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Comment by r3bl | Hacker News Reader

I believe it's a chicken and egg problem. I know I would rely on video way more if my first sentence in every video call didn't have to be "can you hear me?"

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The eggs have been there for a long time and plenty of chickens has been hatched; but noone is eating them.

I am pretty sure that I can do a high quality FaceTime call with a number of people.

Yet still I prefer doing a regular phone call. As so does just about everyone else. The question you should ask is: Why is that?

It is not a technical problem.

> I am pretty sure that I can do a high quality FaceTime call with a number of people.

A number of people that could afford $1000+ to be able to use that platform.

I personally wouldn't consider this problem to be technically-solved until an Android that can barely be considered as a mid-ranger can do it.

I wouldn't expect a mid-ranger phone to be fast and completely reliable. That's why it's just a mid-ranger. The price is a compromise; you get shitty radio hardware and shitty software so you get shitty videoconferencing.

Is a mid-range phone today worse than a high end phone 5 years ago? Because the hardware at the high end 5 years ago could handle it decently iirc. Though it really depended on your internet connection, latency and other issues much more than the hardware on the device really.

For the most part, given the margins at the high end, it's not significantly better.

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