2018 Was the 'Worst Year Ever' For Smartphone Shipments (cnbc.com) 218
2018 was the worst year ever for smartphone shipments, according to the latest figures from research firm IDC. It means Apple isn't the only company fighting to keep people interested in buying new phones every year. From a report: IDC said 1.4 billion smartphones were sold in 2018, marking a 4.1 percent decline for the year in an industry that's accustomed to rapid growth. In 2014, as well, 1.4 billion phones were shipped, which means the industry seems to have regressed about 5 years. Shipments shrank 4.9 percent for the fourth quarter of 2018, IDC said. Apple said earlier this week that iPhone revenues were 15 percent lower than last year. CEO Tim Cook said the strengthened dollar, an economic slowdown in China, lower subsidies on phones and its battery replacement program contributed to the drop in sales. Samsung phone shipments declined 5.5 percent and Apple's slipped 11.5 percent during the quarter, IDC said. But Huawei, which was able to capitalize on China, saw a 33.6 percent bump in shipments. Chinese vendors Oppo and Xiaomi also increased shipments, IDC said.
Well their batteries keep dying. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to buy a new phone because they're not worth the cost. They keep breaking and their batteries die. Why would I keep spending money on these hyped up pieces of garbage that surveill me?
Re:Well their batteries keep dying. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well their batteries keep dying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. The old phone is still working, and the new ones aren't much better. A few more megapixels or an extra camera does not justify a new phone.
And they are all like. They just cannot innovate. Same form factor, nearly same hw. Nobody has anything extra the others doesn't have. E-paper anyone? DAB-radio? Slide-out keyboard? Nope, they are all the same - and the same as the last 4 years.
Perhaps those folding screens will be interesting, replacing phone & tablet with a single device. Unless they break easily. But they are not around yet, so . . .
Re: Well their batteries keep dying. (Score:5, Insightful)
They are actually getting worse! Notches? No headphone jack? No SD card? Glued batteries?
They can shove those 'flagship' pieces of junk back where they pulled them out from!
Re: Well their batteries keep dying. (Score:2)
Donâ(TM)t forget the âoeThey are so thin I keep cutting my handsâ argument.
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$200 is still ridiculously expensive for a phone. My J3 Luna I bought about 2 years ago was $50 or $60, and does everything I need it to do as far as smartphones go.
Re:Scamsung (Score:5, Insightful)
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The ironic thing that Samsung knows how to do this. They make tanks and fighter jets, for crying out loud. They know what they are doing when it comes to composites and materials. It wouldn't be hard for them to make a ceramic back that can take heavy abuse, but still give that top notch phone feel. Or, they can take a step back and go back to machined aluminum which has proven itself to be a decent phone material.
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I don't buy a new house every year, or a new car every year, or a new TV every year, or a new refrigerator every year. Why the fuck should I buy a new phone every year when what I have is working fine and will continue to do so for years to come?
Re:Well their batteries keep dying. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a two year old phone as well. Even more ironic, it has a nice feature that the newer iPhones don't... the fingerprint scanner.
Why spend all that cash for a relatively throwaway item? All buying a new phone does is make the phone makers richer. In previous years where there were actual improvements with devices, like higher IPS displays, fingerprint scanners, faster Wi-Fi and cellular speeds, it made sense to go with a newer phone. However, it will be years before "5G" gets rolled out, and there isn't much the latest iPhone 10xspro-platinum can do that an earlier iPhone can't, other than bouncy poop icons, and a little bit better camera footage.
Phone makers have failed to understand something: The economy is tightening. People are starting to make sure their job is secure, that they can cover next month's rent, and meet basic needs, should they get laid off. The last thing people are caring about is a new phone, especially when companies are starting to do mass layoffs.
Want to make a phone that sells? Make a decent midrange phone. Focus on VWs, not Maybachs. People will buy phones, but they are not going to throw $1500 at a new device in this economy. Perhaps make phones with user replacable batteries and other accessories, because people will buy new batteries, but not phones, especially if the economy gets worse.
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As someone that recently ended up with an iPhone XR (I was intending to stay with my 7 for a couple more years, but circumstances gave me this new phone) I have to say that FaceID is an under-appreciated feature.
Some people have trouble with it, and that's a bummer, but I've never had any issue. It works at surprising angles and it's more convenient for me as a person that finds that he has gloves on or dirty/wet hands a surprising amount of the time. My phone never feels locked to me anymore. When I go bac
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Out of all the phones I have owned for the past 20 years.
Only one of them was due to a battery.
First one: (Candy bar phone) I broke the screen while accidentally hitting an edge on a pillar.
Second one: Flip Phone this one had an insane charging connector (it has 64 connection (all tiny)), which got corroded (on the phone side) so it wouldn't charge, unless I scrape and clean up with rubbing alcohol, until it was warn out.
Third phone: (Flip Phone) Ended up in the wash.
Forth Phone: (popup phone) Worked fine,
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Don't forget the user hostile options. In the past, updates were file based, so if you had a modded /system, it will still be OK. Now, it is by image, so any changes to a read-only filesystem mean no vendor fixes. Now, even rooting is difficult and has to be done via add-on methods like Magisk if it can be done at all, especially with top tier phone makers like Huawei doing their best to secure bootloaders and lock people out of their devices.
On the Apple side, with Cydia all but gone, jailbreaking is al
1754 was not very good either ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:1754 was not very good either ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Does that mean desktop PCs are coming back?
A few years ago it was trendy to depict the death of the PC, which never happened, it was just a mature market and there was no need to upgrade any more. Now it's cellphones' turn.
Re: 1754 was not very good either ... (Score:2)
The death of the PC did happen. Unless you can point to proof of some magic significat resurgence in sales that I somehow missed? A lot of regular people do not replace them once their existing PC dies because a smartphone serves their computing needs just fine.
Re: 1754 was not very good either ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just so. Unless a new piece of must-have software comes along that requires a much more powerful box, the desktop is now where the automobile has been for a long time - does what needs to be done, lasts nearly forever (yes, I remember when a car was pretty much worn out after 50K miles, instead of still going strong at 150K+ miles)....
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This is precisely what "dying" means when it comes to sales. It doesn't require that people literally throw out their existing rigs to the trash.
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The death of the PC did not happen.
The death of PC sales may have happened.
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Re: 1754 was not very good either ... (Score:3, Informative)
The people who only used computers for social media will only use phones for the same thing, sure. But what made the desktop unnecessary is all of the other things which you can now do with a phone. Document viewing and editing, music storage and playback (or even composition), photo capture manipulation and categorization, finance management, tax preparation and filling ... phones can now do the vast majority of the things we used to need computers for. So what's left? Not much that would interest 95% of h
Re: 1754 was not very good either ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, edit a document on a phone. Show me. And I don't mean cut&paste - write a few paragraphs of text.
A home need only one 'computer', not a computer per person. Because light games & browsing is now done on phones & tablets. That computer is still needed whenever writing more than a tweet or two is called for. Therefore, computer sales are down - but the computer is in no way 'dead'. Stuppid salesmen tend to call anything 'dead' that isn't growing though - according to such people, 'food' is dead. Except it isn't - food sell as much as ever, and employ lots of people. But of course no increase.
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Most people don't do much in the way of serious writing, occasional writing can still be handled by a phone even if its a few pages it might take slightly longer but it doesnt justify the expense of a computer if you only do so very occasionally.
Many people who use phones regularly but rarely use computer are actually faster at typing on a phone.
And finally a computer which is several year old will still suffice as a simple input device for text.
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I wrote my novel almost entirely on my smartphone. Google Docs meant I could open it up no matter where I was and write a few paragraphs. When it was done, I did export it into a full fledged word processor on my laptop to properly format it for printing/Kindle, but the writing portion was easily done on my phone. My second novel (still in progress) as well as a series of novellas I'm going to give away for free were also written on my smartphone. It's much more portable than any laptop and definitely more
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I wrote my novel almost entirely on my smartphone.
My biggest question, and not asking to be my usual smart-ass self, is "why?" I 100% understand the Google docs thing, I don't personally use it extensively, but I have used it and love it. (I'm pretty much conditioned to the MS world because of work, and their one-drive/O365 solution is actually getting pretty close to what Google Docs does well.) But I don't understand the reason for the choice of device. I am at least 10x faster typing on a keyboard than I am at text input on my phone. And I can't im
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I used a Bluetooth keyboard whenever possible, but if I was just standing around waiting for a bit, I could load my novel up on Google Docs and type up a paragraph or two using the on screen keyboard during my wait time. It might not seem like much but it added up quickly. As far as moving through a document, I had chapter headers and was able to use "Document Outline" to quickly jump to the latest chapter instead of scrolling through a few hundred pages.
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I did use a Bluetooth keyboard whenever possible, but the on screen keyboard worked fine also for quick "I'm standing and waiting with nothing to do for 5 minutes" writing sessions. It might only have produced a paragraph or two per session this way, but it added up over time.
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"Yeah, edit a document on a phone. Show me. And I don't mean cut&paste - write a few paragraphs of text."
Ironically, cut and paste is at least as big a pita as writing text. First you long press, then you drag some tiny handles whose size is resolution-dependent, so they are tiny on displays which are small but high-res. And then you (well, I) often run into the bug where the edit menu won't pop up if you've selected a complete sentence including punctuation which is both following and followed by a spa
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PCs, tablets, calculators, smart watches, etc. are all computers. Their only difference is processing capacity (usually limited by heat/battery) and screen size (limited by desire to make the thing portable).
The only things stopping phones from replacing your PC (other than for high-power applications like gaming) are display size, difficulty of data entry, general processing power/storage, and operating system inerti
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The people who only used computers for social media will only use phones for the same thing, sure. But what made the desktop unnecessary is all of the other things which you can now do with a phone. Document viewing and editing, music storage and playback (or even composition), photo capture manipulation and categorization, finance management, tax preparation and filling ... phones can now do the vast majority of the things we used to need computers for. So what's left? Not much that would interest 95% of home users. Business/professional use is a different thing.
Do you really want to prepare your taxes on your phone? No matter how phablet-y your phone is, I can't imagine you will be able to spot typos or errors as easily as even a small laptop screen. And that is leaving out the difference in input methods...
Re: 1754 was not very good either ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Your paranoia is silly on it's own, but the ridiculous inconsistency of it is even worse. You think Microsoft or Apple can't access your "idea" stored on a desktop computer running their OS?
Your response has nothing to do with the utility of phones vs desktops; it's just a nutty rant about google.
P.S. google docs isn't the only option on phones.
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Nerds find the fact that the "general public" never really wanted most of what PCs offer to begin with quite a bitter pill to swallow.
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Most people don't need a computer, and aren't tech savvy enough to operate one safely... They might have bought one because at the time it was the only way to get a web browser or access email but it was never a suitable tool for most people.
General purpose computers are and always have been a niche for geeks.
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How ironic the the telephone replaced the computer. Fuck history and timelines.
That's not really what's happened. Computers are being replaced by smaller general purpose computing devices that fit in your pocket and also happen to make phone calls.
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No, but they never went away. Tech businesses have no concept of what a mature market looks like. I bet Coke doesn't see massive sales growth year over year. At best they see growth in line with population growth. It took microcomputers around 30 years to hit that mark. It only took smartphones 10. The market isn't dead. It's just that we have hit a point where the market has reached sustainable saturation while at the same time the products have developed to be good enough. Early on each new model was obje
Re:1754 was not very good either ... (Score:5, Funny)
To be fair the year-on-year decrease in sales from 1753 was 0%, which is lower than 4.1%.
1999 was the best year, when smartphone sales increased from 0% to NaN%.
It is revenue that matters (Score:4, Funny)
Never mind sales numbers, all Apple has to do is keep increasing the price of new models in proportion to falling sales numbers.
Revenue stays the same, and costs even go down! Shareholders happy. How can the plan fail?
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That strategy's working out SO well for cable monopolies in response to cord-cutting, right?
Shareholders care more about profit than revenue, anyhow (unless they anticipate the latter can be easily converted to the former via e.g. layoffs).
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Never mind sales numbers, all Apple has to do is keep increasing the price of new models in proportion to falling sales numbers. Revenue stays the same, and costs even go down! Shareholders happy. How can the plan fail?
Seems legit
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This is how Android's problematic security updates will become a real problem. People will now keep old unpatched Android devices for longer, so all it will take is one golden exploit (think of Stagefright but self-propagating like MS Blaster of old) to bring down the Android ecosystem. Because most devices in the ecosystem are unpatchable.
Perfect reason for them all to go buy new ones when some mysterious virus out of nowhere (definitely not made by google) sweeps through and bricks everything more than x software versions ago.
Why is this bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Smartphone tech has matured, so we dont need to upgrade every year or two year. This is a good thing. Why is every shit news site pumping out story after story on this. Is it a really a bad thing when we can consume less and save more?
Re:Why is this badGood for the customer (Score:2)
It is good for the customer when products are become more durable. However, capitalism requires growth (at least in its current incarnation). Shrinking markets are not compatible with this necessity. Therefore, economists get nervous when more and more markets start to shrink.
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Capitalism does not require growth. Bullshit expectations of increased profit revenue requires growth.
Look, I get by on X Euro every year. If I don't increase my profits every year...my god, think of the consequences to the capitalism!
I don't know why everyone is brainwashed into thinking capitalism = unstopped growth and socialism = stalin.... a little of both with expectations of peace and happiness instead of growth and war would make a big difference towards unchecked carbon release.
Of course that's wha
Re:Why is this badGood for the customer (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism not only requires growth, it requires exponential growth.
Investors, i.e. capitalists, expect a return on their investment, and they expect that return to be some percentage of that investment. A percentage return on investment implies exponential growth. Would you invest in something where you expected to get your principle back and nothing else?
You can maybe imagine some form of "capitalism" where a group of leaders, chosen by some other means than how much money they have, decide how to allocate resources.
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Capitalism does not require growth. Bullshit expectations of increased profit revenue requires growth.
This is very true. Unfortunately, stock-based corporations that reward executives based on short-term stock price appreciation require growth at all costs. The real problem is that growth is defined in terms of short-term metrics that do not value long-term company strength, employee well-being, or societal welfare. Capitalism does not mandate this. For example, small-business owners are often driven by different motivations.
Re: Why is this badGood for the customer (Score:4, Interesting)
However, capitalism requires growth
People keep saying this as if it were self evident, but it's just nonsense. Capitalism tends to create and encourage growth, but there's nothing about it which requires growth.
Re: Why is this badGood for the customer (Score:4, Insightful)
Shareholders require growth. That's about it. Now how intrinsically linked are stock exchanges and capitalism?
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e.g. I own a dairy farm, you own a chicken farm. I have a refrigerator full of milk and would like something to eat. You have a refrigerator full of eggs and would like something to drink. The efficiency of our economics is improved if I trade some of my milk for some of your eggs. Th
Re: Why is this badGood for the customer (Score:3)
Exactly this. Only the shareholders who buy stocks specifically looking for growth are demanding growth. More conservative investors tend to buy stocks which have a strong history of paying out regular, predictable dividends.
In the absence of growth companies would just need to focus more on paying dividends, and investors would have to tame their get-rich-quick ambitions. The market would still work fine.
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A contraction is many of the world's largest conglomerates could precede layoffs, or other measures that accelerate a recession. Probably $trillions of GDP, worldwide, come from smartphone-related employment/goods/services and those of their associated contractors. The US telecom monopolies could thus be seen as a world security risk, if they form an implementation/protocol monoculture that is easy to attack.
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Less money spend on smartphones means that more money is available for other things.
No killer features. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No killer features. (Score:4, Interesting)
Until recently there was a big difference between cheaper phone's cameras and the high end ones. Now that gap has narrowed considerably, especially due to some really good mid range Chinese devices pushing up expectations.
The industry is hoping that foldable displays are the next big thing, but so far no-one has demonstrated one that looked much good. They all tend to be a bit thick and a bit naff looking around the hinge.
The only other thing at the moment is getting rid of the notch. Many phones are going to pin holes now, which are better but still not perfect. Some are going to sliders which seem to work surprisingly well.
Google gave up on 3D scanning, seems like Apple may have a crack at it but it's not clear what the market is.
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"Most people use their phones for messaging, calling people and scrolling through websites or looking up information. That can be done well on even the cheapest modern phones."
Disagree. It takes at LEAST 2GB RAM to have a halfway decent web experience, and more is better. All this JavaScript used as a crutch by incompetent web developers who refuse to understand CSS has really ruined low-memory devices. Cheap phones still often come with 1GB, and most mid range phones still have 2, while high end phones hav
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Your information is seriously out of date. My phone is a 2016 Honor 6X, and it came with 3GB of memory. It never felt like the phone was running out of memory. My Firefox with 15 open tabs usually stayed in memory and did not reload the tabs all the time. Its price was about 200 bucks. I consider that to be pretty cheap (no need to cheapen down to 60 bucks for device you use every day). The 2
actually (Score:3)
actually it was the worse year for smartphone prices. if the prices were reasonable, they would have been no problems with shipments.
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Soon phones will be expensive enough you can put down your phone as collateral to get a mortgage.
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I agree (Score:2)
The crap they shipped was the worst ever.
wonder why (Score:3)
much like with desktop/laptops there isn't much need to upgrade even a mid-level smartphone these days.
which features does it have to warant me to spend a lot of money for such a device?
cpu power is adequate and even storage is not really an issue most of the time anymore.
a better camera? the current offerings are probably more then good enough for most people.
1.4 *billion*?? (Score:4, Interesting)
1.4 billion?? Think about that as a percentage of the world's population. Holy carp.
And that's vs. the whole world population. What fraction of that group is actually the market for what is essentially as luxury consumer product?
This has to be one of the most amazingly successful luxury items of all time.
What should astonish is that it was ever more successful.
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Cheap Phones FTW (Score:3)
I just bought a Doogee phone for about £45. It's to replace my old Galaxy S5 mini which we were using as a "sonos remote control" in the kitchen. Sonos are upgrading their app and whatever version of android the S5 runs is too old for it. So my upgrade prompt was bloody Sonos :-(
Anyway, the doogee runs Android 8.1, has a big bright screen, comes with a case and a screen protector and (so far) looks like a great replacement for the remote control. At this sort of price, it makes me slightly regret spending £10 buying a new battery for the samsung a few months back. My only slight gripe is that there's no 'desk dock' for it as the power socket is at the top.
For those looking for an actual phone, it's got dual sim, removable battery, headphone jack and most of the features you would want, but it is quite heavy. However, when we need another 'remote control' somewhere else in the house, I'll be buying another. Now the S5 is freed up, I'm on the prowl for a different OS to stick on it...
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Which model? Is the SD slot shared with Sim 2? Water resistant?
You could reasonably set it to rotate upside down if you wanted to put it into a dock...
growth (Score:2)
No subsidy and no value (Score:2)
If my galaxy s5 had not gone blank screen on me, I would not have bought a Moto Z. Sure the Moto Z has a bit better screen but is missing key features like a replaceable batter but is a downgrade to me (it was also the cheapest smartphone I could find by enough to compensate for a couple of battery replacements). So there just isn't anything in a new phone I've found that is a benefit over the old galaxy s5, much less the Moto Z (unless a good new phone comes out with replaceable battery when the Moto Z b
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Doesn't the Moto Z support mods? I have a 2 year old Moto Z Play that supports mods. The battery is going so I paid $50 for a new Moto battery mod. I charge it every night and attach it to the phone every morning. That provides me with a day's worth of juice. When this battery pack dies, I can buy another $50 battery pack. Eventually, I'll buy a new phone, but the battery pack mods are helping me delay this purchase.
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Doesn't the Moto Z support mods? I have a 2 year old Moto Z Play that supports mods. The battery is going so I paid $50 for a new Moto battery mod. I charge it every night and attach it to the phone every morning. That provides me with a day's worth of juice. When this battery pack dies, I can buy another $50 battery pack. Eventually, I'll buy a new phone, but the battery pack mods are helping me delay this purchase.
Hmm, it does support mods, I had not realized that included battery packs, rather than just external speakers and other useless (to me) stuff. Will need to look at when the battery winds down. Thanks for the info!
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If you get a battery mod, look for one that can be charged via USB-C without being connected to the phone. This way, you can be charging the battery mod even if you are using the phone away from the charger.
Refuse to replace the batteries (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, this crap of making electronics purposefully hard to repair is a cancer. They should be built to be easily repairable and to last. Warranties somewhat take care of the latter but there's no law to promote the former. It's not only a matter of money but also of e-waste
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Bullshit (Score:2)
I remember 1977. No smartphone shipments whatsoever. None.
Sickening Amount of Waste (Score:2)
Of those 1.4 billion smartphones sold in 2014, how many are still in use (being kept in a drawer as a backup counts as 'use') by the original owner, how many are being used by a second or third owner, and how many are in the landfill? I suspect a large majority are in a landfill. Huge amounts of advanced computing power, precious metals, lithium batteries etc etc all disposed of as 'waste' every year, I'm certainly no environmental nut (I will cling onto my internal combustion engine till I die) but I fin
No Diversty or Advances - Designed for Marking Ppl (Score:2)
Let me guess. You are designing a brand new candy-bar cellphone--right?
For years, I've wanted a new cellphone with a physical keyboard. I hate Apple's closedness, and Android's UI sloppiness. I like being able to plug a USB drive into my phone. Curved screens are impractical. Replaceable MicroSDs and removable batteries rock my cellphone word. We don't need 5 crappy cameras--only one good one. Battery life rules the business world.
Smartphone is the new PC (Score:3)
I recall how horrible were the early iPhones. They reminded me the PCs of the 1990s. Despite all the innovations, there was no denying that say iPhone 3G or iPhone 4S were ridiculously and painfully slow for things like web browsing. Watching video or reading the ebook on 3-inch something display was terrible. But the technology has moved on, and I myself use a 2016 Honor 6X phone which cost me 200 bucks (when it was new). It's has a big bright screen, good camera, the security patch level from Dec 2018, battery to last at least a day and runs all apps that I actually use flawlessly. Sometimes I entertain the idea of getting a 2019 phone, but at the same time I just wonder, don't fix what's not broken.
MAYBE people are wising up! (Score:2)
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Re:Captain Obvious... (Score:4, Interesting)
When people only buy phones for replacement and do not increase the frequency of buying new phones nor do new customers appear on the scene, you have a stagnating market. Stagnating markets != growing market => economists get in panic, as growth is required for capitalism (in its present form). That is the concept the post you are answering to is refering to.
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Re: Why upgrade? (Score:5, Informative)
From what I've seen amongst friends and acquaintances, there are only three reasons most people upgrade these days:
1. The battery life has decreased to the point that it's unusable, and they don't seem to understand that you can change the battery.
2. The phone stops working and is out of warranty.
3. They're on a "plan" which amortizes the cost of the phone over several years, it's time for a renewal, and the provider has offered them a "deal" which they think is good.
Personally I just upgrade on a 2-3 year cycle and buy second hand phones which are about a year old. By that point they cost half or less of the original price, and they've been on the market long enough for me to evaluate the relative performance and reliability based on consumer reviews. Plus I can check and make sure they have an active development community on XDA and a way to unlock the bootloader.
Re: Why upgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I've seen amongst friends and acquaintances, there are only three reasons most people upgrade these days:
1. The battery life has decreased to the point that it's unusable, and they don't seem to understand that you can change the battery.
2. The phone stops working and is out of warranty.
3. They're on a "plan" which amortizes the cost of the phone over several years, it's time for a renewal, and the provider has offered them a "deal" which they think is good.
I can boil that one down in to 1 reason.
1. The phone they have is good enough.
Smartphones are now mature. There's no huge advantage to buying a new model because it will only have minor differences. There aren't any more "killer" features to add, most improvements will not be noticed by the user, making fonts slighlty clearer, improving memory management, so on and so forth. There just isn't the impetus to upgrade any more.
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The only reason I upgraded from my N5 to an S7Edge was the better camera. I will wait to upgrade my S7E when I can get substantially better low-light performance in pictures + reasonable size (5-6 inches, 7 is too big), in a decent price range ($300-$400). Would be nice to keep my QI charging, but no one does plastic covers anymore and glass is slippery crap.
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My current phone is a Moto Z Play. It's two years old and the battery, like many older smartphones, is going. Thankfully, with the Moto Mod concept, I can just buy a new external battery pack for $50, slap it on, and have good battery life again. No, it isn't going to prevent me from ever upgrading again, but it does help me push it off for another year or two.
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I have had my OP3 for a little over 3 years and it still feels like a new phone to me. The battery life has not decreased significantly and it is still snappy.
The only (not valid) reason that I can come up with for replacing it is that I am a little bored with it and want something new.
But then I think about it for a minute and realize that the new phone will be fun for a few weeks and then it will be the exact same slab that I have currently. So what's the point?
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Indeed. My recent reasons to replace my phone:
1. It wasn't waterproof and i dropped it in something wet. Touch no longer works.
2. It was waterproof but i dropped it and the glass broke. Touch no longer works.
3. It had it in the pocket of my jacket under very wet weather conditions. Touch no longer works.
4. It's 6+ year old and still working and going strong. It's almost my oldest phone. Since all the others don't work i'm using it right now. I ordered a new one because it's slow, the 3G a bit buggy and slow
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Indeed. My recent reasons to replace my phone:
1. It wasn't waterproof and i dropped it in something wet. Touch no longer works. 2. It was waterproof but i dropped it and the glass broke. Touch no longer works. 3. It had it in the pocket of my jacket under very wet weather conditions. Touch no longer works.
My last phone had the same apart the touch just stopped working, no reason given.
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Me too, it was a LG Nexus 4 E960. I loved that phone until touch suddenly stopped working. I blame it on the fact that I tend to sweat, and that it was made by LG. Replaced it with a Moto G 2nd, which I regret because of the small RAM. I dropped it spectacularly several times, and the screen is coming out of the case at one corner, but it still works as well as ever. It wasn't advertised as being water resistant, but several independent tests have shown it to be highly so. Now I won't buy another phone unle
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I need root access without having to risk bricking the device
The problem with this is that some apps (e.g. banking ones) refuse to install on rooted devices. Some media streaming ones as well AFAIK. So I don't see rooting as a sharp driving factor.
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maybe they will pull their heads in and sell something consumers want
I won't pay more than $400 for a phone
I need root access without having to risk bricking the device
The battery must be easily replaceable
It must have a standard audio jack
Is this so hard?
I don't want a notch.
I want the phone to be thick enough to hold a battery that will last longer.
The extra thickness and making the sides less slick will make it less likely to slip out of my hand.
The reduced chance of dropping the phone means they can go back to making the glass more scratch resistant.
They could make the front glass easier to replace if it does crack.
The one thing I can compromise on is a memory card slot; if they build in a decent amount (minimum 128GB) of storage without jacking the pric
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who woulda thunk.
1.4 billion phones. 7.6 billion people, figure half of that is probably too old, too young, not literate enough, or live where infrastructure is lacking. leaving 3.8 billion potential users....
at 100% market penetration, that's literally everybody, everywhere on the fucking planet, buying a new smartphone every 2.75 years.
Are you trying to say growth doesn't last forever?