Why I don't like smartphones

Post by CydeWeys » Sun, Feb 14, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #205

CydeWeys wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost every app (and many games) being made nowadays are thin clients making api calls where all the work is done on the server. This is not true of games. Can you name any? Yes, multiplayer games require a server component, but they're not thin clients. And games that are not multiplayer generally don't require a server at all except possibly for DRM. People don't like wasting their data plan unnecessarily and th…

Diablo 3 comes to mind as the canonical example of this, but it's a PC/console game rather than mobile. Single player mode is still run by a remote server, and if you have a bad internet connection or they have a server outage (which has happened many times) it will be unplayable. Blizzard has been much better than most companies about keeping its online infrastructure up and running long after a game loses popularit…

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Feb 14, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #198

digi_owl wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the desktop, you have your text editors, word processors, photo editors, video editors, 3D modelers, IDEs, file sharing utilities, digital audio workstations, etc. Could have sworn i have seen examples of all but 3D modeling in the Android Play store. That said, some of those uses can be very RAM demanding, and phones do not have much to offer there compared to a desktop.

And few professionals are going to be satisfied with a tiny screen, tiny processor and throttled connectivity. And no mouse or keyboard or Bamboo pad. Heck, I need three monitors to be most productive!

Post by vezycash » Sun, Feb 14, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #82

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #24

I don't really see how some of his points support his position. e.g. I don't own a smartphone, because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player. A smartphone is all in one and it's incredibly useful. Beyond that, it is in ways a production device. It's a messaging device, a photo and video taking device, it…

Almost every app (and many games) being made nowadays are thin clients making api calls where all the work is done on the server. I don't like it. I like having games from decades ago and still being able to play them long after the companies are dead and its employees working on other things. On my own time I try to come up with software that can run entirely without the need to communicate with servers, or even wit…

Post by mikegioia » Sun, Feb 14, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

seba_dos1 wrote: post #192

mikegioia wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. Name ONE option for a "completely open smartphone". I've spent the last 4 years in search of just ONE open phone and the closest we've come is the Neo900 (stalled, out of money) the Freerunner (production run of 100?), OsmocomBB running on an ancient candybar (illegal), and this hobby project [1] that is more toy than anything viable. The Nokia n900 was the last "openish" phone to come out and the…

You probably meant GTA04 phones instead of Openmoko Neo Freerunner - the latter was sold in more than 10 000 devices. Yes, not counting GTA04, N900 was pretty much the last phone out there that you could call "openish". However, I can tell that Neo900 is not quite done yet and even though with time passing by it obviously gets less exciting than when it was announced, I'm still looking forward to it.

Post by icebraining » Sun, Feb 14, 2016, 5:51 PM UTC

thebaer wrote: post #170

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #24

I don't really see how some of his points support his position. e.g. I don't own a smartphone, because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player. A smartphone is all in one and it's incredibly useful. Beyond that, it is in ways a production device. It's a messaging device, a photo and video taking device, it…

> it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly It's not just the fact that it's an underutilized general computing device; just look at the apps on your phone and tell me the percentage of them that open to a blank "canvas" rather than some kind of stream / feed. On the desktop, you have your text editors, word processors, photo editors, video editors, 3D modelers, IDEs, file s…