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Comment by muxator | Hacker News Reader

A product marketing page that feels detailed and _honest_: this is something rarely seen in advertising material from big corporations.

Kudos to Asus, not only for the phone, which, by the way, seems interesting.

If only the various hardware subsystems were supported natively in mainline kernel (and open source apps), we'd live in a hacker's dream world.

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Detailed and honest? How is this different from all the flashy usual marketing bullshit on a active scroll (or whatever that's called) webpage? Do they mention on that page that SD card support has been removed this year or is it something you have to deduce because CTRL+F 'sd' returns 0 results?

Detailed and honest would be spec sheet, camera samples, couple of standardized benchmarks, basically a Kimovil.com description page.

Most of what you ask is easily available simply browsing the webpage though.

> Do they mention on that page that SD card support has been removed this year

According to GSMArena, the Zenfone 8 did not have an SD slot either. [1]

Which is too bad, if Asus offered expandable storage on the Zenfone it would be the ideal phone for me.

[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/asus_zenfone_8-10893.php

S*t, now nobody is offering a SD card slot? Neither Samsung nor Apple. Just when in 2022 you can have a large storage AND privacy. I think Huawei is the only one offering a Google mobile phone and storage?

It is good that Apple offers mobile phones with internal storage of 1tb where Samsung ends up in 512gb but in this times of large photos and movies 2 TB should appear soon.

> now nobody is offering a SD card slot

For some reason sd card slot is like audio jack, it's considered a thing for middle tier phones. Xiaomi have a bunch of them (various Redmis for instance), and Samsung at least used to, I haven't checked recently.

Sony seems to be the last manufacturer offering MicroSD slots in their high-end phones. (The last manufacturer that sells phones in the US, anyways.) They also include a headphone jack!

Samsung ditched both of those features in recent years.

I kind of hate sony, but in this instance they seem to be less shitty than everyone else.

If you're in Europe and don't mind a smaller player, the Fairphone has expandable storage out of principle, so your phone can last longer. Thus, you can expect all their future models to have that as well.

Sony's Xperia line seems to be the last one to still offer microsd support in a high-end phone. They also have headphone jacks, waterproofing, front facing speakers, and no camera notch. I kind of hate sony, but I might end up buying one of their phones next, just because they seem to be the only manufacturer that isn't removing features and calling it progress. On the down side, their commitment to updates is pretty lame.

Right now I'm on a Moto g100/Edgs S, which is a mid-range phone with a microSD slot and a headphone jack, but it has two camera holes in the screen, it's not waterproof and it has a single shitty down firing speaker. However, it was $270 used, so I figured I can live with this until I find something I actually like.

Oh, and both Motorola and Sony make it easy to unlock the bootloader, which is sadly not guaranteed anymore. I'm still a little salty at Google for permanently locking the bootloader in my old Pixel 2 and I sent it in for a repair.

I think the best phones are made by Sony. If you want stereo speakers, SD slot, headphone jack and high end performance, it's hard to find other models than these manufactured by Sony.

It's taller than the iPhone SE (2022) and just as wide. It's mush bigger than the iPhone 12 Mini. There's nothing particularly compact about this phone.

https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Asus-Zenfone-9,Apple-...

... but it's so frustrating to click on some element of the page and then click/swipe back only to find suddenly you're back here on HN. Then, 2nd time around on the page you notice they've redesigned a simple web interface: Not a close button, but a 'minimise' but in a very light font. It seems they think throwing out tried and true user experience is a good thing. SPA has a lot to answer for.

Also, while I'm on my soapbox... Having a fingerprint reader as the power button just makes sure that my phone is unlocked just as I put it in my pocket, just after I've locked it (by clicking the power button). Just today I've spammed a couple of voice messages to people just because of that. I'll not be buying another phone with one of those again!

:rant off:

Details are scarce so I'm speculating, but it's likely configurable so you can set it to unlock only if actually pressed/clicked rather than just touched, which should solve the problem.

While the phone is on, the power/fingerprint button "also acts as an extra input, allowing you to pull down the notification shade by swiping across the button – or set it to refresh a page, scroll to the top, or control media playback if you prefer." [1]

[1] - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techadvisor.com/article/805...

> Having a fingerprint reader as the power button just makes sure that my phone is unlocked just as I put it in my pocket

Have the same on my xiaomi, but there is a setting so you must click to unlock which solved the issue for me.

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