Doubt.
Haven’t seen a flip phone in use in ages and I work among the public. Even the barely functional elderly on smartphones.
Who paid for this article? What’s their angle?
Isn’t the angle just to sound interesting/controversial/unbelievable so people click and see your ads? You know, clickbait?
This is one job I’m glad AI is taking over.
For the past 10 years I never bought a phone for more than 300 euros.
I usually get a new phone every 3 years to have the latest tech and donate or recycle the old one.
For the last year I had an iPhone 13 pro (usually goes around 1100 euro) as a work phone and my personal Redmi Note 11 Pro I bought for 270 euros and not once I told myself: Man, this iphone is at least 3 times better than my Xiaomi. It’s clearly a premium product but a middle category budget phone can match most features and even more. I still have a headphone jack, bigger 120 Hz screen, IR blaster and an amazing fingerprint sensor.
iphone is clever marketing scheme to become a status symbol for a generation that no longer has a car as one.
And that’s why you shouldn’t buy those things new. If you really really want one, get a used one. Sure, it’s a few years old, but it’s fine as long as it’s still updated. Besides, you’re paying only a fraction of what it was when it was released.
you are talking about a car, right? because it doesn’t work well for iphone with their planned obsolescence… https://www.ifixit.com/News/11208/batterygate-timeline
Decaying battery is a serious issue in the long run. As long as you’re not buying a 5 year old phone, you should be fine. Get something that’s about 1-4 years old instead and check the battery health before the purchase.
If you need a battery replacement, that means that the previous owner abused the battery with suboptimal charging style or maybe the phone is old enough that you won’t be getting updates any more. In the latter case, it’s just pure planned obsolescence.
As for the article, slowing down the phone without the users consent was a bad move IMO. This shows how little Apple respects the user. Then again, tech companies tend to treat us like trash, so that’s nothing new.
Ya, this pretty much me. I had a bad experience with the budget pixel. Wouldn’t recommend them… But otherwise haven’t really missed out on having a top end flagship phone at all.
Yup, I’m on the Redmi train as well, got a Redmi Note 10, will probably upgrade next month or this month depending on how much money I have left after all expenses. Had it for 2 years or something and it has a crack throughout a good length of the screen otherwise I’d keep it even longer. Cost me 200 € new.
May just get the same phone you got or a newer one/alternative if I find one until then. -> Probably the Note 12 (Pro, if the features are worth it), looking at GSMArena right now. Rooting it again will be annoying though
Had it for 2 years or something and it has a crack throughout a good length of the screen otherwise I’d keep it even longer.
buying cheap screen covers from dealextreme, 20 pieces at a dollar per piece, is what kept my mi max 3 running for 5 years and counting. it still has enough performance for anything i do on it and i don’t plan throwing it away anytime soon.
Just ordered the 12 Pro since I got my paycheck yesterday, I’ll definitely conserve it as much as possible and get some good screen protection and take my Note 10 with me if I’m gonna go out drinking or something.
That’s what I’m saying today, watch me utterly destroy it within a week.
Edit: got the 8 gig version as well so it will definitely last way longer (+ custom roms), maybe I’ll still use it in 5 years like you do ¯\(ツ)/¯
I’ve purchased several budget/midrange phones as my daily driver, and the long term performance simply wasn’t worth it based on the things that I do with my phone.
Now, this is based on cheaper phones with specs from several years so this doesn’t hold true anymore.
Cheap smartphones are an incredible value. My wife bought a 180 EUR Realme 7 about 3 years ago, and it’s still working great, it’s plenty fast for everyday things (she’s not a gamer), has 8 GB RAM …
One thing you really need to compromise on are the cameras. But the problem is that I’m a sucker for cameras, so I keep buying expensive flagships …
maybe you would be better buying an actual camera. there are some really good compact cameras that aren’t necessarily heavy
I have a Fuji X-E3 with some nice lightweight lenses like XF35mm f/2, but even such combo is still far from pocketable. It’s also not great for immediate processing and sharing.
There are some 1 inch sensor compact cameras (Sony RX100), but they are pretty expensive and the IQ difference gets smaller compared to highend smartphones. In the end, my smartphone is the only device I consistently carry everywhere …
I though genZ only bought iPhone because of the green bubble or something?
And i thought 90% of them have brain damage in general…
Aren’t they all broke as well?
This is a thing that isn’t happening, at least not among Gen Z. What a bullshit article.
As a millennial, the thought of ditching my smartphone is a thought that keeps coming up.
I did it for 3 months. I really enjoyed my time doing it and learned a lot about my usage. It was a cheap $50 experiment. After I went back to my smartphone, I uninstalled ALL social media apps. Turned off ALL notifications but left calls and messages as an exception. My smartphone is now essentially a feature phone. It’s not 100% the same since the big screen does lure you in to use it but my usage is still way down and because I don’t have any social media there’s no reason for me to be on my phone around other people. I wholeheartedly recommend trying it for those curious.
That reminded me how a local wanna-be influencer did a smartphone detox for a week, immediately after the completion she posted an FB story: Part 1 - Reflection, how eyeopening the experience was, how much time she suddenly had for the things that truly matter etc. Subscribe to not miss the Part 2!
Eh, I don’t like the idea of getting rid of my smart phone. But I did get rid of all the shit I didnt actually like. I use my phone for Music, maps, the camera, messaging a few people, and a few other things. I got rid of all the crap social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, even reddit(and have not put a lemmy/kbin app on there to replace it), there is not shit mobile games installed. Just does what I need it to do, and doesnt constantly bug me about Person X and what they had for lunch.
However, if I ditched the smart phone, I would need a phone still, but then I still need the MP3 player, a camera. And I would much rather have 1 bit of kit that does all that well, than 3 items.
This same BS headline happens every generation. As soon as any small trends form, the media latch onto it like it’s gonna be the next big thing…
No, feature phones aren’t gaining mass adoption again. No, feature phones aren’t going to kill smartphones. It’s just a subset of people deciding to downgrade, or who want to buy a secondary phone.
As if we needed another sign that ZDnet was trash…
I fucking hate these obviously bullshit articles. “Gen Z is using feature phones”, “Gen Z are using paper maps”, “Gen Z is doing XYZ”.
No, they aren’t. At best some sad excuse for a journalist found a handful of tweets and wrote a whole article on it like it’s a “trend”.
Look, I know “journalists” are being squeezed to produce at an unreasonable rate but if you write drivel like this then you have no business calling yourself a journalist, hell I don’t even think you can call yourself a “writer” or “contributor” either. It barely passes as writing and you are contributing nothing to society.
If I was not disabled with way too much time to burn, and where the weight of a phone is ideal, I would go back to a dumb flip phone like this. Smart phones are an addiction that, at best, must be consciously managed. Heck, I’m beside my workstation procrastinating right now.
It’s after 1AM and I’m meant to be sleeping…what the heck am I doing? I’ll put the phone down now, just after I post this comment and maybe just refresh my front page one more time.
If only that’s allowed as a choice.
So many places assume you have a smartphone, and so many stuffs require one
There’s no rule that says flip phones aren’t allowed to have google pay. I think it’d be cool to see what a current year not-smartphone would look like.
This I wish, but I doubt. I still have my old Garmin GPS and play with the idea of a flip phone but I’ve been spoiled by the smaller things like iMessage not dealing with MMS. It’s an idea I come back to occasionally, but I also think about going back to my Palm with AAA batteries for my PIM needs. Had one in semi-regular-use as recent as 2018!
I’m looking at my Palm T|X or my Psion Revo as two potential revives. The Psion was quite awesome.
Havent seen “$100 feature phone” since 2017 when my grandpa upgraded his phone
- gen zThe games are better for one.
I’m so tempted to do this.
I did it for a few months and really enjoyed it. At the end of 3 months, I realized I could achieve nearly the same thing by turning off all notifications except messages and calls and uninstalling all social media. I realized… if I have the willpower to use a dumbphone I have the willpower to keep the distraction off my smartphone. Phone usage is now 100% intentional with the right setup.
Nice!
I’ve considered doing this in combination with a Pine phone or other impractical but cool linux phone so that I don’t have to worry about not having at least reliable SMS and calling.
Anyone know if there is a tiny dumb phone out there that doubles as a 4G/5G hotspot?
I use a TCL Flip 2, bought it unlocked on ebay for $40. It has hotspot, mms, and emoji support (can’t remember if the included keyboard has any emoji, since I use a custom one that has some, but the system can recognize and display most emoji people send). It actually runs a slimmed down version of android and you can root it and run some stuff, though most things are a pain to use. I’ve got signal, jerboa, and adaway running on mine, though I haven’t found another browser that plays nice yet.
and the numbers don’t lie.
Righto Scott Steiner.
