Are phones getting ridiculous now?

[the_boon]

If someone made a BB Priv style portrait slider, I'd actually pay $1400 for such a phone.

 

[Morty2264]

If someone made a BB Priv style portrait slider, I'd actually pay $1400 for such a phone.

That does sound like a supremely tempting phone.

 

[ptkelly]

Phones, and their cameras, are fantastic. Prices are ridiculous. Rather reminds me of my ex-wife who wanted to see how far she could push and was totally shocked when I wasn't there any longer.

 

[the_boon]

Phones, and their cameras, are fantastic. Prices are ridiculous. Rather reminds me of my ex-wife who wanted to see how far she could push and was totally shocked when I wasn't there any longer.

Phones now are trying too hard to be cameras rather than tough communicators who can withstand day to day abuse.

 

[anon(50597)]

Phones now are trying too hard to be cameras rather than tough communicators who can withstand day to day abuse.

I can agree with this.
It's partly due to consumer demand and partly due to they have run out of things to add or improve (battery life would be nice though).

 

[Elky64]

Phones now are trying too hard to be cameras rather than tough communicators who can withstand day to day abuse.

Although I do like my camera's totally agree with this.

 

[Elky64]

I can agree with this.
It's partly due to consumer demand and partly due to they have run out of things to add or improve (battery life would be nice though).

Yup people like new and shiny things, you know the one's many will be adorning with a case LOL. And the consumer does control the show wanting their devices adorned with every bell-n-whistle even if it has little impact on day-to-today use, or is rarely implemented. But as long as the demand is there the manufactures will keep adding them while increasing price... I'll be waiting on the sidelines for the big train wreck (LOL) as just can't see this trend continuing on forever.

 

[Morty2264]

Phones now are trying too hard to be cameras rather than tough communicators who can withstand day to day abuse.

I do agree that phones should be a bit more durable these days... I know Gorilla Glass and other aspects of the phone are tougher than before; and since some people want fashionable phones (glass backs, sleek look, big screens), durability in phones can oftentimes be difficult to accomplish.

 

[Mike Dee]

Yeah, definitely. Though industry giants like Apple, Samsung, and Google have been pricing their new smartphones at about $1,000 over the past two years, new data shows that such a cost is simply too high for us!

There are alternatives that cost much less if the price is too much.

 

[the_boon]

There are alternatives that cost much less if the price is too much.

Or phones from those same companies but from a generation or two prior

 

[michael58239914]

Who remembers the pomegranate phone. That prank from the early 2000's is becoming a reality.

 

[ptkelly]

Remember "phablets"?

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-phablets/

Big change seems to be bezels and batteries.

 

[Morty2264]

Remember "phablets"?

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-phablets/

Big change seems to be bezels and batteries.

The V20... Still wish I'd gotten that.

 

[Kim Li1]

For me, yes. Larger size and some useless features

 

[BergerKing]

Well, I do a massive amount of work on my smartphone, and I used to be of the opinion that the Note line was too big. Seemed silly back when I was a BlackBerry fan. I ran across my old BlackBerry Tour, and it's just so daggone tiny. It used to be that I'd never consider anything like the Note, until I hit the Motorola Photon, and suddenly, a bigger screen became an enticing option.

I graduated from the Galaxy S4 to the Note 5, and smaller options were out the door. I put my devices through the ringer and it just has to be able to keep up.

Right now, I'm using tag team phones, a Samsung J2 Core and my Note 9 from a different carrier that I had to drop service on because I've spent months in the hospital, more in recuperation, and she got me the Core on her line until I can get back to work.

I don't do a lot on it, because it is just too gadawful slow to work on. It's literally as bad as some of the BlackBerrys back in 2012, spending as much as thirty seconds, sometimes longer to load a single web page if there are any graphics. It sucks, big time!

So I'm a big phone guy. I operate a smartphone a lot easier than I do a laptop, by a huge margin. Sometimes, if I really wanna play, I slip my Amazon Fire 8" Tab on my pocket and take it along, the blessing of cargo pants and huge pockets.

I also love a lot of the bells and whistles of high-end phones. I love that they've amped up the power so you can rapidly multi-task. I know some think it's unnecessary, but I've crashed the Core a dozen times this year, and the Note hasn't done that since the day I unboxed it back in August of 2018.

Backtracking is OK, some people only need a simpler phone. But even my former mother-in-law has increased her phone in size and power, especially after I taught her the ins and outs in a couple of visits. She's 77.

By the way, I type tens of thousands of words a day, frequently. I'm a story writer and working on a novel. Recently, I post a story I'd written over a couple of hours, tried to post it to the writers group on Facebook, and it cut off partway through. I took the story into a character counter, pasted it, and was shocked to find it was almost 16,000 words.

I'm looking forward to getting back to work so that I can upgrade to either of the latest Note devices. Just love 'em!

 

[Brian Dorken]

I think phones are getting really boring now due to them looking almost identical to each other.

But I'm glad Samsung made the S10e, it's basically the only truly compact high end phone of last year.

Even smaller than the Pixel 3 and Galaxy A40.

I wish there were more keyboard phones (I'd have paid well over a grand for an S10e with a sliding portrait mechanism like the BB Priv for example)

And just different form factors in general.

I wish that phones that had moving parts had them for a real/practical reason (such as a keyboard) instead of for the sake of having zero bezels/no hole punch/notch.

Foldables seem to be the only exciting thing, but they have to sort out the durability issues.

I totally agree. Nothing much seems to be happening with smartphones now apart from the odd tweak here and there with the camera and camera apps. The problem is have they gone just about as far as they can with them? What else can your smartphone actually do? I've actually resorted to becoming a beta tester for Android 11. Again, one or two useful tweaks with the UI but there is nothing startling about it.

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

I have an S10+ since January this year. I had a Pixel 2xl and Pixel 4xl and the Samsung is actually smaller in footprint than the Pixel 4xl although I have more screen. I am long sighted and wear 3 different pairs of glasses, or ought to, for varying distances. I love the larger screen as I have text size turned up to save me wearing my intermediate glasses and readers.

What i love the best is Dex. It is just so good. I can use my phone and all its apps while having a bigger screen and multitasking is a breeze. I bought a portable monitor and wireless keyboard. I have plenty of Bluetooth mice and I got a USB c hub with hdmi, USB A and USB c inputs. So I can power the monitor and the phone from one mains plug via usb-c and i have a couple of foldable stands for the monitor and the phone. It is a small footprint and runs superbly.

Dex is why I probably will stick to Samsung from now on.