Comment by ninetyninenine
1 year ago
What I want is quality to the level of flagship android phones or the iphone with the ability to plug it in to a keyboard, mouse and screen and have it function as my laptop as well.
One single integrated experience. I think everyone wants this. We have the technology we have the demand, it's just companies who make the high quality phones want to completely lock down the market.
You would think the free market would produce a company that would tackle this issue but barrier to entry is waay to high so essentially we have small companies trying to get into this space but they are only creating sub-par products because they can't make something as good as an iphone.
It's basically a legal monopoly. Companies can't get into it because the technology and capital required are way to high and only super mega corps like samsung and apple can pull it off...
Closest thing I've seen to this product I'm looking for is the steam deck. I would buy a steam deck phone if it had the quality of a pixel/iphone device.
> I think everyone wants this.
You asked for it. I don't want that. I don't want an "integrated experience" and "flagship quality". The first sounds juvenile and the second sounds unnecessarily expensive and probably containing shit I don't need, like fancy cameras to look good on my nonexistent socials.
What I want is a simple, slow, old, efficient, simple phone with the interface of an 80s era 8bit computer that can actually, imagine this, make and, to complicate matters even further, even take calls.
I basically want an open source dumb phone. Do these exist? If not, why not focus on this first? Why go for fancy cameras and apps when we can't even make calls? Looking at your PinePhone.
LTE set that back by a lot. For years there were no VoLTE implementations in common use other than stuffs on Android. Even those had compatibility issues and lots of carriers still block unapproved clients trying to register on VoLTE.
For 3G, you could always do that. You only needed the right modem module with voice call support and audio I/O, like bare PCM pins, and a host micro to handle AT commands.
> there were no VoLTE implementations in common use other than stuffs on Android
What's wrong with the Android one - is it not permissively licensed?
I think the biggest problem of Linux phones is the community's obsession with trying (and failing) to reimplement (multiple times, in parallel) things that Android does really well and can be used as-is.
That's why the PinePhone or Librem 5 still can't even match the usability (at basic things like phone or camera or battery life) of a 2010-era Android phone, despite having similar hardware.
You want a Linux phone that actually works? Start with an AOSP-based phone and provide manufacturer-approved root and escape hatch such as first-party terminal and Wayland/X server app to run Linux apps.
Over time, you can slowly replace Android components with their Linux desktop counterparts when they're ready (or the other way around - the Android bits can just be the commonly-accepted solution to specific problems in Linux - even desktop - distros), but at least you're starting from a solid base.
2 replies →
> that can actually, imagine this, make and, to complicate matters even further, even take calls
Showing how different different people are. I've probably made... 20? ish? phone calls in the last decade. (I'm 46.)
Holy moly, you must have very different life than most people I guess. I am from the younger generation which supposedly avoids making old-style phone calls as much as possible and I don't think I know anyone who has made less than 100 calls in the last decade.
2 replies →
Same for me, I am 50 and would happily carry a phone sized tablet without call caps at all. I never need to call or receive call; send me an email or hit me up on a chat channel.
>I basically want an open source dumb phone. Do these exist? If not, why not focus on this first? Why go for fancy cameras and apps when we can't even make calls? Looking at your PinePhone.
Your dream is achievable and has been achieved. PinePhone for example.
I obviously don't mean everyone everyone. More like the overwhelming majority of people.
I have one and it very much struggles to make and especially to receive calls and is still trying to be smart. PinePhone is definitely not a dumb phone. It's expensive as well.
To me a simple, dumb, open source device that can easily be manufactured in all kinds of conditions all over the world sounds like a dream for actual, practical purposes. Like, for example, again, calling. To some degree I have the same issues with "smart watches". Simple, open source, dumb smart watches with just a smidge of 8bit CPU goodness to display, say, something simple like a word or even a letter on the screen would be quite useful. I know there is some movement in that arena using ESP32s but I am not particularly impressed. Alas, alas. Why do we as a civilization tend to go for the extremes and not just get our basic shit together first?
I was being slightly obtuse and I understood perfectly well that you meant all reasonable people. If I can't be obtuse and pedantic on HN though, where else?
These do (or did) exist: feature phones shipped with FirefoxOS. Almost no one bought them and the effort was widely seen as a failure, although KaiOS enjoys ongoing success in the developing world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Firefox_OS_devic...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS
I am using a KaiOS phone, a Nokia 6300 4G. It works well as a 4G WiFi hotspot for a laptop and as a small phone for making calls and sending texts. Have a few apps on it for mapping as well as using the browser occasionally.
The KaiOS WhatsApp app will stop working next year though.
3 replies →
I half agree. I dont need the bullshit bells and whistles. However a good camera doesn't mean you want to post on instagram or tiktok - maybe you just want a memory of a trip you went on or technical detail of something you want to document. People took pictures before social media.
Most every phone can already do what we want but the hardware is undocumented or locked behind NDA and the firmware is hostile. Without those locks the gigacorps cant keep you in the data-mining garden. We wont have open phones until this thinking changes. Keep dreaming until then.
I agree I would love this option, but how much would you be willing to pay for such a device? Would you pay $800? $1,000? $1,400?
That's where I have a hard time. I would pay that kind of money, but I would need something well polished and fully capable of being a "daily driver." I think many people are in the same place I am, and thus we have a real chicken and egg problem here.
Microsoft at one point was running full NT on ARM on phones. I think they could've done it within such price range, but didn't.
Didn't they? The Lumia 950 launched at about $500ish and supported Continuum.
Continuum wasn't exactly full convergence, but it was kind of close. As I recall, they had a desktop dock and a laptop like dock, that you could pair your phone to (wireless or wired).
Microsoft was big on their 'universal windows app' concept at the time, where universal meant actually only ran on a small fraction of windows devices. sigh
1 reply →
Hmm. If I bought a phone for ~$600 and a laptop for ~$1000, I guess I’d pay ~$1700 for the converged device (adding a little bit because of the intangible benefit of not having to manage my files anymore).
I'd pay up to 3k if it was quality delivered the experience of a top quality phone and a top quality laptop.
I mean the technology to do this is already here. If apple or samsung wanted to do this... they can.
Right now I use an iphone, but if samsung made a phone that felt like say linux, windows or macos when in laptop mode... I would switch off iphone in a heartbeat.
And i mean it has to feel like macOS. None of that bloat is acceptable. SteamOS actually pulls this off but in a gaming form factor.
> And i mean it has to feel like macOS. None of that bloat is acceptable.
I suspect that every single thing you like about macOS is something I consider bloat (or would if that was the only related word I was allowed to use).
My first task on my recently acquired M3 MBP was to remove/hide/disable as much of macOS as I possibly could; only then can I use it as a productive development environment.
> and a top quality laptop. > I mean the technology to do this is already here.
I think it really depends on what precisely you mean here. I don't think it's currently possible to get the same performance of my M3 Max MacBook Pro in the form factor of a phone.
> What I want is quality to the level of flagship android phones or the iphone with the ability to plug it in to a keyboard, mouse and screen and have it function as my laptop as well. > > One single integrated experience.
Purism achieved that with their Librem 5 phone [0]. However having a polished experience like with iPhone requires to invest billions in software. It can be used as a daily driver [1] but there's a lot to improve yet. Sent from my Librem 5.
[0] https://puri.sm/posts/converging-on-convergence-pureos-is-co...
[1] https://puri.sm/posts/my-first-year-of-librem-5-convergence/
Asus did that in 2011 with the PadFone, it was an Android mobile phone that you could plug into the provided tabled and then plug a keyboard into that.
There was also Motorola Atrix in 2011 with similar idea.
Yeah but it wasn't quality right? I mean the both modes need to have a UX on par with a regular laptop and a high quality phone.
I can do something not unlike that with the second-hand displaylink adapter I currently have gathering dust... I would just need to install a desktop environment on termux for it to be complete (not sure if I could get 3D acceleration with this). The only real problem there is the adapter I have cannot charge the phone while connected.
> One single integrated experience. I think everyone wants this
This is insane to me. Like not just no. Hell no. I want my phone to be a gadget, like a watch, not a whole ass computer. I want my tablet to be its own thing from my laptop, which is different from my PC(s). I absolutely, positively do NOT want general purpose computing to be the typical paradigm. I don’t want, need, or even like the idea of my phone, that I typically use like a wallet, to be a general purpose computation tool. Lock that shit down, please!
> I want my tablet to be its own thing from my laptop, which is different from my PC(s).
But what's the point in owning three devices when you can own one doing everything? How about in addition an mp3 player, a camera and a flashlight, too?
I like tools to have defined roles, not multipurpose.
I mean the top post is a ~200USD “smart” pomodoro timer. I’m not even close to that.
I use my phone for communication, quick photos/ notes and sound. It carries my cards. I want it to be completely locked down because it gets used in public and could be stolen.
I use my laptop for personal business including coding. I want it to be secure and streamlined.
I have a gaming PC, it runs widows and gaming rootkits and all kinds of questionable software. I don’t want my sensitive data around that computer.
I do art on my ipad, I want it to be about art. I dont need the phone stuff there. I don’t want my personal stuff there.
> flashlight too
lol I actually carry a flashlight with me always. Phones are absolutely garbage compared to a modern High CRI flashlight. I also have a FF camera and take it with me very frequently.
Your phone is already a general purpose computer...
I should never say "everyone" anymore. Because everyone is almost never true. I mean overwhelming majority.
I think adults should read 'majority' when someone says everyone. I will keep saying it when talking with adults as it is just easier than put all the exceptions; if some people get annoyed by it, that's not really my problem.
2 replies →
But it got electrolytes?
I remember Motorola showing off a concept like this in ~2012.