Main downside for me is that playlists fall out of sync with YouTube, so i can't really use it alongside Revanced or YouTube in the browser. But i agree, it's a good app, particularly if one can use it exclusively.
Close, but 2000s had some very intrusive and malware ridden advertisements. Popups everywhere, aggressive banners, malware and random browser toolbars being installed to your system. Complete wild west of unrestrained advertising. Online ad blocking didn't start with Ublock Origin, the first tipping point was in the 90s and 2000s, where famously clean and effective search engine Google swooped in to "save us" with their Chrome browser blocking popups by default, and their own concept of 'ethical ads', which were mostly unobtrusive and text-based (what happened there?). Which was nice for a while before Google exploited the popularity that bought them to turn into an inescapable ad monster.
I want to want to spend more time with the game, but i also want it to not let me. Eject me forcibly from its world once the story has naturally concluded, with fond memories of the tightly edited purposeful experience.
Really depends on the game. But roughly something between 3-20 hours is my preferred range. I thought Sayonara Wild Hearts was fantastic and the perfect length for the story and experience it set out to convey (took me about 2 hours to beat).
I feel the opposite. I pay for the narrative and experiencing the game's mechanics and interactive art, not to flush as much of my life away as possible. When I see people complaining a game was too short, I am basically ready to add it to my wishlist.
ZenFone is the same size as an iPhone or an S23, pretty sure there is no lack of people buying phones at that size. But also I would consider that a standard size, not 'small'.
ZenFone isn't small, it's the same size as a regular iPhone/Pro, not the Mini, so I can't see it proving anything about small phone demand that couldn't equally be applied to a regular iPhone or S23 etc. It also isn't discontinued.
But there is the possibility they could capture almost the whole small phone market, instead of competing against titans for a piece of the big phone market. I also don't see how this is not still a big market that is being ignored. So many random trash phones that must be getting pitiful sales numbers, but they can't make anything in a small size, like they used to do in huge numbers just half a decade ago?
I get that the Mini might not reach numbers acceptable for Apple, but for some random Android manufacturers, those same numbers would be huge, and they have basically no competition right now. The first company to offer something decent in that size bracket would have that whole market to themselves.
But no, i think they all just dream that they might beat Google and Samsung for the same 6.3-6.8" market and be rich.
I agree with everything you wrote, except as a designer I wanted to point out that the lack of scope limitation is not usually due to design, but rather product and marketing who drive new features, because their job is to increase new customers, and improving life for existing customers is a far second -- only so far as potential new customers may be impacted (reviews, comparisons with competitors, or churn). So long as they can mostly keep existing customers they will always fight against spending development time on improving their experience, when they could add a new point to the feature list for marketing.
The issue is the drive for infinite growth is counter to a human-usable quality-focused UX (with a focused scope and focused target audience).
I actually pay for Premium at the moment, but still would need to sit through baked in sponsored messages, and YouTube Shorts or other internal YouTube big banner service advertisements. So i still have uBlock (and sponsor block) anyway to remove that stuff. At which point... Why am i paying for Premium again? They made their site awful to use regardless of if you pay, unless you use adblocking and other extensions.
I get it, and i guess the fault is on Google for not providing an alternative for such apps. Still a hack though, because such things don't belong in the user's notifications.
Main downside for me is that playlists fall out of sync with YouTube, so i can't really use it alongside Revanced or YouTube in the browser. But i agree, it's a good app, particularly if one can use it exclusively.