It has nothing to do with features and performance, most people don’t use those anyway. You really don’t need 8-core CPU on your phone but it’s 2 more than 6 and me having 8 and you having 6 has everything to do with that. People love status symbols and pointing them out to others, as if that makes them better by comparison or something.
No matter what others say, you really don’t feel limitations of your device. Sure screen might feel a bit faster, animations might feel more fluid. None of those a crucial to device operation and use and certainly not worth paying premium price for newest iteration that has all those marginally improved. It’s just consumerism at work.
Case in point, pretty much every MacBook Pro has a TPM chip on it (trusted platform module). Guess how many people used it or has it configured to supply entropy to their systems to increase security. ThinkPads also have those, but most other laptops don’t. Even most developers don’t know what those are. They are great addition and extra feature for business users… but for the most part it’s just another thing on the spec sheet that people pay for but never use.
As for the every imaginable feature… it seems they are being removed rather than added. I found 3.5mm jack useful. I wish we still had qwerty keyboards on our big screen devices as most used feature of phones these days is typing. I wish we had expansion slots and memory cards. I wish we had replaceable batteries so you don’t have to depend on finding an outlet on long trips. I wish we had sapphire screens so you don’t have to worry about scratching your screen. I wish we had smaller devices because some people just need a phone and not a tablet or they have smaller hands. But naaah… removing those is considered brave.
Genericusername@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I really liked the times when features were added and not killed off.
10 years ago you could purchase a flagship phone with IR blaster for controlling whatever you couldn’t find a remote for, or trolling people in public spaces by turning off their TVs. Cloud storage wasn’t as popular, but if your phone died, the images were safe on the micrSD card. Bluetooth headsets were a thing, but you could always just use a cheap pair of headphones to stick in the headphone jack. People who desired it could install a custom ROM with all kinds of optimizations and less bloat. It used to be a lot more popular back then. Other than cameras, battery life, and reversible and more robust USB-C connectors, there isn’t much innovation. I used to feel like I owned my device much more back then. Now I only use the stock ROM, can either use wireless headphones or ones that use the charging port. I can’t insert a microSD, or test new features for Android ported from other devices by someone on XDA Developers. I’m not using the phone the way I want, but the way the companies who made it decided on.
nosurprises@lemm.ee 1 year ago
You could easily replace the battery back then! Not on iPhones, but on many Android devices.