I’ve been dipping my toes into entry-level audiophile stuff, and I know the 4.4 mm jack is unnecessary for most use cases, but still I think a dap/phone combo with that built in and open bootloader for custom roms would be pretty neat.
Edit: and before anyone comments, yes I know my best bet in that direction right now would be to get an LG V20, put LineageOS on it, and use a dongle. I have a dongle. Just saying, a thing with it built in would be fun.
Also, what can I do with all these lenses in cameras now?
I use an old v20 with lineage os as my “work” phone (because there is no fucking way I’m putting their spyware on my actual phone), and boy is it slow.
The thing that frustrates me most about all the lenses is they don’t use them most of the time. I have a dedicated 3x zoom lens, but usually when I set my camera to 3x, it still uses the primary camera because it’s resolution is higher and the sensor size is greater. The phone realizes cropping the primary sensor with a digital zoom will get a better shot.
They also took your FM radio
Cells phones outside the US could even record FM. All the technology that was kept from us because of things like copyright is staggering.
Yep, I remeber doing it a few times. Didn’t know phones in the US couldn’t record.
My dad has a Poco phone that came with FM radio from 2020 but Poco pulled an asshole move and pushed a firmware update a few years later that uninstalled the radio app on each reboot
maybe just don’t buy the phones which do that?!
So, what should I buy then?
The IR blaster was the first casualty for me. They just stopped putting them in any phones at all around 2014 or so. I bought an aftermarket one and it was basically just spyware with an LED that didn’t work.
So just saying “uh, then, like, maybe just don’t buy phones like that! Duh.” isn’t going to bring back half of these options already.
I’m so sad I missed out on IR blasters, it’s such a useful thing I’d love to have in my phone
Get an m5stick or a flipper zero
The IR tech in a flipper-zero is more inline and generally useful than some of those old phones. Given the shenanigans that device causes, its probably best it does not have a sim card.
(Ive had realitives get unbelieveably pissed off that their TV remotes could be “stolen”, they arnt that bright and I tried to explain how “universal remote codes” work… I think they just wanted to be angry)
I used to have a Casio watch with a remote control in the early 2000s and can confirm there were plenty of shenanigans to be had.
Next thing to take: unlockable bootloaders so you can no longer install an alt OS.
and then hardware gated LLMs forcing you to use goverment approved AI in your phone to do everything
Installing GrapheneOS on my pixel was easy, but I had to go through hoops to get my old Motorola G7 running iirc PostmarketOS (now called Nura).
Had to install some program on my desktop so I could ask my connected phone for a series of unique character strings through the terminal, then enter them in a specific order on Motorola’s website where they check if your phone is applicable for unlocking bootloading. It says no, so I look around and find a list of carrier codes that indicate whether or not it should be, and mine should. I ended up finding some forum posts from years ago talking about how the website is wrong and lies to you, and that if you change the url that it gives for applicable devices to include your phone’s strings then it’ll correctly identify the device as applicable for bootloader unlocking. Finally got then to send me an email with the unique code for my phone, and I was able to follow the instructions to install PostmarketOS.
what do you mean next? it’s already happening lol
Pretty much done on most smartphones.
Then buy a fairphone or other phones that do allow it.
I love modern phone cameras. My Pixel 10 pro takes pretty amazing pics and I’m on geaphene so I don’t worry about being watched. I do miss headphone jacks. I’ve been thinking about getting a portable DAC/amp and going back to wired headphones but I’m already carrying 2 devices because of my diabeetus, and I’m likely going to have a work phone soon as well.
Activate Multi-User mode under GrapheneOS + add your work profile there.
PS: There are a few good headphone adapters w/power delivery available
What about telecommunication companies conspiring with phone developers to force communication into the different buckets of data, voice, and text and then charge us for each?
This reminds me when cellphone companies used to charge for sms sent lmao
Forced age attestation on unlock. Camera always on.
I have a headphone jack. Maybe you just have a peasant phone.
I lowkey kinda wish Fairphone would make a new phone that has an aux port for the craic. And an FM radio built in too. Use the aux port as an antenna like how older phones did before they stopped doing it.
Something I “love” about my current phone is it has like a 60gb hard drive. This could hold all of the photos I will ever take for the rest of my life. But it keeps trying to put them on the cloud, and then it complains that I’m running out of space because my free 5 gigs on the cloud are full. I never wanted to save anything to the cloud in the first place… just save them into my phone… this is fucking stupid.
Pardon me, we’d like to spy on you, but space is expensive, could you possibly be willing to pay for us to look through your photos?
Microsoft onedrive is the same shit. Don’t you want to keep backups? It literally costs us pennies, how about $100 a year?
We’ll add five cameras! And guess what, if even one camera fails, we’ll brick all five! Isn’t that great! More points of failure for everyone ❤️
But those cameras are awesome? I need wide angle, normal and zoom. Ideally even “super zoom” like 5x or 10x or in absolute like 200 mm in 35mm equivalent. And I have not seen a case where one broken makes all of them non-functional?
At least on my s24 is the case. I get camera failure when trying to use them, and running hardware check shows only the telephoto lens having issues. Thankfully for some reason using the camera app in messages let’s my use the macro lens still. I have the replacement part to fix, just been lazy 😂
I miss the headphone jack so much.
I totally get it but I have been pretty happy with the earbuds to be honest. I know that’s a bit of a hot take but I always wanted wireless in the past and I use my jabra’s on a daily basis. Still, I dont like the removal of useful features, we could easily have wireless earbuds and still have headphone jacks for fuck sake
Same. It took about a decade after the widespread removal of headphone jacks before wireless headphones became a reliable replacement. Now I can’t imagine being tethered to my phone.
That’s still a hard requirement for me, but I don’t mind using older “tech”.
No more touch screens! You press a button to turn it on and you watch/look at/read whatever we give you to watch/look at/read! But first, point the camera at your ID and bank cards.
They took your removable battery
So you’d have to buy a new phone instead of replacing it with a better battery off Amazon
They took your IR blaster
Not sure where this is or what it’s supposed to do
They took your microsd slot
So you’d have to pay for cloud storage
They took your headphone jack
So you’d have to buy wireless headphones
They took your buttons
Because they think they know what you want better than you do
They cut a hole in your screen
Because bigger screens sell
They added 5 cameras you don’t use
Because better cameras sell
The IR blaster lets you use your phone like a universal remote. I can control my TV, my air conditioner, and most importantly, some stores’ unsecured commercial displays with my phone.
I like that last part the most I kind of want to get one now.
They added 5 cameras because people use iPhones as social media machines and Apple knows it.
The IR blaster was an IR LED you coud use to turn your phone into a remote control. Also for direct data transfer, though that one was iffy.
