Smartphone sales down 22 percent in Q2, the worst performance in a decade::North American sales are bad for everyone, except, miraculously, Google.
That’s what happens when you keep increasing the price without adding value.
You mean removing a headphone jack, SD storage options, and removable batteries aren’t added value? I know they claim it makes your phone more waterproof, but I don’t wanna use my phone in the pool, I just wanna listen to some headphones without charging them.
No no no. Your phone might be waterproof, but we don’t condone the usage of the phone near bodies of water. Intentional submersion of the phone voids the guarantee (actual language on the guarantee of a IP67 waterproof phone).
I find hilarious* that they claim their phones is waterproof while shoving a water sensitive sticker that triggers with the small hint of water to deny warranty.
*infuriating
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I miss the jack, and I can still replace a battery if need be (have the equipment and know-how) but no SD card slots is a real kick in the nuts. I’m keeping my n20U.
The new Google 9 comes with 4 wheels so you can drive it without carrying it. We had to remove a bunch of features to fit the wheels and rc antenna, stuff like the phone capability, installing non-Google content, and anything that could prevent ads, Firefox is no longer something you can use, but it’s worth it for zoomy phone functionality.
Also there’s a subscription fee now or you have to listen to ads before your call.
Oooo does it have a foldable screen that no one asked for?
I had a non-waterproof iPhone from 2009-2021 and never had an issue. I hate apple’s BS excuse to sell airpods.
And coming out with a new one every year despite it being the same as last year’s
The ea fifa sports of consumer electronics.
Despite it being WORSE than last year. I went from a iPhone 10 Plus to an iPhone 11 after dropping my phone in used motor oil and fucking up all the speakers/mics. I didn’t realize that I’d be getting a MASSIVE downgrade in image quality. Comparing the photos they take side by side, the iPhone 11 looks like a 4 MP camera from a decade ago. EDIT: OK guys, I get it, I was wrong. It was an iphone 8 Plus, not 10 Plus.
There was no iPhone 10 plus…
There was, until some feckless schlub dropped the prototype into used motor oil
hahah that’s about the sum of it. Never keep your phone in your shirt pocket when changing your oil. This is bugging me, maybe it was a 10 Pro? I haven’t thought about it since I retired it from use. It was an iPhone 8 Plus
Don’t keep your phone in your shirt pocket, period. Most shirt pockets won’t securely hold a US dime let alone today’s 4 pound, 8 inch long smart phones.
It was an iPhone 8 Plus. The only thing I like about the iPhone 11 camera is low light performance vs. the 8 Plus. But nearly everything else about the 8 Plus cam seemed better. Image sharpness, noise, telephoto more desirable to me than fisheye, etc.
lol no worries I was just thinking you meant an XS Max which would be the equivalent to a 10 pro max. Going from that to a regular 11 would be a relative downgrade.
Idk I jumped over to Apple with the 12 and the camera on that was better than my pixel 4XL. I got a 15 pro max now and it blows the pants off my 12.
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Blame greedflation. Phones should be cheaper now, not thousands of dollars.
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I told everyone that once contracts for cell phones were replaced with payment plans, companies would start gouging their customers with higher phone prices because the customers could now “afford” it.
Greedy ain’t the right word imo.
I don’t know why people still use the big carriers. Subsiding the phones and getting an upgrade every 2 years was the reason to use them. Now they just add the cost of the phone to your bill.
The brilliant thing is they’ve gone from “We’ll buy the phone, but there’s a $200 ETF” to “we won’t buy the phone, and there’s no ETF. But now if you cancel you owe us $1,000.”
If you think you’re not using “the big carriers” in the US I’ve got news for you: you are using the big carriers. They are all either owned or leasing bandwidth from the big carriers. It’s nothing more than an illusion of choice.
If they are cheaper or different in any meaningfully way, it’s still worth it. Not sure if would be considered an illusion of choice or not, unless you want to boycott them of course. Not American though so not sure how different they are.
But for example I am on a cheaper carrier owned for the most common carrier here in Spain which is quite expensive. And it’s cheap as fuck compared with the main one and unless you want their tv deal it has 99% of the same services for a fraction of the costs.
I’m using their towers, but paying 1/3rd the price. My point is why pay the premiumto use them directly if they took away the only advantage of doing so.
Exactly what I was coming to write. Who could have thought that rising notably the prices would have led to less sales?
You can still buy a Moto G for like $200 that is better than an old high-end phone in every way and runs Android like a champ. Only flaw is short support lifespan.
Phones is basically cheaper now. Features that only found on high end now on low end. SD 4 is insanely good (4g2 is an underclock 730). Very few reason to shell out 1000$+ for phones now
They should really stop over saturating the market by releasing new models every year with little to no meaningful upgrades.
Even mid-range phones nowadays are good enough to last long after they stop receiving updates, it therefore makes little financial sense (for the average consumer) to buy the newest model every year, not even touching on the environmental impact.
They could try innovating, I couldn’t give a shite about the cameras really. If I want to take proper photos I’ll get a DSLR. I’ll never want their smart processing of pics either.
Give me cool features again.
For me the camera was a selling point. I was tired of hauling around a dslr on my trips. I find that the smart processing is good enough 90% of the time and I don’t want to both haul the camera and handle the post processing anymore. I’d rather just have 90% quality photos of my family and spend more time with them. Hire a photographer for weddings, etc, but really the smart processing is pretty impressive for day to day and even trips.
I mean this right here: I miss those glorious days in the late 2000s when phones were fun. You could buy a phone that fit your lifestyle. If you text and email a lot, get a phone with a keyboard. Take a lot of photos? Get a camera phone. Like listening to music? Here’s a media phone. Like games? Here’s a gaming phone. Just want a thing that can make phone calls that will last a month on a charge because you don’t use it much? Here’s a regular old flip phone.
Nowadays you don’t even have a real choice in size. Want a small phone that’s easy to fit in a pocket because you usually have a laptop with you anyway? Get bent!
Yeah I won’t be buying a new phone until they return to a reasonable size. I have a tablet and laptop for real work.
I was considering getting a mirrorless camera and a compact lens setup for traveling with my family. After a week of researching I stayed with my phone. It’s a huge pita (especially once you consider post processing) and the only situations where you will really need one is low light or evening pictures, and nature photography.
So no, hauling a dslr and 3kg of lens is not really a solution, especially with a kid in one arm. My phone is several years old (Oneplus 7 Pro) and the only thing I wish it had was modern camera and software to match.
My phone’s camera is complete shit and I still don’t bother with my DSLR for the reasons you describe.
You can get way more compact mirrorless, my Fuji X-E3 + 35mm f/2 is 550g and the difference in image quality is very clear.
Unfortunately for you, you’re in the minority. People have proven they’ll upgrade for better cameras.
See how I said “I”, that means it’s a personal view so the statistics for the masses don’t matter…but also this post is about declining sales.
You made zero substantive input to this conversation.
Like what, though? What is a need you have that your smartphone does not currently serve?
In 2017 I bought a Lenovo P2. It had a midrange processor, 64gb of storage (pretty decent for the time), amoled screen, audio jack, 5100 mAh battery, and a price tag of €350.
I only had to charge it every other day, video looked amazing and it was decently prized.
I want my phone to be usable with a dock where I can put in a keyboard, mouse and screen to use as a PC like the steam deck.
Isn’t Samsung DEX exactly that?
Wow you are right, I never heard of that.
WE ALL ALREADY HAVE ONE, STOP USING THIS AS SOME KIND OF MARKET BAROMETER
But infinite growth!
The policy of a cancer cell
I still have a hard time comprehending that the current economic mess has just collectively refused to understand/plan/account for the concept of market saturation.
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We’ve hit the wall of diminishing returns. How much power do you need to run lemmy?
Ive got a 4k oled 144hrtz panel in my phone… to read lemmy.
And my pixel 6 is considered aging.
Pixel 6, look at Mr. Monopoly over here. I just got a 5 off eBay for $100. In fact, my last 6 or 7 phones came from eBay. Can’t imagine why I would pay for the latest and greatest.
Do you put something like lineage on it? I replaced my 5 with a 7a just because it no longer gets updates as of this month I believe it is
GrapheneOS, definitely worth checking out!
No way in hell I’d trust some rando from eBay with selling me a phone not riddled with Malware.
Wipe that shit with a new ROM and you’re golden.
better hope the bootloader isn’t infected as well
You can flash the bootloader too.
Tmobile gave it to me for free after they shitcanned 4g during the Sprint merger. They had to give out new shiny 5g phones to appease users.
You need at least 2 pixel 6’s to run a lemmy… sorry 😞
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Pixel 6 has 1080p90 OLED but ok
Its a 6 pro my Bad
That’s 1440p120
it’s amazing that in capitalism a company has to always show numbers rising like there is no physical upper boundary. The most logical and efficient economic model
It drives me insane how many people turn a blind eye to the funny numbers needing to always go up. Every “investor” will tell me how the market has never not recovered; how I’m the fool and surely not them for trusting in the system.
I hate that my retirement depends on a 401k, or money that constantly depreciates.
Constant growth at all costs. In the short term at least. Whether that works out in the long run or not…
Phone price keeps going up but my paycheck keeps going down with inflation
Have they considered releasing another hard to hold glass slab exactly like the previous one?
It’s almost as if, they haven’t fundamentally updated smartphones in almost a decade, and now they want $2000 for them.
Also, it’s almost as if we’ve been in a recession for a year. Regardless of whether or not the government wants to call it a recession, we’ve had numerous back to back quarters with negative GDP growth. That’s literally a recession.
And with one graph that argument is out the window.
Well there are foldables, which are growing as category, but I don’t know if it makes a net difference and anyway they’re too small to make a difference currently.
"There are some of you who want phones that are easier to fit in a pocket, but we’ll break the deal we made with Satan if we ever build 4 inch phones again, so here’s a 6 inch phone that bends in half. The screen is so soft your stubble will ruin it and the Earth’s atmosphere is too coarse for the severely complicated hinge to survive a month. That’ll be $9900.
Except whenever a manufacturer, including Apple, tries to market a phone that’s smaller than the average size, nobody buys them.
The only people who actually want smaller phones are some very loud people on the internet.
Good. We should be using our phones for longer.
They doubled the price while removing core features like headphone jacks and microSD.
The people who bought phones as a status symbol ran out of money and the people who are advanced users are sticking with their old phones that are simply better until planned obsolescence forces them to buy another older model.
I haven’t felt the headphone jack removal as much as I thought I would, though I’ve had a few sets of Bluetooth headphones for traveling since about 2014 or so
Phone plateaued 5 years ago for the average user.
I have a one plus 6. I’m on it for hours everyday. Reading. Browsing. Listening. No gaming. Lots of pictures.
My online data ran out long before my phone data - for pictures.
Phone runs fast. No more updates so nothing changes on me anymore.
I have zero reason to update. Would I like a better camera? Sure. But not for 1200$ I don’t.
Could my battery last longer? Yeah. Sure. But I can replace it if I want for 20-40$
My next phone will probably be a refurbished last Gen phone. Nothing more then 400 I imagine.
I upgraded from a 7 to a 14 pro and while it doesn’t hang up on the newer OS as much (a problem the 7 developed over its lifetime), it’s not really an appreciably better experience overall. The camera is nicer.
On the 7 Pro, stuck on the oneplus navigation gestures, pop up front facing cam. Fully working phone, still no other phone to replace it when it comes to having a screen without a bump. And I can get a free phone through work, but there isn’t one I want yet…
I switched from the 7 pro to 10 pro just to double my storage and have a better camera. For actual use as a phone, there wasn’t a need to upgrade whatsoever.
Plus you can probably run stock Android on the op6 if you wanted to run Android 13
Good. They should never have been that high anyways
Every major company releases the same phone year after year and the only significant change is the price. I don’t mind using the same phone for few years.
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Honestly… most people probably would benefit from a phone as powerful as a laptop. Imagine I could carry my laptop in my pocket and all I need to turn it into an ergonomical computer would be to pop it into a docking station. I would love that. I barely use a computer outside of my work computer, to the point where it’s barely worth owning one. I do, for some random fringe cases, but it gets used once a week…
I would love a laptop powerful phone with docking capabilities. Just have it down regulate to normal phone needs, until it’s docked.
You can even make the phone thicker if you want, if it’s going to be that useful, I don’t care about a little extra weight in my pocket.
Most Android phones can already do this with a cheap USB-C hub as long as they support video out. Samsung phones have DEX, which even gives you a desktop interface, but it can be disabled if your apps have issues with it.
Wow thanks! I just saw DEX in the hidden option menus and wondered what it even did. That’s really cool.
Does it just launch a bigger version of your phone, or is it like a separate OS where you can have multiple windows doing different things simultaneously? The Samsung marketing materials mostly seem to talk about being able to use your phone and the other screen separately. But it doesn’t really go into detail what you can do on the other screen.
Lmao stopped upgrading years ago…
When this 5 yo phone kicks the bucket, I’ll upgrade to a 4 yo model for cheap
Literally not missing out on anything and saving a fucking bag doing it
I just changed a 4yo phone that was getting extremely slow and laggy. I went for a mid level phone. From this very year. It has the same QoL and features of an iPhone14 if not its performance. It should last at least 5 years and costs ~$300.
What did you get?
Samsung Galaxy A54. 5 years of guaranteed updates, including 4 Android version updates. 120hz QHD screen. High quality cameras that record on 4K (yay! I can’t watch that anywhere because I don’t own any 4K screen). Sleek and familiar UI. 25W Fast charging. Seamlessly works with my earphones and Watch. Plays almost all mobile games I could possibly want. Basically it’s just “an phone”.
Things it doesn’t have:
- Wireless charging: doesn’t faze me at all.
- Glass back: which only exist because of wireless charging, not a fan of the aesthetic, so whatever.
- Aluminum body: this is the only thing I wished it had, but it would add a hundred or two more to the price for very little extra durability. As it is, the phone feels very sturdy and doesn’t bend in any way. I rarely drop phones, and keep them permanently in a case. So it’s not a deal-breaker.
- Ultra high performance: don’t need it, I wanted a phone not a graphics behemoth. This chip is plenty enough.
- Only 256 GB without SD expansion: I have to use two sim cards, which rules out using an SD due to the hybrid tray. I have been abusing the storage with application installs and media download though, and still haven’t hit 40% of used space. Unless I start using it as a hard drive I would not need more than this for a long while.
- S-pen support: I once tried this out with a Note phone of an acquaintance. Really cool feature. Definitely not a must have.
- HDR: There isn’t any content or screen in my context that can do this yet either.
I still haven’t met a task I wanted to do that the phone didn’t deliver appropriately. The smoothest and nicer phone I’ve ever owned.
Oh, and the transfer was super smooth too. I picked up the new phone at the end of a mostly hands free one hour process, and it was like I had just picked the soul of my old phone in a new body. Everything was exactly in the same place that I left it in and 100% functional without any extra setup required. I have seen Apple’s transfer and, compared the two, Apple was a pain in the ass and unreliable (several failed tries and the thing only half worked after almost a whole day).
I don’t own an iPhone for the hardware alone. It’s for iOS, which I prefer, the apps, and for the excellent ecosystem. Worth the extra $ to me.
