- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
- technology@beehaw.org
You must log in or register to comment.
Why is the article using diagonal screen size as their measurement for phone size? In that case you could have a phone the exact same size get “bigger” just because bezel sizes have shrunk over the years.
They specifically call out the iPhone SE as a “small phone” that they seem to want. But the newest iPhone, the iPhone 16 is only 6% bigger in width and height. Fractions of an inch larger. I can totally understand why somebody would want a phone with smaller overall dimensions, but why on earth would your metric for an ideal phone be a smaller screen?
They suck and also the higher capacity batteries take up too much space now.
this is definitely a trade off. batteries are either small, tall, or thick. my phone with a 3" screen is quite bulbous.
I prefer that to it being thin and having like 3 hours of use time though
“thick” phones of the past fit in my pocket just fine.
We can, there’s just less demand for them. Sony was among the last holdouts for small phones with their compact series, but they stopped because they were their worst selling models.
Even Apple stopped selling their small SE model (that was basically iPhone 5 sized) despite it being the cheapest iPhone to get your hands on, because it sold terribly.
Small phones is something the tech community says it cares about, but the market has proven that the average person doesn’t care. Same as the headphone jack and microSD slot.
I don’t like it either, but phone companies aren’t deliberately leaving money on the table. If they thought small phones would sell gangbusters, they’d bring them back.
People don’t buy them for the price they’ll buy bigger phones. That’s it. That’s the whole story.
They have to make the phone cost $300 less to sell in meaningful numbers. Why do that when they could just not make them at all and sell fewer models at higher prices?
exactly, profit margin. people aren’t upgrading every year like they used to, so they have to make up (some of) that lost profit by increasing prices.
Yes, $300 was for the current flagship back then.
I want a repairable phone. A phone where I can replace the battery
Fairphone
Hum… So Fairphone ?
I really wanted to buy the Fairphone 5, but they don’t ship replacement parts to where I live which makes the entire concept pointless.
Forward shipping exists.
Unsure why you were downvoted. This is true
For being too forward, maybe?
OK, so that’s a possibility, but when you start adding a ~$30 fee on top of the cost of the part and shipping from Fairphone you’re looking at about $100 per repair, which stops making sense pretty quickly. You’re better off spending a little more money on a good device that is dust- and moisture-sealed and taking care of it for a few years.
Makes sense. But you can offset part of the shipping from the fact that you can easily do the repair yourself.
Another possibility would be the HMD Skyline. Less repairable than Fairphones, but still far easier than most other smartphones. Only 2 years of updates though.
But starting from 2027, a removable battery will be mandatory for all smartphone in the EU, which mean most, if not all smartphone will switch to removable battery. This may also make repair a lot easier.
For the US, its not just shipping, but also an import fee on top of that, since the De Minimis rule just got overturned by the trump administration.
Yea, but with the De Minimis rule overturned by the trump administration, importing it to the US is gonna have import fees. And also a lot of fees for each part you import, making the whole “repairability” thing pointless as it cost so much.
replace the battery
Besides the obvious Fairphone, theres a Samsung Galaxy XCover series, which acoording to many users on Reddit, the specs are not great for its price. The latest XCover 6 Pro is like $599 USD at release.
I bought a refurbished Xcover 6p and so far it’s great. There’s also the perks of being intended for companies: very long software support and pogo pin charging accessoires.
I’m curious, how repairable? Like comfortable with a solder iron or slots and what not like a PC?
Repairable phones would be great but the demand for them hasn’t undone the cost of design for them. There’s a lot of tech in an incredibly small package, so repairable phone would still require people to have specialty equipment to repair.
Like very few people own an oven for working with BGA chips. And if we go with socket based chips, the thickness of the phone has to increase or the battery has to decrease.
Don’t get me wrong, I think an open and repairable phone would be great. But having one is an engineering challenge that most phone makers have opted to just skip putting dollars into because the demand for one doesn’t justify the cost. Your average buyer is just chasing shiny and doesn’t see repairing their dinosaur as valuable.
But yeah, I’m sure there’s plenty here that would love such a device. Sadly we are not the majority.
Imo I don’t think the goal is/should be “every part is repairable by any average person without tools” tbh. Like that would be awesome but it also isn’t realistic, like you said phones are super complicated. But making simple repairs – stuff like swapping a battery – possible for anybody is realistic imo, and then the rest should be as easy to repair as possible for local shops or someone who does have the necessary skills and equipment. At least personally I feel like that’s a good spot to aim for.
It’s sad that people have gotten used to just throwing away stuff instead of repairing it. Sure, some repairs really aren’t worth it - like the screen I’d gotten replaced of my LG G3 that was prone to have this defect with its screen regardless of screen swaps and whatnot - but most of the time, it’s just minor things that can actually be fixed by non-tech savvy person.
I think it should be of paramount importance that more companies are held accountable as to the amount of waste they’re producing and how much they’re contributing to pollution and waste around the globe. Unfortunately, capitalism is a thing, so that’s not gonna happen.
Having repairable options for those that do care is awesome, though. If I could afford, I’d gladly go for a Fairphone if I ever need to replace my current phone (still going strong after 5 years of use). Until their mass appeal, they’ll likely remain out of my pockets.
Bga is more about skill than equipment. I’ve done it with a cheap hot air gun and a toaster oven. Though it took many failed attempts to get right
But this isn’t always about your phone being repairable by you. It’s about your phone being repairable at all. Apple, google, samsung, et al have made it clear that they have no interest in refurbishing and repairing phones. That’s fine, they have the right to do whatever I guess. And further, this creates a great opportunity for many people to create small businesses.
America has very few markets left wherein one can create a business that is not utterly dominated by some conglomerate that will eat your shit. This is one where you can do so, with honest work (eg not just buying shit from Chinese manufacturers and reselling it on amazon for a profit).
However, the tech industry is openly hostile to small business and its consumers, so every business that has worked in this sector has been either destroyed or hollowed out to barely anything by big techs greedy bullshit in the name of security.
This would enrich communities: you would have another possible route where someone local could open a business within the community, that would hire locally within the community. But apple, samsung, microsoft, etc lobby extremely hard to make sure that they never have to stop pairing parts, providing spare parts, providing schematics, etc. and of course they’re not being asked to do this for free. They’re being asked to do this for a fair and reasonable cost, but they still refuse.
Now designing phones with user replaceable wear items like batteries or even common failure points like screens is obviously a good idea as well in theory but comes with challenges. However the challenges are mixed. Batteries can be user replaceable in thin and waterproof phones. The galaxy s5 is almost as thin and almost as waterproof as the s23 and has a user replaceable battery. If more engineering effort was put forth I’m sure it could be greatly improved. The issue is design; they (especially apple) don’t want to disrupt their “beautiful”glass back phones that 99.9999% of people slap a case on. User replaceable screens are more challenging to make waterproof but I’m sure they could figure it out.
But if the above was addressed, they wouldn’t necessarily have to. We could go back to the days of going to a small store next to your grocery store and getting your phone screen changed out for $150 while you do your shopping. except much more money because an iphone 16 pro max oled is ~ $700 just for the screen, which brings up the other issue of people don’t want to repair stuff anymore because component cost is outrageous. The phone is $1200 for the base model so if the screen and labor is $800 a lot of people will (foolishly) go “well for $400 more I can just get a brand new one!” even though it’s the same damn phone. However, these screen prices fall dramatically when the phones get even a few gens older and a bunch get recycled
Replacing SMT components would fall outside of repairability for 99.99999% of people. More realistically things like ports, screens, and batteries should be replaceable since they’re typically connected to the main board with cables. Furthermore ICs going back on a phone is probably extremely rare while the above mentioned items are very common failure points.
HMD (Nokia) Skyline has a cool feature where you unscrew 1 screw and can change various things like battery. Unfortunately phone itself is not impressive especially from OS update standpoint (only 2 year support for major Android versions). I would love to see this idea being copied by other manufacturers.
Unfortunately phone itself is not impressive especially from OS update standpoint
I swear to god manufacturers do this on purpose so that they can point to the low volume of sales and claim “See! People don’t really want these features” when in reality they’ve just slapped a couple good features onto a completely dog shit device.
Unfortunately phone itself is not impressive especially from OS update standpoint (only 2 year support for major Android versions).
Companies with a smaller market share tend to do that (with Fairphone being the exception).
Why spend resources to support devices for 5 years (or more) if you can keep selling newer phones and redirect your devs to work on the new phone. Its just capitalism 🤷♂️
And screen. And buttons.
I also want something that’s supported more than 3 years so there’s a point to repairing it. Ideally, support should come from the community so it can be infinite as long as someone is willing to do the work.
What’s wrong with Fairphone then? Think I’m gonna buy FP 6 when it arrives
They are pretty expensive for the hardware.
Unless I’m misremembering don’t they charge flagship prices but have midrange specs?
Unfortunately, that’s the cost you pay for a more “ethical” phone. Apple, Samsung, and all the mainstream phones are cheaper because they are subsidized by underpaid labor and sometimes even child labor.
(Not judging people who buy mainstream phones, just stating the reality.)
Thanks! I didn’t know that was part of their thing. I just thought they made the phones repairable. Has their supply chain been audited by a third party?
I’ve also been looking at FP but I believe there are some issues of getting one outside of Europe.
We only get FF 4 here (US), and through a reseller (Murena). And my understanding is that there are caveats in the bands it supports.
I am in the US, and bought my FP5 through clove technologies in the UK. I’m on T-Mobile and get 5G and everything.
No Jack.
I crossed them off the list after they ditched the headphone jack and the CEO tried to blow smoke up everyone’s ass as to why. Then they introduced their new Bluetooth headphones.
Based on https://postmarketos.org/install/ the Nokia N900 can run the latest stable release of PostmarketOS.
Nokia N900 was a proper Linux-powered phone released in November 2009.
So yeah, it’s been getting over 15 years of community support so far.
Edit: Fixed typo
Whoever owns the Nokia badge are selling phones designed specifically for repairability by end users; the only issue I have with them is they don’t really say much about how long they’re going to have software support, so expect it to last 4 to 6 years tops before replacing it becomes required anyway.
we can’t have small phones because the os design can only be so flexible before it starts either being crap at every size or having so many edge cases that internally it’s stupid complex.
having limited sizes means the sizes they do have can be well covered
What edge cases are you referring to? Screen size doesn’t matter if the resolution is the same.
it does if you want your buttons to be anything close to the size of your finger, or if you want the text to be readable (which is adjustable, but most people do not)
Yes please. I really dislike iOS, but I use the iPhone 13 Mini for work and it’s the perfect form factor. I desperately want an Android phone that’s the same size, but I’m rocking a Flip which is the best I can do for small form factor right now.
Check out unihertz jelly phones, they are pretty impressive.
Thanks for the recommendation! I’ve checked them out before but found them a bit too bulbous.
The iPhone 13 mini was the perfect size and if Apple would have used that as a base for their new SE instead of the shitty 16e, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. Just give me a thicc 13 mini with a good battery, camera and a new processor.
Same, and I’ve never used an iOS device as a daily driver outside to work. I would literally dump my whole investment in the Android ecosystem over favourable form factor, especially now that Apple is on board with USBC.
I’d buy another 13 Mini, but I’m worried about how long it’ll be before planned obsolescence takes over.
I‘m also on the lookout for a cheap used one. The phase till planned obsolescence is surprisingly long with Apple as long as you have the tools to swap out the battery yourself. My wifes XS is still running great and thats a 7 year old phone by now. As soon as the batteries hit that 80% or lower degredation, they run like shit.
I‘m sure you could get at least another four years with updates out of it at the moment.
Making a small phone is harder than making a big phone.
Too small, can’t phone
I held on to my iPhone 4S as long as I could. Now I have a 12 “mini”. I know I’m in the minority, though, because I don’t spend all day staring at my phone. I do like having all the features, but I use them only occasionally–say, once a week or less. I prefer my internet use on my gaming computer with a big monitor, and a full-size keyboard.
I expect I’ll end up with a huge phone for my next one, that I don’t need, just to keep access to the functionality. Like everything else in life, there’s always compromises to be made.
I just want Star Wars style comlink. Wearable on my belt or neck, with a strap in case of dropping it.
Will have to be a bit bigger, to have enough keys. And some display, preferably monochrome text-only.
But in general it should be a device not emitting horrible blue light all the time.
About form - I think something round with keys on the sides is still a good idea.
Because most people want big screens?
I mean, it is simple.
Didn’t Apple just come out with one or am I mistaken?
I have an iPhone 15 Pro and a recent Pixel (just because I’m a dev and want to know both ecosystems). I use the iPhone as my daily driver, though, not because it’s necessarily better but because I cannot help myself when it comes to tinkering with Android devices. I have semi-bricked several over the years and then had to install Windows in a VM to run some sketchy-looking factory reset program.
Basically, it’s not an Android problem. It’s a me problem. I’m the one who needs a walled garden so I don’t do science experiments.
I can’t imagine using a phone that I can’t even use adless Youtube on :/
Safari + AdBlock + Vinegar makes for a great YouTube experience.
That said, Freetube on my Pixel is wonderful.
Yeah, fair. I picked this as an example, but overall I’d consider a phone unusable if you can be denied apps. Especially when it comes to important things like censorship evasion tools, which are very likely to be deleted from App Store on request.
Good to know that about one’s self.
Put it on a badge and make it so when you push on it, you say who you want call and it calls them.
Also make the badge the starfleet logo.
So, a smartwatch? Pretty sure someone has made “badge” holders for some models by now, just like you can get a brand new iPod.
I like big phones (and I can not lie)
My brother despises big phones and cannot tell the truth…
