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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> This perceptual dissonance limits our ability to immerse ourselves in the experience.

As opposed to the perceptual dissonance of seeing a person inside a small rectangle we can hold in our hands? Or the strangeness of hearing an entire orchestra while sitting on a bus? The fact that sound emanates from a slightly unnatural place or direction isn't a problem worth addressing, despite the fact that fixing it might make phones 1mm thinner.

How about this: Give me a phone with a proper usb port, a couple sim cards, an SD slot, a replaceable battery and a headphone jack. I couldn't possibly care any less about making it any thinner. It's going into a protective case anyway.

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> As opposed to the perceptual dissonance of seeing a person inside a small rectangle we can hold in our hands?…

I don’t think it makes to frame this as “opposed” to any of the other factors you’re mentioning. This is setting up a false dichotomy.

Having experienced “Spatial Audio”, there is a clear benefit to a sound system that more closely mimics the expectations of our brain’s auditory processing. More than just the sound itself, there’s a certain kind of “presence” or “thereness” that you can experience as a viewer that isn’t possible with traditional speakers, and it can transform certain kinds of content. The person (or whatever you’re watching) is indeed still shown on a piece of glass, but the experience of that can be improved significantly. If a speaker-in-the-screen can achieve something similar, that’s compelling.

I don’t see the relevance of the bus scenario, where externally broadcast audio is never the right choice.

The phone you describe sounds terrible to me (I’d like the headphone jack back but the battery is a tradeoff) but that’s because you and I have different preferences and priorities. And there’s nothing preventing all of the above from being integrated into a device should there be a market for it. And phones aren’t the only devices that can benefit.

> Give me a phone with a proper usb port, a couple sim cards, an SD slot, a replaceable battery and a headphone jack

without the proper usb port ("only" type C), LG had a number of phones ticking all those boxes (while being good phones, good cameras, good screens, the whole thing). They sold so poorly LG left the market.

That is a post-hoc fallacy, implying LG sold poorly because it stuck with these design choices. Even if you didn't mean that, the way you built your paragraph, describing the design choices and then saying LG sold poorly and left the market draws exactly this kind of causation.

https://www.techradar.com/news/why-lg-is-leaving-the-mobile-...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/04/05/after-y...

These two articles indicate only that LG was struggling in the market and decided to focus elsewhere.

They provided two true statements, they didn't link them causally even if they could have done more to make sure people didn't assume that they were implying causation (or maybe they were implying that they think it's likely).

If I say "I hadn't done any of my homework in Calculus. I failed the class." Most readers would assume that the homework statement is related to the failure statement. Even if the real reason was the homework was with zero points and I failed the final exam because I left after five minutes to chase my future wife down before she flew home. That's the thing with language, it's not formal logic and readers make all sorts of inferences based on order and content of statements. That's what makes for good writing and reading between the lines.

I don't know what the poster meant, but drawing a conclusion that there is some correlation due to statement choice is normal.

> That is a post-hoc fallacy, implying LG sold poorly because it stuck with these design choices

No, clearly saying that LG tried all the OP was asking, but there wasn't enough of a market for it, so OP is obviously in the non-sufficiently profitable minority.

Smartphone market is much more complex than just ticking feature boxes. There is brand value perception, post-sales support and warranty, ecosystem, OS customisations, device exchange programs and other marketing strategies.

There might still be market for users looking for modular phones. Fairphone comes to mind in this aspect.

LG failing to provide a product for this specific market niche isn't enough of evidence to support the claim that the market itself doesn't exist, only that LG couldn't or had no interest in maintaining it.

All those things you want take up space. Wouldn’t it be good if current stuff took up less space so you could have more and better features? Of course it would. Not that you are getting those features, but other features like a bigger battery, a better camera, a bigger screen, blah blah blah are all easier to do if the necessary features take up less space and weigh less. And I think it’s cool, it might even open up a whole new gaming concept incorporating locational sound.

Phones becoming thinner and lighter would be amazing though. Imagine iPhone 7 sized device packing the features of iPhone 15 Pro.

Having the screen be responsible for (or assisting) haptics will also mean “spatial haptics” can be a thing, with extreme precision. Also, no more “finger obscuring speaker opening” while holding your phone.

I’m all in on thinner phones with less parts.

> This perceptual dissonance

Check out Michel Chion and the idea of the "audio-visual contract" [0]

I forget, but it has a more formal definition like source fusing in experimental perceptual psychology.

What happens is there is a brief dissonance, but it only lasts for a few milliseconds and then our brains _very_ quickly adjust to align what we see and hear, and crucially what we attribute as the source of sounds. This is a actually not a learned but a low-level adaptation because sound travels slowly compared to light and it reflects (echos) so our brains must be able to re-synchronise effortlessly.

[0] http://www.filmsound.org/chion/av-contr.htm

The Homermobile of phones?

https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer

Do you also want a phone with a hardware keyboard and a dedicated push to talk button?

PTT would be great with WhatsApp messages.

I would love having a hardware keyboard again personally, especially when I need fire up a SSH session to fix something. The inaccuracies of touch keyboards are a real pain sometimes.

I mean the newest iPhones have a programmable button on the side that will let you run a shortcut to launch any app you want to among other things…

There’s still room for my HAM radio, right?

Foldable screens, extra mini screens on the back of phones, wireless charging, little vibrators to simulate pushing physical keys, multiple cameras, accelerometers that track calories burned ... the modern cellphone is already well past The Homer.

But it will be great for marketing, a justification to increase the price of new phones, and overall great for shareholders. Also a no thanks for me.

No, no, give me a phone that is light! What I want is paper-level weights, say 300 GSM (grams/sq-meter) which is the weight density of a business-card.

Let's fight repetitive stress first, the one related to the holding of smartphones for hours. Then we can tackle trigger-thumb related issues later (I hope) once, ie, it tracks eye movements reliably and efficiently. Our generation is bound for a lot of health issues related to hand-held devices.

Correct. With enough effort we may soon be able to interact with others via our phones using only eye blinks. The one thing this generation needs is less physical activity.

Nothing gets my blood flowing like my Twitter routine, whew lad. Been moving up to 2400 calories per day of pure whey. These thumb gains aint easy, but the grind is worth it.

Nobody is getting their physical activity via their smartphone usage.

Not yet. My startup is going to disrupt the cellphone battery industry by attaching a small crank to the back of every phone. We predict this will reduce child obesity, saving billions in health care cost the moment we go public.

Well, why not add a keyboard and call it a laptop?

Motorola G-series. Not all of these, but still.

Like the phrase “Nothing in our evolution could have prepared us for this”. I first saw it at XKCD.

> Give me a phone with a proper usb port, a couple sim cards, an SD slot, a replaceable battery and a headphone jack. I couldn't possibly care any less about making it any thinner. It's going into a protective case anyway.

Almost nobody wants this phone. Sure you'll get cheered on by some small group of people that wouldn't actually buy this phone either, but it just wouldn't sell well enough to justify its existence. There's probably already a phone with most of these features.

You'd be surprised about the amount of people wanting this kind of smartphone. The success of Framework, who are doing something similar in the Laptop world, could be a robust indicator for the demand. Especially the replaceable battery is something we really should get back to IMHO.

The “success” of Framework? By what metric are you defining success?

They employ 45 people and demand for their products is outpacing supply. Assuming they're at least breaking even, that's success.

It's a success in this niche space. Just like there are niche smartphones providing all those features.

Could you please name these smartphones that run a modern version of Android, have modern hardware, and various niche features?

Samsung XCover 6 Pro, Fairphone 5.

> Almost nobody wants this phone.

Evidence?

> Sure you'll get cheered on by some small group of people that wouldn't actually buy this phone either

So all the people who say they want a phone like that are lying?

> So all the people who say they want a phone like that are lying?

They are not lying. Just there aren't enough of them to make such a phone worth producing.

Those features describe the average Android phone on the market until the mid-2010s. If there was popular demand, you’d expect the models which continued to have things like headphone jacks to sell well enough that someone would keep making them, but that just hasn’t been the case.

This suggests that however genuine the desire is, it’s just not widely shared enough to actually constitute a viable market – somewhere below the level of, say, manual transmissions on cars.

Or it demonstrates a lack of competition in the market which allows a handful of big manufacturers, who have similar incentives to cut costs, to make the same decision to cut costs - lots of small reductions lead to a relatively big total increase in margins. In terms of wh.at actually gets marketed to most consumers choice is quite limited

I do have a phone that is about two years old that has a headphone jack.

Replaceable batteries and lack of SD card slots is essential deliberately shortening the life of phones to get people to upgrade sooner.

Batteries are replaceable, just not by you. Do some people replace their phone when the battery sucks? Sure, maybe. But then that phone probably gets refurbished for someone else to buy.

The main use of user replaceable batteries for me was always when my phone only lasted a few hours so I had to swap another one. My Samsung Blackjack with 3G would die in like an hour if I was actively using the 3g connection lol. G1 and HTC Evo also didn't last a whole shift at work.

The market didn’t change instantly, and if we’re to believe there is significant demand one of the many models which did not switch first would have sold better.

> Replaceable batteries and lack of SD card slots is essential deliberately shortening the life of phones to get people to upgrade sooner.

Phone batteries are replaceable, but most people do not want to do it themselves so they go to the mall and pay someone else $50 - it’s still much cheaper than a new phone. The flip side, of course, is that sealed phones are far more durable so instead of the over-simplified narrative about planned obsolescence we have a more nuanced trade off where something adds desirable traits (smaller, cheaper, waterproof, more durable) at the expense of a feature few buyers used. I wouldn’t fault you for being on the other side of that decision but I just don’t think there are that many people who look for that when phone shopping. An iPhone easily lasts 5 years and is probably getting replaced for something like a broken screen, not a battery.

SD cards are similar: yes, the extra storage is nice if you don’t use cloud storage but most people do, and those people avoid the data loss which many SD card users have been hit by and have smaller, more durable phones in exchange. Again, I think both preferences are reasonable but one of them is a niche.

> So all the people who say they want a phone like that are lying?

There's phones with dual usb ports already, do they own one? If not, then it's not as important a feature as they are implying. And that goes for pretty much everything on the list.

> Evidence?

Asus ROG phone sales numbers? The fact that people keep complaining phones don't have whatever feature instead of just buying one?

Well, someone wants these features enough that many will soon be mandatory.

USB port = Mandated in the EU by end of 2024. Replaceable battery = Mandated in EU by 2027. Dual sim cards = common in the global south. Headphone jack = wanted by everyone not a youtube influencer.

Compromise: I'll accept TWO USB-C ports in exchange for the headphone jack. Usb to 3.5mm adapter wires cost maybe 6$ on amazon.

My next phone will be an imported EU phone. I won't even care if it doesn't connect to cell towers (it will though).

I’m not a YouTube influencer and I don’t want a headphone jack. I haven’t used wired headphones in five years.

Other features you mentioned maybe but no one cares about the headphone jack anymore. I don't remember most people using it a lot even before it started to disappear.

I have bought maybe ten usb-to-3.5mm adapters in recent years. I keep giving them away. Last time I went on a work trip (military) I gave away two sets of cheap wired headphones+adapters to kids whose bluetooth headsets had stopped working during long plane/bus rides. (19yo = kid)

I'm not kidding when I say I recently saw someone on a plane using a wireless charging station. They had wrapped tape around the phone to hold it on the charger. Progress!

Have you found good adapters (or ones to avoid)?

I've been using the same $9 Apple one for 3+ years at this point. There have been times when I've pulled it out of my bag and saved the day. Young people are amazed that it just works (microphone and all), Mac or Windows, computer or tablet. Ain't progress wonderful?

Whatever one is on sale. They are all just cheap cables. The dacs are all just whatever one is available for a few cents at the time.

Key part of GP's comment:

> It's going into a protective case anyway.

With that in mind, it seems it's not really customers that want ever thinner, ever more sealed and port-free phones. The very first purchase they make after buying a new phone already defeats the purported benefits of those design choices.

I maintain this market is supplier-driven, and customer preferences have near-zero bearing on how phones look like today.

> The very first purchase they make after buying a new phone already defeats the purported benefits of those design choices.

While protective cases make the phones marginally thicker they don't make them less water proof. Which is in my opinion the purpose of making phones sealed and as port-free as possible.

And even with the protective case my current phone is much thinner than any phone I had with a user replaceable battery.

That may be a justification, but IMHO not the actual reason. It's about cost cutting, improving reliability, making space for more marketable features like camera and battery.

BTW, Samsung Galaxy S5 had all those features, even replaceable battery and was still waterproof.

The question of "what people want" is fascinating.

Like forever, some of the smartest people around admitted that they did not know. They created the entire field of market research. Today I think that is dead. In the past decade we moved to an entirely different model of force-fed consumerism, which is driven, as you say, entirely by the supply side. Oddly the near communist era uniformity we see goes against our stated beliefs in data-driven, targeted markets.

A whole other layer is how we increasingly project our own desires onto others and assume they must be crazy not to want the exact same thing as ourselves. Where does that come from? Here on HN I get tired of hearing these very strident, cock-sure remarks about "what people want is...". Let's just admit we don't have much idea about what other people want. There's nowt as queer as folk. And some of the most interesting markets may in fact be marginal. Smaller markets do not mean unprofitable ones.

> With that in mind, it seems it's not really customers that want ever thinner, ever more sealed and port-free phones.

I definitely do, to some extent. More sealed is good, I don't want water and dust inside my phone. The thinner the phone the thicker and more protective the case you can apply before it gets too thick. Or you could stick a battery in the case, or a USB hub, SD reader, etc. What stops this case from existing right now?

Sony has somehow made it work (except the replaceable battery). I think the only thing they've got rid of recently is the notification LED.

It doesn't help when a very large number of phone users only care about one thing: it being an Apple phone. They will lap up anything Apple gives them every single time. It doesn't matter what the features are.

> It doesn't matter what the features are.

What is more likely: that millions of people spend money on something they use constantly without caring whether it’s actually good, or that your emotional attachment to Android has caused you not to reconsider whether your tastes are in fact universally shared?

Any time you see billions of dollars changing hands for years in a competitive market but don’t understand why, the answer is always to learn more about it.

> They will lap up anything Apple gives them every single time. It doesn't matter what the features are.

Or, Apple actually makes well made good phones which people find desirable?

I understand it is popular to talk trash about them, but maybe their popularity is not all just a product of misguided masses?

> Sony has somehow made it work

And yet every post about phones there's people acting like no phones that meet their requirements exist. They definitely exist. I think what they really intend to say is "Why doesn't Samsung put these exact features I want on the Galaxy S Whatever"

Yes. iPhone users in particular don't even know about Android. There are two phone manufacturers: Apple and Samsung.

I think there are actually a lot of demands that are unserviced in the phone market. There really isn't a way for the consumer to signal this, though. In lieu of consumers I think companies tend to listen to influencers and journalists. I got that impression from watching the evolution of the Xperia Compact which solicited a lot of hate from journalists for its appearances and the misalignment from the norms. Hate to which Sony in many aspects decided to bend a knee to, much to my chagrin.

I will say however, that I expect the biggest confounder is the expense to tool and maintain a niche phone makes it less feasible given the limited demand. It nonetheless does exist, and I hope that such costs can be reduced so the market can diversify its offerings and I can have another XZ1c experience.

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