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The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

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Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#81

Post by keithpeter »

jtchang wrote: post #23

Can we talk about the Nokia 8210 candybar phones? Circa 1999 this thing was indestructible and had battery life that would probably outlast 3-4 iPhones. I think there is a market for these types of phones again. Even if it was ugly it was durable and functional. There is definitely a market for a phone that can be dropped and still function.

My Nokia 3120 phone can do a week or so between charges quite easily, and is very small. It has a paygo sim in it with £10 of credit for emergencies and sits in the kitchen drawer.

As others have mentioned, the new Nokia branded basic phones have good battery lifetimes, although the build quality is basic and I find the buttons quite plasticky

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#82

Post by keithpeter »

mturmon wrote: post #76
jtchang wrote: post #23

Can we talk about the Nokia 8210 candybar phones? Circa 1999 this thing was indestructible and had battery life that would probably outlast 3-4 iPhones. I think there is a market for these types of phones again. Even if it was ugly it was durable and functional. There is definitely a market for a phone that can be dropped and still function.

I get nostalgic for my HP-41CV RPN programmable calculator. It had a printer as a peripheral! And a magnetic card reader, and an optical wand. It's a totemic device for me. But I don't think there is a market for either my old calculator, or candy bar phones, outside of nostalgic ebay purchases.

I take your point on the calculator, but as others have mentioned, the Nokia branded candybar phones of current production are doing rather well actually. People are buying them.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#83

Post by hirsin »

abalone wrote: post #24
mangecoeur wrote: post #12

Batteries that last a week would be nice in current markets too! Not just emerging ones. I personally still don't understand how flagship phones costing $100s barely make it through the day but still get rave reviews. I can't count the number of times Galaxy and iphone touting friends have become unreachable in the evenings because of this - I would have trashed those in a review, who cares about fancy features if yo…

Quite simply because longer-life phones would get trashed even more for not having the features they traded to get longer battery life. Imagine what the reviews would be if the next iPhone is twice as thick and double the weight. That it goes 3 days without a charge for most people would be a footnote to an otherwise poor review.

The irony of course is that after the Apple engineering team spends months trimming off that extra millimeter of thickness, most of their users still go out and get an otterbox that triples the thickness.

Of course, even if they designed an iPhone only twice as thick with triple the battery life and no need for a case, it would still be panned.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#84

Post by CONTRARlAN »

plorg wrote: post #65

Only partially related, but I have a friend who carries around a comically-large 14000 mAh battery[0]. Comically large as in about the size of three or four iPhone 6s's stacked on top of each other - he wore it on a belt clip. My other friends and I made fun of him. He always had his ridiculously large, power-guzzling phone plugged into it. But he insisted that he had it because it could jump-start a car (he's a mech…

I once had a friend show up to help me start a car that wasn't starting–we thought it was the battery but it turned out to eventually be a flaky ignition switch.

It took us a good 20-30 cranks to eventually narrow it down to the ignition switch (when we bypassed it it started). I couldn't believe that little paperback-sized box was capable of doing that.

And it was a relatively big, high-compression engine.

I almost still don't believe it.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#85

Post by INTPenis »

plorg wrote: post #65

Only partially related, but I have a friend who carries around a comically-large 14000 mAh battery[0]. Comically large as in about the size of three or four iPhone 6s's stacked on top of each other - he wore it on a belt clip. My other friends and I made fun of him. He always had his ridiculously large, power-guzzling phone plugged into it. But he insisted that he had it because it could jump-start a car (he's a mech…

This is very common in Thailand and Malaysia. Vendors, locals, they're often seen standing in the street holding both the power bank and the phone in the same hand, plugged in, while talking.

Clearly they're being pragmatical, it's all about battery time and a small set of features.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#86

Post by baddox »

hirsin wrote: post #83
abalone wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite simply because longer-life phones would get trashed even more for not having the features they traded to get longer battery life. Imagine what the reviews would be if the next iPhone is twice as thick and double the weight. That it goes 3 days without a charge for most people would be a footnote to an otherwise poor review.

The irony of course is that after the Apple engineering team spends months trimming off that extra millimeter of thickness, most of their users still go out and get an otterbox that triples the thickness. Of course, even if they designed an iPhone only twice as thick with triple the battery life and no need for a case, it would still be panned.

That's not really irony, is it? A thinner phone in an Otterbox is still thinner than a thicker phone in an Otterbox. Also, there are plenty of people (myself included) who do not use cases, and instead prevent their phones from being damaged by not dropping them. I suspect that "most users" do not use a case anywhere near the thickness of an Otterbox.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#87

Post by pmontra »

efraim wrote: post #36
Piskvorrr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, all of my smartphones so far have a working FM radio app preinstalled (I'm in EU). Is this block some US thing?

Google Nexus phones doesn't come with FM radio in EU. I think all HTC, Samsung, Sony etc does.

Old Galaxy S2 here. It has a FM radio, it uses the earplug cable as antenna but it can play through the speaker. Same thing for my older Nokia N70.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#88

Post by jakobegger »

baddox wrote: post #86
hirsin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of course is that after the Apple engineering team spends months trimming off that extra millimeter of thickness, most of their users still go out and get an otterbox that triples the thickness. Of course, even if they designed an iPhone only twice as thick with triple the battery life and no need for a case, it would still be panned.

That's not really irony, is it? A thinner phone in an Otterbox is still thinner than a thicker phone in an Otterbox. Also, there are plenty of people (myself included) who do not use cases, and instead prevent their phones from being damaged by not dropping them. I suspect that "most users" do not use a case anywhere near the thickness of an Otterbox.

Also, the lower weight makes the phone more resilient to drops. Anecdotal evidence: I've never seen a cracked iPhone 5, but cracked iPhone 4's were common.

Less volume means less mass, which means less kinetic energy that must be absorbed by the frame when dropped on the floor.

Thin and light phones don't need a protective case like thick and heavy phones do.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#89

Post by solidpy »

userbinator wrote: post #7

This is likely a truly unbranded OEM feature phone based on a Mediatek or Spreadtrum reference platform. Resellers then add their own branding to it. I couldn't find that exact one but a bit of searching turns up similar models: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/9000mAh-long-standby-power-ba... http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Original-H-mobile-X8-4... http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Original-Xiaocai-X6-...…

The main reason to use feature phones in my developing country is that they are not worth stealing.

Re: The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana

#90

Post by acdha »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #62
_broody wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> battery life that would probably outlast 3-4 iPhones. And functional life as well. iOS 8 crippled A5 devices which had previously chugging along quite decently. Planned obsolescence sucks (in iDevices' case, it also affects present performance, i.e. Safari constantly having to reload tabs because the device has little RAM to spare). Unlike a smartphone, a simpler device won't be reduced to be unable to perform its…

You don't have to upgrade to iOS 8. Similarly, the 8210 wouldn't have had software upgrades, which naturally would be geared towards newer devices and cause the device to also slow down.

Security confounds that strategy unless you're planning to stop using data once an exploit is discovered which won't be patched on the old OS, which in this case happened the day iOS 8 shipped.
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