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Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance

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Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance

#111

Post by bhelkey »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #22

> When was the last time you felt your smartphone really couldn’t cope? Every day since a couple years now. > I struggle to recall the last time an app jerked and juddered into life. I don’t. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t that way at first. It’s just that over time my phone just slowed down. Purging it of its data and unused software did nothing, I just had less and less available memory over time, and maps grew sl…

> Edit: I have a Xiaomi M1804C3CG.

It looks like that model has 2GB of ram. I can certainly understand running into performance issues with those specs.

Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance

#112

Post by yencabulator »

tetrisgm wrote: post #96

This keeps being postponed. For some reason Chrome OS isn’t being ported to Android devices. Motorola tried their take. Microsoft tried the windows phone thingy. Nokia had the N900 Linux phones. Even Android was supposed to run a Windows 11 VM just fine. Microsoft killed the Surface Neo. There was a phone shaped Windows PC called the Emporium or something, killed too. This whole space has been cursed. You can hack so…

> For some reason Chrome OS isn’t being ported to Android devices.

ChromeOS is actively being re-implemented to run on top of the Android kernel.

Reasons for this may range from merely wanting to minimize kernel/driver work, to something more strategic, and nobody high enough up that chain to know seems to be willing to risk their NDA.

Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance

#114

Post by ghaff »

amelius wrote: post #100
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this mean? With a personal computer I can do anything I want, for my own benefit. With an iPhone I can do what Apple gives me permission to do, subject to what benefits them.

Simply put, your iPhone contains your life. Whereas a PC is often just a tool, which can be used by multiple people in principle.

I'm not sure I know what that means. Yes, I use my iPhone as a camera but I download pics just as with a dedicated camera on a regular basis. I did break one a year or so back but, given reasonable backup practices, it was no different than breaking a PC or it failing.

Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance

#115

Post by hilbert42 »

Kirby64 wrote: post #107
hilbert42 wrote: post #102

I find it highly annoying that these rather powerful handheld smartphone computers don't have decent port access for use with instrumentation, etc. A huge range of features comes to mind from Geiger counters, oscilloscopes, sound level measurement, light intensity, etc , etc. The potential to expand the smartphone capability is enormous yet no manufacturer has tackled it. Why not? Why aren't there multiple USB ports?…

> Why aren't there multiple USB ports? By now why don't all phones use USB-3? Why isn't there general purpose D/A and A/D ports/outputs for instrumentation? Why don't they include a GPIB-like bus to connect to things? Why can't we use the screen as an oscilloscope with a bandwidth of say 100MHz? Because the population of people that would actually use that functionality rounds to approximately 0. There do exist phone…

"Because the population of people that would actually use that functionality rounds to approximately 0."

How can you say that, where are your figures/stats/evidence?

For starters I'm 1 person, so the market is not O. And I know of others, and I know I'm not alone. Clearly you don't work in test and measurement.

Moreover, this article alone has raised the matter of additional features.

Anyway, it's only a matter of time until some (likely small) manufacturer breaks the boring mold and steps out. That's inevitable because the market is already saturated with phones that all have exactly the same features.

Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance

#116

Post by ianburrell »

Kirby64 wrote: post #107
hilbert42 wrote: post #102

I find it highly annoying that these rather powerful handheld smartphone computers don't have decent port access for use with instrumentation, etc. A huge range of features comes to mind from Geiger counters, oscilloscopes, sound level measurement, light intensity, etc , etc. The potential to expand the smartphone capability is enormous yet no manufacturer has tackled it. Why not? Why aren't there multiple USB ports?…

> Why aren't there multiple USB ports? By now why don't all phones use USB-3? Why isn't there general purpose D/A and A/D ports/outputs for instrumentation? Why don't they include a GPIB-like bus to connect to things? Why can't we use the screen as an oscilloscope with a bandwidth of say 100MHz? Because the population of people that would actually use that functionality rounds to approximately 0. There do exist phone…

Also, there is a small market for people who don't want a laptop. Or a Raspberry Pi. I bet a Pi with display would make a better if slightly larger.

It is also strange to complain about multiple ports when can get a USB-C hub. It used to be they were all USB-C to USB-A but there are starting to USB-C only hubs.

Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance

#117

Post by Kirby64 »

hilbert42 wrote: post #115
Kirby64 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why aren't there multiple USB ports? By now why don't all phones use USB-3? Why isn't there general purpose D/A and A/D ports/outputs for instrumentation? Why don't they include a GPIB-like bus to connect to things? Why can't we use the screen as an oscilloscope with a bandwidth of say 100MHz? Because the population of people that would actually use that functionality rounds to approximately 0. There do exist phone…

"Because the population of people that would actually use that functionality rounds to approximately 0." How can you say that, where are your figures/stats/evidence? For starters I'm 1 person, so the market is not O. And I know of others, and I know I'm not alone. Clearly you don't work in test and measurement. Moreover, this article alone has raised the matter of additional features. Anyway, it's only a matter of ti…

> For starters I'm 1 person, so the market is not O. And I know of others, and I know I'm not alone. Clearly you don't work in test and measurement.

I said approximately 0, when compared to smartphone sales… which it is. I don’t need a survey to know that, since the vast vast vast majority of people using phones don’t even know what an oscilloscope, a DAC, or an ADC is. If you think that’s untrue, I’d suggest widening your horizons a bit.

Also, I’d think that you don’t work in test and measurement. I use test equipment in my day job and I wouldn’t trust the output of a phone if I’m doing actual production work. You need calibrated equipment for that. Maybe okay for debugging, but there’s tons of cheap measurement equipment that works just fine for general purpose debugging and has a much better UI than anything you’d get on a touch screen.

Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance

#118

Post by ghaff »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #34
SoftTalker wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be somewhat interested. Single-monitor is good enough for most people for home computing stuff. And touch-screen interaction on a tiny screen sucks for anything like spreadsheets, composing documents, dealing with PDFs, or dense forms. I would probably come down to separate devices however, in the interests of security and continuity. A phone is much more likely to be lost or stolen than a computer on a desk at h…

Another thing in favor of separate devices, is that for lightweight usecases that benefit from traditional desktop UX (like spreadsheets, as you mentioned) even cheap PCs have been extreme overkill for the better part of two decades at this point — the latest greatest desktop hardware is barely better than a mid-late Core 2 Duo booted off an SSD for productivity. One could buy a cheap mini-PC and put some flavor of L…

I mean I have a 10 year old MacBook laptop I use downstairs in the kitchen as a "desktop." It's just fine for most purposes. If I needed to pay $10K for such a device and replace it with my phone and a hub sure. But same thing with Xbox. Computers by themselves are mostly not that expensive or bulky.

Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance

#119

Post by orev »

ghaff wrote: post #72
ksd482 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

orev is not talking about people. He's talking about market forces. That is, device manufacturing companies.

I don't see who is refusing to sell you a phone with various attachments that make a workable computer (especially given 3rd party providers). I just bought such with an iPad. You could do something along the same lines with an iPhone I suppose but I'd probably find it unsatisfactory. Still on the fence whether the iPad is still a fully satisfactory companion device for traveling in general.

In the Apple ecosystem, the one “refusing to sell you…” is Apple, and not only the required peripherals but also not making the software work that way. Because if they did, then you wouldn’t need to buy a Mac.
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