> For the younger readers out there: These are not USB devices and you can't text your friends or watch TikTok videos on them. I know. Crazy.
>> I know that this is a joke, but let's remember to be inclusive and kind to our younger readers and take the time to explain (reiterate even) what pieces of old tech are, and what they were used for.
Expect it's not even funny, it's just super cringey and reeks of gatekeeping and condescension.
> Compared to what you got 5 years ago, they might be smaller and have better power efficiency. But on the grand scale, how does that matter?
This is insane, wrong, and dishonest. How old are you? I'm 30 and during my adult life (the past decade, basically) we've gone from phones that were essentially unreliable walkie-talkies with shitty battery life to ultra fast portable computers with 10 megabit internet connections and 4 or 5 different onboard technologies (gps, camera, etc).
WTF are you talking about sir. Do we live on the same planet?
> NOTE: I do use an Android phone --- but only after it has been thoroughly de-Googled --- starting from a stripped down, bare metal device that won't even power up.
You're going to have to explain to me. Particularly the "starting from a stripped down, bare metal device that won't even power up. Because this sounds excessive and a bit over the top.
> Most of these unwanted smart- phones are neither discarded nor recycled but languish in junk drawers and storage units.
The people who wrote this must not have kids. :)
All of my old smartphones become PBS Kids devices until they are destroyed. Then they get recycled. Except for the one we lost on a plane. I hope whoever found it found a good use for it.
>Android phones can do everything iPhones can plus more. You can debate whether or not it's more rough around the edges but they just simply do more.
Everything, but slightly worse. I don't want it to be a really bad space heater or a really bad flood light, I want it doing a few things really well.
>No emulators, no NFC pairing, no auto-sorting your app pages alphabetically, worse notifications, no grabbing that file off a USB C drive, etc.
The number of people that care about this stuff is a rounding error. I can't even remember the last time I saw a USB drive let alone needed to get something off of it on my phone.
the work so far can all be done with emulator. DO NOT BUY A DEVICE. and as the parent just said, the performance on the emulator is MUCH better than the real device.
it is just more waste in the world.
Also, if anyone want a couple firefox phones msg me. i have a couple left. i got them when i believed that since they were going to be sold in stores, they would be consumer ready... and hence i needed to support them on my site... big mistake on all accounts. to being with they are not consumer ready. and it was close to impossible to find them in stores (despite them being advertised on billboards all over the city)
anyway, if you want a phone, msg me. i have a few left. be warned that is harder to flash than a re-purposed android phone. much. much harder. (extremely closed components and hard to crate kernels)
This is not hate on the project. just on their careless aggressiveness to go to market. the project has lots of future. just take your time before polluting the world with pure garbage.
> That's because the 24-year-old carries a $50 flip phone — the Samsung Gusto 2. There's no touch screen or apps. No Web browsing capabilities. No collection of music to enjoy through earbuds.
I'd like to point out that that phone [1] can browse the web (using Opera Mini Brew), can install apps and games (using the Samsung Brew store) and can be used to listen to music via a common 3.5mm jack (even though it only has 128MB of storage). It even has A-GPS.
"Dumbphones" have not been dumb for at least 10 years.
It would be nice if we had mobile and desktop OSes that didn't get increasingly bloated with time, slowed down, were abandoned by the vendors and were messy in plethora of other ways.
My Android phone doesn't get security updates by the manufacturer, just a few years after the release, which is horrible in the case of RCEs (like the WebP one). I can't install a newer version or a custom ROM because of a locked down bootloader (without exploits) and even then drivers are a big issue. Some of my older hardware wouldn't even be compatible with desktop OSes like Windows 11 because of the whole TPM debacle.
Other than that, digging up my old Android phone with Android 2.1 on it, or maybe my old E8400 CPU from 2008 would yield really bad experience in both cases. Could devices from over a decade ago be viable choices, if the software didn't get exponentially more wasteful? Perhaps, but that's not the reality that we live in, neither for desktop PCs, nor phones.
Yes, You really did just read this. But I think you took the wrong message away.
The parent "Would argue against" small phones, because they prefer larger phones.
I am asking him in the most sincere way I know to not argue against smaller phones because their preferences are currently well served. However mine haven't been nearly met in years.
I find the rest of your comment very bad faith, this is a first world problem _of course_ but this is a topic about a new phone and I haven't been able to buy a new phone in 4 years at this point. At some point the EOL will strike my phone and I'll be essentially forced (by application support, website performance, lack of browser updates whatever) to carry something that feels more like a mini ipad or tablet than a "phone".
Look, Phones are a central point of our lives today; I do my banking on it, I pay my bills on it, I order food with it. I literally pay for everything with it. It's not unreasonable that there is at least a modicum of variety that _isn't_ camera based.
> So basically, stop using smartphones, because it's fucking ridiculous to drop hundreds of dollars every 4 years on a device that is virtually the same thing as your old one. This is a huge joke, and Google and Apple need to do better or stop milking us.
I mean, you're literally posting this complaint on a thread about a phone that is now legally bound to receive seven years of updates.
> Yes; and I do think smartphones are a terrible piece of engineering.
I can't read that and not scoff. I don't know how you can seriously argue that smartphones aren't a great piece of engineering. The power, accessibility, and flexibility offered in a device that easily fits in your pocket is pretty amazing in my book. Yes, battery technology isn't the best, but to say somehow that what has happened in the smartphone industry in the past 5 years isn't an amazing piece of engineering, I find that pretty laughable. I guess we should all go back to our brick phones and blackberries for the business types then?
> In 10 years, kids will look back and wonder why on earth we used to have these 'phones' with dozens or hundreds of apps installed. 'Why would you do that? That is so much work? How do you know which you need to use?'
Phones with apps have been around for 29 years. I'm calling BS on your prediction now.
> After all these years, Android phones still feel like cheap plastic to me, and the interface feels cheaply put together.
This feels like a horribly dishonest sentence to start with. There are loads and loads of quality, well-built products in this world and many of them are even Android phones.
It will take you minutes to find them if you just use Google.
> there's a class of users for whom a general computing device isn't just overkill, it's downright dangerous
I am not sure if you are trying to come off as snobby, but that's how this reads.
This 'class of users' is in many cases very technical people who just don't want their phone to be anything other than an appliance. It's quite common to love tinkering with things, while not wanting to tinker with everything.
> I am totally unimpressed by someone who hasn't used a smartphone for some hours, but perhaps this is some new kind of sarcasm that I can't yet appreciate.
I don't think this is sarcasm (sadly) as there really are some people living constantly glued to their phone. Screen time off the roof, like hours and hours a day.
>> I know that this is a joke, but let's remember to be inclusive and kind to our younger readers and take the time to explain (reiterate even) what pieces of old tech are, and what they were used for.
Expect it's not even funny, it's just super cringey and reeks of gatekeeping and condescension.
reply