery?

The battery is an important issue, but not the most important to me. I could compromise on battery life for devices that met my other needs.

I've also decided to bail on commercial smartphones entirely and build my own. I could no longer find a commercial smartphone that was an acceptable compromise for me, and I'm also very much looking forward to no longer having to deal with the Android OS.

As a Motorola lover, multi-day charge is awesome.

Sometimes you forget to charge your phone. No problem! Battery's good until you get to a charger sometime the following day.

Also, an oversized battery / efficient chip means I can power-use my phone for a full day without worrying about battery.

And finally, because as your battery loses capacity over time, your phone drifts back to one-day charge, not sub-day charge.

My Huawei Mate 20 Lite lasts about 2-3 days. Pretty common for new phones I think.

i only charge my iPhone XR every 2-2.5 days. but i don't commute, and i sit at my desk 4-5 hours/day. when i charge (wirelessly), the phone's right in front of me.

I was spoiled by a Droid Turbo. Now I can't buy anything with less than 3500mAh of battery, which severely limits my options. Too bad Motorola phones never get software updates and are super locked down

Not to mention the latest offerings by Motorola have been lackluster.

I, too, loved my Droid Turbo. When I first got it, I remember driving from San Diego to the north edge of the Los Angeles metro area over about four hours using Waze. 4 hours of screen and GPS time and it only used about 40% of the battery. But after 3 years, 1 hour of Waze would consume 25% of the battery. The battery would barely last me a day, and if I was somewhere where I wanted to take a decent number of pictures, it wouldn't last more than a couple hours. I bought a replacement battery, but even though the battery was new, it was built years ago and was still slightly degraded.

I ended up buying a Pixel 3. The battery is only 3,000 mAh IIRC, but it's quite efficient. I usually finish my day with about 30-50% of the battery left depending on my usage. Of course, it'll be a different story in 2-3 years.

My Droid Turbo didn't lose much battery capacity, but it was four years old, and everyday apps barely functioned, and random things killed the battery in the background.

I went for the Pixel 2XL, for the battery and for the software updates. Can plug in my phone for an hour here and there at random times, and no longer leave it plugged in at night. I can go out or visit family with battery at 50% and not worry about my phone dying.

Google's fast charging also seems to be more variable and "smart" than motorola's, and doesn't seem to overheat my phone as much

My OnePlus 6 lasts about four days, with each charging cycle containing a few hours of speaking, checking random stuff on the web, and using instant messaging and occasional photo shooting. I really, really don't miss the era of early smartphones that barely made it through the day and when their charge went low they died pretty quickly.

I've gone to bed several times with less than 10% battery left, woke up with 2-3% left in the morning, realised the battery is dying and put it charging during breakfast. Back to at least 80-90% when I'm leaving and thus good for another three days.

I would love a phone that I didn't have to charge every day. My life is too full of stuff that I have to remember to charge frequently as it is. Less of that would be great.

Im in the military. Sometimes I sleep places that dont have charge points.

My iPhone SE (refreshed version) hits all of this, except the 2 USB connections -- which is a very specific request, but w/e, I don't judge.

In my mind still is one of the top 5 smartphones available, even if it hasn't refreshed in a few years.

I actually stopped optimizing my app for your screen size. I have no idea if it even works. Surprised there are people out there still using these!

The killer feature of the iPhone SE (and its predecessors) is that it can be comfortably operated with just one hand and fits in every pocket. That‘s why many people will continue to use it until it breaks, or Apple decides to release smaller phones again (unlikely at this point).

Apple was selling them brand new until a few months ago. Of course people are still using them.

Isn’t there some sort of analytics you could add to your app to learn the screen size of your users?

Can I ask what the dual USB is used for? Charge + USB OTG device?

For some, it would be charge + speaker, charge + headphones, or charge + TV.

>charge + headphones

I forgot about the hellscape we're living in where this is a thing.

I do see advantages for those other uses. Also, copying data between USB drives seems handy too!

Charge+something, but also because when one breaks im not screwed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com