Yeah, roll one out with a 5.8" screen and a headphone jack amd I’ll buy it at a premium. I’d shell out even more for a true iPhone mini-sized phone if they make the battery fat enough for decent battery life – small phones can still be ergonomic and light enough with a little extra chonk.
Giant screen, no headphone jack? No thanks, I might as well buy a $50 android phone at a gas station.
Plus the M7 had a nicer aluminum unibody. The M8 had plastic on the front. Still handsome, but not the same level of gorgeous macbook-style design the M7 had. Fuck, I’d rock an M7 today if they trimmed the glass bezel down, removed the hardware nav buttons, and tossed in some new hardware.
Consider giving Steven Erikson a try. Malazan Book of the Fallen is huge and time-consuming, but his style of writing is worth the effort in terms of story and character development. His Willful Child series is Sci-Fi and might provide a way of sampling his very unique style without diving into Fantasy.
I am personally against it despite Sam Esmail’s involvement (I really liked Mr. Robot). It’s not that I don’t think it could be a good show, it’s that NBC has plenty of other properties from former science fiction shows they could redevelop, but they’re redeveloping this one instead....
Citymapper is the gold standard. Osmand is excellent, except for delays. Many countries have third party top-tier apps for transit and train navigation – Trainline comes to mind in the UK, but it varies by region.
Next year, congestion pricing is coming to New York City. And maybe, just maybe, the toll for motor vehicles entering the lower half of Manhattan should be set at $100....
Interesting points here. I hope things don’t work out this way, but I think there is a very strong chance that this is exactly what will happen: the streets of Manhattan below 60th will stay mostly-as-busy, but with more ride shares and private car services, since clear streets means rich people can finally transmute money into quick, private transportation.
I’m curious about this statement:
There exist way more people in New York who would drive if they could, but they literally can’t fit.
I believe there are a lot of rich folks in NYC who would rideshare even more if they didn’t get stuck in gridlock. But I’m not sure we have sufficient evidence to say that “way more people” would drive if there was less traffic. When I lived in NYC (just before covid hit), none of my friends owned cars even though they all had the means. It was just too much trouble to park them and maintain them for the few days a year you need a car if you mostly hang out in the city. And driving is a pain if you’re mostly in a city – the NYC lifestyle is very alcohol heavy and for a lot of folks only spans a couple of miles on an average day. Not exactly a huge benefit from cars there.
100% agreed that we should reclaim parking space and lanes from cars, though. Perhaps congestion pricing will temporarily empty the streets and give the city ammunition to reclaim that space? A smart city would enact congestion pricing, downsize the largest avenues before rideshares figure out a way to exploit the opportunity, and then use that reduced main throughput to justify downsizing and pedestrianizing streets across the city over the next few years. But I suppose they could have done that during the covid traffic downturn, too, like how Paris and London seized the empty streets to expand bicycle infrastructure and pedestrianize streets around schools.
The containers UI is damn near unusable, they’ve squeezed so many of those “offers” into the tiny addon manager popup.
I wish Mozilla had management who understood their userbase. But instead they keep pulling this crap which only makes me (and likely most other power users) less likely to use Mozilla branded products.
I’m definitely a small phone lover. I don’t watch videos on my phone if I can avoid it and tend to consume text-heavy content.
Currently bouncing between an Xperia XZ1 Compact running Lineage 17.1 and an iPhone SE 2016 (!!!) running iOS 15. I get security updates for both, but it’s clear that I’ll have to move to a different phone in the next year or two.
Honestly at this point I just wish Apple would bring out an “iPhone Classic” based on the 4,5, or Mini body. Throw a headphone jack on there, a TouchID power button, and I’d pay serious money for it on launch day. I’d prefer an SD card slot, but if I know the phone will last for 3-5 years, I can pay a couple hundred extra bucks for 512GB of storage.
I just do not get folding phones. I understand that others like them, but I’ve never been a tablet guy. I suppose I would consider one with an internal e-ink screen, so I could combine my e-reader and phone into a single device… but I don’t think I’d enjoy using a phone that’s 1.5-2x the standard thickness of modern phones (not counting those massive camera bumps!). Plus the durability issue – I would absolutely not trust any modern folding phone to last 5+ years, and at the $1000+ price point, it damn well better last 5+ years.
Above all else, I prefer small phones for two reasons:
my phone can “disappear” into my pocket, even if I’m walking, biking, running, or playing a sport
I can use my phone with one hand on public transit, or doing one of the above activities if I decide to listen to music during that activity
It’s really frustrating that phone companies don’t bother with small phones any more. But nobody is even trying – and never has tried – to market a small phone that stays out of your way but helps you when you need it. Even Apple barely marketed the Mini at all (and debuted it during a global pandemic when a lot of people stopped commuting and traveling, two of the best times to have a small one-handable phone).
I wonder how much Apple fucked up the small phone market by maintaining exclusive access to the Mini screens from Samsung, as the author mentions in this article.
“The problem is Apple has exclusive rights to [the iPhone Mini’s] display — so, even with the line being discontinued, [Samsung Display] isn’t going to give us access,” he told supporters last month.
Sounds like we’re splitting hairs: no other OEM is ordering the Mini-sized display, and this line certainly implies some kind of exclusivity. I’ve been following the thread on the Small Android Phone discord as well, and what I’ve seen there aligns with that understanding.
As far as I know, no small manufacturer ever gets displays built specifically for them. Even Pebble, which was a lot more popular than Small Android Phone, used preexisting displays. It just takes a lot of time, knowledge, and money to create a custom display.
I’ve looked at the Unihertz phones quite a bit, but the cell bands and camera have stopped me so far. Your Lemmy instance implies that you’re in the EU, so you should give it a shot if you can stomach the crappy camera. I’m afraid no Unihertz phone has IMS or voLTE support in the USA, so it’s an open question if you’ll even be able to use them at all on our networks in a year or two :(
Yeah, the small car thing is a perfect parallel. The market doesn’t necessarily fit preferences perfectly: instead, companies optimise for whatever MOST folks will buy that nets them the most money.
They make more money selling a large phone with a bigger sticker price and a bigger profit margin, so they make big phones. And the most phone-hungry people, power users, who buy a new phone every year or so, tend to buy big phones. So they cater to that group.
Think of it this way: when I bought my iPhone SE 2016 7 years ago, I cast maybe $100 of profit “vote” in the marketplace.
Every time someone buys a $1700 folding phone, they cast something between $500 and $1000 of profit “vote” in the marketplace. And they do that every year, not once every 7.
Of course, I’d be willing to spend a lot more on a really decent small phone. But nobody in the market has really experimented with that model yet. And it is admittedly harder to fit components into a smaller phone body (though not as hard as Apple would have you believe – after all, the 14 and 15 literally takes up more space with a useless empty plastic SIM card spacer than the headphone jack used to take.
I was going to say that the Mini should be pretty cheap now that it’s two generations old – the 13 is down to $629 new, after all, and the Mini ought to be $100 cheaper…
But it looks like Mini demand has actually driven prices much higher than the normal 13. Strange, almost as if there IS demand for small phones…
The UI for Fenix is dated. Some things need a little bit of love and others just don’t make sense at all, like when you paste a URL, you can’t see the URL or the Paste and Paste & Go options because the system pop up gets in the way....
Saw someone open a PR with this fully implemented a couple of months ago.
Goddamned PM faffed about “UI research necessary before we make changes”, linked them to a bugzilla post closed in favor of a JIRA ticket only internal users could view…
And then closed the PR, denying the change. And we wonder why Mozilla has been struggling so much lately.
I have been using xiaomi phones for a long time now, for most of them the (xda) community eventually had great ROMs that (eventually) worked without problems or with very little....
I know you don’t want to hear it, but if you want a phone that’s (relatively) privacy respecting, reliable as hell, well constructed so it won’t break after just a couple of years, and supported for a long time… you just described an iPhone. You could be the 2022 SE today for $400ish and use it for 3+ years before you have to do anything to it, and even then you’d just have to pay $69 or so for a battery swap. You could also buy a 13 Mini or a 12 Pro for close to the same price and get an OLED screen and a better camera.
The Pixel series is probably your best bet in terms of specs and theoretical support. But I would be very surprised if you were able to use a Pixel for 3+ years without developing a hardware issue. Maybe you’ll be lucky, but I wouldn’t bet on it, personally. My partner’s 4a isn’t even 3 years old yet and it’s clear that Google does not backtest any of their software updates on older hardware either. Hopefully that changes going forward, but Google has a pretty shit record with long-term support. They’ve promised to make replacement parts available for the 8 year lifespace of the 8 series phones, but the phones are glued together and hard to repair, so unless you’re hardcore about DIY, it’s unlikely that you’ll bother with it. Instead you’ll likely end up going to a repair shop, which you could also do with older Pixels today. And both Pixels and their replacement parts are iPhone-level expensive unless you’re playing the carrier incentive game.
I’m not sure why others are shitting on the Fairphone’s hardware. I think it’s incredibly dumb that they killed the aux jack, and the phone is way too big for my liking… but it’s literally built to be easy to repair. And Fairphone has a proven track record of support for their phones. It isn’t perfect, but I’m much more likely to believe that you’d use a Fairphone for 5+ years than a Pixel. If you’re concerned about part availability down the road, just buy a couple of spare batteries, a spare screen, a spare camera module, and a spare USB-C port today.
I’ll probably switch it to GrapheneOS after next month because I think it’s a software issue, not a hardware problem. But my partner can’t use Android Auto even though our car supports it, her phone crashes and becomes unresponsive randomly, and apps frequently drop out of memory when you aren’t heavily multitasking. The phone is perfectly capable of running a browser, music player, and maybe the camera all at once, so it’s frustrating to see this nonsense play out.
The phone is only two years old and runs stock Android. Around 60-70% storage usage on average. No clue what’s causing so many problems, but I’ve heard other 4a users say similar things lately.
I’d go with the Fairphone if I were you, as long as you actually care about having the phone long term. I know the Pixel is very shiny and very nice, but Google really does have an awful history of QA. Fairphone isn’t perfect either, but being able to repair things yourself is a huge benefit. Sure the CPU and camera and screen aren’t as nice, but they’re probably nicer than what you’ve currently got, and definitely nice enough unless you’re a tech reviewer who’s constantly looking at the new shinies.
Plus, y’know, it is kind of cool that Fairphone tries to produce their phones without any slavery or labor abuses, and at least makes real attempts at sustainability. When you get burned by Google, you just feel shame because you knew they were going to screw you one way or another. If you get burned by Fairphone, at least you tried to do something better in the world.
It turns out that the DRM keys only matter on Android 8 (Oreo) – on 9 (Pie) and on all custom ROMs, they don’t matter. I think. Camera quality certainly seems fine to me – comparable to my 2016 iPhone SE, that is, acceptable but not beautiful.
It seems nobody really cares about the DRM keys any more unless you’re hellbent on reselling your XZ1C with the capability of taking high quality photos on Oreo. A pretty niche thing these days!
Because the DRM keys don’t matter any more, no need to root or downgrade. You probably have to factory reset, but you should be able to take a backup and install a custom ROM. Lineage 17.1 and 20 have both treated me well, and introduce some nice new features and conveniences along with improved app compatibility now that Pie is so old. A tough sell on a daily driver, I know, but if you’re contemplating a phone upgrade anyway, this might get you a couple more years out of the XZ1C!
Have you had any issues with crashing modems on your cellular provider? I’m curious if my issue (works OK for a few days after flashing Lineage over stock, then the cell modem totally dies and the wifi crashes every minute or so) is limited to Google Fi. Sadly Fi’s international data is really valuable for me so I can’t switch to another MVNO, but it would be nice to know if I have the option.
Official, too! And I believe the predecessor, the Z2 Compact, also has official Lineage support.
Sadly the XZ2 did away with the headphone jack and has a (subjectively) shittier design. But it is still smaller than any modern phone by a fair margin.
iFixit: We’re Ending Our Samsung Collaboration (www.ifixit.com)
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HTC One M8: The Android GOAT, 10 Years On! (www.youtube.com)
Google's plan is to annoy you relentlessly until you update Messages (www.androidauthority.com)
There’s a new Google Messages update page that takes up your phone’s entire display every time you open the app....
Punkt rocks its minimalist roots with first smartphone (techcrunch.com)
I'm REALLY well read and I have a hard time finding new books to read. I need an audiobook for train ride->plane flight->bus ride tomorrow. Please halp!
I have read a TON of contemporary SciFi authors. I really enjoy...
NBC is planning to reboot Battlestar Galactica for the second time. What do you think? (deadline.com)
I am personally against it despite Sam Esmail’s involvement (I really liked Mr. Robot). It’s not that I don’t think it could be a good show, it’s that NBC has plenty of other properties from former science fiction shows they could redevelop, but they’re redeveloping this one instead....
Google Maps transit is still a frustrating experience despite the latest changes (www.androidauthority.com)
[article] Maybe Don’t Drive Into Manhattan | The Atlantic (www.theatlantic.com)
Next year, congestion pricing is coming to New York City. And maybe, just maybe, the toll for motor vehicles entering the lower half of Manhattan should be set at $100....
Microsoft now thirstily injects a poll when you download Google Chrome - The Verge (www.theverge.com)
The Verge: So long, small phones / There are fewer choices than I thought — and I’m getting out before the end. (www.theverge.com)
Firefox for Android UI update? Material You?
The UI for Fenix is dated. Some things need a little bit of love and others just don’t make sense at all, like when you paste a URL, you can’t see the URL or the Paste and Paste & Go options because the system pop up gets in the way....
Looking for new long-term Android with ability to flash (good, working) ROM
I have been using xiaomi phones for a long time now, for most of them the (xda) community eventually had great ROMs that (eventually) worked without problems or with very little....
Are there any small phones with custom ROM support?
At this point I’m not even picky about which custom ROM I run....