It’s time to stop thinking a phone should be premium
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!
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.
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.
Stop making sense!!!
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.
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.
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?
Sounds like you’ve never had something nice.
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
“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).
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How’s unihertz track record with providing updates? This is an important factor to avoid artificial obsolescence.
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.
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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.
I never thought they couldn’t. Glass phones were an absolutely ridiculous idea.
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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…
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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’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…
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 :(
High end plastics are by far the superior material from any usability perspective. I hate glass phones, and the first glass phone I bought of course broke in only 4 months! Where I’d never had a phone break on me before. And any of my older plastic phones would probably barely have noticed the tiny drop that broke my glass back phone.
Now I have an added plastic cover, which is ugly, and makes the phone unnecessarily bigger than if it had a quality plastic body instead of the moronic glass.I will never buy anything but phones with a plastic back in the future. Problem is that often the only alternative is vegan leather, which is also not as durable and will show wear way before a high end plastic back.
I will die on the hill that metal unibody phones felt the most premium. Especially Huawei had a few that had a super smooth surface that almost felt like glass.
Metal unibody degrades usability by shielding magnetic/RF signals. That degrades GPS NFC Bleutooth, wireless charging and probably also compass functionality.
So as I see it, metal bodies are probably not a reasonable option.
They also get dents, they transfer energy from a drop directly to the insides, they transfer heat from the CPU to your hand… Nah thanks. I’ll take plastic.
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.
Loved my Nokia Lumia phone back in the day. Plastic body and glass screen. Solid af.
