- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
Samsung sees 95% drop in profits for a second consecutive quarter::Today, Samsung posted its Q2 2023 financial results. The report says Samsung’s profits have dropped considerably compared to last year.
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each new phone is more expensive, with less functionality.
hover on the touch screen? gone
iris scanner, gone
headphone jack? gone
air pressure sensor? gone
humidity sensor? gone
ir blaster, gone
meanwhile I get charged out the ass for storage space.
Why the fuck would I want a newer phone?
Don’t forget the SD card slot missing, S20 was the last one that had it. I still don’t know what to get after that, just because of the missing SD.
mine can take an sd card, but only if i take out one of my sim cards, of course
That pisses me off the most
I got an A52 just for that reason. Still using it. I wanted a S20 but they were sold out and I was told they stopped making it.
Internal storage on phones is over 200gb by now. I havent needed an SD for years. What the fuck do you store on your phone that could still need an SD? lmao
I have a young son and it was getting very irritating having to be selective recording my videos of him. I finally just paid $90 and added a 1TB premium sd card, and now I won’t have to worry about it at all & download all the videos I want for us.
Upgrading the internal storage to 1TB on a new phone costs several hundred dollars.
Because I like to store stuff on my phone
4k video files will fill your phone up mighty quick. especially if you use it for youtube videos or similar. or film your family/pets a lot
I am 12 and this is deep, what a moronic take
llamma pr0n.
Record 1 minute video, how big is that file? 200 MB, 0.2 GB. 5 minutes and 1 GB is full. When something interesting happens, 5 minutes are recorded easy, obviously. 200 GB, nothing for apps, maps, downloads,… are enough to record 15 hours of video. Then that is it. How many moments can I capture with that? Enough for maybe 2 years? I don’t throw my memories away when I get a new phone. Instead, I just buy a new SD every few years and compress the video files every once in a while.
Also removable batteries gone
Mine is actually very easily removable. The device overheats so much, that it’s completely annihilated the glue, and now the back panel is only held down by the case c:
Be honest. You tried microwaving it, didn’t you?
A very nice man on the internet told me it would charge it
Honestly, I may as well have
It should be back in 2027 in EU at least
That’s supposed to be coming back by EU law in the next few years. So we have that at least.
Don’t forget color changing led notification light. You could pay with your phone at old card readers using MST. Oh yeah, and the S9 had a blood pressure sensor.
They want to keep competing with and copying Apple/iphones, yet they keep forgetting about what makes Android phones so appealing to the people who select these phones over iphones.
Wait air pressure sensor and humidity sensor? Are you talking about their watches?
no, i am talking about phones. this stuff used to actually be in phones
Samsung Note 10 and others have a barometric sensor, though I’m not aware of any app using them. Which might explain their removal, sadly.
I have a barometric sensor in my phone?!
I like using the app phyphox to look at all the different sensors on my phone
Oh boy this is a weird tool hahah, I love it!! Can’t thank you enough for this recommendation, it always bummers me how wasted are most phones in terms of potential, when I used to fantasize about futuristic portable computers as a little boy I though that people would become a short of cyborg that would do “magic” with their computers. Turns out, phone became the “squary-glassy attention sink machine” xd
I was thinking on accessing the pressure sensor via termux and then export that data to a csv file with some python script! phybox looks ver interesting to gain control over my devices 😗
news to me too, and I’m replacing it on Monday lol.
TIL I had a phone with barometric sensor.
Air pressure is (was?l in pretty much any phone.
At least Samsung has proper video out through the USB port. Unlike the trash that Pixels depend on, such as Chromecast. What kind of GPU doesn’t have either HDMI or displayport (through USB-C like Apple, Samsung, OnePlus, Steamdeck, laptops, etc. ) out in this day and age?
Holding tight on to this Samsung Note 9 until it finally dies. Battery is still ‘ok’ for now, will last a full day.
Snapdragon, not that pos Exynos
Finger print reader on the back is the only way to do it. Wife has had several newer models with built in front side fingerprint reader and it has been ridiculously unreliable by comparison.
Iris Scan
Face Scan
Headphone jack
Micro-SD Card
USB-C
Wireless charging
NFC with payment support
And even the stupid pen thingy that I use maybe once a month.
Not 5G but the 4G LTE is usually more than fast enough even for streaming when using as a hotspot.
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Pointless unintuitive feature that’s replaced with simple press and hold.
Unintuitive for you, perhaps. I found it more intuitive than the press and hold (until it became ubiquitous), since it made more sense for a preview. Press and hold, in my mind, is more for secondary menus and alternative options, like mass-selecting.
The air gestures were also nice if I had my hands full, since they worked without turning the screen on, and without touching it, although they leaned more heavily on the gimmick side of things.
Slow and unreliable compared to fingerprints. Anyone actually used it?
Yes. I use it a lot when I have my phone on a stand, or when I have gloves on. Fingerprint readers don’t work through gloves, for obvious reasons, and it’s less effort than having to fumble around with my phone and my gloves, especially when I will be putting the glove back on afterwards.
Since my phone also has the fingerprint reader on the back, rather than the front, it also makes it much easier to unlock my phone without picking it up, which is nice when it’s on its wireless charging pad, or I want to quickly check a notification or something, rather than needing to pick it up.
As for speed, I’ve not found it that much worse than the fingerprint, especially once the camera’s fired up. The hard part tends to be aligning yourself just right, and that you need to tap a “confirm” button compared to the one-click that fingerprint does.
Who needs these things? Weather apps work just fine. Rather use the space for battery.
The space won’t be used for battery. It’s a small chip on the PCB, and Samsung would either keep it around for other sensors, or would leave that space blank. Having a tiny battery protrusion like that is silly anyway. Having a little dingle like that would just make the battery more likely to be damaged and erupt into a violent conflagration.
I personally found it handy, even if it was underutilised. Sometimes you want information from within the house, not outside of it, and if your phone can fetch that information and present it, you don’t need to go and buy a separate hygrometer and air pressure sensor, and carry it around, or have to feed that information via an external service.
Unless you’re looking to vandalize public tvs, just replace it with any number of wifi/bluetooth remotes.
Assuming that your TV comes with support for those. If it doesn’t, such as if it’s an older television, then you would be out of luck.
Personally, I used mine a bunch back in the day, just because it was nice to be able to fire up the VCR, Amplifier, and TV all in one button, rather than a bundle of loose remotes, but that’s more of a first world problem, and less of an issue these days, since television is on the decline.
More importantly, though, the phones aren’t cheaper despite the loss of these features. The phones just get more expensive, even though they had fewer sensors and features like that.
Found the Samsung fuck boy
The point is that technology isn’t supposed to get in the way of us doing things and that’s exactly what removing features that are useful to people does.
Usually there is a compromise somewhere though. If they could just add all the features without any downsides, they surely would (and demand a premium for it). Granted, sometimes it is just cheaper to get rid of it (and thus make more profit), but sometimes its just a decision to cater to a minority or provide a benefit for the majority of users.
Counterpoint: phones like Redmi 9T have it all. Headphone jack, expandable storage, IR blaster, NFC… Also manages to have an “okay” battery capacity that’s 6Ah.
The only problem is it costs too little so people don’t consider it.
First, even for Xiaomi that phone is crap with a myriad of software related complaints alone. On the hardware front its cheap because cheap in gets cheap out. Underpowered even for 2021.
Oh I see. I just …hadn’t noticed. Probably because these people are overreacting. But sure, if you need to justify getting a new smartphone, you better spend loads of money to make sure it looks good on benchmarks.
Slow and unreliable compared to fingerprints. Anyone actually used it?
Hadn’t had a Samsung back then, but I would love to.
Air pressure/humidity sensor
I’d love those.
IR blaster
It’s still very useful, I used it regularly on my older phone.
When money is tight you might use your phone for a year or two longer. 1000 Euro phones also don’t help the matter.
While I don’t use a Samsung, I am over half way through my phones fifth year. Other than a battery replacement I’ve had literally no problems whatsoever.
If only lifespan and right to repair were written into law everywhere.
Software updates are the problem unfortunately
I wonder why this is not a problem for pcs though
Because PCs are from a time before tech monopolies. They are based on a spec that allows different vendors to work together. As a result there is more competition, more options for repair, etc.
I wonder how long this will last. We’re already seeing Apple getting some crazy performance with their M chips with integrated RAM and GPU, wouldn’t surprise me if PCs start becoming less and less modular as time goes on.
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Yes, though technically they started out as reverse engineered clones. There were tons of incompatible microcomputer brands before the IBM PC. Then companies like Compaq put out “PC compatible” clones based on specs that came from reverse engineering of the IBM PC. Over time, things evolved toward deliberate standardization.
Imagine the dumpster fire of legal action, which courts would likely side with, if someone put out hardware that was 1:1 compatible with the iPhone and iOS would run on it. That’s basically what happened, though MS DOS was produced by an additional party instead of IBM.
I have quite a number of systems capable of running Windows 11. Microsoft won’t allow it. Thankfully I run mostly Linux. But your point is not as solid as you think it is unfortunately…
Because PCs are based on a hardware standard that allows for a standard kernel and pluggable drivers. So you can just take a standard install of a new version of Windows, and toss in the same drivers from the last version, and you’re on your way.
On ARM, there is no such standard that is widely deployed, the hardware is integrated bespoke for each and every device, so building a new version of the OS for a specific phone means using very specific configurations (where in memory is the GPU mapped? where is the sound chip mapped? on a PC the hardware can plug-and-play detect this stuff, on ARM it has to be hardcoded into the OS for every device). This is made worse by the chips used in mobile phones being proprietary hardware where the drivers are only released to manufacturers under NDA, and these hardware manufacturers often don’t bother to supply updates at all and individual phone manufacturers don’t have enough clout to force them to
It kinda is. Windows 11 won’t run on older hardware and end of life of the latest version of Win 10 is coming up in 2 years or so. And a bunch of PCs weren’t really ready for Win 10 when that replaced Win 7/8 and again, support for those dropped at some point.
Lifetimes are usually more lenient with PCs, but it still happens. You can switch to Linux of course, but then there are alternatives for many smartphones as well.
Developers require money, and software maintenance requires lots of developers, testers and other people.
That’s why the bootloaders of phones should be required to be unlocked by law. You can always root your phone and install a custom ROM on it to keep up to date.
Yes and no. Installing last version of android on a pixel 4 is most likely absolutely fine. And keeping at least security support is likely not a big deal. 3 years of security update support it is clearly a finance department decision. Why 3, why not 3 and half? Why not 4?
Just because they need predictability in sales, and they attached the support to the “classical” number of years after which you’d like a customer to buy a new tech product. 3 years has always been a magic number for hardware companies, since forever
No not really, formula is no more than 10% production costs pa unless w produced poorly to begin with. It’s even less if you’re running multiple versions of roughly the same thing then the costs are spread over those versions.
My Galaxy S10 is on its 5th year I think. Really had no issues with it, even the battery. Only showing signs of slowdown this year.
Granted, I run my phone on 720p and constant battery saver lol
It also seems like the whole you gotta upgrade every other month hype has long since died down. It’s not the exponential improvements that it was ten or twelve years ago.
I couldn’t agree more. I have a Zfold 2 that I’ve had since launch (3 years) and I look at the phones on offer now that I have an upgrade available and I see no reason to upgrade to a new phone for a marginally better camera and processor, there hasn’t been enough innovation in mobile tech in that time to warrant paying another £1000+ over another 3 years, I’ll rock this phone phone until it dies the same way I did my Note 9.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve still got an S10 from launch, although it’s noticeably wearing down in performance now. I’ll wait to the holiday season to see if I can get a deal on a new Samsung. At that point I’ll have used the s10 for almost 5 years. Used to get a new phone every other year but that’s not needed or wanted now.
Hell, I’ve had a £100 phone for 3 years already and it’s absolutely fine. I’ve noticed a little battery degregation but it still lasts a whole day. Plus a cheap batter change will make it last year’s more. I can’t understand why anyone would still sing those contracts for a new phone every 2 years.
Phones just went through the same thing PCs went through twenty five years ago.
Yeah, I’ve had my LG G8 for four years now and I’m just starting to look for replacements. Unfortunately the G8 is known for the battery being very hard to replace or I would be looking into a battery replacement service instead to get a couple more years of useful life.
I’m clinging to my LG though with no OS updates ever again its days are numbered. In the meantime I paid a shop to replace the battery in my LG because it couldn’t hold a charge anymore.
I’m still using my iPhone 8 Plus that I bought in 2017 and it still serves well since I don’t play games.
Sorry. I’m just trying not to get evicted due to living in a country with the highest rent, internet, food, and data plan prices.
Sounds like Canada
You’d be correct!
Starting the comment with sorry really gave it away . Plus it sounds alot like my current situation
Seeing that you’re from Canada, why is this so? Why is living in Canada so expensive relative to elsewhere?
Government. Not liberals or conservatives, but the government as a whole. Canada has had many years where both liberal and conservatives were in charge, and nothing changed.
Canada doesn’t allow competition. We have 3 main internet providers, 3 main phone plan providers, like 2 grocery store chains, a couple airlines, etc.
When other companies attempt to come in to break up monopolies, they lobby, and get them shut down.
I mean where are we going to go? America isn’t really an alternative, as much as Americans think it is. Our healthcare, gun laws, etc are things that make Canada really good. We could move to some European or Scandinavian country, but that’s not as easy as it sounds, especially when you need to learn a new language, get accepted, move your entire life, and live in such a different culture.
So people in Canada just accept it. Maybe one day monopolies will be broken up, but there are no parties that are going to do that now. Left or right leaning.
Government. Not liberals or conservatives, but the government as a whole. Canada has had many years where both liberal and conservatives were in charge, and nothing changed.
Huh, it’s almost as if they don’t encompass as much of the political spectrum as they’d like us to believe.
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Not just any government, but a government captured by capitalism
Isn’t refusing to break up monopolies against the idea of capitalism and competition?
Capitalism and free markets are separate things within the economic “sphere” of society. Capitalism is an economic doctrine that focuses on directing production through private capital; free markets (in theory) ensure “equal access” to markets for products (as compared to monopoly or (economic, not necessarily drug) cartel markets which restrict access).
Over in the “public sphere”, governments decide whether to jump in bed with private capital (often resulting in monopolies or cartels in economic marketplacs), or to make & enforce regulations that protect the (so-called) free market.
Or to make and enforce regulations that protect consumers – i.e. human f-ing beings – and enrich local economies without protectionism and “zero sum games”, but I guess we shouldn’t get too carried away here ;)
Thanks for the clarification!
We have a similar thing in Australia with our supermarkets, airlines and media. Our governments have been equally as stagnant in trying to change things. Housing and utility prices are fucked as well.
I haven’t even seen a North American have a kind of acceptable political understanding in the 2020s until now.
Plenty of real people are quite aware of our current issues, they just get drowned out online.
The Economist explains it well in their article Australia and Canada are one economy—with one set of flaws. The competition regulators in both Australia and Canada aren’t doing their job, allowing oligopolies to form.
It’s a type of endemic corruption and Transparency International should start calling it out.
It’s big and cold. How much food do you think grows there? There’s actually plenty of cheap land but people like to live with other people.
If you don’t want modern conveniences, I bet it’s cheap. I bet you can live off of potatoes and chicken for like $0.
It’s not cheap. Buying a crack shack in a shitty province with basically no job opportunities costs more than a nice place in LA.
Actually.
Getting a piece of shit, run down, SHARED town house in Nova Scotia costs more than a decent house in LA.
You can get a rural house with land for no money. You can grown your own potatoes and raise chickens. That life is exceptionally cheap. But like I said:
People like to live with people.
So the problem is, Canada is big and cold. No one wants to live in the cheap areas.
Yeah I watch a girl on YouTube who bought a run down old house in Nova Scotia + plenty of land for I think $64k? It obviously takes a lot of work to get it modernized but it was technically liveable when she bought it. But it’s kinda out in the middle of nowhere and therefore not as desirable.
(If anyone cares, she’s a booktuber but she has a whole video series on refurbing the house. Her name is Ariel Bissett.)
people like to live with other people.
Speak for yourself.
At least you don’t live in the city with the highest rent prices. Our countries treated housing like and investment scheme which drives up local tax revenue resulting in reduction year in year of new developments (assuming Canada has the same supply Constraints as here) . The reduction is fueled by the tax revenue however also by the increasing amount of investors and owners who vote. They don’t want their asset values to decrease so it’s artificially kept high the value component of the assets left long ago, we are in fictional valuations now.
Regarding food, their is no other way around monopoly or duopoly other than supporting farmers markets. By supporting them they can grow their base and bring down prices. Not sure what else can be done here. It’s a real problem for us here.
Electricity prices are skyrocketing here and that’s squarely landed at the feet of poor renewables planning. Mandatory coal plant shutdowns without having replacement capacity in place is killing people when the elderly & vulnerable can’t afford AC during the heat waves.
Sounds like Singapore.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
This is a sign of an upcoming recession if we aren’t already in one. People are starting to run out of their savings due to stagflation and are looking for areas to cut. Buying a new phone every year or every other year and replacing laptops every 5 years are among the first things to go in anyone’s budget.
So currently the only people refreshing their devices are the people who NEED new devices.
Capitalist economies always need spends out of desire and not just necessity.
Worst part is instead of reversing the gouging these companies will probably just go ham on the planned obsolescence.
Or simply that prices have become insane. Good phones used to be around 400, taking me a few days to think about it and say yes. Now they are beyond 1000, so I will do my best to avoid having to upgrade and go with custom ROMs again. In the meanwhile, we also lost exchangeable batteries, external SD cards, and microphone jack, and we gained more Google spyware and bloat.
Good phones are still $400. They just have this ridiculous tier now that is even higher
I had a Pixel 3a for years. It was a great phone and it was $350. Eventually it stopped getting updates :(
Good phones used to be around 400, taking me a few days to think about it and say yes. Now they are beyond 1000
I’m not sure what you mean by a “good” phone. Like yeah, they came up a bit. A Pixel 7a costs $499, and if one wants wireless charging and a better camera they can go with the Pixel 7 for $599. Regular non-Pro iPhones are around the same price.
Like yeah, folding phones are well over $1,000 in most cases, but personally I think that’s a gimmick, my hot take. But for me and 99% of the people I know, we’re sticking with our slab smartphones.
I bought a m52 a while ago on a black friday promotion or something like that for 280. It’s the most expensive phone I ever bought (usially i try to stay under 200). I know that for some that is peanuts, but I have it hard to justify spending so much money on a phone. 1000 for a phone is something I would never be able to do. The thing I do like about it is the quality of the photos and the ease to connect with my wireless buds.
The gouging is insane. £300+ for a tablet keyboard case for the s9 ultra.
I got one free as a preorder for the s8 ultra. No chance I am paying that much for a keyboard.
Even my iPad keyboard (the folio from Apple) “only” cost like £180. Samsung’s going nuts.
But don’t Samsung at least throw in the spen?
Samsung isn’t on planet earth with their prices. I was avoiding them anyway because I believe TouchWiz is an inferior interface than stock Android. Just way too much bloat.
Bloat is negligible. In fact it is their software that keeps me stuck with samsung. Its a total superior hardware and software experience.
Just wished they hadn’t gone down the Apple courage route and bumped the price and pimped the features.
You’re the only one I’ve heard of who was happy with it. One of the guys I worked with, traded a new at the time Galaxy S-series phone back into his carrier to exchange for an iPhone because it was very laggy. After seeing one in action I didn’t blame him. It was laggier than my cheap Moto G series, which had a lot less processing power and slower storage. And this was back in 2017, so not too awfully long ago. But maybe things have changed since then.
2017 was a long time ago.
Like with everything you need to invest time to learn the features. If you just want a phone with basic capabilities then you are better off getting other brands.
The spen itself is packed with so many features but rarely does anyone bother learning them. Samsung have developed a powerhouse for productivity and unfortunately that means I’m stuck with them because nothing else compares.
Everyone is on their own journey and I agree that it is not for everyone.
Part of my job still is to help people connect their work email to their personal smartphones, if they want to. Many buy Samsungs because their carrier’s store still sells them up front compared to other brands of Android. Though it’s mostly A-series phones.
The problem with it is that Samsung doesn’t put the access to the features in convenient or intuitive locations so many users just get used to not using them anyway. The only feature, I as a Pixel user envy over Samsung is the right side menu thing. But anyone with iPhone experience or experience using an Android that has gesture nav enabled by default, wouldn’t think to try it even with the spen because that is the gesture to go back.
Ofc Pixels can do multitask yet many don’t realize that because you have to click the app icons at the top of the recent apps screen to access the menu for it. So I guess I don’t have room to talk about that aspect as a Pixel user.
But Bixby? I honestly think it’s a waste of resources for Samsung when they could have just used Google Assistant like other brands. I mean Bixby is okay but still lacks in some areas, but Samsung invested a lot of resources and effort into it just to come up with something that barely keeps up with Google’s Assistant.
Also I’m not a huge fan of their app drawer still. I guess I’m more of a “I just want to see an alphabetical list of all apps” on the app drawer type of person.
You hit the nail on the head for me. I loved my Galaxy S9+ but it was over 4 years old and literally falling apart. I just replaced it with an S23…but also as others have said, I think the S9+ was better. I’m especially having issues with the camera (look up bananagate) and my old car doesn’t have Bluetooth so I have a USB C to Aux adapter that randomly cuts out sound so for a lot of drives I just put the sound up on my phone speakers and play directly.
I got a cigarette lighter usb port to provide power to a Bluetooth -> aux dongle. Works well.
I remember reading vague claims that this was expected by samsung and it was just the cost of something they did some years ago to eliminate competition. Unfortunately I don’t have anything more concrete but someone else might know and add a comment.
It’s not just stagflation, it’s greedflation
Sadly I don’t think greedflation is an official term. Stagflation was the closest I know about anyway.
damn and I just start my studies at the university :(
Tbh, might not be a bad time to do it as long as you don’t sink yourself into debt too much or have to take out high interest loans. Because if the crash happens while you’re studying and by the time you graduate things might start recovering again. I guess we’ll see.
Drops in profits can mean investments, new hires and a myriad of other stuff. No meaning in the headline whatsoever. Profits are not revenue.
Young people in Korea have switched over to iphones. iphone have like 60% marketshare now for that demographic
Imagine actually using an iPhone
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Firstly, it’s a joke, secondly, it’s more about OS and user experience and not brand loyalty. The fact that you don’t know that is a tell tale sign
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Most of the western world doesn’t have to imagine
Dunno if you’re taking the piss but they’re not that bad. Have an iPhone mini 13 I bought for €450 2nd hand with 100% battery health. Decent upgrade from an Xperia XZ1 compact. Needed a pocketable phone & the Asus Zenfone was too expensive.
Have to say, having the call audio levels, proximity sensor & speakers properly tuned to the hardware, software/security updates without having to run a non-official build of Lineage OS and AltStore-Linux for side-loading has been sweet.
I have for about a decade. I use my phone as my backup map when I am flying. It has to work, every time, without fail. I’ve never owned an android that could hold a candle to an iPhone for software stability.
Do you have any sources for this? Afaik Samsung phones are still massively popular with young people in Korea.
Foldable devices seem like the 3d TVs of the last couple of years. I will not be getting one any time soon.
After having one, it’s really amazing and the form factor and random utility it brings (built in tripod, easy to aim flash light and be hands free). The screens just need work. The crease is a non-issue as far as using the phone, but the little screen protectors that manufacturers say not to take off will deteriorate after like 6 months.
I think it’s close though and I do often miss my foldable.
Have had a samsung foldable and in a 2 year time period I’ve had to replace the factory installed screen protector twice. It started w a little crack that crept upwards until the whole protector was split in half. Ended up just peeling it off after the 2nd replacement started cracking. I imagine ppl don’t like the idea of not being able to protect their screens for one of their premium products…
On the flip side I did watch the superbowl from a hotel pool with this phone and it was perfect for that.
and who even wants this? a couple of friends have them, and it seems like nothing more than a weird novelty. in sci-fi, the phone unfolds to become a tablet, not folds in half to become… uselelss while potentially damaging the screen for no good reason.
this is a classic example of one of those technologies that you think would be cool, but once you have it, you’re like, “eh, never mind.” but Samsung went all sunk cost fallacy and doubled-down on it, losing billions. brilliant!
I’d love to have one but they’re overpriced.
Same with every flagship, the tech isn’t scaring me off just that the price is ridiculous to me. A new phone case, wallpaper and launcher and I’ll get another year out of any phone.
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from what my friends have told me, that novelty wears off real quick, and is replaced with the concern it will break or wear out— which happens more frequently than manufacturers claim. if not the screen itself, then the hinges, which were a common problem with the old flip-phones, too, back in the day.
I mean, you like what you like. I’m just speaking from a practical standpoint in that any moving parts = a high manufacturing cost and higher rate of defect and breakage. the primary advantage of the “candy bar” form factor is that it reduces/eliminates moving parts and potential points of failure from the physical design.
I admit… I really do miss the idea, even the feel of flipping a phone shut. hell, I even miss slamming a phone down to end a call. angrily jamming my finger into a screen to end a call is REALLY unsatisfying, and often ends in my throwing my phone across the room, and I’ve thankfully developed the habit of throwing it at my couch to save on replacing expensive smartphones, lol. but, until tech evolves tot he point where we get phablets a la Westworld or Legion that can unfold into a super-slim tablet rather than fold down into a flip-phone from the past whose screen could actually just break at any moment because the tech was rushed…. yeah, I’m not interested.
I was going to say I miss slam-shutting my flip phone too but have realized that I only talk on the phone like 3 times a week so I wouldn’t be getting a foldable just for that
I had a Motorola razr in 2021 that was a good phone, the crease never really bothered me but after 6 months of use the touch screen stopped working and then the pixels started going out on it before it stopped working entirely.
I loved the form factor but it’s just not reliable enough. I’d probably only buy another clamshell foldable if apple made it because I trust them not to rush a half baked product to market.
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I had flip phones before smartphones became default, I loved the intuitiveness of answering, locking, etc, and I love the idea of a foldable smartphone because of the size of the screen that you can get into a pocket
Same here, was on flip phones for the longest time. I loved the compactness. They became scarce some years ago so I started buying smart phones, currently a Samsung. That thing is huge and unwieldy. It does not fit well in a pocket so I don’t carry it around. I always have to find someplace to stow it, often in the center console of my car.
A folding smart phone could be a solution, but they’re all really expensive. I don’t spend a lot on phones and never will. Right now I’m looking to replace my under $300 Samsung with an under $300 Motorola. Functionally my Samsung works well, but I hate all the Samsung bloatware on it. I know Motorola uses a fairly stock Android image and hopefully it will be a bit more compact.
I see why you’re saying that but I love my fold and I don’t think I could go back to a regular phone anymore, you quickly get used to the screen real estate and its difficult to give it up imo. While the outside screen is too thin on my fold for my fat fingers you get the best of both worlds of a phone and a more portable tablet, I get it if its not your thing but I find it very handy to have that extra work space on my phone.
I’m in the same boat with my foldable. It’d be a handicap now to watch videos on a smaller screen now that I’ve gotten used to the bigger one. I only use the small screen for phone calls now because it’s awkward holding the large screen to your face for that.
While the outside screen is too thin on my fold
Yep, I’m hoping they’ll do a slightly wider tri-fold model at some point. I’d like to have a wider front screen, like Galaxy S22 Ultra sized, and then be able to unfold twice to get a ~3x sized tablet-sized screen.
Not that that would help with the already astronomical price-tag of the Z-Fold.
Yeah, so many points of failure and so expensive
And now TVs fold also 😂
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To be fair, apples done those things and we said the same thing about those moves. And now look at em.
Samsung doesn’t have Apple’s ecosystem.
Yep, exactly the reason Apple created it, and why I’ll never buy an Apple product.
Same reason I switched to Android ten years ago. Sometimes I want to install an unsigned project.
I’m a tinkerer. Give me that Android freedom any day.
Except Samsung has competition. Apple has blind loyalty.
I need to replace my Samsung phone soon and I’m looking at Motorola. An Apple user just says I need to replace my phone soon. Then they get to spend an arm and a leg to do it.
Apple has blind loyalty
I agree. However, I also think that vendor lock-in is the true culprit. The strange thing about Apple users is that they get locked into that platform and there is little escape, but instead of feeling resentful, they swell with pride instead. Apple user = proud capative.
Its also beacuse Apple dosent have cheap tier of phones. So you have the classic went from a 100 dollar android to 1000 dollar iphone case. Like no shit sherlock obviusly extremly cheap phones are crap. Also for some reason the most common phone Brand on the planet is somehow treated like a status symbol. I would kinda uderstand sony phones being status symbol or samsung foldables but iphones But truth be told I really dont get Apple users. I tried one and other than it being really smooth (beacuse my Main phone is a cheap huawei) it was worse in every metric that mattered to me other than sound while costing 4 to 6 Times as much .
blind loyalty
Maybe for some people. There is however a strong momentum to just keep using what you are used to, and Apple has done a great job in that regard. Stuff just works and it keeps working mostly the same and even switching to a new device is almost effortless. Plus their design guidelines for apps is providing a pretty consistent user experience, zero tinkering required. Which is what a lot of people like.
When apple did them they were seen as reasons not to buy iPhones, now everyone has copied them it’s no longer a factor in whether you buy an iPhone or not.
apples done those things and we said the same thing about those moves. And now look at em.
True, however a lot of people really don’t care about that stuff which somehow often gets overlooked here and on reddit.
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I’ve had 3 Samsung phones in a row but I’m over it. The bloatware is too much for me at this point.
I got a Google Pixel a couple months ago after having all Samsungs. The pixel is great. Better phone, imo, and half the price.
Welcome to 2014 my friend
Maybe they could stop taking features away from their phones. Put a micro SD and aux jack back and I’d buy one
Sooo… you want a Sony Xperia then
Stupid money, loved the Z series but the price skyrocketed
Yeh it’s expensive but I vote with my wallet. Sony’s build is the best I’ve ever had. Software is close to stock AOSP with nice Sony improvements. Only issue I see is Sony are slow to roll out major OS updates. All in all, I’d argue it’s one of the best devices I’ve had over the last few generations.
This is exactly why I have mine! Sent this from an Xperia 5 III :)
Maybe I am in the minority but I’ll never need an aux jack again and I see it as another point of failure for water damage.
A lot of people use the headphone jack still. Bluetooth will never be as good as direct connection. Some people don’t own cars with all that Bluetooth bullshit, or just prefer to use the jack since it is lossless audio. People want to charge and listen to music at the same time.
This is why I’m still using my LG v60, it had the best headphone jack and dac at the time and probably still does looking at everything else currently on the market.
I personally don’t use the headphone jack at all, but I still want it back for people like yourself. Also, being ok with the headphone jack removal led to removing the sd card slot, then the charger from the box. Next they’ll be removing the charging cable and send us just a fucking phone. They’ve boiled us very slowly in their pot
Next they’ll removing the charging cable and send us just a fucking phone.
Oh you mean like google did? I was pretty surprised and disgusted they didn’t include a charging cable with my pixel 7. All I got was a 6 inch data transfer cable.
Are you serious? Just a 6" cable? Wow.
Yup. I’m using the chargers from my old phone
I’m still rocking the v60 also. LG started packing a world class DAC into their smartphones back with the LG v35 and kept it going all the way to their pinnacle (the v60). The v35, the v60, and everything in between had audio superiority that still hasn’t been beaten by other modern flagships.
I’m going to be inconsolable when my v60 finally needs replacing.
V50 user here (didn’t get V60 cause of the larger size) I broke my phone a few months ago, filtered GSMarena for a replacement that’d fullfil my criteria, and Sony Xperias were the the best of the few options that it spat out. Ended up just fixing the V50 for $100, I too will probably hold onto this until it actually breaks.
Some people don’t own cars with all that Bluetooth bullshit, or just prefer to use the jack since it is lossless audio.
I really hate that cars seem to drop a built in music solution in favor of smartphones. Give me a good radio and a cd player or sdcard slot over any smartphone connectivity and I’m happy.
Ahh like I get the argument but it is technology progressing, lots of cars didn’t have cd players when the world moved from tapes. The infrastructure responds to demand.
Removing useful features to make people spend more money on something else you’re selling isn’t “technology progressing”, it’s capitalism at work. It’s corporations milking their users. The whole removal of the headphone jack started by apple to make their users buy their airpods. More money, my friend. More money.
It’s not to spend more money, there’s a real increase in value Bluetooth provides to most people. Yes there are edge cases, but when you can get a a blue tooth headset for $5-20 it’s not really cost prohibitive any more.
Remember when the singe piece Bluetooth mics were like $100 when Bluetooth first started hitting mainstream phones? Many people didn’t think it was worth $100 to use an unwired headset for phone calls.
Well now, that phone is also your entire music collection, your cable box and much more. Being untethered makes a lot more sense.
In addition, easily Bluetooth destroyed device batteries, now it’s more power and you can just leave it running all the time in your phone.
It IS to spend more money. Does apple or Samsung sell you Bluetooth headphones for $5 - $20? Nope, those cheap ones are a side effect of the removal of the jack and the instruction of Bluetooth airpods. And it’s a good side effect, btw. I do agree with you that Bluetooth headsets are much better than wired in terms of convenience and not being tethered to your phone, but there are way more use cases of the jack than just for headphones. There are professionals who would never ever use Bluetooth over wired that got fucked over and had to use converters and shit. I do see your point.
I think also, the removal of the port allowed for better engineering around the screen and better waterproofing and thinner devices.
I think with the EU mandating phones use USB-C, it might push apple into to drop port charging all together. You may see MagSafe only charging iPhones in the EU or everywhere soon.
Just because it’s more modern doesn’t mean it’s a 1:1 replacement.
Wired is cheaper, and it has better quality, but it can also be annoying if you’re doing sports.
It’s the same for HD and SSD. I still prefer HD to store multimedia and backups, despite being slower and older than SSD.
There is no reason for them not to coexist.
Maybe I am in the minority but I’ll never need an aux jack again
There is still significant lag for bluetooth audio on both ios and android platforms. It’s doesn’t really impact calling, and it doesn’t really impact watching video content (because they figured out how to measure that latency in real time and inject artificial delay into the video stream so that audio and video sync). But what they haven’t figured out yet is the answer for bluetooth audio for gaming. When gaming, you can’t arbitrarily delay the video feed so that it lines up with audio, so the bluetooth audio experience is complete dogshit for any gaming scenario. If you game, you have to use the physical cable or the constant audio lag will drive you mad.
Also, there used to be (still are) a fair number of accessories designed to work through the aux port. Examples: mobile credit card readers that connect through aux jack (like square/paypal) that are used heavily by small vendors (especially for shows/events); also things like selfie sticks that use a cable plugged into the aux jack connected to a length of wire running inside the selfie stick to a button on the end of it.
The market is starting to come up with wireless versions of these things, but the modern wireless versions now require unique ios and android versions of them when the aux-jack solution used to be platform independent.
Also, the audio quality of an aux jack is an order of magnitude superior to anything that can be piped through bluetooth…still.
I very much appreciate devices still throwing traditional aux jacks onto mobile devices. Ideally, there will be a wireless technical solution that eventually is superior, but that technology is definitely not bluetooth and we’re still waiting for it to be invented and hit consumer availability.
Would love to read more about the Bluetooth lag. Does it affect Bluetooth dac’s like the fiio btr5 as well?
Almost all of those are pretty niche problems though. Which explains why they just aren’t a high priority for manufacturers.
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Wait… they’re removing SD cards?
They already did.
What do they need all this space for?
They removed the keys for the screen. Ok.
Phones got bigger for the screen. Ok.
Phones got thinner, monolithic-like and they removed replaceable batteries. Why?
They removed the 3.5mm jack. Not ok, full stop.
They removed the SD card slot. A cloud’s not a storage card.
I heard they’re removing SIM card slots as well.
Gradually making phones into TV’s with sensors is bad. What if next you’re considered dead or criminal when offline?
What is this, 1995? /jk
Nah it’s 2005
As a Samsung user of 6 years, mainly due to job phone policy, I say they deserve it.
Great screens, but gawddamn they aren’t worth their price. No charger, no headphone jack, no expandable storage, fingerprint sensor that are iffy and damn OS taking up 30% of your storage, no matter which option you go for.
I like the camera and s-pen on my S22u but that’s it. They need to lower price and make competent mid range phones again, like the A52s.
But you can say this about any phone company these days (besides Sony, they still have it all) or you can blame them for taking the ‘apple’ direction of taking away everything and charging more.
Funnily enough they still have expandable storage on the A54. It’s only their best models where they know they can gouge for more storage.
Its actually kinda ridicoulus that somehow features get removed from the top kodeks first and then it slowly trickles down to cheaper phones. You would think pepole paying literaly a 1000 dollars for a phone would complain first and foremost. But then again some pepole replace their phones every 2 years Just beacuse(its not like you need need new more powerful phones for pretty much any use including gaming, with the only known to me exception being emulators, but that is a very specific niche ).
They have expandable storage on a lot of cheaper phones, as well as Aux ports. I chose my phone, the A23 5g, over the A53 because of the Aux port, and it is still an amazing phone.
I love the spen, and never had trouble with the finger print scanner… But you nail the rest of the list.
Fingerprint issues were my biggest complaint on Note 20, coming from S9, that was a huge let down.
Huh, I guess I just got lucky, or have “typical” finger prints!
Try that with a screen protector on 20 series and you’ll see what I mean. With other brands using optical sensor, you don’t need to worry about it at all.
I have a screen protector on my s22u, without a problem.
As I said, maybe I’m just lucky. /Shrug.
Which kind? One that fully adhere to screen or the kind with glue on edges and circular area near sensor?
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They still made around $1/2 BILLION.
I love how every headline about their earnings focuses on the drop from before and not on the actual number they made.
Boo-fucken-hoo the record profits they were making the last few years couldn’t be sustained forever. Oh noes!1!!!
Dude a 95% drop in profits YOY is most assuredly newsworthy
Maybe if it was revenue. Such a drop in profits could be from many ordinary business operations like expansion
It states in the article that it is from less than expected sales, no?
No. Not at all.
If a company made one penny last quarter, and 10,000,000 this quarter, then their profit is up 10 billion percent. It’s a stupid headline.
Is it your belief that Samsung made hundreds of billions of dollars mysteriously in on huge surge?
Revenue matters more since companies tend to invest in future technology. Most serious business analysts would never talk about profit in percentages. This is clickbait. Hence why the stock price (determined by investors not Reddit tech refugees) is not suffering.
If a company did that it would be extremely newsworthy, as a 1,000,000,000,000x profit increase.
I don’t see your point.
If the same company made 10,000,000 last quarter and then made 500,000 this quarter that would also be newsworthy… as you know, a 95% drop in profits.
“Company so and so did an INFINITE PROFIT INCREASE!”
Stupid.
My point is that it’s stupid to use percentages when reporting profits unless you’re writing for clicks. That’s not how professional do it when looking at earnings reports. Ever. And for good reason. Again, Samsung stock is not tanking, because investors are smarter than internet kids who are bad with numbers.
Revenues are looked at as percentages. Profits are looked at as raw numbers. Typically.
Relevant username btw hahaha
😳I really didn’t mean to upset you so much wee man… don’t get too emotional. Just having a conversation here aren’t we?
Percentage is entirely legitimate to look at, it’s merely a way of quantifying what the raw numbers mean versus the raw numbers from last years performance.
No one said Samsung stock is tanking, you’re kind of shouting that into an empty room.
I was acknowledging that a 95% drop in profits vs the same period over the previous year is definitely a newsworthy item especially in two consecutive quarters… I think any shareholder of Samsung would agree.
Company makes 1 dollar q1 2022. Company makes $.05. Q2 of 2023.
Headline: “company loses 95% of its profits.”
It’s the opposite of meaningful.
It is meaningful if you measure Q1 2020 vs Q1 2021. You’ve got a bit confused as to what YOY is, you’re not just measuring two random quarters from different years (q1 2022 vs q2 2023?), you’re comparing against the performance in the same quarter the previous year.
It is a very meaningful way of judging whether a companies performance (ability to turn a profit and create value for the investor) has improved against the same period the previous year.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/y/year-over-year.asp
There is a little bit of very basic information for you. I can try find something more colourful and with nice pictures if you need.
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I was so happy when they released those commercials with their commitment to the headphone jack after Apple abandoned it.
After they dropped it, they made sure I’ll never buy another phone from them. They probably don’t care. They probably make more than enough through their bluetooth headphones.
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Sales are “only” down 37%, it’s profits that are down 95%. Which means either they’ve had to discount their phones, or they’re not selling enough volume to make up for R&D.
Either you make products that people want or you don’t, it seems pretty simple to me.
Imo even big companies fail to realize that they don’t know (or care) anymore what the customers want. Marketing used to be: analyze the market and find out what’s a good product to sell. Nowadays marketing is: make personalized ads and try to push whatever crap is cheap to produce to people who don’t realize they don’t even want this. Also make it look a lot better than it actually is.
Samsung, stop trying to imitate Apple, it’s no use. You don’t have the vendor lock-in and cult-like status to pull that off. Just make good products at affordable prices. Ask the customers what they want, it’s that easy.
Ask the customers what they want, it’s that easy.
Don’t forget though, that the typical customer may be very different from the bubble on this site.
You’re very correct. A core belief at apple is that the customer is too stupid to know what they want, so you can whatever you want down their throat.
There is some merit to the idea that true innovation won’t be anticipated by customers so you have to take risks. But the way apple does it pisses me off to no end.
No apple, removing every port (except shitty ass lightning ports of course) is not a good idea. It just isn’t.
And remember, nobody is actually losing money, they just aren’t making as much as they’d hoped. You make shitty products and you homogenized with Apple losing anything that made you distinct and close to worthwhile. Fuck Samsung, all my homies hate Samsung.
Yeah, this is the chaebol system at work. The Faustian deal between these megacorps and the citizens of South Korea means that it is impossible for Samsung to fail or to be accountable for their bad business decisions. South Korea is the most developed cyberpunk technofeudalistic society.
without any kids. They’re in for huuuge trouble.
They went from one million births in 1960 to just 250k last year.
The birth rate is below 1.
with a birth rate of 1, four grandarents make a single grandchild.
Once we go below 1, most people will never even be grandparents.
The boomers will enter retirement age soon, I’m not really sure how that will work.
They definetely won’t be able to do anything against North Korea. They will either be bedridden or care for someone bedridden.
I think boomers are all retired, it’s gen X and Millennials that don’t breed
Youngest boomers are 59, so still not all retired.
Likely not having that many kids though.
Ok. I guess I live in a wealthier place, they all retired here on generous pensions at age 54 and a half
Could be. My dad retired at that age in the 90s. But he was Silent gen, not a boomer.
Who could know that refusing to patch critical bugs or, for that matter, to put any effort at all into software while constantly raising product prices would piss off the customers? It’s a mistery!
I can’t believe that the whole Android ecosystem -and I mainly blame Google, let Apple outplay it at system updates. It was always going to come to a head as people keep their phones longer and longer.
Yeah, this is not it, their mobile division performed well, it was their chips division.
From the introduction of the article above: „Samsung blames the decline in smartphone shipments for its financial troubles. Samsung is hoping the launch of its foldables will help level out these losses for the second half of the year.“
Ah shit, I read the Q1 report: https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-earnings-report-3318100/
Sounds like a classic trust thermocline. Sales tend to keep stable and users put up with the shenanigans and prices while execs keep ignoring user’s complaints, until suddenly there is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and sales drop suddenly.
Lol everyone commenting it’s because THEY don’t want to buy a new phone. Samsung supplies screens, electronic internals for other companies, and a fuck ton of appliances. They don’t only make phones…
