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Am I the only one surprised there were even that many in the first place?
I can’t believe you’ve never heard of Zoogle, Bokia, Pamsung, ACKOOO, ACKOOO2², Votorola…
Don’t forget uPhone, GRE, Hawaii, Mulberry, Lentuvo, and Hitsubishi.
Chinese companies love the ACKOOO type names. LPOWERB, SUPERQ, FKPHONE, that kind of thing.
FKPHONE
Who wouldn’t want to buy a Fuckphone?
Wait u dont fuck ur phone?
Honestly if I was in the market for an achoo or a fuckhphone, I would totally buy a fuckphone
With all the shitbrands on amazon and similar sites I was only half surprised but still 100% more surprised than I should have been.
Most of them were not real manufacturers, but slapping their name on Chinese white brand phones.
Yup, surprised nobody said this in this thread for so long.
The movement for free and open source software has not achieved a world in which most people use only FOSS. But it has achieved a world where there is a lot of diversity in technology, including many Android smartphone brands you haven’t heard of.
Maybe they are counting all the times Microsoft launched a new brand of phone and then unceremoniously killed off about 6 months later?
Were they real or just shit novelty, scams, or rebadges and sister brands of those multi brand companies like BBK?
LG was the shit. Best DAC, first to the multi cam game, clean looks, innovative designs, pristine screens.
- I may add I’ve owned the V35, V40, V50 and V60. I’m a video specialist and the manual video control with audio levels have been a lifesaver more often than not.
I miss my fingerprint reader on the back 😭
Same, but on the Pixel series. The rear scanner was so perfectly placed. My finger fell right onto it and it read so much faster than the stupid in-screen one is.
With the swipe down gesture to notis 😪
I don’t. Having it under the screen like Pixels makes it possible to unlock the device without picking it up.
I take my phone out of my pocket and unlock it more often than I unlock it and leave it on a table, so the back makes way more sense
Put your hand in your pocket, take your phone out, and it’s already unlocked by the time you look at it
That said, why not both? It’s not that expensive of a component. Cameras cost far more and we’re fine having 3-5 of them on devices now.
In my experience (having used Pixel 7 nonpro for a while) it doesn’t always pick up your finger. Side-mounted (power button) sensor is the nice compromise imho
V30, V35, V60, they put out world-beating designs without any of the shitware.
But fuck one goat (V20 bootloop)…
Yes.
sent from my V60
Still use mine constantly because of the headphones, still a top-tier phone even now.
Yes
sent from my v30
The only LG phone I ever had, it just randomly decided to not boot one day. Apparently it was a common issue, and they were not giving any refunds, at least when I asked. I swore off of LG then, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many other people did as well.
I think the phone was the LG G4: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_smartphone_bootloop_issues
Went from v10 to v20 to v60. Not sure what I’ll do when this dies.
I can settle for a Fairphone just because of the philosophy. Sony and Asus still listents to consumer feedback (I’m talking about that glorious headphone jack) on their flagships so maybe one by them.
Used Sony 5 III was my play from the V30 and I’m honestly still kind of ambivalent about it. DAC not as good, 21:9 aspect ratio is just stupid. Great display, camera and size though.
LG and HTC. The Razor Phone 2 was also pretty cool but didn’t sell well so they didn’t make a third gen
I had a razor phone 2. It was trash. That’s why they didn’t make a third gen.
Within 6 months I was getting screeching from the speakers intermittently, even when nothing was supposed to play (known issue they wouldn’t cover), and at the year mark the charge port stopped working (also known issue they wouldn’t cover), so I had to use wireless charging from then on.
Apps also thought it was a tablet semi-frequently, I assume due to misconfigured android version settings or something. This caused the display scale to be too large to actually use. My thermostat app was one such so I could turn the heat up, but not down. The down button was cut off.
It’s a shame, because the Nextbit Robin was such a cool phone. In a market full of black glass slabs, they stood out and did something different. Every time I took out the Robin in public, people were wowed by it and asked me what phone it was.
Their community involvement and customer support was also a refreshing change compared to other big companies - like they worked closely with custom ROM developers, and were even quite active on Reddit, taking user feedback and implementing fixes quickly. Everyone was looking forward to a Robin 2, but unfortunately Razer bought then and ruined them forever.
That’s sort of what I was expecting when I bought it. A wow device from a company that makes gaming hardware. And for a while it was awesome. (I had no prior experience with razor products, and that soured me to ever considering them)
The sound on it was phenomenal, battery lasted decently, and the screen and refresh were great for games. Good weight, seemed like a nice phone.
It just fell apart super fast, and they covered none of it because they could find a way to blame you, certainly not worth the $400.
For example their reaction to the charge port issue was to say that if you ever used a third party charge cable, it wasn’t warranted anymore because it wasn’t OEM and they can’t guarantee the charge cable was within tolerance. And literally who hasn’t used a third party cable ever in a pinch?
But it was a known issue because their specs were ever so slightly different than standard; a standard cable apparently stretched out the metal port housing causing loose connection, which it turn resulted in uneven pressure on the connector chip, which unseated it from its board, causing charging to fail.
I still have one - though I don’t really use it much - and the only issue I ever ran across was a bit of sound feedback as well, but that was caused by the shitty Dolby software. Disabled that and it was fine
I have no idea what I’m gonna do when my LG eventually dies. I went from the v30 to the v40 and now the v50. Not a single phone on the market offers what I want in a phone anymore
As the former owner of a G3, hard disagree.
Never experienced the G brand. GG I guess. 😅💅
I liked that my LG phone had a back made of metal. I don’t like that phones are entirely glass now, it makes them feel delicate and fragile and they get covered with fingerprints immediately.
First really modular phone. But the conception and logic of LG was sometimes very disappointing like the humidity sensor on the mainboard blocking the touchscreen on the G5. That was betting against customers.
Lot’s of crypto phones as well, who
scammedpromised users to return them the value of the phone by using it to mine some shitcoin.
HTC was truly a pioneer.
My first Android phone and it was amazing. Now I see that they make a “blockchain phone,” I hope it’s a fucking joke.
I still have a white HTC Dream, aka the G1. It’s still dope.
The HTC Evo 3D was a bad ass!
If by that you mean bad and ass, I agree. The 3d wasn’t well supported it was pretty much just a worse version of the HTC Sensation at the time. I was always jealous of the Sensation, it was like the Nexus One’s big brother
HTC is dead?
Deader’n a door nail.
That’s capitalism, baby! Thanks for playing!
“THERE’S NO CRYING IN CAPITALISM!”
*cries a lot in capitalism*
Well, yes, that’s how it works. What’s the problem? We should have 500 factories cranking out pollution and waste vs. the cream of the crop rising up?
That’s not really how it works. I would bet most of these companies were building their phones in the same factories as other small time brands. It’s not like they were all making their own chips and capacitors and assembling every last piece.
I’m mocking the fact that the articles are often written in such a way that I should feel sorry for the companies that die, like how we killed the Diamond industry and the fashion industry and gasp the napkin industry
“Millenials are ruining the market again”
Market has skill issues.
The avocado toasts are killing companies.
“Y’ALL FUCKIN’ WITH MAH DIVIDENDS!”
Smartphones have reached a maturity level where upgrades aren’t really exciting. Sure there are the usual hardware power upgrades (and even those don’t really open up new applications), but in terms of features they’re not coming out with anything really novel. Last thing I could think of is bringing back folding which I do find appealing, but not for the cost or the reliability issues.
One of them has to do 3d camera sooner than later. It’s so close… just need another camera at the bottom back of the phone.
This has been tried and I’ve tried one out back in android KitKat days. Glassless display and all. HTC phone. They’re now bankrupt. The battery lasted a few seconds, and the display was not amazing, and even if done better today it’s a gimmic at best
There have been plenty of phones and tablets with 3D camera systems. It’s just not something that most consumers really want or need, so it tends not to become mainstream.
It still comes up every now and then. The iPhone 15 has a computational 3D camera thing it can do, but I’ve seen virtually no buzz about the feature.
No I mean true 3d by taking 2 pictures an eye length apart. Not ml based (or otherwise) depth sensor stuff.
I had a phone that took 3D pictures with a true stereoscopic camera and had a 3D display all the way back in 2011, an LG Optimus 3D. It was really neat, but 100% a gimmick because you could only share them with other people who also had the same phone or a 3D TV/monitor, and photos took up 2x as much space. You could still obviously share/view them in 2D, but it kind of defeated the point.
The one really neat feature was that it could “convert” games into 3D, which worked pretty well and was a pretty cool effect overall.
That was back when 3d TV’s were still a thing, though, so not crazy
I hate that LG left the market. A LOT of innovation came from them, including a lot of quircky (and often cool) features. They experimented a lot which didn’t always work out, but often it did work out great and it made their phones a lot more exciting then most other brands. Because of this a lot of features that are now the industry standard, like having a wide-angled camera lens, were popularized by LG. And yet, somehow, most people don’t know this and always saw it as a lesser brand.
The iPhone 15’s system will use two lenses and two sensors. It hasn’t been launched on the software side, but is expected in the next few months using the existing hardware.
And it doesn’t need to be an eye length apart: the parallax between two lenses can create an accurate 3D image. Apple’s AR/VR system will also give a way to view/share the actual captured video, assuming it gets some level of adoption.
The problem with 3D pictures is needing something to view them on. I’ve heard of one phone from maybe a decade ago that had a full 3D display that could be viewed from a wide range of angles, but it cost way too much and heavily sacrificed display resolution. Without widespread adoption, it’s doomed to be mostly a gimmick. Some would argue that it’ll always be a gimmick, but I think if it was widespread it’d basically be like high resolution i.e. an enhanced way of looking at content. Maybe not mindblowing after you’re used to it, but worthwhile if it can be done without sacrificing too much.
I had it, it was called the HTC Evo 3D. Used the same type of display as the 3ds. Wasn’t particularly well supported but it technically worked I guess.
I want a phone with a built in projector… and a bigger battery… and something else I haven’t thought of yet.
I miss new features and innovation.
Since we have neither, give me modularization to let me have ^
Phone makers: hmm this isn’t selling. Guess we’ll only make phones that look like and do the exact same things as every other phone.
RIP project ARA.
I hate that Google killed that project. Haken’s block phone is still a great concept that is now used for Framework laptops. I hope thats someone can start doing that for mobiles. Fairphone is OK, but still far from Haken’s idea.
That was the Motorola Moto Z series for ya, had pins on the back for modules to be attached. Some modules were a battery pack, jbl speaker, a projector, and even a little printer to have the phone work like a polaroid
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Also the LGG5 to a lesser extent. I had a chin module that acted as an extra battery and fine control for the camera.
I was just wiping my Force 2 the other day to install an unlocked OS and was impressed how much battery life that clip on pack gives it.
Without it the Force 2 was the slimmest phone on the market and with the pack on it just feels normal. Yet I can get like three days out of it, and I bought it in 2017.
LG failed because for some stupid reason, they decided to sell 9 million different phones between countries.
I miss LG phones. They always tried weird shit with their flagships; curved phone?done. Modular phone? Yes. Two screens? Yup. Also their V-series was probably the best phones ever for those of us who value good audio higher than great cameras.
Edit: I used to work as a reviewer for a magazine and used the curved LG G4 for quite a while. I really liked it, though I never actually bought one.
LG ending their mobile division really sucked, the V series phones were some of the best phones ever imo. I really miss my V30, the quad DAC was awesome and the camera was actually pretty amazing too. They also weren’t bloated with unremovable shit like flagships are nowadays.
Agreed, I’ve got expensive headphones that I can no longer use with my phone because apparently we don’t want/need headphone jacks anymore. Less features and phones are more expensive than ever. Yay consumerism.
Loved my dual screen v50. Wanted the V60, but it was never sold in Australia.
We are heading towards a future of Apple, Samsung, and Google, with even the latter two struggling to stay afloat.
And to be fair, Google deserves a lot of the blame for this happening.
How is Samsung struggling to stay afloat? Samsung has had the largest global market share for years.
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And are under the impression that what’s going on in the US is going on worldwide. Apple is doing fine worldwide, but isn’t nearly as dominant as in the US.
Yeah if you forget your iphone cable here, you’re going to have to go buy another one since you’re probably the only person you know that has an iphone.
Yes. But I think most importantly, Samsung can spin out budget phones and actually sell it. No one’s buying cheap Apple product. Currently mostly it is a status symbol… as most-if-not-all high end phones. Don’t get me wrong, great devices but we all know what kind of personalities mostly go for Apple stuff.
I pretty much go for the se models when they have them, and buy every 4-5 generations. Most people want a device that works, and most smart people want a device that’s going to get more than a couple years of software support. So Apple.
Google should have just spread Android features to 2, 3 years instead of as soon as possible, to match feature set of iOS. Then most Android would be getting easy 10 years of support. But then again most Android phone manufacturers selling a device, Apple is selling services and side products. Giving the die size of A16 SOC and quality hardware, Apple probably giving you their phones at cost and keeping them up to date so you can buy their other products.
Apple is making a profit on every piece of hardware, make no mistake. But that’s only possible because of their scale and focus, which is hard for competitors to compensate for. They literally bought all the 3nm chips for the next year.
Looks like Samsung and Apple trade off on leader of global market share, but Samsung is second place when it isn’t first.
https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/global-smartphone-share/
Tell me you only live in an American bubble without telling me you live in an American bubble.
How much money do you think OEMs make off selling cheap Android phones?
Xiaomi making banks selling mid and low tier phones
Do you know any other manufacturers?
Google, sure. But Samsung has more marketshare than Apple.
https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/global-smartphone-share/
20% Samsung 17% Apple 12% Xiaomi 10% OPPO 8% Vivo
I’d doubt Samsung will be struggling to stay afloat. They’re so diversified they could pick one of their departments to throw money at and just run at a loss in perpetuity, if they felt like it. Apple makes phones, computers, and phone and computers accessories.
Samsung makes phones and computers. And appliances. And chips. And container ships.
And insurance, and healthcare, and construction, etc. They are involved in so many different industries it’s almost hard to believe.
And tanks, missiles, artillery, fighter jets…
It’s incredible how much they are involved in
Yea, was just talking about their phone lines, not them as a company.
Huawei and Honor can both survive purely on domestic sales before you even worry about ROW.
No idea why you think there are only three brands, or why you think the US is the only market that matters (it’s fairly obvious you are US based)
Absolutely nothing good came from them ending the Nexus program. I LOVED all the variety in Nexus. The Pixel phones are just shitty iPhone clones with barely better features.
I wouldn’t even say better features. This will be my last Pixel. I’m tired of Google just not maintaining their products at all.
what was their added value despite cutting down price with their poor hw and integration, shitty drivers?
I mean, FairPhone, Librem, PinePhone have real value and strategy, sure not perfect but this Vitamin (real chinese/french mark), LIPOq or VARK chinese knock-off phones, really, what did they expect?
those craps were like throwaway cameras in the 90’s.
But I loved my HTC 10. And let’s not forget about LG. Also, Sony, Motorola, Nokia are just a shadow of their former selves.
Today your main choices are Apple, Samsung or a Chinese brand (Oppo, Xiaomi etc). Sure, there are those niche phones like Pixels and Fairphones used mostly by nerds, but they are a tiny market.
Sure, there are those niche phones like Pixels and Fairphones used mostly by nerds, but they are a tiny market.
I feel attacked. Lol
Pixels are definitely a small slice of the market, but by golly, it’s still my favorite line.
But I am a nerd, so. No argument there.
I feel like you have Apple, Samsung, Pixel as the big 3 (in the western world)
Then it’s Xiaomi, OPPO (and it’s subbrands), Motorola and maybe Nokia which are all just “cheaper alternatives” or as I think people think of them “android”
Then you have your niche phones like fairphone etc.
I see more tv ads for pixels than I do for galaxy phones.
HTCs were glorious!
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apple & china robbed us of so much, if you’re a gadget guy.
i had sony phones, laptops, palm pilots, panasonic bit and bobs.
i get that technology has advanced infinitely in the last 20 years, but we are on a very narrow path at the moment.
Sony still makes phones, some super high end, bur their marketing sucks balls
As did their support - I had a p800 and p910, and while they looked cool, they were really not great compared to my original iPhone. Everyone here can romanticize all they want, but leaving symbian for ios was like a revelation; I can still remember the wonderment.
Its so cool to be contrary and hate the successful thing now, but nothing was “stolen”. You always had choice. Its not what was chosen though - that how evolution works.
Sony is the only company right now that has a flagship phone with great camera, removable battery, all the holes and comes in smaller sizing.
Yeah…and google had nothing to do with that. It was ALL Apple & China.
I’m sorry I didn’t mention your favourite brand
I’m an adult. I don’t have favorite brands.
What did China have to do with any of this?
Cheap mass production of electronics largely based on existing designs
Sounds like you’re describing amazon
I didn’t even know there were that many.
I’ve been using motorolla android phones for like…16 years now.
I just remembered! I got a samsung recently.
Motorola phones for me and my family, they are reliable and work. At work they give me Samsung phones I guess that knox things sells to companies.
Hate Samsung, they force their own keyboard into the work profile pure balls. It’s bad at basic keyboard things.
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Which is better than Samsung, they used force notifications for the likes of their calendar app. If you removed the permissions it would give you a constant notifications alerting you to the app not working properly.
Scumbag Samsung
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They all did the same, without innovation there won’t be another big smartphone brand.
Somebody pls come along and make a phone with headphone jack, micro sd slot, and fingerprint sensor.
That’s just a Thinkpad. If they keep making them smaller eventually it will fit in your pocket.
If you make it all, and in a small frame, I’m buying right away.
I bought this a few days ago and it arrives next week: https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_10_iv-11522.php.
It’s not iPhone or Zenfone small and it’s only midrange spec but it’s pretty compact. Plus SD card slot, 3.5mm jack…
Its a bit funny how I find that model to be too big. People like me have definitely been abandoned from the market.
But thanks for the recommendation. I ended up grabbing an older model that still works as a low end phone, but I wonder for how long I will be able to use older phones…
It’s definitely larger than I’d like but damned if the manufacturers haven’t heard our demands and realised that, once again, compactness is a premium feature. You can get an itty bitty iPhone or S23 but fuck all in the mid range. Thanks again, The Market!
Fairphone?
I thought the newest one ditched the headphone jack?
Yo, if they ditched the headphone jack, that’s wack.
They had to, I’m guessing. At this point nobody is manufacturing headphone jack hardware for smartphones.
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I’m pretty sure that DACs and 3.5mm jacks are still being manufactured
Then it’s likely cheaper to make a bluetooth headphones phone than include a 3.5mm jack? Or they could just be greedy, although I would hope FairPhone won’t turn to the dark side so soon.
Excuse me, this is meant to be an admin account for c/[email protected] so I’ll have to return to whence I came.
It did? Sad to see even fairphone did it
They already got rid of it with their previous model years ago.
Every non-Samsung and non-iphone.
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Wow. I can hardly name 50 brands, let alone 500.
I thought there were only 2 brands
I bet most people can name 6 or do.
But that’s about it.
For most people in the US at least they can only identify iPhone or non-iPhone.
I just asked my iphone-hqving mom who knows nothing about tech and she named 5.
I mean, anyone who has a “non-iohone” would be able to at least name the non-iohone(s) they have had. Including phone brands from before iphones that they may guess are still around.
For most people in the US at least they can only identify iPhone or non-iPhone.
Anyone paying for flagship phones has too much money and no need for a camera that great.
Blu and Moto phones all the way.
Moto?
Motorola lost my business when they sold me a phone and then provided a grand total of ONE OS upgrade its entire life (Moto G LTE, shipped with an outdated 4.4 build, and then got a single update to 5.1 before being abandoned forever).
There is no potential for brand loyalty when the brand themselves tell their own customers to fuck off.
No idea why you’re being downvoted but I agree. My non flagship android is more than adequate for my demands of it.
Yeah I have a midrange Samsung A31, its more than adequate for my needs
The difference between users on whatever instance you’re on lol. I’m showing myself at 8 and 0 in Kbin.
I miss LG.
I liked some of them. I still wonder how many were Amazon’s random relabeled crap like AIUEO.
