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Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

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Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upcoming Apple display mounted to wall or robot arm is rumored to have audio interface and new OS without 3rd-party apps, only "AI". Jony Ive at OpenAI is rumored to have smart speaker, pendant, pen and bone-conducting headset in the launch pipeline. Audio interfaces, no screens, Meta is selling millions of smart glasses, with Apple and others following. If the memory market was not distorted, home AI + agents + open…

when you say "audio interface" I assume you mean like, "Hey Siri" and not an audio interface as in recording device, right? So we are talking about a HomePod with a screen, or like one of those Meta "Portal" things?

Not sure. Some AI audio pendants are always on. The Apple device is rumored to adapt its interface to the user based on facial recognition. They could choose to start monitoring audio when it thinks a known human wants to interact with the device, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145201

  Apple is developing a tabletop robot as the centerpiece of its artificial intelligence strategy, with plans to launch the device in 2027.. The robot resembles an iPad mounted on a movable limb that can swivel to follow users around a room..The company is also exploring other robotics concepts, including a mobile bot with wheels similar to Amazon’s Astro, and has discussed humanoid models..

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#72
post #47
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing docking functionality could possibly reduce RAM usage by never enabling 4K screen output. This would be similar to the switch lite. Although, for a $450 device that doesn’t need to make much of a profit on its own, I also don’t think they’re heavy on memory in the first place (12GB). You can buy top quality Chinese Android handhelds with more RAM and better Qualcomm processors than the Switch 2 for about the…

> Removing docking functionality could possibly reduce RAM usage by never enabling 4K screen output. This would be similar to the switch lite. Every version of the Switch 1 had 4GB of RAM, they didn't cut that on the Lite. Going back and patching every game to ensure it ran on less RAM it was originally designed for would have been a nightmare. > (e.g., AYN Thor Max is $450 with a 16GB/1TB configuration). AYN just an…

Oh yeah, I accidentally implied the switch lite cut down RAM when it didn’t.

Of course the Thor Max will have a price increase, but also, obviously 16GB/1TB is a massively bigger bill of materials than the Switch 2’s 12GB/256GB configuration.

And I forgot to mention that Nintendo has far more pricing leverage in terms of their volume.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#73

The latest phone reviews have been eyebrow raising. The just announced pixel is the same phone as last year. I know it sounds like a usual complaint, but look at the actual specs, it literally is the same phone with differences so small that hey might have passed as regional variance. As for the Samsung, the screen can darken when looked from the side for privacy. That’s pretty much it. Price increased though. Couple…

The only reason I changed my phone was because my provider stopped supporting it when migrating to 5g VoIP.

Otherwise I'd still be rocking my S9.

I'm also using a pixel 2 for Android development and Google play billing isn't supported on it.

The hardware is fine but they make it obsolete with software.

I'm guessing they'll soon move to a subscription pricing for phones.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#74

Somehow, with 12GB of RAM, I can't get my iPhone 17 Pro to keep more than a few safari tabs open without having them refresh when I come back from an app or two, and it makes me want to throw my phone across the train (Where the internet often cuts out!). A lot of software has been squandering the massive hardware gains that have been made. I hope this changes when it becomes a lot harder to throw hardware at the pro…

I honestly think the memory shortage kills the possibility of a Switch 2 Lite.

Nintendo can't realistically take memory budget away from developers after the fact. The 2DS cut the 3D feature from the 3DS, but all games were required to be playable in 2D from day 1, so no existing games broke on the cost-reduced 2DS.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#75
post #22

If the memory shortage is real and sustained, I wonder whether we’ll see a secondary effect in the resale market.

> I wonder whether we’ll see a secondary effect in the resale market. I'm paying more on ebay for thinkcentre tiny and thinkpads - 12th gen intel and newer. Refurbished spinny drives have been steadily climbing - up 50% since late last year. That's on top of the 20% mystery jump that happened in the last week of 2024.

50% is nothing when RAM is up 500% or so.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#76
post #61

Somehow, with 12GB of RAM, I can't get my iPhone 17 Pro to keep more than a few safari tabs open without having them refresh when I come back from an app or two, and it makes me want to throw my phone across the train (Where the internet often cuts out!). A lot of software has been squandering the massive hardware gains that have been made. I hope this changes when it becomes a lot harder to throw hardware at the pro…

Settings > Apps > Safari > Reading List: Automatically Save Offline “Save webpages to read later in Safari on iPhone” https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/save-pages-to-a-readi...

You're just adding a step that doesn't fix the primary issue (you can already manually save any page you want without adding it your reading list). Someone should be able to go to their translate app, then their photo galley, and back to Safari without it needing to refresh the context.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like my 3GS was way better about resuming where I left off than any fancy new iPhone I’ve had in the past few years. Big name apps like Facebook, YouTube, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts seem totally disinterred in preserving my place. YouTube being the worst where I often stack a bunch of videos in queue, pause to do something else for a while and when I return to the app the queue has been purged.

Too slow to edit. But also now playing just seems to go away after a while. Why isn’t this written to some nonvolatile place and just preserved? It feels like it must be on purpose but I wonder what the purpose is.

I assume the purpose of the Now Playing clearing after a while is the idea that when people start a "new session" with their device it should be "clean". Like, if Now Playing didn't randomly disappear then for most people it would always be on, indicating some paused music or podcast playback. It would also never give a chance for that elusive "start playing" experience that shows up in its place sometimes to recommend that I listen to one of four songs/podcast episodes.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upcoming Apple display mounted to wall or robot arm is rumored to have audio interface and new OS without 3rd-party apps, only "AI". Jony Ive at OpenAI is rumored to have smart speaker, pendant, pen and bone-conducting headset in the launch pipeline. Audio interfaces, no screens, Meta is selling millions of smart glasses, with Apple and others following. If the memory market was not distorted, home AI + agents + open…

I'd love a working bone conduction headset. Also a subvocalization to agent thingy that worked.

Have you looked into Shokz? I use these a lot, they seem like working bone conduction headsets to me.

https://shokz.com/pages/openrunpro2

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS I think has really aggressive background task killing, and it also drives me insane. I know they do it for battery life but I'm about ready to switch to Android, and would have a long time ago if I that didn't also mean replacing my watch, headphones, etc. Is it too much to ask for me to manage my own background processes on my phone? I don't want the OS arbitrarily deciding what to pause & kill. If it actually d…

I recently started learning how to do iOS apps for work and the short answer is: you don't. Apple seemingly wants all apps to be static jpegs that never need to connect to any data local or remote, and never do any processing. If you want to do something in the background so that your user can multitask, too damn bad. You can run in the background, for a non-deterministic amount of time. If you do that, iOS nags your…

> If you do that, iOS nags your user to make it stop. If you access radios, iOS nags your user to disable it.

These are features, because we can't trust developers to be smart about how they implement these. In fact, we can't even trust them not to be malicious about it. User nags keep the dveloper honest on a device where battery life and all-day availability is arguably of utmost importance.

> you have to spend $5k minimum just to put hello world on the screen.

Now that's just nonsense.

Re: Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage

#80
> Smartphone ASP is projected to rise 14% to a record $523 this year

I know I'm not speaking to all the people that need to hear it, but used phones are very affordable, and reduce waste. A used iphone 13 is about $200 in the US: https://swappa.com/listings/apple-iphone-13?sort=price_low

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