I would also like a great camera, a non-locked-down bootloader and a non-customized OS with updates for at least 5 years. I can’t vote with my wallet aside from “not buying any phone”, which isn’t a vote.
Oh I would also like small smartphones back. But there are simply no good ones on the market; nothing I could vote for.
“Vote with your wallet” only works if there is a good enough set of choices on the market.
True, and that’s why you can only marginally change anything on the market with that. If no player on the market offers what you want, your only choices are to punish everyone (which they won’t notice) or reward one of the least-bad players.
Both can set the wrong incentives for companies to change or continue.
Doesn’t fit “small”. It was also just an example, my actual requirements are longer. I need my banking apps to work too, for example, which likely automatically limits me to Android/iOS. No idea how good they work with Sailfish for example.
There is a triangle of camera quality, software support, and peripheral support. You can have 2.
Fairphone is the close, but they removed the headphone jack when they upgraded their camera in order to push their shitty earbuds that they only sold/supported for 2 years I think before scrapping them and are continuing the cycle with their new headphones (directly contrary to their mission). They also refuse to add simple wireless charging.
Sony has camera quality (only their photo pro, not in their shitty default camera app) and peripherals, but no software support (2 years max).
Voting with my wallet is buying no phones ever, apparently.
Search for camera and peripheral support, as for software support, search models which have open source kernel code and bought alot, they usually have best community support, I’m saying this as current owner of poco x3 pro, and i learned my lesson when i bought redmi note 4 mtk 4/64, they didn’t released source code for mtk model, so only way to support it is to make Frankenstein from source code of snapdragon note 4 model, some smartphone kernel code with that mtk cpu support, and cherry pick updates from Linux 3.18 to current, while testing and fixing bugs from one lts version to another till you reach current one
I want to buy a fairphone, but they refuse to add wireless charging (even as an add-on) and they also removed the headphone jack so that they could pish their Bluetooth earbuds which they discontinued after barely a few years, now they have Bluetooth headphones where they will likely do the same. Completely contrary to their ethos.
Though I don’t see how it relates to my comment in the slightest. Showing that 1 phone that has an SD card slot is just my point. There are few good phones being made currently with SD card slots.
There is a Venn diagram of camera quality, software support, headphone, and SDcard where you can have 3 but never all 4.
but they refuse to add wireless charging (even as an add-on) and they also removed the headphone jack
I discounted the headphone jack because your comment included the Pixel, but I feel the same. My current phone has a jack and I tend to use it quite often. Also, I don’t see a good reason to require another batteried device that I need to worry about, on top of it potentially not working in high interference environments.
This has been one of the 2 main reasons why I haven’t taken one yet. The other being non-availability.
I am still unable to understand how important wireless charging might be.
I really just wish I could get a handheld pocketable computer with a cellular radio and GPS navigation related sensors, with some version of UEFI on which I could install whatever Linux I wanted.
I guess I am really rough on my USB C ports? I just plug them in at night and lay my phone on the bed, but after just 2.5 years my Sony 5ii is already getting loose. I clean it out with a toothpick occasionally, but I will probably have to replace the port next year. Everything else about wireless charging is shit to me, but not stressing the port is worth it.
My nokia (HMDGlobal) 7.1 the charging port literally stopped charging after 8 months and then every 2-3 months for the 2 years I had that one. That was the lowest of the low quality phones lol.
An anecdote, I insisted on getting wireless charging with my last phone change because my Sony Xperia XZ premium (that I loved) became a brick after the usb c port failed about 18 months in
There are Qi adapters out there for phones without wireless charging built in. See this CNET article. It’s not perfect, but a simple Google search says it’s possible. Plus, adding this adapter and hiding it inside your phone case has the benefit of protecting your phone’s charge port from dust and other ingress. I use wireless chargers for all my phone charging, so this is a viable option in case I ever want to go with a Fairphone or a Shiftphone (maybe even a Cube).
The headphone jack thing is annoying. I’d buy their Fairphone 4 to have the option between wired and wireless.
Yeah those adapters are handly except that they damage the case and leave a large cable buldge with the bend radius. I might still get one for my current phone, but not a great solution.
There are models out there that I’ve seen that have designed the cables to act more like bus bars that bend at sharp 90° in a flat strip profile, where the bend is less pronounced. But I agree that would be a failure point as time goes on to watch. I don’t really remove my phone case all that often, so I don’t think it’d be that big of a deal. They’re like $10 total for a replacement off of Amazon, so price nor schedule is an issue either.
Just came across the Pinephone. Looks like they’ve figured out how to do modular wireless charging for their platform that still allows free access to the USB-C port, but this isn’t compatible with phones that don’t have pogo pins.
the headphone jack is unforgivable for many users. as an audiophile i often use external DACs anyways, but it still sucks ass to carry around an “emergency audio adapter” which stops working after like a year (even the expensive ones) compared to a built-in one.
fuck you fairphone, but the upsides of the 4 outweighed the downsides for me.
i have a total of 512GB of storage in my Phone already, but my dad has repeatedly run into the storage limit of his 256GB phone. he’s not even that into music, and he stores his music compressed.
i can see all of the songs i listen to now taking up more than 300GB easily in lossles. plus i would be able to access the music from my phone as well as my PC without having to store duplicates, and having cross-platform playlists.
there’s a lot of benefit with streaming, and self-hosting is becoming more accessible by the day. if you have the bandwidth, i see no problem as long as your provider doesn’t fuck you over (which is on the horizon for spotify, we aren’t getting lossless and the prices are going up regardless)
that’s the perks of a phone company who keeps good design decisions going, except for the headphone jack. i will never forgive Fairphone (still bought the 4, sooo…)
if they pull this shit with music, i’m gonna have to look for self hosted music streaming apps.
Why stream music when SD cards are approaching TB?
Because 90% of standard phones now don’t have SD card slots. Thanks pixel
You vote with your wallets. Each time you buy a phone without SD cart, you are submitting a ballot.
Seriously. phones are 99% identical anyways. It’s not so hard to filter for the 2-3 criteria you actually care about.
I would also like a great camera, a non-locked-down bootloader and a non-customized OS with updates for at least 5 years. I can’t vote with my wallet aside from “not buying any phone”, which isn’t a vote.
Oh I would also like small smartphones back. But there are simply no good ones on the market; nothing I could vote for.
“Vote with your wallet” only works if there is a good enough set of choices on the market.
Like regular voting, you pick the best one of the bunch; even if it’s only marginally better than the rest. Even if it’s still terrible.
Repeat. Repeat again.
True, and that’s why you can only marginally change anything on the market with that. If no player on the market offers what you want, your only choices are to punish everyone (which they won’t notice) or reward one of the least-bad players.
Both can set the wrong incentives for companies to change or continue.
So it’s ok to bitch a shitty choices.
deleted by creator
Doesn’t fit “small”. It was also just an example, my actual requirements are longer. I need my banking apps to work too, for example, which likely automatically limits me to Android/iOS. No idea how good they work with Sailfish for example.
This is a cop out. I have a 2023 Motorola phone that has everything but ir blaster and removable battery. Why lie like this??
There is a good enough set of choices on the internet you’re just a spoiled baby. Who needs green chat bubbles 🙄
There is a triangle of camera quality, software support, and peripheral support. You can have 2.
Fairphone is the close, but they removed the headphone jack when they upgraded their camera in order to push their shitty earbuds that they only sold/supported for 2 years I think before scrapping them and are continuing the cycle with their new headphones (directly contrary to their mission). They also refuse to add simple wireless charging.
Sony has camera quality (only their photo pro, not in their shitty default camera app) and peripherals, but no software support (2 years max).
Voting with my wallet is buying no phones ever, apparently.
There’s also Shiftphone out of Germany, but it looks like they’re still securing funding for their next round of phones.
Messed up world out there
Yeah, but they don’t meet the criteria because their camera is pretty poor IIRC.
Search for camera and peripheral support, as for software support, search models which have open source kernel code and bought alot, they usually have best community support, I’m saying this as current owner of poco x3 pro, and i learned my lesson when i bought redmi note 4 mtk 4/64, they didn’t released source code for mtk model, so only way to support it is to make Frankenstein from source code of snapdragon note 4 model, some smartphone kernel code with that mtk cpu support, and cherry pick updates from Linux 3.18 to current, while testing and fixing bugs from one lts version to another till you reach current one
This good enough?
I want to buy a fairphone, but they refuse to add wireless charging (even as an add-on) and they also removed the headphone jack so that they could pish their Bluetooth earbuds which they discontinued after barely a few years, now they have Bluetooth headphones where they will likely do the same. Completely contrary to their ethos.
Though I don’t see how it relates to my comment in the slightest. Showing that 1 phone that has an SD card slot is just my point. There are few good phones being made currently with SD card slots.
There is a Venn diagram of camera quality, software support, headphone, and SDcard where you can have 3 but never all 4.
I discounted the headphone jack because your comment included the Pixel, but I feel the same. My current phone has a jack and I tend to use it quite often. Also, I don’t see a good reason to require another batteried device that I need to worry about, on top of it potentially not working in high interference environments.
This has been one of the 2 main reasons why I haven’t taken one yet. The other being non-availability.
I am still unable to understand how important wireless charging might be.
I really just wish I could get a handheld pocketable computer with a cellular radio and GPS navigation related sensors, with some version of UEFI on which I could install whatever Linux I wanted.
I guess I am really rough on my USB C ports? I just plug them in at night and lay my phone on the bed, but after just 2.5 years my Sony 5ii is already getting loose. I clean it out with a toothpick occasionally, but I will probably have to replace the port next year. Everything else about wireless charging is shit to me, but not stressing the port is worth it.
My nokia (HMDGlobal) 7.1 the charging port literally stopped charging after 8 months and then every 2-3 months for the 2 years I had that one. That was the lowest of the low quality phones lol.
What you seem to want is a a PMOS phone with with Plasma Mobile
An anecdote, I insisted on getting wireless charging with my last phone change because my Sony Xperia XZ premium (that I loved) became a brick after the usb c port failed about 18 months in
You got that right. And TIL that the Fairphone 4 support for that is less than what I would require. i.e. GPS, Mobile Data, SMS, Calls …
Perhaps, if some day I can justify buying a phone with that price tag just for testing purposes, I’ll try helping with the support of those features…
There are Qi adapters out there for phones without wireless charging built in. See this CNET article. It’s not perfect, but a simple Google search says it’s possible. Plus, adding this adapter and hiding it inside your phone case has the benefit of protecting your phone’s charge port from dust and other ingress. I use wireless chargers for all my phone charging, so this is a viable option in case I ever want to go with a Fairphone or a Shiftphone (maybe even a Cube).
The headphone jack thing is annoying. I’d buy their Fairphone 4 to have the option between wired and wireless.
Yeah those adapters are handly except that they damage the case and leave a large cable buldge with the bend radius. I might still get one for my current phone, but not a great solution.
There are models out there that I’ve seen that have designed the cables to act more like bus bars that bend at sharp 90° in a flat strip profile, where the bend is less pronounced. But I agree that would be a failure point as time goes on to watch. I don’t really remove my phone case all that often, so I don’t think it’d be that big of a deal. They’re like $10 total for a replacement off of Amazon, so price nor schedule is an issue either.
Just came across the Pinephone. Looks like they’ve figured out how to do modular wireless charging for their platform that still allows free access to the USB-C port, but this isn’t compatible with phones that don’t have pogo pins.
the headphone jack is unforgivable for many users. as an audiophile i often use external DACs anyways, but it still sucks ass to carry around an “emergency audio adapter” which stops working after like a year (even the expensive ones) compared to a built-in one.
fuck you fairphone, but the upsides of the 4 outweighed the downsides for me.
Wow, I knew that Apple devices don’t, but I hoped that they’d be the only ones. Major oofs right there
It’s far from being perfect solution, but you can buy a miniature USB microSD card Reader very cheap these days.
i have a total of 512GB of storage in my Phone already, but my dad has repeatedly run into the storage limit of his 256GB phone. he’s not even that into music, and he stores his music compressed.
i can see all of the songs i listen to now taking up more than 300GB easily in lossles. plus i would be able to access the music from my phone as well as my PC without having to store duplicates, and having cross-platform playlists.
there’s a lot of benefit with streaming, and self-hosting is becoming more accessible by the day. if you have the bandwidth, i see no problem as long as your provider doesn’t fuck you over (which is on the horizon for spotify, we aren’t getting lossless and the prices are going up regardless)
just photos and some videos and somehow my 256gb is always struggling for space. I’d kill for an SD slot
that’s the perks of a phone company who keeps good design decisions going, except for the headphone jack. i will never forgive Fairphone (still bought the 4, sooo…)
I’m using jellyfin and it just works fine.
There are others more specialized in music. But I kind of like only having to use one service for all my media.
i already run jellyfin, i’ll check out how it works.
What makes you think they won’t? It’s a matter of time.
May I suggest cloudplayer
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doubleTwist.cloudPlayer
Not compatible with Android 14, and doesn’t seem to receive updates anymore (the last one was 2 years ago). So that looks like a terrible choice.
I use musicolet and just have a few GB loaded on my phone at any given time