They’ll take away volume control (SW/HW buttons) and replace with dynamically adjusting “magic volume” so that you can’t mute ads.
Oh Christ. You’ve just triggered a premonition in me–the Galaxy S32 Ultra will be the first smartphone with no physical buttons or ports. You can turn it “off,” but that will only turn on a sort of extreme power saving mode. It will still ping your location once every few minutes, and will keep the fingerprint scanner active. You will “turn on” the device by holding your finger on the fingerprint scanner for four seconds. They will advertise the “quick startup” as a new feature. Volume will be controlled by sliding your finger along the right edge of the phone, which the screen will wrap around all the way to the back. It will be impossible to hold the phone without touching some part of the screen.
It will only allow wireless charging. You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards. In reality, this will be to prevent you from using ADB to remove apps that come with the phone. You cannot turn off mobile data. You cannot turn off location. You cannot use a third party SMS application. You cannot choose your own wallpaper. You cannot set a private DNS. You cannot install applications that haven’t been approved by Samsung. You cannot block ads. This is all covered on page 74 of subsection 32(a) of section G8 of the terms and conditions that you agreed to when you set up the phone.
They will meet the physical limitations of how well a small lens can focus light. Zoom will cap out at 150x. Nevertheless, there will be seven cameras.
You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards.
Making devices water-proof is also a marketing scheme to avoid replaceable batteries :
Some manufacturers are already eyeing an exemption for batteries used in “wet conditions” to opt out electric toothbrushes and possibly wearables like earbuds and smartwatches. The exemption is “based on unfounded safety claims,” states Thomas Opsomer, policy engineer for iFixit, in Repair.EU’s post.
Despite the coming up regulation on batteries and waste batteries by the EU Council batteries in water-proof devices will probably be exempt from being replceable, because the water proof feature of the device cannot be guaranteed. This undermines the right to repair and manufacturers can hope that customers replace their entire devices soon. Making phones water-proof is a loophole to seal off the device so that it is not to be repaired, at least without keeping the water-proof features after repairing.
Yeah pretty sure the Fairphone 5 and its predecessors have a pretty good IP rating, despite their ability to have the battery removed.
correction a bit, you can use adb via wifi. That’s what I do to sideload an app to my Android TV
nahhh you’ll be able to choose your own wallpaper, the average user will eat up all of those “feautres” but god forbid Keighleeeigh can’t put her little baby Xaileeyn as her screen saver
Why are people up voting this? This is such ridiculous FUD that I can’t take it seriously.
I know, right? I mean, does he seriously expect virtually every smartphone manufacturer to put holes in his screen and take away his headphone jacks, removable sim cards, SD cards, replaceable batteries, and IR blasters, and switch to an aspect ratio other than 16:9? That would be ridiculous. They never make user-unfriendly changes!
They’re not user unfriendly changes if 95% of users just don’t care.
And which of the changes he listed would the 95% figure you mentioned care about? By your definition, short of literally turning each feature into a micro transaction, there’s no such thing as user unfriendly changes - and knowing the general public, not even then.
Next will be memory. They will say everything you meed should be stored online for a subscription fee.
Microsoft is already trying hard. My poor mom did not notice all her files are on OneDrive. Now she has two laptops with everything remote on OneDrive. It’s has some advantages, but it’s annoying in so many more ways.
There’s a setting in Onedrive to keep a copy of everything on the device. It will still get stored in the cloud too, but it means that everything will be available if the internet goes down.
I fell victim to that :(
A few years ago my ex got a new laptop and it had onedrive enabled system-wide by default. She didn’t realize until after she had been using it for months, I had to spend several hours backing up her files and defenestrating onedrive. It not as simple as just turning it off because it was even on critical system folders, you have to go in the registry and remap the those folders manually one at time before you can disable it.
It is possible, but it fucking sucks.
It’s not annoying at all. It’s peace of mind. People are just not used to it
No, its kidnapping your data to keep you trapped as their customer. If you want peace of mind, you can make your own backups.
I didn’t criticize anyone, I didn’t disrespect anyone, so it’s surprising getting this many downvotes and answers.
Still, it’s your opinion, and I will still share mine.
Local backups have their flaws, just like cloud backups.
I have 1TB storage using my school account. I am constantly changing between devices, and I like having my files always accessible.
Everything important, I keep in two local backups (external HDD and SSD).
The only thing I dislike about onedrive, is the sync of desktop, documents and images folder. I have turned that off, but my docs folder still appears to be syncing with onedrive.
Besides that, it’s the best thing for me. And like I said… “Peace of mind”. Just because you don’t like that, it does not mean it is a bad solution.
This is Apple already.
Oh. You can only afford 4GB iPhone? Not to worry, for only $10 a month we can store stuff for you.
Also we got rid of photo stream and if you delete the file from the cloud then we remove it from every device
Google keeps trying to back up my non existent photos. It’s annoying.
Google photos made it difficult to download or delete your pictures on purpose. You have to manually select them. There is still a way to get them and it was because of GDPR, when you ask google for the whole data of your account they include the pictures and video from google photos.
You don’t need to request all account data, you can request only the Google photos data
Don’t forget the RGB notification led!
I switched to Chinese brand phones, they still have all this and they’re dirt cheap, currently rocking an Ulephone power armor 18t, which also has a flir infrared camera and a microscope for some reason. No I’m not joking, they work surprisingly well and have come in handy more than I thought they would!
Not sure I’d consider £600 “dirt cheap” but the thermal camera is definitely cool.
All except the IR blaster, right?
And optional microscope connects to the phone, looks like.
Yeah, missing the IR blaster unfortunately! It does have an accessory port for microscope/endoscope, I just got an endoscope but haven’t tried it yet.
Post pics of colon
So what look at that beautiful Phantom Silver S21 Ultra uhjhj
-send by Silver S21U
There are different categories of removable.
With my old Note, I had an extra battery that came with case/charger combination. If my battery on my phone died, I could swap the battery in 10 seconds.
It states that any battery should be removable and replaceable by the user. So this slap on tactic will only work if your device has no internal battery.
I also noticed this is for all batteries. Not just phones, but also cars etc.
EDIT: As any EU law there is a lot of nuance and exceptions. I dig a little further and found the following:
The regulation introduces requirements that say that portable batteries should be easily removable and replaceable by the end-user and LMT batteries and cells in LMT batteries should be easily removable and replaceable by an independent professional.
So what is LMT?
The regulation defines five battery categories depending on how the battery is used:
- Portable batteries
- Light means of transport (LMT) batteries
- Starting, lighting and ignition (SLI) batteries
- Industrial batteries
- Electric vehicle (EV) batteries
I couldn’t find any concrete wording for “easily removed and replaceable”. But I sure hope it means no more glue for the portable batteries.
Source: https://www.intertek.com/blog/2023/08-17-battery-regulation/
“Replaceable by user” has a lot of wiggle room. It could still be a 20-minute process that risks damaging other parts and requires specialized tools.
If phones are to keep their water resistance, they almost certainly won’t be tooless, and will involve swapping out gaskets. It’ll be something you can do to replace a failed battery, not a quick swap because you went camping for the weekend and threw an extra battery in the bag since there are no outlets.
Could you read and understand the information behind the link before replying with nonsense?
FYI: there were waterproof phones before replaceable batteries disappeared. Also the Fairphone for example IPS rated for resistant, so not perfect, but it’s possible.
Making them increasingly difficult to hold (“but design!” They cry) so you “accidently” have to buy a new one again.
- If this hasn’t been done already, being able to unlock the bootloader
- Adding “AI” integrated into the OS with vague benefits even though the processing is done on the cloud (like Windows) just so the OEM can spy on you better
- Forced volume limiters: The phone won’t let you stay at max volume for more than 5 minutes a day, even if connected to a BT device set at substantially under max volume
- Making it take more clicks to disable Internet, Bluetooth, other connected features
- DRM built into Android itself
- Being able to sideload
- Ads within the OS
All of these are already on their way to being implemented:
- Already the case with the vast majority of phones
- Pixels already have this. Samsung is focusing on this in 2024. Several Chinese OEMs already have some version of this.
- This was an idea Google attempted to implement in Android 14. Seems like it didn’t go through that year, but there’s always this year.
- Google already made it harder to do this in Android 12. Apple also does this with the toggles only disabling WiFi/BT until tomorrow. Other OEMs are good for now.
- After widespread disdain for Google’s Web Environment Integrity BS, Google is quietly pivoting to this stupid change.
- Google is now making it harder to do this on all Android phones. Now, you can only sideload apps targeting an Android version at most 8 behind the current one. This disables lots of little FOSS projects that were light on system resources.
- Most Chinese OEMs already do this, although you can usually turn it off. Samsung used to do this, but backpedaled. Also bloatware exists.
I fucking hate the volume limiter. I’ll be listening to podcasts through the vehicle radio, and suddenly notice that ive been straining to hear it fornthe last 20 minutes. Sure enough, the damn limiter decided it was that time of day to protect my half-assed hearing.
Google was attempting to make it even worse, by having it always happen no matter what. The only way to restore the regular volume was to manually click OK on the nag screen and press the volume up button.
If you want the good camera, you need to get the giant version of the phone.
If you want a phone that fits in human hands, you can only choose from subpar cameras.
The EU is mandating easily replaceable batteries from 2027.
I love it when uninformed troglodytes complain about a hole in the screen. They didn’t add a hold in the screen. The hole was already there. They just wrapped your screen around it for more screen. 😅
It’s really infuriating seeing the downvoted on some other replies that point this out. The time/notifications/battery bar along the top used up screen space. Now those notifications are in the formerly dead space with the camera. It is objectively better. It’s not debatable because there is measurably more useable screen space without making the phone larger.
we need to make open source wireless communications infrastructure.
how?
idk the FCC is the major block as long as it’s funded by telecom
HAM radio have been around for decades.
I don’t understand why everyone hates the notch, or especially the hole punch camera now. You could just disable the pixels next to the notch going back to a regular screen, and if you don’t it’s only extra screen space. Even more so with the hole punch. Why more screen bad?
Because front camera is not just a feature I’m forced to pay for, despite never using it once in my life, but now it also makes my experience shittier by adding a hole in my screen. I hate that.
