Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
androidauthority.com
androidauthority.com
> apps will keep up with the performance development and in a blink of an eye
I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I rarely install an app unless I have to or there is no other option.
The few apps that do get installed aren't all that taxing.
<warning snark-level="epic" generalization-level="expansive">
Perhaps if they weren't gluing together unaudited components, with a programming language designed to obsolete the blink tag, using the most expensive laptop on the planet they'd be less profligate with a users resources.
</warning>
Things are no better in the game industry and the days of Avie requiring engineers to develop on hardware more representative of users machines are long gone.
Obviously, it shouldn’t be mandatory, but the ease of use surely benefits the majority of the population. Having to reinstall the operating system every now and then was not tenable.
You mean the ease of restoring Windows. Why do i have to click 2 times in Win 11 to select another window on the taskbar ?
But I mean ease of use, overall. Before, you have issues with your computing device, you have to troubleshoot how to get data off of it, transfer it, possible avoid malware, maybe have to pay someone to help you.
Now, you set it to backup to iCloud, and if something happens to the hardware you buy a new device and login, and you’re good to go. Or if it’s software, you might have to reinstall (I never have had to).
But then I have a gaming PC and a big television at home.
And I don't just use it as a gimmick, I use a HDMI/USB-C cable to use it with my TV as a streaming/light gaming setup. Nice to be able to plug it in, kick off a streaming app or Youtube, or play some Minecraft or something on my TV in bed, all comfy.
I never really used it for much, a bit of light browsing and really just as a gimmick, buit yeah, there was a desktop of sorts and you could use all the apps, and the touchpad/mouse thing worked. You could attach a bluetooth keyboard too, IIRC.
Kindof a shame my iphone doesn't do this (I assume, I haven't tried), but I'm not sure if I'd use it.
I might give it a go when I upgrade to a USB-C model.
Works fine. I don't know if you can format drives, but you can definitely read and write to external disks and network shares.
Yeah it's painful to use! You can set up a mouse, and use a physical keyboard for input, but it doesn't attempt to do any more than mirror the screen onto the external device by default.
Huawei's desktop mode was limited, but I think you're right - you can say the iphone has good device compatibility, but there's not a good way to use it docked. Not that the android ones were 'good', but they made an attempt!
I meant the Z Flip 6. Not the fold. The folds have always had fully supported DeX.
The Flips did not have a DP-capable USB-C port until the Flip 5, and still did not support DeX due to thermals. But the Flip 6 has it with a developer option, but only the "new" DeX.
Sorry for the confusion on my side. I thought of the Flip as the OP mentioned the Motorola Razr which is positioned against that, not the Fold.
Firefox with ublock origin works very well for example. The only thing is it doesn't adjust automatically to native screen resolution (1600p in my case). But its still just an Android, even with full filesystem access it feels vastly subpar to normal desktop PC if I need more than just browsing or other android apps.
I bought a pair of Viture Pro glasses, but they were pretty unusable for coding for me. Maybe for watching videos would have been OK but not typing / needing to read all areas of the screen.
[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41658828
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41669765
[3]: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/227186/samsung-automatische-cont...
To answer your question directly: I'm pointing out unexpected privacy pitfalls of using a smart TV's full set of features (i.e. running apps and using it ... as a monitor).
Although I agree with the point of your solution... I disagree with minimizing the danger of such anti-features.
To elaborate, try thinking of your average reasonable person and think of their journey into learning how to preserve their privacy without losing access to the features of the services and products they have paid for. Without a massive effort it is ultimately an oxymoron.
A reasonable person would expect that your (internet connected) smart TV would collect info to help them tailor future products based on their customer's usage (app usage frequency, standard or cable usage frequency, frequency of usage as external monitor). You would not expect to have to watch what you say in front of the such a device because they're literally listening to you [0] (in 2015, you needed to use the remote to use the voice detection service).
Additionally, reasonable user's of smart TV's (and other IoT devices) might feel like they are no longer tracked with their uniquely identifiable information because they turned off "targeted advertising" (if the service allows for setting that option), but that only prevents their advertising ID from being tracked [1].
Moreover, a reasonable person might expect that using a DNS-based blocklist would be a sort of "revocation of consent" to being tracked, but tracking services are savvy when it comes to PII exfiltration [2]:
> [...] We find that personally identifiable information (PII) is exfiltrated to platform-related Internet endpoints and third parties, and that blocklists are generally better at preventing exposure of PII to third parties than to platform-related endpoints. [...]
Finally, there have also been studies that show a lack of transparency when it comes to GDPR requests about the data collected through Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) [3].
So, my point is that "just don't use your product for most of its intended use" might be a thought-terminating cliche that prevents us from taking a step forward in stopping the normalization of unreasonable privacy transgressions (PII exfiltration, audio spying by third-party service providers, monitoring of external devices' screens).
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31296188
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/11/20908128/smart-tv-survei...
[2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.03447
[3]: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/electronic-electrical-engineering/news...
Or are you saying this is built into phones too?
In short, I couldn't find strong conclusive evidence for "yes" or "no".
The Wikipedia article on ACR [0] seems to be quoting CIO-Wiki [1] --- or vice-versa. The statement would imply "yes":
> Real-time audience measurement metrics are now achievable by applying ACR technology into smart TVs, set top boxes and mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. This measurement data is essential to quantify audience consumption to set advertising pricing policies.
On the other hand, a paper on ACR [2] implies it only occurs on TV's (so, this points us towards "no"):
> [...] Unlike traditional online tracking in the web and mobile ecosystems that is typically implemented by third-party libraries/SDKs included in websites/apps, ACR is typically directly integrated in the smart TV’s operating system. [...]
... but then, in its conclusion one could make the case for "not yet" as they reference Microsoft's Recall (this, to me, makes me lean on "not yet"):
> [...] Finally, although different than ACR, our auditing approach can be adopted to assess privacy risks of Recall (Microsoft, 2024) – which analyzes snapshots of the screen using generative AI (Warren, 2024). [...]
Collecting my thoughts on this paper, I'm a bit disappointed that we seem to have a double-standard for the nomenclature: if the content recognition happens on a PC, then it's labeled as "generative AI" (should've probably been called LLM by the authors) and if it takes place on a TV-shaped computer (they're mostly Android TV's, after all, right?) then it's called ACR. I think that it has not been properly articulated that what people are worried about [3] is that Microsoft's Windows Recall is (or will become) "ACR with extra steps".
To conclude (and extend this to the mobile phone domain), I'll leave a "thought experiment": is all the AI processing power on new mobile phones going to be used exclusively by the users, and for the users?
-----
Some nuanced notes...
I'm conflicted about whether to demonize ACR entirely or not. To me, "ACR" means something that is running all the time listening to user's surroundings or screenshotting a user's displayed information for the purposes of improving targeting or tracking their behavior (this seems to match Wikipedia's definition at first glance). I am in part validated by [2] as well:
> [...] At a high level, ACR works by periodically capturing the content displayed on a TV’s screen and matching it against a content library to detect the content being viewed on the TV. It is essentially a Shazam-like technology for audio/video content on the smart TV (Mohamed Al Elew, 2023).
However, after doing some research, I discovered that a particular knowledge field may be misusing the term (or using the ACR term for lack of a better term like "reverse image search" or "content-based image retrieval" --- CBIR, CBVIR, QBIC --- in their vocabulary), and perhaps in the process inadvertently "whitewashing" the term.
Take, for example, the European Union's Intellectual Property Office's (EUIPO's) discussion paper titled "Automated Content Recognition: Discussion Paper – Phase 2 ‘IP enforcement and management use cases’" [4] (PDF). I think that they are conflating some terms like hashing, fingerprinting, watermarking and labeling it under the ACR term, then they're making valid-sounding use-cases like "smartphone solutions to detect genuine or counterfeit products" (products, by definition, are not content,... so I fail to see how ACR ties in). Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can correct me if I'm misreading the paper (I am no IP lawyer, but have worked as an Information Security Officer).
I think the EUIPO paper also glosses over some possible privacy implications: e.g., they link to an article called "Are 3D printed watermarks a “grave and growing” threat to people’s privacy?" [5], but in the context of using "RFID tags or serial numbers" to protect IP on 3D printed objects ... they do not discuss the possible privacy implications of, for example, being tracked by a possible "RFID-tag-cloud" of such objects. I know that this is beyond the scope of "is there ACR running on mobile phones", but I wanted to showcase what I think is the misuse of the ACR term to expand into the physical --- "offline" --- world, in the process losing its more "academic" meaning.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition
[1]: https://cio-wiki.org/wiki/Automatic_Content_Recognition_(ACR...
[2]: https://arxiv.org/html/2409.06203v1
[3]: https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/micr...
[4]: https://euipo.europa.eu/tunnel-web/secure/webdav/guest/docum...
[5]: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/are-3d-printed-watermark...
Thankfully my job was all about reducing rendering latency to prevent people from getting nauseous, so thermal throttling was outside of my scope.
- External Touch Screen - only needs one cable, usbc, for picture, sound, touch, power! ... (DP mode you mentioned required)
- As power source. My caravan computer (Dell wyse 5070) uses usbc as power source with a cheap DC slot adapter. My laptop charges in usb-c from 60w or more.
- We have 2 Rolands (p-1, s-1) both can use their usbc cable for direct audio in AND out which just works on Linux.
- For the Roland's I can use my phone as sound DAW or source, or both. I can also attach the touch screen, ...
All using the same (cheap and available) cable. Which is amazing and took my whole life to get to.
A huge range of features comes to mind from Geiger counters, oscilloscopes, sound level measurement, light intensity, etc , etc. The potential to expand the smartphone capability is enormous yet no manufacturer has tackled it. Why not?
Why aren't there multiple USB ports? By now why don't all phones use USB-3? Why isn't there general purpose D/A and A/D ports/outputs for instrumentation? Why don't they include a GPIB-like bus to connect to things? Why can't we use the screen as an oscilloscope with a bandwidth of say 100MHz?
Of course not everyone needs these features but the smartphone stands out as an ideal device for use in instrumentation and measurement and data collection (of the other kind).
I find it amazing that no smartphone manufacturer has branched out into this field. Such potential and no one is servicing it. Phone manufacturers are missing out by not servicing this scientific/techie measurement market.
Why, say, doesn't Fairphone provide a range of interchangeable ports/modules that can changed for different functions, to add additional sensors, etc.?
although i would buy one.
Because the population of people that would actually use that functionality rounds to approximately 0. There do exist phones with multiple USB ports, and there do exist plenty of USB3 capable phones. Instrumentation and measurement is an extremely specialized field, and the number of people that would maybe find use out of it would quickly switch to a more useful interface for something like an oscilloscope.
For your general purpose adc and dac, they already make one: it’s called a usb-c audio adapter.
How can you say that, where are your figures/stats/evidence?
For starters I'm 1 person, so the market is not O. And I know of others, and I know I'm not alone. Clearly you don't work in test and measurement.
Moreover, this article alone has raised the matter of additional features.
Anyway, it's only a matter of time until some (likely small) manufacturer breaks the boring mold and steps out. That's inevitable because the market is already saturated with phones that all have exactly the same features.
I said approximately 0, when compared to smartphone sales… which it is. I don’t need a survey to know that, since the vast vast vast majority of people using phones don’t even know what an oscilloscope, a DAC, or an ADC is. If you think that’s untrue, I’d suggest widening your horizons a bit.
Also, I’d think that you don’t work in test and measurement. I use test equipment in my day job and I wouldn’t trust the output of a phone if I’m doing actual production work. You need calibrated equipment for that. Maybe okay for debugging, but there’s tons of cheap measurement equipment that works just fine for general purpose debugging and has a much better UI than anything you’d get on a touch screen.
1. so incredibly convenient to always have with you, that everyone's willing to overlook shortcomings compared to dedicated equipment. Prime example: camera.
2. Offer a new type of use that is widely considered desirable. Example: mobile access to Internet.
Most use cases either cater to too few people and/or fall into the category "those who'd really care, already have dedicated equipment which is better". With flagship phones costing more and more, that equipment is probably also cheaper - or, at least, is price tag is not that outlandish.
Even replacing laptops probably won't catch on, simply because companies can easily provide a good laptop for half the price of a flagship phone (if not less). So they're not going to facilitate that. And if the boss isn't on board, would you want to use your own private phone as your primary work laptop?
The GP seems to be basically saying the same thing as many others have expressed. They want their phone to basically be a PC. Whether that involves upgrading, installing your own OS, or otherwise just being able to use it for an arbitrary workload.
I don't know why the market is such, that expensive phones remove features, such as extra sim card slots, sd card slots or head phone jacks. It doesn't seem impossible that Samsung could find room in their lineup of 8000 phones to have a ruggedised phone, with some kind of standardised interface on the back.
especially, as increasingly you go to a restaurant and the waiter has a phone/ tablet. and I'm sure there are many other industries that could do with basically a phone, that does one extra specialised thing, be that an rfid scanner, or a bore scope, or a label printer.
There are many back cases for specialised functionality like PoS, Ir camera etc.
Also, with many cases you can have devices connecting wirelessly via bluetooth - e.g. I bought a bluetooth trichiscope recently.
Making a specialised phone instead of a plugin is a way more expensive option. And in risky if the market is so small that nobody did a plugin first.
There were I think two companies that tried to build a modular phone where you could eg replace camera with a module of your own design - the issue was that they were bulkier and more expensive than a regular design - you can’t cheat physics.
Also, how much more would you be willing to pay for such a phone? Could you pay 2-3x the price and be happy with upgrades every 3-5 years, and the phone having electronics that are 1-3 years behind the top of the line ones on the start? Because that’s the reality of production with niche products.
> Even replacing laptops probably won't catch on, simply because companies can easily provide a good laptop for half the price of a flagship phone
You’re comparing top of the range phones to low end laptops. A low to mid range phone can be bought from a reputable manufacturer (Samsung) for about £200 and it has plenty of processing to do email, video calls, PowerPoint, and basic spreadsheets. My wife works for the government and I’m pretty sure one of those phones would be about as responsive as the hunk of junk they provide her with, and for half the price.
Bonus there is that it's one place for all your data.
Alternatively, on the data side I've been shocked at how cheap storage is now. I bought a 256gb usb stick shipped for £10. I've got tiny 4tb external drives. You can get terabyte microsd cards! It'd be pretty nice to have a setup where the device is intended to be blank and you just pop your data card in. I know it's more complex but not that complex for what would to me feel like a fairly sci-fi thing.
Honestly, I'd love to be surprised and see everyone switching to docking setups everywhere. But I just think the positives over current working modes are too small to gain the needed traction. And that's before considering downsides other than investment costs/overcoming network effects.
I've worked in one of the prototype laboratories of one of the biggest electronics companies in the world where we actually developed communication equipment.
Using bench type instrumentation has nothing whatsoever to do with what I'm talking about. At no time did I ever say that my portable device was a substitute for professional test equipment. The idea is preposterous.
Given your comment, one has to ask what you do and at what level.
Conflating ideas and 'reading' stuff that isn't actually there is the single biggest problem with the internet. .
>> Of course not everyone needs these features but the smartphone stands out as an ideal device for use in instrumentation and measurement and data collection (of the other kind).
Your words, not mine. Without more context (which you didn't provide) it's unreasonable to expect me to understand what you mean (you, in fact, advocate I don't 'read stuff' that isn't actually there) outside of replacing actual test and measurement equipment.
Of all the people you interacted with in any way, shape or form this year, what percentage of those would benefit from this?
It rounds to 0, assuming you’re not a shut-in
What phone do you use now and are you satisfied with it?
Tell me that and I may be able to then figure where you are coming from. BTW, read my comment to f6v.
> How can you say that, where are your figures/stats/evidence?
I responded with:
> just look outside in the real world?
That’s totally relevant to you asking why no mass-market phones support increasingly niche features that ~0% of the population need or want, and you expanding on this by saying “me and one other person I know want this”…
I can't make it any clearer, sorry I don't speak Klingon.
Or
> “Because the population of people that would actually use that functionality rounds to approximately 0."
> How can you say that, where are your figures/stats/evidence?
Pick one
Children who play Fortnite on the go are a much bigger market and will always be. Smartphones are content consumption devices.
The point I put forward is what I and a small select section of the market wants as features—NOT what's on offer from manufacturers now.
The argument people are putting here is that manufacturers would not serve that market. These are two separate issues. Isn't that clear?
When someone makes what I want then I'll buy it. BTW, I've not suggested anything that cannot be made now with existing technology.
Instead, manufacturers are removing important features such as not including FM radio and 3.5mm headphone sockets. These are the first two specs I look for on a phone before I buy it. If they're not included I'm not interested. Full stop!
In brief, the lowest common denominator is NOT what I want. The market has to be more diverse. That in part is what the article is about and why I commented.
Imagine somebody asking for phones that have a built-in Swiss army knife because there is a (tiny) segment of the market who would benefit from it.
Before it makes sense to integrate these features to the phone, you would expect to see a thriving ecosystem of third-party external dongles providing the same, for example.
The market is not more diverse because there is no money to be made by making it more diverse. You underestimate the cost just as much as you overestimate the size of the market segment that wants those features.
I beg to differ, Fairphone thinks it's economically viable to make phones that are upgradeable by changing modules. The company is doing it now!
All I want is a spare slot inside one of these phones that I can insert a specialized module. There would be no problem in getting specialized manufacturers to make those modules, witness the fact that there are already thousands of small modular devices on the market already.
If Fairphone were to provide a slot I'm damn sure there'd be call to use it. Think Raspberry Pi and all its ports, just transfer the concept to a phone that's almost suitable now.
Fairphones devices are, frankly, bad value and not particularly interesting. Being able to “upgrade” components is not very useful, if those components are already years behind. Also, fairphone doesn’t allow this! You just can replace components with the same kind… which just makes repairing easier.
> All I want is a spare slot inside one of these phones that I can insert a specialized module. There would be no problem in getting specialized manufacturers to make those modules, witness the fact that there are already thousands of small modular devices on the market already.
You have one. It’s called the USB-C port. Make whatever you want with it, it’s widely supported and compatible.
It is also strange to complain about multiple ports when can get a USB-C hub. It used to be they were all USB-C to USB-A but there are starting to USB-C only hubs.
First, a USB hub is bulky and frankly a damn nuisance to carry about, it needs to be integrated.
Second, USB-C/OTG on many phones is implemented in a way that makes it essentially useless. For instance, USB-2 (which is on most phones) is too slow by miles; access to external devices via OTG is often set deliberately to time out after say 30 mins or such, also on many devices permission to access OTG is awkward, and the vast majority of phones do not support NTFS for external drives or internal SD cards.
Frankly, is this is a first-class fucking nuisance. Why can't I have direct compatibility with my PCs and laptops?
To get my phones to do what I want I have to root them and even this isn't fully satisfactory. Rooting is a pain and takes a lot of time to do it correctly and I'd prefer not to do it
With OTC there is no consistency across phone manufacturers. Why the hell not?
Also, why are phone manufacturers removing micro SD slots from phones?
More on NTFS, why doesn't Android support NTFS after all this length of time? After all, the Linux kernel now does and has done so for some time, so why has Google nuked it from the Android kernel?
Now if I go to that despised Chinese company Huawei I can get NTFS support by default (on OTG at least). That Huawei can offer NTFS as a standard feature and most others do not tells me a lot about the oligopoly-like smartphone market.
People here have been criticizing me and voting me down because I've had the hide to suggest features for specialized phones but no one seems to bother addressing the elephant in the room which is that the smartphone market has reached stagnation.
There's been fuck-all worthwhile innovation in recent years.
First, multiple USB ports are bulky, and frankly a damn nuisance to carry about. I don't need an extra port for the majority of my uses.
> Second, USB-C/OTG on many phones is implemented in a way that makes it essentially useless. For instance, USB-2 (which is on most phones) is too slow by miles; access to external devices via OTG is often set deliberately to time out after say 30 mins or such, also on many devices permission to access OTG is awkward, and the vast majority of phones do not support NTFS for external drives or internal SD cards.
The timeouts are for idle time. If you have a long period of idle time, you aren't using the device... which consumes power from your tiny phone battery. It's very reasonable for the uses most people use them for. I'd agree it would be nice to have the ability to disable the timeout, but I can't speak to what every phone manufacturer is doing.
> More on NTFS, why doesn't Android support NTFS after all this length of time? After all, the Linux kernel now does and has done so for some time, so why has Google nuked it from the Android kernel?
What's wrong with exFAT? It's an external hard drive. Better compatibility with everything anyways.
> People here have been criticizing me and voting me down because I've had the hide to suggest features for specialized phones but no one seems to bother addressing the elephant in the room which is that the smartphone market has reached stagnation.
And what exactly is wrong with that? Laptops also haven't had "innovation" in the sense you're describing in years either. They serve their purpose, do what they do well, and get marginally better year over year. It's fine.
One of the reasons why my reply is late is because of exFAT problems. Right, I don't expect you to believe that but it's true—see my comment at the end.
exFAT may have better compatibility but it's about the worst file system ever invented. Have you ever thought why Microsoft made it freely available and not NTFS? Yes, everyone believes the MS mantra that exFAT uses fewer resources than NTFS and that's true but it seems few are aware about how diabolical this file system actually is and the high potential it has for losing one's data.
Why? Well it has only one FAT table and not two, clobber that and one is stuffed big-time—and often many people lose data this way.
Why would Microsoft eliminate the second backup FAT table in exFAT when it was proven so valuable in earlier versions of FAT—especially given exFAT's higher capacity where the loss of data would be even more disastrous? (Even Blind Freddy ought to be able to see the necessity of having a second FAT to protect one's data.)
Let me give you an example: about 12 months ago I was transferring some data stored on my smartphone's 512GB microSD card to my PC when I lost about 231GB of data! That's no small loss and I've still not recovered it.
You may well ask how that happened. Simple, the SD was removed from the phone and placed in the PC's USB slot to move a small percentage of files to the PC. Unfortunately, I removed the SD before the write process had completed and it clobbered the FAT and everything was deleted, the card was not only devoid of all files but also according to Windows it was now unformatted.
OK, so it was my fault, that I accept—doubly so because I didn't follow the golden rule of copying everything first before deleting the source files (although in this case that wouldn't have saved the files that I'd not moved).
I tried the usual unearase utilities/procedures and only recovered shrapnel. Of course, what else would one expect when file systems don't store files in contiguous sectors. This is yet another antiquated idea where data integrity is traded for speed without adequate fallback/safety protections.
You probably are asking why I removed the SD from the phone instead of transferring the data by OTG. That's easily explained too, OTG on phones is inordinately slow except for the very few that use USB3—not to mention the fact that Android (especially so since v10) won't allow one to copy data from say the Android directory. (In this instance, even though I wasn't copying all the files there were enough to make removing the SD to provide a worthwhile saving in time (it had over 300k files stored on it).)
Fortunately, most of the files were already backed up so only a small incremental amount of nonessential data was lost and I've put the SD aside until I get around to mirroring it in case I ever want to recover them. Incidentally, this isn't the only time I've killed an exFAT's table but it's the only time I've lost data (other times the data was already backed up). I'm not alone I could tell stories of others who I know personally who've lost data in similar circumstances.
I've experimented with exFAT both on SD cards and SSDs and have come to the conclusion that if one wants to kill all data on such a dive quickly without secure delete so it looks like a new drive then all one has to do is to disconnect it during a write operation. It's that catastrophic.
Now comparing exFAT with NTFS is like chalk and cheese. If I'd been using NTFS then none of that would have happened. NTFS is a proper journaling file system with good inbuilt protections, it's hardy and will take much abuse before significant data is lost. Moreover, the argument that NTFS uses large resources and overhead is now mute—we're long past the days of floppy disks and pissy little processors.
If you think I'm whingeing about this without due reason then I'd suggest you ask yourself why some USB thumb drive manufacturers pre-format large capacity drives (>32GB) in FAT32 when Microsoft limits FAT32 formatting to only 32GB in Windows. Good question. I'd suggest they're well aware of the dangers of exFAT and how easy it is to lose data when using it. The answer is obviously an economic one—they want to minimize customers returning drives after losing data and or not wishing to develop a reputation for having flaky drives.
Now ask yourself why does Microsoft force users who format drives larger than 32GB to exclude using FAT32 and use either exFAT or NTFS yet still provide Windows with the facility of reading FAT32 drives with much larger capacity.
Also the question remains why Android doesn't automatically support NTFS, especially so nowadays given that the Paragon NTFS file driver is an integral part of Linux. There are multiple reasons for this some of which are known publicly, others we can only speculate about. Similarly, the reason why many manufacturers have removed SD cards from phones but that's a separate matter too big to address here except to say their excuses are so weak they're just pathetic.
One fact remains certain, none of the big manufacturers gives a damn about integrity of users' data despite all the palaver and noise over security, hackers stealing data etc. If they did then they'd be just as concerned with data entropy† no matter what its source—but they aren't. I could say much more but this post is already long enough.
BTW, my Huawei phone (which I no longer have as I'd dropped it and broke the screen) was very handy. It still used exFAT for its SD card but its OTG supported NTFS by default. Moreover, it used an excellent NTFS driver in that even on USB-2 files could be copied very quickly to an external drive. To transfer files to my PC I used to couple a 1TB NTFS-formatted SSD via OTG and it worked perfectly (also OTG provided enough power to run the SSD without effort).
It's little wonder so many were pissed off with the restrictions over Huawei as the company's products work extremely well. It's a shame other manufacturers don't follow suit.
Finally, this reply is late because my phone's SD (a 512GB Samsung SDXC Pro) could not be read after I'd done multiple file transfers from internal memory to the SD (aftwewards the SD couldn't even be seen). The problem occurred almost the same time as your post.
Fearing the worst I immediately shut the phone down and moved the SD to the PC where I found the card and its files 100% OK. I then wasted considerable time copying the files to the PC because many files exceeded the 260 file/path-length limit in Windows. Right, another ridiculous historical artifact that Microsoft and others have not yet fixed (same goes for the ongoing limitation with reserved characters, why can't we use say a '?' in filenames when clearly it's possible?).
Why so many users simply accept this unacceptably shitty and ergonomically terrible tech without complaint just beats me.
Clearly, you're one who is actually satisfied with your tech.
† Same goes for the unacceptable and irresponsible way Microsoft has implemented the SSD Trim function in Windows. If it isn't obvious I will provide an explanation.
There was some 10 years ago a project from Google to make the smartphone modular (Ara ?). It died in its infancy.
But we are seeing some signs this might change. And insure hope it does, in a big way. A hub can be ok, but with the need to mix display out & peripherals and power, in fancy ways, USB3 really is a limited option. And alas USB4 fixes many of the constraints but is way too high end alas alas alas. Anyways here's an upcoming very cheap tablet with multiple ports, and reports are a lot more are coming. Given the marginal cost of ports, it's about frelling time! Do it! You won't ever have adoption if there's no (or almost no) option! https://www.techradar.com/pro/this-tablet-has-a-genius-featu...
There is one, it's the headphone jack. (Or dongle.)
It's obviously useful, that's how Square launched their card reader business.
Not quite what you're asking for, it wasn't standard bus connectors or anything.
As far as I understand the weird ART vs JVM difference also means Java libs are only sometimes going to work (would love to be corrected here though)
If this is too difficult, than your use case is orders of magnitude more difficult. Unfortunately everyone tries to sell to the same generic user, with very little actual space for differentiation targeting niches.
The smaller iPhones didn't sell well.
No one can phone me on my smartphone as it uses a data-only SIM so it's difficult for Google and others to make sense of the data they steal from me (even then they only receive data garbage for reasons I won't bother to mention here).
It's hardly less convenient as the dumb phone is small enough to fit in my shirt pocket whereas the smartphone is in a trousers pocket.
You should have a look at the GATT spec for bluetooth LE and the UART service. It has never been easier to build scientific devices that rely on your phone for compute. The thing is, I think we're actually at the point where it's cheaper/ more reliable/more predictable to stick an nrf52 chip into a peripheral than try to support a physical connection to your phone - I guess from a security standpoint as much as anything else.
There are a _ton_ of scopes and stuff that sit in the prosumer space that leverage your phone. They're just not wired, and I think it makes sense for them not to be.
Models off phones with these features integrated please?
Where can I find them on, say, GSMArena.com?
I think the actual need right now is the other way around, don't build new devices and instruments, rather support existing devices.
And also a lot of professional equipment providers are going sort of this way, building portable devices around a OEM android phone.
I would _love_ a smartphone with a GPIB connector. Something like https://www.starte-e.net/product/ieee-488-gpib-cn24pin-metal... /s
Sales of new phone models have a lot more to do with perceived status and obsolescence (real or imagined). Actual performance improvements remain largely incremental and irrelevant for the majority of phone users, but perception and fear of obsolescence drive sales anyway. The same goes for camera quality: actually important to a small percentage of users, but perceived as important by a lot more users even if they only post low-quality snapshots online.
Most people don’t need to “upgrade” their purse, sneakers, watch, car, etc. as often as they do. Smartphones have turned into Veblen goods for some, and status display for many more. Spend some time with teenagers. Their fears of not having the newest phone derive entirely from perceived status and fitting in, not from number of USB ports or processor speed.
The number of smartphone users actually interested in using their phone as a PC — with external monitor, keyboard, pointing device — describes a small niche of the smartphone market. Solutions have existed for some time (Samsung Dex and Motorola Ready For, for example). Consumers by and large ignore those offerings and buy for status and FOMO reasons.
The phone manufacturers have so far succeeded in selling disposable and un-repairable devices and feeding the constant upgrade cycle. I have heard many people say they will replace their phone when the screen cracks or it gets too many scratches — the same way they would justify discarding a pair of shoes rather than getting them repaired.
There are upper-middle class equivalents of this. Cars come to mind.
It is interesting explaining to a middle class person why I have a $100 crappy phone. "My old one broke, and I have 4 of these $100 phones for my wife's company, so I'm using it until I find a good phone with an Aux port". Ease is everything.
Divided by the number of hours a phone is used, the amortized cost of having something you want is miniscule. This is the thing moms will be taking precious pictures of their kids with, video calling their families on, shopping for themselves and others, and even watching or listening to entertainment.
If there’s one thing that people can justify spending more on for more utility, it’s a smartphone. Obviously, I’m not referring to spending $1k more for a 1 TB Pro Max, but spending an extra $500 is going to make sense to many people for purposes outside of showing off.
If this was true, Apple would not be the major US player.
Everything you mentioned doesnt cost $500, it cost $200 on a nexus a decade ago.
Also, a Nexus wasn’t $200 in 2014, and in no way was a $200 mobile phone in 2014 as good as a $500 iPhone (or any other $500 phone).
For a dumb device ? Max 200 €. Browsing the internet on a smartphone is terrible, the GUI is terrible, typing is terrible. DOS level multitasking. Spying machine. No way i will pay more for this.
So unless phone makers want to be in the situation where end-users are less and less willing to pay for and upgrade to a new phone, they have to figure out something new.
Either turning the phone into a massive local personal AI device with lots of local compute. Or as suggested here opening the phone up and turning it into a general computing device.
Personally I would prefer the latter and I am kinda skeptical of the former eventhough it seems the path major manufacturers (Apple, Qualcomm) are taking.
There are some pursing a more general form of computing - in particular Samsung and Huawei:
https://www.samsung.com/us/apps/dex/
(Though still a very closed model of computing where the device provisioned with software through an app store rather being completely under the end-user's control. Perhaps business model plays a role here.)
Sadly, rumors are the SE4 is going to be yet another 6” phone.
I am currently using a Moto G Play 2024 I bought new for $120. I have zero complaints.
People pay too much for phones mostly out of novelty and image.
When my laptop (2017 Dell XPS 13, Fedora 41, $200 at a pawn shop) dies I will buy a Samsung and use Dex, because that as well is more than most people need.
Also, the reason Apple is not doing this is that it will obviously eat into Laptop sales. They will just end up selling the phone for $4000. :)
I held on to a Pixel 4a for way too long, and it was struggling to deal with the its 12M camera with 6Mb or RAM on android 13, getting 3s of shutter lag pretty often.
Multi-tasking was also a drag, having two windows would freeze often enough I stopped doing it, which was a pain for paperwork. I can't imagine how it goes with even less.
I'd assume the best strategy would be to first root it to move to a lighter OS ?
I'm glad it works for you, but the Moto G sounds like a seriously compromised package in this day and age. The TFA going with a Pixel 8 sounds a lot more sensible to me.
Well, my bank account is compromised as well. :)
But seriously, I use maps, podcasts, music, browsing, light social media. What I am saying is I use my phone like most people do,not like most people here on HN. ANd it costs 10% of what the base model iPhone 16 costs, which I tried and that new gimmicky camera button is the worst.
The one issue I have is no HDMI out, which is lame, but I do not need it much. Oh, and root is a pain adn there are no ROMS out for it either. Yes, it would be great with teh pure Pixel ROM but Moto's ROM is not that far off.
[1]: https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-edge
[2]: https://puri.sm/posts/a-librem-5-video-made-on-a-librem-5/
Their terrible and outdated OS was supreme for 2 decades from a simple 'Free CD' marketing trick. The actual performance has always been so bad, people made Mint and quickly abandoned Debian/Ubuntu-family for desktop use.
Hearing the Ubuntu phone failed is not surprising.
I tried Debian, Sidux, Arch, Chakra, Fedora, Mandriva, Mint and others and for last 10 years I am happy back on Kubuntu LTS , there is no magic on the other distros that give you performance and I do my work on this PC, game on wine/Proton, I have latest NVIDIA driver.
The reason I use LTS is because I do not need the latest features+ latest bugs combo from upstream, I can fix the current bugs and wait a few year until I am forced to upgrade.
Btw some Ubuntu developers are also Debian developers so using Mint or other Debian based sitro is still benefiting from ubuntu devs work.
"Debian is outdated and cant be used with Nvid---"
"ARCH"
"ARCH sucks, too hard"
what?
I never mentioned Arch.
There is some sickness going on with Debian-family members, to see this 'Arch' line across the internet when literally no one mentions Arch, makes me think there some fear mongering going on.
If not for Arch, they might have tried a good distro.
Can you read and comprehend at the same time ? I used Arch and Chakra and other distros. or you claim Arch and the distros are mentioned are BAD.
It wasn't a finished product, given time and investment it could have been a pretty slick setup for basic tasks.
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/motorola-atrix-4g-att
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/03/motorola-atrix-the-u...
This was precisely the target of the Motorola Atrix. They sold a netbook-like "shell" with a monitor and keyboard, and when you plugged the Atrix smartphone in it became an Ubuntu webtop device.
That seems hugely important to such a conversation.
There's so many reasons why it's hard to say this is really unwanted. Atrix was a boutique not mainstream product so who knows what would have happened had it been generally usable.
At the time we didn't have anything like usb-c, so it was all special peripherals and displays. Now though a decent % of displays do have USB-c with power, and that's totally different starting conditions. Especially if that display also has a keyboard and mouse plugged in, which many do!
Commercial success requires paving of cow paths, needs a low impedance route to mass success. We haven't been in a spot where that's ever been remotely possible before.
Do I think Android on display is going to totally take over & dominate soon? No, no I don't. But mass availability and a world capable of supporting - making use of this capability has just arrived, and this really lets us get started with these ubiquitous & pervasive computing ideas that, so far/until now, have had to be bespoke offering.
Different but also similar, it feels like game streaming has some reasonable popularity too now, and it's another case of using interconnect across devices & peripherals that I think a lot of people have really grown into & deeply enjoy being able to do. It's still a small segment of people, relatively, but to me it speaks of adoption curves & how success is often extremely slow, how there are real fans who feel great joy & happiness, without the rest of the world being much tuned in or aware.
What the people definitely didn't want was the performance of 2011 smartphone for desktop. The use case didn't fail, that device failed because the limits at the time made the phone desktop impractical. And I remember it not being a stellar smartphone either.
But every smartphone also failed until they didn't fail anymore because they were good enough. Phones today have astounding levels of performance so they can easily serve as desktops.
Starting the discussion from impractical attempts made "ages" ago (in tech terms) is a nice bit of historical trivia but not an indictment of the "phone desktop" idea. It's like starting every discussion about EVs with how early 20th century EVs failed because people don't want EVs.
Can you play Cyberpunk with desktop quality on it?
What kind of software environment do you expect when you connect your mouse, keyboard and 22" screen to a device where everything is geared toward touch input on a 6" screen?
It's not an unsolvable problem and I do think there is demand for it if done right. But it's not a solved problem either.
> it's not a solved problem either
Never said it is. But we can't use one experience from the baby years of the smartphone to proclaim what won't work or won't have demand today. If we never try to solve a problem, especially because "it didn't work on the first attempt ages ago", then we'll never solve a problem.
Honestly, today's phones are an overkill for most mobile computing tasks except for a very small niche of users who might run very high end games. And even there it's not a given.
I would like to use them for four or five years with a battery replacement at the midpoint.
As a result, all my phones end up looking pristine several years into them being used.
They look pristine except for being wrapped in a case and a screen guard. It's a bit like how some people wrapped TV remote controls in plastic film.
Don't get me wrong, I also put a case around my phone, but it makes it look fugly from day one.
Modern devices are already massive, putting a case on then make them even bigger, and in my opnion more prone for falling from your hands.
And I have the extra-advantage of being able to easily locate my phone on family gatherings as I am usually the only one who doesn't have a case. :-)
My bigger issue is usually that the phones get so heavily outdated that banking apps stop working. And it's based on pure luck if the modding community build something great for my phone so I at least could use it as server, cam, or whatever. Also the charging slots breaking / turning unreliable which most wouldn't repair on a $100-$200 phone.
I fear it's not just about 3rd battery quality but the software driver side where calibration needs to redone for a new battery. If this is locked because of "security" or just inferior then oops, replacements never match first party.
Very hard to understand why that should be. Even the most scary conspiracy theorists would not claim that banks and govs try to force phone tech refresh... unless ... it is really about spyware bloat :)
It is not like we live in the early 2000s where the heavy road warriors had to have a spare battery on their backpacks because the phones would be dead after a coast-to-coast flight.
There's a myriad of small reasons, my last one was because my main payment app was taking 4s to create a damn QRCode while the casher and I stare at the blank page, and also for how hard it was to just answer calls from the notification screen as the phone was struggling at just multi-tasking.
And that was on top of the expending shutter lag and and many newer OS functionalities just not properly working.
And it's not the phone's fault per se, the most critical apps are really crappy. But there's also no incentives for them to be efficient, and they'll keep being crappier and crappier, and I'll probably need another phone in 4 or 5 years either way.
The reason I upgraded was that I was wasting literal minutes per day waiting for apps to load. I live in China, and for some reason the apps here are beyond outrageous in the amount of resources they use. Showing a QR payment code in WeChat, or opening a shared bike in Meituan, frequently took on the order of 10 seconds. I assume the phone was just chewing on a terrifying amount of JavaScript.
I could only keep 2 of these monster apps open at a time. Opening a third would OOM kill one of the other two.
iPhone 16 pro and these actions are basically instant.
Fucking nauseating.
If Intel hadn't cancelled their x86 smartphone chip (Broxton?), I wouldn't have been surprised to see an x86 Windows Phone with a desktop mode.
Any hybrid would be a compromise for me. I do have multiple systems--almost certainly more than I need.
I do think they're trending in that direction but I actually like that they're not pushing people faster than feels comfortable. I expect to see a convergence of iPads and at least MacBook Airs but we're not quite there yet.
Some people insist on self sabotaging. It's sad.
It's not like kids ever wanted computers for schoolwork in general...
Saying they wanted computers for schoolwork, is another matter.
Growing up without access to a proper computer still seems weird to me. How do we expect kids to build computing literacy?
Now they want to sell services, while Apple and Google control all major endpoints.
The other issue is demand. I suspect that the number of people who’d like their phone to double as a computer is actually rather small — non-technophiles just do everything on their phone these days, and increasingly the main reason anybody keeps around a computer is for more “big iron” sorts of use cases that are too demanding for smartphones. The market for a converged computer-phone device is basically down to people whose needs would be served by a Chromebook, but would prefer an external monitor and keyboard which is rather niche.
I would probably come down to separate devices however, in the interests of security and continuity. A phone is much more likely to be lost or stolen than a computer on a desk at home. I keep my really important stuff on my computer, and try to keep my phone as disposable as possible.
One could buy a cheap mini-PC and put some flavor of Linux on it and it’d serve office software duty for upwards of 10 years without issue. Even accounting for FOSS aftermarket Android distros, smartphone hardware doesn’t have that kind of longevity.
Using only one device would mean a downgrade in my work setup - one screen less. Moreover, if I'm traveling and have to work somewhere on the fly, a laptop offers a decent keyboard and tolerable screen size by itself. And there is a variety of options on offer (larger screens, lighter laptop, more computing power), so I can pick the optimal one for me.
As such, I don't see a smartphone replacing my daily driver, nor my "planned to work while travelling" driver. Best-case scenario it'd a below-average compromise. But the laptop market offers enough choice that I can get a better compromise for less there.
And yet, this question is here - somehow no one really uses it or even knows about it.
Microsoft tried to do it with Windows Phone years ago, but phones were way too slow and Windows on ARM was an even worse prospect at the time, so that died too.
It worked well but of course Android would kill any Ubuntu process at random if RAM usage reached a certain threshold, so I wouldn't use it for anything heavy. I remember I was able to run a Ruby on Rails project of mine plus emacs. Slower than my laptop but still decent. The real problem was the limited amount of RAM of the tablet and the insecurity deriving from random process terminations.
If I was a student with Chromebook-style needs (browser-based tools) it would be worth considering instead of a laptop.
I think other commenters are right that this would cannibalize Apples own products, which is a shame since I think it would be awesome to have a unified computing device.
MacOS already runs on arm64 and the iphone has wireless charging and bluetooth, so I don’t think there is a lot stopping Apple from doing this.
Despite the fact that the largest iPhone and smallest iPad are less than 2" difference, the $130 Apple Pencil will not work with an iPhone Pro Max, and both devices run different operating systems with arbitrary features.
One of the biggest complaints about their latest iPad was that it's so powerful yet limited by iPadOS. I feel the same way about my iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Apple wants you to have an iMac as your desktop, a MacBook for your mobile device, an iPad to watch videos, and an iPhone to bring with you.
I still can't do that with any Microsoft system. I've been able to do it with Apple devices for a good 5-10 years.
I always had the impression it's just iOS with a slightly different configuration.
Plasma, GNOME, Phosh, it all just works.
My pixel 9 is essentially flat, and the battery life is plenty for a couple of days.
Either way, my point is that with a case the pixel 9 is mostly flat, and has a battery life that I can't complain about. How big the battery is physically is unimportant to me. Logically it's big enough.
Most of the world is not using the latest version of Android, and you don't really hear about viruses/malware like we used to with Windows machines in the '90s and '00s.
https://www.spiceworks.com/it-security/endpoint-security/new...
I agree the lens bulges are a pain in the arse, but I want a good camera.
You can buy low-end phones with minimal bump from the likes of Motorola and Nokia if cameras are not important to you. But I want my higher-end (not necessarily premium, but in that direction) phones to keep coming with better and better cameras please, and if that means a bit of a bulge then fine.
So nearly 50% of the demographic is buying those phones simply for the camera, and a big screen, nothing else.
I’ve noticed its typically just men (including me), who dont care about the camera much at all, and just want a normie phone that can run most apps.
The average use case I bet isn't making use of 4000 plus pixels
It's been years and years since I ever felt like my phone's performance was holding back its usefulness to me. I have only ever replaced my phone because the battery could no longer hold a charge or the charging port was damaged beyond use.
It has a camera, web browser, chat apps, and receives emails. It also makes calls and texts. It doesn't lag while doing these things. That's plenty.
I can't imagine what people "need" high-performance phones for, other than gaming, and for that as well there are much better alternatives.
If I could hook it up to a docking station and use it as a full-fledged computer that would change things I suppose.
When I started using Unexpected Keyboard the realization that I can just shift + arrow select text and ctrl + x cut it hit me like a bag of bricks. This is such a simple thing, but the existing story for marking and editing text is so bad on phones that I nearly forgot that just making existing shortcuts available would already be a sifnificant improvement.
Sadly unexpected keyboard has other flaws, like no prediction/correction, no swype and less typing accuracy since there are no statistics on where you hit buttons that could adjust the collision borders etc.
The quality of the auto-correction afforded by the operating system matters quite a bit.
Also it is hard to believe that you can bend your fingers so fast to produce 2 words per second without getting tired.
I don't think so, the mistakes you tend to make with physical keyboards are more on the "entirely wrong finger for this letter", rather than "pressed the key right next to it by mistake".
I use it mainly because it is the only keyboard app that supports arabic well and because it has better themes. I don't know how much better or worse it is compared to the android version though.
They could have easily made it the same as on Android, but they didn't, and I have no idea why. Android is orders of magnitudes faster to type on, it's baffling why they wouldn't just add the features to their iOS one.
Samsung's keyboard on my tablet does Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X like a PC. It does more than that. I remember that holding Ctrl highlights a few keys hinting to the allowed combinations. Probably Ctrl-A is among them. It's not close to me now so I cannot check.
I'm using Hacker's keyboard on my phone in Connect Bot to be able to use the arrow keys to navigate in the shell. It does also all the other key combinations that are useful on a terminal. I also don't want my normal keyboard to remember what I'm typing in my ssh sessions.
Because of this I've sent way too many badly worded, typo-riddled and incomplete messages.
Yeah it's too bad it doesn't have auto-complete. But suspect that with the better controls, the need for auto-complete becomes a lot less. Well, I'll try it out for some time and see how it goes. In any case it's nice for dev work on Android anyway (what it was designed for). Not that I like to do that all too much on Android, but it's nice to be able to do it when your laptop is not available.
And for other activities, the stylus, as a proper tablet.
Although I do agree, input reckognition on Android is still way behind the kind of apps that are available on iPadOS, but that is mostly app developer's issue, not Android itself.
(Before that, phones were so slow and had so little RAM that software updates made them unusable eventually).
The mid-range Samsung A52 5G now comes with 7 years of security updates and you can get it with 8GB of RAM for less than 300€.
That's a pretty good deal! You just need to replace the battery every three years or so.
Having said that, i think that on-device AI will change things and it will accelerate the update cycle once again because bigger models are better and the models that fit on phones are still anemic these days. Where are the phones with 32GB of RAM? My body is ready!
If you used it as a PC, presumably in a dock attached to a monitor, keyboard, etc, then it's be plugged in most of the time and battery wouldn't get much use.
But there are other benefits such as the availability, even when your phone is offline, latency and no cost per use.
I just assumed they are the Apple of Android, big marketing budget, expensive, but mid-tier.
Updates are anyway a joke, so I stop caring for that to the point I only have a passing interest on what Android team shows off at Google I/O.
Apple stuff I only use via my employer/customers, but same reasoning applies regarding features I care about.
This whole space has been cursed. You can hack some old Nokias or Androids to run windows on arm and have driver issues. You can use a handheld pc console like the GPD Win and get the LTE addon. But there’s no “this phone is a PC“ offering that is really viable.
I suppose having a Pinephone and running Linux is the best option right now.
I used a lap dock for a while (UPERFECT) which allowed me to plug a device via usb c and it would turn the phone into a basic laptop.
I wish there were serious efforts.
ChromeOS is actively being re-implemented to run on top of the Android kernel.
Reasons for this may range from merely wanting to minimize kernel/driver work, to something more strategic, and nobody high enough up that chain to know seems to be willing to risk their NDA.
> there’s no “this phone is a PC“ offering that is really viable.
> I wish there were serious efforts.
You should really google "Samsung Dex".
The real question I have is why software keeps getting progressively slower requiring faster phones. I don't buy the "devs are lazy / management pushes for frequent releases, so devs use poor expensive platforms like electron" or "all manufactures conspire to make phones that age too fast" - both devs and companies have always been like that, I don't see any recent fundamental shift in that. And it is not like current dev experience is somehow fundamentally different and easier then 10y ago - we use similar kinds of abstraction to do similar things (maybe ~20% more productive and simple?). I am genuinely confused.
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/14/conti...
I get jerks and judders all the time, but it's 100% the fault of the software.
Of course what users see is that their devices are more responsive, also engineers use the new performance to provide more and more cluttered and animated GUI. So you have to have the performance.
Sigh.
Yes. Of course if a chip isn't actually more power efficient at the same times as being more performant then it wouldn't be the case. But that's almost invariably the case, at least long term (if you upgrade every 3-5 years or so).
Also, the people who make phones are usually not responsible for the most performance hungry GUI's. I'd blame heave web sites for that. App writers are going to do whatever makes enough % of people have an acceptable performance. So you need your own device to be within some margin from the average, or it will be too slow eventually.
You want thousands of people to do useless and potentially unpaid work?
I want the opposite: that I can write the code once and it will work forever, requiring maybe only security fixes (which is not even required for many apps). I am not interested in spending my time for maintaining the code or "updating to the new API".
I think this is an extreme interpretation of what I said. I want software that is maintained. Android has a problem with apps refusing to update to hold onto legacy permissions that are restricted in newer versions (or at least it did when I moved back from android to iOS in ~2022). Apps that don't work with biometrics, or handle the notch properly are other examples.
> I want the opposite: that I can write the code once and it will work forever,
That only happens if the environemnt the code is run in is frozen, and if the underlying API was prescient enough in the first place. Device resolutions and aspect ratios have changed dramatically in the last few years. Access to buttons/input methods have changed on iOS and Android. Hardware has chagned dramatically.
This is dismissive. I'm tech savvy - I'm a programmer who has written kernel level code shipped to hundreds of thousands of people. It's not about it being "easier and safer", it's about not caring wanting to have to make every microdecision just so I can read an email.
Also apps on Android usually have sane defaults so you don't necessarily have to make microdecisions in order to read an email.
That is why you need to do a little bit more research and be a little bit tech savvy for using Android in the proper way.
I would recommend brands like Google Pixel, OnePlus, Sony, Motorola. They don't put much bloat in their Android versions.
But yeah that is the thing with Android, developers have more freedom with it, so also some will use it to make things worse. With Apple you can't do anything; you're just stuck with what the manufacturer provides you and if you don't like it then you are either the CEO of Apple or it's just too bad for you.
But it cannot. Have you ever seen the kind of setups professionals in various industries are using for their craft? Like DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), 3D modelling (Blender / Maya / whatever), JetBrains IDEs (or others), architects, doctors, etc.
How does that fit on a smartphone's screen? It doesn't.
Your phone is not and cannot be a PC.
A laptop is barely adequate.
Now I'm not saying there's not that one musician who managed to create that one hit from his smarthpone but most musicians use a proper setup. Proper instruments. Proper PC.
Is a phone sufficient to post pictures and vids on social media? Sure. But there's more to the world than social media.
I haven't seen many vids of chip engineers or SpaceX engineers working on next gen tech from smartphones.
A phone is not a PC, no matter how much you're addicted to your phone.
If you are expecting your phone to be identical to a modern PC then yes you will be disappointed. But its processing power and capabilities are more than adequate for 99% of software.
The percentage of 3D modellers and people running DAWs are very low; running office-style applications and web browsing is perfectly acceptable. We managed to live without the web browsing bit for many years too! Eg. I ran a 386SX and a 486 DX for my homework decades ago, without the Internet. Modern phones are perfectly capable of this.
Second, I'm currently using the OnePlus 5T I bought back in 2017 as my phone. It's perfectly fine, and never feels particularly sluggish either (except at times with LinkedIn, which is probably the trashiest app ever anyway). The only repair it ever received was a battery replacement last year.
My wife still uses the OnePlus One I bought in 2013. It's equally fine for her modest use, and it still runs (LineageOS) with its original battery for two full days without any trouble.
I don't know if iOS does better in that regard, but it has other issues that make it painful to use as a daily driver.
That's a chicken and egg issue. The more performance you have the less the apps are optimized. We used to do incredible things on very limited hardware, now everything is a bloated piece of shit that uses 10-100x too much ressources
> Work expands so as to fill the time available for it's completion.
Programs expand so as to use the average hardware available to developers.
but... Android sucks because the default permissions and business model on Android all veer towards advertising, and this is heavy on network and bandwidth as well as background processing across lots of apps... and that drains battery and performance.
I switched to GrapheneOS and just disable network on many things like Camera, etc... the Cloud AI features are not worth it... I also run web apps instead of installed apps for the vast majority of things, if an app doesn't require some hardware capability that only an app can provide then it's staying as a web app, m.uber.com works, most news websites work best as web apps with the JS disabled... I routinely get multi-day battery and stellar performance by just not running apps that are always trying to continuously exfiltrate data about me.
I've found only 2 things that don't work the same on GrapheneOS: Revolution banking just does not work at all - so I closed my account with them, and AMEX forces 2FA on every sign-in - which I can tolerate. Nothing else was impacted, everything else is an improvement in performance and battery.
And yes, agreed, I can't live without mobile browser extensions. Tubular for YouTube is similarly indispensable.
The phone I have now is a Nokia branded something, can't remember the model name but it's about two years old. As fast as the day I bought it.
When one phone falls off the bottom of the stack another one goes on the top of the family stack. In service we have a 15 Pro, 13 Pro, 12, XR, 8 and the 6s. I'll push Pro phones down every two years now. Occasionally something needs a new battery and that's about it.
As for usability, there are a couple of problems but once you get used to it and why, meh. Safari+AdGuard (free) is excellent and a lot less dicky than Firefox on Android.
- ZMK powered super portable wireless Bluetooth split keyboards
- portable headset-based displays like the Viture XR pro
I am now comfortable leaving my laptop at home with zero anxiety, because I know I can fairly comfortably dive back into anything I need to from anywhere with my split 36 keys, termux, obsidian and earbuds. Yes most of the functionality that makes this possible has been around for a while, but it feels like the peripherals that grease the UX are here now.
What is the experience like? Could you spend time programming in the terminal? Would it be comfortable for several hours?
I'm really not familiar with the physics of this. But when using your glass, the image is put in a parallax between left and right eye to 'appear' at a distance.
But does this mean that your eyes are focusing on a very nearby plane irrespective of where the image is perceived to be by your brain? As in would this strain your eyesight more?
However, because the spacing between the screens is not adjustable, your eyes will always do some level of 'vergence' adjustment to point themselves at the screen, effectively going a little cross-eyed or a little in the other direction. In the beginning I felt like my eyes were a bit too far apart to use the headset comfortably, but a recent software update allowed you to adjust this by trimming a few pixels from the edge of the screen to adjust the position of the image. While it's not perfect, I think it's helped a lot. I've tested this by looking through the glasses with a mouse pointer on the screen while trying to notice at which distance I see just the one pointer, and it's roughly around 3m in front of me, which aligns perfectly with the focus distance of the projected screens.
On the question of actual focus - screen focus itself is actually adjustable on the Viture XR Pro to accommodate for glasses prescriptions, down to a -5.0 diopter. You can adjust focus individually for each of your eyes, and I think it's this that actually makes the biggest difference in how relaxed you can be when you use it. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to adjust it for long-sightedness, but I'm a +1.0 and find there's still room in the opposite direction if I wanted to adjust it more on the dials.
Hope that helps.
For example, "phones" use eMMC or UFS which are not the choice of those who want "performance" from their personal computer. They prefer SSDs.
Chromebooks also use eMMC. To illustrate, search for the term "eMMC" on Amazon and the results are mostly Chromebooks. Also routers and development boards are still using eMMC.
And they already had phones that turned into PCs.
They failed because they are a stupid idea. You either need a mobile computing platform with a large screen and keyboard, or a pocketable mobile good-enough-computing/communications/payment platform. What you don't need is a stillborn defective fetus of a disaster where you plug into someone else's greasy keyboard and smeared monitor instead of pulling out a laptop.
Unless you're one of those weirdos who spends thousands of dollars to build a netbook-sized cyberdeck only to never use it except as a status symbol at hacker conferences.
The only thing dumber than carrying around a phone to use it as a PC is trying to use and change settings in a phone OS via a Linux terminal emulator.
Also, everyone in here saying the cameras are "good enough" is wrong.
Until a camera can take a photograph of an individual atom from across a pitch-black room while being shaken IT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
People who want phones to be PCs remind me of the folks who went all-in on VR back in 2016 who now pretend to ignore the thousands of dollars of trash they have collecting dust in the corner.
They are solution-in-search-of-a-problemizing.
Looks like it... exists. And not much more. I doubt it's a high priority for PMOS devs given that lot of internal hardware is still only partially working or not at all.
I really wish there was some startup that made a relatively affordable Linux phone that is competitive with modern phones in performance, stability, and support.
Web requirements scale up over time, elder devices (some years old as opposed to yesteryears device) are CPU and RAM constraint.
Once a device is not manufactured anymore, its batteries are neighter. You will only get stocked elder batteries.
I am personally much more fascinated at the new possibilities opened up by having all this processing power in a handheld form factor than the prospect of humanity being able to snap slightly better looking Instagram pictures.
Like the 14 Pro is so much faster than the first couple iPhones, and those didn't even have UI lag like that.
For $400 you can get some virtual displays you can carry around everywhere.
The next gen comes with 6DoF, and when they half or quarter in price, things could get interesting.
So, it's hard to call it a PC at the end of the day IMO.
I'm not trying to dismiss your perspective here, I think you have a real point about the intimacy and personal importance of modern smartphone usage. From a layperson perspective, you're absolutely correct that these deliver on the promise of "personal computer."
But to those who choose to spend more time learning and understanding them, computers are (very flexible) tools, and specifically they're tools where you get to choose the computation being performed. This is why, to me at least, (most) mobile devices simply can't be "personal computers."
Smartphones and tablets are still useful to people with that perspective - but I see them not as a computer but as an appliance. I turn it on, I turn it off, I maybe get to fiddle with a few knobs, but most of it is a black box that hopefully "just works."
And hey, I like that convenience - as long as it's not the only way I have to interact with technology.
So, it may seem pedantic, but I think it is worth distinguishing true general purpose computers from phones. They are absolutely personal - a "personal smart appliance", if you will, but not a personal computer at the end of the day.
Don't ever expect goggle to have your interests at the core of their plans or products...
Cameras too might be hitting diminishing returns
I turn it on, it does stuff. I don't need to fiddle about with it.
I stop using a piece of software, the OS makes sure it can't hog resources in the background without a good reason.
It updates software automatically, usually overnight. I don't need to manually run commands to update.
This is why I use an iPhone.
If you don't want to pay, then don't. Get an older phone or not the high end.
The extra performance is used. Modern photography uses a ton of power, and recording even more so.
Granted, I also think that progress in other parts of the phone has slowed, but it's not like CPU people are the same people deciding how much battery you get in a phone.
Right now, all we see is arrangements of the same cores from ARM.
I actually feel almost the same for my computers, and the only reason I bought a maxed out M3 Max Macbook was to future proof my self for a very long time.
But I feel this way more acutely with mobile devices. I see no reason at all to upgrade from my fourth gen ipad pro, from my pro max 12 iphone. There's no conceivable use case for me with those devices that require more computing power.
Every day since a couple years now.
> I struggle to recall the last time an app jerked and juddered into life.
I don’t. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t that way at first. It’s just that over time my phone just slowed down. Purging it of its data and unused software did nothing, I just had less and less available memory over time, and maps grew slower and slower, and it was becoming increasingly impossible to open several, sometimes just two applications at the same time.
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That being said, I do agree with the core point of the article: phones are plenty fast enough.
Heck, I’m pretty sure a snappy modern UI with all the bells and whistles except perhaps a voice assistant requires less than a tenth of the computing power of the average phone. We just need reasonably performing software. Not crazy optimised software, just something that makes decent use of the CPU and GPU, and doesn’t consume too much RAM.
But the market won’t even give us that. You know what, keep that up a few years and I’ll seriously think of switching back to a flip phone.
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Edit: I have a Xiaomi M1804C3CG.
Also, despite Android fanboys getting triggered, I never said that there are no good Android phones. There are. And the median Android phone is more powerful than an iPhone for the money (especially non-US models). The differentiator is that Apple doesn't ship iPhones that are too awful.
If you want to replace a battery on a relatively modern Samsung flagship, you will likely swear, drink, and/or curse the engineers that decided "Glass and glue is good enough"
Perhaps you have malware installed on your device?
I’ve heard that as systems update, they keep the old stuff around until you run out of memory. I haven’t checked, and I have yet to reset my phone to factory setting, but if that’s what’s really happening, that’s still unacceptable.
One reason for low memory being responsible for slow loading times, is on the fly (de)compression, to save what little memory the phone has left.
Multiple different brands have the same buggy OS, even those which used to be household names. This must've saved the companies at least $20 000.
iPhone? They throttle the CPU to make the battery look like it's not dying.
Back in the mid-2010s when I was broke and getting by on a worn out hand-me-down iPhone I would’ve loved to have that feature. It really sucks when your phone dies in the middle of a business call at 40% battery thanks to one of those aforementioned spikes.
It looks like that model has 2GB of ram. I can certainly understand running into performance issues with those specs.
As for convergence I'm not so sure. The only place I use a desk is at work and even if a phone could optimally run a docker stack and everything else I need there wouldn't really be a benefit to me. I guess taking a phone home instead of the work MBP would be a bit easier but meh, I carry a bag anyway and then I would need something to plug it into at home.
For personal I use my MBP on the couch. If it was a laptop-like dock that my phone slipped into, ok, that would work but A) Apple will never do that and B) what would the benefit be? I doubt it would be a ton cheaper and I'd need to keep my phone more up to date than I do now because I do want a powerful laptop.
In principle I like the idea, but in practice I don't think it would work for me. What I'd be more interested in is running macOS on an iPad.
Sadly I feel like a harbinger consumer with my tastes.
A couple of weeks ago using Obsidian in an iPhone SE (3rd gen). And I've switched to an iPhone 16 and it's definitely way more fluid (even for browsing).
There is clearly some kind of rat race: more raw power available, less time spent by devs in optimizations (and I guess the PRO to that CON would be less time to market). I'm not sure how to feel about all this, but there are definitely situations of phones that can't keep up.
At the core it's a capacitor app.
I touch my phone 3-4 hours a day. As much as I detest the upgrade rat race (and using a phone so much, but that's an aside), the increased responsivity feels really nice. Definitely worth the money for me.
Really, no one?
TLDR: Android "custom rom" turns into debian when plugged into a monitor. Has been around since at least 2016.
BUT GOOD SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS LIKE SAMSUNG AND ALL DONT ALLOW EASY ROOT, NOT WITHOUT RISK OF BRICK AND LOSS OF DATA
AND PHONES LIKE PIXEL AND ONE PLUS THAT ALLOWS FOR ROOT ON THEIR OLDER MODELS ARENT THAT GREAT IN TERMS OF UI AND PERFORMANCE LIKE SAMSUNG
BUT SAYING PERFORMANCE ISNT NECESSARY IS FALSE
I GOT MY FIRST PHONE AND SINCE 7YRS I DID NOT TOUCHED MY PC OR LAPTOP, WITH PHONE + ADB + TERMUX I HAVE LINUX DISTRO IN POCKET,
WITH PROOT BASED DISTRO YOU CAN ALSO DO MINOR IMAGE EDITING AND VIDEO ENCODING
THOUGH BATTERY OPTIMIZATION OF ANDROID MIGHT CRASH