Positronic @ Positronic @lemdro.id

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Joined

2 yr. ago

It probably is if the rumour about them switching to a 19.5:9 resolution is true. It'll still be larger than the S24 and Pixel 8 because of the top and bottom bezel but height should decrease by a couple of mm.

Seems like an overclocked version of the 7+Gen 3, interesting they didn't release that chip with this one.

I definitely think Apple and Samsung can do a smaller premium phone if they want to as Apple makes the lion's share of profits in the industry and Samsung is the only other manufacturer that makes a significant amount of profit. Heck Samsung can probably do a smaller midrange phone as well. I do not think it makes sense for other manufacturers as they make 3% profit and targeting a very vocal but demanding minority isn't going to help them improve that.

Small phone users should also temper their expectation, I saw a lot of comments from people saying they didn't get the iPhone mini because they expected the Pro Max's specs in the mini form factor. They have to understand that the cameras on the biggest flagships occupy a lot of space and it isn't feasible to bring it to a smaller form factor. Increasing the thickness might help with the battery but that's about the only component that benefits with an increase in one dimension.

I feel the cameras are better than the majority of the competition at that price if the Pixel 7a is excluded. I agree they're nothing special but Xiaomi's shots are overexposed and they insist on throwing a rubbish 8 MP ultrawide on everything that's not their flagship number series.

I also am not a fan of Samsung's image processing, feel they oversharpen too much. Pixel is probably the safest option if still images are the most important thing unless one is willing to go through some hassle to get the Vivo X100 Pro, Oppo Find X7 Ultra or Xiaomi 14 Ultra. I feel those cameras are the best purely because of the hardware that is in them. For video, Apple are still the best with Samsung a distant second.

Really depends on the location. In North America and Western Europe, it costs about as much as a OnePlus 12R which has a better chip, bigger battery and will get updates for longer. In the US, that's after discounts. There were times you could get an S23 for the same price which isn't a good comparison for the Phone 2 unless the bigger display,better battery life and unlockable bootloader are more important than IP68 water and dust resistance, a faster chip and an offline presence.

I don't think it will be a loss leader because phones at this price are specced the same or better.

They might have one or two better specs but the package at that price is pretty good. The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ is more expensive, has a fuck ton of bloatware and launched with Android 13 out of the box. Also has that idiotic curved display and terrible auxiliary cameras. The Poco X6 Pro has a much faster SoC but the cameras are not as good as HyperOS is essentially a more refined version of MIUI.

I agree the 2 was too expensive. It got a drastic price increase compared to the 1 without upgrading too much. What they should have done is released a 2 around the same price as the 1 and released a Pro version if they wanted to sell a phone with a bigger profit margin.

Yeah it's actually infuriating to read some of these threads. Some of the small phone users expect Oppo Find X7 Ultra cameras with a 5000 mAh battery and headphone jack in an iPhone 5S form factor and the only argument they make is the phone can be thicker. Thickness is only one dimension, all these components need space in other dimensions too.

Is there a noticeable difference between the Titanium on the Ultra and the aluminium on the other models? I'm guessing it's the colours on the Ultra that stand out more.

GSMarena is saying South Korea gets the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 variant. If that's true, it's a safe indicator the Exynos is dogshit. Wouldn't be surprised if performance/watt is worse than the 865 since no Samsung fabbed SoC has beaten that one yet.

Edit: seems like South Korea are getting Exynos for the S24 and S24+. Looks like GSMarena are wrong. Hope it isn't a shit show like the 990 and 2200 but I don't expect much.

Maybe design award, he talks about how everything is the same but was impressed with the Magic V2 because of it's thinness and how it manages to cram a larger battery than other foldables. While that's impressive, I don't really think it's groundbreaking. I feel repairability should also be a consideration for design since most slabs and foldables look identical to each other and the Fairphone is miles ahead of everything else in that regard.

8+2 MP rubbish on a phone that's surely going to cost $600 or more at launch is honestly infuriating. This won't make sense in any market other than India.

Unfortunately both chips were fabbed by Samsung Foundry. Tensor is also fabbed by then which explains the overheating, poor efficiency and throttling. I really hope Samsung can catch up with TSMC with 3nm but would be wary of a Samsung fabbed SoC until they prove they've caught up. Qualcomm moved from Samsung to TSMC for the 8+ Gen 1 because Samsung weren't meeting their targets as they had low yield. The yield issue seems to be fixed according to some media outlets but doesn't seem like the fab itself has improved.

How many people are going to read that properly? We're not just talking about enthusiasts, regular users will do it if they get the option and think they can store their apps on there.

Not sure if all manufacturers do this, there are also instances where the user might set up the SD card as adoptable storage which would make it hard to differentiate between internal storage and the SD card.

Well yeah NAND has a certain amount of read/write cycles but it's always going to be an issue with SD cards because they're using the cheapest form of NAND. As a result of that they're not going to get some of the complex safety mechanisms that are built into internal NAND. So I think we'll have to disagree here.

They were using the telephoto as a point of differentiation too. I'm not sure why they even bother with that awful 8 MP ultrawide since it's unusable. The images have no detail at all. Might as well just have one good camera instead of one useable and two unusable cameras.

My initial comment also mentioned why developers hated the SD card slot. To quote Koush

The SD card needs to go away. It's a nightmare for developers. There's too much variability here. SD Cards can be slow, resulting in poor app performance. They can come and go, or be swapped, and that results in unpredictable behavior if an app was expecting an SD card. One contiguous block of data needs to become the standard here (with different OEM SKUs for more/less storage), as it has been on iOS since the first iPhone.

The comments from Linus came from an industry insider he said he trusts. I would be inclined to believe him since he used to carry a Note9 and was a massive advocate of SD cards.

Also don't think the reliability of the cards was an issue when I got them, they were high rated Samsung and Sandisk models.

And 128 GB is almost nothing, kinda proving my point that this is more of a use case point than an argument against the feature.

You're looking at this from the point of a power user and not the average person. Most normal people just get the base variant when they see it has 128 GB and are happy with it.

They're objectively more reliable than cloud storage though, should you ever go somewhere where network connectivity is an issue

I mentioned I dislike cloud storage but with USB-C ports I can actually use my external SSD or a USB drive to backup my phone if I want to although it's not something I do often.

Given that they're still using Bluetooth, which is still terrible with any interference, low bandwidth, and has the same tedious connectivity problems it's had for the past decade...I'd argue we have yet to see that progress where it matters.

When was the last time you used a Bluetooth headset? I had issues initially in 2018 and 2019 but things like the Galaxy Buds+ and newer generations of truly wireless earbuds have fixed the connectivity and interference issues. Some Bluetooth headphones support LDAC and LHDC codecs which allow for high bandwidth. LDAC is part of AOSP so it should be on every Android phone running Oreo or newer unless the OEM has removed it for some reason.

If that were true, there wouldn't be so many people vocally expressing why new products aren't adequate without these basic features.

That's because there are a small group of enthusiasts who are extremely vocal. Most people have moved on, they may want one or both features but they aren't dealbreakers for them. Also wouldn't say a bunch of enthusiasts complaining means it expresses the sentiments of everyone. Look at the outcry about the iPhone mini, it didn't sell very well but online communities would have you believe it was the most popular device of that lineup.

I doubt they'll do it since it's not on the regular Pixel 8. I think that's a feature they'll keep for the higher end. Pixel Xa series already has a faster processor and better cameras compared to their competition in North America, Australia and Western Europe.

From my experience it's been the opposite, the phones have survived but the SD cards have died twice. Haven't cared about it since then.

My comment mentioned why the SD card was removed. To paraphrase Linus, they're the cheapest form of NAND storage and are extremely unreliable. When they fail, the average consumer blames the phone and not the cheap SD card they put into it. I'm not a fan of cloud storage but most people do not need anything other than the base variant now since it comes with 128 GB out of the box. Some manufacturers are even offering 256 GB.

I also mentioned that I'd like having the jack but it's not a dealbreaker that it's gone. Also doubt we would have seen as much progress with truly wireless earbuds if more manufacturers did not remove the headphone jack. I know some people detest them and think they're a cash grab but they're a game changer when it comes to exercising and moving around. However I'll agree that removing the jack also opened another revenue stream for manufacturers which could be construed as a cash grab.

Additionally I stated my point wasn't directly at the OP but was a rant at the senseless "no jack, no SD card, DOA" comment which can be seen at the launch of a phone who's manufacturer hasn't included those features for 5 or more years. It's just beating a dead horse at this point. It is like expecting CRT TVs to be the default instead of flat TVs. CRTs also had advantages but the market has moved on. Additionally I think it might be better to actually comment about a phone having a headphone jack or SD card slot or both of those since that's a much more positive way of looking at things since not having them is the default now.