901–910 of 1001 posts
I have never been less excited for a phone. Maybe it's the One Plus 12 I'm holding, but this is a hard pass by me. All I want is a flagship chip, Esim support and a headphone jack. But since earbuds are almost all profit we won't see jacks coming back.
I have negative desire to get a phone billing itself around AI and LLM features. I turn off every AI assistant feature on my existing devices, I actively don't want a phone that ties Gemini and AI photoshop even tighter into it. If Google wanted to actually improve their phones they would add basic software functionality they're still missing instead like, say, a per-app volume mixer that half the 3rd party Android p…
I'm with you that AI is overhyped but your suggested feature is "per app volume mixers" like in Windows? What's the use case on a mobile phone to warrant the extra complexity?
Can someone explain why we get 12GB and 16GB RAM in these phones, but Apple sells its MacBook Air M3 with 8GB as the starting configuration. Shouldn't mobile phones require much less RAM?
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I guess mostly because the only thing new smartphones offer is faster cpu, more memory (which I don't really need, a 10y old smartphone handle my current load correctly) and a better camera and an always bigger footprint. The only thing I like is the possible better camera sensors, but that won't make me shed thousands of dollars for it. If I have the choice I'd rather have a more compact model with the camera qualit…
> which I don't really need, a 10y old smartphone handle my current load correctly Which phone are you using then? I presume your usage is totally non-representative of the average normal user, but curious nonetheless.
I do the usual stuff, navigation, whatsapp, music, video...except I tend to avoid installing apps when the corresponding website works well (but I still have lots of different apps) and the only social media I am connecting to is the fediverse through the browser.
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I'm with you that AI is overhyped but your suggested feature is "per app volume mixers" like in Windows? What's the use case on a mobile phone to warrant the extra complexity?
I don't let my phone make any noises, but I do use it for music. Would be nice not to have to turn "do not disturb" on or off to listen to music.
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Would have been nice if they did a regular size (5.8”) for normal people and 6.8” for the genetic freaks with dinner plate hands. 6.3” is still huge. 5.8” is workable. And it’s not like there’s no precedent, the Zenfone 10 is also 5.8” and is adored for it.
Yup. I had a Pixel 4a, which is 5.8". I thought it was a great phone and still perfectly usable, but it stopped getting security updates. I'm now using a Pixel 8. It's fine, but too large and no headphone jack. I'd buy a new Pixel tomorrow if they released a smaller one.
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I dislike the bundling of hardware and software alltogether. In the world of laptops, we have a wonderful situation. I can select the hardware that I like, then wipe the whole disk and install the software I like. Which in my case is a Linux distribution and then exactly the applications I prefer. I wish the world of phones was like that.
The desktop OS are all pretty bad so I wouldn't want to use that as an inspiration for anything.
I mostly live in the Plasma desktop, Konsole and Firefox. And life is good.
What are you missing?
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There is also "hold for me", where the phone listens to hold music for you, then rings when the operator arrives. And there is a feature now to show you how busy a customer service line is at a particular time, and to give you a text transcript with clickable buttons for the phone tree.
Am I the only one who thinks these features really don't add much to the experience? If an annoying phone tree is going to take 3 minutes to navigate by listening to the prompts, then it will also take 3 minutes to navigate by letting the AI listen and write little buttons for me. I didn't really save any time. If on the other hand it could say "other users have seen this phone tree before, so here is the whole searc…
Probably because it's just bolting more shit on the ends of a shitty, outdated relic of a system. Like, we have two different computers, one of which is playing back a pre-recorded voice, to a computer which is transcribing that voice into text and buttons, so it can play a generated voice back to the other computer, which will then interpret that voice into text, then perform an action based on that text. The action probably being repeating that process a few more times.
This is remarkably bad. I'm remembering the last time I had to deal with Apple Support. I didn't sit on hold for hours, I told them I needed a call, told them what the issue was, gave a brief summary, and then their support person called me, I was immediately on the phone with a human, she sorted out my problem, and the entire thing took probably 10 minutes tops, including filling out the form.
It feels like these legitimate challenges to businesses to manage their customer service lines, support lines, etc. have actual solutions that:
a) don't require two different damn computers talking over a shitty low-baud connection to one another, and
b) result in a better experience for all parties involved
If they'd just be willing to spend a little goddamn money, like they actually care to provide good service, rather than just paying lip service to it while offering the same garbage system they've offered since the fucking 1970's.
The dominance of the negativity in these comments is noteworthy. Personally, I thought it was a exciting update with major hardware improvements, some compelling AI demos and use cases at a similar price point as the past. Top tech reviewers e.g. MKBHD has similar impressions. Mostly just curious as to why there are ~0 positive comments here. I suspect could be: 1) anti-google HN bias - perhaps deserved? 2) it's simp…
I Use Hacker News for technical input. on an average, HN crowd is pretty clueless about a) running a profitable business b) foreseeing technological progress -- say two iterations down the line. c) mass adoption of features On an average, they tend to be elitist and don't represent the average brand popularity (e.g Google, Meta, Amazon). They only mildly upvote technology that helps their extremely privileged life. E…
AI features in phones from Google are English only or maybe a few languages, even if you know English try to use "AI" to set a route using your voice when the locations are not english words. Sure, some free AIs on the web will help poor people but the best ones are under payment wall and not only that you need a specific way to pay, what I mean for example is Netflix, Steam do not need my credit card, they have alternative ways to pay like PayPal but Google, Microsoft, OpenAI they only allow credit card , so I conclude they do not care for my money they really need that credit card for some reason.
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I'm with you that AI is overhyped but your suggested feature is "per app volume mixers" like in Windows? What's the use case on a mobile phone to warrant the extra complexity?
I don't let my phone make any noises, but I do use it for music. Would be nice not to have to turn "do not disturb" on or off to listen to music.