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Comment by Rinzler89 | Hacker News Reader

>Why today’s phones are so boooooring?

Because the HW part of the UX has been commoditized to a giant screen where the big difference in style and UX is made by the SW and UI.

In fairness LG has tried experimenting with different HW UX over the years to distinguish themselves[1], and they went bust doing it because consumer weren't into that and voted with their wallets to those making boring phones like everyone else.

If consumers want large pocket Netflix machines you give them large pocket Netflix machines if you want to stay in business. They can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

[1] https://www.androidheadlines.com/2021/04/top-5-best-unique-l...

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I remember as a young lad being taught that one of the virtues of a consumer society was that there was enough production variety that everyone could find a product that meets their needs.

Weird that smartphones are the exception.

There's enough app variety to meet your needs. Phones are now just basic pipes to those apps.

But what I want is a phone incapable of running apps. I just want a phone that acts as a phone, does SMS, and ideally has physical number pad.

Where do you live? Plenty of companies today sell 4G/LTE capable dumbphones or featurephones as they're called, including Nokia.

In the US. I have yet to find an actual dumbphone, though. There are plenty of feature phones, but those are just low-specced smartphones. Better than nothing, but not what I really want.

If, for instance, the phone is running something like KaiOS, then it's a low-spec smartphone even if it only presents dumbphone functionality.

Get a low spec phone. It’ll be incompatible with a bunch of apps and run most apps so poorly that you won’t want to use them.

Unihertz makes several phones that roughly fit your needs

> acts as a phone, does SMS

So literally the worst parts of smartphone - unsolicited calls and SMS and dependency of having a phone number in literally every government form, bank and serious website.

I’d kill for a smaller phone.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/225634137128

And more physical buttons. I can't leave my FiiO x3 1st gen because I can control it with a hand in my pocket.

I miss my LGs for exactly this reason. They were just about the only ones doing anything 'new' beyond "hey our camera is 12% better than last year!"

My Pixel 7 Pro is great and all, but it doesn't do anything _interesting_

Still using LG V50 for 3.5 years baby. Bought 2 more as spare.

Planning to collect all dual screen but they are kind of run out of stock.

LG's dual screen implementation is amazing. Both screen can operate separately, that's true multi-tasking! Damn I wish I bought more back in the days.

Is it like the Microsoft Surface Duo ? Those seem awesome for multi tasking productivity on the go and people with ADHD. Shame they're way too niche and don't appeal too the masses therefore end up being canceled.

Never used Microsoft Duo. LG is like having two computer with two mouse. You can game in one hand while scrolling facebook on the other hand.

>You can game in one hand while scrolling facebook on the other hand.

Like I said, that's an ADHD person's dream.

My last was a g8x ThinQ, dual screen by virtue of a case like the v50, but both screens were the same size - I believe with the v50 the secondary was slightly smaller?

What ultimately forced me to upgrade, however, was the main screen fell off - the glue holding it to the body seemingly failed, and as it fell the ribbon cable tore. I mulled getting another one (or a Wing) on ebay, but the P7Pro seemed a wiser investment

Yup V50's dual screen used different panel.

> glue holding it to the body seemingly failed

This happen to my first V50 as well. Wonder why is the screen seemed funny one day and discovered that I can lift up the oled panel wtf. Carefully glued it back, still using it right now.

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