91–100 of 277 posts
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Snapchat refuses to let you access their services at all via browser. And most banks offer you a restricted set of functionality via browser, e.g., no taking pictures of checks to deposit (in fact, I can't think of any banks that do let you do that via browser).
What a wonderfully ripe area for disruption.
I like the idea of a more open phone a lot but dispute the "Smartphones are shit" premise. I think modern smart phones are an unbelievably awesome value. Battery, display, wireless and processing power have advanced at such an unbelievable rate that we have something in our pockets that far exceeds predictions of 20, 30, 100 years ago. The problem is that we don't want to pay what it really costs to have such a great…
So a 2015 iPhone 6S runs the latest version of iOS. A 2013 iPhone 5s is still getting security updates. A 2011 iPhone 4s doesn’t support LTE and soon won’t be able to connect to any network. Verizon is shutting down their CDMA network as is Sprint. So how does open source make my life better? From a hardware side, why wouldn’t I just take my phone to any number of places to get the battery replaced?
Why is your cellular modem wedded inseparably to your pocket computing device? I think that's the bigger picture.
Some years ago I was thinking of a way to separate the functions we insist in cramming into phones, making them in the process nearly unusable for anything but consuming media content and advertising.
The idea was to have a small battery powered 3g (now 5G) modem whose task was to route Internet connectivity to a local PAN (low power WiFi, BT, etc) while allowing other PAN devices talk each other. Other PAN devices would be: a very small phone piece with minimal display and navigation keys to receive calls and make ones picking contacts from the list; a pocket keyboard to enter data; a small camera to take pictures and movies; a tablet like device screen with touch, a more capable OS and physical buttons for apps and games; a belt-like holder with housings for all PAN devices. All PAN devices would have their own battery along with contacts exposed for recharging, so that their battery would be recharged by a bigger one contained in the belt as soon as they're snapped into their place in the belt; also all devices would store their data in a central small NAS-like device, also contained in the belt. The communication protocol would allow for example to talk with someone using the phone piece, then grab the camera, take a photo and have it sent automatically to the person on the other side, including geographic coordinates. ...etc.
I spent some good hours wondering about this contraption, then realized that, although very open to expansion, it would also be extremely unpractical for most users, and eventually let the idea die.
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You are purposely taking the well known and understood term "general purpose computing device" out of context and using it as a polemical statement to push an agenda.
Nah. It's not outrageous to say that a criteria for being a "general purpose computing device" is that I should be able to run whatever code I want on it. I say this as someone who's an iPhone user, and I'm perfectly happy with my iPhone. But I wouldn't call it a general purpose computing device honestly. The Android phone I used many years ago, for all its flaws, would have fit that description much better IMO.
In fact, it is outrageous not to say so.
Just like the Linux desktop, alternative smartphones will forever remain a tiny niche market for highly technical people. Mainstream adoption can and will never happen given the current state of hardware design and manufacturing.
Please elaborate on how the current state of hardware design and manufacturing ensures that mainstream adoption will can and will never happen.
I have wanted to switch from Windows to Linux so many times, and I would love to ditch my Google phone for PinePhone. But for me, this always gets back to the problem of well-maintained software on Linux vs corporate systems. The last time I tried switching to Linux a few months ago, all of the programs I use on a regular basis had some impossibly complicated setup or program-crashing bugs (that I reported) that made me give up after a few days trying to migrate.
Don't get me wrong, the OS (Ubuntu) installed just fine and I was able to browse the internet (which should be sufficient for most people). But anything beyond turning the phone on and having everything self-setup is asking way too much from a mainstream user. Therefore, this argument is always an economic one - not a conceptual one. You need a greedy corporation that is incentivized to make a friction-free experience for the end user. Too many well-meaning, but way too smart for their own good developers think everyone else thinks like them.
https://xkcd.com/456/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlg4K16ujFw
> Don't smartphones... kind of suck? How many times have you had to replace a phone in the past 10 years? Do you have a drawer of random crap with a growing pile of phones? I simply cannot relate with this hook. > Don't smartphones... kind of suck? No, smartphones are kinda magical. They take better snapshots than my first DSLR, they play games at higher fidelity than my first gaming PC, and they’re general purpose c…
Me too! And I'm a mobile engineer! My partner only recently updated their iPhone 6s, and I upgrade when the need arises, not when there's something new and shinny on the market.
I like the idea of a more open phone a lot but dispute the "Smartphones are shit" premise. I think modern smart phones are an unbelievably awesome value. Battery, display, wireless and processing power have advanced at such an unbelievable rate that we have something in our pockets that far exceeds predictions of 20, 30, 100 years ago. The problem is that we don't want to pay what it really costs to have such a great…
Just editing fucking textfiles and copying it back to a normal PC (that isn't a mac) is a real bitch. Especially if you don't have an internet connection. It's almost as bad as a ti84+ honestly, just a nicer screen, a couple cameras, and the ability to send IM and email. In fact the TI84 could do things iOS can't, I had compilers on mine.
EDIT: Somehow I missed that you mentioned the battery. Smartphones have some of the worst battery life among any PDA I've had. iPhones can stretch out a few days (maybe a week if it's just sitting in a drawer near a tower) if you use them sparingly but it's nothing like the Palm Pilot or the grayscale calculators that could easily last a month.
Does lineage in that case really provide better privacy? Honestly curious. I use an iPhone these days out of uncertainty
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The choice is between GrapheneOS + Sandboxed Google play vs LineageOS + MicroG. If you care too much about privacy, GrapheneOS is the way to go. If you want a balance between privacy and usability, LineageOS is the way to go. Also, GrapheneOS only supports Pixel phones. I have tried CalyxOS but there are too many issues.
> If you care too much about privacy, GrapheneOS is the way to go Not so sure about that. If you care about SECURITY than GrapheneOS is pretty much the best choice on the market, comparable only to iOS or bare Android on Pixel Phones. Everyone else isn't even reasonable to compare against it. But wether it's more private with sandboxed Google Play Services vs Lineage OS and MicroG or iOS is not such an obvious choice…
I like the idea of a more open phone a lot but dispute the "Smartphones are shit" premise. I think modern smart phones are an unbelievably awesome value. Battery, display, wireless and processing power have advanced at such an unbelievable rate that we have something in our pockets that far exceeds predictions of 20, 30, 100 years ago. The problem is that we don't want to pay what it really costs to have such a great…
From my quotes file: "It's amazing what we can build, it's baffling what we have built." (jrumbut, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25168187) Yes, the hardware is amazing, and the software is sometimes amazing in what it can do, but... If you have gobs of bandwidth (courtesy of modern WiFi and LTE) and loads of RAM and storage and CPUs that scream (seriously, for a while my phone had more cores than most of my laptops at a close clock speed) and a high-quality touch-sensitive screen and a solid OS that makes it easy to use the system even on that tiny screen, but you use it to let apps bloat like there's no tomorrow (Facebook comes to mind), show ads even more efficiently, spy on the user at will, and deliberately make things worse so people will pay more (ex. YouTube), what have you really gained?