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Comment by antisemiotic | Hacker News Reader

All the issues except for "ruined web design" and to some extent "there are no secure smartphones" seem to be solved by phones based on GNU/Linux rather than Google/Linux. I'm very much looking forward to my preorder of Librem 5 and being able to use it like a regular PC with any peripherals.

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The author says that smartphones suck because battery life limitations mean you cannot use the full power of the phone's components. Librem admits that they are aiming for a mere one day of use before you have to charge the phone's battery, which is shorter than many Android devices these days. Therefore, even the Librem phone may disappoint the author of this article.

I don't see the problem. Phones often run at full (thermal) limits when they have an external power source. So, just connect an external battery pack if you want your phone to go faster.

That's a pretty obscure reason to say that smartphones suck though. If you need more computing power, buy a tablet or a big battery pack, or use a laptop. Hell, log into a remote server and run your apps there.

95% of people who use phones don't need that much power and given how many people own phones they clearly find them extremely useful.

The battery limitation is pretty much inherent to portable devices. I took liberty to interpret the article as "how could smartphones be better". If the point is literally "smartphones suck", then I guess, okay, they do. Case closed, we all can go home now.

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