So many useful features lost in service to slim and waterproof theoretically. Replaceable batteries, external storage, 3.5mm jack…
These are all lies made by tech companies to spend less on engineering and production costs while selling products at the same (or higher) price.
Yep I had a waterproof android 2.3 phone that had a removable battery, microSD slot, headphone jack, and FM radio all included. There were seals around the battery door-flap and rubber plugs for the USB and headphone jacks to keep water out. Another phone I had had all those features minus the FM radio, but it had an IR blaster to control TVs and shit. Smartphones used to be more serious multi-tools, and now they’re just fancy computer tablets with cameras.
I had an HTC phone many years ago, with a headphone jack. The official instructions, for cleaning the screen, were to run it under the tap and give it a wipe lol.
I miss phones being real tools.
Sony literally has one of the most waterproof phones.
It is IP68 AND IP 65 rated (submersion and jets) which pretty much no other phones have.
Headphone jack and SD card.
It is a complete lie for profit. Just like getting rid of chargers without lowering the price.
Which one is that? If it’s not bloated up with crapware it sounds like one on a future considerations list.
Water RESISTANT.
It is IP68 AND IP 65 rated (submersion and jets)
What does that mean?
My phone is as thin as I’m comfortable with it being, I have grabbed a snorkel and watched movies underwater, and it takes an sdcard.
It also has a headphone jack, but I’m not comfy using that underwater and had to use BT headphones for that.
You didn’t sacrifice for shit. It was stolen from you. Voting with your wallet isn’t a real option.
So what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about all the comforts of modernity being stolen from you as its weight and terror and heat come crashing down? You can’t go back. There is no back, not with the planet like this. Not that you survive. What are you gonna do about it?
Negative. It was all bullshit to upscale with phones. Remove an sd slot that takes up virtually no space and then charge an extra $300 for a phone with more space when the storage chip in the phone costs $20. Same for the headphone jack. Now people are buying branded earbuds every few years for hundreds of dollars. phone storage sizes haven’t increased for the past like 8 years because they want you forced into paying for cloud storage.
I have a phone right now from China with a headphone jack, cooling fan, and 1 tb storage, and it was less than a thousand bucks. It’s waterproof and plenty slim with a 7500mah battery.
All the shitty things about Samsung and apple… all the things they removed were all so they could turn around and sell you more. It has nothing to do with size constraints or waterproofing.
Losing the microSD card slot has put me off of buying flagship devices.
My 6 year old phone does more than the modern ones.
I want to want a new phone. I just don’t.
Fairphone. No headphone jack, but at least a microSD card slot.
I used to say Sony but fuck them. They still have both though.
Motorola also has both on many models.
No interesting phones. Nowadays the most interesting phones are the ones you can secure and degoogle the most (too bad pixels have no SD card, no headphone jack, and tiny storage)
There are a number of niche brands out there that still cater to us old farts. Check out Ulefone, Oukitel, Unihertz, Doogee, iiif150, etc. Each company has normal models, but they all also dabble in unusual experimental models as well, some that are ultra small, other that have blackberry style keypads, or feature projectors, floodlights, uhf radios, thermal cameras, multiple screens, etc etc.
Most models still retain SD card slots, headphone jacks, some still have IR emitters and other older i/o as well.
They’re all Chinese companies though, funny how all the consumer tech innovation is happening in communist countries.
Theres been a few Chinese models I found appealing, but using a Chinese phone in the States seems like a huge hassle from what I’ve heard
An elegant device from a more civilized age.
I’ve since upgraded with a NAS - if something happens to my phone everything is synced to my server anyway, so the only real loss is the hardware. Kind of like folk that subscribe to a cloud service. My phone has 512GB of storage to toy with, so I’m really not missing the microSD cards.
Many of you will never know the freedom of a micro SD, headphone jack and tool less user-swappable battery. You’d set out for a day’s adventure prepared and just wouldn’t think about your phone at all. You’d use it as a tool as needed, without hesitation. Casually carrying all your music, some movies if trapped somewhere, effectively unlimited stotage space and zero dongles. Bluetooth headphones as default, wired earbuds as backup and you could move from zero to 100% battery in the 23 seconds it took to remove phone back and swap a fresh battery. And technically all things needed as “backup” fit in a pocket or purse.
It was perfect and they broke it to drive cloud storage, bluetooth headphone sales and to increase “anxiety” that your phone is old/failing as you get storage full notifications and the same old battery runs thousands of cycles without simple replacement path and holds charge less and less.
Fuck Apple and Apple devotees.
But but but muh waterproof (that really isn’t).
Yeah but all the apple users and idiot kids told me that nobody uses SD cards, just use the cloud!
Apparently the normies love paying tons of extra money for less space and less privacy and security, not to mention less access to your data should your network drop.
My favorite was “nobody downloads music anymore”
🤣
On the bright side, I am happy that internet speeds and availability is good enough now that I pretty much never have to worry about storing music on my phone because unless I’m on vacation, streaming will work pretty much anyone I go.
Twenty years ago, this level of internet access was only possible in my dreams. Teenager me would be absolutely ecstatic to find out that in just a couple of decades, I will be able to go online anywhere I want without being tethered to a PC, and my phone bill will actually decrease over time too. I never thought I’d see the day where I could get unlimited talk, text, and 50 whole gigabytes of data for half as much as I’m paying for 300 minutes, 500 texts, and data that is charged by the megabyte in the 2000s. That’s one good thing about the modern era; phone bills have never been lower.
You seem to have a titanic blindspot in the form of a fundamental unawareness about the stability of your indefinite access to the media you can stream. Research some of the modern conversion around owned media. The point is that we didn’t even have to think about it be we weren’t beholden to a company. Expandable storage capacity was already to the point where I had it all with me and I could listen in the middle of nowhere and again, was never even a thought otherwise.
Dress it up however you’d like, it’s lesser in many ways.
Hey, not arguing anything you said; in fact, I agree with all of it.
It’s just that there’s so much negativity in the world that I thought I’d point out the bright side of things.
It’s a nice thought, but in this case that can really read as covering for bad folks doing bad things. The old saying is to plant trees that you will never be able to enjoy the shade of - meaning trying to focus on our positive today “this works great for me now” does nothing for the kids that will come up after us. We focus on, not positive or negative, but on reality for them, today.
And the reality is, the strategy is get us to full cloud, no owned media, and then make access gated to the wealthy, censor/alter content after release and monitor consumption of media for several nefarious reasons.
It’s real and it’s active, speak about it.
They shrunk massive storage down to a tiny usable convenient size and then said, okay we’re not going to use it anymore. fuck the cloud
Micro sd cards aren’t all that cheap right now either .
Still WAY cheaper than phone manufacturer upgrades though.
For example, on the Pixel 10 Pro it’ll cost you $120 to add 256 GB of storage (going from the 256 GB option to 512 GB option), and on the iPhone 17 it’ll cost you $200 for the same jump.
A name-brand Sandisk 256 GB micro SD card costs about 60 bucks right now, or anywhere from half to less than third of the upgrade price. You could buy a 1 TERABYTE Micro SD card from Sandisk for less than Apple charges for 256 GB, and even if the $120 price from Google was your limit, you could still buy 512 GB of additional storage and have money left over.
And of course as someone else already mentioned, you don’t have to get rid of your old storage media when you swap phones if it’s on a portable Micro SD card, so you don’t have to pay more money for storage every single time you get a new phone. Not only is it cheaper on its own, but it’s also a less frequent purchase.
The onboard storage should be faster, which is obviously why it costs more, but I’m with you just give me some bulk cheap bulk storage for videos, photos and stuff
If a modern high speed SD card is good enough for 60fps 4k done footage, or whatever they’re shooting now, it’s probably fast enough for whatever you’re doing on your phone.
But those cards can carry you between phones.
No but we all have a dozen laying around the house we can use.
There really is a place for phones having slower, but cheaper and bigger storage. Some photos or your music really do not need that fast speeds.
Google wants you using their cloud
256 GB SD card already costs like a new phone.
My next phone is going to be a clamshell. I barely use mine for anything but phone calls and texts anymore. The only reason I even have a smartphone now is because my school switched away from sms for login security and the app requires Android or iOS.
Looks like android authority watched “the infographics show” on YouTube yesterday.
*Edit: video I’m referencing- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEiOV6JL2bg
no idea what that is but expandable (standardized) storage is always a good thing
Here you go. This guy puts out quite a bunch of pretty good vids. He voices his shit so well that people kept thinking it was all AI generated shit, so several months ago he started showing himself speaking at the beginning of all of them to prove he’s a person.
I want a tricorder, fat and gives me extra powers.
