Its an absolutely insane culture we have that we expect to replace these kinds of devices so often.
Growth at all costs.
US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
241–250 of 339 posts
Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have an iPhone 13 mini, the last <5" flagship phone you can buy. I'm not particularly tied to the iPhone ecosystem, but when this dies, I don't know what I'm going to do.
This is the only thing on the horizon that I'm aware of: https://smallandroidphone.com/ but it's looking like vaporware at this point.
Yeah, I signed up for updates more than a year ago and haven't gotten any. Migicovsky seems more interested in Beeper than furthering this project. Which I get, an app is easier and cheaper to deploy than a phone. Still a bit disappointed, I might end up buying a Unihertz Atom XL for a reasonable screen size with bonus FRS radio built in.
Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
#243I bought an Apple watch cellular for my son, just to give him the ability to text us or call in emergency and a watch cellular subscription is cheaper than a new cell phone line. But this watch does not work with my wife's Iphone 6S and it seems that we have no choice but to buy a new iphone even though the 6S is doing fine.
edit: typo
Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
#244If Apple with get their act together on an AI agent that lives on the IPhone and gives you privacy but can really do stuff - but that capacity would only work on new hardware - everyone would upgrade and Apple would be work 4 Trillion
I don't want an AI agent, I want simplicity. My phone should make my life less complicated. It seems like every new feature achieves the opposite.
The best AI tool in most places would be to drive you toward APIs or functionality that you haven't discovered yet. The best (non-AI) example of this is the Microsoft Office ribbon, which you can drive almost entirely by keyboard, and which makes for incredibly easy hotkey discovery.
Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
#245If you want to sell phones, give people a reason. Have your phones do things that others cannot (and not just adding differential features with Tesla-style arbitrary software limitations).
Nobody is addressing the market that One Plus used to target. I'd be genuinely excited for:
1. Premium specs at a good price. Indulge on the CPU & RAM, save money on the physical materials. I'm adding a case anyway, I don't need expensive aluminum.
2. A rootable device (i.e. unlocked bootloader and downloadable factory images to restore if needed). Root friendly would be even better. This is even more important now that Google is removing features and cracking down on legitimate things. Try recording your phone calls in 2023, even though this was trivial to do 10 years ago.
3. Rear fingerpint sensor
4. Left-aligned camera notch
5. Headphone jack
6. SD card slot
7. Modularity, or at least a replaceable battery
8. First party support for Graphene OS and/or third party ROMs would be killer
9. External display support. 10 years ago I could plug in an adapter and get HDMI and it worked wonderfully. Now Pixel phones won't do that at all without special crappy hardware. Samsung is at least working on this with Dex, but even simple display mirroring would be great.
Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's true, though I kind of don't care. Many people of course do care. My risk tolerance is higher than most. I suspect companies like The Google hold security over people's heads in order to effectively inject code and encourage buying new phones. If I haven't installed new software in a very long time, and most of what I use is FOSS, and I rarely ever update my apps, and there's no reason to believe there's any v…
> That's true, though I kind of don't care. Many people of course do care. My risk tolerance is higher than most. It shouldn't be - common smartphone malware attacks now steal banking info, personal info, and even look for sexting pics that are used as blackmail. > I suspect companies like The Google hold security over people's heads in order to effectively inject code and encourage buying new phones The former is no…
> [your risk tolerance] shouldn't be [higher than most]
In your opinion.
> The former is nonsense but the latter is kinda true.
What exactly do you think happens when a security update is performed? New code is installed on the host.
> There's always going to be vulnerabilities.
Yes. I should have said something like "exploit in-use" instead.
Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
They cost about 20% more, for now. That’s not a ton considering you can break even on gas alone in 2-3 years, depending on how you drive.
It is a ton more when the parent states how much cheaper and easier they are to manufacture. 100x fewer parts and yet they cost more? How does that make sense.
One of the parts is rather expensive
Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically the LTE iWatches are a <5" phone, too.
Can you use them completely independently from an Apple phone? I thought not... Context: I'm not particularly interested in switching to Apple's phone ecosystem, but their watches seem to be superior to Android's and I am slightly interested in getting one of them.
I don't have one, but I was under the impression cellular versions of Apple Watches can be used independently from an iPhone. You can take calls, send messages, stream music, etc. miles away from a phone, as its connectivity isn't through the phone its through its own onboard cellular modem. Now, do you have to have some kind of iPhone somewhere for it to do things like route messages through iMessage? I don't know.
Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be nice to have full LIDAR based 3D scanning on phones, one for better imaging and two to provide datasets for 2D to 3D LLMs.
Yeah Apple's Lidar sensor is one of the most compelling features on their phones. I'm seriously considering switching from Android to iPhone for the first time in my life in part because of it.
I've always wondered Android manufacturers copy the wrong things from Apple and not the cool things like the LiDAR sensor.
The LiDAR on the iPhone is faster but produces less detailed models. Photogrammetry is slower but produces higher resolution models [1].
I don't know if I would drop $1000+ just for that though.
Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main benefit is that everything else also uses USB-C, so you can standardise on one type of cable.
What is special about high-speed USB-C cables that sees them not work with low-speed USB-C devices (i.e. the iPhone 15 non-Pro model)?
High speed USB-C cables work fine with low speed devices. Just at lower speed.