Hacker News Reader

Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to feel positive about upgrading my phone when every new phone seems to remove things I want while adding stuff I don't care about.

My S10e is a reasonable size in my pocket. It has a headphone jack. It has an SD card slot. Any new Samsung phone I buy will be missing these things, and I'll be forced to pay hundreds of dollars extra to increase the on-board storage that will still be far less than the 512GB sd card I've currently got in there.

And I could try switching away from Samsung, but then I risk losing even more features I take to be standard, like wireless charging.

The phone still works just fine, it's fast enough for my needs (although the battery is certainly worse than when I got it). I would be more than happy to pay like $100/yr for "extended" support on it to still get repairs and security patches, rather than having to chuck it in the bin.

View on HN

I have an iPhone 13 mini, the last <5" flagship phone you can buy. I'm not particularly tied to the iPhone ecosystem, but when this dies, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Same here, I am genuinely shocked they discontinued the mini series. Will there be another version of the SE maybe?

As another person in the same boat, the problem is that people don't buy them. Like it or not, we're in the minority.

IIRC, the mini versions skimped on the camera. That’s the only reason I didn’t buy one. I preferred the small size but wanted the best camera offered.

Other than battery capacity and physical size of the phone (body and display), the Minis are identical to their non-Mini non-Pro counterparts.

I guess what this person wants are the cameras of the Ultra Max Pro Super Mega iPhone model, on the mini version. And not "just" the cameras of the standard iPhone.

Yea I agree. They tend to market the mini or smaller ones not just as smaller phones but as lower end phones. Since my order of preferences is the features and then the size, I end up never able to justify the smaller phone even though I don't need the big size.

I would be surprised if even 5% of people noticed the difference in a picture taken by a 13 mini and a 15 pro max.

Speaking of, I don't understand why camera quality is the selling point that so many people glom onto.

I get why it's useful to some. But I have to imagine we've crossed the point where "better camera" stopped being noticeable to the masses?

I take lots of pictures, and cameras are expensive. So - upgrading my phone every 3-5 years is better if the camera gets a good improvement.

Sure I get that. My focus was on this part: "But I have to imagine we've crossed the point where "better camera" stopped being noticeable to the masses?"

We haven't crossed that point, no.

Everything might look good in the camera app preview, but it's really noticeable when you go back and look at your old photos. You see a lot of things you wish were captured better. That's from just a year or two ago.

I'm sure there are people who say they don't care about their photos having room for improvement, and sometimes you want better and can't afford it, but that's not quite the same.

I can only speak for my experience with iPhones.

I went from iPhone 4 -> 7 -> 11 -> 13. I upgraded on a shorter cycle from 11 to 13 so I could pass down my 11 to my kids. In each instance, the image quality has improved tremendously.

Going from 4 to 7 was a massive jump in terms of resolution. Going from 7 to 11 was a boost in color and clarity, despite being nearly the same MP. Going from 11 to 13 was a huge improvement in night mode and shooting speeds. Also, these are non-PRO phones, as I cannot afford the PRO ones. I imagine the improvement in the PRO iPhone cameras are nicer.

Every iteration has been an improvement to me, and obviated the need for a DSLR in every day use.

Literally all my family photos are taken on a phone. I don’t own another camera. What is so hard to understand?

I am no photography expert but if you skip 3-4 generations of iPhone you are guaranteed a very substantial upgrade every time. The improvements are visible and obvious.

That's only a problem because of monopolies.

A very small minority of Americans buy pizza in Columbus, Ohio. That doesn't mean there aren't any pizza sellers there.

Pizza parlors are ubiquitous because it takes 50 cents of ingredients, 5 minutes, and an elementary school education to make one. It’s not a very relevant analogy.

There is only so much variation to the size of people’s hands. The mini makes a big battery life and visibility sacrifice to save space.

It’s not much different to the reasons why two-door sports cars have fallen out of favor. They can only do one thing well.

Phones have to do so much for the typical person, they’re not just basic communication devices, and having one that can’t do everything all day is a big compromise.

I had a 12 mini and 13 mini and I can understand why they were discontinued. I loved them at first, but the trade off ultimately doesn’t make sense. I bet you there were very few repeat customers.

I have small fingers and it was hard to type on. Looking at the screen was straining, and it would be worse if I was older or had worse eyesight. The battery life got a little better for the 13 mini but I got range anxiety and had to charge before the day ended almost every day.

People hate the short battery life, and all the high-powered parts of a premium phone (to the extent that they do take more power) are thus even worse suited to the small battery. Incidentally, I'm starting to want something with less battery; mine lasts over two days, so it seems like I should get something smaller. Problem is, from what I understand, iPhones still do slow charging in 2023.

Re:iPhone SE, the newest one was announced March 2022, a refresh from the 2020 predecessor, so I think you should consider them an active product line with slower refresh cycle fitting a lower-price device.

> iPhones still do slow charging in 2023.

I'm not sure where you got this impression, they've supported fast charging since the iPhone 8 in 2017, which could do 50% of the battery in 30 mins, with the appropriate charger. Now which fast charging spec is a different question.

Thanks, that's faster than I realized.

This is the only thing on the horizon that I'm aware of: https://smallandroidphone.com/ but it's looking like vaporware at this point.

Yeah, I signed up for updates more than a year ago and haven't gotten any. Migicovsky seems more interested in Beeper than furthering this project. Which I get, an app is easier and cheaper to deploy than a phone. Still a bit disappointed, I might end up buying a Unihertz Atom XL for a reasonable screen size with bonus FRS radio built in.

The smallest current vaguely mainstream phone IMO is the Asus Zenfone 10 at 146.5 x 68.1 x 9.4 mm. The iPhone 13 mini is 131.5 x 64.2 x 7.65mm. Then you have weird stuff: https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2022&fDisplay... so perhaps by the time your phone dies the Cubot Pocket 4 or 5 will be your answer. Here's the Pocket 3: https://www.gsmarena.com/cubot_pocket_3-12314.php

I agree it isn't really mainstream, but Samsung has the "Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5" at 85.1 x 71.9 x 15.1 mm while folded.

Zenfone 10 is only marketed as a compact phone. In reality, it is just slightly narrower than a Samsung S23 (146.3 x 70.9 x 7.6).

yet that makes it 5.9" instead of 6.1" clever marketing gimmick to fit into the below 6" bracket

The iPhone SE 3rd generation would be the smallest mainstream phone, seeing as it’s still sold, but might not meet your definition of “current”.

At this point I’d go back to iPhone 8 form factor if it gets an upgrade, but I’m on a 12 mini and it’s not a big step up

Technically the LTE iWatches are a <5" phone, too.

Can you use them completely independently from an Apple phone? I thought not...

Context: I'm not particularly interested in switching to Apple's phone ecosystem, but their watches seem to be superior to Android's and I am slightly interested in getting one of them.

I don't have one, but I was under the impression cellular versions of Apple Watches can be used independently from an iPhone. You can take calls, send messages, stream music, etc. miles away from a phone, as its connectivity isn't through the phone its through its own onboard cellular modem. Now, do you have to have some kind of iPhone somewhere for it to do things like route messages through iMessage? I don't know.

You can but it’s not the most ideal experience. Calling, maps, and health stuff works fine; texting is alright; other apps are going to be hit or miss, mostly miss. You also need to get the more expensive LTE version, and to have a provider that will sell you an esim for just the watch without an attached plan for a phone.

With the newer iterations, you can. I bought a series 5 used off ebay and plan to try using it independently. It's obviously not going to give you the full functionality of a full-sized phone, but if we're talking minimalist phones I don't think that's the point anyway. Maps + (very) basic texting + phone calls.

Same. I had an iPhone 5, then an SE (1st gen) and now with a 12 mini. Form factor is the key argument. If there no more "mini" form factor, I'm moving to something else.

I'm starting to think about combination smart watches + dumb phone. But I have no clue how the smart watches actually are. But smartphone seems to be targeted for people that do not use laptop/desktop that much.

>But smartphone seems to be targeted for people that do not use laptop/desktop that much.

I'm a "power user", and I want a powerful device when I'm away from my laptop/desktop. Currently using the Samsung Fold 4, and loving it.

the mini has a 5.4" screen, its not <5"

Really sad to see not being corrected after dozens of comments and upvotes. It gives me the feeling people dont actually know what they are talking about.

I bought my S10e for 450AUD ($300US) on clearance six months after it was released. I've replaced the factory rom, and the battery once.

There's nothing on the android market like it, it's only slightly larger than the iphone 12/13 mini that's also discontinued. Small phones with all the bells and whistles aren't made anymore by anyone. I will be very sad when I can't get parts.

Oh, I didn't even notice why I keep postponing upgrading my out-of-line phone that can't even get new software from the play store anymore. But yeah, it's because I dread of looking around trying to decide what I'll give up to get a headphone jack.

You can put a USBC-to-3.5mm (or lightning) adapter on your headphones and just leave it there. Not as good as having a proper headphone jack, but it's good enough. Yes, they make combo listen & charge adapters, too.

I don't think it's good enough, and I don't think the others complaining about the same issue are somehow unaware of charge+listen USB-C or Lightning dongles either.

My gripe is that I don't want to pay for a new thing that causes me a problem that I don't currently have. I don't want to carry and keep track of a dongle. I don't want to put wear and tear on the USB-C port for the 8-12 hours a day I've got headphones plugged into the phone in my pocket.

Yeah, 100% agree it sucks. But what I'm responding to is, "I dread of looking around trying to decide what I'll give up to get a headphone jack." I'm saying it's not worth making an enormous sacrifice to retain the jack.

I've been using adapters for at least 5 years at this point, I've never had a port break. The dongles do break after 4~6 months, which sucks, but they're only like $8-10. Buy a handful and swap in a new one as they break. It is a downgrade, and you're right to complain, but again it's not worth making a big sacrifice over.

That's fair. And it certainly won't be an enormous sacrifice.

It's just that I've been postponing making any effort towards that, with some unusual amount of resistance that I couldn't explain until I saw the GP.

Former S10 owner here. It had an audio jack, and an SpO2 meter (which is useful to a family member), and FM radio (used it a lot when doing farm work). The S22 has none of those, and it is heavier. Feeling so cheated by phone ~~makers~~ grifters is making me very careful with any of my next purchases. It's as if the market has reached a peak and the only thing they can think of is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I also loved my S10e. Unfortunately the mainboard on it died few few months ago.

I bought Sony Xperia 1 V to replace it. It has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a MicroSD card slot. The build quality is excellent but I'm a bit worried what the software support will look like in a few years.

It's a Sony, you should be worried that it's being supported at the time they released it. Akio Morita is rolling in his grave.

Eventually you'll just have to upgrade because the phone is too slow. I had to upgrade from my galaxy S8 earlier this year because it slowed to a crawl, my wife commented on how slow it was every time she used it. I had it for 5 years. I still hate not having a headphone jack, but having 5G and an insanely fast phone made it worth it.

I bought a usbc to barrel adapter. It has a extra cable for power if I want to charge too. Still annoyed they took it away. s5->s22 was my step.

That's quite the leap! Good job holding onto the old one so long.

replaced the battery 3 times! this new one not so much.

I bought it thinking 'ill get the best there is. At the time it was. Then all I used it for was very light web stuff and phone calls. So as long as it did those 2 things I was fine. Still trying to figure out what to use it for. I think one of the flash chips is EoL at this point.

It's well known that the flash memory degrades and gets very much slower over time, and this is why smart phones get slower as they age. Can't replace the flash, so the phone is essentially unusable after a few years.

Also a S10e user here. I've been eyeing the Asus Zenfone 10, but it's unfortunately not available in the US for most mobile networks here. Truly a shame that not many are making small phones, and those that are are not paying attention to the US market.

And new phots are super expensive. You are paying more in the phone than your work notebook, something is terrible wrong with that.

That's why I drag out my upgrades as long as I can. If I want a decent upgrade it's gotta be higher end, and if it's higher end it's gonna be >$1000 CAD (if not ~$1,500). If I have to spend that much, I'm going to try to get it to last as long as possible so that I get the value out of the current phone AND the greatest improvements possible before plopping down that money down again.

The phone makers did it to themselves with the prices.

pretty much. This days Im happy with a middle end phone, because my mother and step daugher always Inherit my old phone from me, so if I have to buy for everyone I will buy every year a middle of the range phone and after a year or 2 give to one of them,

I loved my s10e, although the camera glass (or rather plastic) cracked during the first months from basically placing the phone on flat surfaces. Otherwise the form factor, dimensions, audio jack port, photos quality were excellent.

My galaxy s10 rocks. I guess the battery has had almost 1000 charging cycles and is still performing good enough. I like the smaller than average size and weight, the smooth and snappy scratch resistant screen. Speaker sound is quite decent.

I don't see how I would benefit from things like 100Hz or more screen refresh rate or even tinier pixels. 5G, I would not use since that would increase the amount of wireless data so much that i'd need a more expensive plan.

I guess a lot of phones in use are sitting on a 'more than decent' plateau. It's a good thing.

I'm pretty sure almost every mainstream phone nowadays has wireless charging. The iPhones do, Pixel phones do, etc.

I thought so too, and believed it so much I didn't check the detailed specs of my OnePlus 10T.....

Oh damn, I would've not expected OnePlus to not support it, with them being always on the more cutting-edge of technology. That's a huge letdown.

OnePlus is a big disappointment to me. I'd be a customer for life if they'd kept doing what made them so good:

1. Never settle: big specs, lots of features. SD cards and headphone jack on a flagship? yes please!

2. Factory images available so I can easily re-flash to stock

3. Great pricing

4. Not required proprietary charger to get max speed

They could really turn it around, but they would need to return to their roots. Until then I'll just stick with the Pixel A series. It never excites me about phones, but it checks most of my boxes.

For a while the "a" versions of Pixels didn't have wireless charging. The 6a does not have wireless charging, but the newer 7a does.

I'm not upgrading from my Pixel 5A. It has a fingerprint reader and I can unlock it from my pocket. It has a headphone jack. Every new phone has taken these things away. Very disappointing.

Still with SD cards and headphone jacks? The world has moved on, my man.

This is a technical audience. This article is about people not upgrading phones. There are many technical and professional people that have chosen not to upgrade phones because of the lack of these features.

Clearly, that group isn't the main reason for the decline (it's not even mentioned as a trend in the article,) but it really shouldn't be surprising that there are people on this site who still take these things into consideration when upgrading.

Oh yeah, moved on to what? What has replaced those things and rendered them obsolete?

On-board storage sure didn't, that's small and not portable, and we already had that. Bluetooth headphones didn't, those require special hardware, have to be charged (battery), have higher latency, reduced sound quality (lower fidelity), packet loss, and spyware built in, and DRM capable. Not even close to a replacement for analog headphone jack.

The storage on the device is portable when the device is portable. There are very few instances where I'd find an SD card acceptably portable but a phone not so.

Phones these days come in hundreds of gigs of storage. My current phone was a decently cheap one and had 128GB of storage, easily >100GB of usable space. On Android one can easily mount the storage as a USB drive and transfer data at high speeds. And given its a nearly permanently network device its pretty trivial to have it sync storage someplace else, including your own self-hosted infrastructure. I don't need to have my complete music library on my device everywhere I go, I just cache the playlists I'm in to at the moment and stream when I have network (which is the majority of the time). Same goes with consuming video content or listening to podcasts or whatever. Why save it locally when it can trivially be streamed? Why keep your entire photo and personal movie collection on your portable device which can get lost and broken when you can just connect back home and access even more storage with higher reliability anytime, anywhere?

Between on-board storage ballooning in size and network infrastructure making it pretty easy to access things over the net, for me and many others having SD cards is entirely obsolete.

I don't understand what you mean about "spyware built in" for Bluetooth headphones. All my Bluetooth devices do not have any other kinds of network connectivity, they don't phone home or anything like that. There's no app or anything like that needed for them.

There's also no "DRM" for Bluetooth, the output of the Bluetooth audio doesn't have some kind of macrovision or something preventing you from recording it or anything like that. I've got Bluetooth receivers which output to S/PDIF and analog RCA connectors, its not protected or anything like that.

> Why save it locally when it can trivially be streamed?

If you usually have a network connection, then most of the time streaming is fine. However, not everybody does. About 50% of the time I'm not home, I have little to no service, and even sometimes when I have a strong signal, it will randomly just stop working unless I toggle airplane mode off and on to reforce a handshake with the tower. If we all lived in a big city then sure we could probably make that assumption, but some people live in Wyoming. With local storage I can download high quality FLACs from Bandcamp and get higher quality without having to even think about whether I'll have service. Offline playback of music is a feature the original iPod had!

> Why keep your entire photo and personal movie collection on your portable device which can get lost and broken when you can just connect back home and access even more storage with higher reliability anytime, anywhere?

I would guess most people have more than 100GB in personal photos and videos, so even for the average use case this seems wrong, but especially for people that record much 4K video, you'll run out of space very quickly. Those files can easily get multiple GB in size. If you're on a vacation where you have little or no network connection, you'll have to downgrade your video quality or limit what you record. How is that better? If there were an SD card slot, this is a non-issue because you can bring as many SD cards as you need, and swap them out as they fill up. Can you do that with onboard storage? Then it's not a replacement/obsolescence, it's just a feature removal.

> I don't understand what you mean about "spyware built in" for Bluetooth headphones. All my Bluetooth devices do not have any other kinds of network connectivity, they don't phone home or anything like that. There's no app or anything like that needed for them.

That's great, I'm really happy for you. But some bluetooth headphones do have spyware (especially some of the best ones in some people's opinions). If it requires you to use a special app to pair and/or access features, then it (probably) has spyware in it. Bose is a great example (or at least was, maybe things have changed). With a physical head phone jack, there's no pairing required and there's no way to force you to use their software. That's a hell of a feature IMHO.

That you don't personally have a use case for a headphone jack, doesn't mean it's obsolete. There isn't a replacement for a physical headphone jack, only alternatives with different pros and cons. If that were the criteria, then the M3 macbook would be considered obsolete because I don't personally have a use for it.

> If it requires you to use a special app to pair and/or access features, then it (probably) has spyware in it.

There's an extreme minority of Bluetooth audio devices which have apps. And even in those extreme outliers, the app is optional. The headphones still pair to Bluetooth devices without issues, or else it is not using Bluetooth. I've used >50 different bluetooth audio devices over the years, 0 ever needed some kind of app to pair. Suggesting Bluetooth has some baked-in spyware is absolutely untrue; There's no baked-in spyware to the Bluetooth audio stack. The Bluetooth audio stack has no built-in way to enforce the app.

It really shows your extreme biases though stating such wild untruths like Bluetooth has baked-in spyware and DRM.

> Suggesting Bluetooth has some baked-in spyware is absolutely untrue; There's no baked-in spyware to the Bluetooth audio stack. The Bluetooth audio stack has no built-in way to enforce the app.

I never said that. If you actually read what I wrote, you'll see that I specifically mentioned that some do that, and that they require an app to pair or access special features. That is the opposite of saying the spyware is baked into the Bluetooth audio stack. Not to mention, there isn't just one stack, there are numerous different implementations. Either you're arguing in bad faith or you don't understand the technology and how an app could introduce spyware, or both. If you want to actually have a productive conversation, you need to stop the straw manning[1] and pearl clutching[2] and address the arguments (of which there several more that you're conveniently ignoring).

And the attempt at accusation in a mirror[3] of "extreme bias" further demonstrates bad faith on your part. I think it's best to just go our separate ways on this one.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pearl-clutching

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror

I did read what you wrote.

> Bluetooth headphones didn't, those require special hardware, have to be charged (battery), have higher latency, reduced sound quality (lower fidelity), packet loss, and spyware built in, and DRM capable.

Here you're not stating that some extreme minority (read: probably <0.001%) have an entirely optional app which might possibly have spyware. You're stating Bluetooth headphones have spyware built in. Where's the limitation that its only some of them? Sure, later you walk back your extreme position, but you make yourself known off the bat in your original comment.

Thinking that Bluetooth headphones, as an overall concept, has spyware baked in isn't grounded in reality. The only way I can imagine you pushing that idea, which you 100% did in your original post, is an extreme aversion to it. Which its funny you then accuse me of not knowing how Bluetooth audio works, when you're the one arguing spyware is inherently baked into it. Which please, point to me any standard Bluetooth Audio spec (A2DP, LE Audio, etc) which has spyware baked in like you originally claimed.

Please, show me one pair of headphones which represent themselves as Bluetooth headphones but will not pair without an app installed. That somehow use the Bluetooth protocol to enforce DRM and enforce spyware. Or else get otta here with claims like "Bluetooth has spyware built in". Maybe its not me that doesn't understand the technology.

Ah, but I'm the one arguing in bad faith and doesn't understand technology. Not the one who makes non-factual statements like "Bluetooth has spyware built in" and later argues they didn't say it.[0] Its not straw manning to address something you literally did write. Its not pearl clutching to point out when someone says something untrue like "Bluetooth has spyware built in".

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

> On Android one can easily mount the storage as a USB drive and transfer data at high speeds.

One can? I thought one actually can't, because a) the internal storage is using a file system Windows PCs and Macs don't understand and b) you can't simultaneously mount the internal storage on both your phone and your computer because that would only lead to data corruption. And unmounting the internal storage while the phone is running isn't possible either, because that's were all your apps and settings and whatnot are stored.

Hence for a very long time now you can only access your phone via MTP, which can be annoyingly fickle and less stable.

Conversely, an external SD card that only gets used as additional storage space for documents, music, pictures, etc., actually can be unmounted and at least in principle be switched into true mass storage mode (although in practice this might require root, and I don't know how well this still works on current phone models that still feature SD card slots).

You're using an extremely narrow definition of "mount" here, as in natively mounting the filesystem. Accessing your phone via MTP is still a form of "mounting" the storage over USB. Different than how one would mount an SD card, sure, but its still "mounting" the storage.

I've had no problems over several years using my Android device as essentially a large external storage device to move files around. For the purpose of copying photos, videos, documents, other files, side loading apps, etc. it works well.

And one can go the other way and take an external drive and plug it in to most Android devices these days to copy data off of it without having to use it with a Windows/Mac/Linux device. So from the perspective of someone who went on a vacation in the woods and is shooting hundreds of gigs of videos it is possible to plug in external storage and copy off to it directly. One could even use a USB SD card reader and write it to SD cards. Or MMC cards. Or floppy disks if you're so inclined.

> I've had no problems over several years using my Android device as essentially a large external storage device to move files around. For the purpose of copying photos, videos, documents, other files, side loading apps, etc. it works well.

Yeah it works, but I'd still say that "well" only applies with some caveats. MTP only works with full computers, not other devices that only expect some dumb USB storage (like the book scanner at my local state library), for a long time there was a bug whereby Android didn't preserve the last modified date when copying files via MTP (and I'm still not absolutely sure it's been fixed in current Android versions – I guess I'm going to find out once I finally upgrade my phone), sometimes it didn't show changes I made on my phone if the media scanner hadn't got around to indexing them yet, normal software on my computer other than the file explorer couldn't directly access files, listing of directories was slow, if you tried to do too much at once (like continuing to browse the storage while some large file transfer was underway) you'd get the dreaded "device is busy" error… it's better than nothing and it's not completely unusable, but there's a reason why I immediately looked for better solutions

Reply on news.ycombinator.com