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Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

theguardian.com

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Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#911
post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are phone SD cards encrypted? Because they're not fast or reliable, so one would at least hope they're secure.

The newer microSD cards are quite fast. Not as fast as built-in storage but fast enough for things like photos and videos if you buy a card with the appropriate speed class. V30 512 GB costs about 40€ including VAT here in Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#Class

SD cards are made for cameras etc, and they're good for that. They have sequential RW speeds to match common video formats at 1X speed or burst photo capture. The spec sheets won't tell you how terrible the random write speed is, and even the quoted sequential speeds aren't very good, but that's ok for cameras.

I use a modern high-end SD card from SanDisk as semi-permanent storage in my MBP. If I copy anything to that card that's not a single file, it takes forever. Overall it feels worse than using an old HDD. I have to actually think about what I store on it (mostly videos/photos), so I totally see the reason for wanting more internal storage instead of an SD slot.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#912

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've obviously never dealt with people who've been hacked and had their life's savings extracted or the business made unviable. Just goes to show, you can lead a horse to security patches (or vaccination, or the effects of climate change) but you can't make him apply them.

> Just goes to show, you can lead a horse to security patches I don't agree with the poster but he has one thing right - our industry is a shitshow. The soviet government handled Chernobyl better than we handle security. Its impossible, even for most proffeshionals, to tell if a device is secure It would be easier for me to measure radiation. The british government had Mi5 check Huawei source code and even couldn't b…

I disagree that security is impossible, because that is using 'secure' to mean absolutely proof against compromise, which is fundamentally impossible because of complexity (even formally verified systems like seL4 run on real processors/RAM which have side channels).

Practically a fully patched iPhone or Pixel without sketchy apps is a very hard target and exploits have a limited lifetime. There is a vast gulf between that and a phone running a 5 year old release without patches.

Why are governments so bad at mandating security? Paralysis in Congress and the EU?

Re Huawei, they were sure there were exploits that could be used against it, and they could never be sure it was exploit-free. (We know that major vendors like Cisco have bugs constantly, so it only requires early access to the code to discover them to produce a ready stream of exploits.) Which is totally what we would expect.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#913

And it comes with a 3mm headphone jack! Hallelujah!! I’m so, so glad someone is stepping up to fill this niche. My only complaint, and it’s kind if a big one, is that the screen is too damn big. I’m tired of phone manufacturers forcing me to carry a television in my pocket. I want something small that I can hold in one hand without a pop socket. I’ll trade performance, camera quality, basically anything for a phone w…

Loving my Unihertz Atom (for a particular sports application). https://www.unihertz.com/products/atom if you haven't tried one. I agree that it would be great if Nokia did this product but in a reasonable size.

I just wish Unihertz had better ROMs or made it easier to flash alternatives like LineageOS. I've got a Titan and the software ruins an otherwise-wonderful piece of hardware.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do none of the good phone options get sold in the US??!? E.g. Sony has one of the few modern smartphones in a reasonable size (xperia 10II (might be the dumbest name though)), and way too few of the bands work in the American market.

As someone who works in e-commerce related to phones, I think a big part of the answer is that the US is not a big market when it comes to selling phones without a contract. In the EU it's common practice to buy without a contract, whereas this is very rare in the US. In other words, carriers have way more power in the US.

> I think a big part of the answer is that the US is not a big market when it comes to selling phones without a contract.

If that was true, then Wal-Mart wouldn't bother carrying every pre-paid SIM under the sun in the same section of the store that sells shitbox Motorolas, nor would Amazon bother carrying the same exact Motorola shitboxen - all unlocked, mind you.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#915
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do none of the good phone options get sold in the US??!? E.g. Sony has one of the few modern smartphones in a reasonable size (xperia 10II (might be the dumbest name though)), and way too few of the bands work in the American market.

You can't complain about availability of phones (or any electronics) while being in the US. Try living anywhere else like Canada.

I can and will complain when the "abundance of choice" here is overwhelmingly geared toward ad delivery rather than actual long-term ownership and usefulness.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#916
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, your point reminds me that the my "dream smartphone" would be one with no cellular connectivity at all. You mean a PDA ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_digital_assistant )? Modern smartphones are basically a PDA with cellular connectivity (this is more obvious with early smartphones like the Treo 650), so if you take out the cellular connectivity, what you have is once again a PDA.

I don't think this distinction makes any sense nowadays. A "smartphone without cellular connectivity" is a lot more than a "Personal Digital Assistant". Could a Palm Pilot stream music? Did it have an app store? GPS? Microphone? Could it make VoIP calls? Could it connect with an external modem so that it could work as a softphone?

If Palm were to create the Pilot in 2023, it would almost certainly be designed to support all those features, yes.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#917

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't 5g fix that? Same radios for everyone.

Does it? I thought Americans were still using alternative frequencies to everyone else. [Edit] It appears that the US doesn't overlap with the majority of the world for most of the ranges, except for one band at the top which overlaps with Japan/Korea. https://5gobservatory.eu/5g-spectrum/ > Currently, the most used bands are: - Low-band: 700 MHz (except in US); 600 MHz (US) - Mid-band: 3.3 – 3.8 GHz (except US); 2.6…

At this point frequency compatibility is purely a firmware setting, no? It seems like every 5G (and even 4G) phone these days supports every frequency on a chipset level and just enables/disables some of them depending on the intended region.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#919

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I enjoy smaller phones, it makes no sense to have high end smaller phones. It doesn’t sell. Just look at Apple’s sales and their cancellation of the mini. I’d love it to be the opposite so I didn’t have to hold on to my iphone 12 mini, but it’s just how things are. Most people don’t like smaller phones and would be a waste of resources to make high end ones.

I buy them. I’d even suggest a deviation: make them a few mm thicker and fill the extra space with battery. I’d use a small powerful multi-day battery smartphone far more than anything else.

The fact you buy it is irrelevant. I buy them too, but if the sales don’t justify the ROI no company is gonna bother with it.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#920

And it comes with a 3mm headphone jack! Hallelujah!! I’m so, so glad someone is stepping up to fill this niche. My only complaint, and it’s kind if a big one, is that the screen is too damn big. I’m tired of phone manufacturers forcing me to carry a television in my pocket. I want something small that I can hold in one hand without a pop socket. I’ll trade performance, camera quality, basically anything for a phone w…

There's a bizarre niche of 'secondary' phones that use esim that might suit you.
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