Comment by kace91
11 hours ago
The latest phone reviews have been eyebrow raising.
The just announced pixel is the same phone as last year. I know it sounds like a usual complaint, but look at the actual specs, it literally is the same phone with differences so small that hey might have passed as regional variance.
As for the Samsung, the screen can darken when looked from the side for privacy. That’s pretty much it. Price increased though.
Coupled with the current iOS situation it seems like things are… rotting. Everything in decline.
> The latest phone reviews have been eyebrow raising.
It's eyebrow raising for me in other ways.
I have a Pixel 9a and it's been quite good with really solid battery life. It's barely 6 months old and I got it new straight from Google.
A few days ago I noticed the battery started to drain much faster than usual. I also noticed at the same time Google is pushing the 10a.
Nothing changed on my end. I barely use the phone in my day to day. In 10 hours today I sent 3 text messages with Whatsapp and lost 60% of my battery in that time frame. Up until a few days ago, 60% would last me 3 days.
I find it weirdly coincidental that the battery life went from amazing to worse than a 5 year old device I had prior to this just as they are releasing new phones. I've powered it down and given it a full discharge / charge too. It's still draining at an alarming rate.
I dont think Google is gimping your device to sell you new ones.
What you probably see is Google toggling on some new AI feature, which is now doing some initial on-device computation. It will usually calm down after a few days.
Probably just some broken code that got shipped.
Battery life, RAM usage, Performance, all suffer immensely from being leaky abstractions instead of creating hard faults.
"Just"?
The entire point of his statement, is that the broken code is on purpose.
Yup, I’ve heard of that “bug” from personal friends so you’re not imagining things.
Did it happen to them in the last few days? Did it self fix itself?
I wish there were better options for phones. It's absolutely crazy to me that a phone can be perfectly working one day and then it starts getting issues like this out of the blue.
It makes it completely undependable. All I want is a phone I can trust traveling with where I'm not going to wake up the next day and then the phone starts draining 3-4x faster than it normally does.
There hasn't even been a system update for almost 3 weeks, so it wasn't an update that busted things.
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Couldn't this just be confirmation bias?
The only reason I changed my phone was because my provider stopped supporting it when migrating to 5g VoIP.
Otherwise I'd still be rocking my S9.
I'm also using a pixel 2 for Android development and Google play billing isn't supported on it.
The hardware is fine but they make it obsolete with software.
I'm guessing they'll soon move to a subscription pricing for phones.
I am rocking a second hand phone that I got 5 years ago.
It might last until 4G is turned off.
I can’t really imagine needing greater bandwidth than I have now but I still use the phone like it’s 2010.
Upcoming Apple display mounted to wall or robot arm is rumored to have audio interface and new OS without 3rd-party apps, only "AI".
Jony Ive at OpenAI is rumored to have smart speaker, pendant, pen and bone-conducting headset in the launch pipeline. Audio interfaces, no screens,
Meta is selling millions of smart glasses, with Apple and others following.
If the memory market was not distorted, home AI + agents + open models could have a bigger role via AMD Strix Halo. Instead, they will be reserved for those who can afford to spend five figures on 512GB or 1TB unified memory on Mac Studio Ultra devices.
Wall mount? I'll pray for an e-Ink model.
I'd love a working bone conduction headset. Also a subvocalization to agent thingy that worked.
Apple recently spent $2B to bring subvocalization inference to iPhones, from the inventor of FaceID and Kinect, https://www.newsweek.com/apples-2b-ai-acquisition-could-have...
> users [could] interact with Siri and future Apple devices without speaking out loud.. AI systems capable of interpreting facial expressions and subtle muscle movements to understand so-called “silent speech.”
I’d love a 2015 input system that worked, but my iPhone’s keyboard prediction has been broken for like a year.
Have you looked into Shokz? I use these a lot, they seem like working bone conduction headsets to me.
https://shokz.com/pages/openrunpro2
when you say "audio interface" I assume you mean like, "Hey Siri" and not an audio interface as in recording device, right?
So we are talking about a HomePod with a screen, or like one of those Meta "Portal" things?
Not sure. Some AI audio pendants are always on. The Apple device is rumored to adapt its interface to the user based on facial recognition. They could choose to start monitoring audio when it thinks a known human wants to interact with the device, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145201
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OSes have been in decline for a long time. This memory price is just a blip, though. These supply and demand shocks happen periodically and always return to normal.
I'm actually super fine with the hardware stagnating! Work on the yields, cut the prices, simplify and make it more robust, while keeping the spec the same. It gives developers something to focus on, like a console, so the software gets better over the life of the device, not worse.
Perhaps this could give room for physical design changes instead. I'm sick of phones that are just a slab of glass. I remember fun, weird, fashionable designs! Buttons and keyboards, phones felt like an individual choice, not just this boring black mirror. I'd take ten years of stagnation on hardware development in phones in exchange for ten years of exciting form factors with improving software. Let's face it: the spec is high enough for anything we need to be doing, by now. The software is the real problem, and there's room here for massive improvement.
I think even going back a few generations, phones are improving at a much slower pace. You can only jam so many cameras onto a phone frame before users lose interest. A few years back there was a mad dash to add AR features to flagship phones so they could wow us with apps that never materialized. My last few upgrades have been almost imperceptible. Buyers just don't have a good reason to buy new phones every two years.
> Coupled with the current iOS situation it seems like things are… rotting. Everything in decline.
Just "commoditizing". Last years microwave ovens were basically the same as 2024's also, and no one cares. You still need them and people still buy them and use them as much as ever, but at a replacement rate and not because of fashion or innovation.
That is a good thing. It means the economy is doing what it's supposed to do and bringing maximal value to consumers so we can spend our resources more efficiently (on other fashion-driven junk in different market segments), making us richer.
It's only bad news if your business is selling "phones" and not innovative products more generally. Which, yeah, is pretty much AAPL's trap. But that's on them, not us. We're winning.
> so we can spend our resources more efficiently (on other fashion-driven junk in different market segments), making us richer.
Richer… so we can buy more stuff I guess?
Anyway a good microwave can last you 30 years not even joking.
So I take it then we’re seeing more efficient and cheap models as time passes right? Definitely not a software regression and higher prices?
We are and have been for many years now. Check out the "free" phone tier at your mobile vendor of choice. Those are great devices!
They may not match your particular tastes, but people with inflexible taste are always the last-resort market for manufacturers of commoditized products. People still buy from Hermès even though Shein completely dwarfs them in revenue, etc... That's the way it will always be with Apple too.
you better not look at screen:body ratio since Pixel 6a, it decreased for few generations and only now it's finally back on par, that's not what I call evolution/progress
same with Amazfit Bip from like 2018, you can't buy small THIN <10mm watch with battery requiring charging once a month and always readable MIP display (the more sunlight the better)
Don't worry, I'm sure the billions of dollars being spent on AI slop will restore consumer enthusiasm any day now...