Audio Jacks for life
I would recommend 3389.
Got a Zenbook Duo last year. As thick as an old Thinkad.
But it has two screens; one under the keyboard. The keyboard pops off, then you prop it up with the kickstand to get one at eye level and the other below.
It’s friggin amazing.
I’m all for this on laptops. I’ve had external monitors for so long that when I have to work using only the laptop screen, it’s difficult to be effective. It’s great that laptops are small and light but I’ll sacrifice some of that for more screen size
Agreed. I had to start a new repo with scripts to get most of the features working in Linux, but I just consider that a fun weekend of discovery.
iPhones are thicker then ever (except for the air but it flopped) and no ports, worst of both worlds 😒
My phone has a headphone jack. I never want to let it go
Headphone jack and removeable battery for me. I always have 3 batteries in rotation, and replace the oldest one every 2 years or so.
Carry a spare in my pack and have a 3rd charging on an external charger to swap out at home.
Im currently working full time doing solar installs. I do a lot of the EE and physical design, and can edit both from my phone, whole working off of existing plans. And I can’t exactly have my phone plugged in while up on a roof. So I just swap out my battery when it gets low.
The when I get home, I swap out the dead battery for the one on the charger, and plug my phone in while I sleep.
I also end up catering or ‘celeb’ bartending 2x a month or so during the season out here. On those days ill often swap to the 3rd battery before I go to work for the evening so I have a fresh battery and can run the music off my phone all evening, without having to worry about power.
I traded my headphone jack for a pen. I’m buying a new active USB-C-to-Jack converter every six month, because techbros fell in love with some futuristic concept image featuring a cyborg girl wearing what appears to be wireless earbuds. (At least the full transparent glass phone apocalypse is further away)
If they ever do that I will refuse to call them anything other than datapads
Product R&D engineer here. I have a product manager who only knows how to give one piece of feedback: make it smaller and slimmer. What requirement is driving this? Can’t say. What user need are we trying to address? No idea. But smaller=better for some reason.
compensating for complexes behaviour, I guess
One thing people who don’t build products tend to imagine is that PMs are constantly doing market research, data analysis, focus groups, etc.
That may be true at some companies, but IME they can be clueless beyond belief because their real job is to be salespeople. They sell dreams to executives. Whether those will actually sell is a much lower concern.
See also: AI being shoved down everyone’s throats.
I bet that once upon a time, this was standard operating procedure.
Have you considered arranging an office white water rafting trip or perhaps cave diving, where a terrible misfortune may befall this person?
Can’t you just kill him? You know, for the greater good?
Just make sure you dispose of the body in the smallest, thinnest container possible.
A slurry can be made very, very thin.
“Fun” little tidbit, the Mexican cartels call the guy who reduces bodies to a slurry “un pozolero” (a soup-maker) when they need to get rid of a body. Actual Pozole is quite delicious though.
br0th
The greater good!
Crusty jugglers!
Ask them why then.
Thinner until I can shave with this thing.
At least they’d be adding a function to a phone for once.
You’re gonna have to hone it to keep its edge. Wonder if it’ll come with vendor locked honing stones
I think it’s because, on one hand, it’s an engineering feat (useful or not) but also it’s one that is immediately visible and measurable. It’s useless beyond the novelty, as we saw with the iPhone Air, but it’s still impressive.
Also there is a history of great functionality being born from miniaturization. I’m not sure we’ll see much of that happening anymore, the low hanging fruits and nearly every other avenues have been explored, and it’s much less a problem of engineering as much as it is chemistry and physics. Unless you sacrifice usability for the sake of the feat.
So I agree with you that it’s not bringing much to the table, but I think there is an interest in pursuing it for one’s career
I mean, that’s actually really fair.
But now, we’ve seen how small we can go… Bring back the features! Swiss army knife time!
Fuck that person. They don’t need to exist.
Make components smaller so you can have it be more powerful, not so it can be smaller and the same power.
Give me a week long battery.
Give me an actual camera sensor.
Give me no more lag.
Give me real storage.
Give me a fucking headphone jack.
Give me a replaceable battery!
Give me smaller, dedicated buttons.
Give me a phone with a real frame, something I can sit on, jump on, lean on, and use as a hammer.
Give me a phone that doesn’t have components that slowly work themselves free over a few years.
No more planned obsolescence.
Give me texture! I want to be able to grip my phone and not have it constantly slide off tables and couches because glass is so smooth.
Omg yes that’s the worst. I’ve also had CASES that do this. Super annoying.
IR Blaster too!
YESSSSS those things were awesome. You didn’t need it until you did, and then it was incredible to just have one in your pocket. It was just an ir led, too, so not including it was like… Wtf why
This was awesome when it was just me and my family in a hospital waiting room with like a few other folks who were doing their own thing. The TV just blasting ads and maybe some talk show or something, as it does.
Boop. Lowered the volume and could finally hear myself think.
Felt Watchdogs AF lol.
OnePlus models sometimes have them.
Give me a week long battery.
I got a Chromebook that lasts like seven days sleeping and 30 hours that I booted with Linux. It has headphone jacks. It has three USB ports. It also cost like $300.
It was awesome for light coding and browsing, and lasted 10 years.
Still got sweats going, “Eww it’s notApple/isGoogle/cantplayCrysis/cant3DModelWhileWatching4K.”
I never considered a Chromebook in that respect. I’ve got a 2015 11" MBA that does Invidious and lightweight work fine, but the battery leaves a lot to be desired.
I’m guessing the Chromebook I’d want would have to be jailbreakable and x86 if I wanted to run a lean Xfce Linux distro on it?
The idea of needing to jailbreak a laptop you own is just insane to me
Phone screens don’t really get more durable because as the tech improves, they make the glass thinner to cut on weight and overall thickness.
Does the screen at least stay as durable BECAUSE the tech improves? Or have the screens gotten weaker?
Depends on the phone/screen. For example, foldable displays are seen as a tech advancement, but they scratch incredibly easy like plastic and require screen protectors. Traditional screens? Not nearly as much.
There’s some really cool ceramic tech that’s making it marginally better, but overall, sapphire is the best way to increase scratch resistance, but it’s brittle.
Hahaha yeah a little bit
I…actually like my MacBook Air…
It’s weird but the portability is nice. I’ve been lugging desktop replacements for so long that having something that can fit anywhere and not break my back is cool.
Now does EVERYTHING need to be like that, no.
Ports are just offline compatibility.
And we can’t have that, can we?
–Silicon Valley Giants That Force Design Paradigms
Bigger battery, more ergonomic grip, less camera bump, better thermal regulation, less weight, nobody wants a thinner phone
The camera bump is insane. Scratching the lens every time you place your phone on a solid surface. I have to find a specific phone case where the lip around the camera is high enough that it’s at least the same level as the lens.
phone case where the lip around the camera is high enough
Same. I’ve actually cracked a camera lense from a very unlucky drop. This was before waterproofing, because that phone died in a pool.
The camera continued to work, mostly. There were certain angles that would cause lense flare that would make J.J. Abrams jealous.
Maybe the lense is harder now but why risk it.
And a screen small enough that I can reach the whole thing with my thumb — I have very large hands (and pockets) and find my phone very awkward to hold.
And no AI features.
And no AI features.
Best we can do is Liquid Ass.
Honestly I’d take that trade if it were in the context of Windows. The amount of AI bullshit is astoundingly bad, it makes Windows 8 feel like a relief to use.
Oh, absolutely! I loved Aero on Windows Vista and 7. :)
It doesn’t check all of those points, however a good number of them fit the new Sony Xperia, they have two models, one that’s more powerful and expensive and a cheaper (€400) model.
I’m sick of my Samsung tbh, have had them for a while now, but as soon as I saw that the Sony phones have a headphone jack and Micro SD slot I’m sold for my next phone. No camera hole punch either (I’m not a fan of it, I can understand people liking it though).
Can you buy Sony phones in the US directly or do you need to import them, it’s sad how uncompetitive the US tech market is, the government has basically banned most Asian brands from selling in the US
I have the Xperia 1 VI and absolutely love it
We hear you, and added another Animoji meanwhile!
Next year we might allow you to change glass color OR opacity, who knows when the wonders will cease?
I want both options. So at least one person wants a thinner phone.
You want bigger everything and less weight.
???
Xperia VI (which is small and light for a modern phone) is heavier than the Galaxy S3.
The Xperia is much larger than an S3.
Xperia 162 x 74 x 8.2 mm weight 192 grams 98000 mm^3
S3 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm 133 grams 83000mm^3
But not twice as large.
It doesn’t weigh twice as much.
The only thing that would significantly add to the weight is a bigger battery and even there new battery tech has come out that is lighter than the existing lithium ion battery tech so its possible to have a bigger battery with less weight
The only thing that would significantly add to the weight is a bigger battery
You said get rid of camera bump. That means making the entire device thicker because of the limits of optics. Batteries are already around 25% of the total weight so doubling battery life would increase weight 25%.
Sounds good to me, I think the camera bump is one of the dumbest design decisions modern phone designers have forced on us. Just make the thing a uniform thickness, gives them room to put back those things they removed in the quest for more thinness, which they never could have really done because of the optics.
I lost my fingerprint reader on the back because they wanted to go thinner and I’m stuck with the significantly worse screen reader, all so I could get a phone that’s more awkward to lay down without a case that effectively limits or eliminates the bump anyway, so nothing has been gained.
I agree. It’s just the “Make it bigger and lighter” doesn’t make sense. If you remove the camera bump and fill it with battery you have a much heavier phone.
Ports and a slightly larger battery using the space in the shell created by the ports
And maybe a screen glass that is 3mm thicker but that won’t break if you drop it
I could be wrong, but I don’t think this has so much to do with thickness as it does hardness. Like how you can smash automotive glass extremely easily with a tiny chunk of ceramic from a spark plug.
There are temperature treatments that can be done to glass that purposefully induces permanent tensions and compression forces in the glass that makes it stronger. But you need a big enough piece of glass to do that.
This was relevant before they added a bunch of ports back and made the MacBook Pro thicker in 2021, but ok.
If you are NOT a real PRO and DON’T need real PRO performance and don’t want to open your wallet too much, then you deserve no ports. You don’t need then, who do you think you are? Not a PRO, that’s right.
What’s this from?
Thinner (1996)
I want smaller, not thinner, if I wanted a large phone, I would have used a tablet to take calls
