It's not just about the cost though. They're inferior to pretty much any other mid-range or high-end smartphone too. Expensive but good would be fine. Cheap and mediocre would be fine. Expensive and mediocre though? Nah.
My £250 used phone has a faster processor, more RAM, better screen (higher resolution, brighter, bigger and higher frame rate), and a higher capacity battery with faster charging. It's a mid-range Xiaomi from a couple years ago, not a high end or flagship phone.
They should take notes from pinephone. Offers something unusual at a low cost. Since enthusiasts eat that stuff up you get extra help with software and ROMs too. Yes it's low spec, but it's good enough for enthusiasts to play with and is of good value as the price reflects the quality.
Plenty of other brands which aren't Chinese are both better and cheaper. Samsung, Apple, Google, Asus even.
Do they all use cheap Chinese labour? Sure. Do you actually think Fair phone doesn't? Even if they somehow completely avoid China for the whole supply chain, they will inevitably get cheap labour from somewhere - like Taiwan or Costa Rica. After all they are using standard Qualcomm parts, so that's going to be either TSMC in Taiwan or Samsung in China and Korea.
According to their own website their living wage bonus is only $2.63. It doesn't even say if that's per hour or per day.
I would rather buy nokia with ifixit partnership and save hundreds of euros. for me it's about the money 700€ is a shit ton of money
edit: okay after looking moreninto nokia phones (or hmd phones, maker of current nokias) I would propably hold my money until they release something new and good which isnt too expensive, currently their lineup is a bit weird. but they do make the phones mostly from recycled materials and I like the idea of that company. (mostly cuz it's finnish and even stores the data in finland so no china involved)
While this may be concerning from an ewaste standpoint, don't worry! Samsung has that covered. For anyone that elected to get a new phone instead of replacing a simple part Samsung has had the courage to not include a charging brick which slightly decreases the size of the box. Customers that need a charging brick can aquire one through a separate expensive purchase that comes in another box shipped on a different cargo ship from china. Samsung is super duper into being green.
If you're replacing your phone surely it's better that it doesn't come with the charger (from an environmental point of view), since you don't have to ship it back and they don't have to ship you a new one. And what does it matter if they're on different ships? It would still be pretty much the same amount of emissions released, which is probably less than the amount needed to drive it to your house. Adding the extra packaging for two separate items isn't great though, and I agree that as a customer it isn't great to get less for the same price.
Most importantly, Samsung has only ever shipped batteries to iFixit that are preglued to an entire phone screen — making consumers pay over $160 even if they just want to replace a worn-out battery pack. That’s something Samsung doesn’t do with other vendors, according to Wiens. Meanwhile, iFixit’s iPhone and Pixel batteries cost more like $50.
I went from years of Pixels to an S22Ultra. The only hard part was that the app drawer is paged instead of scrolling. I just ignore everything Samsung/Bixby and never see it. Seems fine 🤷♀️
Honest question: What makes you think you are qualified to know if they've "done anything"? Nova was bought by an analytics(data) company, the danger wasn't in them aesthetically changing nova or its core functionality, the danger was in them keeping you thinking nothing has changed but aggressively/unethically selling all the data about you so others can exploit and manipulate you.
Simple example is, making a predictive model of when you're most likely sad based on context clues and general device usage and then kleenex buys that data, in aggregate. They then use it to predict when they can raise the price of tissues for surge pricing in your area when you're most vulnerable and least price sensitive. This is a slightly silly example work "big Kleenex" as the bad guy, but hopefully you get the idea.
Add to it if you use any of nova middle layer services (e.g. A nova search widget instead of browser search, sesame shortcuts, etc). That's all increased fidelity they get on a data profile of who you are at any given time so that they can sell it to others to target and harass you. That is what the new nova is, quietly. You won't get a knock on your door to ask you if you approve, it has just happened already.
More hypothetical examples:
We detect increasing frequency of you launching the travelocity app, means you're getting more desperate to book, prices go up on your app, increasing more and more between today and the departure date you've been searching.
You downloaded two pregnancy tracker apps in a week, means that several companies can now invest in spamming you with predatory social and direct mail advertising and you're employer can consider finding alternative cause to fire you to not absorb the upcoming costs of delivery/care and parental leave.
You not having any Christian/bible material or apps on your phone means there's a high percentage that you aren't a practicing Christian (or conversely, you having a Quran app downloaded). Your house gets a big red X on a map for an app funded by dark money Christo-fascist, Christian nationalists quietly creating a directory of "good" people and "bad" people that your neighbors with red hats and flags on their raised trucks can eventually download and access freely to "keep an eye out".
That last one is NUTS! You're crazy! That's ridiculous!and then...
Meaningfully, Google is under a much larger microscope and with an aggressive FTC. Nova is smaller relatively and that has its own under the radar dangers
Look, if JEDEC standardises it (which they did) it's in everyone's best interest to apply the standard.
The only thing laptop manufacturers have to gain is selling you a new laptop every for years... Oh.
Jokes aside, the LPDDR soldering has always been a cash grab. With efficient cpus and lack of dedicated gpus I doubt the 4W of RAM is really that much of a battery drain. The only reason you would want a laptop to not be upgradeable is because they don't want you to use your laptop for more than 4 years.
I'd say quick turns in the laptop market is good for innovation, but it's absolutely awful for consumers's wallets and e-waste.
as the other person mentions, the purpose of camm standard is speed. sodimm has realistically hit its frequency limit, which is why the lpddr versions of devices tend to have higher clocks. the faatest components in terms of bandwith is always the closest to the cpu sock (which is why for instance, the fastest pci-e lane on a motherboard is usually the top most x16 slot, as well as usually fastest m.2 slot).
camm is the fix required for next generation high speed memory because of the phenomena, else igpu performance is going to be held back, which doesnt bode well when igpus are getting bigger to able to take a load off AI workloads.
One fascinating example is one owner that replaced the DC barrel jack with a USB-C port, so they could utilize USB-PD for external power.
Oddly enough that's also an example for bad design in that notebook: The barrel jack is soldered in. With a module that is plugged into the board that'd be significantly easier to replace - and also provide strain relief for power jack abuse. All my old thinkpads were trivial to move to USB-C PD because they use a separate power jack with attached cable.
The transparent bottom also isn't very functional - it is pretty annoying to remove and put back, due to the large amount of screws required. For a notebook designed for tinkering I'd have wanted some kind of quick release for that. Also annoying is the lack of USB ports on the board - there's enough space to integrate a USB hub, but just doing that on the board and providing extra ports would've been way more sensible.
The CPU module also is a bit of a mixed bag - it pretty much is designed for the first module they developed, and later modules don't have full support for the existing ports. I was expecting that, though - many projects trying to offer that kind of modular upgrade path run into that sooner or later, and for that kind of small project with all its teething problems 'sooner' was to be expected. It still is very interesting for some prototyping needs - but that's mostly companies or very dedicated hackers, not the average linux user.
So yeah, hardware is hard. But there are a lot of passionate people working on making it more accessible and transparent, tearing down the walls around technical secrecy. We’ve been saying it for years: Your devices don’t have to be incomprehensible, you don’t need to be a certified expert to figure out how it works. Understanding empowers tinkering and we need more tinkerers.
... Aren't devices designed to only charge the battery to 90% (and report that as 100%), because actually changing a battery to 100% is pretty harmful for it?
You're thinking of cars, industry and others that have high value batteries.
Power tools, smartphones etc charge to the maximum 4.2V/cell, sometimes even 4.3V (some chemistries safely allow it) because the average person just wants the maximum runtime and will replace the equipment before the battery degrades significantly.
This sounds like the battery and the charger's problem to handle, not mine.
All this tech, all this automation for every damn thing, and people keep coming at me like I'm supposed to do everything manually with my fingers and eyes and maybe an alarm or something to keep me on schedule. No. Stop it.
Make the charger handle it, or shut up. Make the phone, the charger, and the battery handle it together, you know, with digital automation. Do not even mention it to me.
All BMSs I've come across have this disabled by default sadly, manufacturers seem to target longest device runtime, rather than extended battery longevity
On my FP3 it needs to be enabled in a terminal, while rooted (newer devices have it in the settings).
On my Steam Deck it also needs to be enabled in a terminal, the exact command differs depending on the model of steam deck. An embedded developer or tinkerer will find it very quickly in the kernel sysfs though.
Edit: Apple and Lenovo are the only companies I'm aware of, who have historically cared for the internal batteries in certain models of their laptops. Macbook Pros in particular used to behave differently when they reach 90%, some will stop charging and others will wait a few hours then resume charging to 100% depending on how the machine is used. I assume this is the only reason why my 2012 MBP still is going great on its original battery, running Linux of course.
Lenovo used to let you configure the charge preferences in the BIOS of their ThinkPad line
This was a decade ago though, can't vouch for whether this applies to the modern stuff too
It's an Apple device, what did you expect?
The thing even has an external battery pack, and instead of using USB-C so you could use any power bank you already own, they designed a completely new proprietary connector. In 2024.
Who the fuck does that anymore, except Apple?
You can use any USB battery with it, just plug it into the battery pack. Why? Because releasing this without a battery and leaving it to the customer to source one would be super weird.
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