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Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

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Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#71

Post by Kirby64 »

craftkiller wrote: post #47
Kirby64 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to a pixel, they're budget phone specs missing some fundamental quality of life stuff that other phones have offered, usually for years. The fairphone 5 seems a bit closer to flagship specs, but it still clearly misses the mark and also seems priced at flagship levels. Pinephone is just a junk budget phone, although at least it's priced much lower.

> The fairphone 5 [...] still clearly misses the mark How so? Comparing [1] and [2] shows the geekbench scores between the fairphone 5 and the pixel 7 are pretty similar. > missing some fundamental quality of life stuff that other phones have offered, usually for years I'd argue that statement is backwards: the non-mainstream phones have been offering quality of life stuff that the mainstream phones have abandoned ye…

For Fairphone, you're comparing against a Pixel 7 - which is a last year phone. Compare against the Galaxy S23, which has a Geekbench score that is ~50% higher than the FP5. Compared to iPhones it's even worse.

As per how they compare, reviews of the FP5 seem to say it has the following deficiencies:

* Poor display - bad brightness, which hurts outdoor usability

* Bad battery life, even considering the wimpy processor

* Underwhelming performance, which will make it feel sluggish faster

* Mediocre speaker performance

* Mediocre cameras

You're paying a whole lot, in my view, for something that has an easily replaceable battery... which is something you might do maybe once in the life of the device? If you're keeping a phone longer than 5-6 years, I suspect performance of the chipset is going to become a big issue. Additionally, with the bad battery life/performance already, it'll incentivize you to want to upgrade even sooner.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#72

Post by jauntywundrkind »

I'm just as in pain that we lost so many cpu makers. I don't even remember who used to be making chips. It feels like we are down to so few.

Ignore Apple entirely (since you can't make a phone with that chip) and Qualcomm and MediaTek are probably make up significantly >50% of the market. Samsung and who else make buyable chips?

More to the point of this submission, isn't it amazing how hard it is to get a phone smaller than 5.9" diagonal? It just isn't done. The market itself has set, has picked a couple things it wants to do, and doesn't try anything else.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#73

Post by Kirby64 »

soperj wrote: post #55
Kirby64 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to a pixel, they're budget phone specs missing some fundamental quality of life stuff that other phones have offered, usually for years. The fairphone 5 seems a bit closer to flagship specs, but it still clearly misses the mark and also seems priced at flagship levels. Pinephone is just a junk budget phone, although at least it's priced much lower.

> fundamental quality of life stuff As someone who used a Galaxy S3 for over a decade and has now "upgraded" to a friend's old S9, I can't understand this at all. What kind of quality of life stuff am I missing out on? I'm missing having a removable battery, but at least it has a sd card.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37615789

In summary though, it's a phone that has 1-3 year old performance metrics at nearly-flagship pricing.

I'd take a removable battery all things being equal, but it seems abundantly clear that FP5 would be making compromises in device performance compared to current flagships. That tradeoff just isn't worth it to me. Maybe it is to you.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#74

Post by solardev »

vanchor3 wrote: post #66
solardev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that different from Nokia, Nintendo, Siemens, Lenovo, Asus, Samsung, Ikea, Ferrari, Volvo, etc.? None of those sound reputable by themselves, they had to build up a reputation. Hell, I'd probably buy a Zolimo Barbertron just FOR the name!

Most of those are at least "real names" though, which you can find some sort of significance behind. Either named after a place or person, or with some sort of meaning. Rather than names that seem to be randomly generated 5-7 character vaguely pronounceable names that aren't already in use.

Maybe if you look them up, but I bet the average person has no idea what Lenovo, Asus, Volvo, Nintendo, Samsung, and IKEA mean.

Even more modern company names are kinda like that... Anker, DJI, Haier, Dalian Wanda, Kagi, Vercel, Nexon, Plex, Splunk, Zyxel, Sonos, Zynga, Hulu, Etsy, Yandex...

Maybe if they just used a better random name generator with a better appreciation for English phonemes, we'd never know the difference lol.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#75

Post by granshaw »

solardev wrote: post #65
granshaw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously why don’t these Chinese companies hire someone for 30mins to come up with a more reputable sounding name?

Is it really that different from Nokia, Nintendo, Siemens, Lenovo, Asus, Samsung, Ikea, Ferrari, Volvo, etc.? None of those sound reputable by themselves, they had to build up a reputation. Hell, I'd probably buy a Zolimo Barbertron just FOR the name!

At the very least they could just not all-caps them

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#76

Post by LeifCarrotson »

granshaw wrote: post #31
codeulike wrote: post #13

Are these like real brands, or fake cookie cutter brands on Amazon? Amazon: "We're talking top brands here, like FLORGOO, REMPLOW, BARBENTRON, ZOLIMIO" Customer: "Those really dont sound like real companies, Amazon" Amazon: "But they kindof do though, you can see how those might be company names" Customer: "I guess?" (from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQpxAvjD_30 )

Seriously why don’t these Chinese companies hire someone for 30mins to come up with a more reputable sounding name?

It's because in 2015, Amazon was opening up the marketplace to third-party vendors, but didn't want to take on the enormous job of quality control for those products. So they established the Amazon Brand Registry in an attempt to force the US Patent and Trademark Office to help them.

They basically hoped that vendors would respond by going through the enormous effort to get a high-value trademark for something like a "Quality Appliances" brand, expending an enormous amount of discovery and legal fees (or just being a pre-existing well-known brand like KitchenAid[TM] or General Electric[TM]. That trademark would be so valuable that they would never risk importing lead-contaminated aluminum cookware and tarnishing their image, they'd implement strict quality control, fight back against counterfeiters using their likeness, and otherwise be a reliable vendor for Amazon. Right?

Wrong. It's basically free and instant to file for a trademark for CHUKOFAZ[TM] kitchen products, because it's not a word or even a substring of a word that anyone would want to trademark. So the vendors did that, submitted their valid trademark for CHUKOFAZ[TM] to the Amazon Brand Registry, and imported the cheapest junk that they could build. And then consumers sorted by "price low to high" and a bought CHUKOFAZ mixer instead of KitchenAid, and raged at Amazon and the CPSC, because the CHUKOFAZ brand had ceased to exist, and the product page they'd bought from was now a HAKLBUC-brand backpack with 2500 5-star reviews praising how well it mixed cookie dough.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#77

Post by frandroid »

solardev wrote: post #65
granshaw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously why don’t these Chinese companies hire someone for 30mins to come up with a more reputable sounding name?

Is it really that different from Nokia, Nintendo, Siemens, Lenovo, Asus, Samsung, Ikea, Ferrari, Volvo, etc.? None of those sound reputable by themselves, they had to build up a reputation. Hell, I'd probably buy a Zolimo Barbertron just FOR the name!

Not to mention GOOGLE

Back in 2000/1, I had such trouble taking them seriously, with that name and that colourful logo, I was like, whuuuut? But then I started using it and obviously it was miles ahead of everything else. That taught me a good lesson on whether you need a clever brand name or not. The product makes the brand name, not the other way around.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#78

Post by [deleted] »

stonogo wrote: post #62
chankstein38 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite one ever is still MOBDICK

The two past champions are "Fartpeach" products and "Dickass" brand car brakes. Both are gone -- the Fartpeach brand is retired entirely and Dickass changed their name ... to Dickase. Some remnants of the former remain, e.g. https://www.amazon.in/FartPeach-Professional-Mountain-Suspen...

[deleted]

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#79

Post by FormerBandmate »

solardev wrote: post #74
vanchor3 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those are at least "real names" though, which you can find some sort of significance behind. Either named after a place or person, or with some sort of meaning. Rather than names that seem to be randomly generated 5-7 character vaguely pronounceable names that aren't already in use.

Maybe if you look them up, but I bet the average person has no idea what Lenovo, Asus, Volvo, Nintendo, Samsung, and IKEA mean. Even more modern company names are kinda like that... Anker, DJI, Haier, Dalian Wanda, Kagi, Vercel, Nexon, Plex, Splunk, Zyxel, Sonos, Zynga, Hulu, Etsy, Yandex... Maybe if they just used a better random name generator with a better appreciation for English phonemes, we'd never know the dif…

> Anker, DJI, Haier, Dalian Wanda

These all started as the equivalent of Amazon brands and went legit after getting a reputation for relative quality. Anker especially

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#80

Post by foobarian »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #76
granshaw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously why don’t these Chinese companies hire someone for 30mins to come up with a more reputable sounding name?

It's because in 2015, Amazon was opening up the marketplace to third-party vendors, but didn't want to take on the enormous job of quality control for those products. So they established the Amazon Brand Registry in an attempt to force the US Patent and Trademark Office to help them. They basically hoped that vendors would respond by going through the enormous effort to get a high-value trademark for something like a…

It goes further, once the CHUKOFAZ pages fill up with poor reviews, no biggie, the brand is worthless anyway so just make a new one. Cue JUGGOKIT kitchen products.
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