I'm literally still rocking a 3A (XL) and have no complaints. But I think visually, it's kinda funny how the 3A still has the one lens and every new phone now is up to like 12 lenses or whatever. I have heard a lot of good things about Zenfone 10 so I might pick that one up in the future.

I really really loved my 4A, but I found the battery was quite noticeably small unfortunately. I would have been okay with a slightly larger device and. Bigger battery because of it.

Excellent phone though, absolutely loved it.

Just picked up a 6A and other than the screen being almost unuseable outside under the Cali sun, I love it

The saddest thing is that Windows Phone actually had this figured out in 2012. The drivers for the SoC, baseband, etc were literally just WDM drivers. This allowed Windows Phone to have a standard installer image across different phones, get OTA updates directly from Microsoft, and even be hacked onto phones that never supported it. It also allowed full Windows 10 and Windows 11 for ARM to be hacked onto the Lumia 950, because Windows Phone uses the same driver model as full Windows. The drivers "just work".

Android is hampered by lack of stable driver ABI, because Linux has no stable driver ABI. Windows drivers for Windows 7 will mostly still work on Windows 11 without recompilation. Linux drivers break as soon as anything in the kernel changes, requiring a recompilation. This is untenable for closed source drivers and is the reason why Google can never offer a "standard" OS image that includes drivers for all phones.

PC Compatibility exists because Compaq and others were allowed to re-implement a reverse engineered version of IBM's BIOS without being sued into oblivion.

That will never happen with Qualcomm unless forced my legislation.

I was about to disagree but then i remember i needed a custom Kernal for my Zerolemon battery. That shit was a beast. Lasted 3 -5 days on a single charege with heavy usage and about 2 weeks very light usage. Now phone companies make it hard af to customize your kernal and get root access. Then current Android OS are favoring Samsung devices. Many non Samsung device uses are complaining of slow downs and freezing after the recent Android upgrade. Tbh i thnk they just need to allow customization again instead of a standard for all.

> 10+ year old phone

10 years? how long does you battery last?

That's mostly due to not getting OS updates I would imagine.

Yeah iPhones definitely hold up better after a few years

It's not just about profit, it's also just really hard to make large software programs work well. The Android and Apple phone markets have literally billions of users, it's hard to manage such a gargantuan set of software.

Yup, went to the Apple store and got my daugther phone battery replaced for like 80$CAD by apple. That was around 3 years ago, I’m sure inflation made it more expensive but still very, very reasonable.

Back in the day I knew people that would carry around 2 batteries. A battery is smaller than a charge bank thing and you don't need a cord. Just a quick swap and keep going.

My gut is telling me Motorola.

There is absolutely an advantage to using adhesive in a phone. Any time you introduce something modular in consumer electronics, you are sacrificing something.

You can stick a phone in a ziplock and that's IP68 too.

Yes but these new EU regulations aren't going to help there.

Iphone 14 is rated for almost 5.8 meters (19 feets). Thats..quite deep. If your phone is that deep I think its gone anyways unless its a crystal clear pool or you have some diving equipment on hand.

Samsung did an IP68 phone with a replaceable battery. In 2022.

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php

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I think you're still going to get the glued-together glass slab design even with this regulation.
The older days of being able to pop off the back and hot-swap your battery are likely gone (and it's worth pointing out that designing battery cases for that type of swapping does take up space and would mean slightly reduced capacities). What we are going to see is no more incidences of batteries that are glued so tight to the phone board that you basically risk tearing it apart when you try to remove it.

> There are still cars from the 80s that get 30-35+ mpg like a standard car nowadays.

Because they're death traps. They weigh like half what a modern car does and their list of safety features is: seat belts.

And to know that your phone should be technically off if you turn it off and take out the battery.

Yea... I'd just throw the whole thing away.

"New cars, starting in 2018, will need to be equipped with backup cameras!"

**THIS DOES NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK THIS MEANS**

This does not mean Hot Wheels and Barbie replica cars for your toddler will need a backup camera!

All this means is that the motor vehicle you buy and use and need a drivers license for will need a back up camera!

Truly! God damn its upvoted to thousand votes and I am looking for a gotcha in it if I missed anything because without this guy shouting from his lungs I knew exactly what it meant :S

It always baffled me how so many people celebrated the technical innovation with each feature they took from us...

- removable batteries
- sd cards
- headphone jacks

The marketing machine brainwashed so many consumers into believing that removing features was in consumers best interest somehow and not ALL about making sure we bought more phones, more cloud services, and more expensive accessories from them.

So by "tech" influencers, you mean "Apple shareholders"?

John Deere has entered the chat

The problem with almost all American rights is you have to be ready to sue to defend them. Plenty of companies get away with blatantly illegal warranty policies because are you really gonna hire a lawyer over a defective graphics card?

The Samsung Galaxy S5 had an IP67 rating. The back panel was made of plastic/vinyl, had a rubber gasket around the entirety of the panel, and clipped in and out of place with one's fingers.

I feel an appropriate modern adaptation of this could easily be done, while still maintaining the IP68 and quality standards of current phones.

Not only that, but the ur-example here is that Sony had a Walkman in the late 80's/early 90's that was waterproof. I will reiterate, for the Zoomers in the audience reading: This device was waterproof, accepted removable AA batteries, and also split in half like a clamshell so you could put a cassette tape inside it. The whole thing. In half. On a hinge.

This is an *extremely* solved problem. Any whining to the contrary is either shilling or wilful disingenuity at this point.

If the comments are to be believed any time this topic comes up, there is a not insignificant fraction of users who want a waterproof phone with swappable batteries. It's up to the manufacturers to man the fuck up and make that happen. Isn't that how the vaunted free market is supposed to work? Instead, we have these motherfucking handset makers trying to dictate to *us* what "we" want.

Sure, but there’s trade-offs. The Xcover 6 has almost identical height and width as the the iPhone 14 Max but is 20% thicker. And despite the extra volume still has a 10% smaller battery. All that battery packaging takes up a lot of space

It’s not an impossible task and never was. But when consumers have the choice most people have preferred bigger batteries over removable ones

I remember the S5 also had a removable battery.

I think Samsung stopped doing that when they released the S6.

I still use my S4 as my GPS, replacing batteries was so great I now have an Xcover Pro upgrade which does the same, carry a spare battery in my jacket

I'm honestly curious how much of it is by design and how much of it is "we're building as compact as possible. If that means it's hard to replace the battery, so be it." Perhaps it's just a benefit to them.

>Probably

You’re just making stuff up because it sounds reasonable.

Planned obsolescence is 100% but that doesn’t make everything a conspiracy.

The more realistic scenario is that choices were made because of tolerance in the manufacturing. Using an adhesive over screws means slapping glue down and putting the device in, using fasteners means they have to be properly torqued or there has to be some mechanic advantage like a plastic flange around the outside of the battery pack to secure that battery, which means it takes up more space. Engineers often try to use other parts of a device to use as somewhere they can secure something together, such as secure if two or 3 sub components.

Engineering and supply chain are incredibly complex beasts. Yes, companies are predatory. However, it’s not very good to feel forced to replace something because the equipment failed. That doesn’t give confidence in the buyer to just go out and replace their phone with the next generation model. That’s a negative way of attracting attention.

Instead, Apple slowly adds features every year so they can always fit in that “one more thing” and make people feel like their current phone isn’t fast enough or good enough when comparing to the latest new model.

Obviously like, “my battery is already shot, I could replace it, or I can just buy a new phone *with features I think I want anyways*.

Planned obsolescence only really works if the industry is specifically colluding. The lightbulb industry had a lightbulb mafia and they 100% were producing light bulbs that failed way more than they ever should have because they colluded with each other to make sure that no matter what bulb consumers were buying, they all failed around the same time, and then it was just luck or the draw which lightbulb someone buys to replace it with.

Making phones more difficult repair has more to do with, engineers are thinking about the best way to package the phone, deliver on the hardware, lower manufacturing costs, make sure they don’t fuck something up and have the Galaxy Note level of failure.

I would bet you can find some marketing asshole directly telling an engineer to make something worse on purpose. Yeah, of course middle management are always looking for ways to become upper management. That level of short sightedness is what made the auto industry incredibly stagnant. But, I think you’re overlooking so many other factors that lead to why a choice was made.

Material science, manufacturing, and so many other things are rapidly changing, and the reason why a choice was made can often been outdated by the time a product goes to market because someone else figured out a better way to make a process that meets the scale necessary to make a phone capable of meeting a specific water resistance standard. It’s just way too fucking complex for you to make sure declarative statements only for you to then use *probably* in the next sentence.

Subs are welded, which doesn't lend itself to modularity.

>Submarines aren't held together with glue... well except for oceangate.

Not even that one, well, not anymore

No, generally they’re welded together, and oxy-acetylene torches are standard equipment, but it’s probably not a good idea for consumers to be using those, especially near batteries.

> If you actually bother to read the regulations themselves, which are actually very simply written

I believe that's also by regulation.

>Except pretty much anyone can watch a 5 minute video on YouTube and change a alternator. And the tools you need are tool commonly used for many things.

>With phones some can need a heating source, specialty tools or bits. But yet when you open them up, they chang out pretty much the exact same way as they used to.

>It's convoluted for literally no good reason, only thing it is good for planned obsolescence.


$1. They aren't capable of changing an alternator, youtube or no, with random tools they have laying around their house.

There are countless models of cars that have alternator replacement book times of greater than three hours (for a professional!), and some require draining the cooling system. Some models will require an oem scan-tool for integration. FWD cars often require engine-mount removal for alternator access. Merecedes, BMW, and AUDI use water-cooled alternators on some of their models. Some modern Alfa's $1. This all assumes that the hardware isn't corroded to hell.

People love to throw around "planned obsolescence" as if it's some grand conspiracy, but the reality is that there are engineering constraints when designing a product, be it packaging, time-to-market, repairability, assembly processes, safety mandates, component interchangeability, etc.