General Smartphone Discussion Thread - What phones to recommend and which ones to avoid?

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At some point the main focus of consumer technology shifted from trying to impress old people with disposable income with the promise of more utility into, uh, trying to impress young people with the promise of impressing other people. apple didn't used to market the newest version of their operating system with pure aesthetics. china still has some of that schizo "uhh make it fold other direction" energy and it's respectable

apple wants everything to look like a direct x 9 tech demo and that's really funny to me but it also kinda sucks that they go with formless liquid instead of something defined and solid. bring aero back.
 
oh no its pipkun said:
theres a lot to be left desired. i bought a refurbed fold 4 for drawing and the bigger screen is nice for drawing or reading but its really fragile. the big screen ended up with lines of dead pixels after a pocket pebble managed to get in the little gap. the digitizer also lost sensitivity where the fold was. the front screen was tiny. its good for people like my missus who arent doing a lot of phyical activity for work.
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Haven't the Fold 6 and 7 done quite a bit to alleviate the problems that past models had? I keep hearing that the 7 is a game changer for foldable smartphones. And rumor has it that the battery on the 8 is going to be on par with the Ultra's.
 
Merton J. Dingle said:
Haven't the Fold 6 and 7 done quite a bit to alleviate the problems that past models had? I keep hearing that the 7 is a game changer for foldable smartphones. And rumor has it that the battery on the 8 is going to be on par with the Ultra's.
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My understanding is that the newer z folds fold flat which mitigates the debris problem but they also lack a digitizer. I'll stick with the ultra line for now until a better drawing solution comes out.
Samsung might remove the pen from future ultras.
 
big pauper said:
I've never seen anybody ever use the stylus on their phone and it was a huge trend for a while with LG and samsung and apple accessory manufacturers
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I have one. I used to use it for signoffs for work, but then I left that job and now I never use the thing.
 
Anyone ITT have any experience with Ulefone or other "rugged" smartphone brands? Utility is key to me, I want something sturdy that will last a very long time. Long battery life and good torch + speaker also desirable, I'm happy to compromise ergonomics for it, and I'm not that fussy about the camera.

It annoys me how higher cost = flimsier gimmick shit and sometimes a better camera with mainstream smartphone brands.
 
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TheArtilleryman said:
Anyone ITT have any experience with Ulefone or other "rugged" smartphone brands? Utility is key to me, I want something sturdy that will last a very long time. Long battery life and good torch + speaker also desirable, I'm happy to compromise ergonomics for it, and I'm not that fussy about the camera.

It annoys me how higher cost = flimsier gimmick shit and sometimes a better camera with mainstream smartphone brands.
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boy do i have the phone for you ($250 currently)
1765113648585.webp

I've been using a titan 2 for a week and the build quality is a strange mix of extremely high quality and extremely spartan. The software is basically just stock android and leaves a lot to be desired but for a normal shaped phone with normal input methods thats probably more of a benefit than a downside. They use LCD panels scavenged from new old factory stock, and they are manufacturing new high capacity batteries for these devices, so you probably wont be able to buy overstock on aliexpress and do repairs yourself. They do sell some user serviceable screen replacements but it's pretty hit or miss. Because of that, I do get the feeling that these are not phones that will last you 6-8 years and their business model is just hooking you onto their gimmicks on a 3-4 year refresh cycle. But, the last phone i bought for $400 was a nexus 4 and that phone broke after two years, so it's not really a scathing criticism it's just having realistic expectations.

they make one with a 24000mah battery and a DLP projector
 
Has anybody experience with AXP.OS? From what I can tell, it's a former fork of divestOS, targeted at a similar user base. Beyond that, I can't seem to find much additional info about it - just posts from the main developer steadfasterX, who pops up in several forums.
 
TheArtilleryman said:
Anyone ITT have any experience with Ulefone or other "rugged" smartphone brands? Utility is key to me, I want something sturdy that will last a very long time. Long battery life and good torch + speaker also desirable, I'm happy to compromise ergonomics for it, and I'm not that fussy about the camera.

It annoys me how higher cost = flimsier gimmick shit and sometimes a better camera with mainstream smartphone brands.
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They're pretty good phones, a friend has one that is like 1" thick and a week long battery life and he likes it. It's just that it is so heavy that you can't really put it in a pocket and if you use the included lanyard you need to adjust it so that it doesn't swing into your nuts all the time otherwise you won't be able to have kids.
 
glad i upgraded to an s25 when i had the chance then. feels nice to have a phone that doesnt have a plastic back and tweaks out doing anything remotely intensive. but at what cost? i lost out on flash storage expansion (i have bluetooth headphones, i can survive without the headphone jack for now).
 
Kiwifarmsname said:
God damn could we have at least ended on a high note? Why do we have to be stuck with the Switch 2 and PS5?!
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Secure your 16 GB VRAM GPU while you still can if you are PC gaymur.

PS6 has been long rumored for 2027. They might be internally debating between either 30 or 40 GB of unified RAM for it, based on a leak. They could always delay it a little into 2028. There's still some time for the RAM crisis to be resolved before it starts utterly ruining things for years. But if we're in the same mess a year from now, then I would be concerned about the next-gen getting a RAM cut, hobbling all of gaming throughout the 2030s.

I still use a smartphone with 4 GB RAM.
 
The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
Secure your 16 GB VRAM GPU while you still can if you are PC gaymur.

PS6 has been long rumored for 2027. They might be internally debating between either 30 or 40 GB of unified RAM for it, based on a leak. They could always delay it a little into 2028. There's still some time for the RAM crisis to be resolved before it starts utterly ruining things for years. But if we're in the same mess a year from now, then I would be concerned about the next-gen getting a RAM cut, hobbling all of gaming throughout the 2030s.

I still use a smartphone with 4 GB RAM.
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I have a PC that's decent but I worry if a part breaks. Also I feel sometimes console gaming is just better and I enjoy both. I don't really care for phones but I have a pretty good one right now and I keep phones for a long time. But what if I drop it or something? I feel like if things get really bad we'll see people start to refurbish older PCs and phones in mass.
 
Kiwifarmsname said:
I feel like if things get really bad we'll see people start to refurbish older PCs and phones in mass.
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Already happening. That's how I've gotten some good cheap stuff. The Skylake-era Intel chips represented a plateau for computing. Fast enough for all basic computing needs, as well as PS4-level gaming. Smartphones are also more than fast enough and the latest flagships are becoming capable of running emulated Windows x86 PC games.

RAM scaling slowed down significantly after around 2010. Copilot+ was the driver for making 16 GB a new minimum for PCs only recently, and very few people actually need >32 GB unless LLMs are involved.
GeorgeFloydFentanylStash said:
With how hungry apps are for memory, those phones are going to be terrible
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I've generally been OK with 4 GB. I have a tablet with 3 GB that can shit itself when 10+ Brave tabs are opened. 8 GB should be fine.

I think Samsung has stagnated around 12-16 GB for flagships while China went for 18-24 GB more often. There have been some press releases about a 32 GB smartphone package, but I don't know if they've been seen in the wild. Now I wouldn't be surprised to see cost-down 4/6/8 GB models with better SoCs than usual.
 
GeorgeFloydFentanylStash said:
With how hungry apps are for memory, those phones are going to be terrible
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It's mostly the games that will be affected, specifically the always-online Gachas especially if its 3D.

I can't think of any regular app that will need more than 4GB. MAYBE YouTube and any other online video platform? I don't use TikTok and the others so I'm not sure how resource-heavy they are.
 
Celebrate Nite said:
It's mostly the games that will be affected, specifically the always-online Gachas especially if its 3D.
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I got a 4GB phone a couple years ago when it was the best one that fit inside our corporate allowance. I figured it would be just fine, I'm running literally nothing else on it.

Wrrrrrong. They only let you do dual-profile (work/personal) now and with all the duplicated libraries thing fell flat on its face.

For a lot of people though, it'll be okay. It's not just gaming that can eat RAM though.
 
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