Disappointing phones
26 points by thang
26 points by thang
I wanna shill a bit for phones aimed at construction workers. Since I discovered this was a thing, I've completely abandoned phones aimed at office workers.
Check this out:
Drawbacks are:
What's the name of your phone and the model?
Currently on an Ulefone Armor 27T, but used to roll with CAT before this one.
It really cannot be overstated how heavy the 27T is. Nothing I'd want to spend all day scrolling on that's for sure.
Nothing I'd want to spend all day scrolling on that's for sure.
That sounds like it might kinda be a stealth feature, for some of us. :)
I'd probably only ever use it as a toy but if I got one of those I can't imagine myself doing anything other than spending about a week just pointing the FLIR at things and going "oh hey look how hot that isn't / is".
And then one of your friends sees you do it and asks to help either with insulation or with finding an underground leak in a pipe…
I never liked phones. Like objectif_lune here in the comments, it felt like an enemy - a distraction device.
But GrapheneOS changed that. Now it feels almost like a Linux PC. It's under my control. It doesn't do anything I don't want it to do. It's non-commercial!
I set up separate User profiles in it, so the apps that I hate but need for work are jailed in their own profile, rarely used. I switch to it when needed, then when I hit the power button, next to the button to power off the phone, is the option to just shut down that profile. Boom. Shut. Off. All those apps stopped. It's like having phones inside a phone. (Like jails or containers.)
I think people who like Lobste.rs would like GrapheneOS.
I'd just like to chime in here for the skeptics: GrapheneOS actually feels eminently usable compared to custom ROMs of old.
The Sandboxed Play Services implementation is excellent and allows most banking apps to work well (Google Pay, however, does not). Location/GSM use wifi+surrounding devices, not just GPS (though this is toggleable in settings).
Limited number of devices supported means development is more focused/not scattered, and devices get timely updates within support window.
I also recently switched to GrapheneOS. I have many positive things to say about it, but one thing I also love is how peaceful/quiet it is. No attempts to shove AI in your face, no attempts to sell you cloud subscriptions, video/music subscriptions, etc. Just a phone waiting for you to tell what to do.
I do have Play Services enabled for some apps from the Play Store, but in contrast to other Google certified Android phones, it is sandboxed. For some reason I take a lot of pleasure in giving Play Store the minimum permissions I can get away with.
Storage and contact scopes are also brilliant. Storage scopes give apps the idea that they have broad storage access, but in reality, they are playing in their own little sandbox.
Sounds great. Do other ports like LineageOS support that? Probably Linux phones do, though there are fewer mobile apps.
User profiles are part of AOSP with work profiles being a specific setup, so every Android port could support them.
Depending on the port provider they may only expose the API (Lineage?) or provide full user tools for working with them(Graphene). In the former case there are tools like shelter that can assist with managing profiles through the exposed API.
I genuinely dislike my phone, and my relationship with it has become more and more antagonistic over the last year and a half or so. Smartphones don't feel like they used to, my iPhone always feels like it's trying to capture my attention, and then hold it for as long as possible. I'd much rather have a dumb phone (or maybe a LightPhone? Or an old-school nokia and a boox palma?) and spend the money I would have spent on an expensive smartphone to play wordle, and feel bad about the state of the world from news bomarding, on a nice compact digital camera like the new ones that have that vintage look to them.
I don't do social media, I don't visit many sites other than lobste.rs and a handful of others, I do use it to listen to spotify in the car, I don't use it to check my email, I do use it to message my mom and dad, wife, and kids. And I only ever get calls really from my partner and the school my kids attend.
Everything else I do from my computer. I'm not really sure I need a smartphone, or that the use of one justifies the cost...
the only major problem I have is banking. My bank doesn't have physical locations, and they don't really have a web-based portal. They just have their mobile app...
Yeah I’ve been considering the Bluefox NX1 and the Qin K25. They’re normal Android phones, except really small—which I reckon will disincentivize me from using it for anything more than the essentials. Toss a minimal launcher & grayscale it and you have a Light Phone for 1/8th the price.
I've abandoned all hope on phones and got an iPhone several years ago and upgraded it recently. It made me relatively happy with my policy on notifications (aka, I only allow specific set of apps to send notifications and only an even more limited set to show numberless "badges") together with my policy on apps (zero social media, zero games).
Having to admit, it does feel silly to have this amount of compute purely for the camera (that's feature I use most often, not for social media as mentioned earlier).
On the android side, foldables seem like fun phones (but generally pricey, ironic coming from an iPhone owner) and I am slightly excited for the Clicks Communicator.
Clicks Communicator
Interesting, I watched a few Mr Mobiles videos back in a day. It seems like a grief over the Blackbery-like phones have never left him, the phone looks really interesting indeed.
Since we're shilling phones in here, I have to say I'm always surprised that no one with these sorts of requirements ever considers the Sony Xperia series.
The cameras are awesome (mechanical zoom, physical shutter button, Carl Zeiss lenses, Sony makes friggin' cameras), they still have SD card slots that you can pull out with your thumbnail (I have 1TB in mine), and they still have 3.5mm audio jacks, all while being thinner and nearly as waterproof as an iPhone. They also ship with a pretty minimal Android ROM that's nearly bloat free. My one issue with that has been this "Game Enhancer" app that asks for attention once a year or so.
Oh, and the battery lasts 2 days. All in all, the best phone I've owned that didn't come with a physical keyboard.
I think the main issue is price and the fact that they announce today what will be available in a year. Sony has always been kind of strange that way.
True, though I usually buy phones used or from back stock off of ebay for cheap. My Xperia 1 IV is currently going for around $350.
My last phone was a 1 or maybe 2 year old Nexus Google phone, that i bought via amazon...i can't recall if it was refurbished or simply overstock...Anyway, it has worked great! ...Up until recently. Its still functional, but i know the battery is on the way out. So, my plan is to do something similar as last time: buy a Nexus phone off of amazon that's either renewed/refurb., etc. Why a nexus, wll, i have zero affinity for google, but it has historicaly had a audio jack...and its pretty "standard" in its UX/UI as far as android phones go. The camera is fine, the battery (under normal/newer conditions) is perfectly fine. But, buying such a phone as i do tends to be much cheaper than truly new phone.
I think however for my next phone, i will use a more minimal launcher at least, or at most, legit install//run GrapheneOS. I have no need for banking apps. ;-)
Now, my hope is that AI companies have not also started buying up all available phone inventory as they have RAM/memory, etc. :-D
I have an S23, and have had Galaxy S Series phones forever. They are fine.
Some things:
Besides that, I put it in a Ringke case with a random brand screen protector and it's a tank. Just yesterday I launched it from my lap getting out of my car and it was totally fine.
Camera is good, I use it a lot and it works well.
They are fine? Jesus your list makes me want to never touch a Samsung phone.
They are terrible. Some apps have to be updated through the Samsung Store and it will show a mandatory popup add, every, single, day.
I've never touched the Samsung Store or had that experience with the mandatory popup, but I don't use a single Samsung app.
Yeah, the forced app installs are really awful. I plan on switching to a different brand when this phone dies; my prior Samsungs never did this and it is really invasive and awful.
On the other side of these negatives, however, is a very responsive, ergonomic, customizable device that has good storage, good hardware integration, good camera, support from every vendor / accessory maker / repair company / app maker, solid speakers, good size, and great battery life.
Right now I have devices with SIM cards (button phones; realistic use case: receiving SMS), a device with Google Play passing integrity checks (currently off, has banking application), and a device that deserves that interactions with it can be called «use». The latter is a PinePhone with the PP keyboard, replacing a PlanetComputers Cosmo that suffered an unfortunate incident with one of its two USB ports.
The years between N810 and Cosmo have been spent being annoyed at the bad usability of phones for editing shell commands / LaTeX code / etc.
The state of modern phones is a bit saddening. All I want is a small phone that does the bare minimum like instant messaging and reading/writing notes.
For now I have been using a refurbished iPhone Mini 12 but with each update it gets more sluggish to the point where I have to be very careful about how I use it otherwise the battery will get drained in a couple of hours of use.
I was recommended https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-max by a friend and it seems solid, though I haven't done a proper research as of yet.
I don't want a phone. I want a tiny PC with a built-in keyboard and mobile internet so I can run NixOS on it.
Note: I know it's possible to install NixOS on some phones. Still, I want a tiny mobile PC, not a phone.
I've since gotten an iPhone, but I was fairly happy with the Google Pixel 6a I had before.
No headphone jack, but I made peace with that ages ago for better or for worse. I was coming from a OnePlus Nord N10, which just made some wild hardware choices in the name of looking good on a spec sheet but which were terrible on paper - 4 cameras, 1 of which was some grayscale camera which AFAIK was never used by the software, and another was a macro lens that was so bad it was eventually disabled with a software update, since the main camera was better on close-ups anyway. It also had a 90Hz screen which went entirely unused because the phone could barely hit 60FPS, let alone 90. And a horrible vibration motor which both made a ton of noise if on a table, but was completely unnoticeable in a pocket. Compared to that the Pixel was a breath of fresh air.
Now I'm working on getting postmarketOS running on it. Unfortunately it uses a Google SoC so it's a bit behind other vendors, but Google themselves seem to be upstreaming some stuff so that's encouraging.
I had no luck with the xenphone -- the phone crapped out on me when I tried using headphones. I ended up biting the bullet and getting a pixel and waterproof earbuds. Camera quality is excellent. You could put grapheneos on it if you want the linux experience, but be warned, google pay doesn't work.