But also...I think this would be hilarious (in a good way) if this (thankfully anachronistic throwback) repairability really took off and in the next 3 years Apple releases a budget / or premium( prolly premium? knowing Apple hehe ) set of products like a framework style repairable moddable laptop, and a "wePhone" that you can swap parts and mod. Truly I think there's a cool cyberfunk future in there somewhere. TikTokking teens showing off their latest phone mods, builds and hacks (and holoscreens). I mean they already "discovered" the flip phone and went mad. I think this is waiting to happen :) ;p
5: 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm
12 mini: 131.5 x 64.2 x 7.4 mm
The more important difference is, the 12 mini screen is 5.42" diagonal instead of 4" like the 5. This is maybe marketed as a benefit, but it means I can't comfortably reach the entire screen during one-handed use.
I can't hold phones with >68mm width reliably and drop them constantly. I just wish vendors can make small (or long, like Sony) phones.
No idea if they work with Android Auto but isn't android auto some kind of mapping plus music UI? The screen is quite small, I don't use it mounted on motorcycle when I ride for that reason.
I bought an el-cheapo, small (really small) one (originally only to manage EU green passes) that (after that use was over) I started using as a "backup" phone when I cannot carry the (larger, heavier) "main" one.
It turned out to be not bad at all, of course within its limits.
The model I got was a King Kong mini, but I believe that in the last two-three years they made some two or three newer models.
The Power Armor 13 takes multi day heavy use to approximately what I've always wanted out of a handheld computer.
1. Budget:
- Basic processor/camera/space with 6 inch screen
- Basic processor/camera/space with 4.5 inch screen
2. Flagship
- High-end processor/camera/space with 6 inch screen
- High-end processor/camera/space with 4.5 inch screen
There’s perhaps a gap in the $150-$400 range, but used phones can definitely be found there, and I would bet that there are Android manufacturers that sell new phones there.
(All prices are USA and before tax, so other markets will be a bit more expensive.)
Below $150 you only have the cheapest models by brands like Xiaomi, and over $1000 you only have the flagships.
There are plenty of models in the middle, not only Pixels but also a plethora of offerings from Oppo, Samsung, Xiaomi, Vivo, Honor, Poco, etc. Name any [X,X+100] interval in that range and there are phones of that price. Last week I went with my mother to buy one for her, she settled for the Oppo Reno 8 (about $500) but there was the Lite version at about $100 less, the Pro version at about $100 more, and then other lineups from the same brand (Find X5 in Lite/normal/Pro versions, etc., and many, many others we didn't even look at); and that's within a single brand.
So your parent comment doesn't make much sense to me even if it's hyperbolic. Maybe the available offer is really different in the US, here there are definitely plenty of models of all prices. A different story is that all brands tend to make the same decisions and follow trends (e.g. ditch the headphone jack, make screens larger, etc.) so everything is sameish and even if there are hundreds of models to choose from, it's possible to not find a model that fits one's needs. I myself imported my phone (Pixel 6 Pro) from Australia because no brands other than Apple or Samsung seem to sell 512 GB storage models here...
But even if SMS costs money, why not just use free apps like Whatsapp or Signal?
And if SMS does cost money for the recipient, does that mean it doesn't get used for 2FA? I imagine some people would block it in order to prevent unexpected costs.
I had not expected either of those, but I'd imagine if iMessage costs money on Android, that would massively increase the popularity of either Whatsapp or Signal.
It doesn’t sell.
Just look at Apple’s sales and their cancellation of the mini. I’d love it to be the opposite so I didn’t have to hold on to my iphone 12 mini, but it’s just how things are. Most people don’t like smaller phones and would be a waste of resources to make high end ones.
Mini sales were just not enough to justify having to order a miniature display by current standards.
I was an Android guy, but one of the top two reasons my newest phone is an iPhone is due to the small form factor (the other is longer support cycles). If Apple stops making small phones, my next one may well be an Android.
On consideration, capturing a niche market segment like this may be more valuable for Apple than it is for other manufacturers, as it increases the odds of getting them locked into your ecosystem.
It's also a bit challenging, since a powerful phone has higher battery/heat/etc needs and that is easier/cheaper to do in a larger device.
I would also argue that small screens are awful for consuming content nowadays. People with bad eyesight struggle with bigger fonts in a small screen, and publishers tend to try to fit more and more content in each screen. It's systemic.
I wouldn't. Most content is time wasting nonsense and ads.
> People with bad eyesight struggle with bigger fonts in a small screen,
My experience with Presbyopia is that a bigger screen is still impossible to read without glasses. Without glasses my only hope is to pinch zoom or browser zoom which works on both large and small screens.
Also, if you think that most content is not worth consuming, thus smaller screens are “good enough”, perhaps you are not part of the target market anyway. There are still feature phones out there for the minority who holds that sentiment.
There is a very small minority of people who prefer smaller phones, but they make a lot of noise.
No one buys small phones - hence why iPhone mini was abandoned and most Android OEM's smallest models have at least 6.43'' screen
And it will under guaranty for at least six months. The website guarantees a at least 70% of the orginal capable batteryu
That's what I have. Has a jack, a physical home button and back button, a microSD slot. Don't know your expectations but the camera is better than the expensive camera I bought in 2005. I am not ashamed of sending photos to any of my friend. Performance is fine. (Usage: I text, use Google Maps, YouTube and I browse without an issue)
It's a fair bit bigger than my old 2016 iPhone SE, but it's actually smaller than the iPhone Mini.
The same generation iPhone - the 6S just got a security update a couple of weeks ago.
I got the Google pixel 4a 5g and tbh couldn't be happier. Still, if the S7 was faster I would keep using it.
Related - I'm a huge fan of Airpods and only ever want to use my wired headphones with my laptop
All I know is when I want to pass the aux to a newer iPhone, I need a stupid dongle now, which funny enough doesn't work with the old one. And either phone's battery will last all day regardless.
- no headphone jack
- no SD card slot
- all come with ad-ware and un-uninstallable third-party apps like Facebook (except for Google Pixels, which don't satisfy the first two criteria)
Mid range is where it's at. Why pay $200 more for 256 instead of 128 GB when I can put in my 1,000 GB mircoSD card?
It's a shame that Fairphone went with the no SD card trend. I would have really liked to buy their phone...
I use a modern high-end SD card from SanDisk as semi-permanent storage in my MBP. If I copy anything to that card that's not a single file, it takes forever. Overall it feels worse than using an old HDD. I have to actually think about what I store on it (mostly videos/photos), so I totally see the reason for wanting more internal storage instead of an SD slot.
150MB/s is nowhere near SSD speed, but it would saturate a SATA I port.
Mounting without a buffer on a badly chosen filesystem in what could well be the M1's abysmally slow sd reader isn't a representative test.
Hare braned formatting tools will also often offset the filesystem by 512 Bytes (necessitating two writes and two reads for one 4k write) or use blocks that aren't 4kiB
https://web.archive.org/web/20151222043711/https://support.a...
It's like connecting a QLC SSD through an IDE port and complaining it's slow. It /is/ slow but not that slow.
A usb 3 UHS III reader would be able to talk to the card at full speed, then it's a matter of convincing the OS to trim it and buffer as if it's an internal hdd. Kinda expensive and pointless to go to that effort to get 2x hdd performance when there are NVME enclosures for cheaper SSDs that have 100x the IOPs though.
The SD cards usually used for mirrorless cameras, when recording video, have to write at 600 Mb/s. That should be plenty for most apps in phones.
(e.g. ProRes 422 at 4K 10-bit or XAVC-I 4:2:2 at 4K 10-bit)
90MB/s is slower than most HDDs, btw.
Built-in storage is the next limitation, if you get past holding your huge-screen no-grip phone securely (like with a pop holder) and the battery that degrades exponentially f(time).
https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?chk35mm=selected&sSIMT...
Ip68 is important. I went with xperia 10, and am positively surprised. Fits all the checkboxes and less undesired software than google. I don't have the mandatory search bar in the front screen!
https://gsmarena.com/results.php3?chk35mm=selected&chkAccele...
Source: https://shop.fairphone.com/en/buy-fairphone-4 under specification/storage -> unfold the block "Storage" and under the main storage is : External storage capacity: microSD up to 2TB (SD 3.0)
Great camera, great screen, headphone jack, microSD card slot too!
My display started failing after 4 months, when I was browsing intensely (and it was hot to the touch but I was using a pop holder), but they wouldn't fix it under warranty because they claimed the software caused the overheating. Screen replacement would have cost 70% of the device new.
That is when I started boycotting smartphones. I have a 7-year-old device (second-hand) and I do not use it for anything security critical.
I don't quite get the appeal of high end phones or of changing so frequently. What works, works.
I just wish:
* The battery was replaceable
* Moto didn't do stupid things such as break VPN functionality when they released the Android 12 upgrade. This was a failure of pre-prod testing that had to be corrected with a further update a few months later.
I'd rather buy 4 of the Nokia and live with the unwanted big screen rather than having the "right" form factor for 4x the price. That's not even a compromise here.
I was on your same boat until I actually owned an iPhone 12 mini. In reality, it sacrificed usability and battery life to achieve that small form factor. I had to bail on the phone because it was physically straining my eyes.
Our phones are basically pocket computers. That's why the screens are big. They're used for everything.
Here's the other thing about the 3mm headphone jack on phones: it's irrelevant to anyone with enough disposable income to afford wireless headphones. I personally own the second generation AirPods Pro, and to be honest they're completely mind-blowing compared to what we thought was possible on a technical level just 5-10 years ago.
Yes, I spent a lot of money on them. Yes, they are perhaps a disposable item considering how difficult/impossible it is to replace their tiny little batteries.
But would I go back to using wired headphones and getting them caught in a bunch of shit? No, not ever. No amount of dollar savings or latency shavings could convince me.
I still use wired headphones on my desktop computer, but that makes a lot more sense in that context. I'm not taking wires onto the train or the bus or the airplane ever again.
The reason budget phones like Nokias have headphone jacks and sometimes even microSD slots is because their customers will not pay for upgraded internal storage or expensive wireless headphones. On the other side of the market, companies like Samsung and Apple can upsell a lot of their flagship phone customers and give them a nudge by removing that port.
It's the same reason why you don't see a number of options packages on a Toyota that you can get on a Lexus that's based on the same vehicle.
Is the removal of the headphone jack a shady tactic? Maybe it is. On the other hand, maybe it's just an obsolete port for that market segment. If I am using an expensive gaming PC, do I need my graphics card to output to VGA or DVI? Of course not. But I might need that if I'm buying a PC to hook up to a 15 year old monitor in a school computer lab.
For desktop use cases they have the problem that you have to take them off to get up.
Well that and the struggle of finding half decent headphones that fit my needs (decent enough they wouldn't die in a year, but not so expensive i'm going to regret it if they get damaged or lost).
I still hate that I now have headphones that can die, but it is nice to be able to walk around listening to whatever without having to carry my phone on me while I cook/clean/whatever. Not what i paid for them nice....but it's something.
You can use an adapter? Or a headphone amp with a BT receiver, I have one.
Considering the light weight of wireless headphones it doesn't seem like they're actually a significant ewaste issue, especially since earbuds aren't repairable either.
It is good that larger over ear headphones have replaceable cords, but I don't know, people are too enthusiastic about audiophile headphones - the ones they recommend only work well in perfectly quiet listening environments. In the real world you want noise cancelling, not open ear cans.
I think Bose still has wired noise cancelling headphones too.
But worrying about ewaste from headphones and then buying an Android phone with a piss poor history of long term operating system support is looking at the wrong place
Why should I throw away headphones that work perfectly fine (or constantly lose and buy new adapters)?
It's not like removing the headphone jack helped in slimness or battery runtime – the iPod shuffle had a headphone jack and that worked just fine, almost 20 years ago!
I really shouldn’t have had to get rid of all of SCSI peripherals either.
And Apple really should haven’t abandoned the 32 pin connector either on the first iPod. All of my accessories like my cassette to 30 pin adapter that let me pause and play my iPod from tape deck became obsolete
Btw, did you also complain when you couldn’t use your 32 pin iPod accessories with your Shuffle?
Besides, I have an Apple Watch, iPad, phone and Mac. When I start doing something on one, my Airpods automatically switch.
The AirPod shuffle was also not waterproof and running with that and the wired headphones was irritating especially compared to my Watch with AirPods.
There are plenty of Lightning headphones available
https://www.macworld.com/article/668694/best-lightning-headp...
We replaced SCSI with SATA. Or music cassettes with CDs.
But the headphone jack is and remains a standard. My audio interfaces have XLR, 6.3 mm or 3.5 mm jacks. My cameras and Zoom recorders use XLR, mini XLR or 3.5 mm. My AV receiver uses 3.5 mm, 6.3 mm or XLR (or banana plugs for passive speakers).
These connectors remain the standard across desktop computers, laptops, audio interfaces, professional condenser microphones, mirrorless cameras, audio recorders, etc.
I don't see a reason to throw away expensive my Sennheiser headphones nor my IEMs, just because a handful of devices in one industry want to force me into paying more money.
> Btw, did you also complain when you couldn’t use your 32 pin iPod accessories with your Shuffle?
No, back then I complained that “made for iPod” required a proprietary port which wasn't compatible with either mini-USB nor micro-USB devices. I never bought, owned, or will own a device with proprietary connectors.
I wouldn't call that a niche when most models still have it.
I mean, I know why, but it’s crazy. As soon as I find a high quality standalone watch I’ll start to seriously consider not having a phone at all. Or perhaps just not an expensive iPhone.
Watches cover pretty much every use case I have with a phone.
The other watches seem to come close, but should be topped up pretty much daily (with my level of usage) from what I understand.
Many watchOS apps and features require an iPhone in order to be set up. For example: Oceanic+, Waterlamma, Overcast, various Apple Health features, or Sleep Cycle. That's a pretty wide variety from my own experience so I suspect it's quite common.
Until that stops being a thing, we'll need iOS to maintain our watches. In some cases it sort of makes sense because you're using apps that function sort of like a sidecar to iOS apps, not a standalone app. There are several where this isn't the case at all though, and it feels a lot like unnecessary tethering which limits our ability to use an otherwise very capable device on its own.
I think we'll get there; other manufacturers won't have the same incentive to keep watch apps tethered to phones, and I suspect that freedom will become increasingly appealing to Apple Watch users. I could be wrong, but I imagine eventually that limitation will seem too ridiculous to consumers. I don't expect to happen for quite a while still, though.
I keep mine in Sports mode, which is basically just a smart watch , most of the time
I still have it, and don't plan on buying anything new until I can either 1. get an iphone mini with a usb C jack or 2. find a competitor that's similar sized.
I'm so so sick of these massive phones.