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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

#111

Post by hellbanner »

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.

The irony is that the iPhones are designed to be broken from falls so that consumers are motivated to buy new cases.

Anecdotal (as an iOS dev), yes, but how hard would it be to add back a fraction of a mm in casing above the screen to protect from falls?

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

#112

Post by tiatia »

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.

The HP48G runs on my android as a free app. I use it daily.

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

#113

Post by pekk »

Someone1234 wrote: post #52
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.

Since the 8210 didn't really have a working web-browser (by modern standards) or legitimate animations, you could likely make a 8210 today with an eInk display and also take advantage of the battery tech' improvements. At the time it only had a 650 mAh battery. And while it is a very small phone, similarly small phones today can easily get double that in the same physical dimensions. So I guess what I am saying is, i…

At what price?

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

#114

Post by e12e »

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-...…

Looks like an interesting phone to take to music festivals...

Now, if they were paired with some kind of api/dev-kit so one could rip out the "snapchat"-stuff and bundle something useful, like xmpp+otr, a bare bones rss client... email... that kind of thing.

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

#115

Post by undertow »

I seriously miss low-tech phones that are actually so low-tech and dumb that the only features they boast are the most practical necessities.

The worst part about most phones of any era is that they become ruined with sinister bloatware, designed to funnel you into dark patterns of paying for garbage that burns any trust you might invest into a device, until it's a charred unregocnizable mess.

Unfortunately, even now, if they made a device that was purported to be "dumb" and no-frills, I probably wouldn't believe that the phone were as pared-down as I might wish to believe, simply because I'd be sure that the chipsets available to manufacturers might actually possess far greater power under the hood, than some simple throwback of a handset might seem to house.

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

#116

Post by userbinator »

kens wrote: post #103
hucker wrote: post #6

This phone looks really interesting as a backup/utility, especially for people who travel a lot with many sim cards from different countries... Has anyone found somewhere to order internationally? EDIT: Specifically that exact design, there's something about it..

If you find how to get one of these phones, let me know. I'd like to do a teardown.

Alibaba/Aliexpress would be the place to go for this and other unbranded feature phones.

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

#117

Post by userbinator »

undertow wrote: post #115

I seriously miss low-tech phones that are actually so low-tech and dumb that the only features they boast are the most practical necessities. The worst part about most phones of any era is that they become ruined with sinister bloatware, designed to funnel you into dark patterns of paying for garbage that burns any trust you might invest into a device, until it's a charred unregocnizable mess. Unfortunately, even now…

Unfortunately, even now, if they made a device that was purported to be "dumb" and no-frills, I probably wouldn't believe that the phone were as pared-down as I might wish to believe, simply because I'd be sure that the chipsets available to manufacturers might actually possess far greater power under the hood, than some simple throwback of a handset might seem to house.

You'd probably get a 32-bit ARM at a few hundred MHz, with several MB of RAM, like this:

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107

I don't know if that counts as being minimal to you, but they're certainly not putting even low-end smartphone SoCs in these. Interesting that a low-end smartphone costs roughly the same, with all the smart features, but not as much ruggedness:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9558854

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

#118

Post by [deleted] »

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-...…

[deleted]

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

#119

Post by [deleted] »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #27
jre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be doable to build an Android app that turns data on every X minutes. Does such a thing already exist ? Does it really help with battery ?

Yes, and yes. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gyagapen.c... It essentially disconnects data when screen is off (the algorithm is a bit more complex, but that's the basic idea). Especially in areas where my phone passes between 2G/3G/noSignal often, I see much improved battery life.

[deleted]

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

#120

Post by Spooky23 »

jakobegger wrote: post #88
baddox wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

iPhone 6 models in my workplace (sample size 2000/12000) are about 4x more likely to break than 5/5s models.
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