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Comment by damnencryption | Hacker News Reader

Pixel 4a is the sweet spot for me. Small phone for 2020 standards and works just as I expect it to. I really love the casual design and how it feels in hand. I don't like the glass backs or pure metals. I don't want edge display. I don't care about wireless charging (why do people even feel it's necessary?). I would rather have faster cable charging.

I want a practical phone. I don't care much about gimmicks. The new one plus has 3 useless cameras out of 4. They added two flash and extra cameras for marketing purposes. These little things added by the marketing departments only increase the amount you need to pay and make for a worse experience.

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It's super convenient for me to drop my phone in the phone holder when I get in my car and have it start charging, and to just take it out of the holder when I exit my car, without having to plug and unplug the phone. It's different from charging at home since when at home, I pick up and use the phone in my hand even while it's charging, so a wireless charger is less useful, while in a car the phone has to stay in the holder when I am driving, so saving the steps of having to plug and unplug makes sense.

Never thought of this earlier. Apples magsafe for iPhones now makes absolute sense.

That can be solved with magnetic usb type C charger docks.

Are you referring to the phone holder in the car? I can see how a phone holder with a magnetic charging cable can give similar functionality, with the addition that the home charger would also need to be magnetic so that there is no need to plug and unplug the adaptor. Also, I wonder how finicky aligning the magnetic connection would be in a phone holder -- it's has not been a problem with my wireless charger: either the wireless charger in my phone holder has pretty wide tolerances in alignment, or the holding clips were well designed, as I have not had any instances where it did not align and charge.

This is how products get better. Small changes that seem less relevant to people with low product interest.

Meanwhile these features stack year on year til you have vastly better products over time.

This improvement isn't marketing departments. They might spin the improvements to stories and messages but the changes come as continual engeneering improvement in products. Go see a 15 year old phone and imagine we'd stopped adding little improvements there vs today's phones. They work but they are clearly inferior products.

I agree with you but in one plus's example, the two of the 4 cameras were completely useless. You should look up their reviews. The camera app didn't switch to the macro camera automatically like in previous phones which means they were aware that the cameras were bad enough to be useless.

Small convenience at the cost of bigger cut offs isn't practical in a budget phone. Wireless charging is not useful to people looking for a budget phone. Good wireless chargers cost money with very little convenience. They are slower than traditional fast chargers by 3-4x.

If by "get better" you mean get to the insane situation where you can reasonably describe a $700 phone as a "downmarket" "mid-range" device, then, yeah maybe.

Wireless charging is typically included on waterproof phones.

You can take an IP68 phone for a swim in the sea just fine but afterwards the charging port becomes unusable for at least half a day as the phone's moisture sensor will disable the charging port to prevent short circuits until it's completely dry. Not a problem with wireless charging.

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