I’ve had a micro SD card fail, it sucks if you haven’t created a backup as flash storage used for SD cards is lower quality than what you get internally with UFS storage. I would say that’s the big difference to losing or dropping your phone.

Because contrary to the popular opinion in tech forums, bigger phones are more popular with the general public. The iPhone Pro Max is more popular than the Pro and likewise with the Galaxy S Ultra compared to the rest of the Galaxy S models. Don’t believe me? Check Counterpoint or any other market research study. Granted more manufacturers should make more phones that are iPhone 16/Galaxy S25 sized as the base iPhone ends up on top of those charts every single year but it seemed like Chinese OEMs didn’t want to do that until they could fit a really large battery in there. They’re doing that now but it seems like global availability is limited.

Always makes me laugh when small phone users blame the lack of popularity of the mini on the iPhone SE and completely ignore the huge difference in price. Price may not be considered important in enthusiast circles but it is probably the deciding factor for a vast majority of buyers. It’s also funny how the regular sized iPhone still ends up being the best selling phone in the world despite the SE being in between both sizes. Apple tried the mini experiment for two years, I wonder what’s the excuse for the 13 mini being a failure despite the SE not getting an update that year. Yeah it got one in 2022 but the mini still sold abysmally compared to the rest of the lineup if you look at Q1 results.

Additionally if the SE took sales away from the mini like it’s fans say then shouldn’t it have taken away sales from the base iPhone as well? Yet they never make that argument and insist on coming up with even more outlandish theories like saying a Pro version would be the best selling model globally when logically it would have garbage battery life to fit the Pro’s cameras. We’ve already seen this with the iPhone 16e as it manages to fit a significantly larger battery compared to the iPhone 14 because it has a smaller camera that occupies less space.

From whatI know of the mod team, you can summarize the article but you can’t add your own opinion about something. It’s to prevent user bias from creeping into titles because most people don’t read the articles.

They don’t contradict each other. Every other article has also said it doesn’t support Qi2. The only way you can charge it magnetically is theough the case.

The OnePlus 13 does not, Oppo only have magnetic cases that support their proprietary wireless charging.

And will still have that awful GN3 sensor on the primary rear camera. Xiaomi were using a Sony sensor of the same size on the Redmi Note 12 Pro a phone that cost somewhere around $200-300 depending on the region it was sold back in 2022 and 2023.

Is there a noticeable difference between the Titanium on the Ultra and the aluminium on the other models? I’m guessing it’s the colours on the Ultra that stand out more.

GSMarena is saying South Korea gets the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 variant. If that’s true, it’s a safe indicator the Exynos is dogshit. Wouldn’t be surprised if performance/watt is worse than the 865 since no Samsung fabbed SoC has beaten that one yet.

Edit: seems like South Korea are getting Exynos for the S24 and S24+. Looks like GSMarena are wrong. Hope it isn’t a shit show like the 990 and 2200 but I don’t expect much.

Maybe design award, he talks about how everything is the same but was impressed with the Magic V2 because of it’s thinness and how it manages to cram a larger battery than other foldables. While that’s impressive, I don’t really think it’s groundbreaking. I feel repairability should also be a consideration for design since most slabs and foldables look identical to each other and the Fairphone is miles ahead of everything else in that regard.

8+2 MP rubbish on a phone that’s surely going to cost $600 or more at launch is honestly infuriating. This won’t make sense in any market other than India.

Unfortunately both chips were fabbed by Samsung Foundry. Tensor is also fabbed by then which explains the overheating, poor efficiency and throttling. I really hope Samsung can catch up with TSMC with 3nm but would be wary of a Samsung fabbed SoC until they prove they’ve caught up. Qualcomm moved from Samsung to TSMC for the 8+ Gen 1 because Samsung weren’t meeting their targets as they had low yield. The yield issue seems to be fixed according to some media outlets but doesn’t seem like the fab itself has improved.

How many people are going to read that properly? We’re not just talking about enthusiasts, regular users will do it if they get the option and think they can store their apps on there.

Not sure if all manufacturers do this, there are also instances where the user might set up the SD card as adoptable storage which would make it hard to differentiate between internal storage and the SD card.

Well yeah NAND has a certain amount of read/write cycles but it’s always going to be an issue with SD cards because they’re using the cheapest form of NAND. As a result of that they’re not going to get some of the complex safety mechanisms that are built into internal NAND. So I think we’ll have to disagree here.

They were using the telephoto as a point of differentiation too. I’m not sure why they even bother with that awful 8 MP ultrawide since it’s unusable. The images have no detail at all. Might as well just have one good camera instead of one useable and two unusable cameras.

My initial comment also mentioned why developers hated the SD card slot. To quote Koush

The SD card needs to go away. It’s a nightmare for developers. There’s too much variability here. SD Cards can be slow, resulting in poor app performance. They can come and go, or be swapped, and that results in unpredictable behavior if an app was expecting an SD card. One contiguous block of data needs to become the standard here (with different OEM SKUs for more/less storage), as it has been on iOS since the first iPhone.

The comments from Linus came from an industry insider he said he trusts. I would be inclined to believe him since he used to carry a Note9 and was a massive advocate of SD cards.

Also don’t think the reliability of the cards was an issue when I got them, they were high rated Samsung and Sandisk models.

And 128 GB is almost nothing, kinda proving my point that this is more of a use case point than an argument against the feature.

You’re looking at this from the point of a power user and not the average person. Most normal people just get the base variant when they see it has 128 GB and are happy with it.

They’re objectively more reliable than cloud storage though, should you ever go somewhere where network connectivity is an issue

I mentioned I dislike cloud storage but with USB-C ports I can actually use my external SSD or a USB drive to backup my phone if I want to although it’s not something I do often.

Given that they’re still using Bluetooth, which is still terrible with any interference, low bandwidth, and has the same tedious connectivity problems it’s had for the past decade…I’d argue we have yet to see that progress where it matters.

When was the last time you used a Bluetooth headset? I had issues initially in 2018 and 2019 but things like the Galaxy Buds+ and newer generations of truly wireless earbuds have fixed the connectivity and interference issues. Some Bluetooth headphones support LDAC and LHDC codecs which allow for high bandwidth. LDAC is part of AOSP so it should be on every Android phone running Oreo or newer unless the OEM has removed it for some reason.

If that were true, there wouldn’t be so many people vocally expressing why new products aren’t adequate without these basic features.

That’s because there are a small group of enthusiasts who are extremely vocal. Most people have moved on, they may want one or both features but they aren’t dealbreakers for them. Also wouldn’t say a bunch of enthusiasts complaining means it expresses the sentiments of everyone. Look at the outcry about the iPhone mini, it didn’t sell very well but online communities would have you believe it was the most popular device of that lineup.

I doubt they’ll do it since it’s not on the regular Pixel 8. I think that’s a feature they’ll keep for the higher end. Pixel Xa series already has a faster processor and better cameras compared to their competition in North America, Australia and Western Europe.

From my experience it’s been the opposite, the phones have survived but the SD cards have died twice. Haven’t cared about it since then.

My comment mentioned why the SD card was removed. To paraphrase Linus, they’re the cheapest form of NAND storage and are extremely unreliable. When they fail, the average consumer blames the phone and not the cheap SD card they put into it. I’m not a fan of cloud storage but most people do not need anything other than the base variant now since it comes with 128 GB out of the box. Some manufacturers are even offering 256 GB.

I also mentioned that I’d like having the jack but it’s not a dealbreaker that it’s gone. Also doubt we would have seen as much progress with truly wireless earbuds if more manufacturers did not remove the headphone jack. I know some people detest them and think they’re a cash grab but they’re a game changer when it comes to exercising and moving around. However I’ll agree that removing the jack also opened another revenue stream for manufacturers which could be construed as a cash grab.

Additionally I stated my point wasn’t directly at the OP but was a rant at the senseless “no jack, no SD card, DOA” comment which can be seen at the launch of a phone who’s manufacturer hasn’t included those features for 5 or more years. It’s just beating a dead horse at this point. It is like expecting CRT TVs to be the default instead of flat TVs. CRTs also had advantages but the market has moved on. Additionally I think it might be better to actually comment about a phone having a headphone jack or SD card slot or both of those since that’s a much more positive way of looking at things since not having them is the default now.

More telephoto cameras on midrange phones. It seems like they’re returning on some Chinese flagship killers. Would be great if Samsung and Google followed suit. Would be especially nice if we got periscope lenses.

I’d like to see LTPO on more phones, seems like it’s limited only to the highest end flagship now. Would be nice to save battery when the screen is not being touched.

Something I don’t like on a lot of Chinese midrangers - those rubbish 1/4" 8 MP ultrawides, don’t think it would cost much more to have a 12 MP ultrawide and the difference in quality would be big enough to justify using it. Samsung do it on the A2x and A3x too.