Smartphone sales down 22 percent in Q2, the worst performance in a decade::North American sales are bad for everyone, except, miraculously, Google.
it’s amazing that in capitalism a company has to always show numbers rising like there is no physical upper boundary. The most logical and efficient economic model
It drives me insane how many people turn a blind eye to the funny numbers needing to always go up. Every “investor” will tell me how the market has never not recovered; how I’m the fool and surely not them for trusting in the system.
I hate that my retirement depends on a 401k, or money that constantly depreciates.
Constant growth at all costs. In the short term at least. Whether that works out in the long run or not…
Good. We should be using our phones for longer.
Have they considered releasing another hard to hold glass slab exactly like the previous one?
They doubled the price while removing core features like headphone jacks and microSD.
The people who bought phones as a status symbol ran out of money and the people who are advanced users are sticking with their old phones that are simply better until planned obsolescence forces them to buy another older model.
I haven’t felt the headphone jack removal as much as I thought I would, though I’ve had a few sets of Bluetooth headphones for traveling since about 2014 or so
Blame greedflation. Phones should be cheaper now, not thousands of dollars.
Exactly what I was coming to write. Who could have thought that rising notably the prices would have led to less sales?
You can still buy a Moto G for like $200 that is better than an old high-end phone in every way and runs Android like a champ. Only flaw is short support lifespan.
Phones is basically cheaper now. Features that only found on high end now on low end. SD 4 is insanely good (4g2 is an underclock 730). Very few reason to shell out 1000$+ for phones now
like desktop PCs
like DVD players?
no innovation, no need for a new device
apple seems to have quit innovating and google is just a fat fuck that is so lazy their core product search has gotten shit.
nokia nokia lol
Every major company releases the same phone year after year and the only significant change is the price. I don’t mind using the same phone for few years.
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Honestly… most people probably would benefit from a phone as powerful as a laptop. Imagine I could carry my laptop in my pocket and all I need to turn it into an ergonomical computer would be to pop it into a docking station. I would love that. I barely use a computer outside of my work computer, to the point where it’s barely worth owning one. I do, for some random fringe cases, but it gets used once a week…
I would love a laptop powerful phone with docking capabilities. Just have it down regulate to normal phone needs, until it’s docked.
You can even make the phone thicker if you want, if it’s going to be that useful, I don’t care about a little extra weight in my pocket.
Most Android phones can already do this with a cheap USB-C hub as long as they support video out. Samsung phones have DEX, which even gives you a desktop interface, but it can be disabled if your apps have issues with it.
Wow thanks! I just saw DEX in the hidden option menus and wondered what it even did. That’s really cool.
Does it just launch a bigger version of your phone, or is it like a separate OS where you can have multiple windows doing different things simultaneously? The Samsung marketing materials mostly seem to talk about being able to use your phone and the other screen separately. But it doesn’t really go into detail what you can do on the other screen.
Partly because everybody’s finances are stretched pretty thin, but also partly because phones got Good Enough like 6 years ago and so at this point you basically replace one when it breaks and replacement cost exceeds repair costs unless you’re an enthusiast who demands the latest and greatest… which is why the lucrously short support window for security patches on most Android devices is obscene. I know the technical reasons for them, but they’re still unacceptable.
Well… do we all need to change our perfectly fine, advanced and fast pocket computer every year just to have always the latest -> IMO No.
Good for the environment that it’s a bad business year.
finally some positive news.
Cause they keep making them shittier and shittier. Like I can’t replace my battery like a fairphone, replace all the parts, have a microsd slot and fingerprint reader like the older phones. People complaining about size and weight. Check out the Samsung S5, what was fucking wrong with that? Worked fine and waterproof. Fucking bitchasses keep complaining about how it’s not possible when it’s been done for many years already.
Bad, non-consumer centric marketing forces poor changes. We could invest in all day battery life, or we could make the frame out of titanium. Titanium is easier, so boom, done! Do you want a headphone jack, or do you want a slide in the presentation that says the phone is 0.2mm thinner and 5g lighter? Done! Sleek, elegant, thin, sexy, but no headphone jack.
Nobody makes a phone with the consumer’s convenience and experience in mind anymore. They make things without microSD card slots to drive subscriptions to their cloud platform. Instead of selling me a $60 battery I can change myself, they parts lock all pieces of the phone. It’s totally anti-consumer, and I don’t understand why. If someone released a stylish flagship phone right now with headphones, microSD, good battery life, and snappy performance, they’d trade wireless earbud and cloud platform sales for straight market share. How is that not worth it?
Bad, non-consumer centric marketing forces poor changes.
I don’t think so, the companies (mostly Apple), are making these changes and twisting them to make it sound presentable, but in reality, they’re making it less usable for the consumer unless they pay more money. They continue to do this because people still support it by buying them each year. Plenty of people at my campus are Apple fanboys for life and upgrade to the newest releases each year. When Apple fucks their consumers and their consumers still purchase them, other technology companies follow behind because it’s proven success.
When companies fuck you over, don’t continue giving them money to fuck you again. This is easier said than done as it’s more of a societal shift but let’s say everybody holds off, or a good portion hold off and demand that the companies changes things up, then something may be done to get the point across.
This upcoming phone update I’m tempted to buy the fairphone 5 even if theres no upgradable sd slot or headphone jack because it’s not like the google pixel will introduce it. I just hope CalyxOS supports it soon.
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/10489306843409-Install-a-Micro-SD-Card According to their site, you should still be able to upgrade storage space with a micro sd. Another recommendation is that if you do buy a fairphone dont buy the adapter from usb c to aux from them, ive bought 2 from them and they both broke within half a year.
That’s all actually very good news. I must’ve missed that in the specs sheet. I guess the only thing fairphone doesn’t have now is a headphone jack. I’m a bit more inclined to buy their products now. Really, the only thing that’s holding me back is CalyxOS support. I know it’s been supported on the FP4 and I hope it will be available for FP5 soon. I also live in the US of A so that adds additional complications.
The fp5 is looking good finally with an oled screen. That was the only thing keeping me from buying the fp4.
It is amusing how cell phone companies want people to think about their products like a fridge or video game console, yet are shocked when people seem to only want to buy a new one every 5-10 years or more when the old one breaks.
The fact that you think it’s normal to change fridges regularly astonishes me
I don’t like it, but it is a fairly normal part of the modern world of consumer goods for home appliances to “not be made like they used to.”
I just had to replace my clothes dryer. New one is guaranteed for one year. Estimates for the life of the unit is about ten years max. The dryer I replaced was made in 1989.
I had to replace my washer recently. Brand new as of 2019. The price of repair was approximately 500 dollars. A new washer was 700. This is a very frustrating situation.
Are these shocked cell phone companies in the room with us? iPhone sale peaked like three years, Samsung probably close to then as well.
Two cents on the headphone jack issue folks bring up all the time. The convenience of 3.5 mm is great and valid. Totally agree.
However, I use and own a lot of wired higher end headphones and a dongle DAC is just better audio quality than the 3.5mm jack. Let me explain.
3.5mm jacks means the phone’s on board DAC is doing the work and outputting an analog stereo signal. You are stuck with whatever, typically sub-par, DAC is built into your phone. Yes, some phones have better DACs than others, but it is a challenge to sort out and is often not a priority for most manufacturers.
With type C dongle you can escape your phone’s limitations and use dongles with audio features like fully balanced audio because the signal stays digital from your phone to the dongle. Personally, I’m a fan of 4.4 mm balanced connection, as most of my headphones will run balanced. This is something I could never do with 3.5mm alone.
DDHifi, XDUOO, ifi, etc makes some great ‘audiophile’ - dumb title but you know what I mean - DACs.
I often don’t hear this side of the issue discussed.
The idea with the jack is convenience tho. Including the jack won’t take much space and it’s just convenient. You wanna take a quick phone call while doing stuff around the house, plug the headphones in and good to go, no worries about battery or connection loss. You still have the type C for the digital audio. A hybrid analog/SPDIF would be even cooler, some laptops and sound cards do it
I don’t get why everything has to be wireless these days. It becomes less convenient when we have yet another device to charge. Heck, remember when removable batteries used to be a convenience feature?
If it had 2 type c ports on the top and bottom I wouldn’t mind this. 1 port with a splitter is a nonstarter for me for basic audio and charging
That’s a great idea. I don’t know of any manufacturers floating this, but I really like the idea of two USB C ports.
Then you could also pretend their eyes and ask how your phones day was.
what dongles do yoy reocmmned and why, link them here
If you’re upgrading your device every single time a new device comes along, you’re just chasing clout and status. They rarely, if ever, have significant performance upgrades or new features that make sense in upgrading when your current device is perfectly fine.
Phones also aren’t special anymore. Like the days where phones were flashy and people needed the best/newest phones are gone. Everyone knows everyone has a phone, nobody cares what phone it is. It reminds me of like 2004-2008 when laptops were a big deal and then everyone had one and it became a tool and people stopped caring what you had.
In fact I think smart phones peaked 3 or 4 years ago and we’re going downhill now. The manufacturers remove features that people like in favor of objectively worse ones (lots of people loved having the fingerprint reader on the back, now it’s either gone entirely or under the screen for some stupid reason?, then of course headphone jacks are going extinct).
When is the last time a smart phone had a major improvement over it’s predecessor? And I mean like, “This one didn’t have a camera, this one does.” Especially since they’re converging on the same 5.7" black rectangle.
I like the finger print reader under the screen
Why the fuck would I upgrade my phone every single year? Don’t get me wrong, I love the one I literally just got, but it’s my first upgrade in years. At some point, the question becomes “what the fuck else do you want these things to do”
I used to be excited to upgrade my phone every year because it was during a period of innovation. Now I just have a pay as you go SIM and whenever needed buy a midrange phone outright and use it until it dies.
