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People want 'dumbphones'. Will companies make them?
(www.bbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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I don't want a dumb phone but I would 100% take a phone with a back that isn't glass, high repairability, and full control over the OS. Make it THICC and put a big battery too.
Sounds like a Librem 5. Am currently typing from one.
How is performance? Read spec relatively low.
Why would the back of your phone be made of glass? Lol, wtf?
because steve jobs' ghost wills it
From what I understand about phone design, it allows for the smallest possible design that can still do NFC and wireless charging, while keeping that premium feel.
I don't give a damn about premium feel, I just want a no-nonsense phone that does what it's fucking supposed to while still being serviceable.
Because if you want wireless charging it's that or plastic and the latter certainly doesn't make for a great premium product
What? My phone has a metal back and charges wirelessly just fine, even with a case on it.
I van assure you at the very least the part where the coil is situated has no metal backplate. While technically possible to charge wirelessly with a metal back the efficiency of the charging would drop into hell. Unless absolutely not otherwise doable it's better avoided, not least of all because the back would heat up immensenly when using charging speeds that are remotely useful
I use my phones with a case, so I actually don't know the difference
So that the manufacturer can charge you to repair it when it breaks
Legit the cheapo plastic screens on the less than $100 phones are the most resilient phones i've ever owned
I had a chunk of metal fall on one, and the only thing it did was INDENT the screen, the plastic was soft enough to bend rather than just crack
So a fairphone? Though it doesn't provide wireless charging I think.
And no headphone jack
Yeah that was probably the wrong decision, following their mantra. But personally it doesn't bother me too much. I'm pretty happy with it
Make repairable phone
Remove headphone jack and release wireless bud that not repairable (TWS earbud)
Piss off community
???
Profit?
(i know fairbud now better, but was not back then)
For now there are Fairphone and SHIFTphone but both only guarantee to work in the EU. They offer very mid hardware but I hear they do actually work.
Not EU so I'll have to wait. It cost me around $40 USD in shipping and taxes just to import a damn Pinecil to Canada, my country is ridiculous.
Wanna to hear worse? In Turkey you can not import a phone with shipping. You have to bring it with yourself and register it with your passport after paying around 1000 dollars.
Wow they really did find a way to make it worse. Impressive.
I'm not 100% sure on this but there is always the possibility your carrier could always block devices it does not recognize. I need to look more into this.
Also, it seems that someone has already started to work on bringing mobile Linux "PostMarketOS" to the new Shiftphone. It's not even released yet. If it's officially supported, I'll have a favorite brand for sure. That kind of software support would be unprecedented (except maybe the Librem as mentioned earlier but their hardware repeatability is much lower).