What do you think about modern smart phones?

[UN 474]

They're fragile, have poor battery life, and riddled with bloatware that's impossible to remove without rooting the device.

I own a personal Chinese surveillance device disguised as a Huawei P8 lite. I bought a case to protect it against any accidental knocks and falls, until that unlucky day when I dropped it on the floor and smashed the glass back. The case has failed it's purpose, and I pray to God that it ends up in hell for all eternity.
When I removed the broken glass back, I was annoyed with its overall construction.
The only material holding the glass to the back phone was this paper thin plastic layer. There was nothing supporting the glass to assist structural integrity while under any form of mechanical stress. Like, what the fuck?
What also annoyed me was the lack of protection on the battery. The glass could quite easily penetrate the plastic membrane thingy and then damage the battery, thus quickly turning the phone into a personal bomb.

Then again, it's my own fault for buying a shitty brand of phone.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on phones in general.

What pisses you off? What makes you so fucking angry that it makes you want to cause a mass shooting?


Edit: I recently got myself one of these to replace it. No bloatware, nothing. Just a clean install of Android right out of the box.
If hardware isn't too much of a concern, I'd recommend getting a Cubot King Kong.

Cubot King Kong Review

Cubot King Kong - cheap but tough! Where to buy: https://goo.gl/2yHUi2 Written review: https://goo.gl/9M2ydT

www.youtube.com

 

[REGENDarySumanai]

I bloody hate how much bloatware is on the phones. Samsung is the worst offender in this regard because I have a 16 GB phone and at least 9 GB of storage is taken up by the useless bloat. Also, my battery is shit because my battery is old as fuck (honestly, I should replace it). Apple deserves to burn in Hell because you shouldn't need to melt the glue holding the screen in place just to get to the innards of the phone.

 

[BONE_Buddy]

There are tools that do specific tasks better than smart phones. i.e. writing forum posts is better with an actual, physical, keyboard.

But because they are conveniently at hand everywhere you go, they get substituted in despite being a significantly worse experience than the specialized tools.

That is my main grip with them. They encourage a worse user experience out of convenience. I just don't know how to fix that.

 

[Gustav Schuchardt]

The disappearance of removable batteries in almost all new phones drives me insane. Back in the old days when your phone got old, hot and slow and the battery life bad, you'd just pull a spare battery off the charger and swap it for the dead one in your phone.

Now you theoretically have fast charge, but it never seems to work. And fast charge won't help you when the phone gets old, hot and slow and the battery has lost a decent chunk of its capacity.

Also why is it a two year old phone is basically unusable? It's insane how you spend hundreds of dollars on a device and it'll be OK for a year, and then rapidly become so crap you need to buy a new one.

And why are headphone ports disappearing? I've got a Bluetooth headset but it has poor battery life and makes the phone battery life worse. I've also got a wired headset which has the downside of wires but a load of upsides - better sound, better phone battery life. And yet headphone jacks are going the way of removable batteries.

And then there's cost. A high end phone is $1000. For something which is designed to die in a year and a half.

 

[JM 590]

You'd really like JerryRigEverything on YouTube. Here's a video of him doing a durability test on a Huawei P9:

All of his videos are like that, and show off just how smartphones are all just about the same today. They're all way too thin, extremely fragile, have a boring design and look almost identical. The defining features these days are if and how the screen has a notch cut out of it, and how many various cameras there are on the back. That's about it.

The market still seems to follow whatever the newest iPhones are doing, which used to be a good direction. iPhones were great until around 2014, when the iPhone 6 Plus came out and had that huge bendgate problem that Apple quickly swept under the rug. Things just kind of started going downhill from there - iOS is stagnant as all fuck, and newer iPhones are noteworthy for bizarre design choices like the notch and the lack of a headphone jack. The headphone jack being an especially big bugaboo, because the reason given is because it's an older connector, and every single millimeter of space is valuable in an iPhone.

So... maybe get rid of the proprietary charging port too? Why's that still there? What about wireless charging? And file transfers over the several different wireless radios in the phone? NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 4G, but we still need a USB port? Really? Plus, the iPod Shuffle line charged over the headphone jack, so that's possible.

 

[SmileyTimeDayCare]

I have an older phone from GoogleFi. It doesn't really seem to track very much though I'm sure Google tracks my every step.

The battery life is pretty great and no carrier bloatware.

Modern smart phones are adult sized pacifiers that gave businesses an alternative to RF ID chips.

 

[millais]

For an infrequent smartphone user like me, it's getting trickier to install stuff like Xposed on the newer Android builds in order to get more control over basic phone functions and bypass stupid hardcoded safety limits on things like volume control.

 

[Sprig of Parsley]

I use a Moto G4 Play (version without adware).

It does its job(s) in a fashion that isn't terrible. I wouldn't touch an iPhone.

 

[Looney Troons]

I work from my phone quite a bit. Where I appreciate the convenience, I find myself checking work-related emails and chats outside of work hours which is an extremely bad habit. When going out with friends and family, it irks me that people will choose to dick around on their phone other than partake in whatever social gathering is happening. The technology itself is... whatever, but far too many have allowed their mobile devices to completely control their lives. I know people who feel uncomfortable if they are unable to snap a shot of their food for Instagram before eating. Mega ‘tism.

Edit: since this thread is more tech-y, I use iPhones. I don’t have any complaints about them. I have no need for a terminal or anything of the sort built into my phone - there are also several decent SSH applications available. All of my phones seem to have shit battery life, but that’s likely because I have Outlook et al set to push notifications toward me.

 

[UN 474]

So... maybe get rid of the proprietary charging port too? Why's that still there? What about wireless charging?

Despite how horribly inefficient wireless charging actually is, I can see this happening.

 

[Looney Troons]

Question: do people still find it necessary to ‘root’ their devices? That’s a term I haven’t heard in years pertaining to phones.

 

[edibleBulimia]

I ironically have an IPhone, I got it as a gift and don’t have the money to get another smartphone.
My old samsung smartphone works like shit, it’s 6 years old, I only use it to download games that otherwise are paid on the IPhone.

 

[JM 590]

Question: do people still find it necessary to ‘root’ their devices? That’s a term I haven’t heard in years pertaining to phones.

As far as I know:

-If on an iPhone: Yes, if you want to pirate apps or run homebrew.

-If on an Android: Only for installing different bootroms, or if you need some very specific, weird permissions. Like for example, there's a PS3 controller app you can get on the Play Store that requires root to let you use a PS3 controller wirelessly on Android, even to this day. PS3 controllers work fine over USB without root, but if you want wireless, you need both root and that app. I have no idea why.

But rooting older Androids is still useful if you want to squeeze a few more years out of an old one.

 

[Medicated]

They're fragile, have poor battery life, and riddled with bloatware that's impossible to remove without rooting the device.

I own a personal Chinese surveillance device disguised as a Huawei P8 lite. I bought a case to protect it against any accidental knocks and falls, until that unlucky day when I dropped it on the floor and smashed the glass back. The case has failed it's purpose, and I pray to God that it ends up in hell for all eternity.
When I removed the broken glass back, I was annoyed with its overall construction.
The only material holding the glass to the back phone was this paper thin plastic layer. There was nothing supporting the glass to assist structural integrity while under any form of mechanical stress. Like, what the fuck?
What also annoyed me was the lack of protection on the battery. The glass could quite easily penetrate the plastic membrane thingy and then damage the battery, thus quickly turning the phone into a personal bomb.

Then again, it's my own fault for buying a shitty brand of phone.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on phones in general.

What pisses you off? What makes you so fucking angry that it makes you want to cause a mass shooting?


Edit: I recently got myself one of these to replace it. No bloatware, nothing. Just a clean install of Android right out of the box.
If hardware isn't too much of a concern, I'd recommend getting a Cubot King Kong.

Cubot King Kong Review

Cubot King Kong - cheap but tough! Where to buy: https://goo.gl/2yHUi2 Written review: https://goo.gl/9M2ydT

www.youtube.com

I don't use phones, so I would be interested in hearing what I'm missing out on.

 

[Baby Jane Hudson]

To the OP, I have to say my Samsung S7 hasn't betrayed me the way my pc did today. It totally puked out on me for no apparent reason, it wouldn't start up so I had to refresh the whole system and lost a lot of stuff as a result!! Not Happy!!!! I had no warnings, it was fine last night when I shut it down. So at the moment, my Samsung phone and my Samsung Tab4 are in my good graces, my Dell PC..not so much.

 

[PL 001]

They definitely seem more cheaply made and not built for any long lasting use. I just upgraded maybe 4 months ago and my phone already seems to hemorrhage battery life, even in idle and after I've gone through and disabled any background apps.

Bloatware is a big issue as well. A good third of my phone space is taken up by "essential" apps that are unnecessary and a huge pain in the ass attempting to uninstall.

 

[JM 590]

I don't use phones, so I would be interested in hearing what I'm missing out on.

-Mobile app stores are wastelands of skinner box games so you're missing out on the worst, addictive-by-design pieces of shit you'll ever play

-The perpetual cycle of having to look at a little screen around 50 times a day because the world now expects you to be connected 24/7

-Touchscreen keyboards that'll take you a couple of years to get used to

-Pretty good cameras honestly

 

[Coolio55]

Never use phones but Sam Hyde sums up my opinions pretty well

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

I think smartphones are legal crack-cocaine and they turn people into vain, vapid assholes.

But yeah, they're pretty fun.

 

[Samoyed]

Even with the massive benefits they bring, new smartphones definitely have major flaws with communicating "what shouldnt be touched or it will fuck up". Samsung's developement of foldable phones comes to mind when I think about this since reviewers/early adopters thought a part of the screen was just the protective layer for scratches.