[HN Gopher] LG is getting out of the mobile phone business
___________________________________________________________________
LG is getting out of the mobile phone business
Author : thereare5lights
Score : 584 points
Date : 2021-04-05 03:18 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| And I Discovered that BQ get out of business like some months
| ago. Sadly... They make really good phones for a good price.
| underwater wrote:
| The mobile phone ecosystem is sick, and I don't see it getting
| better.
|
| The fact that there is not a third choice is maddening. Even in
| the worst parts of the Microsoft era we had Apple as the
| underdog. Apple products had issues, but Apple die-hards at least
| could rest easy knowing that they were buying into a company who
| stood for something.
|
| In the mobile space the underdog is Google; a company who sees
| dealing with people as an unfortunately necessity on the way to
| get to gobbling up more data.
|
| I can't but feel that Android has sucked the oxygen of the space.
| I can't go out and buy a Tizen or Windows phone in large part
| because of Google's pathological Android licensing. Google force
| carriers to choose between their, supposedly open, ecosystem and
| shipping alternative OSes.
| [deleted]
| eertami wrote:
| >In the mobile space the underdog is Google
|
| Doesn't Android have 70% market share? I don't follow how
| they're the underdog, surely they're more like Microsoft in
| this comparison.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Depends on how you slice the market. Android powers 70% of
| the phones on the market, but iOS makes 50%+ of the profit.
| oezi wrote:
| How much is Google still investing in Android? The Android
| ecosystem feels stagnant since at least 2 years. It seems
| Google is content with Apple taking most of the hardware
| profits and them taking the ad dollars.
|
| I wonder if this will backfire soon. Wasn't LG the OEM for some
| of their Pixels? Who is replacing them?
|
| What about Apple's mobile processors outclassing Android?
| Marsymars wrote:
| > I wonder if this will backfire soon. Wasn't LG the OEM for
| some of their Pixels? Who is replacing them?
|
| Google makes their own phones now with the part of HTC they
| bought.
| JoshTko wrote:
| From a mass end user perspective what part of the phone
| ecosystem is sick?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| You are blaming the wrong company. Qualcomm is the company that
| makes it hard to do alternative software platforms for mobile.
| Even apple still licenses their solutions (they are working on
| their own modem but have not shipped that yet). The issue is to
| get your hardware + software solution certified for use on
| mobile networks. That's very hard and it's not a very fair
| game. It requires a nod of approval from operators and
| intellectual property from Qualcomm.
|
| Apple simply plays the FOMO factor. They do deals with
| operators. And the deal is typically "take it or leave it and
| watch your customers jump to your competitors". When they first
| did that, a few operators were smart enough to say yes. The
| rest has since learned to do as Apple says. But even so, Apple
| pays the Qualcomm tax.
|
| The rest of the phone industry plays this game by just sharing
| a lot of components (Google's Android, Qualcomm's hardware,
| Samsung screens, Sony camera sensors, etc.). Google has tried
| to get into that market directly by buying Motorola at some
| point and by doing their Nexus and Pixel phones. But they never
| really became a dominant manufacturer. Google is a supplier of
| mostly software in this space.
|
| Out of all that stuff, Qualcomm is the one that has the keys to
| the ecosystem. You need 4G/5G compatibility, which they provide
| via their hardware and software. And you need to get your
| solution certified. Without that you have an interesting device
| that does not talk to a mobile network. Even if you manage to
| build your own version of that (which is hard, but e.g. Apple
| is doing it), you still need to get it certified and then after
| you succeed with that, you need to license a lot of patents
| from Qualcomm to actually ship it. The price of entry to the
| market is very high. Long story short, there are not a lot of
| alternatives in the market and a few that have issues being
| allowed in mainstream markets like the US for IP licensing
| reasons.
| fsflover wrote:
| > The fact that there is not a third choice is maddening.
|
| Actually, there is: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5. It's
| expensive though, since it does not benefit from economies of
| scale and targeted ads.
| deergomoo wrote:
| > The fact that there is not a third choice is maddening
|
| Even more so because Windows Phone was actually a pretty nice
| OS with some really interesting ideas. It just came far too
| late.
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| >>"I can't go out and buy a Tizen or Windows phone in large
| part because of Google's pathological Android licensing. Google
| force carriers to choose between their, supposedly open,
| ecosystem and shipping alternative OSes."
|
| I don't understand how such a licence can be legal. Surely it
| is monopolistic practices? Yes, Apple exists at a consumer
| level, but at the level of phone manufacturers google has a
| monopoly on licensing mobile OS to manufacturers. This is abuse
| of their dominance to prevent competition from android forks.
| mpol wrote:
| Could the difficulty be around the duopoly? We mostly have
| laws about monopolies, there can be some push-back against
| monopolies, but with a duopoly everything "seems" right.
|
| I see so many discussions on the internet, also on HN,
| following the same ritual. Apple does something bad, and
| people say "Just choose something from the competition, like
| Google". Then Google does something bad and people say "Just
| choose something from the competition, like Apple".
|
| Even intelligent people get fooled by this.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Writing legislation is hard enough for a monopoly, it's
| probably near impossible for a duopoly. Especially when the
| consumers want to use what everyone else is using and
| network effects come in play.
| Exmoor wrote:
| I wish I could be more sad about this. LG lost a lot of trust
| during their bootloop era, around the time of the G4. They had
| some interesting ideas with their V series, but I just couldn't
| bring myself to trust them after my G4 died in less than 18
| months.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I have two nexus 4's with bootloop, Nexus6P faced bootloop too
| but that's because Qualcomm messed up S810,S808 so bad that it
| had physical core separation. Both LG & Google had to face
| settlements for it. There were reports of Pixel devices facing
| bootloops too. I've decided not to buy flagships until it's at
| least a year in the market.
|
| Btw, Nexus6P bootloop can be fixed in most devices by disabling
| the 4 Big. Cores and the phone can be used for less-demanding
| tasks with the 4 Little Cores. My Nexus6P has been resurrected
| this way[1].
|
| [1] https://abishekmuthian.com/resurrecting-nexus-6p-from-
| bootlo...
| unclekev wrote:
| > after my G4 died in less than 18 months
|
| The whole G4 bootloop fiasco is why i'll never buy a LG phone
| again.
|
| Went through 4 G4's in 12 months because of it.
| danielEM wrote:
| Started a petition to open source LG phones:
|
| https://www.change.org/p/lg-electronics-lg-to-open-source-th...
|
| Sign it and share it if you want that too. Thanks!
| llaolleh wrote:
| They peaked at LG V20. Replaceable battery, useful 2nd screen,
| and kickass audio chip.
|
| An end of an era...
| ekianjo wrote:
| I dont know about the LG G2 bit the V20 also has the same
| characteristics.
| llaolleh wrote:
| Yeah I meant the V20. Apologies.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I still have my Nexus 4 (LG manufactured) in a box somewhere.
| This was actually my first smartphone, and it turned out to be a
| great purchase. It was affordable, simple, and somewhat close to
| open. Rooting in place was as simple as could be, and with
| "Xposed" I was able to get features on my phone that wouldn't be
| widespread on stock Android or iOS for many years.
|
| It's hard to point to anything very wrong with that phone. It
| even had an Amoled always on display, which was ahead of its
| time. Reviewers thought that front and rear glass was an awful
| design decision, and they may have been right, but look where we
| are now?
| rchaud wrote:
| The camera. It was shockingly bad. Otherwise, I agree. It was a
| pleasure flashing custom ROMs on to it, as you didn't need to
| go through the rigmarole required to get an an alternative
| bootloader running. There was a ton of development happening on
| XDA-developers then as well, so every week the distros would
| get better and more stable.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Maybe it's a statement about how difficult it is to be profitable
| in the industry, and how much support/development effort it takes
| to keep up.
|
| If this is true, I might suggest that people who wonder "can't we
| just make our own open source phone" inject some realism into
| their estimates about how much work is needed to make an
| alternative that people actually want to use.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > can't we just make our own open source phone
|
| This seems have nothing to do with LG's move.
|
| On the contrary, what drives LG to leave smart phone also
| enables the open source smartphone: the lowering of
| manufacturing puts more emphasis on software reconfigurability
| to the targeted audience of open source smartphone.
|
| LG cannot sustain because they don't have a strong software
| product to make their smartphone profitable.
|
| And open source smartphone is about open source anyway. It
| should not be compared to mass market products anyway.
| varispeed wrote:
| I remember announcement that Samsung pulls out of the laptop
| market, yet they still seem to be doing those. At the time I had
| a Samsung laptop which was an abomination.
| Jemm wrote:
| Didn't help that LG made some truly horrible tablets. Hardware
| was OK but software was locked down garbage.
| pb77 wrote:
| I had LG G8 thinq and it made me get an iphone after it. My
| previous 2 phones were pure android motorolla phones. G8 thingq
| one was very bloated, i had to drag an app to the screen before i
| can bring it up. I cannot see list of apps and just run it. I
| have samsung tablet the ui seems to be ok, not too much bloat.
| axaxs wrote:
| Can't say I blame them. Phones are really close to being
| commodities. Samsung and Apple have the top end on lockdown.
| Xiaomi will obliterate you on the low and mid range. So your only
| real option is to dump huge amounts of cash into top photo and
| app folks and try to fight with the big two.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| I wouldn't discard Huawei, they are on par with Samsung.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Huawei is basically dead as a consumer brand after USA and EU
| went after them [0]. They've re-branded most of their
| consumer stuff as Xiaomi.
|
| [0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-
| telecommunications-co...
| azurezyq wrote:
| I don't think EU ever targeted Huawei's consumer business.
| It's only the US for this exact one.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Did you mean their Honor brand instead of Xiaomi, which is
| an entirely different manufacturer?
| manojlds wrote:
| Wait, what? Are you trying to say Xiaomi is rebranded
| subset of Huawei?
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| I'm not the parent author but they're both state
| sponsored enterprise.
|
| I can't speak about wherever they're rebrands though,
| you'd have to take all their phones apart to figure that
| out.
| rchaud wrote:
| Shouldn't the government own the majority of the shares
| for it to be a state sponsored enterprise? Or does it
| just have to offer tax breaks and subsidies?
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Or does it just have to offer tax breaks and subsidies?
|
| I wish the definition included this, there are so many
| shitty corporations which depend on subsidies and tax
| breaks but happily privatise every penny they can.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| Huawei has nothing to do with Xiaomi as far as I am aware.
| Yes same country of origin but that's all. Perhaps you can
| cite a reliable source to back up your claim?
| arboroia wrote:
| In Europe, Huawei is still the third largest by market
| share, at ~15% [0]
|
| [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-
| share/mobile/europe
| blackoil wrote:
| Samsung has a decent mid range A/M series and you can replace
| Xiaomi with 'Chinese companies' but comment otherwise stands
| true.
| rchaud wrote:
| I read somewhere that the Galaxy A51 was the biggest selling
| mid-range phone globally. It's about 30% of the price of a
| flagship, but there aren't huge compromises on performance
| and camera quality like there is on the A20, A10 series.
| mjgs wrote:
| I don't know that much about mobile development aside from as a
| user, but I guess the disappearance of a manufacturer is somewhat
| similar to the disappearance of a web browser, but probably worse
| because you also loose all the hardware possibilities, and I
| always thought that LG had some interesting phone designs,
| especially the dual screen devices, a bit experimental, but it
| seemed though at some stage one of them would lead to something
| really novel.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| The mobile phone market is no longer rational. That is why we are
| seeing such weird things happen like LG exiting. I blame apple.
|
| There are basically three markets nowadays.
|
| 1. Ultra luxurious $1000+ phones. These phones are bought purely
| based on brand name. As a result they generally have a smaller
| set of features and put the users through some amount of pain.
| For example, the latest iphone does not have headphone jack, does
| not come with a charger, does not have expandable memory, does
| not have a fingerprint sensor, has outdated 5 year old-looking
| screens with a huge notch, etc. You cannot compete in this
| category with good, technically sound products. People will pay
| $1200 for a brick with an apple logo on it, but not for a
| genuinely advanced phone packed with features, just because it
| ain't from apple.
|
| 2. Mid tier phones. These phones are bought based on a mixture of
| features and brand value. It is possible to compete here because
| the customers are making some sort of logical decisions. That is
| the reason Oneplus is able to gain significant share here. But
| these also have started falling into the trap of removing
| features and making users suffer a bit for the brand.
|
| 3. Cheap commodity phones. These are extremely cheap, the
| software is barely acceptable and the hardware is decent. Once
| again, it is difficult to compete here because these customers
| will buy the absolute cheapest phone there is with the set of
| features they want. They will entirely disregard any software
| polish, any brand association, anything that requires attention
| to detail. As a result, chinese manufacturers are absolutely
| killing it in this space.
|
| So the only place for LG to fit here is the 2nd one. This is a
| downgrade from earlier when they used to be in the flagship game,
| before apple fucked it up. I guess they are not able or ready to
| adapt to the new reality of the market. Sony did the same. I
| respect the decision on some level.
| ceedan wrote:
| Well that explains why I got my LG G8X ThinQ for 50% off, with a
| free dual screen case, $100 gift card rebate and a free 2 year
| warranty with proof of purchase. I got this phone just over a
| year ago. It's a great phone. Fantastic battery life, and it has
| a headphone jack. It's a shame - I felt a little weird getting an
| LG phone but I literally asked for "the best phone for the
| cheapest price" and LG/the dude at the Sprint store definitely
| delivered. I would have definitely considered an LG phone for my
| next purchase, but I'm hoping that won't be for another few
| years.
| pookieinc wrote:
| Can someone enlighten me on why manufacturers who have experience
| with software, such as Microsoft, don't create their own OS for
| their mobile phones? I recognize that it's easier and faster to
| iterate to just use Android with some sprinkles on top, but even
| if it meant spending 4-5 years developing it, the potential
| market share is absolutely massive. I can see the first year or
| two would not be great since app developers would need to build
| their apps, but after that initial hurdle, then I'd imagine it
| wouldn't be as bad. After that, it comes down to sales, marketing
| and mindshare adoption.
|
| To me regarding LG, I was never a fan of their phones, but less
| competition is always bad in my book.
|
| Edit: Yes I remember the Windows Phone and it's failures, was
| thinking more of starting a newer OS these days rather than
| several years ago.
| bawolff wrote:
| Microsoft has tried and failed multiple times.
| eli wrote:
| Microsoft, of course, famously did create their own phone OS.
| It wasn't bad either, but among other problems they were a
| little late to market and there were no apps for it. A real
| chicken and egg problem. Not worth the engineering effort to
| build an app for a tiny marketshare and no one wants a
| smartphone that can't even hail an Uber.
| dtx1 wrote:
| Having developed for windows phone 8, 8.1 and 10 i can say
| with certainty that it was bad in a plethora of ways and
| microsoft's constant over promising and under delivering made
| it worse.
| eli wrote:
| Compared to competing OSes at the time? I don't remember
| any being particularly fun. (But also I didn't spend much
| time in the Windows Phone ecosystem)
|
| But I think you're right that MS lost focus on developers
| on mobile. Ironic given "developers, developers,
| developers" was the literal mantra.
| tempestn wrote:
| Microsoft tried; they weren't able to capture that market
| share. Much of that probably comes down to it being tough to
| catch up to the 3rd party app ecosystem Apple and Android each
| have.
| villgax wrote:
| They tried & died a bunch of time. Windows ME, then Lumia
| series....
| bogwog wrote:
| Not sure how you missed the whole Windows Phone era
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone), but they tried
| doing their own operating system and it didn't work out.
|
| Blackberry too.
|
| And Samsung (Tizen)
|
| And there was also WebOS which I know was used in atleast one
| tablet, maybe some phones too, and which is currently owned by
| LG.
|
| Just think about how manufacturers are struggling to find
| success with their own smartphones. Imagine trying to do that
| with the added burden of developing a custom operating system.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| > And Samsung (Tizen)
|
| And before Bada . And Samsung had a bad history of promising
| stuff for users of Bada and Tizen, that never got shipped.
| This is one of the reasons that I would never bought a
| Samsung phone again.
| throwbacktictac wrote:
| I believe Hauwei is being forced to develop their own OS due to
| the threat of US sanctions. However, I think it'd be a losing
| battle to try to steal enough market share of IOS/Android.
| They'd simply copy (or one up) your competitive advantage
| leaving you little room to compete.
| xpressvideoz wrote:
| IIRC Huawei's OS is just a rebranded Android.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Huawei is absolutely writing their own kernel, see
| https://github.com/LiteOS/LiteOS.
| reaperhulk wrote:
| They may be working on other things but they also trumpet
| harmony as their own. Ars Technica wrote an article about
| how original it actually is:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-
| on-h...
| sanxiyn wrote:
| I mean, "fake it till you make it" is a good strategy
| (although you probably shouldn't lie). It is a sound
| engineering decision to rewrite Android piece by piece,
| like replacing Linux with LiteOS.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Just to expand on Windows Mobile: For the problems it had
| (probably the biggest was trying to enter a duopoly), I have
| yet to hear of anyone who had one who didn't like it. I never
| used one, but those who did seem to have liked it better than
| iOS and Android.
| ryl00 wrote:
| Yep. I'm still using my Alcatel Idol 4S Windows Phone as my
| daily driver.
| joana035 wrote:
| I will really enjoy seen LG pushing some drivers code upstream.
|
| Postmarketos and the Linux community can benefit a lot from it.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| At this point there are basically no non-Chinese mobile phone
| makers aside from Samsung and Apple. And even those devices are
| still manufactured in China, right?
| Server6 wrote:
| Here's a list: Apple - American
| Samsung Mobile - South Korean Nokia Mobile - Finnish
| Google Pixel - American Sony Mobile - Japanese
| LG - South Korean BLU Products - American Lava
| - Indian Sharp - Japanese Fairphone - Dutch
| Philips Mobile - Dutch Yotaphone - Russian BQ -
| Spanish Acer - Taiwanese Asus - Taiwanese
| HTC - Taiwanese Essential Products - American
| Cherry Mobile - Philippino DoCoMo - Japanese
| Panasonic Mobile - Japanese. Afrione - Nigerian
| Mara Phone - Rwandan Librem - American
| fomine3 wrote:
| Docomo is a carrier and just selling devices made by OEM
| (like Huawei), so not a manufacturer. Panasonic is abandoned
| long ago.
|
| Kyocera, Fujitsu still making phones in Japan.
| rchaud wrote:
| Micromax in India assembles phones locally. Parts and design
| however are sourced from China.
|
| Yotaphone is primarily a carrier/networking tech company. The
| mobile arm that created the Yotaphone e-ink/LCD phone went
| bankrupt in 2019. Their last device was the China-only
| Yotaphone 3 in 2018 [0].
|
| [0]https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508418/yota-devices-
| ban...
| [deleted]
| josalhor wrote:
| > BQ - Spanish
|
| BQ is liquidating [0].
|
| [0]: https://www.lainformacion.com/empresas/fabricante-
| moviles-bq...
| [deleted]
| qwertox wrote:
| Gigaset - German. I don't know exactly if they let them build
| in China, but they claim it's "Made in Germany"
| imiric wrote:
| Thanks, but you've listed where those companies are
| headquartered, not where their devices are manufactured or
| where their main suppliers are located.
|
| I wasn't able to track down the country of origin for many of
| them, but at least Fairphone is open about it, and 75% of its
| components are manufactured in China[1].
|
| Apple devices are still mostly produced in China, with some
| smaller scale operations in India[2].
|
| I would like to see Fairphone levels of transparency from all
| manufacturers, but until then it's safe to assume that any
| electronics are partially sourced from countries with
| existing manufacturing facilities and cheap labor such as
| China. It's a cost cutting measure that makes it unfeasible
| to move production elsewhere, even for giants like Apple, and
| downright impossible for smaller companies.
|
| [1]: https://www.fairphone.com/en/impact/source-map-
| transparency/
|
| [2]: https://fortune.com/2019/06/13/apple-iphone-china-
| production...
| deathtrader666 wrote:
| There's ASUS from Taiwan.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Samsung mobile phone manufacturing left China long time ago.
| Most Samsung mobile phones are manufactured in Vietnam these
| days.
| paxys wrote:
| Practically speaking, no. After Samsung and Apple the next 10
| or 15 largest smartphone manufacturers (excluding LG) are
| Chinese.
| avelis wrote:
| So, many big phone makers tried to meet the smartphone transition
| and pulled out. It sucks.
|
| Palm LG Nokia RIM (BB) Microsoft Amazon Obi Worldphone
|
| I know BB still makes phones but it is no longer a dominant arm
| of their business.
| rchaud wrote:
| BB's last phone was the Priv in 2015. All phones after that
| were built and sold by TCL, who licensed the Blackberry name.
| They weren't bad phones and the 2018 Key2 is actually something
| of a a cult favorite. But it's Blackberry in name only at this
| point.
| roguson wrote:
| They should improve their marketing campaign instead of getting
| out of the industry. I remember using my LG G4; it was the
| flagship phone of LG at that time. It was worth it, but the
| mainstream would instead choose between Apple and Samsung over
| other brands.
| Crono wrote:
| Very sad. I found the perfect smartphone for me - the V20. It
| almost feels like a smartphone that happened by accident and will
| never return in its glorious form again. Dont know what else to
| use if it dies. Already have a spare Screen and its 4th Battery
| ready to be used.
|
| The second screen is just the perfect solution for having an
| allways on display without a real (and stupid) notch. I love this
| feature. Also knock to power on is super convenient. Battery is
| replacable. The Screen is super sharp. Its thin despite its very
| accessible inner parts. The amp and music quality is absolutely
| awesome. The camera is awesome as is the sound recording quality.
| The IR Blaster ist just super convenient. Also the FM-Radio is a
| very nice addition. The camera-app is just awesome and i have yet
| not managed to find something simmilar. Also i like the gallery
| app. And the sound recording app. Its also fast, has enough power
| still to this day. And the SD-Card Slot combined with the
| internal memory gives me 640GB Storage. Also Dual SIM is nice.
|
| Really it is such an awesome phone that im not sure how this
| phone happened in the first place. As each Smartphone does at
| least 2 things stupid or hase some dumb features no one asked
| for.
|
| Its allways the same with me - as soon as i find the absolute
| perfect hardware - its already legacy and nothing like it is
| buyable in the future ...
|
| The V20 is like the perfect tool. No stupid features only used
| for sales, no shortcuts, just a very nice package. Two things i
| would change: Cameras should never stick out and the volume
| buttons should be on the back like on the G4.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I really miss my V20's 2nd screen and removable battery.
|
| I went with the V30 next because I needed the extra horsepower.
| I'm mostly happy - except for the headphone jack on top.
| ck425 wrote:
| How is the software though? I tried it years ago because of the
| audio quality and ended up going HTC 10 because the LG version
| of Android was horrendous. Less bloat than Samsung sure but
| still horrible
| gorbachev wrote:
| I'm still using a V20 as well. It's one of the last phones
| manufactured with a replaceable battery and a headphone jack.
| It'll be a sad day when it croaks.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I also have a V20 and am quite satisfied. The replaceable
| battery, SD card slot, headphone jack, and LOS support make for
| a great overall package. I pray this device lives for many
| moons.
| CivBase wrote:
| My first (and apparently last, now) LG phone was a V30. It's
| currently my main driver and I have no plans to get rid of it.
|
| It has expandable storage, a headphone jack, a full screen with
| a very thin chin and forehead, a decent camera, loud speakers,
| a good fingerprint reader, FM radio, a battery that still gets
| me through a full day easily, and almost everything I want from
| a phone at what was a very competitive price.
|
| The only thing it's really missing for me is a software update.
| If there was any hope for that before, there is certainly none
| now.
|
| The only thing that appears to come close to being a suitable
| replacement is the ROG Phone 5 but it's expensive, lacks
| expandable storage, and I've heard bad things about ASUS's
| software support.
|
| As excited as I am for the PinePhone and Linux smartphones in
| general, I don't see that being a viable main driver for at
| least three or four more years - probably longer. Maybe I can
| keep my V30 going until then...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| You should make plans to replace it because it's quite likely
| updates for it will end soon. Corporations are well known to
| bail early when a profit center is axed. You don't want to
| end up hacked.
| villgax wrote:
| Can manufacturers do a wedge like design with a thicker top &
| tapered bottom edge? That way there is no camera bump & the
| device sits flat on a desk & a bit raised towards you as well.
|
| Bonus camera points coz the lenses are along the same axis
| horizontally & closer to the centre of the device than in one
| corner, likewise for the front facing camera too, which could
| just be shoved into one corner without leaving a hole-punch or
| notch at all.
| DenseComet wrote:
| The original Pixel had that exact design, although the later
| designs went in the opposite direction.
| eru wrote:
| I don't remember them being wedge shaped?
| paxys wrote:
| Camera bumps are all cancelled out by cases anyways. What you
| are describing sounds uncomfortable to carry around in the
| pocket.
| villgax wrote:
| Both are cuboidal & I don't think it would make any
| difference without the case in a pocket
| Stratoscope wrote:
| I don't mind a camera bump _if_ it is symmetric horizontally.
| But most of the ones I 've seen have the bump on one corner,
| which ruins the use case you mentioned of setting the device
| flat on a desk or table.
|
| My Note 8 and a friend's Note 9 don't really have a camera bump
| at all, other than a barely raised ridge around the camera
| section. But unlike many other phones, this ridge is symmetric:
| it extends equally to the left and right. Even if this were a
| raised camera bump, it would still work for setting the phone
| on a table.
|
| The iPhone I got from work is quite different: it has a rather
| thick camera bump on one corner. So when it sits on a table, if
| I tap on the display the whole phone wobbles.
|
| That is very poor design, but now Samsung seems to have copied
| it! The newer Samsung phone have bumps in one corner just like
| the iPhone, so they would be just as annoying to use on a
| table.
|
| For the moment I am hanging on to the Note 8 for dear life,
| until I find a newer phone with a good camera and either no
| bump or a symmetric bump. Are there any high end phones like
| this any more?
|
| (Regarding a sibling comment about cases, that is one solution,
| but I don't use one and don't plan to.)
| deergomoo wrote:
| > But most of the ones I've seen have the bump on one corner,
| which ruins the use case you mentioned of setting the device
| flat on a desk or table.
|
| Unfortunately I don't think this is a high priority because
| most people use a case, which means the camera is either
| flush or even slightly recessed depending on thickness.
|
| I don't use a case on my phone so this annoys me just as much
| as it does you, but for 99% of people I doubt they even think
| about it.
| tsjq wrote:
| That will be a beautiful and practical design
| SuperFluffy wrote:
| Good. I swore to never get an LG phone again after my terrible
| customer service experience sending in my G4 for fixing their
| serial bootloop issue. Sent the phone in, took two weeks for it
| to get fixed, and then got lost on the way back to me. I then had
| to fight DHL to get some of my money back. Their customer service
| line threatened me with their legal department should I write
| about this online.
|
| All out great experience.
| dlevine wrote:
| I never had an LG smartphone, but I have many fond memories of my
| old LG VX4400 dumbphone that I had from 2003-2007. It was built
| like a tank, easily fit in my pocket, and the battery lasted for
| 4 or 5 days. Sure it didn't have a web browser and the only
| available apps were BREW, but I didn't really need any of that
| stuff at the time.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| As a reminder the Iphone one wasn't actually the first full
| tactile, "wide" screen smartphone, it was the LG Prada. However
| the Iphone was still innovative, especially on the software side.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Wondering if the Android phone market can be still considered a
| Google-led mobile "ecosystem" when Samsung is the only big player
| left with competitors dropping out or struggling, and the big
| Chinese manufacturers being forced out.
|
| Not meant as a snark (owned HTC phones in their heyday and also
| Samsung S5 and S8); just wondering if Samsung shouldn't aim for a
| larger influence on Android or even fork, for better or worse.
| herbst wrote:
| This appears to be an american centric view. In the rest of the
| world samsung is really far from the only big player. And i
| dont see the chinese flag ship sellers dropping at all either.
| Oppo is growing faster than an other phone company right now.
| Huawai is dominant for years now too.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Even when you look worldwide, Samsung has ~1/3 of the market,
| triple the market share of any other competitor.
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile
|
| https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-manufacturers
| [deleted]
| rickdeckard wrote:
| All weaknesses aside, I always liked LG for their adventurous
| attempts to challenge the market. There was a "dare product"
| every year, something noone has done so far but with the
| potential to push things forward in the industry. Unfortunately,
| the lack of sales (and marketing) caused those leaps to get
| smaller every year...
|
| They will be missed. In a world of ever-increasing smartphone
| conformity, they were the ones reliably rattling the cage by
| placing a screaming punk of a product just in the middle of the
| worldwide white-collar market...
| Kjeldahl wrote:
| LG had good phones. But while most other phones allowed some
| minor cracks in their glass, the earlier LGs did not. One minor
| crack and the touch UI would stop working (they fused the touch
| sensor to the glass or something). They insisted on this
| "feature" for longer than most competitors I believe, and for
| every customer that experienced it we would 1) Never by an LG
| again, and 2) Bitch about it to others. I'm sure this was a
| factor to their downfall as well.
| scrame wrote:
| good.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Lamentations here. G5, G6, V20, V30. Each buy followed a research
| period - primary qualifications were handset quality+specs, price
| and _rootability_.
|
| I didn't particularly care who the manufacturer was. LG kept
| winning out.
| paxys wrote:
| That's unfortunate. The LG G series has consistently been among
| the best Android phones, especially for the price.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Ugh, no followup to the Stylo 5, then. Got mine in 2019 shortly
| after it was released, and it's been rock-solid. Aside from the
| inevitable non-removable battery, I've had no complaints, and to
| be fair to the battery, I still get outstanding life from it.
|
| I really don't want a phone that's all-glass. I know it's trendy,
| but, hard pass for me. The aluminum frame and plastic back are
| things LG got very right with the Stylo 5. Please put enough of a
| bezel on it that I can actually grab it without triggering
| something inadvertently.
|
| And, yes, that 3.5 mm jack is important. Music-making apps are
| basically impossible to work with when your audio path includes
| Bluetooth delay.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > And, yes, that 3.5 mm jack is important
|
| I thought the USB-C -> 3.5mm adaptors are just mechanical, or
| have no delay?
| rokweom wrote:
| There are passive and active dongles. With a passive dongle,
| the DAC is built into the phone and the analog signal is
| simply passed through the connector. Active dongles are
| essentialy tiny USB DACs, they communicate with the phone
| digitally via USB.
| ck425 wrote:
| My understanding is that many USB-C adapters limit voltage,
| which screws over good headphones. Also from experience of
| using a DAC via USB-C everyday for many years, they're really
| really unreliable.
|
| 3.5mm on the other hand just works and is (was? ) ubiquitous.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| If they are mechanical, they are probably some special sauce
| not quite USB-C ports. USB is digital, TRS is analog. (Yes
| that means standardized adapters have to include a DAC). The
| delay should be minimal, though.
| jmclnx wrote:
| same here, I always liked the LG phones I have had. Very solid
| and works great. Sad to see this happening.
| foobaw wrote:
| LG should've gone out years ago. Hindsight is 20/20 but it just
| wasn't worth it after G6 in my opinion. Obviously, G4 was when
| they should've really stopped but that's much harder to predict.
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| LG phones were great before colour screens.
| pentae wrote:
| In another lifetime ago, back when I was much younger, had a lot
| more hair, and phones weren't very smart; the cell phone store I
| was working at had a customer come in with his LG flip phone. The
| users primary complaint was that it was shocking him on his face
| while using it plugged into the charger and on a call.
|
| After plugging the phone in we called it from the store phone and
| sure enough not long after answering the thing gave me a nice big
| zap on my hand.
|
| Never recommended LG phones after that.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Proud owner of 3 LG V20s.
|
| What are my LG v20 alternatives now ?
| marcodiego wrote:
| Every company that leaves a business should be obliged by law to
| release detailed documentation, bootloader keys and dev
| kit/tools. There's no other way to guarantee that costumers can
| own the devices they paid for without this.
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| Are customers entitled to that but only if they purchase a
| phone from a failing company? I've had Samsung drop support for
| one of my phones after ~no time, but they're doing fine.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Let the requirement be broader then!
| AbuAssar wrote:
| LG G2 was my favorite phone of all time.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Mine too! I freaking loved that phone.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| I doubt they'll opensource anything even after exiting the
| market, which is unfortunate. Millions of devices will stop
| getting updates in a few years.
| summm wrote:
| No difference to the situation before: LG never really bothered
| with updates or even security updates. That is also the main
| reason the G4 was my last LG phone... And I hope it was the
| reason they stopped making phones.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Given LG's success in the TV biz with WebOS, I'm surprised they
| never made a port of the OS for their mobile line.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| People don't like their TVs because they have WebOS (which
| sucks big time btw), they like them because they make the best
| quality OLED panels for reasonable prices. The CX is a
| phenomenal TV or monitor replacement (in 45 inch configuration)
| paxys wrote:
| Not sure if joking or not...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Not at all. I realize WebOS started as a mobile project but I
| want to see it come full circle back to mobile.
| paxys wrote:
| That isn't going to happen. There is no room for another
| smartphone OS. Look at how much cash Microsoft threw at the
| problem, and they still couldn't succeed.
| akvadrako wrote:
| WebOS is originally made for mobiles.
|
| Not enough people want an OS that doesn't have native support
| for Android or iOS apps. Even windows couldn't cut it.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| They do now. We have all became acutely aware of Google and
| Apple having too much power over the mobile ecosystem.
| Windows Phone 8+ didn't offer any differentiation other than
| UI design and they were charging for Windows mobile at first.
| Windows never got the critical mass of apps. It wasn't open
| source. Microsoft is just another tech giant. But if they
| piggy backed off the TV market success of WebOS they could
| have a truly open source alternative to Android that other
| organizations could have more influence over.
| Akashd7 wrote:
| They Made Great phone , im still using a LG G7.Sad that they are
| shutting down. very few companies focused on Audiophile needs /
| DACs.
| tiagod wrote:
| I had an LG G3 and it heated up so much that the shell separated
| from the screen/body. It was literally painful to hold your hand
| in the middle of the screen with heavy apps open (like Snapchat
| at the time...)
|
| I sent it for warranty repair three times, and every time they
| "repaired" it instead of giving me a new one, and it would happen
| again. The fourth time it happened I just gave up.
| shmerl wrote:
| That's surprising. They make one of the best devices. What else
| is there, Sony? I have no interest in Samsung in the least. I
| don't find it "incredibly competitive" when the number of decent
| options is approaching zero.
|
| I guess mass market junk approach pushes good options out.
| wpm wrote:
| oh no!
|
| anyway...
| jcronenberg wrote:
| What I find most sad about this is that LG appears to be the only
| manufacturer who makes phones with both wireless charging and a
| headphone jack. Somehow these features seem to contradict
| themselfs for other manufacturers. Wireless charging is seen as a
| premium feature, while headphone jack is seen as a budget
| feature. I unfortunately have gotten so used to both that I don't
| want to give them up. I love my wired headphones and my phone is
| pretty much always at 80% (Battery limiter) since it always
| charges when I'm at my desk. Right now I don't see a reason to
| upgrade my V30 but when that time comes I hope someone makes a
| similar phone (my biggest hope is Sony as they at least appear to
| be interested in headphones, now they just need to add wireless
| charging)
| briankelly wrote:
| These, the higher quality DAC, and the lack of software bloat
| are killer features for me. I'm not looking forward to
| replacing my G7.
| sodality2 wrote:
| I just got a G7 as well and I love it. really don't want to
| replace it either.
| lwelyk wrote:
| Yeah, I unfortunately finally gave up the headphone jack. My
| phone broke and I couldn't find a good phone that had wireless
| charging, a headphone jack and a micro SD card slot. I went
| with the S20 FE since it had 2 of them. The budget galaxys seem
| have headphone and mcicro sd but not wireless charging. I
| almost bought an old S10 since that's the last galaxy with all
| three, but figured since it'd be losing update support soon I
| had better pick which feature to lose.
|
| I'm kind of regretting it already. I don't have portable
| bluetooth headphones right now, had to order some and I kept
| wanting headphones over the weekend since they haven't arrived
| yet.
|
| I was kind of leaning towards and LG, but everyone online was
| saying this was going to happen soon.
| mdhen wrote:
| I recommend getting an es100 to pair with wired headphones
| fX0rObfoMN4 wrote:
| You can use GSM Arena's Phone Finder tool to search for phones
| with specific feature sets. In this case released 2019 or
| newer, 3.5 mm jack, and wireless charging[0]. As of now there
| are 26 phones that match those criteria and 10 of them are from
| LG. Three are from Huawei which means they are basically
| useless outside of China. Looking at high end devices you are
| left with the 3 year old Samsung S10[+], the Motorola Edge+
| from last year, and Sony's Xperia 1 II. Sony has an
| announcement on the 14th where they will likely announce the
| Xperia 1 III[1]. I would look forward to that to see if it
| retains the headphone jack.
|
| [0]
| https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2019&chk35mm=...
|
| [1] https://www.techradar.com/news/sony-xperia-1-iii-gets-
| possib...
| coolg54321 wrote:
| > only manufacturer who makes phones with both wireless
| charging and a headphone jack
|
| May be the you should mention "flagship" because there are many
| android mid-rangers with both headphone jack and wireless
| charging, but this too is not true because sony's flagship
| xperia 1 mark 2 still have both headphone jack and wireless
| charging + sd card support that the others have abandoned.
| simfoo wrote:
| Samsung S10e has both. Best smartphone I ever owned (once you
| got rid of all the crapware using ADB).
| jessriedel wrote:
| Are there any services that will strip off bloatware using
| ADB for you? Would be happy to pay $100 for it to just
| reliably work out of the box then spend a bunch of time
| reading forums and worrying that something will break.
| kogepathic wrote:
| Just pick and choose from the list of bloatware:
| https://github.com/khlam/debloat-samsung-android
| 3v1n0 wrote:
| Agree, still typing with a V30 and rocking.
|
| Amazing pictures and nice and slim look, working with no
| problems for years now.
| AbraKdabra wrote:
| My last phone was LG V20 which was a beast, but LG went the
| Motorola Atrix way and decided to fuck the customers and not
| update the phone, so now I'm happy with my Note 10 Plus receiving
| an update each month.
|
| Fuck LG and every company that decides to don't give a shit about
| their loyal customers.
| anoncow wrote:
| The recent LG Dual screen phones have been good. The wing phone
| was innovative as well. Sad to see them go.
| JamesAdir wrote:
| From following other companies in the LG group it seems that the
| company is very slow to innovate compared to it's biggest rival
| Samsung. Comparing stock prices is almost surreal as Samsung
| grows in 10x multiplier over the last 10 years. LG will also be
| pushed out of the home electronics business as more manufacturers
| from Asia increase their output and capabilities. I think they
| will eventually become like Philips with focus only on B2B
| specific product lines like displays, batteries and EV
| components.
| qmarchi wrote:
| I can't really blame them. Ever since the LG G4, they haven't
| really been relevant, which is unfortunate. They have the
| capability to experiment outside of the box, like the Wing, but a
| business is a business.
|
| RIP LG Mobile.
| bogwog wrote:
| I'm still amazed at how well the LG G3 holds up today (with
| custom roms). That era of LG phones was great.
|
| It's too bad that they started to concentrate all their efforts
| on coming up with the dumbest gimmicks possible (like that
| ridiculous second screen on the V20)
|
| Sometimes it seems like Apple owes much of its success to the
| bizarre fact that all their competitors are completely
| incompetent.
| xpressvideoz wrote:
| I think you and the GP are disagreeing with each other. You
| are criticizing LG's gimmicky adventurous choices, which are
| the exact reasons why the GP liked LG.
| ohazi wrote:
| I never understood why Samsung phones were constantly receiving
| praise by tech reviewers while LG got crapped on.
|
| Samsung always wanted to do things their way -- different
| (shitty) UI, Samsung versions of all the core Google apps (but
| worse), reorganizing preferences for no reason, the stupid bottom
| button placement, non-remappable Bixby button, aggressively
| killing apps for power management and breaking widgets, etc.
|
| LG always seemed a lot closer to stock Android, and was good at
| staying out of your way.
|
| I had a Samsung Galaxy S4, then an LG G5, and now an LG V35. I
| hated the S4 and loved the G5 and V35. My fiance had an LG V20,
| and now has a Samsung Galaxy S20+ and feels similarly -- loved
| the V20, is super annoyed by stupid Samsung software quirks, even
| on this latest model.
|
| Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances? Why is
| Samsung considered the flagship of flagships? Build quality
| beyond the V30 is basically identical.
| ksec wrote:
| On a global level,
|
| 1. LG are crap at discovery ( Sales and Marketing ) and
| distribution. Something which despite HN is a forum from VC and
| Startup, pays very little attention to.
|
| 2. LG's phone QA were never really as good. This has been the
| case since pre-Smartphone era.
|
| 3. LG WOLED, something they tried to get it work on Smartphone
| but never worked and their AMOLED panel were inferior, which
| sort of have a knock on effect on their brand.
|
| 4. They were just never as aggressive as Samsung, I dont mean
| Samsung Electronics and LG electronics, I mean the _whole_
| Samsung vs LG. I guess someone from Korea can chime in on that
| because I know LG is competitive in South Korea.
|
| 5. Samsung are great at making Smartphone. Their whole Business
| Model. If you think you know Flywheel because you know Amazon.
| Take a look at Samsung.
|
| 6. On a Hardware level, Samsung is way ahead of LG on Spec.
| Which is what nerds and Tech reviewers likes to focus on. UI
| and Software tends be subjective. And stock Android is like the
| year of Linux on Desktop.
|
| 7. You would have thought they could built some synergy with LG
| OLED from TV. Nope.
| puritanicdev wrote:
| > LG's phone QA were never really as good.
|
| They are still abysmal to work with. I'm working on a webOS
| TV app and some of the updates require their certification,
| and their QA team is unbelievable...
| toyg wrote:
| I had an idea for one of those but absolutely bailed when I
| saw the joke of an "approval process" they had. I remember
| something like having to fill in a presentation (!)... The
| only item missing from the list was "fly to Korea and take
| the team out for dinner".
| puritanicdev wrote:
| Yeah! We have to create the app presentation each time we
| submit for certification, and if even one of the text
| elements from presentation differs from the app it's cert
| failure... I mean, what the hell LG?!
|
| One time they've sent us cert feedback for another (big)
| application, instead for our app. All that with their
| presentation file, login details, and other stuff.
| als0 wrote:
| Wow. If you can share, what particular aspects require
| their certification?
| herbst wrote:
| > 5. Samsung are great at making Smartphone. Their whole
| Business Model.
|
| The same Samsung that earned way more with everything but
| phones? (Probably changed meanwhile, but it wasnt the case
| for a long time)
| juliand wrote:
| I am a s10+ user and recently I ditched all the different
| google version of my phone apps. I decided to use samsung's
| version of the calculator, calendar, files and contacts apps.
|
| They seem solid enough for me and some of them present better
| integration with the Samsung ecosystem . Those apps are also
| integrated with different third party providers including
| google .
|
| I still despise bixby but I'm very satisfied with the rest of
| the phone.
| durnygbur wrote:
| > I am a s10+
|
| > very satisfied with the rest of the phone.
|
| The plastic glass of the back camera in my Samsung s10
| cracked in the first 2 months of using the phone, it cracked
| from laying it on flat surfaces.
| juliand wrote:
| Mine has remained intact even without a case (with the
| usual wear of course, but no cracks).
| mindentropy wrote:
| Google Keyboard is the worst. It is so laggy and there is no
| way to adjust the keyboard keys for fat finger people.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Recommend another keyboard that will let me switch quickly
| between the five languages that I have installed, supports
| swipe in all those languages, has cursor navigation, and
| does not promote the use of emojis in conversation, has
| rich set of characters including diacritic marks for Hebrew
| and Arabic. If it pops up my selected text as an
| autocomplete selection that would be nice too.
|
| I would be willing to pay for such a keyboard. Alas the
| free Google keyboard does all that. For me, the only
| feature missing is language selection when attaching a
| hardware bluetooth keyboard. I have to switch to the
| default Samsung keyboard to be able to switch languages
| from the hardware keyboard.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| At least the Samsung Gallery app works just fine if you block
| the network access with a firewall. The Google Gallery app
| does strange things and is not usable at all behind a
| firewall.
| norswap wrote:
| Counterpoint: I have a rather good experience with Samsung. I
| bought flagships devices some time after their releases (I had
| S2, S4, S8 and now a S10e from work) and they lasted me a long
| time (S2 and S4 both lasted for four years).
|
| The big advantage is that they were powerful devices with a
| removable battery and a SD-card slot.
|
| Downside was a tendency to overheat a bit (this was
| particularly bad on the S2 at some point, though I recall
| subsequent software updates helped a lot).
|
| In all cases, the devices kept being updated to the latest
| android while I was using them.
|
| The Samsung Android additions are pretty much useless except
| maybe one or two good ideas, but they also don't get in the
| way. I just spend 30 minutes to disable things when I get my
| phone.
|
| Also I don't know if you've looked at real stock android (e.g.
| fire an emulator from Android studio for instance) but that
| stuff is real ugly (shouldn't be a big consideration - it can
| be themed quite easily, but I felt I needed to make this
| point).
| jfd98njkdgnh wrote:
| I genuinely enjoyed my S2 ( I9100 ) and I only given it away
| to my sister since she kinda annexed it during my trip to the
| old country. It was a solid device for the time. Since then I
| also used asus zenfone ( interesting features there ) and now
| LG v20 ( prolly last android phone with changable battery ).
|
| I honestly don't get why people are so addicted to a brand. I
| used to drive Acura when 2004 models were still good. I
| wouldn't buy one today.
|
| Still, LG failing does seem like a marketing loss. My
| experience with their hardware was not bad.
| xpressvideoz wrote:
| Yeah, I like the Samsung UI. I think it's brilliant to have the
| scroll area in the below half of the screen initially, to make
| it easy to touch the first few items of the list.
|
| I even like some of their apps. Samsung Health is, in my
| opinion, infinitely better than Google Fit. The latter doesn't
| even let me delete mistakenly input data. I'm not sure what
| Google's strategy on this app is.
| TechniKris wrote:
| This. AOSP feels so annoying to use, while OneUI is
| incredibly comfortable, especially showing its advantages on
| large screens. I swear, I often wish more apps would follow
| OneUI in their design, that's how comfortable in use it is.
|
| I'm using a mix of Samsung's navbar gestures and "One Hand
| Operation" GoodLock module gestures and my thumb barely ever
| needs to reach outside of my "comfortable grip" reach area on
| my 6.4" Galaxy A50, even when accessing notifications/quick
| settings drawer.
|
| And I could go on and on about how good their hardware is in
| the midrange shelf, though it seems to me flagship pricetags
| usually don't seem to bother HN users.
|
| Also: if you use a Samsung, try out GoodLock apps, they're
| great. I don't think any other manufacturer supports
| completely changing things like the recents tab or sound
| controls without rooting or installing custom ROMs.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| Generally I felt LG was stuck between Samsung and cheaper
| Chinese brands. Samsung flagships had slightly better specs for
| people that wanted the latest and greatest. Also they were well
| known so had purchase inertia. While people wanted budget and
| willing to try something new went the Chinese brands where for
| a little less phone, or not sometimes, it's cheaper. Also LG
| would release at high prices and then drop not too long later
| chasing volume. I always felt they needed to sacrifice margin
| for a few cycles to get volume and release at the soon to be
| markdown price. Kinda how pixel phones have shifted on their
| last release. Same goes for Sony who have some decent phones
| too.
|
| G5 was a great phone though wasn't it.
| syshum wrote:
| I wonder the same thing about Apple....
|
| Does believing you're the last sane man on the planet make you
| crazy? 'Cause if that's the case, maybe I am.
| lordoftheknow wrote:
| Samsung phones always had problems and shiny screens. Don't
| know why people raved about such silly gadgets. LG phones were
| darn good.
| jmcnulty wrote:
| I switched from Samsung to Pixel for the same reasons.
| Samsung's additional bloatware and their penchant for
| installing new things I didn't ask for drove me nuts.
| blackoil wrote:
| Google Apps aren't gold standard. I own a Samsung phone I have
| replaced launcher (MS launcher) /SMS (SMS organizer). Contacts
| and Phone app maybe Samsung's but they never troubled me. Only
| Settings search is unexplicably slow which annoys sometimes.
|
| In terms of hardware/updates Samsung is good enough. Only
| Chinese phones may give better value for money but they come
| with too many software quirks, which I don't like.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| My personal phone is a Nokia and I just received a Samsung
| for work. I use MS Launcher on both.
|
| I did try the Samsung phone app but didn't like it and have
| installed the Google one. I've only done one settings search
| and it was really slow too.
| reader_mode wrote:
| OnePlus has decent value and while being Chinese it doesn't
| have a lot of quirks and is geared towards western markets.
|
| Motorola also has some decent phones in the budget category.
| Pixel a series are also great value.
|
| I got a Samsung last generation and gave Samsung ecosystem a
| go (smart watch, buds, TV). They do great hardware but they
| should just leave software alone - tizen os is a major PITA
| on TV and Watch (lacks apps, Bixby is retarded).
|
| I had one plus before this and I'll probably go back if I
| stay on Android - software is just much better
| publicola1990 wrote:
| RealMe phones also seem decently build and value for money.
| dotancohen wrote:
| My daughter just bought one, and it is amazing.
| Responsive, great looking screen, and by far the best
| camera of any non-[D]SLR device I've ever seen.
|
| She actually bought it for the camera, nevermind that it
| was half the price of the other phones that she was
| looking at.
| vinay427 wrote:
| Honestly, the Samsung OneUI on phones has little, if
| nothing, to do with Tizen. Have you tried a newer Samsung
| Galaxy phone?
|
| As someone who now has a Pixel, newer Samsung devices come
| across as far more full-featured (I think this might be
| objectively true?) with a more consistent and pleasant UI
| (IMO) than stock Android. I don't use it because of
| bootloader/ROM support, but if that didn't exist I'd
| probably prefer the device that takes stock Android and
| adds some polish and thoughtful features along with better
| quality hardware.
|
| There's a reason why Google has often integrated Samsung
| features into stock Android with a delay of a year or two.
| Obviously, the reverse is true and Samsung benefits from
| Google development, but I think that's already a given when
| Samsung advertises an update to a new Android version.
| OneUI also seems to avoid the general slowdowns of older
| Samsung UI experiences such as TouchWiz.
| reader_mode wrote:
| Yep - I'm using an S10 right now and have been for the
| last 2 years.
|
| Some problems I have with it :
|
| Bixby is garbage and I don't know why they haven't killed
| it yet - there is 0 chance they will ever develop
| anything usable let alone competitive.
|
| It comes preloaded with bloatware I cannot uninstall,
| custom app store it uses to update it's own system apps,
| it's own apps are spamming me with notifications
| constantly.
|
| Supposedly it has good integration with it's ecosystem
| devices, but unlike Apple - nothing actually works well,
| SmartThings craps out, Health keeps spamming me when I
| stopped using the watch, the watch doesn't have Google
| assistant or Maps out of the box.
|
| Overall the hardware is quite good, base OS is decent (I
| replace the launcher with Nova), but the apps and
| software ecosystem is garbage. Apple is miles ahead it's
| not even funny. I really don't want to get an iPhone
| because the iOS is so locked down and I want to go back
| to a Windows machine after the disappointments with MBP
| thermals for years and outdated design at this point. But
| Apple ecosystem just works 95% of the time.
|
| I mention Tizen as an example of Samsung trying to pull
| off their own thing in software and sucking at it (like
| Bixby). All Samsung devices would be better if they used
| a competing OS stack. One UI is the shining example of
| something that works but frankly I don't see the value
| add over stock.
| vinay427 wrote:
| Thanks for the reply. That's definitely very fair
| criticism that I generally agree with.
|
| I suppose I personally don't mind the inconsistent and
| lackluster device ecosystem support because I currently
| prefer an outdoor watch over a "true" smartwatch. The
| OneUI additions were therefore what stuck out to me the
| most, especially from the perspective of a Pixel user.
| While I would appreciate the privacy and consistency
| aspects of iOS, I really don't like the often confusingly
| obscured UI elements, and the limited feature-set is the
| deal-killer for me as I at least occasionally depend on
| having decent file management, FTP/SSH, etc.
| blackoil wrote:
| Yeah Oneplus is a good option, but their pricing is now
| ~flagship, while I stick with low-mid end. Right now I'll
| go with A52 if I have to replace my phone. I don't use
| Bixby/Google and have ungoogled my life by lot, maybe one
| of the reason
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, the 9 starts at PS629 which is actually really
| cheap for the specs. The only way to get the Snapdragon
| 888 any cheaper is to go for something like Oppo or
| Xiaomi, which are not available everywhere.
|
| And yes, their prices have been increasing over the
| years, but 3 years ago I paid PS550 for the 5T, so now
| paying PS629 for the 9 doesn't seem like such a huge
| leap.
| reader_mode wrote:
| OnePlus has a Nord line which is in line with A52 I think
| ?
| nullify88 wrote:
| Years ago I used to use the MS Launcher, however I noticed
| strange behaviour when in low 2g signal areas...Apps would
| take longer starting up. I'd tap on an icon, nothing would
| happen and the launcher would appear frozen, few seconds
| later the app would open.
|
| I noticed the launcher was sending traffic whenever I started
| an app and it was affecting app start times when in low and
| slow signal areas.
|
| I didn't dig in to it, but I suspected it was sending app
| usage analytics and the launcher was blocking until its usage
| data was transferred.
|
| Another MS app "Your phone companion" is also sus.
| Preinstalled on my S10, it uses 20mb of data a month and I
| don't use it at all. Receives very frequent updates, its
| changelog is "Not provided by developer", and it has many
| permissions.
| mhitza wrote:
| Recently I wanted to try out a new launcher on my phone.
| I've installed 3-4 different launchers and they all had a
| huge privacy policy page about the large amount of data
| they would exfiltrate from the phone.
|
| So your experience definitely doesn't come as a surprise.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| If you want a lightweight launcher with few features and
| an atypical UI, try https://kisslauncher.com/ (available
| in the Play Store and in F-Droid). It shows your apps in
| a "frecency"-ordered, scrollable and searchable list.
| alexvoda wrote:
| All of you complaining about trafic caused by launcers
| and privacy concern should just try an open source
| launcher from fDroid. I settled for Lawnchair2. It does
| it job well enough.
| mhitza wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion. I usually roll with the
| default LineageOS Trebuchet launcher. However the last
| time I upgraded there wasn't a large enough warning that
| installing the micro gapps would overwrite the Trebuchet
| launcher, and also make it unavailable for switching.
|
| I'll give your suggestion a try, takes less time than
| reinstalling LineageOS :)
| nullify88 wrote:
| Lawnchair does a great job but at the time of use
| development slowed and when I switched phones I stuck to
| using the stock launcher.
|
| But its great to see an alpha for Android 11 was out a
| week ago. So I'll be jumping back on that bandwagon.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I had an S4 then a G4 and then a S8 and never looked back. I'm
| now on the S20+. The jump from the S4/G4 to the S8 was such a
| massive one it felt like it was a whole new experience. The
| only thing that would convince me to switch from Samsung is if
| Google got its act together and built a real flagship complete
| with all the bells and whistles.
|
| Samsung, for me, just works. It's a bit obnoxious to have
| doubles of apps, but otherwise I don't have a lot of problems.
| It's funny you mention Bixby key because none of those phones
| you listed have one - I supposed you could argue the S20 does,
| but the first thing I did was remap (using Samsung's built in
| controls) it back to the power button and I was on my way. I'm
| only reminded that Bixby is a thing when people complain about
| it.
| datagram wrote:
| This mirrors my experience. I had an S3, and my experiences
| with that and having to deal with the S4 for work turned me
| off of Samsung entirely.
|
| Later on I ended up upgrading from my HTC One M8 to a
| refurbished S8 (it was one of the only phones on the market
| that was small enough for my tastes), and honestly I love it.
| All the flashy aesthetic stuff I had scoffed at Samsung for
| (curved screen edges, etc) ended up feeling really great once
| I was using the phones, ignoring Bixby gives me a free extra
| hardware button, the Samsung apps stack up pretty nicely
| against the stock Android ones, UI themeing works better than
| it ever did for me on other phones, and accessory
| availability is excellent due to their popularity.
|
| Honestly, more phones should start adding extra remappable
| hardware buttons.
| gregmac wrote:
| I've also had an S8 for the past 2-3 years. I remapped Bixby
| button (home button, or double click+hold for flashlight,
| even when locked). I also use almost none of the Samsung
| apps. I use Novalauncher which is better than any other
| launcher I've tried: lets me hide everything I can't
| otherwise uninstall, and with ability to set grid
| spacing/sizing lets me have a single (non-scrolling) page of
| "all apps I care about" I can swipe up to get to.
|
| Totally happy with it.
| BlameKaneda wrote:
| I've had an S8 for two years. For a phone that's four years
| old, it's by far the best and most performant one I've had.
| Past phones I've had seemed to slow down noticeably, but with
| the S8 you barely notice it at all. I'm hoping to hold onto
| it for a few more years, and after that I'd love to continue
| down the Galaxy line.
| mywacaday wrote:
| I had two Motorola phones back to back and really liked them,
| hardly any bloatware, performed well and the second one had a
| impact resistant screen that wasn't glass, didn't need a case
| and tooke some awful banks but never cracked even though it had
| some dents.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I've always had Android phones since my first smart phone,
| and they have always been Motorola. Totally happy with them.
| Causality1 wrote:
| There's a lot to love about LG phones. They're way better on
| features than Samsung, and friendlier to people who want to use
| a custom ROM or root their phone.
|
| Their POLED screens killed it for me, though. I haven't seen a
| single phone that didn't have horrifically uneven colors,
| usually with the bottom half of the screen shifting to green. I
| kept hoping they'd fix it, and I bought and subsequently
| returned a V30, a V35, and a V40 before giving up on them.
| emodendroket wrote:
| The type of person who cares about stock Android is probably
| rare and anyway is just going to buy a Pixel or maybe an
| iPhone.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Do you recall what you hated about the S4?
| trabant00 wrote:
| Because at large people don't select their phone based on what
| you mention. What does matter I believe is marketing.
|
| I think most importantly is Samsung's image presence vs LG.
| Can't remember the last time I've seen a TV advert for LG. Or a
| billboard in the city center, or youtube hype from influencers,
| etc. While Samsung is everywhere.
|
| Second is the cool factor. LG has none while Samsung have this
| as a priority. From the design of the phones to their special
| physical presence in malls.
|
| People often ask me (as an IT guy) to recommend a phone. But
| they always have their mind made up by the time they ask and
| Samsung is the choice. The other options don't look as good,
| are considered a risk vs a known, and are also seen as a budget
| choice for those who can't afford a Samsung. Sometimes I feel
| they would be even ashamed of having people see them with
| anything "less".
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| _What does matter I believe is marketing._
|
| "It's just marketing" is an age old refrain from tech people.
| As a group, we still haven't figured out that marketing works
| and matters. Nor have we figured out the kinds of features
| that lead successful products.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Oh, we've figured it out, we just don't like it.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| I think for Samsung the key was to build a loyal customer
| base by copying the iPhone at a lower price point. Thier
| designs have now departed significantly from those of Apple
| but the core customers have stuck around.
| patentatt wrote:
| You may be on to something here. The comparison isn't in
| 2020, but in 2010-ish. I'd say the distinction then was
| much more pronounced, and Samsung gained a lot of good will
| in that era.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Except Samsung's prices now rival the iPhone. The Samsung
| S21+ without a trade in is $1199. The iPhone 12 Pro Max is
| actually $100 _cheaper_ at $1099.
|
| Flagship prices seem completely ridiculous these days for
| minor improvements over the previous year's models or even
| their second-tier offerings. But consumers put such a
| premium on having the newest shiniest thing that the
| previous year's model can frequently be had for less than
| half the price.
|
| Looking at unlocked iPhone retail prices for the iPhone 4
| in 2011, flagship pricing has increased 3-4x the inflation
| rate for the same period of time.
| waheoo wrote:
| I think it's simply that people that buy LG don't buy a lot
| of phones. Samsung so shit you need to buy the new model to
| get rid of the annoyances of the last. S3 and note were
| really their only winners. LG hits it out of the park at
| every price point almost every generation.
|
| Same goes for HTC. Buy once, cry once, hodl that shit for
| half a decade on the short side.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Is that feasible when the device is only supported for 3
| years max? This is a serious question. Just bought a new
| pixel 5, because the pixel 3 I had bought refurbished 2
| years ago will lose support in October. There's
| absolutely nothing wrong with the pixel 3, it's literally
| the same phone with slightly older innards and no wide
| angle camera.
| detaro wrote:
| Few people care about it, especially since the devices
| don't make noise about but just stop getting updates at
| some point. Apps tend to be conservative about axing
| support for old versions too, so little pressure from
| there.
|
| (And given how little many people actually install new
| apps etc, I wonder how large the attack surface really is
| - but I have no data on that)
| mcny wrote:
| My guess is it is a self fulfilling prophecy. If a lot of
| people have older devices, application developers have to
| support the older API levels.
|
| For example, a store called Safeway decided to cut out an
| older version of Android. However, they reversed less
| than a month later.
|
| Speaking of marketing, I think LG does market quite a bit
| inside the Republic of Korea. I saw a show called oh my
| ghost and everyone had an LG phone in the show.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I really don't care about apps, I've barely ever ran into
| app compatibility issues on older devices. What I care
| about is security updates.
| kijin wrote:
| Nobody I know who isn't seriously into tech even realizes
| that phones need security updates.
|
| The problem is compounded by the fact that every
| manufacturer has their own schedule for security updates.
| Just because Android got a widely publicized security
| patch doesn't mean that their phones will get it any time
| soon. By the time they do, nobody remembers what it's
| for.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'm not sure there's any phone provider that has security
| updates available the same day that Google releases them,
| or very quickly at all. I remember the last Samsung phone
| I had, S7 edge, I went months without updates.
| Unfortunately, if security is a top priority, your best
| choice at 1st party phones like Google's Pixel or the
| iPhone.
|
| I used to use Xiaomi's flagship and it seemed to have
| fairly regular updates, but every time I installed one it
| would replace all of my preferences and default to using
| their own replacements apps instead of stock Android apps
| that I preferred. I finally had to get rid of it way
| before the end of its useful lifespan because there there
| seemed to be a whole lot of issues surrounding its
| customization of Android. The deal breaker was after an
| update when I stopped receiving text messages reliably.
| Sometimes they'd come through immediately, sometimes a
| few minutes late, and a few days a week they wouldn't
| come in at all until either 1) I rebooted 2) I lost and
| then regained cell signal 3) I airplane mode on then off.
|
| I tried all sorts of work arounds, suggested fixes from
| browsing forums, etc., nothing worked. I liked the phone,
| but it just got too stressful for work: My boss is
| respectful of normal business hours, but during the day
| still relies heavily on text messaging for requests,
| urgent issues, etc.
|
| I was pissed off at having to put out money for a new
| phone so early, so I went with the budget Pixel 4a, and
| honestly I don't see much of a performance hit at all,
| even though it's about 25% worse on CPU specs. And even
| though the camera specs are much lower, it takes _much_
| better photos. At this point, I 'm a convert to 2nd tier
| Pixel phones.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I am sure you'll end up retiring your pixel 4a far sooner
| than it will become unusable due to wear and tear due to
| Google's ridiculously short support term :/
|
| I believe my next phone will be a glorious fruit device,
| probably a second hand one.
| richardfey wrote:
| > I saw a show called oh my ghost and everyone had an LG
| phone in the show.
|
| That's product placement?
| elliekelly wrote:
| If that's how LG decided to spend their phone marketing
| budget then someone deserves to be fired.
| kijin wrote:
| Even in Korea, everyone knows what the latest Samsung
| phones are, but few people keep track of LG's product
| cycle.
|
| Here, LG is best known for household appliances and the
| Gram line of ultralight laptops. It's a running joke that
| even Samsung stores use LG air conditioners. Samsung
| appliances are for people who can't afford LG. When it
| comes to phones, though, it's the other way around just
| like in the rest of the world.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| There seems to be large regional variance. I live in South
| Korea, LG definitely advertised a lot. I recommended LG
| phones to a lot of people who asked me, and no one
| complained.
|
| Edit: For example, people love LG's KnockON feature.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| Here in New Zealand, I see Samsung advertising everywhere.
| TV, billboards, in store, digital, etc. Whereas LG has very
| little advertising and usually not for their mobile phones.
| LG is a South Korean company so I guess they advertised
| heaps domestically but not internationally?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| In Kazakhstan both companies advertise a lot. But people
| buying Xiaomi, because they are cheaper and better.
| camhart wrote:
| Xiaomi's battery management (aggressively killing apps)
| is horrendous.
| shaicoleman wrote:
| Here's a guide how to fix it:
|
| https://dontkillmyapp.com/xiaomi
| moreati wrote:
| For others wondering about KnockON
|
| > With Knock ON you can set the phone to turn the screen on
| by quickly double-tapping the screen. Double-tap an empty
| area in the Home screen, Status Bar, or Lock screen to turn
| the screen off.
|
| -- https://www.lg.com/us/support/help-library/lg-android-
| knock-...
| JCharante wrote:
| Huh I thought that was a stock android thing since mi UI
| (xiaomi) also has it.
| Mogzol wrote:
| LG was one of the first to add the feature back around
| 2013. Now it's more commonly known as dt2w (double-tap to
| wake) and is a feature on a lot of stock roms, as well as
| pretty much any custom rom.
| Moru wrote:
| I believe it is, it's just never activated. My guess is
| they are saving that for a later upgrade when they can't
| add more cameras. I loved my LG with knock on, would
| still use it if it could handle today's apps...
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I loved that feature back on the LG G2. I think I never
| stopped expecting phones to behave like this, and it
| seems even Apple agrees somewhat, the iPhone 11 Pro I now
| use turns its display on when tapped once.
| rnotaro wrote:
| Samsungs S10+ and Google Pixel phones have a double tap to
| wake up too.
|
| [1] https://www.samsung.com/sg/support/mobile-devices/how-
| to-qui...
|
| [2] https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7443425
| erhk wrote:
| My LG G3 had it in like 2014 or whatever year I bought
| it.
| distances wrote:
| Introduced by Nokia in Symbian but I forgot when, maybe
| around 2008? I have to assume Nokia patented the feature
| as it's super useful but was missing from all non-Nokia
| phones for the longest time.
| minusf wrote:
| g2 was the first to have it, because the buttons migrated
| to the back and there had to be a way to wake it while
| lying on the table
| avereveard wrote:
| there's a lot of tradeoff in samsung phones, from thermal
| envelop to installed crapware, but their success is not just
| marketing, they usually come with top of their price class
| camera, and that is something a lot of people care about.
|
| especially mid range a lot of phone produces washed, sad
| mockery of pictures unless you're under the sunniest day
| conditions, and even then skin and faces get garbled by the
| ai-thingy lot of them sports. this does matter to a lot of
| consumers.
| carlmr wrote:
| I mean honestly looking at the Linux or alternative phone
| offerings, I'd love to jump on it, but the cameras are ages
| behind. And my phone has become my main camera.
| avereveard wrote:
| all the downvotes only show how much detached from reality
| the hn cohort has become.
| kipchak wrote:
| Samsung was also much more aggressive regarding
| incentives/commission for salespeople. At a Verizon store an
| employee might make $50-100 on selling a Samsung flagship vs
| $5 for an iPhone.
| neogodless wrote:
| My nephew asked me what my phone was. I said a OnePlus 7 Pro.
| He said "is that a Samsung?" My anecdote suggests there is
| only iPhone and Samsung that people choose between. Of course
| many know there are other options, but that seems like the
| mindset of the masses.
| gmadsen wrote:
| if seems like all collection of social structures
| eventually coalesce into a duopoly.
| behnamoh wrote:
| that seems to be the case:
|
| - two-party government,
|
| - two major desktop OSs (macOS and Windows),
|
| - two main mobile OSs (android and iOS),
|
| - two major phone manufacturers (Apple and Samsung),
|
| - two main internet browsers (Chrome and Firefox),
|
| - two mainstream cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin and Ethereum),
|
| - two major home internet providers (Verizon and Comcast)
|
| - two ...
|
| There are exceptions of course, esp. in the retail market
| and fast food industry, but I'm afraid the good-ol' times
| choices in many areas are mostly gone.
| neogodless wrote:
| Ha I wish your point about browsers was correct. Sorry,
| Safari is (a very distant) number 2.
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
| nayuki wrote:
| Except for Safari's mandatory monopoly on iPhone/iPad,
| unfortunately.
| skrowl wrote:
| That should get fixed soon(ish) when Apple is forced to
| allow other app stores on their devices. Real firefox /
| real Chrome / emulators / etc!
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Actually only one broadband ISP choice for many
| households
| tertius wrote:
| Ah yes, it was so much better before...
| SkyBelow wrote:
| It is a legit concern of mine. I've been asked for phone
| recommendations from family as well, but they only focus
| on the main brands with a strong preference for Apple as
| the status symbol and Samsung as the slightly less pricey
| option for people who want a phone they can do a bit more
| with (which is to say they see Samsung as the phone I
| like because it isn't locked down). Even after explaining
| there is more to Android than just Samsung they don't
| seem to care because their view seems to be based on what
| advertisements they watch.
|
| I'm afraid too much critical thinking has been off loaded
| to corporations through advertisement. Sure, it is just a
| phone, but for many of these people the $1k price tag is
| a major part of their disposable income and I don't think
| enough thought is being given to the far cheaper
| alternatives.
|
| Not only has it been reduced to two options, the two
| options have become two of the most expensive options. I
| don't think this was by chance.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Most non-technical people I know opt for iPhones because
| they know they can use them for 5-6 years with 1-2
| battery swaps (that costs 30 EUR where I live). And for
| display quality.
|
| I keep hearing this adage of "iPhone as a status symbol"
| and I have legitimately never in my life seen it. Only
| ever saw people on the internet talking about it.
|
| An anecdotal data point for you, if it's useful.
| nopato wrote:
| Let me give you some perspective.
|
| It might not be a status symbol in the US and Europe but
| in the rest of the world it definitely is. I've lived in
| the uk for a while and no one cared that was wearing an
| iPhone. But as soon as I moved back to my home country
| everyone thinks I'm rich. And they're right to think this
| way as the price of iPhones in my country is completely
| absurd.
|
| Everyone thinks an 800 pounds phone is expensive?
|
| Imagine if you had to pay almost double of that. In a
| country that receives less than 200 hundred pounds of
| monthly minimum wage.
|
| I would never buy an iPhone while living here. It makes
| no sense unless you really want it as a status symbol.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Which country are you talking about?
| coryrc wrote:
| I used my $80 Android phone for four years. (Blu R1 hd).
| You you paid more for battery swaps than my phone.
| datavirtue wrote:
| You clearly got lucky on that dice roll.
| pdimitar wrote:
| And I likely used mine for much more activities than you
| used yours.
|
| But if you're convinced that your choice is superior then
| you do you. I'm not here to argue, only to provide info
| of what I did and what many others I know did as well.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Even after explaining there is more to Android than
| just Samsung they don't seem to care because their view
| seems to be based on what advertisements they watch.
|
| Fashionistas see you the same way when it comes to
| clothes. Car people see you this way about cars.
| Furniture people about furniture. Photography nuts about
| photo gear, knife people about kitchen knives, restaurant
| critics about restaurants, and the list goes on. Let's
| not even get into what audiophiles think of most of our
| speaker and headphone choices ...
|
| Life is too short to be an expert at everything. Too
| short to even care about most purchases when good enough
| is plenty.
|
| Look up satisficing vs maximizing.
| leetcrew wrote:
| that's fine, but why bother asking someone knowledgeable
| if you're just going to ignore their advice? an
| audiophile will be disappointed if you ask for a
| headphone recommendation and say your budget is only $50,
| but they will probably still suggest a good model for the
| price.
| datavirtue wrote:
| One of the best phones I ever had was a $500 Sony Xperia
| (amazing battery life). The other best phone was a Nokia
| 920 (?) Windows phone (zero cognitive load). Tech
| superiority and user experience are not market defining
| factors, clearly. I think both Samsung and Apple are
| trainwrecks compared to their earlier offerings. This
| because of a lack of competition now.
| mlmonge wrote:
| speaking of "Tech superiority," IMHO... I still think
| that the Palm OS Centro that I used so many years ago was
| simply the best. The Nokias of that era just didn't
| compete. I don't remember the cost but I really don't
| think it was at all expensive. I do remember that I could
| anything and everything with little gem. Sometimes I say
| I'd buy it again in a heartbeat if it had today's
| processing power. Ah, the good ol' days....
| mdiesel wrote:
| +1 for OnePlus. I started years back on the 2, upgraded
| more recently to the 6T. Will take a lot of convincing for
| me to even think about anyone else.
|
| Same experience though, people have either heard of it and
| rave about it, or ask who makes it.
| Jemm wrote:
| I'm still using my OnePlus One. Damn thing won't die.
| asah wrote:
| serious q: OnePlus looks *great* but I'm concerned about
| the Chinese government and the de facto cyberwar with the
| US.
|
| Example: I have security sensitive US clients, and I'd be
| concerned that (in the future, let alone present) I'd be
| labeled a security risk for carrying a "chinese
| cellphone."
|
| How do you mitigate this concern? (serious replies only
| please)
| azinman2 wrote:
| If this is a real concern then why not pay attention to
| it? I believe Apple has the best track record in security
| and not embedding Chinese gov spyware.
| unknown2374 wrote:
| This is the exact same reason I can't go for a OnePlus
| myself. I would look elsewhere.
|
| edit: even if you flash the phone with open-source ROMs
| and firmware, the closed-nature of cellphones in general
| make it nigh impossible to know what hardware backdoors
| the manufacturers are forced to put in.
| eertami wrote:
| Most people don't recognise what cell phone someone has,
| and I've never had a conversation organically turn to
| phone models unless someone is buying a new one.
|
| I think if you put a case on it, the make/model of your
| phone will be brought up exactly 0 times in life.
|
| Small aside: I used a Oneplus X for more than 5 years,
| but these days I'm not sure what positives OP have over
| other manufacturers. Early phones were great value but
| the recent releases just seem like other flagships. And
| the Nord for my usage is just a Pixel 4a but worse.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Oneplus just isn't the same anymore in my opinion. My two
| year old OnePlus 6 launched at $530 with flagship specs
| and a headphone jack. The 9 starts at $730 for the same
| screen resolution, same storage, and it even loses the
| headphone jack and OIS.
| oriolid wrote:
| OnePlus seems to have same kind of marketing aura as
| Samsung. I remember when they first came out and my co-
| workers were bragging about the great features OnePlus
| had. It turned out that Nexus 5 had all the same stuff.
| nucleardog wrote:
| OnePlus was great when they hit the market because their
| phones had all the same stuff... but for cheaper to
| significantly cheaper.
|
| They were never really sold as competing with a Nexus 5,
| and most people weren't buying a Nexus 5. (Even so, it
| was still ~20% cheaper.) People were looking at a OPO
| against a Galaxy S4/S5 and the other flagships that were
| all more than twice the price.
|
| It was "marketing aura" in the sense that they took a
| phone that would have normally only appealed to
| developers/phone geeks and managed to market it to the
| masses to some extent.
|
| But it wasn't _just_ marketing aura just because there
| was one other phone on the market that could compete with
| it. It was a legitimately good offering at the time when
| a Samsung cost twice as much and their offerings in that
| price range had seen so little care and attention as to
| be barely functional in many ways.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Hello fellow 6T owner. I got it just about three years
| back, the battery is in perfect shape and the phone
| doesn't have a scratch on it. If I take off the
| protection, it can genuinely pass off as new.
|
| I'm never getting a phone without an armor again. That
| thing has fallen so many times on hard concrete and is
| completely untouched.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Unfortunately OnePlus hasn't been releasing software
| updates for their new phones
| moonbug wrote:
| that's wrong. They've just made their latest release -
| 10.3.9 - and it's supported on all models back to the 6.
| neogodless wrote:
| My understanding is that OxygenOS 11 took longer than
| expected but has been announced as far back as the 7. It
| was available for the 8/8T a month ago.
|
| Still I am holding off on it as there are too many issues
| on various forums. I don't think there's anything I'm
| missing from Android 11 (yet.)
| enragedcacti wrote:
| They've actually promised OxygenOS 11 all the way back to
| the 6. That said, rumors are that we won't get even a
| BETA until August meaning it will be more than a year
| after AOSP release and be out of date before it even
| ships :(
| ck425 wrote:
| I loved my OnePlus One. But then when I went to replace
| it years later they'd scraped the headphone jack.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| >People often ask me (as an IT guy) to recommend a phone
|
| There are two types of IT guys. Ones who care entirely too
| much about phones, and ones who care absolutely zero.
| jayp1418 wrote:
| Read somewhere "Good product with great marketing beats
| amazing product with no marketing."
| Jemm wrote:
| This is what I tell my family who keep saying they have
| fantastic ideas for products. No advertising budget means
| hardly anyone is going to use their Facebook clone.
| ip26 wrote:
| The exception is if the products are directly & trivially
| comparable, such that it takes anyone all of two seconds to
| identify the amazing product.
| shrikant wrote:
| I saw it as part of a Tweet thread:
| https://twitter.com/awilkinson/status/1376986007711711245
| zibzab wrote:
| Galaxy S2 was a pretty bgreat phone and Samsung capitalised
| on that success by releasing slightly improved versions
| every year .
|
| LG on the other hand was up and down. I think LG was the
| one that needed marketing since they always lost their fans
| and had to bring in new people
| jsight wrote:
| This is so underrated as a comment, but so true. Samsung
| just kept at it with incremental updates to a single
| series and an occasional separate model if they wanted to
| try something new.
|
| LG was constantly shifting markets. I had a G2 and really
| liked it. I would have bought other devices from them,
| but the things that appealed to me about the G2
| disappeared in most future products.
|
| Constant shifts in focus gained share but also lost share
| at the same time. They really needed a cohesive line.
| abdulmuhaimin wrote:
| Replacable modules - gone in the next version Self-
| healing body- gone after 2 version Vein sensor - gone in
| next version
|
| At that point, any feature LG introduce are gonna be
| labeled as gimmicky, because they never develop it
| further for their next phone
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| That's great insight. It kind of matches with that saying
| "people don't like change".
| throwaway86310 wrote:
| I can't agree with this enough. LG failed to create a
| marketing worthy "series" like Samsung did with "galaxy"
| series.
| minusf wrote:
| the lg g2 was the best android phone i ever had.
| unfortunately the series ended there for me. lg was just
| making it huger and huger.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Samsung absolutely decimated the other manufacturers in
| marketing - including Google.
|
| I remember seeing GQ articles that were interviews with
| celebrities that was kind of a "30 questions" thing where
| each celebrity was asked the same set of questions.
|
| One of them was: "iPhone or Samsung?"
|
| It didn't matter that the answer to every single one (in that
| issue) was iPhone. It didn't surprise me that celebrities
| would be 100% iPhone users.
|
| But as a discerning high-end android buyer gravitating
| between flagship Google Nexus devices, HTC, and LG, the
| implication that the alternative to iPhone was "Samsung" was
| BEWILDERING to me.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I think it stemmed from their dominance in quality TVs for
| a while. These days I see no reason to pay Samsung's
| rediculous TV prices and they do puy out some real garbage
| screens now but for a while it was Samsung or some peasant
| trash.
| arkitaip wrote:
| When 6-year-olds use Samsung as a synonym for Android, you
| know that Samsung's marketing is crushing it. Which is a
| shame considering how poor their overall software quality
| is.
| cageface wrote:
| FWIW I've had good experiences with recent Samsung
| devices. The OS is fast and stable and adds some useful
| things to stock Android. Their bundled apps aren't
| terrible either. I use their mail & notes apps. At this
| point I'd rather have a flagship Galaxy phone than a
| Pixel since Android doesn't bring that much in terms of
| new features with major releases these days.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| They should hire at least one UX-Designer and listen
| occasionally to it.
| benibin wrote:
| I'm sorry but how a 6 years old know anything about phone
| brands?
| erhk wrote:
| Advertising.
| II2II wrote:
| It is a demonstration of how well advertising works since
| they (presumably) don't have much knowledge about mobile
| devices or branding. Calling everything an iPhone is the
| telling part. If branding wasn't a thing, they would
| simply call it a phone.
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| 6 year olds watch a lot of TV/YouTube, and see a ton of
| advertising
| tda wrote:
| That really depends on the parents I would say. My kids
| watch about zero linear ad riddled TV and YouTube,
| because we don't have a TV. They do get to watch Netflix,
| NextTube and Disney+. And various educational programs
| that are streamed ad free online. That at least limits
| their exposure to advertising, though some shows are
| basically advertisements for cheap plastic toys (paw
| patrol, fireman sam) and we disagree if they are allowed.
| pengaru wrote:
| bad parenting -> unfettered access to advertising
| influences
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Not sure why this is getting down voted, I think one can
| articulate why giving children unfettered access to
| advertising content is probably bad parenting advice.
|
| Advertising is almost always a thread of a lie, so
| reducing exposure to that until children are more mature
| is probably a good idea.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Youtube, TikTok and countless other apps. They will
| literally create videos asking each other to rate phone
| brands and what not.
| murukesh_s wrote:
| its election time in my home state in India and my 6+
| year old asks me who will win the election? I was
| surprised at the question and the fact that she is able
| to articulate the political party names. At her age i
| didn't even know what a political party is. I then
| realized she sees lots of Television now ever since she
| moved to her grandama's house during covid.
|
| She goes and names three top parties herself and predicts
| that one particular party will win. I was surprised..
| Asked her why she think so and says she sees more ads of
| that particular party more than others.. i was beyond
| words.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Sounds like child abuse.
| mjevans wrote:
| You should teach your children, and those in your
| extended family, how to, and to, avoid ads.
|
| We should all also do our part to end the political ad
| insanity. This can't be healthy for anyone.
| murukesh_s wrote:
| I have stricter no screen policy at my home. But since
| she is staying with her grand parents now (due to reasons
| beyond my control) and they are used to watching TV, she
| ends up watching it too. And its really difficult to
| avoid ads, you get that in all the channels.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Sorry to hear.
|
| I remember when we went to my grandmas house, and the
| media was talking about a 'major crisis' in the White
| House, like they do every day.
|
| Our seven-year-old suddenly got concerned and has to be
| calmed down, because she is so rarely exposed to American
| media.
|
| I feel bad for this generation, and I'm not surprised
| that almost half of our senior high school girls (at
| least on one sports team) are on anti-anxiety medication.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Parent has a point. Even if it's difficult, teach her to
| mute and ignore them. Seriously, my parents taught me
| some disgust against ads, and it's one thing they did
| right.
| jariel wrote:
| It's not bewildering if it's literally always been true.
|
| A few points:
|
| Samsung is not cool. Or rather, maybe a little bit among
| some very middle/lower class people.
|
| Selling mobiles is done primarily through carriers - this
| is not about Samsung direct advertising mostly, by and
| large, it's through the deals made with carriers.
|
| Google has never taken their phone and it's
| manufacturing/distribution as seriously as Samsung.
|
| Carriers may have also specifically not wanted Google to
| win, because it gives G too much power, they hate Apple and
| don't want to have to be told what to do.
|
| Samsung has always had a huge variety of phones, a much
| bigger and broader approach.
|
| They have always led with a kind of crappy, thrown-together
| feature, but it was enough to put some wrap a bad campaign
| around good enough for a bulk of the Android community.
| billfruit wrote:
| Outside of US, carrier bundling is rarely seen, people
| buy phones and carrier plans often prepaid separately.
| carschno wrote:
| The US is a pretty large market, plus carrier bundling is
| quite common in Europe too. You are usually free to
| choose a non-bundled phone as well, but I have no ideas
| what the numbers are.
|
| Within the bundled packages, my impression is that
| Samsung is very dominant as well among the Android
| phones.
| billfruit wrote:
| China and India are the two largest smartphone markets in
| the world, and I am thinking in these big markets carrier
| bundling isn't a thing at all.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| New Zealand is outside the US and it's not unusual for
| people to buy their phones from their carrier alongside
| signing up to a plan especially if they are spending a
| lot of money. Phones purchased directly from the carrier
| are guaranteed to have the correct LTE bands which makes
| it easier to be sure you will get the best performance.
| Also carriers offer sweet interest-free deals with free
| stuff throw in which makes it more appealing than buying
| a phone outright. It's usually people buying cheaper
| phones that may just pair up an cheap phone from an
| independent store with a cheap plan often from a virtual
| operator.
| jowsie wrote:
| It's the same in the UK as well.
| tootie wrote:
| I'm pretty amazed Samsung can pull this off. Anyone who is
| the least bit brand conscious is buying Apple everything.
| Android's big appeal to me is power features and value and
| Samsung is the worst on those facets. I've had a few LGs and
| they were really nice.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| This doesn't answer OP's question. Tech reviewers have
| extended access to phones to see if they live up to the hype.
| whakim wrote:
| LG phones have often suffered from a number of issues: really
| poor displays (bad calibration and/or poor power profiles due
| to LG's in-house displays lagging far behind); poor camera
| hardware and software (Samsung has definitely made a number of
| missteps in this area, but LG blew it generation after
| generation); and bad battery life. I agree that Samsung has the
| upper hand (and gets the benefit of the doubt) through massive
| mindshare, but it's not as if LG has been churning out better
| quality phones year after year and not getting any traction.
| kolinko wrote:
| +1. It was over a decade ago, but my mom bought an LG
| ,,smartphone" back around 2009.
|
| It had a touch screen so bad that you could barely hit proper
| numbers on the number keyboard.
|
| For me, the reputation of them as a phone manufacturers was
| gone from then on. How can you sell a product to people that
| essentially doesn't work?
|
| Ditto with their laser projector recently - movies stuttering
| on a $2500 machine, and speakers worse than on my laptop :/
|
| Their TVs are still good though :)
| grawprog wrote:
| I personally can't stand most Samsung phones. I've had a few,
| going back as far as an old white Samsung flip phone. They come
| with so much built in crap, they've by and large lasted less
| time than any other brand of phone I've bought and the price is
| always higher than equivalent phones from other brand.
|
| >LG always seemed a lot closer to stock Android, and was good
| at staying out of your way.
|
| Motorola was always my go to for that, but I picked up an LG
| for the first time since my very first cell phone back in 2005
| and so far, I've been pretty damn impressed.
|
| It did come with a bit of extra prebuiltin crap, but it was
| actually possible to uninstall it, not just disable it like on
| Samsung phones. The unreprogrammable hardware button that does
| nothing but open Google assistant is kind of annoying, but I
| don't think that's an lg specific thing? Or maybe it is? I
| couldn't really tell when I was looking up if it could be
| changed to do something different.
|
| Fun fact just because:
|
| Samsung and LG also both make engineered stone for countertops,
| by and large the LG stone outsold the Samsung stone at the shop
| I worked at by a large margin.
|
| LG Cirrus was like the third most popular engineered stone we
| sold after caesarstone and silestone.
|
| We occasionally had some Samsung stone jobs, but they were
| pretty rare.
| TexasfoldsEm wrote:
| Since getting my first LG I have not gone back. I just picked
| up an almost new LG v40 for 125 bucks on ebay and there is no
| need for nything faster in my opinion. It will be sad to see
| them go. I mean in a month or two you can get the v60 for 259 I
| bet. Probably not after they stop making their phones. I have
| two LG televisions in my home that are over ten years each and
| they still work perfectly also. In fact, I m using one for a
| monitor I am typing to right now.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Yes, because I don't find Samsung annoying. Back in the Nexus
| days and a few years after, stock Android was king. Since then,
| Samsung cleaned up TouchWiz and then made OneUI with an even
| better accessible UX.
|
| I say this with the caveat that no phone UX is perfect. I can
| see flaws in all of them. But right now, I prefer OneUI and
| it's level of out-of-the-box customization over stock. (Ex: You
| could hide the on-screen navbar and make all apps immersive
| with/without gestures)
|
| I'd even argue Samsung has been doing a lot of the heavy
| lifting of adding new features to Android. Google frequently
| adds features that were previously only available on Samsung
| (and sometime other vendors) for generations. I've noticed when
| Google adds the same features, I find the UX to be a downgrade
| from what I was used to. This is because Samsung then adds the
| Google flavor (more taps!) and removes their own. I'm still
| annoyed at the latest camera UX and multi-window.
|
| Then there's Samsung's hardware. The Wacom EMR S-Pen has become
| a must have for me. Also I've come to rely on Samsung Pay,
| which WAS the best mobile payment app (more on that later).
| Samsung has hardware in their devices that allows them to write
| to any magnetic strip reader on any POS system. This works
| everywhere NFC/Google Pay/Apple pay aren't available.
|
| All that being said, I like Samsung a lot less than I used to.
| As of last year, ads have suddenly clogged up their software.
| (Want to pay for groceries using your phone? Look at this ad
| first!) Also Samsung Pay is being removed from newer devices,
| probably to make room for 10 more camera lenses. Sorry, NFC is
| still not everywhere.
|
| Between the ads, removal of Samsung Pay, removal of features in
| general, and the lower screen resolutions of S20/S21s, I won't
| be upgrading to a new Samsung any time soon. There's also this
| homogenization of Android becoming more Apple-like and Apple
| becoming Android-like. At this point I'm seriously considering
| Apple, especially if they make a smaller Apple pencil to be
| used on phones.
| screye wrote:
| > Between the ads, removal of Samsung Pay
|
| This was so painful. Samsung Pay was genius. A perfect app at
| what it did.
|
| This is the same time Google released incomplete two feature
| god-awful google-pay apps. Now I'm hurting to find something
| as good as the old Samsung pay.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _I never understood why Samsung phones were constantly
| receiving praise by tech reviewers while LG got crapped on._
|
| Samsung pays for reviews [0] and engages in other scummy
| behavior that is given a pass anti-Applers see it as the sole
| champion against the Tall Poppy:
|
| [0]
| https://www.google.com/search?q=Samsung+paid+students+for+re...
| m4rtink wrote:
| Consistent stylus support ( they call it S-pen) for one thing!
| Comming from PalmOS and N900 the lack of stylus support was the
| biggestregression to me on modern smartphones.
|
| Being able to take notes, draw simple pictures, use denser UIs
| again is just so refreshing! Also new stuff like on-hover
| translation overlay or stylus button actions.
|
| Really, Samsung is preatty much the only vendor that cares
| about stylus support these days andvthat's sad. Also if you
| want to draw on the go, the only usable mobile drawing tablets
| come from Samsung, unless you want to lock yourself into the
| overpriced dumbed down closed nightmare that is the Apple
| ecosystem.
| onli wrote:
| I saw a video about that by one of those tech youtubers,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW3wNsTLCEw. Many good points
| imho:
|
| 1. LG did not have one thing they stood for. At a time it was
| repairability (the LG G5 and LG V20 is one of the best older
| Android phones with an exchangeable battery), sound quality,
| supporting modules to extend the phone (but almost never
| releasing any), one release had a great camera, last year they
| released one with a cross display. There is no common theme, no
| follow up on their experiments. Quick, what's the newish LG
| Velvet about? Even I don't know, and I read the reviews
| (checking again: There is nothing special).
|
| 2. Product names suck, with them all colliding together over
| time. Samsung also does that a little bit, but not as much with
| their S line.
|
| 3. Repeatedly releasing phones at high prices, putting them in
| direct competition with almost flagship phones, and cutting
| them a week after release by several hundred dollars. Instead
| of cutting the price immediately and getting better reviews by
| thus being in competition with cheaper and worse other phones.
|
| 4. Not supplying reviewers with review models, at least in the
| US.
|
| No surprise really. I would have loved a modern G5 at some
| point in the future. But now LG is gone, and the phones they
| released in between had nothing to do with what made the G5 and
| V20 good anyway.
| jfd98njkdgnh wrote:
| This is part that is aggravating to me. I know you are right,
| but why does it have to one thing. A discerning consumer
| should be able to determine if a given product works for its
| use case.
| onli wrote:
| I thought that argument was strong. If a brand or at least
| a product line has one characteristic, it can find
| customers that value it and it becomes their goto choice.
| Without that, the product has to find new customers each
| time. Gets ridiculous with cult-like followings as with
| Apple, but in essence it does not have to be a bad
| mechanism.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| For the most part I like the Samsung software. At least the
| bits that I do use. DeX in particular is a nice option to have.
| I had a Pixel 2 and replaced it with an S20. I actually prefer
| the Samsung software over Google's customized Android. I may be
| the minority online but given the relative sales figures I
| suspect people like me may be more common than you think.
| gpspake wrote:
| I'm kind of surprized that the Pixel line isn't considered the
| "flasgship of flagships" by more people given that it's
| literally the flagship first-party manufactured device by the
| OS creator. It's the closest thing to the iphone experience
| with android. If you use Fi, messages mimics imessages (in that
| you can use it online) and your service, device, and OS all
| come from the same company and you get the most out of the box
| google-intended Android experience.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > If you use Fi, messages mimics imessages (in that you can
| use it online) and your service, device, and OS all come from
| the same company and you get the most out of the box google-
| intended Android experience.
|
| That only has appeal to purists. Why would Joe Schmoe care
| that their phone is made by the same people who make the OS?
| And why would someone buy Android for the iPhone experience?
|
| To be clear that appeals to me, but I'm not the average
| consumer. And despite that appeal I have a S20+ because when
| it came time to upgrade Pixel was still stepping all over
| itself with poor battery life and weird features that I
| didn't need. The 5's now offers no "flagship" option, which
| are the phones that appeal to me. I hope that they can get
| things sorted for the next time I want to upgrade.
|
| Samsung has marketed well and makes high quality phones. It
| hit the ground running with Android and hasn't been afraid to
| reinvent itself (OneUI was a greatly improved experience).
| officeplant wrote:
| >If you use Fi, messages mimics imessages (in that you can
| use it online)
|
| To be fair that is available for all US carriers at this
| time. I've had RCS working on Mint(T-mobile) and now
| Visible(Verizon) for years.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I never understood why Samsung phones were constantly
| receiving praise by tech reviewers while LG got crapped on.
|
| > LG always seemed a lot closer to stock Android, and was good
| at staying out of your way.
|
| > Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances? Why is
| Samsung considered the flagship of flagships? Build quality
| beyond the V30 is basically identical.
|
| Well, knowing them only through my purchases of a Nexus S,
| Nexus 4, and Nexus 5:
|
| The Nexus S is still around.
|
| The Nexus 4 suffered from battery inflation.
|
| The Nexus 5 suffered from a catastrophic failure that caused me
| to lose a year's worth of message history.
|
| So all I can say in response to the news "LG is getting out of
| the mobile phone business" is "good riddance, they should never
| have been there in the first place".
|
| Which one is "closer to stock Android" is a non-issue if you
| run stock Android anyway.
| hharlequin wrote:
| Knox and Dex are why I'm locked into Samsung. I like LG's new
| Wing and want it, but I'm too used to having my Knox security
| features (like secure folder) and Dex to lose them. Do I like
| everything Samsung does? Not really, but the things they got
| right, or closer to right, have me hooked.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > I never understood why Samsung phones were constantly
| receiving praise by tech reviewers while LG got crapped on.
|
| Samsung phones work well, they have one of the best cameras,
| the best screens, the best batteries, usually the most
| features. LG phones are famous for boot-looping.
|
| > different (shitty) UI
|
| It is a matter of opinion. I much prefer Samsung's UI over the
| garbage that is google's, and even slightly better than iphone.
|
| > Samsung versions of all the core Google apps (but worse)
|
| Every Samsung app that replaces a google app is 2x better. The
| browser is faster, better than chrome. The contacts app is so
| much better. The dialer is like 10 years ahead. Gallery is at
| least 10x faster and less buggier than google photos. I always
| try to delete as much google bloatware from my phone as
| possible, and use the samsung apps.
|
| > the stupid bottom button placement
|
| What button? There are no buttons on Samsung phones for the
| past 3-4 years. The navbar is fully customizable (unlike
| google), and hidable.
|
| > non-remappable Bixby button
|
| Similar to the non-remappable squeeze button on pixels and siri
| button on iphones?? And the bixby button is remappable with an
| app nowadays.
|
| > aggressively killing apps for power management
|
| Samsung is hardly the worst offender here. And I can't blame
| them for trying to fix the clusterfuck that google has created
| with android.
|
| > Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances?
|
| I can't speak for others, but your "annoyances" are useful
| features for me. The alarm app turns on my bedroom lights in
| the morning automatically. Bixby routines automatically cranks
| the brightness and enables auto rotate when I play a video.
| Samsung health auto-tracks my sleeping schedule and tells me
| which apps are keeping me awake. Samsung browser blocks all ads
| and has an automatic dark mode for every website. Samsung pay
| lets me pay with my phone at any credit card terminal, not just
| the ones with NFC.
| m-ee wrote:
| I've owned 5 iPhones so far and never seen this Siri button.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| It's on the right side. Hold it and it will start siri.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| The on off button? Doesn't do anything when I hold it
| down.
| noahtallen wrote:
| You can enable it in Accessibility > Side Button > Press
| and Hold. It appears to be enabled by default for me --
| Siri shows up in less than one second of holding the
| power button.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Hmmm I have Siri enabled, but this button is off for me.
| Didn't even know I could enable this.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| It triggers siri on iPhone 11. Single click locks,
| unlocks. Hold triggers siri. And this is identical to how
| the lock/Bixby button works in Samsung.
|
| Read about it on apples website:
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203017
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I have the iPhone 11 Pro Max, since launch, with Siri
| enabled since launch. It's only ever worked with 'hey
| siri', and apparently my button is off. I didn't even
| know the button existed until the other reply to my
| comment!
| mrweasel wrote:
| Even if it did that is an extremely deliberate press,
| it's not a button you randomly push.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Well Samsung has the exact same setup. So why blame them
| when you give a pass to apple?
| m-ee wrote:
| Samsung does not have the same setup. They added a
| separate button mapped exclusively to this feature. The
| iphone has an alternate mapping most aren't even aware of
| for a multifunctional button
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| You are misinformed. It works exactly identically as it
| does on iPhone.
| m-ee wrote:
| Samsung added a separate hardware button for Bixby, Apple
| did not. That is not identical. The only buttons on the
| iPhone are power, volume, and the silent switch. There is
| no separate Siri button. I'm not sure what you're
| disagreeing with here?
| mrweasel wrote:
| Samsung users makes it sound like they are activating
| Bixby constantly, while Siri can't be activate when not
| enabled. So is Samsung allowing users to disable Bixby?
| It sounds like they're not.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Samsung lets you disable Bixby fully. Users complain more
| about Samsung because Android users are not used to being
| forced by the device they paid $1000 for, it's a new
| experience for them, unlike Apple users.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I don't understand the complaint then, what is Samsung
| forcing users to do?
|
| Just disable Bixby or buy a phone from another brand.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I agree.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| I have the s20+ and tried to disable bixby as much as
| possible, but it cant be uninstalled (short of adb hacks
| that can get lost with updates), and even after disabling
| everything i could it kept popping up asking to update,
| though that thankfully stopped after a month or so of
| regular annoying popups. Probably going stock android
| next time
| daemoon wrote:
| Yeah, that's a shortcut for not having to say <<Hey
| Siri>> - not a dedicated button for starting Siri.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I don't think he ever owned an iPhone. Lol
| Aloha wrote:
| Apple has never had a dedicated Siri button.
|
| Also, it's a phone dialer - like the functionality of a phone
| dialer has been well defined since the early 2000's (also
| having used PalmOS, webOS, Windows Mobile 6 and 7, Early
| Android, and iOS from 2012 on I've never desired additional
| functionality here), so like what makes a phone dialer "like
| 10 years ahead"? - I'm not trying to snark, it's a genuine
| question.
| batiudrami wrote:
| For a long time stock android didn't have T9 contact
| searching from the dialer (and, astonishingly, iOS still
| doesn't), something present since the Galaxy S1.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Why would you need T9 on a touch screen? You can just
| display a full keyboard. That was the defining aspect of
| the keynote that launched the first iPhone, even.
|
| There's nothing "astonishing" about it.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| For many people T9 is faster than QWERTY keyboard.
| batiudrami wrote:
| Because the T9 keyboard is already displayed, and the
| full keyboard isn't. It is a very fast way to search
| through your contacts directly from the dialier when I
| want to call someone, which is the primary use case of
| the dialer (calling someone already in my contacts).
| kiwijamo wrote:
| This is the first time I've heard of T9 being used since
| we moved on from the old Nokia phones that pioneered T9!
| Bring back fond memories of my Nokia 3310 and 8210. But
| yeah it's odd to see T9 in the context of a touchscreen
| phone...
| porsager wrote:
| I think it's a pity it's gone. I've developed
| https://typenineapp.com for iPhone, since I couldn't get
| used to the small buttons on the qwerty keyboard. I would
| dare to say I type almost twice as fast as regular qwerty
| phone users, and even without the tactile feedback I can
| do so without looking.
|
| I've had about 60.000 downloads, and I almost never see a
| bad review, so I'd say T9 on a touchscreen has a place.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I love the T9 dialing on my galaxy phone. It's amazing.
| It saves so much time searching for contacts. Blows my
| mind that iphone doesn't have it.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > Apple has never had a dedicated Siri button.
|
| Sure it does. Right side button, hold it and it triggers
| siri. Single click locks unlocks the phone. This is
| identical to how the unlock/Bixby button works on Samsung.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| That's optional, and _opt-in_ -- it asks you during phone
| setup whether to enable Siri.
|
| It does try to nudge you into enabling it, but if someone
| kept pressing that button and invoking Siri accidentally,
| they could open Settings and search for "siri" to disable
| it, which I think is reasonably discoverable.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Bixby is also optional. You can disable the key trigger
| from the settings, exactly like iphone.
| totalZero wrote:
| Depends what phone. S8 for example had a Bixby button
| that could not be disabled.
| morsch wrote:
| On my S10, there is a seperate Bixby button on the left
| side, so it's not shared with the unlock button. The best
| thing about the Bixby button is that I can freely remap
| it with third party applications, meaning I have a
| dedicated, customizable, physical button, something all
| phones should have.
| thweoru23434 wrote:
| Sony phones too seem to be quite underappreciated.
|
| The Xperia X line came with amazing built-in noise-
| cancellation, which only required a special purpose made $20
| NC31E earphone with a 5-pole connector.
|
| The performance of this combo to my surprise was amazing! It
| matched WH-1000XM4 and Bose QC20 in home-office environments.
| Not having to carry around yet another earphone that needs
| charging was radical.
|
| Sadly, the whole line failed, and the feature was removed in
| the following series.
|
| People think that "survival" is proof of aesthetic and
| functional superiority (we've seen this in all sorts of things
| - from programming languages/OSs to philosophies to races to
| religions).
|
| It is not.
| arendtio wrote:
| Often it is not just about the products.
|
| Sony as a company has shown so many times what their
| perspective on customers is (installing root kits on customer
| devices, the whole PS3 + Linux debacle, etc.), that I try to
| avoid Sony products as much as I can.
| oriolid wrote:
| This. I bought a Sony smart TV because it had much, much
| better picture than competition at the same price level. In
| the first firmware update they added SambaTV. Now it's best
| to just keep it disconnected.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Thank you for mentioning this. It is also the reason why I
| avoid Sony phones and at the time, their e-ink devices.
| I'll buy their dumb headphones, but nothing with a
| microprocessor from that company.
| NathanielK wrote:
| I love this combo! Since the NC31E were pack-in earbuds, they
| were dirt cheap on the grey market. I purchased my pair for
| ~20CAD just before Covid. They work well with my XZ1 compact.
| After the XZ1, they removed the special 5 pole jack so new
| Xperias lack the feature.
|
| The implementation is clever too. The wired-noise cancelling
| doesn't require extra chips. Sony used the built in noise-
| cancelling feature on the Qualcomm audio chips. The chips
| also support a "transparency mode" like feature, but there is
| no convenient way to use it in software.
|
| > Sony phones too seem to be quite underappreciated.
|
| Their phones are excellent, but their not available at all in
| many marks (they left Canada recently). Xperias are very
| expensive. For example, the Xperia 10ii costs twice as much
| as the Moto G8. Both phones have the same SDM665 SoC and
| budget eMMC storage. On paper, many people would cross shop
| them.
|
| Since I've owned my XZ1c, I've come to appreciate the
| durability of Sony phones. I've dropped it, caked it in
| grease and batter, and generally abused it with no case. It
| works fine, just some chips in the paint. Based on this I
| would recommend Sony. They use thick Gorilla Glass 6 and even
| the cheaper models are IP68 rated. Cell phone durability
| doesn't translate well to a spec sheet or tv ad very well
| though.
| kayxspre wrote:
| Sony also doesn't quite catch on in Thailand, and they
| (somewhat) exited this market for years now. When I need to
| get a replacement for XA1+, I have to chase around some
| carrier retailers known to have one, cause it's just won't
| be around ordinary phone retailers anymore.
|
| Sony was quite a justified spec of its time (though the low
| battery capacity is my biggest complaint), but more players
| have emerged with a more competitive spec, and I also have
| to switch accordingly.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| I had the Sony 6.3 inch phone with common glass cracking
| problem, and mine cracked. Sony denied it was an issue, but
| it was endemic on that model. In that case it was designed
| to fail which is the very opposite of durability.
|
| I do find many Sony items to be durable, but clearly not
| all - do your research first. Also Sony Australia store are
| bandits but that's another story!
| lk0nga wrote:
| > Sony phones too seem to be quite underappreciated.
|
| > The Xperia X line came with amazing built-in noise-
| cancellation, which only required a special purpose made $20
| NC31E earphone with a 5-pole connector.
|
| > The performance of this combo to my surprise was amazing!
| It matched WH-1000XM4 and Bose QC20 in home-office
| environments. Not having to carry around yet another earphone
| that needs charging was radical.
|
| > Sadly, the whole line failed, and the feature was removed
| in the following series.
|
| > People think that "survival" is proof of aesthetic and
| functional superiority (we've seen this in all sorts of
| things - from programming languages/OSs to philosophies to
| races to religions).
|
| > It is not.
| p2detar wrote:
| You're missing something. Samsung has a large enterprise
| customer base. Apart from Google's semi-working enterprise
| stuff, theirs is probably the only successful Android
| enterprise solution to date. Samsung Knox is not to be
| underestimated. They really did a marvelous job there and
| Google borrowed a lot of ideas from the Knox standard.
|
| I agree about the UI stuff though.
| screye wrote:
| IMO, Samsung drastically improved their phones from S5 -> S7.
| (I have an S10e)
|
| The S7 onwards, Samsung phones have been superior to all other
| traditional android competitors at providing a fully rounded
| flagship experience. (vs Sony, Htc, LG, Xiaomi, Huawei, Pixel).
|
| The new OneUi 2.0+ experience has dramatically improved my
| impression of Samsung devices. Samsung phones now allow you to
| hide all the bloat away and the unremovable parts are quite
| pleasing. My phone hasn't lagged once in my 2 years of owning
| it and the basics (Screen, Camera, Battery, Smoothness,
| Updates) remain near the top of the line, despite its age.
| There is no reason for stock android to be considered superior
| to OEM skins. It just so happened that for majority of its
| iterations, OEM skins ruined more than their improved. However,
| when done well, an OEM skin can absolutely be superior to stock
| android. (HTC & Sony back in the early days of Android). I
| believe, One UI 3.1 is currently superior stock android. (As
| long as I can swap out the bearably terrible app drawer and
| remap the unbearably terrible bixby to google)
|
| Now the S20 devices are 3rd in line on Samsung's flagship
| ladder. Fold > Note > S20. So, if you are really craving top of
| the line, then the S20 ain't it. Personally, I can't wait to
| get my hands on the Z-fold-3 whenever it comes out.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Samsung always had better screens and cameras than anyone else.
| That's all they needed.
|
| They still have the best screens today. They still have the
| best cameras besides apple today.
| dotancohen wrote:
| You should see the RealMe cameras. The marco mode is fine
| enough to photograph the hairs on a spider's legs. I've not
| used an iPhone to compare it too, but the device costs about
| 1/5 the price of an iPhone locally.
| literallycancer wrote:
| Sharp has very nice screens but beyond that it's HMD garbage
| and bricks easily if you root it. Good hardware is worthless
| if the software sucks or even if the phone is obscure
| (meaning no support, no mods).
| noisem4ker wrote:
| OLED screens are the single most important reason I've chosen
| Samsung since 2011. They were the first manufacturer adopting
| and developing them, and they maintained a consistent edge
| over the competition.
| Black101 wrote:
| I dont like my LG G8 ThinQ... the fingerprint sensor stops
| working constantly until I reboot and I had to send it twice
| for repair because the USB-C plug was defective... and although
| I dont use it very much, the 1/8 audio port is also defective
| (too loose and the wire falls out very easily). And in addition
| to that, I cant install LineageOS.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I don't have much experience with LG phones, but my experience
| is exactly the same as you mention with Samsung vs. HTC,
| Samsung vs. Sony, and more recently, Samsung vs. Huawei. All of
| these four brands are or have been prevalent in my family and
| close friends and I have tried at least 4 or 5 of each.
|
| To me, Samsung's UI has always been the clunkiest and worst of
| all I tried, plus their phones have a tendency to degrade fast
| in terms of battery consumption and lag (I don't know if due to
| hardware or software updates). And yet, the press has always
| praised every Samsung flagship while often lambasting the
| competition.
|
| Honestly my hypothesis is that they just devote a lot of money
| to buy reviews.
| creamynebula wrote:
| I had a Samsung smartphone a few years ago and it was a
| terrible experience! After that I had phones by ASUS and
| Motorola, both good experiences.
| dsego wrote:
| My LG G3 was a decent phone but I never once received any
| Android update.
| onli wrote:
| The G3 did receive multiple Android updates. See here:
| https://www.gsmarena.com/lg_g3-6294.php - they updated it
| from 4.4.2 to 6.0. If that did not arrive for your phone it
| might have been your carrier blocking it.
|
| The G3 can also run Android 10 via LineageOS 17.1, it is an
| officially supported device, see
| https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#lg. I don't know whether
| it will get 18.1/Android 11 though. LineageOS 17.1 worked
| well with the G3, I did test that recently.
| donbox wrote:
| My 4 year old Samsung J2 is still going strong (for
| me).Received an update in Jan 2021, Its still on Android 9
| donmcronald wrote:
| LG G6 is my favorite phone ever. I like it physically, it's
| waterproof, it has a headphone jack, it has a fingerprint
| reader, it has NFC, it does NOT have a notched camera, and
| Spigen made an awesome inexpensive case for it.
|
| And I bought mine for $360 CAD (about $240 USD) at the end of
| its cycle. That's hard to beat. Samsung makes crappier, more
| expensive phones IMO.
|
| It's a sad day for the phone ecosystem :-(
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I was one of those with G6's broken sim tray issue.
|
| I think that was the only manufacturer issue I ever had with
| an LG phone.
| nomay wrote:
| LG has arguably the best design in the Android pact, it's
| elegant and slick, while Samsung looks like things cobbled
| together to the sole purpose of avoiding patent wars with
| Apple, and Huawei is just Frankenstein.
| bartvk wrote:
| I have a Spigen case too, but for my iPhone. It's this really
| simple black case, and I haven't been able to discover a
| single disadvantage. It's sturdy but not too thick, it wraps
| tight but not overly, etc.
|
| I'd like to get a new case, just for variety's sake, but
| they're bound to be worse -- so I don't.
| ayoisaiah wrote:
| I disagree with your take on the Samsung. While it's not
| perfect, it's the best (and sometimes only) option for most
| people who want an top end Android phone. Google sells it's
| phones in only a handful of countries, same with Oneplus, LG
| and Sony and all of them have their own compromises. So in many
| parts of the world, its either Samsung or a Chinese
| manufacturer like Xiaomi.
|
| I find Samsung apps to be much better than their Google
| counterparts. Samsung Health, Internet, Calculator and Notes
| are examples. Besides, they fit the UI really well along with
| the menus and other things. And whatever annoyances you've
| experienced can be tweaked since the UI is highly customisable
| (bar none).
|
| In terms of long-term support, Samsung also provides 3 years of
| upgrades and 4 years of security updates. That's the best from
| any company bar Apple and it extends to their midrange devices
| too.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| I would love to buy a Sony, because my previous phones were
| Sony, but a year ago when I needed a new on no Sony phones
| were available, and now they are only making 21:9 phones,
| which I think is just absurd. They look so tall, that I would
| be afraid of putting them in my pocket, fearing they will
| snap in half. Where is a man supposed to carry these phones,
| which are so tall that they don't seem to fit in jeans
| pockets? I wish they would stop with that sillyness.
| ideamotor wrote:
| LG was the best Android option. Glad I switched to Apple. I
| still miss the back button though, yikes. Samsung is
| particularly bad. I swear folks buy their phones because they
| oversaturate the colors on their screens.
| danielbln wrote:
| I hated my S3 back in the day and loved the S6, S7 and S10E (my
| current phone). The UI has been de-bloated significantly over
| the years in my opinion and is actually sleek and pleasant to
| use.
|
| To each their own.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I don't like Samsung's UI compared to LG, but in terms of
| hardware quality I've had bad luck with LG, with two phones (LG
| Nexus 4, LG G3) bootlooping before they reached two years.
| Never had that issue with Samsung (S5, S7).
|
| I switched to Motorola since, the UI is quite close to the
| Pixel and the price range is reasonable.
| dghughes wrote:
| Quirks like this?
|
| Set up you Samsung account ...ding!
|
| Set up you Samsung account ...ding!
|
| Set up you Samsung account ...ding!
| pjmlp wrote:
| Because using stock Android is like the phone version of year
| of Linux Desktop.
|
| It is so ugly from UI/UX perspective, that almost everyone ends
| up installing a theme anyway.
|
| Then Google only does the minimum in features, and their
| software is crap.
|
| For many years, if you wanted proper music software, Samsung
| phones with their custom real time audio SDK were the only
| option on Android ecosystem.
|
| Same applies to the quality of Vulkan drivers.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Stock Android UI is ugly? Now that's a first.
|
| I've harbored the suspicion those who prefer "theming" their
| phones are not detail oriented. That or they're fine with the
| trade-offs.
|
| For example I've always noticed inconsistencies and jankiness
| with anything that's not close to stock Android. Be it
| Samsung's TouchWiz or others, all are like a cheap veneer of
| dross over stock Android. They all just feel so tacky.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, quite ugly full of eye burning white
| literallycancer wrote:
| There's a dark mode in the last 2? 3? versions? The main
| problem with Android wrt visual jank is now that
| lockscreen doesn't respect the night light, that night
| light fades in after unlock instead of being on
| immediately and that the automatic brightness has
| feedback loops that make brightness spike when display
| turns on or changes to white content (sensor detects
| phone light as ambient and turns up the brightness, over
| and over).
| vetinari wrote:
| Samsung TouchWiz has been dead for several years now, their
| OneUI is in what, third iteration now? From aesthetic and
| usability point, it is indeed nicer than stock android.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| i suppose thats a matter of taste .. i moved from stock
| android to s20+, and i agree its not as bad as previous
| samsung touchwiz era :)
|
| but then i declined most of the samsung apps - google
| already has all my data and i dont want to share it with
| samsung on top of that, and then samsung also included
| third party services such as a dialer app which i didn't
| use because of the (lack of) privacy policy
|
| overall i'm looking forward to getting back to stock
| android!
| vetinari wrote:
| I prefer Samsung apps over Google's for the simple reason
| that they do not insist on uploading my stuff anywhere.
|
| E.g. Google Photos had two choices for the cloud service:
| start uploading now or upload later (and nagging
| meanwhile). There's no option for _not interested, don 't
| bother me anymore_. Samsung Gallery asks for OneDrive
| once, but is fine with declining and not bothering me
| anymore.
|
| Yes, the dialer does use third party service for
| screening the calls; it asked you about it, and when you
| declined, it respected your choice (I've declined as
| well).
| herbst wrote:
| What does Samsung audio do better than other phones? I still
| own a mp3 player because not even those shitty beats phones
| did a close to clear sound experience.
|
| Ps: i never used a theme. All i want is stock android o.O
| oriolid wrote:
| Samsung Pro Audio used to be the only low-latency audio API
| on Android devices. AFAIK it was a very thin wrapper over
| JACK. Of course, using it often crashed the app, and then
| Samsung first declared it deprecated and then didn't port
| it to 64-bit runtime.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Because eventually AAudio was created, by the time 64 bit
| Android started to matter.
| oriolid wrote:
| Is AAudio really low latency, or "low latency" in the
| same sense as low latency modes in Android Audio and
| OpenSL ES? It's surprisingly difficult to find actual
| numbers that would compare between these three.
| pjmlp wrote:
| In the sense that OpenSL is out of the game, and AAudio
| is good enough for Samsung to drop their Audio SDK.
|
| Now if you compare it with iOS, it still isn't going to
| win the race, neither in ms nor in tooling.
|
| https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/03/high-
| perfo...
| daemoon wrote:
| I use an iPhone, but in my opinion the stock Android looks
| and feels much better than the launchers that manufacturers
| put on. Especially the latest versions of Android look great.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > It is so ugly from UI/UX perspective, that almost everyone
| ends up installing a theme anyway.
|
| Sources? Because I see no substantial difference and I
| deliberately bought phone with stock Android as it has just
| Google garbage, rather than both Google garbage and phone
| manufacturer garbage.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The anecdote data of everyone I know that keeps buying
| devices like Samsung, Huawei and Xiomi.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Xiaomi sells also devices with stock Android, the same
| goes likely for other mentioned companies
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Do you seriously belive a xiaomi phone isn't siphoning
| off your data to other servers than the usual google
| servers?
|
| So it's probably more accurately described as stock-
| appearing Android ..
| pjmlp wrote:
| They do sell such devices yeah, yet what most people buy
| make use of MIUI, likewise for the other vendors.
| bengalister wrote:
| Most "tech" youtube reviewers often say that an Android
| customization is good because it is minimalist and is close
| to stock Android. It is often praised also because it adds
| only a few features that stock Android doesn't have. But over
| the years these missing features have often been integrated.
| Xplune13 wrote:
| I may be in a minority here but that simple UI/UX design is
| the one of the main features that gravitate me towards stock
| android. I like the simplicity of that UI and all other
| themes look like chaos on my screen (that's just me). One
| point that I agree on is Google should definitely add useful
| features in their stock android. The sweet point is something
| like Oneplus's OxygenOS. It is close to stock android with
| added features and some UI tweaks (though they're going off
| that route lately). But, from UI perspective I think it is
| atleast top 2 for me (other one being OxygenOS).
| distances wrote:
| I don't think you're in minority. Parent is one of the few
| people I've heard to prefer something else over stock.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I guess you need to spend more time away from FOSS
| friendly bubble.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| I greatly preferred TouchWiz to stock Android UI. It's a matter
| of preference.
| vinay427 wrote:
| TouchWiz bears minimal resemblance to Samsung's newer UIs, to
| be fair. Most seem to find the newer OneUI iterations to be
| significant improvements because they make for a far more
| full-featured device than stock Android with a more
| consistent UI experience and without the slowdowns that
| people complained about with TouchWiz. I'm curious how you'd
| find it as someone who preferred TouchWiz.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I loved the UI on my 2012 Samsung Note 3, cannot stand the UI
| on my 2019 Samsung A50. Which of the two would have been
| TouchWiz?
| Jefff8 wrote:
| I'm not especially pro-Samsung, and I'm just one consumer and
| I'm sure that for every unhappy one, there's someone who loves
| LG or loathes Samsung, but I will never buy any LG product at
| all if there's something else available which is about
| equivalent.
|
| They sold me their top-end phone, years ago, for a top-end
| price, on the basis that they would update Android in the next
| three months. It was a nice phone, but three became six, which
| became a few years - three or four or five.
|
| Eventually they did offer the option, of course by then I was
| not using the phone, but I tried to upgrade anyway, and my
| phone would not upgrade. There was no support when I asked
| apart from 'download it and it should work'.
|
| So in answer to your question, it's not about Samsung, it's
| about LG for me - and they destroyed all credibility with me -
| I don't believe claims on build quality, I don't believe claims
| about support, I don't believe any of their advertising. And I
| actively advise friends not to buy their products, when asked.
| wallaBBB wrote:
| yup, basically what you described is what has been an issue
| with LG android phones from the start - support, especially
| SW upgrades.
| varispeed wrote:
| I have a Samsung phone that used to be their top of the line.
| I have never updated it because I know the next update
| disables call recording. I believe any subsequent phone has
| non-working (probably not in every region) call recording so
| that is a deal breaker for me. It seems like they got lobbied
| by insurance companies who scam people over the phone (they
| promise options that turn out to be a lie) and you can't
| really prove it unless you record them. Call recording saved
| me few times from losing money. You can also record calls
| with your parents, so you can listen to them forever.
| l0wp1t wrote:
| >You can also record calls with your parents, so you can
| listen to them forever
|
| I highly recommend recording your parents.
| sumedh wrote:
| > It seems like they got lobbied by insurance companies who
| scam people over the phone
|
| I always wondered why Android disabled call recording.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| IIRC Google claimed something along the lines of "for
| your own privacy and security".
| varispeed wrote:
| And yet they don't disable cameras that you can use to
| secretly record someone...
| herbst wrote:
| Could also be because recording calls without telling is
| highly illegal in a lot if not all of europe. There are
| still apps that can do that afaik
| varispeed wrote:
| In my country (UK) it is legal, so there is no reason for
| them really to disable that.
| manishjhawar wrote:
| In most of the customer support calls I make, I speak up
| right after connecting that I'm recording the call for
| legal purposes while the IVR plays. It's a bit tricky for
| marketing calls received, but I try nonetheless.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| By the way, there is a great call recorder in F-Droid. If
| your phone doesn't have built-in support, you can always
| get it there.
| manishjhawar wrote:
| Can you please name the app? I've tried all I could find
| on Oneplus 2 & 6 but couldn't get the call recording
| working.
| gruez wrote:
| >It seems like they got lobbied by insurance companies who
| scam people over the phone (they promise options that turn
| out to be a lie) and you can't really prove it unless you
| record them.
|
| Seems like a weird conspiracy theory to me. What leverage
| do insurance companies have over google? Moreover, isn't it
| trivial to record with a second phone?
| marcodiego wrote:
| > Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances?
|
| No.
|
| > Why is Samsung considered the flagship of flagships?
|
| Because hardware is reasonably good in a scorched earth kept by
| and endless race to the bottom that is the android landscape.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| The samsung of today is pretty far from the S4 days. They toned
| down the crap a lot starting on the S7 I think and personally I
| love a ton of Samsung-only additions. Some of the quirks are
| annoying but the amazing hardware+great additions balances it
| out.
| herbst wrote:
| Could this be an mostly american thing? I only ever witness
| this sentiment online. IRL most people i know dislike samsung
| because of their shitty android modifcations and mediocre
| hardware. Even oppo seems way more popular right now here in
| switzerland
| tryptophan wrote:
| I personally found samsung software to be very feature rich and
| reliable.
|
| I never considered LG because they do not offer software
| support. You might get 1 year worth of OS updates and MAYBE 2
| years of security. Meanwhile samsung offers 3 years of OS
| updates and 4-5 of security updates.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| > Do people actually like all those Samsung annoyances?
|
| Switched to a Samsung A71 after having an Apple 7+. Gave my 7+
| to my daughter who previously had a 6+.
|
| I'm about six months in and I'm going back to Apple or OnePlus.
| My iphone had a few quirks that I could deal with. Nothing
| major. The A71? OMFG every single day I'm dealing with constant
| issues with the phone:
|
| - finger print scanner is the worst I've ever had bar none.
|
| - All the Samsung apps continually turn on and fight with the
| Google apps for preference, even after I've turned them off
|
| - The Samsung apps constantly run and drain my battery. A brand
| new phone, with a non-power user and it can't make a full day
| on a full charge? Unreal.
|
| - I had to turn off all the notifications. It seemed like every
| 5 minutes a new system notification would pop up. Like: "Your
| wifi is unprotected! Use Samsung VPN to protect it!" Even when
| I'm already running a VPN??
|
| There's a ton more that happen less frequently, but dealing
| with these every day has soured me completely to Samsung
| products. I had a OnePlus before my iPhone and loved it. Stock
| Android, no frills, battery lasted forever, no bloatware.
|
| I just can't use Samsung phones ever again - no matter how good
| their marketing is.
| csomar wrote:
| Samsung is very aggressive in marketing and penetrating
| markets. If you make a very good phone, it won't sell without
| 1. letting people know your phone exist and 2. making it
| possible for people to buy your phone.
|
| Samsung aggressively installed itself in even the most remote
| places. When you go through a small city (my parent's home) and
| find that Samsung has an official office with actual Koreans in
| it, it makes sense that people from that place will conduct
| business with Samsung.
|
| Same can be said with Apple. For example, Apple is _aggressive_
| when it comes to international warranty. In my opinion, they
| understand that a good size of their products are sold
| /smuggled in the black market. When you offer international
| warranties, it gives you an advantage over other brands since
| now the Apple product is as cheap as Samsung's. Where I live,
| the official-partner Apple store is basically a warranty repair
| shop. Most people buy their products _off-market_.
| drtz wrote:
| My anecdotal experience: My wife and I both had LG phones,
| Nexus 5x, for about 9 months before they stopped being usable.
| Dealing with poorly made equipment and terrible warranty
| service was more than enough to ensure I wouldn't be buying any
| more LG products.
|
| While I don't like a lot of their software, my experience with
| Samsung's hardware, and their warranty service for that matter,
| have been much more pleasant.
|
| edit: On a somewhat related note, I recently bought a new
| Samsung TV. True to Samsung form, the software is terrible but
| the hardware has been very solid.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > tech reviewers while LG got crapped on.
|
| Samsung bought more ads, maybe?
| vanshg wrote:
| Ding ding
| asadkn wrote:
| It sort of depends on the bubble you live in. In the US, things
| might be very different, but in rest of the world, Samsung
| isn't the only known Android phone manufacturer.
|
| Xiaomi is a well-known and rising (now the #3). Huawei was the
| a big player but losing ground. Oppo is well known:
| https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile
| herbst wrote:
| This. Samsung always was only one of many options here in
| central europe. Never appeared to be the "main choice"
| either, except from people who look for the cheapest phone
| replacemt with their carrier and end up with a galaxy light
| product
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Samsung versions of all the core Google apps
|
| Because everyone wants to own as much of the stack as possible:
| http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/09/owning-the-s...
|
| Samsung doesn't want to become a yet another interchangeable
| and disposable phone body manufacturer for Google.
| [deleted]
| cageface wrote:
| At least in the places I've been in Asia distribution is a huge
| part of it. Samsung phones are available in every shop and they
| have their own dedicated stores in the bigger shopping malls.
| herbst wrote:
| The asia ive seen was at least 50% oppo shops and 30% fake
| apple shops and only like 20% for everything else. Thailand,
| cambodia and malaysia about 5 years ago that is.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| I've noticed the same here in New Zealand. My local mall is
| not a particularly large/important mall but it still has a
| Samsung store. Even if that wasn't there, all the carrier
| stores sell Samsung. All the electronics stores sell Samsung.
| Hardly any LG mobiles to be seen!
| fX0rObfoMN4 wrote:
| For a couple years LG phones commonly had issues that bricked
| them. That kind of reputations sticks.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_smartphone_bootloop_issues
| hanniabu wrote:
| > the stupid bottom button placement
|
| Are you talking about the home button? I actually love that and
| it's the reason I got the S4 and then S7. I've been putting off
| buying a new phone because all the new phones are digital
| buttons and I really like having the physical ones.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I love it too and that's also the reason I am sticking with
| the S7. Its fast. It's popular enough so that if it ever
| becomes obsolete, I'll easily switch to LineageOS. And I
| never had to buy an expensive new phone, second hand cheap s7
| are everywhere.
|
| Disparition of physical buttons is a good example of
| "backwards progress" : another area where it drives me crazy
| is all those induction hobs that have touch buttons that
| never work properly when wet (which happens all the time it's
| a kitchen ffs). I get it, it's easy to clean, but it's a pitn
| to use.
| pkulak wrote:
| Because tech reviewers don't know how to review software. They
| just measure camera megapixels and dynamic range, screen nits,
| processor speed, etc, then say it they like it or not.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| That's too bad because they make good, reliable phones that tend
| to be easy to root.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Good move. Time to focus on other home products, especially the
| living room TV before they become relegated to panel supplier.
| yyyk wrote:
| %$#@!. LG was an early innovator - their touchscreen model
| slightly predated the iPhone - the G2 was a classic phone, and
| they have very good headphone/audio tech, having decided to keep
| it rather than ditch it.
|
| Their modern phones are good and simple, alas, the company never
| recovered its image following the G3/G4 fiascos.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| I bought an LG Velvet 5G literally two weeks ago
|
| I am fuckin' livid. Especially since I can't unlock the
| bootloader on the fucking thing (apparently only Europe can, not
| Australia or the US)
| xpressvideoz wrote:
| I've appreciated LG's adventurous moves. The one I liked the most
| was LG Optimus 3D, which provided a naked-eye 3D display similar
| to that of Nintendo 3DS. The most recent LG Wing, I was hopeful.
|
| But LG also left a bad taste in my mouth. The last LG phone I
| used, Nexus 5X, died all of a sudden, but after months of
| despair, I could revive it using a freaking _hair dryer_.[1]
| Yeah, some of you who are well versed to soldering may not be
| surprised by this, but the fact that such a huge company makes
| such a minor mistake completely turned me down. My reaction might
| be irrational, but after the incident I could not get close to
| newer LG phones anymore.
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Nexus6P/comments/66wsvq/this_might_...
| vbezhenar wrote:
| My iPhone 4S had broken WiFi chip which I revived with hair
| dryer as well. Should I draw conclusions about Apple? Every
| device has a possibility of defects.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Yeah similar experience my nexus 5X, and G4, both failed fairly
| quickly and I wasn't game to try LG after 2 in a row with
| issues.
| carstenhag wrote:
| The LG G4 (which I had) was also plagued by a similar issue,
| you could put the logic board into an oven for half an hour and
| if you were lucky that would resolve the issue. For me, it only
| helped for 5 minutes or so, then it broke again. The support
| did not help at all because I had unlocked the bootloader, even
| though it was an hardware issue (I was in Spain back then).
| djmips wrote:
| If it was a car you would have just taken it to the local
| repair shop and hopefully it's an affordable repair but phones
| don't have that and so when they die, and they all do, it's
| quite harrowing (unless you are super rich).
| vbezhenar wrote:
| You definitely can repair your phone. There are repair
| masters who can replace chips on the board. This is common in
| Kazakhstan and Russia at least.
| offtop5 wrote:
| >Kazakhstan
|
| What's the typical income in this country, in America if
| you're talking about a $700 phone, and you make $70,000 a
| year it's not completely unreasonable to replace it every
| year.
|
| But if you're making $15,000 a year, spending $30 to repair
| your $700 phone makes much more sense.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Average salary is $6,000 a year. But those numbers are
| according to the official statistics and I don't think
| those are true because of huge gray economy sector. I
| think that it's more like $3,000-$4,000 a year for most
| people (but those numbers are after all taxes, we usually
| don't pay taxes from our salaries, our employer takes
| care of that).
|
| I agree that's one of the reasons that repair is more
| common. Very few people would darn torn socks, because
| those are cheap enough just to buy them.
| offtop5 wrote:
| This is actually a bit fascinating to me, so do people
| tend to buy much cheaper phones to begin with. I know in
| many parts of Eastern Europe iPhones aren't nearly as
| popular due to the expense.
|
| I've had to replace a battery once ( on a Nexus 4)and I
| will never go through that again.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Generally people tend to buy cheaper phones. But iPhones
| are kind of exception, some people are so obsessed with
| iPhones that they're trying to get loan to buy iPhone.
| It's not really logical decision, they just want to look
| more wealthy than they are, it's kind of luxury item.
| offtop5 wrote:
| People take out loans for IPhones in the US too.
|
| You also have bizzario phone deals where if you pay 2 to
| 3x as much for service you can get a free IPhone. I
| personally buy a phone for 300$ or so every year or 2.
| Right now I pay about 30$ a month for 2 lines, but you
| can definitely spend 150$ a month for 2 lines plus
| financed phones.
|
| Americans love ZERO down deals, so you can get you and
| your partner IPhones and worry about paying em next
| month.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| So I guess this means I'm going to stop recieving security
| updates? Time to go phone shopping...
| summm wrote:
| What? You did receive security updates from LG before? Really?
| [deleted]
| klondike_ wrote:
| What happened to the Android phone ecosystem?
|
| Android phones used to offer unique and useful features like
| removable batteries, headphone jacks, IR blasters, SD cards, etc.
| Now it seems that Samsung and Google are obsessed with copying
| whatever Apple does, even their controversial decisions like
| removing the headphone jack, even after making fun of Apple for
| doing it. No thanks, why would I buy a shittier iPhone with a
| worse OS?
|
| When my LG V20 bites the dust or becomes obsolete I don't know
| what I'll replace it with. I hope that the Linux phone ecosystem
| matures by then otherwise I might buy an iPhone.
| [deleted]
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| Honest question, who are the people who need more chargers?
| Definitely being anecdotal but everyone in my circle is
| drowning in generations of random usb adaptors, myself
| included. I've been very supportive of removing wasteful
| redundancy but again, this is subjective
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I have tons of chargers because I have had a smart phone
| for ten+ years. Most of the chargers are usb, not USB-C, so
| that won't help me if I buy an iPhone, although I have an
| old cable so that would be fine.
|
| However anybody buying their first phone, anybody selling
| the old phones or anybody wanting to take advantage of fast
| charging would need a new(er) charger they might not have.
| klondike_ wrote:
| While that's true right now, it might not be true a few
| years in the future if manufacturers stop including them.
| Also, people are more likely to use dangerous counterfeit
| chargers (Amazon sells plenty!) if they don't get one
| included in the box. Considering how many devices run off
| USB nowadays, having a couple extra laying around the house
| isn't that big of a deal.
| e-clinton wrote:
| I now have tons of USB C to lightening cables laying around
| the house with nothing to plug them into. So I either have
| to go buy USB C chargers or toss what I have. While the
| idea was a good one, the execution has been complete BS
| kiwijamo wrote:
| Many people who hoard chargers still hang on to old
| chargers that only do the 5W standard. For modern devices
| fast charging is very useful especially for high battery
| capacity devices. I've recycled all chargers that don't
| support any of the fast charging standards.
| dagurp wrote:
| I recommend Motorola phones. They have headphone jacks and
| (almost) stock Android
| summm wrote:
| And horrible security update, policy, you can basically throw
| them away after 1 year...
| zozin wrote:
| They're obsessed with making money. No 3.5mm means you're more
| likely to buy bluetooth earbuds. No SD? Cloud services.
| Battery? You'll get a new phone after 18-24 months. No charger?
| Wireless charging pad.
|
| Apple can "get away" with it because to a lot of people it's a
| luxury/lifestyle brand. Android vendors copy them because they
| want to create new revenue streams by removing features/out of
| nothing too!
| 7952 wrote:
| But I will get a new phone after 24 months. It is going to
| wear out because I am _constantly_ using it.
| unreal6 wrote:
| Then why wasn't there massive commercial success for the
| phones that kept these features, like a headphone jack an SD
| card? Samsung tried to market it for a few years, but
| eventually surrendered to the same trends like the rest of
| the market. If this was really so bad for consumers, they
| would've chosen the alternatives that were available at the
| time.
| Macha wrote:
| The transition was very quick. My experience (replace
| phones every 3-4 years), I got one phone to pick from where
| only apple and Google pixel lacked the headphone jack then
| the next where only the pixel a and some xiaomi devices had
| a headphone jack
| Judgmentality wrote:
| The only reason I bought a Pixel 4a instead of a Pixel 5 is
| because I wanted a headphone jack.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Battery life is better too. Love my 4a.
| Exmoor wrote:
| I'll be interested to see what happens with Samsung's
| decision to drop SD. They did that once before with the
| Galaxy S6 and brought it right back with the S7 after
| disappointing sales. Personally, I just purchased a Note20
| Ultra (at a _heavy_ discount) because it looks like it
| might be the last phone with microSD that gets long term
| updates. In theory they sell phones with larger amounts of
| storage, but they rarely seem to drop below MSRP or are
| always out of stock if they do.
| klondike_ wrote:
| Vendor lock in. People might be upset at Apple for removing
| features, but all their pictures are on iCloud and all
| their friends are on iMessage, etc. They'll stick with a
| mediocre iPhone because the friction to switch is too high.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I own 3 LG G6 phones. I like the SD slot and headphone
| jack. I like the display. I like the lack of gimmicks. The
| camera is mediocre quality-wise, and slow to load and snap
| a photo, though. The OS is falling out of date, and
| Google's apps have bloated enough that it's annoying to
| navigate and listen to youtube music at the same time.
|
| The G6 has some reliability flaws around its USB port and
| camera focus mechanism. I bought two of them used, and the
| 3rd new because it had a 2 year warranty. The warrantied
| one I sent in twice under warranty. The 2nd time, they sent
| me back an "upgraded" G6+ with amazon branding and a locked
| bootloader, which was unacceptable to me. I politely asked
| for the G6 or another phone with an unlockable bootloader,
| and a month later they sent me another G6+. It took 3
| months to get that straightened out, but I ended up with a
| like-new refurbished G6.
|
| LG definitely lost money just on the one phone I bought new
| due to the reliability issues, and probably burned through
| $100+ in unnecessary stupidity with their warranty process.
|
| I tried buying a used V20 (I think) at some point, but the
| display had severe burn-in, and I was able to return it.
|
| I think LG just went slightly too mediocre on each of their
| phones to optimize costs, missing the forest for the trees.
| The G6+ would probably be a nearly perfect phone that I
| would happily pay money for, if it wasn't bootloader locked
| and infected by amazon. The only reason I have an itch to
| replace my G6 right now is because of the mediocre camera;
| I miss so many precious toddler moments that my wife's
| pixel doesn't. I'll bet every G6 ever made complains about
| "moisture in the USB port". The V20 clearly has a screen
| burn-in issue.
|
| I bought a used-but-modern mid-range Samsung tablet to
| mount on an exercise bike, but it turns out none of the
| biking apps support it. I was annoyed at first because I
| hate consumer electronics without a purpose, but it turns
| out it works well as a tablet and I use it all the time.
| I've owned other tablets over the years, and they all
| sucked. Clearly Samsung has some idea of what they're
| doing.
| fraudsyndrome wrote:
| I would speculate that for some people, while the feature
| that they removed was preferable for the consumer, it
| wasn't necessarily a deal breaker. So in the same vein, if
| they included that feature, it wouldn't be a deal maker
| either.
|
| With all these features they are removing, I personally
| can't ever see myself buying a device solely based off of
| that one feature and so I compromise.
|
| I'm not happy with having to compromise but it's not a
| perfect world and I'm not so set in my opinion that I would
| consider not buying it based off of X feature (to an
| extent)
| TruthSHIFT wrote:
| A lot of those design decisions can be explained by Apple's
| push towards smaller, more waterproof and more durable
| devices. Like you mention, these choices do make Apple money.
| But, they also lead to a superior product.
| klondike_ wrote:
| >more durable I disagree. Lithium cells wear out over time,
| they're a component that needs to be regularly replaced to
| maintain peak performance much like the tires on a car. A
| lot of iPhone users put up with this for some reason,
| lugging around external batteries as their phone ages which
| defeat the point of the space savings anyways. With my LG
| V20, I just buy a replacement battery every year and never
| have anxiety over finding a charger since it lasts all day
| even with heavy use.
|
| As for waterproofing, the Samsung Galaxy S5 proved that you
| can have both a removable battery/SD card and maintain
| waterproofing. Plenty of action cameras have removable
| batteries too that don't compromise waterproofing.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Nevermind all the disposable junk that it creates. And people
| at the same time complain about the lack of respect for the
| environment.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| That's why I try to buy used phones when possible, and
| repair them when seemingly wrecked to eek out a bit more
| life (going as far as re-flowing BGA ICs and bypassing
| damaged PCB traces with enamel wire).
|
| The LG G6 was a great phone to buy used, and it's not too
| horrible to open up to repair. Probably has something to do
| with LG giving up...
| cerved wrote:
| they make money because the product sells and as others have
| pointed out, these features have advantages and most
| consumers appear to appreciate them or not care about them
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I agree that the hardware omissions are blatant copy from Apple
| as the way to have more markup and revenue from accessories,
| software services but I like to differ on the OS front.
|
| Android's power user ecosystem couldn't be matched in iOS. Even
| without root, Tasker can automate every single aspect of the OS
| - Want to send and receive WhatsApp messages over email?[1],
| Want better accessibility e.g. Voice summary of news?[2], Want
| a butt triggered pomodoro timer?[3]. Termux runs a Linux
| container and it can run complete Linux distribution inside it
| with PRoot[4]. Best of all, Tasker & Termux can communicate
| with each other for endless possibilities.
|
| Of course Google can mess it up with their policy/API changes
| for Playstore, but that's where 3rd party app stores like
| f-droid comes in and can ensure open-source apps like Termux
| can be published without hurdles. Not to mention the privacy
| focused apps on f-droid.
|
| And if one doesn't want anything to do with Google, LineageOS
| has proven itself to be a viable replacement for stock android.
|
| [1] https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-
| message...
|
| [2] https://abishekmuthian.com/voice-summary-of-news/
|
| [3] https://abishekmuthian.com/butt-pomodoro-a-butt-triggered-
| po...
|
| [4] https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot
| nl wrote:
| > Even without root, Tasker can automate every single aspect
| of the OS - Want to send and receive WhatsApp messages over
| email?[1], Want better accessibility e.g. Voice summary of
| news?[2], Want a butt triggered pomodoro timer?[3]. Termux
| runs a Linux container and it can run complete Linux
| distribution inside it with PRoot[4]. Best of all, Tasker &
| Termux can communicate with each other for endless
| possibilities.
|
| Does anyone actually care about any of these things? I'm a
| long time Android user and I've installed both Tasker and
| Termux. Never found anything useful for them and uninstalled
| them.
|
| I work in a software company, with lots of people who
| experiment with home automation etc - the kinds of things
| where this could be useful.
|
| Instead everyone uses RPis, and controls them with apps from
| their iPhones.
|
| I'm sure there are a few people who actually do this stuff.
| But in my experience they are the kinds of people who enjoy
| working around barriers, so would find a different way to
| achieve the same things anyway.
| anhner wrote:
| You got downvoted but you speak the truth.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| What's wrong with working around barriers? I find Tasker
| useful for fixing things I don't like about my phone that
| are otherwise beyond my ability to fix. For example...
|
| 1. By default my phone remembers the last media volume
| level used with headphones. This does make some sense, but
| it is easy to accidentally get maximum volume blasted in
| your ear. I use Tasker to automatically reset the volume to
| a safe level when I plug in my headphones.
|
| 2. I find that the automatic screen brightness on my phone
| doesn't work well at all. In a dark room, it would not set
| the brightness to its minimum level. It also would not turn
| the brightness to maximum even in direct, bright sunlight.
| I prefer to just set the brightness manually, and avoid the
| poor guesses of the automatic brightness algorithm (which
| is claimed to be "smart" and aware of my preferences). The
| only problem with manual brightness control is that it's
| common to end up in bright sunlight with a very dim screen.
| It is impossible to use the phone under such conditions.
| So, I used Tasker to add a gesture. If I shake my phone
| relatively hard, twice, in an up and down motion, it sets
| the screen to maximum brightness. I use this all the time.
| acdha wrote:
| Your comments are interesting in terms of the iOS/Android
| comparison: both of those are things which just work on
| iOS without needing to find and configure a separate app.
| This dynamic shows up constantly in these discussions
| because HN is full of people who enjoy tinkering as a
| hobby and have strong opinions about things should work
| whereas from the perspective of most normal people it's
| easier to pay $400 for a noticeably faster iOS device
| rather than spending time puttering around trying to find
| the right combination of apps to compensate for an
| unmotivated device vendor and hoping that you didn't just
| install malware in the process.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| That is true. I prefer an experience that's more fiddly
| and annoying overall, but that can be customised to fit
| my preferred usage if necessary. I would not be happy on
| an iPhone, stuck with what they have chosen. I like to
| install my own launcher and such. That's why I use
| GNU/Linux on the desktop, and Android on my phone. Both
| of these ecosystems are very fragmented as well. For
| example, my old Android phone had neither of the problems
| I mentioned.
| acdha wrote:
| To be clear, I think this is entirely legitimate. I used
| Linux on the desktop for years, drove a car with a manual
| transmission, etc. so I totally understand being in a
| spot where the broader market is moving in a different
| direction. I feel like we're losing something with less
| control over our devices but totally understand the
| security & support dynamic which got us here.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| does ios remember the volume for every bluetooth device
| though or is it just headphones? i have tasker set a
| different volume for my car's bluetooth than my bluetooth
| headphones.
|
| another thing i have tasker do is write down the hours i
| work every week by detecting the bluetooth tv in work and
| then the times my car stops in the morning and starts
| when i head home. then on friday if there are any hours
| that haven't been sent, tasker puts them into an email
| and i review it before sending.
|
| i often think about switching to an iphone for the camera
| or some other reasons, but then i think about all the
| stuff ive made in tasker and how i probably won't be able
| to replicate it all on ios
| acdha wrote:
| I haven't tested that many Bluetooth devices but it seems
| to be per-device -- e.g. my wired headphones are
| different than either of my Bluetooth speakers or the
| built-in speaker.
|
| Apple's Shortcuts app supports a number of automation
| scenarios -- for example, I would implement the feature
| you mentioned with a rule which tells Toggl to start an
| entry when my location is within a certain radius of work
| and stop it when I leave. You can also create or add to a
| note, send emails, etc. Since I have the Pythonista app,
| that could even extend to running arbitrary code.
| nindalf wrote:
| > Does anyone actually care about any of these things?
|
| On HN, sure. The other 3.6 billion smartphone users out
| there? No. The top voted opinions on HN are niche and don't
| represent the general population in any way. You can see
| this effect on other threads. Here are a few classic
| examples.
|
| - Everyone on HN hates Facebook, and yet 2 billion+ people
| use it every day.
|
| - Privacy is a paramount concern on HN, more important than
| anything else, and yet billions of people don't care as
| long as their dick pics are safe
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRWxk7o-QlI).
|
| - HN users _hate_ ads and would happily pay for the
| privilege of eliminating ads. In the real world? Youtube
| has 2 billion monthly active users, only 1% of whom pay to
| eliminate ads.
|
| - The ideal HN smartphone is one that has software support
| for years, is rootable, can have it's OS changed on a whim,
| can install any app from any app store. Hardware should be
| modular, with a swappable battery, camera etc. So
| Fairphone, basically. Units sold - 200k in 5 years. iPhone,
| the exact opposite of this in every respect (except
| software support) - 1 Billion in 5 years.
|
| What I've said is so obvious it's self evident. But now and
| then people do get surprised and maybe annoyed when they
| find the world doesn't reflect the gospel truth preached on
| HN. At the time of this writing, your comment is actually
| downvoted ... for implying that the general population
| might not be Tasker-Termux installing, life automating
| power users.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I agree about the HN bubble, but not every comment has to
| reflect the larger market; The comment is about the power
| users and it reflects the significant portion of HN. Just
| like content on Computer Science is preferred on HN, it
| doesn't mean just because not everyone is a CSE/Computer
| Scientist in the real world, CS content is not valuable.
| oblio wrote:
| The problem with this logic is that with millions of
| people, everything can happen.
|
| When someone says "never/no one" in a casual
| conversation, they don't mean "it's physically and
| mathematically impossible for this to happen, I'm sure
| the chance of this is 0%". They mean: "the vast majority
| of people".
|
| Techie communities can be tiresome with all the
| nitpicking.
|
| I swear that if I posted a comment saying "nobody puts
| their dick in the vacuum cleaner shaft" while discussing
| the best vacuum cleaner design, somebody would feel the
| need to object and say they did it.
|
| https://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html
| nindalf wrote:
| The issue is not that HN users have different preferences
| or that they signal those preferences. The issue is when
| they are surprised and annoyed that the ordinary folks in
| the real world don't make the same superior choices that
| they do. Why do they keep buying iPhones instead of
| Fairphones? Why do they keep using ad supported services
| instead of paying for it? Why do hundreds of millions of
| them eat at McDonald's?!
|
| This lack of understanding of the general population is
| the issue.
| oblio wrote:
| Yeah, I hate this part on HN. People with horse blinkers
| that don't even seem to realize they have them on :-)
| [deleted]
| summm wrote:
| The Fairphone has really crappy specs otherwise. Abysmal
| camera, low RAM, etc. That is an important reason power
| users don't buy it. Instead one could have some old phone
| with good hackability which is better and even cheaper. I
| see too many posts like yours here, so I do not imagine
| most of the HN think like you describe. Unfortunately.
| rbreaves wrote:
| The amount of work & installs you have to do for all that is
| laughable though.. assuming you can get a jailbroken iPhone..
| the terminal app is easy to install.. small install & full on
| posix compliant terminal is right there w/ a more normal pkg
| manager to boot. I dunno shortcuts & a jailbroken iPhone is
| equally powerful & there's far less tinkering involved imo.
| But I'm sure you've not used an iPhone enough to realize
| that.
| rymate1234 wrote:
| Having to jailbreak an iPhone is what makes the iPhone more
| work -- Termux is a single install and works on stock
| Android, and comes with a package manager
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| >assuming you can get a jailbroken iPhone.
|
| And the security tradeoffs therein.
|
| >But I'm sure you've not used an iPhone enough to realize
| that.
|
| Was that ad hominem necessary? I've used iOS devices
| regularly w/o Jailbreak since 2010 until last year. I've
| spent several thousand dollars personally and my business
| money on Apple products. My comment was purely regarding
| the technical nature of the OS and was not directed against
| any brand. I know people are religious about brands, but
| private businesses don't deserve such dedication and I feel
| it's unhealthy overall.
| saagarjha wrote:
| > assuming you can get a jailbroken iPhone
|
| This is a _massive_ assumption.
| rbreaves wrote:
| Well like I said, assuming lol. But generally speaking if
| I am on the terminal of iOS vs the terminal on Android I
| feel more confident that I can bring in whatever packages
| I want as it was really designed to be a full desktop
| class citizen underneath it all. Android in contrast is
| extremely locked down in other ways that simply require
| you to use abstraction layers to run pretty much
| anything.
|
| To me it's the difference between installing a full linux
| OS on a chromebook vs running it in chroot (crouton) or
| google's new virtualized method. They both have their
| trade offs while running a full linux OS pretty much has
| 0 trade offs. That's all that I was getting at. Of course
| there are pros to having a more locked down model at the
| expense of performance or being able to run something
| directly on metal at times. iOS is a strange combination
| of either being insanely secure or not so much, but in
| either case the raw performance and stability is almost
| always there in comparison.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Termux is on their way out as they refuse to implement in
| Java the requirements of newer Android versions, not exposed
| as NDK APIs.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Did you mean way out of Google Play Store due API 29? As
| that's why I mentioned f-droid and f-droid doesn't require
| API-target restrictions. Termux is being updated only on
| f-droid because of those changes.
|
| If you meant Termux on Android 11, Here's the quote from
| the developer-
|
| >"Most of things work on Android 11. Only few packages have
| issues (including zsh) and restricted /proc/net which
| renders network information utilities like netstat unusable
| without root. Rest seems working correctly unless hit by
| some known issue not related to Android 10+."[1]
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/mj142i/whats_t
| he_fu...
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, standard Android, I don't care about deviations like
| f-droid.
|
| Some of those issues are manageable when making use of
| Java APIs, naturally not all of them, and even less if
| one refuses to touch Java.
| literallycancer wrote:
| With the governments waking up on big tech, it is very
| possible that you won't even have to root to have the
| Google Play UX with fdroid, like automatic background
| updates.
|
| Used to be you had to jump through hoops to get other
| stores at all and now it's just a few clicks away.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| > Some of those issues are manageable when making use of
| Java APIs, naturally not all of them, and even less if
| one refuses to touch Java.
|
| What do you mean by that and how does it affect not being
| invoke exec() in android 10 without making changes to
| SELinux?
| pjmlp wrote:
| You don't call exec(), rather the Android Java APIs, that
| is the whole point that they don't want to change, more
| Java and less C POSIX.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Sorry that doesn't make any sense. The whole point of
| Termux is to make GNU/Linux tools available on Android
| without root by compiling it for the Termux environment,
| to run those packages from the user directory it needs
| exec(). You seem to suggest that it rather be android
| packages, for that you don't need Termux in the first
| place.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It makes perfectly sense, Android OS is not GNU/Linux,
| the Linux syscalls never were or will ever be part of the
| public API.
|
| The public API is based on Java and a couple of NDK APIs,
| clearly enumerated by Google as stable APIs.
|
| They can either adapt themselves to this reality, make
| use of those APIs in a mingw like way, creating wrappers,
| or die in their faith that Android is Linux, alongside
| countless attempts to GNU/Linux phones.
| dvdkon wrote:
| So they can either put in a monstrous effort to end up
| with a worse product or not be on the Play Store. I know
| what I'd choose. The kind of people who want Termux are
| capable of downloading an APK, I wouldn't worry too much
| about it.
| pjmlp wrote:
| APKs are deprecated, replaced by Android App Bundles,
| adapt or die.
| bawolff wrote:
| Apples controversial decisions aren't without reason, probably
| they realized it makes sense for them too.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| They realized people use their phones as fashion accessories
| and don't care about specs? Removable batteries create bulk,
| make the phone ugly. Headphone jacks? Added width and makes it
| harder to sell the consumer bluetooth headphones. IR
| blasters/SD cards? Nobody cares.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Removable batteries create bulk,
|
| Not even remotely true. The LG V20 is very thin and still has
| a removable battery.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Batteries have to hold substantially more power now than
| they did 5 years ago.
|
| EDIT: Huh, I looked it up and I'm completely wrong. Battery
| sizes haven't changed.
| speedgoose wrote:
| They charge much faster now, which is good for sales
| because a battery that charges fast is very convenient.
| So it progressed.
|
| Fast charging degrades the battery slightly faster than
| slow charging but it's not the end of the world in my
| opinion. I'm guessing it's much better to not keep your
| phone battery at a high state of charge for a long time,
| much of the chemical reactions that degrade the battery
| happens at high state of charge, than avoiding to fast
| charge it to 80%.
| ekianjo wrote:
| The LG V20 already supported fast charging so its not
| recent tech by any means.
| starky wrote:
| >Removable batteries create bulk, make the phone ugly.
|
| I've always found this who argument hilarious given that a
| majority of people put a bulky, ugly case on their phones.
| criddell wrote:
| And they would continue to do so if the phone had a larger
| battery and you would end up with an absolute brick.
|
| If you want more battery and don't care about bulk, get a
| battery case.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| There is lots of weird Android stuff on AliExpress.
| ehsankia wrote:
| You don't even need to go that far.
|
| - ASUS is on it's 5th? gaming focused phone (with attachable
| fan and all) [1]
|
| - You have folding, flipping and stretching [2] phones
|
| - You still have plenty of great niche hardware keyboard
| phones [3]
|
| The issue is that these mostly fill niches, as the majority
| of people are happy enough having the a clean simple phone.
|
| [1] https://rog.asus.com/phones/rog-phone-model/
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF-Hfzntue0
|
| [3] https://www.fxtec.com/
| karlshea wrote:
| > with attachable fan and all
|
| Oh my god you're not kidding.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I mean it is literally the "Republic of Gamers" phone
| fomine3 wrote:
| All passively cooled thin highend phones can't run highly
| loaded games longer, due to GPU makes massive heat, so
| actually fan is practical for such use case.
| oriolid wrote:
| Wouldn't a water cooled phone be much more awesome?
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| > plenty of great niche hardware keyboard phones
|
| Plenty? In what way? There seems to be one company that
| makes a keyboard phone with outdated CPUs and other
| hardware, to make ends meet and be able to produce such a
| phone economically.
| AnssiH wrote:
| I would not say plenty, but there are at least three
| companies (Fxtec, Planet Computers,
| BlackBerry/OnwardMobility):
|
| https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x
|
| https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/cosmo-communicator
|
| https://www.techradar.com/news/new-blackberry-5g-phone-
| with-...
| BardRT wrote:
| Whoa. Thank you SO MUCH!
|
| I'd completely despaired of ever finding a modern
| smartphone with a full physical keyboard on it. It's been 8
| years since I had one.
|
| Now to do some research and find a US carrier that it'll
| work with.
| djmips wrote:
| I wonder if you could even code on that...
| BardRT wrote:
| Interestingly enough, that was _sort of_ one of the
| things I occasionally used my WinMo6 HTC Tilt for JUST A
| LITTLE.
|
| Back in 2007 there was a period where I was doing a lot
| of work on deployed standalone application servers at
| remote client sites, some of which had little to no
| internet connection.
|
| We'd audit servers before I traveled and send me with the
| "right software patches", but it didn't always work out
| perfectly and tethering was pretty primitive back then.
|
| I loved being able to call someone, have them check
| something out of sourcesafe, then throw it up on one of
| our servers, where I could SSH in from my phone, grab
| files, edit them, then shove them on my MicroSD card,
| pull that, shove it in a USB adapter and patch an install
| for a server with no internet connection.
|
| SUPER hinky by today's standards, but it felt pretty
| amazing at the time.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Haha, same, when I got my very first Android phone (HTC
| Dream) with that hardware keyboard, I would sometimes ssh
| into servers and run commands. There was also a python
| app on play store that lets you write scripts and run
| locally. I still sometimes do but it's much hardware with
| software keyboard.
| hunter-2 wrote:
| My V20 died a few months back and I reluctantly switched to
| OnePlus. Man, I miss my V20 every single day.
| blackoil wrote:
| With fast charging, removable batteries aren't that important
| now. IR blaster is too niche. SD card, headphone jack are still
| available in lot of phones, but again aren't deciding factor
| for most people.
|
| IPhone is an aspirational brand with awesome marketing, so
| things like notch which don't make much sense are copied by
| everyone.
| scaladev wrote:
| >removable batteries aren't that important now
|
| If you like throwing out your phones every two to three
| years, then sure.
| totalZero wrote:
| Seems a bit dramatic considering that you can simply
| replace the battery once every three years.
|
| I like having a waterproof phone.
| dageshi wrote:
| The part of the audience that drives the market certainly
| don't have a problem doing that it seems.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Phones that do fast charging properly (e.g. heat generating
| components in the charger not in the phone) like Oneplus
| phones, will experience fat less battery degredation than
| an iphone or samsung phone.
|
| Not as important these days.
| kube-system wrote:
| That used to be a top reason I bought android phones. Then
| I found myself throwing them out every two to three years
| because they stopped receiving software updates.
| f6v wrote:
| It's not like a battery is soldered there, you can still
| replace it and it'll cost you much less than getting a new
| phone. AFAIK I can still get a new battery on my iPhone 7
| which is 4.5 years old.
| ungzd wrote:
| Replacing iPhone battery feels like reassembling a
| mechanical watch. It isn't soldered, but it's glued in
| weird way requiring applying heat. To change battery, you
| have to disconnect 4-5 tiniest connectors, looking like
| LPT for fleas, extremely fragile.
|
| https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+12+Battery+Replacemen
| t/1...
|
| And you just can't buy original battery, they're
| available only to selected service centres.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Changing the battery is an operation that you likely only
| do once in the phone's lifetime. It doesn't make sense to
| have design constraints just to make that operation
| super-quick.
|
| Currently it takes an hour at most to do at any repair
| shop. It's good enough. What matters is that it's
| possible for a reasonable price.
| Macha wrote:
| EUR100 for labour, EUR50-80 for parts, now it suddenly
| only makes sense for high end phones
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| In practice it already costs about half that price.
| acdha wrote:
| That's considerably more expensive than Apple's $50/$70
| flat rate pricing.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| Just pay a mobile repair shop to do it. Not very
| expensive and much cheaper than buying a new phone.
| f6v wrote:
| Well yeah, I've replaced the battery and the button on my
| iPhone 4s myself back in the day. Handling those tiny
| connectors feels like you're performing an open heart
| surgery if you're not doing it for a living. But let's be
| honest, personal computing devices are going to get
| smaller and more intricate in the next decades. The days
| of replacing the battery yourself are long gone.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| My phone is from May 2019, so just under 2 years and I am
| still seeing basically the same battery performance from
| when it was new - something I didn't get with my earlier
| devices that had a removable battery.
|
| Besides, getting a battery replacement for an iPhone costs
| sub 80 bucks, which is probably about the same as we would
| have had to pay for batteries for the older models - and
| they were more likely to break because you can't get
| waterproof phones with replaceable batteries.
| [deleted]
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| They lose software updates by then anyways
| blackoil wrote:
| Maybe, but I haven't seen this issue with ~3 year old,
| Lumia, Xiaomi, Oneplus and Samsung phones in my family.
| Battery life may have gone down a bit but not as a
| practical deterrent. We aren't heavy users so that may be
| the reason.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Fast charging degrades the battery faster, so I have no idea
| what you are talking about.
| Drew_ wrote:
| Fast charging has been around for quite some time now and
| battery degradation hasn't become more of a problem than it
| already was 10 years ago. Apple just had its battery
| degradation and throttling controversy only and that was
| for a set of phones that didn't even have fast charging.
| herbst wrote:
| I have all those features and my next android phone will have
| them too. Are you comparing samsung with the android ecosystem?
| twirlip wrote:
| What current phone out there has a high-impedance 3.5mm
| headphone jack, user-replaceable battery, and IR blaster?
| Asking as a V20 owner.
| benatkin wrote:
| Samsung hasn't copied Apple any more than Apple has copied
| Samsung. The most notable thing recently is that Samsung phones
| kept supporting Fingerprint ID. It was a tremendous PITA having
| to enter my passcode at night because of the move to Face ID
| without continuing to support Touch ID.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| I thought Face ID used some sort of radar/infrared technology
| and thus didn't really need light to work? Happy to be
| corrected on this.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Nope, it works perfectly fine in the dark.
| [deleted]
| rektide wrote:
| LG V20 is a fantastic phone. It feels so much better than every
| other device I've ever owned. Space-age frame with such core
| ruggedness, great screen, great for it's day camera, sd card,
| sweet audio.
|
| And! And! Someone managed to unlock the bootloader. So there's
| a variety of decent roms one can run on it. All aging now, a
| little bit too old at this point, but this 2016 device was
| swinging mightily until it became utterly bereft &
| unsupportable.
|
| It's just so pathetic that we rely on these shitty ass vendor
| OSes. The v20 is a case study in how amazingly awesome devices
| are when consumers have any right what-so-ever to maintain &
| work with their devices. By hook here! One uses the "dirty
| santa" exploit (with pixelated santa junk) to unlock the
| blasted thing. And with that it is a semi-modern, loveable
| device. By community effort. By contributor effort. No thanks
| to Google nor LG.
|
| But modern phones are more impervious. This 2016 device is one
| of the last devices that (unintentionally) allowed access.
| After this, everything slid downhill. Everything went to shit.
| Android collapsed into a pitiful shitmound. Libre was squeezed
| out. Consumerism & obsolescence are enforced in firmware now,
| almost ubiquotously. What a pathetic trash heap Android is.
| John Deere tractors have nothing on the disposable technology
| that Android levers against it's users. It's a vile situation.
| Unlock the bootloaders you frigging jerkwads. This is hell you
| perpetuate against your users! Stop this madness.
| [deleted]
| striking wrote:
| OnePlus ships phones with unlockable bootloaders. They're
| great!
|
| However, when you unlock your bootloader, you lose access to
| things that demand devices be trusted by Google. So Netflix
| no longer even shows up in the Play Store, you can no longer
| use NFC pay, etc. And ROMs are not what they used to be
| (though the update process being lighter and quicker is a
| nice change).
|
| It's too bad, but I get why it is the way it is.
| pimeys wrote:
| I never used my old xiaomi with anything else than lineage
| os and I used NFC payments and a bank app all the time with
| my phone. You're mileage may vary I guess...
| rektide wrote:
| Android SafetyNet[1] is supposed to exist to give
| developers protection against users/"threats".
|
| A very popular Android modification tool Magisk has been
| waging a long running battle against Android to try & get
| by SafetyNet & other validations. However the increasing
| securitization at a hardware level is leaving less & less
| possibility[2][3] for users to access their devices as
| they would like.
|
| I can't remember what movie it is, but I keep thinking
| about some movie with a person trying not to get
| kidnapped, and the victim being told early on: "if anyone
| says 'you're safe and secure' don't trust that person",
| which, sure enough, latter gives way to the believed-good
| but actually-bad guys driving off with her saying this &
| her appropriately freaking out. We are secure all right,
| secure against ourselves. What we are doing- creating
| ever more perfect anti-user enclaves- is vile. The
| security world has such a ferociously ruthelessly
| absolutist view on security, is so ready to declare
| threads & build bigger moats & walls, but users & freedom
| keep getting screwed. Such woe.
|
| [1] https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet
|
| [2] https://www.xda-developers.com/safetynet-hardware-
| attestatio...
|
| [3] https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/29/googles-
| dreaded-saf...
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| If you want to keep a phone going, try a Fairphone.
|
| https://shop.fairphone.com/en/fairphone-3-plus
|
| I'm too spoiled on having snappier phone specs to enjoy
| something like this, myself.
| klondike_ wrote:
| I wish they sold this in the US
| jayd16 wrote:
| The way I see it, WWDC has been full of 2 year old Android
| features for 3 years now, and the iPhone hardware is always
| strictly less featured than that year's Galaxy phone. Certain
| changes sweep through the industry like the notch or no
| headphone jack etc, but you can always fine some Android phone
| with the mix you want.
|
| If it wasn't for the Apple silicon (and the advantage is
| clearly Apple's) it would be just come down to whether you
| preferred iOS enough to overcome the obvious feature advantages
| on the Android side.
| f6v wrote:
| > obvious feature advantages on the Android side
|
| I remember Samsung flagships from 2013-2014. That thing had
| eye tracking, ie it scrolled the page for you as you read it.
| That's just one example, the phone was packed with those. How
| many of those features are useful in daily life though? It's
| as if Samsung is trying to pack as many features as they can
| to compensate for something.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| My $170 new moto g7 power has a 5ah battery, a headphone jack,
| an sdcard slot, a 6 x 3 in screen, and no lock to any carrier.
|
| I wouldn't love a Linux phone but app support is going to be in
| need of help unless it can run android apps
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Amen. Best phone I've had, because it flawlessly hits the
| only things I care about in a phone: Stock Android, an SD
| card slot for my music library, a screen big enough to read
| shit on, a biggass battery, and cheap enough that I don't
| feel too bad when I inevitably lose or break it.
| f6v wrote:
| > even their controversial decisions like removing the
| headphone jack
|
| I love wireless headphones myself. But you've got to admit that
| it'd be much harder to sell those if phones had 3.5mm jack.
| It's as if corporations do anything to increase revenue...
| fomine3 wrote:
| Happily they stopped cloning the iPhone's decision to adopt
| face auth and drop fingerprint auth
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| It's not that Samsung n' co is copying Apple, it's that Apple
| is making the right design and tech choices for the right
| reasons and Samsung is figuring this out too and making the
| same choices.
| cageface wrote:
| Samsung has led the way in many respects. Higher refresh
| displays, multiple cameras, always-on displays, in-screen
| fingerprint readers, much larger phones, etc.
| bengale wrote:
| Doesn't this just come down to them being able to put
| emerging technology in their devices faster due to not
| having the same insane supply requirements that apple has?
| cageface wrote:
| Samsung sells a lot of phones too.
|
| I think it has more to do with the fact that better and
| more innovative hardware is the only way Samsung can
| differentiate from other Android vendors and that they
| don't have the sticky ecosystem that Apple has so they
| need people to keep upgrading.
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's decent reasons behind most of those, or at least
| consistent ones, a lot is around slimness which drives strength
| and material decisions.
|
| > removable batteries
|
| Those usually require relatively flimsy backs that slide fit
| onto the phone. This has problems with water proofing and it's
| a part that can wear and eventually fit poorly or fall off.
| It's a lot easier to waterproof/resist a phone when you can
| seal the whole back of the phone off from the outside world. It
| also allows using soft polymer batteries that can eek out a bit
| more volume without the protective bits removable batteries
| need to be safe(r) to handle.
|
| On the more cynical side maybe they figured it'd induce people
| to replace their phones more often though I don't have data
| showing how much of a factor bad battery is in replacing a
| phone versus other stuff like better performance or FOMO.
|
| > IR blasters
|
| Honestly don't think I had a phone with one of these since my
| Palm Centro in high school and college and I don't think I ever
| used the IR feature on there. The only real use I see is slow
| data transfers (better accomplished with Bluetooth now) and
| controlling TVs. The latter isn't a huge draw for most people I
| bet because people generally either have one remote (that more
| often can control everything if setup properly either through
| ARC and HDMI control signals or the cable box remote also
| sending the TV signals when needed) or many remotes and are
| willing to spend money on a nicer universal like a Harmony.
| There's probably still some out there today but it seems like
| an extra part that most people won't care about so the extra
| fractions of a cent + to include it gets wiped out to increase
| profits over a few million phones.
|
| > SD cards
|
| This one is maybe a little more cynical. There's some
| justification for reducing the number of intrusions in the
| waterproofing seals and increasing the internal volume
| available to squeeze more battery in. I think another reason is
| to induce people to buy the more expensive version of a phone.
| If you include SD card expansion storage it's harder to upsell
| people on the larger more expensive storage options because
| usually SD cards are cheaper than the equivalent sized storage
| in a phone
|
| > headphone jacks
|
| This one I think is a mixed bag. Including the jack sets some
| hard design limits on the shape of the edge of the phone and
| it's a pretty large hole to plug against water and other
| intrusions. I think Apple might have had more coldly calculated
| reasons for doing it with the close launch of their own
| AirPods. Some phone companies have similar offerings where you
| could see a calculated plan to increase profits.
|
| I think we're maybe also just reaching the more mature phase of
| the smartphone design. There's a basic set of features most
| people care about and optimizing for that pushes companies in a
| pretty similar direction. There's some margin for small
| experimentation around the edges but those induce compromises
| in the core features people judge on so that limits the market
| and profit of making those choices.
|
| There's technology like foldable screens that might shake
| things up but they're pretty new with some big compromises at
| the moment so they haven't really hit the core incentives and
| forces that are corralling phones into the same tight design
| and feature list.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| The traditional approach to an SD card is to put it in the
| tray. The OnePlus line of phones had its second SIM slot also
| accept an SD card. That is, one tray, one waterproof gasket,
| with the tray long enough to accept two cards. This is the
| same on the Note 10+, and is in fact an upsell feature from
| the Note 10.
|
| Headphone jack needing to be waterproofed is a bit of a lie,
| as there have been IP68 phones with a headphone jack. It's
| simply wanting to cut down on prices.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Yeah it's a small increase in the gap for waterproofing
| because of the additional lanes required but it's a decent
| sized hit to the internal volume taken out by the longer
| tray. I'm not trying to say these are rock hard laws just a
| set of reasons a lot of phones have removed certain
| features.
| arvinsim wrote:
| All these talk about waterproofing and I never heard one
| person decide to actually take advantage of that feature.
|
| I am definitely on the cynical side of thinking that it was
| just marketing spin to justify taking away features to
| increase profits.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| Yes - even a splash of water won't concern people as much.
| If they had a way to secure from the screen not cracking,
| well that's something most people would appreciate.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| What is taking advantage of that feature? You still
| probably aren't going to go swimming with your phone but
| you're a lot less likely to ruin it when you accidentally
| drop it in the pool.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I take advantage of that all the time. I lost two mobile
| phones to rain before I decided I'll never buy a phone
| without waterproofing again.
| Macha wrote:
| I've replaced three phones to battery expiration and one
| phone to water damage (dropped in a mud filled puddle -
| it turned on again after drying out but didn't trust it
| seeing corroded battery/sim contacts).
|
| I'm especially curious how rain has damaged phones - I
| use them in Ireland where you can just say "scattered
| showers" and have a 50% chance of an accurate forecast.
| Never thought twice about using any in the rain, and
| never bought a "waterproof" phone. I always assumed the
| puddle/pool scenario was what the waterproofing fuss was.
| Or are people using phones in hurricanes or monsoons or
| something?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Or are people using phones in hurricanes or monsoons or
| something?
|
| I don't know about those, but we get fairly heavy
| rainfall every now and then here in Norway. The kind
| where your underwear gets soaking wet for no other reason
| than being outside.
|
| I keep my phone in the front pocket of my pants, and
| after losing two phones to such events I decided that was
| enough for me.
|
| Now I can check when the bus is due or take that call
| even if it's raining (heavy or not) and I don't have to
| think about it.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| I find people enjoy the novelty of taking photos underwater
| or when in the pool/lake/sea. I often have to point out
| that their phones are also waterproof and they run off to
| grab it for underwater (or just around the water)
| photography.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Yes. Quite many of these phones without headphone jack or
| replaceable battery are, in fact, not waterproof. Removing
| a "niche feature" such as a headphone jack for a niche
| feature (no quotes) like waterproofing seems like a bad
| excuse to plug the DRM hole, save cost and sell bluetooth
| headphones, to be honest.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| I just got out of a bath where I was using my phone...
| neild wrote:
| I've never _decided_ to take advantage of waterproofing,
| which made me all the more appreciative on the times I've
| unexpectedly done so.
| extr wrote:
| I had a Galaxy S2 that had an IR blaster, you're right that
| it wasn't particularly practical. But as a late teen/college
| student who enjoyed some occasional mischief I remember
| having A LOT of fun with it. It was the perfect storm of an
| era where it wasn't unusual to have your phone out constantly
| but it wasn't really common knowledge smartphones had the
| feature, or to be aware of the explicitly-for-mischief "TV
| Off" devices.
| deergomoo wrote:
| > If you include SD card expansion storage it's harder to
| upsell people on the larger more expensive storage options
| because usually SD cards are cheaper than the equivalent
| sized storage in a phone
|
| Another argument against SD cards is that a lot of stuff
| people do on their phones requires a certain baseline
| performance, e.g. 4K60 video recording, burst photography
| etc.
|
| Other stuff like fast loading of apps from disk isn't
| necessarily required, but reflects poorly on the phone if
| it's slow. It could also cause issues for games which might
| expect to be able to stream a lot of data from disk.
|
| Of course, it's perfectly possible to buy SD cards which are
| plenty fast enough to support this stuff but:
|
| a. SD card speed classes are a bit of a nightmare even for
| techy people
|
| b. 99% of people will just buy the cheapest card they can
| find on eBay, which is likely to be some knock-off crap
|
| Throw in the fact that no expandable storage forces people
| into a purchase-time upgrade with a hefty markup applied and
| it's not hard to imagine why it's all but disappeared.
| klondike_ wrote:
| >removable battery It's not really worth the extra few mAh
| for a battery you can't replace, considering that in a few
| months it will wear out and you quickly lose that advantage.
| User replaceable batteries allow you to put in a fresh
| battery every year, meaning you can take full advantage of
| the battery capacity regardless of how old the phone is.
|
| >IR Blaster The IR blaster is one of the most used apps on my
| V20. It can control anything from my circa-1980s stereo
| system to my modern surround sound AVR. And all without any
| proprietary apps which never get updated or having to connect
| to WiFi! I've put all my remotes in a drawer and forgot about
| them because I can do it all from my phone. I think this
| feature would get a lot more use if it was included on more
| phones, considering an IR LED is about $0.01 to include. Why
| do "smart" devices resort to overcomplicated and insecure
| Bluetooth/WiFi control interfaces when we had this problem
| solved since the 80s?
|
| Waterproofing is a poor excuse. Most phones that removed
| these features are not waterproof. Samsung themselves proved
| that you can have all these things in a waterproof phone with
| the Galaxy S5.
| martyvis wrote:
| Both my LGV30+ and my wife's LG K61 are waterproof for 30
| minutes at at least 2 metres
| shellfishgene wrote:
| > IR blasters
|
| (Almost?) all Xiaomi phones still have an IR blaster, which
| is a pretty big share of the the overall market. Some Huawei
| models do, too.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| Indeed, I have one. And yet (apart from a few days when I
| first got it) I've not used it. Although that is largely
| due to the awful IR apps I've tried--perhaps there is scope
| for improvements in this area.
| 7952 wrote:
| My hunch is that the 3.5mm jack caused too many warrenty
| returns as people over stressed the socket.
| acdha wrote:
| I suspect this is right: protecting against that requires
| heavier construction which adds size, weight, and costs
| more in a field where all of those are highly competitive.
| I value the sound quality and reliably perfect latency of
| 3.5mm headphones but it's really easy to see why industrial
| designers might make other choices.
| umvi wrote:
| Get a Jelly 2
| [deleted]
| vbezhenar wrote:
| There are plenty of phones which provide features you
| mentioned.
|
| samsung galaxy xcover pro: removable battery, headphone jack,
| SD card. That's just one example.
| summm wrote:
| Also phones with good cameras and more than 4gb of RAM?
| scruffyherder wrote:
| I've been thinking of getting a pine phone. The concept sure
| looks interesting.
| arvinsim wrote:
| Androids have become iPhone sheep.
|
| That is, whatever iPhone decides to do, they just copy it.
|
| I don't know if it is because the business just decide to
| follow market trends or if the designers are secretly Apple
| fanboys.
| [deleted]
| deadmutex wrote:
| Umm, there is a lot of useful tech that iPhone is
| missing/Android phones had first:
|
| E.g. - >60Hz displays - 5G (e.g. S10 5G was released >1 year
| before iPhone with a 5G). - Notchless phones, etc.
|
| This is why if you watch Apple presentations, they'll always
| say "best iPhone ever", not "best phone ever".
| coolg54321 wrote:
| This is sad because LG was the one of the last 2 android phone
| makers with both headphone jack and SD card support in their
| "flagship" the other being Sony.
| T3RMINATED wrote:
| Axios is a spam network.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| This is actually very very bad. Google's lack of focus/vision
| w.r.t Pixel all but guarantees that Samsung can eat up the whole
| high end android phone market. Samsung's desire to stuff so much
| garbage unto their phones that they are molasses-slow even with
| the fastest mobile SoCs available to them all but guarantees that
| for most users, android will remain a huge mess.
|
| As an android user, this saddens me.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I think it's more likely we will see Microsoft and Google
| taking substantial share of the US Android market over the next
| 5+ years
| posguy wrote:
| Isn't OnePlus starting to eat the share that LG, HTC &
| Motorola once served? They seem to be the only ones that
| reliably update their software, don't have horrendous
| hardware issues and consistently have good LineageOS support.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I am sure they will. I just mean over time MS and Google
| will cut deep into this as well. Portable gaming and TV
| over 5g will be a bit part of their hardware lineup. This
| is longer term 5+ years thinking though
| martinald wrote:
| Yes, I think a Microsoft Android phone could do extremely
| well. The Surface hardware is good.
|
| As someone else pointed out, the real problem with the
| Android ecosystem isn't so much the hardware imo it is the
| absolutely appalling software everyone but Google seems to
| ship (I definitely include Samsung in this). Microsoft could
| do a good job of this and has the $$$ to throw at marketing
| (plus could leverage the cloud streaming Xbox stuff).
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Agreed. I think leveraging Xbox brand as a gaming service
| with some kind of gaming enhanced hardware could get them
| in the door. Partnering with other big US names might be
| required. Comcast TV over 5g live package is what I am
| thinking. I just don't think MS or Google can sit back and
| watch Apple build out a full ecosystem that pretty much
| rocks in most measurable ways. Too much on the line for
| these guys in the US market
| throwbacktictac wrote:
| Why are google brands[0] featured so prominently on
| Microsoft's phone. Is it a requirement for phone Android
| phone vendors to keep google on the homescreen?
|
| [0]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-
| duo?...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Samsung's software design feels like an analogy of Korean
| corporate structure.
| revendell_elf wrote:
| And what is Korean corporate structure?
| cerved wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
| cageface wrote:
| Samsung's software is really not bad these days. I feel like
| there's a hint of Western arrogance in the dismissals they
| get now.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| "Better" would be a fair summary [0].
|
| The original quip was an application of Conway's law, in
| that if you have a rigid, hierarchical organization with
| lots of bureaucracy, you're probably not going to get great
| software out the other side.
|
| At least for consumer devices. You might make exemplary
| software for other rigid, hierarchical enterprises.
|
| It's nothing against Koreans. It's everything against how
| Korea has organized its corporate culture, even if it's
| making efforts to change that.
|
| [0] https://www.phonearena.com/news/Samsung-One-
| UI-3.0-android-1...
| selimthegrim wrote:
| What is Sony doing these days?
| bmitc wrote:
| Making excellent phones that are ignored, like LG was doing.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Exactly this! I find it bewildering -- they're by far the
| best in every respect that matters to me, and yet most
| people I meet are surprised to hear that Sony even makes
| phones, even when they express interest in mine. SD card,
| excellent camera, waterproof, durable, excellent battery
| life, headphone jack, quick, mostly vanilla Android OS, and
| most of all, the smallest form factor that I can still find
| in a phone.
|
| Their branding is terrible though. Their naming scheme is
| without any pattern, making it hard to tell which phones
| are their budget/flagship/new/old models, and so on. And
| they're hard to even get at all in Canada.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| Like most thing Sony the Hardware is good but the
| Software (and its support) is very crappy though. It
| looks flashy on the comparison table but falls short in
| real usage and support, and probably why with more
| exposure than LG (afaik) they seem to not catch on.
|
| I've only ever owned 2 smartphones in my life: Samsung
| Note2 and my current Sony Xperia XZ. Until now I've never
| experienced the touch screen go broke after an Software
| update, and that the temperature limit of the camera set
| so weird that 10min continuous usage leads to a warning
| popup (that can be removed without hardware damange, if
| you root the phone).
|
| Their lack of customer support is also not doing it any
| favour for getting respect.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| What has your experience been with the Laredo service
| center (that I think gets broken PlayStations shipped to
| it too)?
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| are you sure?
| https://www.androidheadlines.com/2019/05/sony-mobile-
| strateg... (headline says "Sony Mobile Has Now Officially
| Left Most Of The Global Market" from 5/2019)
|
| I guess that I will have to give Google phone or Huawei a
| try, for my next phone. (once tried xiaomi, didn't like
| them)
| jbay808 wrote:
| The story you linked is a bit more complex than the
| headline. It's kind of appropriate for the deeply
| confusing and paradoxical experience of shopping for a
| Sony phone.
|
| And it confirms the GP's thesis that Sony is committed to
| keep making excellent phones while redoubling its efforts
| to ensure they're ignored.
|
| What the article really says is that Sony is going to
| stop _marketing and selling_ their phones in many
| regions, which means if you want one you might have to
| order it online from a reseller in Hong Kong or
| something. And then it may or may not be compatible with
| your local wireless spectrum. If it is, you 'll have an
| excellent phone, and if it's not, you'll have an
| expensive pocket camera.
|
| Probably what they've found is that outside of Japan,
| they can't compete against Apple's and Google-Pixel's
| mindshare (despite having far superior hardware than the
| latter, in my opinion).
|
| _> Xperia is by no means dead to the world and the
| company is actually redoubling its efforts with that
| brand in a bid to grow amid the spending cuts in regions
| where it will now be appointing its focus. The Sony
| Xperia 1 marked the start of that and is actually the
| result of those cost-cutting measures._
| lvs wrote:
| The Sony designs seem pretty interesting and divergent from
| the rest of the market. I don't know why they're not getting
| more attention, but I assume it has to do with carrier deals.
| martinald wrote:
| I dunno. I think Google's new focus on the mid range is where
| it is at. Got a Pixel 4a 5G and it's a great phone (after the
| major missteps of the 3 and 4 with their hopeless battery
| life).
|
| To me, I don't see what I'm missing going up from the 4a to a
| high end Samsung at twice the cost. Maybe a 90Hz display and a
| slightly faster CPU/GPU, which seem very marginal.
|
| I think if Google doubles down on its mid range strategy
| (again) it's on to a winner.
|
| Fwiw I feel similar about the iPhone SE, especially if apple
| refresh it at some point without a home button and better res
| OLED screen. Feels we are reaching the end of the S curve on
| smartphones.
| fomine3 wrote:
| I believe why Google choose mid SoC in 2020 is because of
| Snapdragon 865 doesn't have integrated modem but requires
| external 5G modem. It makes phone design difficult and bad
| for battery life.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Pixel is basically irrelevant.
| cerved wrote:
| pixel market share is tiny
| kiwijamo wrote:
| Tiny as a pixel?
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| While their mid range offerings may be quite good Google
| still needs a cutting edge flagship to build the brand.
| nicolimo86 wrote:
| My last experience with LG was with the LG Nexus 5X. I loved it
| until it lasted. After 2 years of daily usage it stopped working
| completely while I was calling someone. The phone went black and
| it never woke up again. I had to trash it.
| FiddlerClamp wrote:
| It's a pity they never got to release their rollable phone. I
| hope another OEM launches one (Samsung? Google? Apple?).
| initself wrote:
| Blackberry Key2 is still a normal phone with excellent normal
| phone qualities, including a normal physical keyboard.
| Lorin wrote:
| Hoping the upcoming sequel is worth the wait, no longer
| produced by TCL, but OnwardMobility. Considering no product
| design folk are listed on their team page, I won't get my hopes
| up.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I can only think of a few reasons that LG couldn't make it, and
| none of them are enough to sink a brand:
|
| * Lack of updates * Occasionally non-flagship hardware * That
| Nexus issue many years ago
|
| Their UI is better than Samsung. They're less intrusive than
| samsung. Their flagships are usually pretty good and come at good
| discounts soon after release.
|
| I have an S21 now, and the number of bloatware samsung apps has
| me wanting to move back to Oneplus or even Apple, maybe. I only
| bought it because I wanted a flagship high-refresh phone under
| 6.5".
|
| I'll miss LG a bit, it isn't as if we need fewer competitors in
| the Android space. It's Chinese brands, Samsung, and Google now
| pretty much, no?
| jessriedel wrote:
| The Samsung boatware is outrageous, but LG's was also pretty
| bad. The reason I got an LG, which I've been mostly happy with,
| is that they offered an Android One certified model (the LG G7
| One) that came with nearly stock Android.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One
| Marsymars wrote:
| Sadly, the Android One program looks to be nearly dead. G7
| One owner, don't want a larger phone, so looks like the Pixel
| line is the only remaining option for my next phone.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Yes, this is my exact situation too, and if I want a
| headphone jack then I'm stuck with the Pixel 4a which has
| only 128GB of storage and other deficiencies :(
| dizzystar wrote:
| If you want minimal bloatware with Android, why not get a
| Pixel? I've the Pixel 3a for 2 years now. It's the longest-
| lasting smart phone I've ever had, and there are no indications
| that it is falling over.
|
| The 4a is 6" and has a headphone jack.
| VHRanger wrote:
| > Their UI is better than Samsung.
|
| Is there any UI that is *worse* than samsung?
|
| They have ads in the menus now. And their UI layer adds
| significant touch latency.
| mdoms wrote:
| Oppo is much, much worse than Samsung ui.
| summm wrote:
| The missing updates was enough to kill the brand for me.
| HeavyStorm wrote:
| > I'll miss LG a bit, it isn't as if we need fewer competitors
| in the Android space. It's Chinese brands, Samsung, and Google
| now pretty much, no?
|
| Does this means that Motorola is now considered a fully Chinese
| brand?
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Of course. Just like Alcatel isn't french anymore, but a
| brand of TCL China...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah I think the only thing it shares with the historical
| company is the name and the patents they got along with it. I
| would consider it owned by the CCP at this point and act
| accordingly to what you consider acceptable as far as
| security if you have one of their phones (remember software
| update backdoors can be nearly as bad as hardware backdoors)
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