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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

#301

Post by david-gpu »

williamdclt wrote: post #293
david-gpu wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a result, all my phones end up looking pristine several years into them being used. They look pristine except for being wrapped in a case and a screen guard. It's a bit like how some people wrapped TV remote controls in plastic film. Don't get me wrong, I also put a case around my phone, but it makes it look fugly from day one.

I think the parent's point about "looking pristine" is less about the aesthetics of it than a way to say that it's intact and fully functional, no wear and tear that would force the user to replace it

Yeah, I get it... but it looks fugly. Beauty has some intangible value, too.

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

#302

Post by 72deluxe »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #298

> Unless my phone can be a PC But it cannot. Have you ever seen the kind of setups professionals in various industries are using for their craft? Like DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), 3D modelling (Blender / Maya / whatever), JetBrains IDEs (or others), architects, doctors, etc. How does that fit on a smartphone's screen? It doesn't. Your phone is not and cannot be a PC. A laptop is barely adequate. Now I'm not sayin…

And yet, we managed to work on PCs that were significantly less powerful than modern phones for decades, and got things done!

If you are expecting your phone to be identical to a modern PC then yes you will be disappointed. But its processing power and capabilities are more than adequate for 99% of software.

The percentage of 3D modellers and people running DAWs are very low; running office-style applications and web browsing is perfectly acceptable. We managed to live without the web browsing bit for many years too! Eg. I ran a 386SX and a 486 DX for my homework decades ago, without the Internet. Modern phones are perfectly capable of this.

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

#303

Post by tazjin »

andrepd wrote: post #287
chvid wrote: post #270

As phones look today and as how they are used, I think we have reached peak usability at around iPhone X. Afterwards - the additional computing, camera, network, form factor that have come with iPhone up to 16 - have provided very little additional end-user value. So unless phone makers want to be in the situation where end-users are less and less willing to pay for and upgrade to a new phone, they have to figure out…

I would pay good money for a phone that isn't a literal tablet in terms of size, and yet there is literally zero options for this. I'm sticking with my Pixel 4a until it dies, and even that is already huge for me.

They actually are starting to come back, e.g. the Xiamo QIN 3 Ultra. The QIN phones also have unlocked bootloaders and you can flash Lineage with Google Play if you need it.

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

#305

Post by simion314 »

resource_waste wrote: post #288
divbzero wrote: post #191

Ubuntu Edge [1] was a Linux phone proposed in 2013 that never got built, but today we have the Purism Librem 5 [2] which becomes a full Linux desktop when plugged into a monitor. [1]: https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-edge [2]: https://puri.sm/posts/a-librem-5-video-made-on-a-librem-5/

The longer I live, the more I think Ubuntu/Canonical and the team is terrible at everything except marketing. Their terrible and outdated OS was supreme for 2 decades from a simple 'Free CD' marketing trick. The actual performance has always been so bad, people made Mint and quickly abandoned Debian/Ubuntu-family for desktop use. Hearing the Ubuntu phone failed is not surprising.

Probably you read to much Arch users comments, many servers run Ubuntu LTS , and many desktops run Ubuntu or Kubuntu.

I tried Debian, Sidux, Arch, Chakra, Fedora, Mandriva, Mint and others and for last 10 years I am happy back on Kubuntu LTS , there is no magic on the other distros that give you performance and I do my work on this PC, game on wine/Proton, I have latest NVIDIA driver.

The reason I use LTS is because I do not need the latest features+ latest bugs combo from upstream, I can fix the current bugs and wait a few year until I am forced to upgrade.

Btw some Ubuntu developers are also Debian developers so using Mint or other Debian based sitro is still benefiting from ubuntu devs work.

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

#306

Post by rolandog »

amelius wrote: post #260
rjh29 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All high end Samsung phones can do this as well (DEX).

How secure is it? Will Samsung or others be able to look over your shoulders?

Boy do I have some bad news for you: Automated Content Recognition [0, 1, 2]. If your Smart TV is connected to the Internet, it can also track what you're watching or doing, even if you're using it as an external monitor [3] (in Dutch).

[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41658828

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41669765

[3]: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/227186/samsung-automatische-cont...

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

#307

Post by _heimdall »

divbzero wrote: post #191

Ubuntu Edge [1] was a Linux phone proposed in 2013 that never got built, but today we have the Purism Librem 5 [2] which becomes a full Linux desktop when plugged into a monitor. [1]: https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-edge [2]: https://puri.sm/posts/a-librem-5-video-made-on-a-librem-5/

Windows Phone tried this as well with Continuum. It was around 2015 if I remember right, so a couple years after Ubuntu Edge raised the idea, but it did work well from what I saw.

It wasn't a finished product, given time and investment it could have been a pretty slick setup for basic tasks.

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

#308

Post by [deleted] »

rjh29 wrote: post #187
CMDBob wrote: post #124

It's funny, as my phone (A 2022 Moto Razr) can work as PC, if I plug it into a monitor with it's USB-C port. I can plug it into a monitor, and plug a mouse and keyboard into the monitor's inbuilt USB-C hub, and it works just fine. Has a desktop mode and everything! If the monitor doesn't have a hub in it, I can use the phone as a mouse/touchpad! Plus, if the monitor supports it, it'll even keep it charged rather than…

All high end Samsung phones can do this as well (DEX).

[deleted]

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

#309

Post by hilbert42 »

ianburrell wrote: post #116
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…

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.

"It is also strange to complain about multiple ports when can get a USB-C hub"

First, a USB hub is bulky and frankly a damn nuisance to carry about, it needs to be integrated.

Second, USB-C/OTG on many phones is implemented in a way that makes it essentially useless. For instance, USB-2 (which is on most phones) is too slow by miles; access to external devices via OTG is often set deliberately to time out after say 30 mins or such, also on many devices permission to access OTG is awkward, and the vast majority of phones do not support NTFS for external drives or internal SD cards.

Frankly, is this is a first-class fucking nuisance. Why can't I have direct compatibility with my PCs and laptops?

To get my phones to do what I want I have to root them and even this isn't fully satisfactory. Rooting is a pain and takes a lot of time to do it correctly and I'd prefer not to do it

With OTC there is no consistency across phone manufacturers. Why the hell not?

Also, why are phone manufacturers removing micro SD slots from phones?

More on NTFS, why doesn't Android support NTFS after all this length of time? After all, the Linux kernel now does and has done so for some time, so why has Google nuked it from the Android kernel?

Now if I go to that despised Chinese company Huawei I can get NTFS support by default (on OTG at least). That Huawei can offer NTFS as a standard feature and most others do not tells me a lot about the oligopoly-like smartphone market.

People here have been criticizing me and voting me down because I've had the hide to suggest features for specialized phones but no one seems to bother addressing the elephant in the room which is that the smartphone market has reached stagnation.

There's been fuck-all worthwhile innovation in recent years.

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

#310

Post by braggerxyz »

This article resonates greatly with me. And because this is not happening anytime soon, I run with Android phones in the "throw away" price range (~200€) or even refurbished ones until the battery or the charging port dies, or my banking app refuses service (happened once last year on an old Samsung S9 which was running perfectly up until then)
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