What phone you use as your daily driver? And, a discussion of them.

[AusWolf]

As far as I'm concerned the entire front should be display - I hold the edges and I want a battery big enough that those edges will naturally have to be thick enough.

That's not really a firm grip, is it? One tiny summer breeze and your phone lands on the floor. Not to mention doing anything on the phone with one hand is impossible as well. Each to their own I guess, but I prefer my phones being usable even while carrying shopping bags (just an example) to being petty things to look at. They're meant to be communication devices, not jewellery after all.

 

[trparky]

3G is still a good fallback option in far away rural areas where even 4G coverage is spotty.

That may be true, but you're going to find that carriers will eventually only leave limited amounts of frequency bands for 4G as the years go on. OK sure... your 4G phone will still work but forget about being able to do fun things like Netflix, Amazon, or God knows what streaming services while on the go due to limited bandwidth. They'll probably keep one or two frequency bands as 4G bands but that's about it, the rest will be 5G for the ever increasing rush to provide fixed wireless broadband.

In the United States, all the carriers are rushing to provide fixed wireless broadband via 5G and that's going to need more frequency bands to be opened for 5G.

 

[faye]

That's not really a firm grip, is it? One tiny summer breeze and your phone lands on the floor. Not to mention doing anything on the phone with one hand is impossible as well. Each to their own I guess, but I prefer my phones being usable even while carrying shopping bags (just an example) to being petty things to look at. They're meant to be communication devices, not jewellery after all.

I've literally been holding phones like that for. I don't know 20 years at this point and never had a issue?

 

[AusWolf]

That may be true, but you're going to find that carriers will eventually only leave limited amounts of frequency bands for 4G as the years go on. OK sure... your 4G phone will still work but forget about being able to do fun things like Netflix, Amazon, or God knows what streaming services while on the go due to limited bandwidth. They'll probably keep one or two frequency bands as 4G bands but that's about it, the rest will be 5G for the ever increasing rush to provide fixed wireless broadband.

That's fine. I don't stream on 4.3 inches anyway. The most bandwidth-consuming thing I do on it is read TPU while sitting on the company toilet (fingers crossed that no colleague of mine reads this).

 

[trparky]

That's fine. I don't stream on 4.3 inches anyway. The most bandwidth-consuming thing I do on it is read TPU while sitting on the company toilet (fingers crossed that no colleague of mine reads this).

I'm just stating how things are eventually going to go. That's all. I tend to keep my ear to the ground when it comes to what the wireless companies are doing since one of the other sites I often visit is geared heavily towards broadband, wireless, and other various carrier industry news.

 

[AusWolf]

I'm just stating how things are eventually going to go. That's all. I tend to keep my ear to the ground when it comes to what the wireless companies are doing since one of the other sites I often visit is geared heavily towards broadband, wireless, and other various carrier industry news.

Sure, but it'll take years, if not decades. By that time, the next mini rugged phone (the successor to my N6000) will probably be available with a budget-friendly 5G chipset.

 

[trparky]

Sure, but it'll take years, if not decades.

I don't know about that, carriers like T-Mobile (in the US) is deploying fixed wireless broadband via 5G faster and faster these days. AT&T is sunsetting a lot of their old copper networks to be replaced by fiber (in areas where they know they can get a good ROI) and fixed wireless in other areas to be eventually filled in with fiber at a later date.

I'm lucky, AT&T deployed fiber in my area so I have 500 Mbps to the home.

 

[Double-Click]

AT&T sucks here in the north east. I only have them because I'm on a family plan and it's really hard to get 5x people to split a cell phone bill.
Verizon is way better where I am, but the most expensive (same w/ internet from them, which I do have).

 

[freeagent]

elaborate ?

Put a load on it and it would cause the phone to reboot

 

[DaemonForce]

This thread reminded me to pick up an S20 today. Thanks guys.

 

[trparky]

AT&T sucks here in the north east.

AT&T Wireless or home Internet?

 

[Double-Click]

Wireless only in this area, at least where I am (tri-state, NY/NJ/CT).

 

[Han44]

Xiaomi 9T and Poco x6 pro

 

[sam_86314]

Still using the Pixel 3 I got back in September 2022 on eBay for $70.

Just updated it to Android 14, which marks the second "unsupported" release I've run on it.

I still have no plans to replace it, it still needs a new battery and USB port, and my only real complaints are the lack of storage (64GB) and the lack of RAM (4GB).

In other news, LineageOS 21 fixed voicemail not working, and also fixed the stock camera app not saving the orientation of photos.

 

[trparky]

the lack of RAM (4GB).

That's the thing about Android, a typical Android phone needs at least 16 GBs of RAM for it to perform well otherwise it runs like hot shit. Meanwhile, iOS runs phenomenally well on as little as 6 or 8 GBs of RAM.

 

[sam_86314]

That's the thing about Android, a typical Android phone needs at least 16 GBs of RAM for it to perform well otherwise it runs like hot shit. Meanwhile, iOS runs phenomenally well on as little as 6 or 8 GBs of RAM.

General usability isn't the issue. It's still plenty usable.

Really, the only memory-related issue I've encountered is Yuzu (rest in peace) crashing upon loading into a race on Mario Kart 8.

I just wish it had 6GB or 8GB like other flagships of the time.

 

[trparky]

General usability isn't the issue. It's still plenty usable.

If you want to use any of the apps that, shall we say, pig out on system RAM (I'm looking at you, Facebook!), you're going to have a bad time.

One of my coworkers has one of those budget Androids and whenever she uses Facebook, the device becomes dog slow. You can really tell that it's struggling to juggle the various apps running in the background sometimes resulting in apps being killed in the background to make way for more RAM hungry apps.

 

[bonehead123]

That's the thing about Android, a typical Android phone needs at least 16 GBs of RAM for it to perform well otherwise it runs like hot shit.

Well I guess my P8P is a real laggard then, with it's paltry, miniscule 12GB of ram, hehehe

And yet, it seems that I can run ANY apps I want, as many as I want, everywhere, all at once, and all the time, old, new or otherwise, nottaproblemo.......

Full disclosure though, I have all the background shiitzu, unnecessary bloat, and unwanted apps either snoozed, disabled or deleted altogether, so that probably helps alot too...

 

[Todestrieb]

That's exactly why I just bought a 4.3-inch Blackview N6000. I don't need high-end performance, and I absolutely loathe big phones.

That is a very interesting phone that I will consider as a secondary device...except there is probably no way I can buy that thing.
I use my phone for general web browsing and moderately heavy gaming, so a high-end-ish config would be more preferable for my primary device. And I expect my iPhone 13mini to last at least 4 years, preferably muuuuuch longer. My aunties are using their EOS'd iPhone8 completely fine, albeit their usage is much lighter.

The one before XR is a OnePlus5 leftover from my brother. That was a great one, but I was too much into Apple stuff to appreciate it. And it was supposed to be a emergency substitute as I lost the SE1. Back in the good old days when Oneplus was actually great...

 

[de.das.dude]

That's the thing about Android, a typical Android phone needs at least 16 GBs of RAM for it to perform well otherwise it runs like hot shit. Meanwhile, iOS runs phenomenally well on as little as 6 or 8 GBs of RAM.

perks of having a closed ecosystem for hw is that you dont need to make it work for the infinite combinations of hw.

 

[AusWolf]

I don't know about that, carriers like T-Mobile (in the US) is deploying fixed wireless broadband via 5G faster and faster these days. AT&T is sunsetting a lot of their old copper networks to be replaced by fiber (in areas where they know they can get a good ROI) and fixed wireless in other areas to be eventually filled in with fiber at a later date.

I'm lucky, AT&T deployed fiber in my area so I have 500 Mbps to the home.

Why would the advancements in 5G come at the expense of already existing 4G networks which are still used by many?

That's the thing about Android, a typical Android phone needs at least 16 GBs of RAM for it to perform well otherwise it runs like hot shit. Meanwhile, iOS runs phenomenally well on as little as 6 or 8 GBs of RAM.

My two phones have 4 GB and 8 GB, both work absolutely fine. I can't imagine what might need 16 GB on a phone.

 

[de.das.dude]

Why would the advancements in 5G come at the expense of already existing 4G networks which are still used by many?


My two phones have 4 GB and 8 GB, both work absolutely fine. I can't imagine what might need 16 GB on a phone.

a sneaky thing the telcom operators did in India is when they rolled out 4G, they rolled out 5g capable hardware. they all moved to 5g pretty quickly.

and the best part is we still get unlimited data on 5g for very cheap on one of the operators

 

[AusWolf]

perks of having a closed ecosystem for hw is that you dont need to make it work for the infinite combinations of hw.

Is there an infinite combination, though? Besides the bazillion vendors making SoCs, it's just some ARM architecture working underneath 9 out of 10 times.

 

[de.das.dude]

Is there an infinite combination, though? Besides the bazillion vendors making SoCs, it's just some ARM architecture working underneath 9 out of 10 times.

still there is enough change to make it a hassle. kind of like windows. its all x64 now but then again many diff combinations of drivers etc.

remember its not just the cpu gpu thats hardware, theres other chips for all sorts of stuff too on our phones, which oems can select. like camera for example.

hell even displays are different, so each phone has to treat its display in a diff manner too.

 

[trparky]

Why would the advancements in 5G come at the expense of already existing 4G networks which are still used by many?

Because where are you going to get the frequency to run a 5G network? There's only so many frequency bands to work with and frequency licenses aren't cheap. So, because 5G is the new, cool, hip, trendy network technology that everyone wants to get because oh yeah, you'll be able to download more cat videos faster, you have to rob from the older 4G LTE network frequency space to be able to feed the newer 5G networks. How does this not make any sense to anyone here?

Well I guess my P8P is a real laggard then, with it's paltry, miniscule 12GB of ram, hehehe

Well, ok... maybe I should have said more than 12 GBs of RAM. Is that going to make you happy?

I can't imagine what might need 16 GB on a phone.

It depends upon what apps you may use and how many of them you want to be able to juggle at once. Some are hungrier than others. It's just like it depends upon what you plan on doing with your PC. I, myself, would never dream of running a Windows system with anything less than 32 GBs of RAM.