I still won’t buy a phone without a microSD slot.
GET OFF MY LAWN!
What phones even still do? Sonys? Low end Samsungs? Fairphone?
My Motorola does
Crazy how every time someone asks what brand even supports some previously-normal feature, the answer is always Motorola. Headphone jack, FM radio, SD card, stylus…
They have been surprisingly good devices in past few years. No nonsense software, pretty good hardware for very acceptable price and like you said none of the good things missing.
Their cameras are always garbage, but other than that I’ve been always buying them since the Nexus line went dead because they’re always the best for the least amount of money.
If I’m expected to buy a new phone every two years my working thesis was that I’ll pay very little for it. A lot of their phones are pretty decent for like $50-$150.
I’ll admit I caved a bit and bought a Motorola razr last Christmas though. It’s much more like the phones I usually don’t buy: no headphone jack, no microsd slot, a bit expensive, etc… But I wanted a phone that would actually fit in my pants comfortably for once.
Yeah, cameras are not usually comparable to high end stuff, but they are good enough for me. For my use case camera is just and after-thought. A good convenience to have at hand, but not a necessary one, especially not necessary to have 6 of the damn thing.
My Xperia 1 V has one, but it shares the same space with the 2nd sim card slot, which I use.
Right now running a Samsung Galaxy A53.
Also using the A53. It’s certainly not the snappiest phone, but damn it, it holds my entire music library and all the movies I could want. Slapped a 512gb microsd card into this bad boy.
There are 2TB cards now. O_O
Why
Because they want more storage? I honestly don’t understand even asking the question lol
Also, I’ve got an entire music library and several movies I can just pop into my next phone
Storage for what though? That’s why I asked. My device storage is 256 and I’ve only used 100, that’s with 700 songs downloaded. I’m curious what you need a ton of storage for.
Because having the option of using a micro SD can provide additional storage that is significantly less expensive than buying a phone with larger storage capacity.
Pics of yo momma.
I’ve about 2,000 and counting FLAC files on my micro SD card for high quality audio. Many from my CD collection, and a nice amount obtained through other means. I’m already at 90 gigs used in my 256 gig card.
I’ll be getting a new phone at the end of the year, and to transfer all that music (plus my commissioned art collection) all I’d have to do it just pop the card into the new phone.
No wrestling with cloud storage subscriptions or having to worry about my digital stuff being in somebody else’s hands. Just keep it on a tiny card smaller than my fingernail and back it up periodically to my desktop and my laptop. Best part is that I don’t even need any adapters to use headphones, as Motorola phones still have headphone jacks.
There’s people with downloaded movies and shows they like having local access to without any streaming woes, folks who take tons of photos and videos, etc. Having an SD card slot is one of the requirements I need for me to want to use a phone.
“If I dont have a problem that means NOBODY will EVER have that problem”
More like asking for insight to understand.
Why are you so angry?
Are you dumb? If you don’t want that many storage space doesn’t mean others don’t want it?
Cheap, easily expandable expandable memory
I like that all of my media is on a removable card I can pop in any device I want and it doesn’t interfere with system files and apps. Makes the initial setup of a new device much easier, not to mention backing it up to my hard drive (
cp -r * /media/user/whatever_diskand I’m done).What a dumb question
28 net downvotes so far for asking “why”. I think Lemmy is becoming more toxic than Reddit was.
Because the march of time terrifies them.
If demanding better features means you’re old, then fuck being young.
That’s the ultimate irony of being young now - satisfied with awful tech experiences. Watching videos on a tiny screen and listening to music on earbuds or even worse, a cell phone speaker.
I recently saw an Amazon review where someone couldn’t believe how much better full size headphones were than their apple airpods. A whole review blathering about why a speaker 25x larger sounded better. “Never imagined such a difference!!!” Funny af
And the tech companies absolutely know this.
From the average user’s perspective, there is no real need.
Back in the day your 0.2 megapixel camera would take up a lot of space. That’s not the case anymore, especially with cloud storage and being able to just plug your phone into a computer and take the files off it that way.
Huh, buddy, I have some news for you, current cameras have evolved too which means that pics and especially videos take a lot of storage today too… (Not to mention that app resolution has also grown up which means they are heavier too).
If you think that the same proportion of storage is taken between the two. Then I don’t know what to say to you.
That’s actually making a comeback because the EU got pissed.
My phone’s brand new and it has a removable battery, not even in the EU
I think it is because the EU listened to the people. This is what you get when elected representatives are not bankrolled by big business, and are allowed to enact legislation that doesn’t only benefit one side.
This is what you get when elected representatives are not bankrolled
The car lobby in the eu: Am I a joke to you?
yet cars in the EU still have higher standards, so where does that leave us?
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Coz batteries degrade over time, and this way you’re either forced to buy a new phone, or have to pay to have the battery replaced
It’s also 10x easier to achieve IP67 water resistance with the battery sealed off. Having a removable battery would require more engineering contrary to shareholders’ wishes.
This also contributes to the bulk of the device. IIRC, at the time things shifted to sealed designs, Apple and others were competing to make phones as thin, wide, and tall as possible. But that’s not really an excuse; we can probably do better nowadays.
They used to have microSD…
Who needs a micro SD when you can pay a subscription cloud service for the rest of your life??? - morons responding to me every time I lament the need for an SD card
Not to mention if your screen gets fucked you can remove the card and have all your photos / movies instantly
Why not both! I love SD but its also pretty handy I can access photos from my PC without needing any further action (I refer mostly to OneDrive right now) SD still rules tho.
This drives me crazy. An iPhone 15 pro max with 256gb of storage is 1199 and the 512gb is 1399.
So $200 for an extra 256gb. Meanwhile a fast, name brand, 1tb micro SD card is about $100.
That’s the Apple business model.
That Android phones haven’t hesitated to adopt… Sadly.
Not all of them, but yes, sadly it has become a trend.
Well at least on android you have a choice (iirc Fariphone 5 has an SD-card slot)
True, and hopefully most brands adopt this way.
Run out of storage? We have a subscription for that!
Up-selling is the game. Especially if you have something to repair, they will happily quote you close to half of the price of new device so you go “ah, then I might as well buy a new one”.
They still do. My 2021 model phone has dual SIM, with one of the slots being enabled for either a SIM card or a SD card.
Many if not most new models don’t have them though
Phones that use those are still relatively easy to find tho.
No headphone jack
No memory card slot
No ir blasterWhy are they making it a useless device??
Because we still fucking buy them
My phone is a 2021 model and still has a 3.5mm jack and a memory card slot.
I love that my pixel 4a has a headphone jack. I’m overdue for an upgrade but I know I’m going to lose my fingerprint sensor and jack. Yeah it’s a security risk but this phone still works and performs well. I hate stupid planned obsolescence. I wished tech was more about stability and long life. But I guess that doesn’t make enough billions in revenue.
I’m finding plenty use in my phone without those things.
I still keep my old phone on my desk and put it in my bag because is has weeklong battery when i dont use it and it has an ir blaster.
IR blasters are fine, so few TVs even use them now. Storage, eh, 512 is default these days and I’m only using 25% of that (assuming you meant storage and not memory).
Headphone jacks and replaceable batteries are huge though. I’m still pissed about that.
i haven’t used wired headphones since a few years before jacks went away, and i have never missed that effing cable
Why do you think my old ass bought a fair phone
Same here
They say stuff like repairability, durability, not using child slavery, yada yada not important
the easily replaceable battery is what really caught my eye and brought me to the yard!
I wouldn’t…
You know what, never mind. Don’t sell past sold lmao
I kinda hate the fact they took of the headphone jack. Conveniently, they started selling their own buds with that launch
I miss that too. The perfect phone doesn’t exist.
If you don’t mind me asking, what country are you in?
I know murena sells in the US, but I’ve always avoided it because it seems like buying parts is still going to be a PITA, and what’s the point of a repairable phone if you can’t get parts?
To sell you more phones. Duh.
OP up in here learning about late-stage capitalism like 😲
The only valid reason is waterproofing. If the phone isn’t waterproof, it’s only to limit repairability… Also one factor in that was, I believe, the thinness war, but that’s pretty much over now as they all got to the practical limit I guess.
I’m not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded (at the sacrifice of battery life) if the mfrs hadn’t pushed it as a selling point.
In the flipphone days I didn’t know many people who didn’t have at least one spare battery, so they could swap to a fresh one on the go without having to charge, or bought extra thick batteries with higher capacity, extending the back of the phone.
Then when smartphones had removable batteries, lots of people still did those things. And all during that time I remember many reviewers and consumers reacting to many of the “thinness” claims with “I’d really like a bigger battery instead.”
I also remember it being proven that apple’s removal of the headphone jack impacted neither waterproofing nor thinness, despite their claims. (But then of course one by one others started following suit.)
I think it’s better for mfrs and that’s the only reason. It saves them money on mfr, or gets phones tossed in the bin faster. Possibly both.
I’d still take 2 or 3 more mm of thickness for an amazing battery.
I’m not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded
I am entirely convinced that most “features” on modern devices are not “something consumers would have demanded”. Sure, different lenses is nice if you’re a hobbyist photographer, but do most people really need more than a single back-facing camera? Do most people want to have wireless earbuds at the cost of not having a headphone jack? Do most people want glass backs and other such gimmicks that make their device more fragile? I’ve been told for decades that the modern economic system is great because competition forces manufacturers to prioritize what is best for the consumers. But in the context of smartphones, it feels like the roles are completely reversed. Manufacturers come up with some bullshit and then mount psy-ops (ad campaigns, online astroturfing) to convince the population that it’s worth their money
About thinness: I also like my phones bendy and snappy (iPhone 6), as well as exploding batteries (Galaxy Note 7 or 10, I don’t remember the exact model tbh).
Or you have to ‘hold it right’ (OG iPhone).
These were all huge issues that could be fixed without sacrificing the thinness.
Thinness shouldn’t be used as an excuse for otherwise shitty phones, since it’s clearly a non-sequitur.
lol I first thought that “mfrs” meant “motherf***ers”
Well if the shoe fits…
I just reread that entire sentence substituting that word both times, and made myself lol.
I feel like I have done my good deed for the day.
Well, there’s another change that made it more viable - back then people had spare batteries cause they needed them. Now most devices will last a full day of normal use, so the ‘average user’ doesn’t care much about swapping batteries.
My gripe was physical keyboards. Until they basically disappeared entirely, I tried to buy exclusively devices with physical keyboards. I liked my T-Mobile Sidekick except it could stand to be thinner.
Yes, I don’t care how good Swype/etc is, I’m still much faster and more accurate on a physical keyboard.
I’m not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded
Something popular back in the removable battery days was to replace them with thicker extended capacity batteries. So no, battery life was more important to a lot of comsumers.
The Galaxy S5 was IP67 waterproof and had a removable battery and a headphone jack.
Did they have a stipulation that if the consumer opened the phone the IP rating would be nullified?
Genuinely asking, sounds like something a corpo would do.
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My casio watch is waterproof. [100M Water Resistant] And it has a user replacable battery. With a gasket inside and cool looking screws. (yes, I consider screws to be cool) Also, it costs less than $20
Your Casio watch also has a manual with a warning inside saying it won’t be waterproof anymore after a battery replacement unless you send it in to Casio to replace the battery.
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Casio watch warranty period: 24 months
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Casio watch advertised battery lifetime: 10 years
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My Casio watch actual battery lifetime: 5 years
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I didn’t have to open it until 2x the time of official warranty.
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The gasket had gunk in it on the outer side, so I cleaned it, but I could have gotten a replacement from one of the local Casio stores.
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The strap has broken 2 times until now (yeah, I’m kinda rough on it) and replacing that doesn’t void any warranty.
- The standardised nature means, I can get either Casio branded straps (even from other models if my model is discontinued) or other generic straps.
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I am nearing the point at which it might require another battery change, but either way it’s worked pretty well.
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I take hot water baths with it and even though I never used it up-to 100m (I’m not really into diving), I haven’t seen rust or moisture in the inside.
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Of course, if you open the stuff and change something yourself, it’s up to you to warranty it. You can’t expect them to trust every tom, dick and harry who might:
- Not tighten the screws well enough
- Not place the gasket back in place
- Do any other random stuff
and officially say that they will cover that. I know I wouldn’t.
The point is, they let you do what you want and help you at a reasonable price (the replacement straps were priced appropriately).
I can’t say the same for the fancier models though.
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For legal reasons. Because they can’t check if you didn’t fuck up the gasket.
Screws are an incredible wonder. Itty bits of metal with fine threading to attach two things? And we just produce like billions of the things? Truly amazing.
I’d love to have a phone with 8 screws and a gasket in the back cover instead of the fixed plastic latches that the Fairphone and others have. Easily more water tolerant and love the industrial feel.
You can have ip68 removable battery phones. Check out samsung xcover
You can, but every hardware feature you add takes physical space in the phone. Making a phone waterproof requires adding stuff to the phone, which takes away space for other things. Usually battery size ends up being one of the things that takes a hit. You want a phone that’s waterproof and has a removable battery? Then the battery size gets reduced by X%, or some other features people care about get dropped.
Ffs make it thicker. Most phones are already too tall to fit in most pkckets, and the added thickness would make them more comfy to hold
Take away user choice, use really bad excuses like water proofing and space saving, and you can be sure consumers will iteratively buy more frequently and spend more for cloud services.
Bye battery Bye bye headphone jack Bye bye user expandable storage.
Capitalism has steered us to this as the preferable product.
It really sucks that they charge so much money for the storage difference. Why are the pricing tiers based on the storage? It’s so strange.
Anyways, I recall having a lot of issues with external storage in the past. Like Android just didn’t integrate that shit properly. It was kinda painful having the phone data and photos in separate places. Don’t remember specifics, I just know I constantly wished they were a single location.
It’s fine now, external storage. Been that way for 5 years or so. Works as any computer does.
I blame Apple. They slowly got rid of features and still sold a shit ton of phones. This is obviously more profitable so other companies followed.
I ended up buying a Motorola razr because at least the fucking thing fits in my pocket for once. That’s honestly the biggest tangible benefit I’ve gotten out of a phone purchase in a while.
Each iteration of phone seems more like something I don’t want to even be involved with. Maybe I’ll just buy a light phone next time.
I remember when I could do everything with my phone using a single hand. I never grabbed my phone with two hands. Now I need two hands much more than before.
I don’t know why phablets are a thing. Phones are too big imo.
I had a Motorola g power from 2020? I think? That’s about the right size. I actually wish they could make a usable phone that’s about the size of the bottom half of this one I’m using right now, but it would take some UI innovation which nobody is interested in. It’s funny too because the bigger flagship phones are more expensive, but I’d never pay for that.
You might be interested in the unique looking designs on https://www.unihertz.com/ .
They’ve got some really tiny ones and some with physical keyboards even. I like the designs but dunno about their update commitment or hardware specs much.
This sounds almost perfect. I’m missing the option to install a custom ROM or as you said specs on support.
Installing custom ROMs on devices is still way too difficult. Recently tried to install divestOS on an old Oneplus phone and it is currently in brick hell. I followed the instructions. Unlocking is easy, rooting is still a massive PITA.
Thanks, these actually look really cool. I hadn’t heard of this before.
So you’re telling me that capitalism works, and that it’s working as intended.
I agree that this is a result of capitalism. But I would surmise that this is exactly the standard by which capitalism is based. Reduce complexity, reduce operating costs. That generally means that whatever you’re making is going to be generic with no customizability and no ability to be repaired or changed by the end user. Complete vertical integration with optimizations in productivity, materials cost, and other operating expenses, all while charging “as much as the market will bear”
Thank you for defining capitalism.
My Fairphone 3 still has a removable battery. I replaced the battery myself last year. It took me 10 seconds once it arrived.
I just wish it could run GrapheneOS :(
I wish it could run iOS, I would switch in a heartbeat…
All Fairphones, not just the 3, of course.
A lot of anti-user design choices were first introduced by the iPhone. As someone who has owned iPhones since the iPhone 3G, I blame myself.
Computers were not stopping you from running any software you want, until they got small enough for people to forget they are still computers.
Ah yes, the software battery.
Just a similar thing that also could be for this meme, not a comment to the situation with batteries 😆 .
Integrating the battery saves a small amount of space and weight. That makes the phone very slightly thinner and lighter, which is what most people seem to prefer. Same with not having expandable memory. IMO it’s a bad tradeoff, but I still miss physical keyboards.
The stupid part is that they will buy phone cause it’s 0.1mm thinner and then slap on 3mm phone case on top.
Don’t think anyone has actually bought a phone for the thinness since like, 2016, but also a case isn’t a decision of thinness. The people who use their phones without a case continue to do so because they like the look and feel, and those who use a case for protection will want it regardless of whether the phone is 5mm thicker.
I’ve got an Otterbox Defender on my phone. It’s the only reason my phone is still operational.
I still want a user-replaceable battery though.
I never met anyone that said they wanted a thinner lighter phone.
I’ve met tons of people that would take a half inch thick brick of a phone if it came with an equally big battery that could last days between charges.
Go on Amazon and search for a “outdoors phone”. I have one that is about that size and weighs a lot, but I can go a week between charges easily. I can play games with my headphones for 8 hours straight without needing to charge.
But … The battery is not replaceable.
That’s genuinely one of the things people look for; iPhones are incredibly dense designs, in a very sleek, smooth, light package, and people love them. A very basic phone case and a screen saver adds nearly half the OE thickness of the phone to the package, and look how many people forgo those, even on a phone that’s $1500. If I added that much thickness to a phone that started out at .5" thick, it would end up feeling like I was carrying a brick on my pocket all the time.
I would still take the brick with replaceable battery though.
apple idiots buy whatever apple tells them to because they care more about the artificial status symbol of having the latest apple logo’d bullshit than they care about having a good or decent product.
Yeah, no. I’m an Android user, and have been for about a decade, but Apple makes good products. I think that Apple is overpriced, I don’t like their walled garden, but they’re still good. My wife had an iPhone 8 up until this year, and I’d gone through multiple Samsung and other phones in the same time period that all died due to hardware failures.
I wasnt saying you were, I was saying in general.
Samsungs phones fell off a cliff after the 9, imho. I would never buy another samsung.
Apple artificially destroying batteries to make you buy more phones, sooner, should have been the nail in the coffin of that company if people actually cared about the products and not the artificial status symbol.
I want a thinner and lighter phone!
But you haven’t met me.
You could plug one into the USBC port.
Yeah, but that’s not neatly as portable as the old Crackberries that had slide-out keyboards.
Oh I feel you. I loved them too. The only reason why I had to switch (back when a physical keyboard was still kind of an option) was because I started to type in cyrillic too, and - especially as a newbie who isn’t familiar with the keyboard’s layout - a digital one was much easier to use. But I still hate that feeling of typing on my screen.
Am not convinced there are many who honestly enjoy typing on screen. It’s never great, just passable.
Definitely. I think the only people that like them are the people designing the phones, because they don’t have to worry about smaller/lighter/more durable keyboards.
I had to give up my final phone with a physical keyboard because some of the keys stopped working, and there was no way to get an identical replacement anymore.
I so wanted Blackberry Key3 to come out and was holding out for that one, then they canceled their phone production entirely. Old Blackberry Passport was such a good design for my use case. Sadly outdated software meant I was unable to use it as my daily driver.
This is so the spyware can’t be disabled via battery removal
Also so that phones require more frequent replacement. Usually the battery goes first. It doesn’t hold a charge or undervolts and slows down the phone. They want you to buy a new phone every two years.
Usually the screen goes first after a drop. But that is also not easily repaired.
Yeah, but if you don’t drop it, the screen will last many years. Burn in hasn’t been a problem for a while.
On phone from 2013 I started to get burned pixels in around 2020-2021
Some still do. I just started working at Walmart, and they give you a Samsung phone to do your job. You use the camera for scanning tags, shelving, check item status, and a bunch of other shit. It’s a modern phone, with USB c, fingerprint sensor in the power button, android 13, stupid hole-punch camera, etc. And when I pulled off the otterbox case they gave me with it, I found that the back pulls off and the battery pops out, like all of my phones used to do back in the day. I assume that’s so they can more easily keep these phones in use, as they can pull out a failing battery and pop a new one in without having to send the phone sent off for servicing.
Likely being provided to a business rather than a consumer means that there’s incentive to make a product with what the purchaser wants.
