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Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

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Re: Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

#321
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't use the name - "Mr Floppy at the beach" is meaningless, but "dog at a beach" will probably yield a lot more. I've found google photos search to be pretty good, and if it can't find something usually the map-mode is enough to pin it down (e.g. go to the beach where you took the photo and it shows you the photos from there)

Thanks for the suggestion. I did just check, and "dog at beach" generates sub 20% recall for me. I go to the beach weekly with my dog, take lots of photos because I'm a dork, and that first query skips many weeks. Also, I did add my dog as a known / named pet under the explore tab, which is why I thought the name should work. I can make it work by picking out the beach via geo, but I think the whole thing illustrates…

I think the classification engine is likely just like 500 common object classifications. It's quite old and has been around for ages so I don't think it is currently as sophisticated as modern LLMs etc. So "sand" and "face" are probably fine, but "sand on face" might be tricky. No idea though - just guessing from my own personal experience

It was also hobbled quite hard near the start as they had a scare with searches for "gorilla" accidentally returning pictures of black people so they have probably turned all the safety knobs they have up to 11, even if that impacts recall.

Re: Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

#322
post #83

I actively don’t want AI, on-device or not. But with the near monopolies on these devices there isn’t a way to vote with your wallet. We’re getting whether we want it or not.

You can have a dumb phone. If you require one for 2fa. Just have one in addition for that purpose. But you can also sms 2fa on many services

For 2FA try a Yubikey or similar hardware U2F device.

(opinion my own)

Re: Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Ask customers "do you want AI in your phone?" and their response will probably be "meh", as shown in the article. But ask "do you want notification summaries, a better camera in low light, Siri to be able to look up more things, searchable photos, etc?" - and they absolutely will.

Lol no one i know wants any of the things you mentioned. Normies hate the AI hypetrain bullshit.

Okay let’s be fair, people do want better low-light photos. And text recognition in photos. And translation.

Or maybe they don’t, but I somehow see people using those features all the time.

Re: Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the execution is usually borked... I was eyeig ZenFone 9 (or something around that) and what? It was reported that it had problem with overheating and build quality. What's more, I would love something akin to my current Galaxy a52s 5G with a display around 5.2-5.5" (I first had LG G2, then OnePlus3 which was already a bit bulky and now a52 as compromise; https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=5543&id…

iphone minis weren't particularly borked, and they didn't sell well enough, people apparently preferred the larger iphones (to my own dismay)

I think apple didn’t wait long enough.

In my friends circle, iPhone Minis are the most popular smartphone model, it’s even peculiar how pronounced it is.

But they all bought iPhone Minis 2 or 3 years after they came out.

I’d like to see iPhone sales numbers per generation, over multiple years. Like „how did iPhone 12 models (minis, normal, pro…) sell in 2020, 2021, 2022, etc.

Re: Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is it isn't reliable enough to rely on the answer from just one question for anything that matters.

I don't really understand why it is acceptable to speak for others on this topic. It is fine if it doesn't work well for you. It is also fine if it works well for others. These blanket statements lead to flame wars.

It is clear to me that people who make these comments, simple don't use the models much.

To say it is faster to get information from Google than the latest update to Sonnet is simply absurd to me.

I might have even agreed a few months ago but certainly not now.

Re: Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your example highlights why this kind of "everyday AI" would be nearly impossible. If my phone automatically rescheduled my appointments and notified my contacts, without my explicit direction, I would be pissed as all hell. There are some "confirmation" notifications that could assist here ("We noticed your flight is delayed - would you like to reschedule these appointments?"), but even then, I'd say the maj…

If you were an important CEO or something, and you had a competent human Personal Assistant - would you allow them to reschedule your appointments if you were running late? Seems to me the problems are (1) the "assistants" aren't anywhere near good enough to be trusted to make the right decisions, and (2) a trustworthy assistant isn't compatible with the adtech business model, so it's unlikely facebook or google woul…

I think this is actually a deeper issue.

The CEO would trust the personal assistant to do this if they have a deep trust in the assistance competence. They would also need to know the assistant has a deep enough understanding of the their preferences to not do something they don't like. AI can mirror that.

More importantly though there will be consequences if the human assistant makes a big mistake and books the wrong flight. They would have to take responsibility for the mistake.

The LLM is always just going to write in text it is sorry if it makes a mistake. That is never going to be good enough for anything of consequence. The LLM would practically have to be omniscient in a way that is not going to be possible in a world filled with uncertainty.

So much of human activity is built around the network of trust that another human takes the blame if something goes wrong. So much activity involves coin flips and that someone takes the blame when the coin lands on heads but we bet on tails.

Re: Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

#327
post #34

I'd rather have flagship specs in a smaller package. The smallest in the iPhone (SE) and Pixel ("A"?) lines are still too big and tend to have previous-gen specs

I've been hearing this sentiment for 10+ years, but it's been tried and each time it's tried it doesn't sell well enough.

By "it has been tried" you mean that they sold some crappy phone for almost the same price as a way better one?

Re: Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the execution is usually borked... I was eyeig ZenFone 9 (or something around that) and what? It was reported that it had problem with overheating and build quality. What's more, I would love something akin to my current Galaxy a52s 5G with a display around 5.2-5.5" (I first had LG G2, then OnePlus3 which was already a bit bulky and now a52 as compromise; https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=5543&id…

iphone minis weren't particularly borked, and they didn't sell well enough, people apparently preferred the larger iphones (to my own dismay)

iphones are extremely expensive

Re: Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

#329

Man I really just want email, texting, and a web browser on my phone. More "stuff" to do is an anti feature for me.

I want maps, a taxi/bike rental app, banking, notes, a camera, a music player, tickets for stuff, and a TOTP gizmo.

You’ll say I can do most of that in a browser, but then you’ve just moved complexity around.

Re: Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care more about battery life

#330
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, vast majority of smartphone usage is done for entertainment and social networking purposes (IG, TikTok, Twitter, HN, gaming, Netflix and etc.). If you’re mostly scrolling and consuming, I can’t imagine how current AI tooling can help you other than some summarization of texts. Sure, for productivity cases it might be legitimate, but that’s not what supermajority of people use a phone for.

Im not sure people really know how to use an AI chat bot or understand its a more powerful, quicker and personally more fun way of getting information then just a Google search Some personal examples of how I find it more useful (love to hear yours) and fun to use.... - Wanted to go on a hike an hour away from where both my friend (lives two hours west of me) and I live. Asked GPT what are some good hikes an hour dri…

I definitely agree, but again, if you look at the app usage times across every single demographic, those type of use cases are such a minuscule portion that it's just some noise. In my opinion, GPT/AI will cause more changes in workplaces, than in casual consumer spaces.
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