Phones, phones, phones

Lumeinshin · 2024-04-08T10:06:12+00:00

I've been looking at sorting myself out a new phone for a little while and i thought what better way to get some ideas than by making a phone thread? Are yo...

Ross_R

Lumeinshin What was your phone journey like?

Nokias. Lots of Nokias. But to only cite the recent history, it all started going south since about 2010 or so. I've bought myself Lumia 822, and this is - time of purchase-wise - the oldest phone I still have and use, though it is the second one. The first 822 I bough has a broken screen, though I still keep the remains - other parts are good and might come handy as a spare.
That being said, I've since ceased using it as a phone. It mostly works for me as a notepad: I find the size of 822 being just right for my palm and I came to be quite... well, used to its keyboard. So I use it for notes, many notes. Still take it with me.
After Lumia I bought an Android 9 Huawei Y5 2019, mostly because Windows Phone got discontinued and apps I've used disappeared from it. I will be fair: I do not like a thing about Android as a phone. For games I have MEmu Andorid emulator installed on my PC, which is way more comfortable for playing. And as for anything else - well, I pretty much don't need it. Modern life does pretty much all it can to make you roll with a modern phone: QR-codes, discounts, whatever... Well, fuck that. I'm not rolling with that. At some point, I've figured out I really want to get rid of this Android.
So I've bought myself a phone I always dreamed of: first model Nokia N-Gage. Not sure if I ever described it on the Patio, but it is quite a good phone so far. The only major trouble I had with it was the music player: the only Symbian s60v1 music player which supported N-Gage's stereo was the default one which came from the factory with the phone. All the third party music players were mono, and more often than not, the quality was terrible.
That was the time, right? I completely forgot music players were actually affecting the quality of the music at some point of my life. Nowadays it is all about formats, and all the players are pretty much similar, save for UI. Heck, if you want to practice in programming, you are likely to hear: write a music player! Frankly, I probably will write one at some point for my N-Gage, though at this point I have no idea how to write software for Symbian and N-Gage is not my main music player anyway - first and foremost, N-Gage is my phone. It does what a phone should do rather splendidly.
Albeit I got lucky. Turns out second model of N-Gage didn't support stereo for whatever reason, so I'm happy my tastes inclined me towards first N-Gage. Otherwise I would've been pwned.
Also, I had some troubles finding a good 2.5-jack-to-3.5-jack adapter for my N-Gage: the phone has 2.5 and all my modern headphones are 3.5, but this problem has since been solved.
I still can't get rid completely of my Android though, because of one app I really need: navigator. As I am driving a car rather often and I often go to new places, navigator is quite a needed app for me. I really see no way to circumvent it so far: I think, the only way it to buy a specialised hardware nav. So I'm still taking my Android for a ride for now. There you go, three of my current phones.
I'm also a proud owner of a fully working Nokia 9110 Communicator phone, though so far it just lies in a box. I look for a way to bring it into my life somehow, probably as my new notepad instead of a Windows Phone, but... there are some troubles with it so far.
Never touched an iPhone. Or anything by Apple. Apple's products are nothing but cancer since 2005 or so. I've been thinking about getting pre-2005 Apple laptop, but money are tight at this point.

Ross_R

Ross_R The only major trouble I had with it was the music player: the only Symbian s60v1 music player which supported N-Gage's stereo was the default one which came from the factory with the phone. All the third party music players were mono, and more often than not, the quality was terrible.

Completely forgot: the reason I even went for searching for third party players is because the factory one... lacks fast forward and rewind feature, as unbelieable as it sounds. It's not even that big of a problem, though it kind of is when you are listening to something like 15-minutes long version of (Not Just) Knee Deep.

Melon it's red!!!

Now that is awesome. My Lumia 822 is red. Frankly, I'm sick of grey, black and white color palette which seems to be prevalent nowadays.
Shame my N-Gage is grey. Maybe one day I'll have the guts to re-paint it. Or, perhaps, I should ask one of my friends who paint minis? Not sure, but I would've been glad to get rid of gray color.

Melon

I was actually semi forced to get a new phone recently since my old ones android version wasn't supported by the banking apps (sigh) I needed.
That was a BQ Aquaris X. I've always been a midrange android person, mostly due to money constraints. But it seems now that will never change,
since my absolutely required feature, a headphone jack, is now almost extinct on high end phones. But oh well, smartphones have gotten so expensive anyway
that I couldn't really justify it anyway...

So what I have now is a motorola g84
What I appreciate about it:

headphone jack (top priority!!!)
sd card slot
high refresh rate screen (I didn't expect to care about this but it does feel nice)
hybrid stereo speakers are "good enough" for yt content, definitely nicer than a mono set up
the display gets dim enough to comfortably watch videos in the dark
it's red!!!
gestures are cool like you can do a quick shake to open the camera, sounds like a gimmick but I do use it regularly for camera and flashlight

What I don't appreciate about it:

the soc is an aging midranger and makes me feel slightly ripped off
camera is bleh
update policiy is lacking imo
it's a bit heavy, but I think that's modern phones in gerenal

I'm pretty happy with it, it serves my needs exactly.
Since I just got this I'm not thinking about what my next one should have.
I'm just praying headphone jacks don't get phased out completely...

Lakitu64

My favorite phone I ever owned was the galaxy s5. With root I had the rom down to a gig. And had so many button combinations and sounds that I rarely ever had to touch the phone. Now I run the S10. Hardware is great but without root options I can't make use of the extra button on it. Also the updates they did broke the phone so bad I had to switch up a lot of stuff to make it usable again like using g board. I want a phone just like the S10 but with root. The phone I'm excited for the most right now is the new e ink phones for $300. I would love one of these.

Fantasy

Lumeinshin Are you someone who uses a smartphone? Android or iOS?

I've mostly used Android. Though I have used iOS before and hold nothing against it, I've just settled into Android.

What was your phone journey like?

Began with a flip phone by Samsung, then another one, then a smartphone from them, then an iphone, then Google phones since. Every few years I buy a new Google phone, I like them quite a bit even if they've strayed from the path I would have chosen. I've owned a Nexus 5x, Pixel 1, Pixel 4, and Pixel 6.
Out of those I prefer the Pixel 1. Still had a headphone jack, had a rear finger reader which unlocked very quickly, and a very nice looking screen. For this phone I also splurged and got the larger storage option. I later went back on this for the Pixel 4 which was a huige mistake. My pixel 6 is back at being the largest size.

What features do you miss or would like to see in your next phone?

I don't see myself upgrading for a long time and I'm conflicted on what I'd get next. Part of me hates the path Google took and I'd rather a meh phone with a headphone jack, but I also genuinely use the Pixel exclusive features like Call Screening, and then I have the inkling that I should go back to a flip phone or use a phone that is less controlling. I'd love a real basic phone without any bloat and a headphone jack please to God let me use the headphones I want to use.
I've been looking at paper screens. Similar to E-Readers they are all black and white which does help you look at your phone less. I've been using my current phone with a black+white filter and just seeing that says to me "put your phone down" and I can get back to enjoying life properly.

On a side note this is probably the closest to my ideal smartphone in terms of looks
If you could replicate this but have some physical buttons it'd be real nice. I like the bottom bezel btw.

Lumeinshin

Fantasy I was kinda looking at the pixel fold and whacking lineageOS on it, but i'm still apprehensive about the folds and I probably just don't need a folding phone

Gladius Yeah Samsung have started making their cheaper phones ie A series worse on purpose. The thing that annoyed me most was they locked the number of fingerprints that could be stored based on the phone series... Very frustrating.

1996FordMondeo
Oh nice, I had the S3 as well! My dad had it for a bit and when he upgraded it became mine. That was a great phone, durable as hell too. I remember making a point to someone at school who had been worried about their fancier phone breaking and I threw my phone away a along ways and it was fine. I was actually looking to swap back to it a couple years back when you could still get extended replacement batteries for it.

Gladius

Lumeinshin
I have only been using smartphones since 2020, when a lot of services moved from physical to app only. Having a PC in my pocket is not bad, but I despise how much you have to wrestle with the OS to do anything outside what it wants you to o.
I thought it would be okay buying a cheaper samsung, since they are a global brand, they all came bricked out the bag (samsnug also deep fries the camera with no option to turn it off).
I am thinking for my next phone to either get an Asus ROG series phone, because they have a headphone jack, or an iphone, since they have a real camera.

1996FordMondeo

Ah yes phones honestly my smrtphone lineage is smth like this.
My first smartphone technically was the 1st Iphone that was a handmedown from my dad.
He got it imported from USA then one day it overheated and cracked. So dad gave it to me, I never used it and later took it apart.
My first smartphone I actually used was some LG handmedown as well.
And first proper new smartphone was Sony ericsson active. Small phone for active people. God I love that thing.
https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_active-3998.php
About a year later I asked for Samsung Galaxy S3 for xmas because it was difficult to play games on my active
I absolutely loved S3 and consider it one of the best phones I had.
Some time later I got Galaxy S4 as a handmedown from my dad since he bought an iphone6(iirc) I still have it, its charging port is dead and im considering soldering some wires so i could plug it into PC and use it.
Some time later I was gifted some sony smartphone(forgot the name) was good but I believe that battery contact got broken and it would turn off randomly. Never got it fixed.
My current phone is Galaxy S8 which I was gifted for xcmas 2018.
Its a good phone but kinda excessive for me. I noticed that I use my S8 pretty much as I used my SOny active. only differece I used to play games on phones and now I also use banking programs on the phone. Hell id love to go back to using sony active. But cant find it.
Luckily I found my brothers old sony tipo phone.
https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_tipo-4718.php
While its not water and bump proof as active is, the tipo is about the same size.
I am considering atleast for a while to run tipo as my go to phone with sim and shit.
additionaly i only talk about smartphones because I barely remember any of my previous phones(I think I also used to own sony ericsson w100i That one was also great)
now I think im the only one in my family with an android.

magicrabbit

Lumeinshin Are you someone who uses a smartphone?

Yes, unfortunately. iPhones are very expensive so I've always used Android, which I don't think will change going by how terrible Apple and their phones have gotten.
I'm not attached to phones at all, and it's been 4 years since I've gotten a new one and kept it.
A year or two ago I bought a new Xiaomi, I do like custom ROMs but they weren't a priority for me at the time, so the model I picked didn't have support for Lineage. I set it up the way I like things to be, and after a day I packed it up again and refunded it. The battery, despite being bigger, lasted far less than my current phone's; the new Android version was much more locked down, and the screen was somehow worse. The hardware specs fit my needs so I was slightly excited, but the experience overall was much worse. To make my perception of modern smartphones even worse, a few months ago the charging port of my current phone broke, and I switched to a Samsung j7 I still had laying around, and again, the battery on my current phone (a motorola g8), although bigger also lasted a whole day less than the j7; the newer Android on it is also much more locked down. So I found out the hard way that new Android versions (and by extension, new phones) are terrible. Nothing will satisfy me either because what I want is an old phone with modern hardware, a custom ROM will fix part of the issue but it won't make me happy. So when my phone breaks, I won't buy a new one. Maybe a dumbphone so my family can call me. I miss my blackberry.

Lumeinshin Yeah Samsung have started making their cheaper phones ie A series worse on purpose. The thing that annoyed me most was they locked the number of fingerprints that could be stored based on the phone series... Very frustrating.

I've seen companies do the former before and it's a good business strategy but the fingerprint thing is downright scummy, default Android has no limitations from what I know. Also one of the reasons I don't want to deal with newer phones, the entire market is anti-consumer. The only phones I've seen be pro-consumer are Pinephones, and Linux phones still have a long way to go.

friffri

I have an iPhone SE and so far it has worked great so far except for Safari: this browser is a piece of crap and since last year's update it often breaks when you try to browse back in a page.

Before that I had a Nokia 6.1 Plus which was also a good phone except it fell apart one day: first the charging port stopped working, and a few days after fixing it the phone connection died forever.
When this happened I went back to my Moto G 3rd gen and I was shocked to see how usable it was. For a while I was considering not even upgrading phones and just staying on it but my bank app forced me to upgrade.

magicrabbit
My dad has a Xiaomi Redmi 2 and their software is terrible. So many bugs, he had to live for months without the multitasking button because Xiaomi broke it with an update and it took them months to fix it. He also cannot set a background pic because when he selects one the launcher straight up crashes and he needs to reboot.

kurisu

friffri My dad has a Xiaomi Redmi 2 and their software is terrible. So many bugs, he had to live for months without the multitasking button because Xiaomi broke it with an update and it took them months to fix it. He also cannot set a background pic because when he selects one the launcher straight up crashes and he needs to reboot.

I'd say this is unbelievable... if I didn't have a Xiaomi before. Horrible software, seriously. The fact that I had to wait a week and google whether the last patch broke something or did some tradeoff with my current version is just awful. Sometimes it was like "oh yeah they fixed the camera zoom bug but they broke this other thing" and I was like "damn, so I have to trade this thing to get my zoom back?".

You don't know how surprised I was when I got my current samsung. I did a software update... and things worked? How?! That's magic!! In all seriousness though, you can tell that Xiaomi makes way too many devices to be able to test them all, given how many shitty updates they used to ship at least back in the day. Sure, their phones are cheap and have great specs, but they're so unusable that I don't mind paying more for less, as long as it means that it's gonna be a stable, usable OS.

Bonus: I've had one person telling me stuff like "dude, your phone's getting old, you should buy a new one". Sure, my current phone might look bad, but it's still working, I don't see a point on spending money again to get an upgrade I don't need. Like seriously, "woah, I'll get 5G, 120hz and a faster processor!!" 120hz is nice, but I don't need a better processor to use whatsapp, protonmail and poweramp. And 4G works just fine.

I love my phone, I don't need much more. I don't regret spending a bit more to have a phone that'll last me for a good while. Also, I think we reached a point where upgrades are so minor that I don't care about them at all. Back in the day, the leaps were huge. 4GB to 8GB wasn't much, but 8GB to 16 or 32?! That was huge!! You could finally install more than 1 or 2 apps AND have more than 3 pictures in your gallery, lol. Or how about finally having a decent processor that wouldn't crash every 5 minutes? Or a camera that's way better with nice features? I feel like those things were the magical element of smartphones back when they were still new. But now that every phone has lots of storage and a fast processor, there really isn't a reason to upgrade your phone for the sake of better specs.

Are you all happy with your phones too? Do you see a point in upgrades nowadays?

magicrabbit

friffri

I didn't spend too much time with it to have much to say about the software, but it wasn't a good first impression for me either. You have to accept a privacy contract before using... well literally every basic app that comes with it. I did like the UI for a bit but later realized the default Android look is much more usable (until Google pushed out Material You).

Fantasy

kurisu
I see no reason to upgrade as long as your phone works. Just like laptops and computers 99% of people just need the bare minimum. Solid bug free experience with basic features being reliable all the time.
My current phone is a few months shy of being 3 and I've yet to see a phone worth upgrading to from here. If things go really quick I can see AI being integral to the next wave of these devices but that'll probably be 2-3 years time.

Ragingether

kurisu I like my own Xiaomi quite a bit, but I also installed LineageOS on the thing to not deal with their crappy software 😛. Once that is installed, it's a fine phone that does the job.

frijole del alta

Fantasy

Fantasy If things go really quick I can see AI being integral to the next wave of these devices..

yeah that and more bloatware probably.

fargit

I have a TCL FlipGO but frankly I think it's not that good.

kurisu

kurisu I'm thinking that my next phone will probably be a Sony.

Nevermind, apparently they have huge QC issues such as fingerprint sensors that last about a year or screens that simply stop working. Goodbye, SD card and headphone jack.

I guess it's time for me to find another brand for when I need to replace my current trusty phone. Might go for a Pixel, dunno.

sebt

i use those phones with the slide out keyboard cuz that shit feels all good on my fingers, typing is so fast and i feel what im pressing before pressing down hearing and feeling that nice as CLICk sound , seriously boss, idk what its even called the logos got grinded off from years of torture, idc tho , i just need the shit for calling and texting my bitches, does the job. u guys should seriously invest , its the tits

Fantasy

sebt
Physical buttons will always be better. But I don't use my phone in any way that would need one. My sister had this phone and I think if keyboards ever came back it'd be this form factor not vertical. I've seen people become nostalgic for all those slide and text phones that I can't remember the name of.

The Gardener

I use a flip phone. No internet, no anything, only MMS and calls. It feels good not going around with a mini computer everywhere, and you start to notice how much people use it like its a new part of the body. I suggest people to do the same if they can (of course, some people can't because of their jobs or some other things), it's really healthy. I do have a smartphone, an old Samsung Galaxy J4, but it remains in my closet for emergences.
Maybe in the future I'll buy something different, like one with a keyboard like the one sebt has.

sebt

Fantasy those names are busted no wonder u dont remember lols, i dont either and i use it every day , its always like samsung 520344.G2 or someshit samsung im not remembering ur series of numbers, nostalgia is retarded i just think the typey feeling is nice

what u said about keyboards coming back like that, totally , a more usable place like that would be the only way anything more complicated then swipe ur phone and touch ur screen would be put, RIP cuz those keyboards will never be put on anything people will buy ever again , probs dead . but i use the old dead ones , i dont care if theyre done being made if i can buy them still. and use them to text my bitches

Fantasy

sebt
I'm not talking the number named ones. They had names like "Slide" "Flip" or whatever.
I'm just going to go out of my way to google some names, I'll keep this text here so you can follow my thoughts.

LG EnV (envy)
T-Mobile Sidekick
LF Rumor
Samsung Alias
These names aren't as cool as I remember but at least they're not numbers.

DastardlyCrunch

sebt Based profile picture.

As for phones, I feel like smart-phones have done a lot of damage to society, but at the same time they can be pretty convenient.

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