The vanishing of the small high-end smartphone
The vanishing of the small high-end smartphone
The ASUS Zenfone 10 claims to be a pint-sized flagship, but the truth is there have been no truly small and powerful phones in 2023.
Manufacturers don’t make displays under 6 inches available for purchase, with special cases (such as the iPhone Mini) being made under exclusive contracts. The best lead they have so far is to try to use displays designed for the front part of a foldable phone, but they’re yet to strike an agreement.
TIL that display manufacturers are also part of the reason why we aren't getting small phones and why it's probably even harder for manufacturers like Fairphone to make them.
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I just want one with a removable battery and a headphone jack...
And SD card support. Why TF do I want to pay a mint for storage when I could spend like $50 (or less) for the equivalent (or more) in SD form?
it's not that you want to, but rather that the companies want to charge you $100 more for $5 of ROM.
Either that or get you on a cloud storage subscription
That you'll need stable internet to use (so goodbye using your media library while camping/offroading)
Not just that, but they get to charge $100 dollars more for the $5 of ROM while avoiding the support costs and reputation hit of idiots who force the SD card in the wrong way or blaming the device when the SD card is inevitably sheered in half after being forgotten about during a battery replacement.
Unfortunately every market incentive just aligns against expandable storage in phones.
Read Only Memory...?
Wait until 2027 and buy a Sony then, I guess. They're the only manufacturer who consistently includes a headphone jack and starting in 2027 all phones sold in the EU have to have removable batteries. Yeah, it's pretty sad that that's the only option...
Guess I'll be moving to the EU in a few years ;-;
You don't need to; the Brussels effect has you covered.
It's cheaper to sell phones with replaceable batteries worldwide than to design the same phone twice for different markets. So most major manufacturers will probably just sell EU-friendly phones everywhere just like when the EU required USB charging ports.
Apple literally a victim of it's own success.
Yeah, it's pretty great here lol
Like the old days, man
I don't mind not having a removable battery, and a headphone jack is nice but not make or break... but so few phones apparently have expandable storage these days.
This brothers me so much. It's such an obvious cash grab - manufacturers can force you to buy a more expensive model of the same phone, cloud services can tap your wallet for additional space, and carriers can tap your wallet for a larger data plan.
It's gross. There's literally no consumer-friendly reason to strip it.
Me too, Fan, me too.
...and a qwerty keyboard.
At the last EU is fighting to make your first wish happen.
RIP headphone jacks.
I don't understand why we can't have a phone a usb C port on top and bottom for audio + charging