It’s time to stop thinking a phone should be premium
True, too many people treat phones like a status symbol or fast fashion instead of a tool that should be maintained and used for many years.
A tool can also be premium, and there is definitely a difference between an average phone and a premium phone.
The problem is all the nonsense about the premium FEEL, it’s not a feature when it degrades durability, or requires a cover that removes that premium feel anyway. Glass covers are also more slippery, making it more likely to drop out of a pocket or hand bag or even your hands.
Glass is detrimental in every way for usability, just the extra weight of it, makes drops more likely to cause damage. All the reviewers that push “The Premium Feel” without consideration to the downsides, like being slippery, adding weight, being more fragile and making the phone slightly more bulky, should be banned from making reviews.Yes, I completely agree on the complicity of reviewers parroting the same PR buzzwords in every single review. It definitely feels like they have played their part in normalising many of these objectively bad and anti-consumer design decisions.
pandering to reviewers who use the phones for a couple of days instead of actual consumers who want to use it for a few years is probably the stupidest thing they do in this industry
give me a fucking replaceable battery so i can use it for more than a couple of years, stop removing features we all use just so it can feel futuristic and new. give me a repairable fucking phone.
like holy shit please take this off the hands of bean counting capitalists and marketers, and please put computers back in the hands of engineers.
Absolutely, but I think they feel they have to, to get good reviews.
It’s time to stop thinking a phone should be premium
too many people treat phones like a status symbol
Honestly just be glad you’re not among those misguided and move on.
Good philosophy. I’ve found that I’m much happier on the internet since I stopped being bothered about other people being “wrong”. I cannot save the world, but if I can help out a few people then that’s enough.
Premium phones make little sense, based on what I’ve seen everyone puts them in cases anyway. “Premium materials” are slippery and “premium thinness” results in insufficient battery capacity so accessories like phone rings get put on them, and people carry around external battery packs.
Why not just make a grippy, practical phone that I can use as a tool, with removable batteries, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and expandable memory?
Burn the witch!
Because that phone would last and you would only need a new one every 4-5 or however many years instead of 1-2 so capitalist companies won’t see that as having any value.
I think companies know what people want and how to make a great phone like that, just none of them will or want to be the first.
The only thing premium phones have going for them are really good cameras. I love midrange phones but the photos they produce are not as good as flagships.
Stop making sense!!!
I don’t need the audio jack, but I guess it doesn’t hurt. There are phones that have all that, but unfortunately they are at most mid-range phones which isn’t what I’m looking for.
so fairphone?, look it up, it’s a phone maker that do exactly that
Fairphone dropped the 3.5mm jack too :(
Unfortunately, they have minimal support for US frequencies. The US market is dominated by disgustingly expensive flagships, and severely compromised midrange and budget offerings.
It’s time to stop thinking phones are anything but commodity hardware with variable degrees of shittiness. There are no such things as premium phones, just premium prices.
Who wants to pay premium for prices?
FINALLY someone gets this. I don’t care about the “premium look” whatever that means, I just don’t want my phone to break when I accidentally drop it. Which is why I always put a case on my phone
In fact, I’m pretty sure phone manufacturers started putting glass on the back of phones specifically to make them less durable so that customers buy a new phone sooner
Nah, it’s mostly because all the tech reviewers trashed phones with plastic backs saying they felt cheap. If you look at any of those reviews they always talk about the premium feel.
It also changed from aluminium to glass backs mostly for wireless charging.
Plastic backs are better, but the tech reviewers did a lot of damage there. If they’d tried to influence people and explained why particular made sense instead of trashing it we may have more plastic phones.
It’s funny that we buy these metal and glass phones and then protect them with rubber and plastic cases.
New phones are made to show wear so that they lose resale value.
It’s not funny, it’s moronic. But I guess that’s kind of what you meant. 😋
Funny as in sad
I always buy a new phone and a new case and after some years I ditch the case because it wouldn’t hurt to buy a replacement and it feels like a new slimmer version of my trusted phone…
I never thought they couldn’t. Glass phones were an absolutely ridiculous idea.
“Glass is glass, and glass breaks” I want a metal back phone. I don’t care about wireless charging.
- 8GB ram
- 250 GB memory
- “>6000 mah” battery. Thickness doesn’t matter.
- Fast charging
- 120hz display
Can anyone suggest me an Android that has all these?
I may have found a phone for you. It’s called the unihertz tank 2
- 12gb ram
- 256GB memory (expandable)
- 15500 mah battery
- 60W charging
- 120hz display
https://www.unihertz.com/products/tank-2
Comes with a few other really interesting features you don’t see on any other phone (like a goddamn laser projector?), though i think the processor is a little underpowered.
That’s kind of insane. From the name I think it’s safe to assume they’re angling for some military contracts.
From this comparison, I would guess they chose the G99 to cut costs, as the 1300 was announced two months earlier and beats or matches the G99 in every category, including battery life (which is the only thing it seems to be good at).
How’s unihertz track record with providing updates? This is an important factor to avoid artificial obsolescence.
What do you mean by track? Unihertz is a small Chinese manufacturer - it makes no guarantees around support and barely delivers any updates to its devices, as is the norm within much of the non-Google, non-Samsung Android market. It’s really only within the last couple of years that the industry has actually made a bit of progress in this area.
Track record.
This is a norm to be avoided. A phone without updates (at least security updates) should be avoided at all costs considering the potential consequences.
I was being a dick and asking a rhetorical question there, because I thought it would be pretty obvious that the support for a small Chinese manufacturer would be abysmal.
I want a metal back phone
Steve Jobs did too, they still needed a plastic window for some antennae on the OG iPhone, then went to full plastic. It has become worse now, the back isn’t just for wireless charging. It is also for NFC, UWB, and often cellular/gps/wifi/bluetooth may share antenna connections through the back.
Right there with you though. NFC could probably be packed in a band at the top of a phone. UWB seems of dubious value thus far.
I did a search on GSM Arena and if you lower the battery capacity to 5000 then there’s a single result. If you change some of the other spec requirements there’s some other stuff available but nothing that matches what you want one-to-one.
I went with the lenovo/motorola thinkphone. Kind of an oddball choice, but it has a kevlar back instead of glass, and has most of your points.
The battery is ‘only’ 5000mah, but i get multiple days of use per charge.
There were some pretty good sales on it because it didn’t sell as well as they had hoped.
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You don’t like paying for a phone that’s the price of a mortgage payment, while having features removed every year?
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When I switched from shitty LCD to nice AMOLED screen. It was Galaxy S3 I think.
Then, meh, I don’t like huge phones without the bezels.
I wish thicker bezels were more common tbh. It’s annoying to swipe from the side of the screen when my case is in the way.
The first Android phones were really exciting. I got a Samsung Galaxy (no numbers, no letters, just Galaxy) in 2009. AMOLED screen - the first Android experience for me. Unfortunately Samsung dropped the update support really soon - which got me into custom ROMs - another exciting thing…
Fuck plastic & the oil industry where it comes from.
Totally agree! I can’t wait to put that granite-cased phone with wood-backed PCBs in my pocket.
I remember seeing people mod the iPhone 4 to replace the glass back with a nice wood back.
Metal and wood can’t be a worse idea than glass. Grippy too. Although without the right treatment it can get gross I guess.
Shhh then it has more planned obsolescence under a veil of greenwash for being biodegradable.
I understand what you mean, but I disagree, there are places where it isn’t necessary, needless use of plastic is a problem. But for the back of a phone, it can avoid buying an even bulkier plastic cover, it can extend the lifetime of the phone, in both cases it reduces waste.
There are plastics that aren’t oil derived. Some of them are even compostable in an industrial setting.
I can’t think of anything plastic that I’d consider premium, let alone a phone.
EDIT: Wait, Legos.
That’s the thinking the article is arguing against.
But I do have an example.
High end polycarbonate prescription lenses for glasses.
The high index, thinnest, lightest lenses, are plastic. Not glass.Edit: Thinking more, I wonder how much more expensive it would be to use the same polycarbonate material on phones.
It would certainly be stronger and less prone to breaking. With good coatings, it would be just as scratch resistant.
It would offer the same premium look and similar feel as glass. Just lighter.Also Carbon fibre parts and silicone sextoys and cable shielding
None of that is plastic.
How is that not plastic?
Carbon fibre without plastic is just a hairy string
And with silicone I don’t even understand where the confusion is coming from? What else would it be?You sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole and now I’m less sure of what plastic actually is. Epoxy, which is used for carbon fiber among many, many, many other things, isn’t something I’d say is plastic but I looked it up and it was about 50/50 on plastic vs not. I found similar conflicting information about silicone but it was leaning more toward not being a plastic.
What would you define as plastic then?
Or maybe share some source claiming epoxy isn’t plastic?Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. - Wikipedia
: a plastic substance specifically : any of numerous organic synthetic or processed materials that are mostly thermoplastic or thermosetting polymers of high molecular weight and that can be made into objects, films, or filaments -Merriam Webster
plastic, polymeric material that has the capability of being molded or shaped, usually by the application of heat and pressure. This property of plasticity, often found in combination with other special properties such as low density, low electrical conductivity, transparency, and toughness, allows plastics to be made into a great variety of products. These include tough and lightweight beverage bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), flexible garden hoses made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), insulating food containers made of foamed polystyrene, and shatterproof windows made of polymethyl methacrylate. -Brittanica
Composites like CF and fiberglass use those materials as a stress distributing component and a plastic component as the rigid layer.
Historically fiberglass composites used things like polyester resin - a polymer derived from oil - as the rigid component.
If that’s not a plastic, what is it then?
Metal? Wood? Glass?
Yep, I’m incorrect. Learned something new today.
So your idea of premium is fragile and expensive?
Plastic has superior usability in every way, weight, bulk, durability, shock absorption, less slippery than glass, meaning it doesn’t drop out of pockets handbags or even hands as easily.
So what part about a high end plastic is that isn’t premium in this situation?Utility is for poors. People who don’t count money want something shiny or whatever their peers have. They can easily replace it if it breaks.
Which is a problem of perception and marketing, given that in many cases a plastic that has been specifically engineered to perform a function will, unsurprisingly, be better than an alternative.
I’ve been saying this for years. Use nice textured recycled plastic. The amount of cool textured and nice feeling materials out there is insane.
Gimme a plastic screen too. If someone is concerned about scratches they can add a glass protector. Those people already do anyway. There are even plastics that could be used that would resist scratches incredibly well.
Then my whole phone is flexible and nearly unbreakable.
Bro just make it yourself you probably have enough plastic in your body for it
I’d give my left nut for a premium plastic phone…
Nice to finally see a review stating what I’ve been thinking ever since the Samsung Galaxy 2 was scorned 13 years ago by reviewers for having a plastic back, and not having the premium feel of the much more fragile iPhone.
Ever since it’s like a conspiracy of reviewers hailing the premium feel of metal unibodies or glass backs, despite the clearly lower quality of those materials, while dissing superior plastic bodies that weigh less, has way better shock absorption, is less bulky, and is less slippery and therefore less prone to drop out of pockets or bags.
The main reason it feels more “premium” is the extra weight, which is clearly detrimental to usability.It’s like cheap stuff like cheap loudspeakers, where they have iron bars in them to ad weight, to make the speaker “feel” better. Where a speaker with a stronger (magnet) may actually be better.
But with phones it is 100% people fooling themselves, if they think heavier is better, and fragile glass is somehow better than sturdy quality synthetics.
I certainly would prefer a plastic backing than a glass one. Why the fuck does every phone have to be encased entirely in glass? It breaks and it’s slippery as fuck, making it more prone to slip out of your hand and break. It’s so ubiquitous and universally fucking stupid that I am convinced it’s purposely designed so you will drop and break it so you have to pay to fix or replace it.
Every heavy duty aftermarket phone case is mostly plastic and rubberized silicone. Because that shit is 1000 times more durable and shock resistant than glass. Glass’s great only for being scratch resistant. There’s no reason that every phone couldn’t have an otter box-like outer shell built in.
Phone material stopped mattering the moment camera bumps became a thing. Now, nearly everyone slaps a case to balance out the bump.
That said, I miss my completely mirrored-back Sony Xperia Z5 Premium.
I miss phones without camera bumps :(
You know what’s funny? I dream of a form factor like the Nintendo Switch: fully plastic, even the screen, so I could put a high quality glass screen protector like the one I have on the console. The thing is a tank, surviving many falls without a single damage, and I had to swap the protector once in all these years I have it.
