Metal unibody phones are a dead breed; Pitiful phone design

[Commodus]

2 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Gaming phones are dumb just as gaming laptops are dumb. Why would you game on a phone to begin with? They're only meant to run lighter games not Shadow of the tomb raider. Just get a normal phone with y'know a good camera and speakers and a screen that isn't washed out.

While I do think some gaming phones are over the top, I don't think gaming on a phone is a bad idea.

 

First: in many countries, a person's phone is their only gaming-friendly computing device.  They either play games like Fortnite on their phone, or they play nothing.  We shouldn't deny them high-performance features if it means they can get one device that coves both their phone and gaming desires.

 

And many of the features that pop up in gaming phones can be appreciated elsewhere.  A 120Hz screen makes things easier to read in motion, improves responsiveness and is just easier on the eyes.  Having gobs of RAM means that your apps are more likely to stay open.  That sort of thing.  It's mainly the over-the-top features that we can do without.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

On 4/8/2020 at 9:44 AM, Lord Vile said:

Can recycle glass fairly easily. plastic is a lot harder. Plus plastic is made of oil, glass isn't

The thing is, if phones get smashed more easily then it's not the glass, but the whole phone that needs to get recycled. So far from a clear advantage there.

 

On 4/8/2020 at 12:17 PM, seanondemand said:

Wireless charging.

Zero importance to me, down there with "water proofing". Although I could unexpectedly benefit from water resistance by chance, so even that gimmick comes first.

 

 

7 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

From reasonable heights most phones will survive a drop

3 hours ago, Caius Filimon said:

The Dooge s95 pro if you want chipset performance.

Not even needed: my old Doogee DG800 would (and has) survived infinite drops, with its simple "eject plastic cover" impact-absorption strategy  

Two-piece plastic phones are actually superior to either glass or metal "unibodies" in this respect.

 

3 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Nah with the size phones are getting it's hard to make it slim enough to make sure it doesn't end. Plus you need cutouts for buttons and charging ports which weaken the structure further. 

So bad design choices breed bad design choices, is what you're saying?

I must say I don't mind remote-control-shaped phones being made of glass (or compost for that matter), as I won't get one anyway  

 

 

1 hour ago, seanondemand said:

The market has decided wireless charging is not dumb.

"The market" has also "decided" that camera notches are "not dumb" by that measure. Except "the market" is not an entity and it doesn't "make decisions".

1 hour ago, seanondemand said:

Consumers love the convenience and it puts out enough charge to get more juice at your desk, in your car, or on your bedside table. Car makers are putting it in, IKEA's had it in lamps for years, Linus is building it into desks, it is a thing. Mark my words, 5 years from now we'll see phones with no ports, period.

 

A proprietary snap-on charge cable is very 2004 and is never coming back.

So, all your arguments boil down to herd behavior?

I  don't think OP was ever questioning what the trend is, he was expressing an understandably negative opinion about it. 

[Lord Vile]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

While I do think some gaming phones are over the top, I don't think gaming on a phone is a bad idea.

 

First: in many countries, a person's phone is their only gaming-friendly computing device.  They either play games like Fortnite on their phone, or they play nothing.  We shouldn't deny them high-performance features if it means they can get one device that coves both their phone and gaming desires.

 

And many of the features that pop up in gaming phones can be appreciated elsewhere.  A 120Hz screen makes things easier to read in motion, improves responsiveness and is just easier on the eyes.  Having gobs of RAM means that your apps are more likely to stay open.  That sort of thing.  It's mainly the over-the-top features that we can do without.

But it doesn’t cover it, let’s not use fortnite because If you only that you need to be taken behind the Woodshed but a FPS you need a controller with it and it’s just not a good experience. Yknow you could always get an older phone and say, an Xbox.

[Commodus]

32 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

But it doesn’t cover it, let’s not use fortnite because If you only that you need to be taken behind the Woodshed but a FPS you need a controller with it and it’s just not a good experience. Yknow you could always get an older phone and say, an Xbox.

I'm sorry, but this is out of touch with what many people can afford, have access to and would appreciate given their lifestyles.

 

Let's say you're a Taiwanese person with $800 to spend on your phone (this may be generous) and any other gaming niceties.  Do you spend $800 on a nice phone where you'll have reasonably nice gaming and an overall improved phone experience, or do you get a lower-quality phone and, say, a $200 Switch Lite that you'll have to lug around in addition to that phone? Some would take the two-system setup, but I'll bet most would take the better phone.

 

And that's in a well-off country like Taiwan.  If you're in mainland China or India, for example, that $200 may be not be much smaller than your total budget.

 

There's also the simple reality that many people don't care for consoles, and that many kids might not bother with a console because they can't play during recess or with their friends who don't have the same console.  The experience won't be ideal even if you do have a gamepad, but here's the thing: for many, it's about having fun on the platform that's always with them, the one all their friends have, than having the absolute best control scheme or graphics.

[seanondemand]

2 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Zero importance to me, down there with "water proofing". Although I could unexpectedly benefit from water resistance by chance, so even that gimmick comes first.

 

"The market" has also "decided" that camera notches are "not dumb" by that measure. Except "the market" is not an entity and it doesn't "make decisions".

So, all your arguments boil down to herd behavior?

I  don't think OP was ever questioning what the trend is, he was expressing an understandably negative opinion about it. 

No, they boil down to the question of if phone builders should cater to a shrinking group of people who focus on very specific design aspects, or should they focus on the majority of people who buy phones?

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 minutes ago, seanondemand said:

No, they boil down to the question of if phone builders should cater to a shrinking group of people who focus on very specific design aspects, or should they focus on the majority of people who buy phones?

But you don't know what either the majority or the minority want, do you? All you observe are fashion trends on the manufacturer side.

Surely enough, if they copy each other inside a given market segment, whatever phone people buy in that segment will have the same characteristics, wouldn't it? Not exactly a celan experiment on consumer preferences, I would say.

[seanondemand]

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

But you don't know what either the majority or the minority want, do you? All you observe are fashion trends on the manufacturer side.

Surely enough, if they copy each other inside a given market segment, whatever phone people buy in that segment will have the same characteristics, wouldn't it? Not exactly a celan experiment on consumer preferences, I would say.

It's not clean, but I'd say those trends are driven by customer demand, and customers seem to be demanding the glass sandwiches so they can get both the fashion look, and (I'd argue) wireless charging too.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 minutes ago, seanondemand said:

It's not clean, but I'd say those trends are driven by customer demand

Well, as Wikipedia says, "citation needed"

 

We do have repeated instances of companies like Apple or Google telling us consumers don't know what they want so they just don't care what they say, "they'll learn they want what we give them once we educate them" type of mentality.

 

6 minutes ago, seanondemand said:

and customers seem to be demanding the glass sandwiches

Glass sandwiches pre-date metal unibodies (which I also don't like ), starting with the iPhone itself, so the song was sang in reverse before. Everybody added a notch that now is cool to hate.

And that's the thing: even if you could show a demand-side trend, fashion has no sense of progress, it can happily be circular (round headlights-square headlights cycles in cars, tight pants - loose pants cycles in cloth...), so whether something becomes more popular or less popular tell you nothing about whether something is better or more convenient to someone, which I think is what the thread was about...

[Lord Vile]

3 hours ago, Commodus said:

I'm sorry, but this is out of touch with what many people can afford, have access to and would appreciate given their lifestyles.

 

Let's say you're a Taiwanese person with $800 to spend on your phone (this may be generous) and any other gaming niceties.  Do you spend $800 on a nice phone where you'll have reasonably nice gaming and an overall improved phone experience, or do you get a lower-quality phone and, say, a $200 Switch Lite that you'll have to lug around in addition to that phone? Some would take the two-system setup, but I'll bet most would take the better phone.

 

And that's in a well-off country like Taiwan.  If you're in mainland China or India, for example, that $200 may be not be much smaller than your total budget.

 

There's also the simple reality that many people don't care for consoles, and that many kids might not bother with a console because they can't play during recess or with their friends who don't have the same console.  The experience won't be ideal even if you do have a gamepad, but here's the thing: for many, it's about having fun on the platform that's always with them, the one all their friends have, than having the absolute best control scheme or graphics.

With 800 id get a used iPhone XR and a Xbox one S. Or a switch because why have a phone with crappy microtransatian laden games when you can play literally 2 of the best games of all time on the switch along with stellar titles in Mario Kart, Smash, Animal crossing, Mario Maker, freaking Doom, Overwatch etc.

 

In china I'd get probably whatever Huawei phone they're selling for pennies because they can't really use it to spy on you more than they already are and then go to Internet cafes  for $0.5 an hour.

 

You don't need a "gaming" phone to play mobile games... for a start one game of battle royal lasts longer than any school break and most decent phones can run them without issue if you turn graphics down if the "absolute best" graphics don't matter.