Our poll results show that only a minority of you want the thinner phones that Apple and Samsung are promising.
I want something between ‘feature phones’ and smartphones. A little bit like what Nokia had to offer with Symbian and Maemo but more modern. If you want a rectangle of glass that requires wireless proprietary everything and replacing every time the battery starts packing up, more power to you, I’m a fan of choice and options.
But I want to be able to buy a music phone with great speakers and toys like FM transmitters thrown in. Or a gaming phone with a d-pad, a, b, x, y and shoulder buttons. But like, with Firefox instead of Opera Mini. And social media apps and shit.
Haven’t phones been getting slimmer and slimmer for the past 10 years or so?
Let’s see, decreased durability, decreased battery life…what are the advantages again?
That being said AA should (and probably does) know better. Their audience is not representative of the typical consumer.
Not very impressive when you also make it longer and wider. You’re just pancaking the phones.
Were in desperate need of a small thick, emovable battery / sdcard pocket rocket.
My Oneplus 6, Oneplus 9, and Pixel 8 Pro are all around the same size. The best one from feel alone is the OP6 because it feels solid and it’s a bit heavier. Lighter and thinner are way less interesting to me compared to the possibility of 3 day battery life, a headphone jack, or modular construction.
True. I want a bulky ass phone with more power, more storage, more battery life, and more accessory compatibility. I want a BRICK
I want a phone that stops falling out of my hands man…
This here! 🤣 😅 😆
I don’t need a paper thin phone. I need a phone with a battery that lasts all day when actively using my phone non-stop with everything on and the screen at maximum brightness.
I would also like a phone that doesn’t fall out of my hand because there’s not enough of it to actually hold on to, and what there is is polished completely smooth.
and (I’d like to add) the ability to change said battery when it, inevitably dies, and the I also want a minimum of 6 years of security update.
Also, I absolutely do not need the newest shiniest hardware. I want something that can handle WhatsApp/Signal encryption. YouTube playback would be nice, doesn’t need to be 1080, 720p is absolutely enough on a phone. And frigging security updates for more than a few years. Can we please figure this shit out.
Apparently the Galaxy A16 5G gets 6 years of updates.
So do some of the pixel series phones, and those you can install a privacy respecting OS (GrapheneOS or CalyxOS, for example).
Yeah pixels are great in that regard. But they are flagship phones with latest and greatest hardware costing a ton of money.
Agreed. Make the phones ⅛ in - ¼ (3.18mm - 6.35mm) thicker and use all the extra space for a bigger battery! Virtually everyone throws a case on their phone anyways, so it’s not going to be a very noticeable size difference anyways.
I want a small screen (about 5"), headphone jack, and unlockable bootloader. That’s all.
SD Card also. dont forget the SD Card.
Hotswappable batteries and an option for a keyboard would be nice too. Virtual keyboards seem like they’re getting shittier (at least on Android) and they never matched the accuracy of a regular keyboard.
I agree with you but also have you tried Heliboard, FlorisBoard, or FUTOKeyboard, Theyre all very decent FOSS* keyboard projects. I like HeliBoard myself.
*FUTOKb is Source available
Florisboard is pretty great
I use Heliboard myself and can second that recommend.
I just started using FUTO and it seems pretty solid
I have not. Thanks for the suggestions!
And removable battery. This will be coming for EU soon, hoping for the rest of us too.
Absolutely bonkers that a company can claim to be environmentally friendly despite their phones being practically disposable once the battery gets under 70% health.
For my own use, I don’t care much, but I agree in theory. My 128gb Pixel 4A has 32gb free and I do not actively manage space on it. Android’s handling of SD cards is kind of terrible, making them mostly useful for media files. If I did much photography or videography with my phone, I’d want this more.
Replaceable screen and battery. Actually being able to drop in a new radio would be nice too. I only gave up my op7t because no 5g.
What benefits are you seeing from 5g? It’s obviously faster, but I rarely find myself bandwidth constrained on my phone.
And a material you can actually grip. Pixel 9 be slippery af
Almost all the modern flagships have this garbage glass panel on the back that’s slippery and can break when dropped. I just don’t get it.
I bought the dbrand grip for the last 3 phones I’ve had, and it’s always been a great choice for me, highly recommend; but I shouldn’t have to spend $60 and increase the thickness of the phone by nealy 20% just to be able to hold on to the damn thing.
Yeah it became luxury products so basically fragile and not daily-use friendly
Slim phones are coming, but most of you don’t want them
Our polls show that, if anything, you want thicker phones.
Yeah, some poll on a site for tech nerds is not really representative of the general public. Thick phones with huge batteries exist and they sell like shit, it’s a super niche market.
Expect these thin phones to sell like hotcakes.
That’s because everytime I see a thick phone it’s the size of my arm. In the same way a wafer thin phone is shit, so is 13 bricks glued together vertically.
A wafer thin iPhone won’t be shit though. It will be slick as shit. Sure, there will probably be compromises and it won’t be suitable for the most demanding users, but most people aren’t that demanding of their phone. As long as it manages to get through one day it’ll be good enough.
Don’t underestimate how important the size, weight, build quality and design is to the user experience. I have a 13” M4 iPad Pro which is also crazy thin yet feels absolutely solid and that makes it look and feel like a magical piece of technology. It has a huge impact on how it feels and that is ultimately what matters to people. Not the specs or the benchmarks, but how it feels to use it.
If it’s wafer thin it isn’t going to fit the battery I want it to fit. Thin, yes, wafer thin no. I understand size matters which is why the 20,000mah battery phones aren’t good either. iPad isn’t a fair comparison to a phone, more battery space
If it’s wafer thin it isn’t going to fit the battery I want it to fit.
Personally I don’t care about the size of the battery, I care about how long it lasts. There have been rumors that Apple is working on improved battery tech. Their SoCs are also crazy efficient and super fast.
What I expect to happen is that they will equip the iPhone Air with this next-gen battery tech (probably not a massive improvement, but something like 10-20% more energy in the same volume would already be a big win), combined with a throttled down SoC with fewer cores (still plenty fast for anyone but the most demanding users), that will allow them to reduce power usage by a lot. Add to that the already excellent power-management in iOS, maybe tweaked a little more aggressively, and they’ll have a phone that’s super thin and lasts all day.
People will hold this phone for 3 seconds and be sold.
having a larger battery capacity can allow you to charge other devices from the phone, like wireless earbuds.
Something I’ve never done, or wanted to do, in my life.
A 20% improvement on batteries wouldn’t make it wafer thin though. I get your point about how long it lasts being the part that actually matters, I just don’t see us having phones people want to use that can last a full day and are that thin. At least not anytime soon.
People right now buy phones that have way way more performance than they’d ever need, all the time, I don’t expect that to change for the general market.
I want a battery that lasts a week, a headphone jack, and an eink screen.
That’s what I don’t get. If they can make a phone that is thinner but lasts 2 days, why not double the battery and make it last 4??
I’m going on 9 years with this current phone. I want my next phone to last double that, at least.
Wow, what phone is still working fine after 9 years???
I feel like 5 years is generally the upper limit of usage due to battery issues, spontaneous hardware failure, slowness due to advancing tech standards, etc. A user serviceable device would be able to help with some of these things but still…
It’s a Samsung A5 (not Galaxy). I didn’t really think much of it when I got it, and it started to slow down a few years ago, but I just keep clearing space to speed it up and it just keeps working. Would probably last 2 full days on the battery, so never have to think about that as long as I charge it over night. Not to shill, but at this point I’m rightly impressed. It just works.
Some apps like Slack have stopped working on it, but nothing that would make me switch to a newer phone.
for the 10 year anniversary you should give it a cake
Not parent poster but my LG G2 just works™, been going for 12 years now.
Just want a phone with more RAM and less AI
People are still gonna bolt a protective case, screen protector, popsocket, magnifying glass, and a hairdryer to their phone so what does it matter?
Same thinking here… who can afford a phone without proper case. That case adds bulk and provides option for whatever thickness.
With that being said why not make battery biggers. I don’t think i ever heard anyone say they needed thinner phone…
Manufacturers want them - they break more easily
Thank you daddy
EVERY SINGLE TIME
Good read on the PR angle here, corpo is literally telling us we getting them, like it or not, boy!
Desgustang. Naked phone is the only way.
nudist phone gang 👍
0.5 + 0.3 < 0.8 + 0.3
what kind of argument are you making, wtf
Let’s just make all phones 5cm thick, obviously it doesn’t matter?
Obviously thinner is better if you don’t have to compromise on anything else
I’m kidding. I thought it was obvious when I added the hairdryer bit.
I’ve got the newest Samsung and it’s already so slim that the cameras are sticking out.
And so slippery that I don’t dare use it without a case, defeating the entire purpose.
I’d rather have a thicker phone with more battery life and space for more than just a USB-C port.I recently upgraded my Pixel, and the old one is sitting on my desk. I took the case off and put it down, and without it, it just slides right off the desk and hits the floor! It’s ridiculous!
If the slim phone has a camera bump then is not longer slim and I’m not interested.
