Essential Phone, available now • Hacker News Board

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#171

Post by zeppelin101 » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

davemp wrote: post #117

git-pull wrote: post #85

I admire the gumption of making a new phone. But controlled obsolescence kills me. The real feature that improves in phones the past few years for me is the software and apps, not the hardware . My wishlist: - Give me a lighter, snappier OS. Not something clunkier and slower and uses more ram, gpu/cpu (aka battery life). - Actually support updates to the things for longer than 2-3 years. - (Not related to this phone)…

> And physical keyboards. Something for SSH'ing with. Biggest thing I want is no aux port but __two__ (or more) usb-c ports instead. That way you can do stuff like plug in a keyboard/monitor or other standalone usb devices. I don't want to be forced to use weird all in one hubs for specific use cases. I want the UNIX philosophy with my hardware.

Bluetooth keyboards work great with Android devices. No cables required.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#172

Post by SamBam » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

fiatjaf wrote: post #168

feld wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - And physical keyboards. Something for SSH'ing with. There is no market for this product. Nobody wants it except a tiny fraction of the market who work in IT.

Apparently you should give that advice to Google Chrome, which spends hundreds of thousands of money into making their developer tools better, a feature only a tiny fraction of their users want.

Google has a vested experience in improving the internet for all, because the more man-hours that are spent online, the more people are interacting with Google marketing and products.

To that end, they've always been very vested in improving web development for everyone.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#173

Post by fiatjaf » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

0xbear wrote: post #46

Now we'll know exactly how many Andy Rubin fanboys there are in the world. Why would anyone else buy a $700+ phone from a startup which might not even be there next year? My prediction: a few tens of thousand units will be sold mostly in the US, darn near zero anywhere else.

"Mostly in the US"?

Of course, it's only being sold in the US. Do you know how awful it is for a single customer to try to buy something from another country?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#174

Post by exabrial » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:11 PM UTC

WalterSear wrote: post #137

martin_bech wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have a floppydrive?

Could you recommend a pair of cheap, studio quality, headphones that use bluetooth? Also a pair of good value, audiophile quality earbuds that use bluetooth? Please don't suggest Beats by Dre, or Apple. They aren't either.

How about ones that don't have unpredictable 15ms-30ms latency was well...

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#175

Post by exabrial » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:11 PM UTC

Dirlewanger wrote: post #50

No 3.5mm jack, no thanks.

Yep. Phone HAS to have a headphone jack.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#176

Post by zazpowered » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:11 PM UTC

lolsal wrote: post #48

> Your phone is your personal property. It’s a public expression of who you are and what you stand for. No, it's really not. It's literally just a tool I use for communication.

That obviously varies by person. Why do you think people get different cases or make modifications to their phones?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#177

Post by phonon » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:11 PM UTC

git-pull wrote: post #85

I admire the gumption of making a new phone. But controlled obsolescence kills me. The real feature that improves in phones the past few years for me is the software and apps, not the hardware . My wishlist: - Give me a lighter, snappier OS. Not something clunkier and slower and uses more ram, gpu/cpu (aka battery life). - Actually support updates to the things for longer than 2-3 years. - (Not related to this phone)…

> - And physical keyboards. Something for SSH'ing with.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keyboard-mod-a-physical-k...

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#178

Post by bsimpson » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

jordanlev wrote: post #35

nicktelford wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They stated 2 years OS updates, 3 years monthly security updates in the blog post.

It's kind of funny what they follow that up with: > Essential Phone will get guaranteed Android OS updates for 2 years and will get monthly security updates for 3 years, so your phone will always be secure and have the latest features. I do not think the word "always" means what they think it means :)

The worst piece is that they usually measure from first day of sale, not last. If you buy this same phone next year, you'll only get a year of updates.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#179

Post by objclxt » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

fiatjaf wrote: post #168

feld wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - And physical keyboards. Something for SSH'ing with. There is no market for this product. Nobody wants it except a tiny fraction of the market who work in IT.

Apparently you should give that advice to Google Chrome, which spends hundreds of thousands of money into making their developer tools better, a feature only a tiny fraction of their users want.

Repeat after me: "Hardware is not software".

Software is far, far, cheaper than hardware. Building bespoke hardware for a tiny fraction of your customer base is insanely expensive, because the larger players have sewn up all the component orders. Once you build your hardware you are stuck with it forever. There is no "Day 1" patch for hardware.

If you needed further evidence you only have to look at the number of hardware Kickstarter projects that fail miserably because they grossly underestimated the cost and complexity of actually making a physical thing.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#180

Post by smt88 » Thu, Aug 17, 2017, 6:13 PM UTC

fiatjaf wrote: post #168

feld wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - And physical keyboards. Something for SSH'ing with. There is no market for this product. Nobody wants it except a tiny fraction of the market who work in IT.

Apparently you should give that advice to Google Chrome, which spends hundreds of thousands of money into making their developer tools better, a feature only a tiny fraction of their users want.

This is not a good analogy.

1) Google is an advertising company. They're not good at making products. If they were, they'd have a lot more profit come from places other than AdSense. They have literally dozens of products, and very few of them impact the bottom line. Clearly they do need to figure out what people want.

2) Dev Tools in Chrome is a way to get developers to target Chrome. This means Chrome is going to work better when browsing than other browsers.

3) Google has so much engineering bandwidth that Dev Tools is a tiny investment. It was useful enough (at the time it was released) to keep it entirely internal, honestly. Letting the public use it was just gravy.

4) Web developers are far, far more common than people who need to use SSH from a phone. Not all developers use SSH and not all developers have a reason to use it from a phone.