They’ll take away volume control (SW/HW buttons) and replace with dynamically adjusting “magic volume” so that you can’t mute ads.
Oh Christ. You’ve just triggered a premonition in me–the Galaxy S32 Ultra will be the first smartphone with no physical buttons or ports. You can turn it “off,” but that will only turn on a sort of extreme power saving mode. It will still ping your location once every few minutes, and will keep the fingerprint scanner active. You will “turn on” the device by holding your finger on the fingerprint scanner for four seconds. They will advertise the “quick startup” as a new feature. Volume will be controlled by sliding your finger along the right edge of the phone, which the screen will wrap around all the way to the back. It will be impossible to hold the phone without touching some part of the screen.
It will only allow wireless charging. You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards. In reality, this will be to prevent you from using ADB to remove apps that come with the phone. You cannot turn off mobile data. You cannot turn off location. You cannot use a third party SMS application. You cannot choose your own wallpaper. You cannot set a private DNS. You cannot install applications that haven’t been approved by Samsung. You cannot block ads. This is all covered on page 74 of subsection 32(a) of section G8 of the terms and conditions that you agreed to when you set up the phone.
They will meet the physical limitations of how well a small lens can focus light. Zoom will cap out at 150x. Nevertheless, there will be seven cameras.
correction a bit, you can use adb via wifi. That’s what I do to sideload an app to my Android TV
You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards.
Making devices water-proof is also a marketing scheme to avoid replaceable batteries :
Some manufacturers are already eyeing an exemption for batteries used in “wet conditions” to opt out electric toothbrushes and possibly wearables like earbuds and smartwatches. The exemption is “based on unfounded safety claims,” states Thomas Opsomer, policy engineer for iFixit, in Repair.EU’s post.
Despite the coming up regulation on batteries and waste batteries by the EU Council batteries in water-proof devices will probably be exempt from being replceable, because the water proof feature of the device cannot be guaranteed. This undermines the right to repair and manufacturers can hope that customers replace their entire devices soon. Making phones water-proof is a loophole to seal off the device so that it is not to be repaired, at least without keeping the water-proof features after repairing.
Yeah pretty sure the Fairphone 5 and its predecessors have a pretty good IP rating, despite their ability to have the battery removed.
The Galaxy S5 did it first :)
(for a competent smartphone that is)
I dropped my phone in the bath once, so it’s worth it 🤣
I dropped several flip phones in water ranging from bath, to sink, to ponds and creeks in the mid 00’s to mid teens before getting a smart phone. Out of probably 10 phones used only one was ever ruined by the water, the rest all dried out fine when taken apart and left to dry for a day or two.
nahhh you’ll be able to choose your own wallpaper, the average user will eat up all of those “feautres” but god forbid Keighleeeigh can’t put her little baby Xaileeyn as her screen saver
This is when I go back to having a “dumb” phone 🫡
Why are people up voting this? This is such ridiculous FUD that I can’t take it seriously.
I know, right? I mean, does he seriously expect virtually every smartphone manufacturer to put holes in his screen and take away his headphone jacks, removable sim cards, SD cards, replaceable batteries, and IR blasters, and switch to an aspect ratio other than 16:9? That would be ridiculous. They never make user-unfriendly changes!
They’re not user unfriendly changes if 95% of users just don’t care.
And which of the changes he listed would the 95% figure you mentioned care about? By your definition, short of literally turning each feature into a micro transaction, there’s no such thing as user unfriendly changes - and knowing the general public, not even then.
Next will be memory. They will say everything you meed should be stored online for a subscription fee.
Microsoft is already trying hard. My poor mom did not notice all her files are on OneDrive. Now she has two laptops with everything remote on OneDrive. It’s has some advantages, but it’s annoying in so many more ways.
There’s a setting in Onedrive to keep a copy of everything on the device. It will still get stored in the cloud too, but it means that everything will be available if the internet goes down.
I fell victim to that :(
A few years ago my ex got a new laptop and it had onedrive enabled system-wide by default. She didn’t realize until after she had been using it for months, I had to spend several hours backing up her files and defenestrating onedrive. It not as simple as just turning it off because it was even on critical system folders, you have to go in the registry and remap the those folders manually one at time before you can disable it.
It is possible, but it fucking sucks.
It’s not annoying at all. It’s peace of mind. People are just not used to it
No, its kidnapping your data to keep you trapped as their customer. If you want peace of mind, you can make your own backups.
I didn’t criticize anyone, I didn’t disrespect anyone, so it’s surprising getting this many downvotes and answers.
Still, it’s your opinion, and I will still share mine.
Local backups have their flaws, just like cloud backups.
I have 1TB storage using my school account. I am constantly changing between devices, and I like having my files always accessible.
Everything important, I keep in two local backups (external HDD and SSD).
The only thing I dislike about onedrive, is the sync of desktop, documents and images folder. I have turned that off, but my docs folder still appears to be syncing with onedrive.
Besides that, it’s the best thing for me. And like I said… “Peace of mind”. Just because you don’t like that, it does not mean it is a bad solution.
Google keeps trying to back up my non existent photos. It’s annoying.
Google photos made it difficult to download or delete your pictures on purpose. You have to manually select them. There is still a way to get them and it was because of GDPR, when you ask google for the whole data of your account they include the pictures and video from google photos.
You don’t need to request all account data, you can request only the Google photos data
This is Apple already.
Oh. You can only afford 4GB iPhone? Not to worry, for only $10 a month we can store stuff for you.
Also we got rid of photo stream and if you delete the file from the cloud then we remove it from every device
Don’t forget the RGB notification led!
I switched to Chinese brand phones, they still have all this and they’re dirt cheap, currently rocking an Ulephone power armor 18t, which also has a flir infrared camera and a microscope for some reason. No I’m not joking, they work surprisingly well and have come in handy more than I thought they would!
Not sure I’d consider £600 “dirt cheap” but the thermal camera is definitely cool.
They have frequent sales, i got it for under 300
Don’t forget the RGB notification led!
The Nexus One had this, the trackball had an RGB LED inside it. With custom ROMs it could be customised to flash different colours and patterns for just about anything.
THEY TOOK MY SLIDE OUT QWERTY KEYBOARD!
There are different categories of removable.
With my old Note, I had an extra battery that came with case/charger combination. If my battery on my phone died, I could swap the battery in 10 seconds.
It states that any battery should be removable and replaceable by the user. So this slap on tactic will only work if your device has no internal battery.
I also noticed this is for all batteries. Not just phones, but also cars etc.
EDIT: As any EU law there is a lot of nuance and exceptions. I dig a little further and found the following:
The regulation introduces requirements that say that portable batteries should be easily removable and replaceable by the end-user and LMT batteries and cells in LMT batteries should be easily removable and replaceable by an independent professional.
So what is LMT?
The regulation defines five battery categories depending on how the battery is used:
- Portable batteries
- Light means of transport (LMT) batteries
- Starting, lighting and ignition (SLI) batteries
- Industrial batteries
- Electric vehicle (EV) batteries
I couldn’t find any concrete wording for “easily removed and replaceable”. But I sure hope it means no more glue for the portable batteries.
Source: https://www.intertek.com/blog/2023/08-17-battery-regulation/
No. This law keeps being misquoted, and people are going to be disappointed if they go into 2027 thinking we’ll be able to pop out batteries like the good ol’ days.
It does not necessitate battery removal like that. Only that it not be too difficult to change out for a repair (i.e. stuff like gluing it in place with a strong glue, or necessitating removing the display before the battery). That’s still a good change, I’d be happy if it were something like removing 4 screws then unplugging, but it’s not the same as what everybody makes out.
It also doesn’t apply at all for batteries over a certain capacity, or so long as the battery retains 63% capacity or more (presumably this means throughout the warranty period, but I’m unable to find a timeframe for which this standard gets applied) from 2027, or 73% from 2030.
There’s also a 2 year grace period after the law comes into effect where it won’t really be applied.
I still have an S9 with a notification LED.
From my cold, dead hands.
still using the 3.5mm on my S8 every damn day
Smartphone manufacturers, if you’re reading this:
I spent 6 hours on google to find a phone with a screen smaller than 6 inch. I did find none (except an old iPhone, but I want android), so I had to buy one 6 inch. It is too unwieldy. I am annoyed.
There is a serious market for people like me. Do not look away. Somebody will buy these phones.
Also, by the way, it’s not bad if the phones are a bit thicker.
They removed my slide out keyboard, too.
I just want my physical keyboard back, damnit!
They now sell it as an addon in a phone case
Ew
The IR blaster needs to come back. They were mostly on phones pre-smart device where they had super limited usage. With a smart device, they could practically do anything. I wanna use my phone as a universal remote, damn it.
I want a 0hysical.keyboadd too. Touch screen sucks.
I had it on my Xiaomi around 5 years ago, amazing stuff. Could turn on-off air conditioning anywhere, great party trick
You know what else they’ve taken from us? Actually unique designs for phones. When I look at modern day smartphones, for some reason they look like clones of each other. Where’s all the spunk that these manufacturers used to put in their devices?
Fuck you, minimalism. Ever since you’ve ruined my iPhone back in 2013, my life has never been the same.
I love it when uninformed troglodytes complain about a hole in the screen. They didn’t add a hold in the screen. The hole was already there. They just wrapped your screen around it for more screen. 😅
It’s really infuriating seeing the downvoted on some other replies that point this out. The time/notifications/battery bar along the top used up screen space. Now those notifications are in the formerly dead space with the camera. It is objectively better. It’s not debatable because there is measurably more useable screen space without making the phone larger.
Phone nerds are such losers.
They removed 3 ways water could get inside the phone
They made it a thin piece of glass that slips out of your hand.
still better than plastic
People don’t care. They buy whatever marketing tells them to buy. Lines around the block for the first iPhone when it was vastly inferior to the other phones of the day. Couldn’t even use custom ringtones. Knew then that people really are sheep.
