Smartphones are Designed to Fail Us (and We Have to Change That)

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Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨mesamunefire@piefed.social⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/smartphones-are-designed-to-fail-us/

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asbestos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
That’s an awesome domain

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- princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  This is how it’s supposed to look, wish Lemmy/Voyager did a better job here:
  
  Image
  
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  - MimicJar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I assume it’s done that way to prevent an IDN homograph attack.
    
    For example if I sent you a link to “gооgle.com” you’d be like, sure. Except that isn’t a link to “google” it’s a link to “xn–ggle-55da.com”.
    
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- infeeeee@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Nothing special, it’s that’s how urls with unicode, non ascii chatacters look like. It’s called punycode, more info: en.wikipedia.org/…/Internationalized_domain_name
  
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- mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  They have such a custom site. In a good way. Works well with RSS :)
  
  https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/index.xml
  
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oce@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

The first step toward meaningful change begins with us. We must abandon our craving for glossy (and therefore glassy) devices, and instead embrace hardware that may not be as immediately pleasing to the eye (as it is the case with e.g. Fairphones or the PinePhone), but is built to be slightly more durable, somewhat repairable, and capable of outlasting even today’s limited commitments to software updates.

Fairphone and PinePhone being only mentioned anecdotally for being pleasing to the eye, and I guess not as sturdy as the author wants, is quite weird for an article about reducing fragility and improving repairability.

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- brap@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Kinda funny that they end up full of glass when for the most part everyone just bangs it in a case of some kind.
  
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cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
The main issue is the lack of software support. They keep making each new Android version more bloated so you can’t update more than once or maybe twice. If it wasn’t for that, you could keep using the same 5G phone until they shut down the 5G network as long as the battery is replaceable.

I wish Android was more like Debian where it’s lightweight, uses stable versions of software and runs well on old hardware.

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- FrameXX@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  The newer Android versions aren’t that much more bloated. Sure. If you compare Android KitKat with Android 14 it is gonna be a bit more demanding probably esoecially on graphics, but overall there were a lot of improvements to the battery usage and memory management. You can have a 6 years old phone that will run the newest Android version just fine because you flashed it with a custom ROM.
  
  When we get to the manufacturer’s custom skins… Well that’s a different story. Most of them are gonna be more or less bloated than stock Android, but this is a problem of manufacturers and the fact that mobile OS market and ecosystem is so much locked down compared to desktop, which makes it harder to remove bloat from your OS, install different ROMs and tinker with it, rather than Android being bloated as an OS.
  
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WanderingThoughts@europe.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It’s why I buy budget phones. Expensive phones break easier so far. They have a nice design? I wouldn’t know, it doesn’t leave its case ever.

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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I prefer midrange phones. Budget phones are gonna either:
  
  1: Be out of date and insecure
  
  or
  
  2: If you keep them up to date, the new OS is gonna drag it down and it’ll be laggy.
  
  Mid range phones are just good enough it won’t lag due to an update, but also not too expensive like a flagship
  
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  - WanderingThoughts@europe.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I’ve almost always broken my phone before it getting out of date or laggy was any issue. I’m a bit clumsy.
    
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mesitoispro@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

and a call for manufacturers and users alike to prioritize function over aesthetics.

People didn’t even want “thinner” products. They were told they wanted thinner products so that businesses can sell them shit that breaks easier.

I hate my generation so much it’s not even funny.

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- pyre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  they’re not even selling thin products. you can’t call your phone thin when the camera is twice as thick as the rest of the body.
  
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- glibg@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Agreed. All of marketing is so imaginary and stupid. No one is asking for this.
  
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rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’ve recently learned that the device Sun first made Java for was, well, almost a smartphone in idea. So those Java phones and now Android are not a perversion of the initial intent.

I also think that, if you only compare various places in reality and various casinos by the amount of endorphine per minute spent, you’ll choose casinos (OK, maybe brothels).

The reason you don’t choose a casino is because you know that in average the casino always wins. That’s a knowledge of how casinos work.

The reason you don’t choose a brothel is because you know that many people working there are disadvantaged, and because you can control your impulses. That’s also a knowledge of how brothels work.

This means, that if we make an analogy between casinos, brothels and the computer industry, including smartphones and the web, the user has to know how it works to make the right decisions.

So the commonly repeated point about grandmas and casual users is simply wrong. There’s no way they don’t get deceived by the other side profiting from their ignorance, other than learning how things work.

So - I think we need a global social network. We have siloed services because it doesn’t bring profits to make such a global service, and the one Sun, Netscape, Macromedia (yes) and many universities made in the 90s has gone obsolete. The Internet itself allows to make a global Facebook. But instead of solving the problems of technical debt and adoption for that, it’s simpler to use a centralized service which was relatively easy to launch initially.

From Facebook (or others) you ultimately need 1) search of 1.a) contacts, 1.b) groups and 1.c) posts, 2) storage of 2.a) contacts, 2.b) groups and 2.c) posts, 3) universal forward identifiers of 3.a) contacts, 3.b) groups and 3.c) posts.

With cryptography and #3 you can use untrusted services for #1 and #2.

If they can be untrusted, services for #1 (indexer crawling the network and answering search requests in a standardized way, similar to RSS, maybe just with RSS ; the crawler service and the search result storage can be separated too) and #2 can be contributed to their respective pools like with SETI@home or other projects.

There is the question of a financial incentive to providing such a service. That can be done with using, say, (maybe number 4), a pool of billing services. A user makes a payment and before requesting a search service or a storage service, requests a billing service on which they are registered, providing it with the identifier of a resource they are going to use, that billing service and that resource interact in the sense of payment in background, giving the user a token with which they request the service itself. To pay for used storage or a heavy search request (or a request above a threshold).

Well, that looks ugly, maybe some other way is possible.

Those search results from search services and objects fetched from storage services are presented in a native application similar to Facebook, perhaps.

Contacts would be just PKI certificates or something, with a valid certificate for a registrar domain someplace in chain.

So you’d request in DNS (or someplace else, I dunno) pool.search.nihilsoc.org for a bunch of uniform indexer services, pool.store.nihilsoc.org for a bunch of uniform storage services (if we don’t have a paid service saved, probably even encrypted on some available storage service), pool.relay.nihilsoc.org of a bunch of notification servers similar to IRC (except not used for chat directly, or maybe even that), pool.billing.nihilsoc.org to pay for services requiring it. It wouldn’t matter much which ones you’d hit, because every post, contact and group identifiers would be global, containing parent identifiers and such.

It would supposedly be seamless for the user. You search for a group on a few indexers, you get a few lists of results showing on which storage services it’s present and how much of it, you deduplicate those and you ask those directly by global identifiers, check signatures yadda-yadda.

Seems very archaic, I dunno why nobody is doing this, probably because things seeming simple are complex.

OK, about smartphones and casinos - just like the way to fight gambling lies in knowing that the casino always wins and there’s no luck, the way to fight enshittification lies in users caring what they use. Yep, technologies and systems involved are complex, then maybe those should be made simpler for users to understand. Simpler inside, like OpenBSD, not simpler outside, like ChatGPT.

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MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
There are tons of rugged smartphones out there, also some brands that focus on easy to repair phones.

The fact that they’re not well known kind of shows that the majority of the market doesn’t really care about those things.

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- squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  One big problem is that pretty much all of these devices have major downsides. For example, I don’t know a single repairable or rugged phone with an actually really good camera or a flagship SOC.
  
  They also usually have a huge markup and are often produced by small boutique manufacturers with terrible support (like Fairphone) and/or really bad software (like Fairphone).
  
  So if you have the choice to e.g. pay €600 for a Fairphone with its terrible camera, battery life problems, inexistent support, huge amount of bugs and frequent issues with network providers (e.g. VoLTE not working), or you pay €300 for a comparable Samsung with similar software support duration (6 vs 10 years) and it just works without issues.
  
  If there was something like a Samsung A56 or even a Samsung S25 that’s nicely repairable and costs a maximum of €100 more than the regular version, that might be worth it.
  
  But the way it is now, it’s much better to buy a regular phone and spend the €300 you saved on 1-2 professional battery replacements down the line.
  
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96VXb9ktTjFnRi@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Quite happy with my fairphone running /e/OS. So far I’ve not needed to replace anything, except for the battery which was getting weak. So I bought another battery, and I’m keeping the other one as a spare battery.

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kratoz29@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
And there is me using a 2019 (dying) device which I heat up with a termux command to get it back in working state 😁

For the curious the device is a Poco F2 Pro, known for IMEI and charging flex issues, the termux command I use to bring alive my IMEI, Wifi and USB data transfers is:

for i in $(seq 1 32); do sh -c ‘while :; do a=$((a+1)); done’ & done; for i in $(seq 1 32); do yes > /dev/null & done

This paired with fast charge will heat the SOC and make it work like the 1st day without an issue lol.

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- squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  What dies that do? Just do noops heating up the CPU? How does it help?
  
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  - kratoz29@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yep, loops to heat up the CPU, in combination with fast charge to make it hot quicker.
    
    CPU loses contact with the board or something like that making it not able to read modem, efs, and whatever is the responsible to transmit data through the USB port (charging works normally, even fast charge), it needs a reflow or reballing to fix this for good, but technicians nearby are… Simply put, thieves lmao.
    
    So I’d rather keep doing this until the phone dies (the workaround makes it work for an undefined amount of time, which can be hours, days or almost a week) or change the motherboard myself.
    
    I got the idea along with ChatGPT when a user in telegram told me that he got USB data transfers working again (in order to escape from MIUI once again) by heating up the SOC with a hairdryer, yes, that worked for me too to fix all above, thus I decided to create a software solution in the meantime 😅
    
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Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I mean phone durability has become a lot better. I use my iPhone 14 Pro without a case, and I have dropped it a few times and more than once it has flown across the room. Just last Saturday it fell on concrete from like 4 feet high. It’s good as new.

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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Do people really want devices that are more durable? If so, why aren’t they buying them?
  
  Because the compromise is either:
  
  Bad updates, and buggy software, possibly unpatched vulnerbilities. Usually only 1-2 years of security updates (Blackview, Ulephone, Dogee)
  
  Or
  
  Bad Specs. (Samsung Galaxy XCover)
  
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  - Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    It’s not a compromise, it’s a reflection of the fact that most people don’t care about these durable devices so they don’t sell well and thus they can’t be supported very well or for very long. This is just a reality of the market.
    
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bieren@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Fucking lights bulbs are designed to fail and we are okay with it. Why would anything change with phones.

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- phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Because it’s not right?
  
  Because it’s fraud?
  
  Because fuck these asshole companies?
  
  Take a pick why
  
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- lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  As in, desgined to fail early? I highly doubt that.
  
  Even if it were true, lightbulbs still last longer and are way cheaper. Whether I have to replace them every six years or every five years doesn’t matter as much.
  
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  - swelter_spark@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Light bulbs originally lasted basically forever, is my understanding. The wires were thick enough to not break with use. Then they were made thinner so they’d wear out eventually and users would have to buy more.
    
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- mesitoispro@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Are light bulbs still designed to fail?
  
  I’m pretty sure the Veritasium video mentioned a historical cartel for light bulbs, but I thought it was something that didn’t exist any more.
  
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  - AlsaValderaan@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Modern LED bulbs tend to overdrive the LEDs to a point where they last about as long as incandescent bulbs in my experience. It also allows them to use fewer LEDs, driving cost down. They could last so much longer…
    
    I do like to buy high power ones (100W equivalent ones), open them, and lower the drive current by increasing the driver shunt’s resistance. I haven’t had a single one of those fail. (Don’t do this unless you’re a professional, mains power stuff can be fatal!)
    
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MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Software side too: Linux’s deliberate choice to not have a stable driver interface is detrimental to atomic distros with the usually shitty proprietary vendor drivers. Causing you to get no updates after a few years or get a new device.

Which is why i think BSD would have been a better fit for Android.

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- squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  BSD would have been a much better fit for many reasons. It was just started with Linux for mostly irrelevant reasons, and then it was too hard to switch away.
  
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  - MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Licensing, among others. Google doesn’t like the GPL.
    
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oyzmo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Still use my iPhoneX from 2017, and it still get updates 😊

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- kayazere@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  It’s stuck on iOS 16. Once iOS 26 releases, companies will quickly pivot to iOS 17 as the minimum supported version and slowly you will find important apps no longer work on the phone.
  
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UltraBlack@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’m honestly quite happy with my Samsung XCover 6 pro:

physical headphone jack

notification LED

removable and replaceable battery

rugged and without a screen that bends around the edge of the phone

relatively recent and quite powerful imo

some samsung’s default apps are surprisingly good

two extra freely mappable physical buttons

gps and all the other stuff

dual sim

good battery life

it’s an enterprise device

you can get it new for 350€, if not less

Only drawback: utterly dogshit camera. It looks to be interpolated. 50MP never looked that much like 8MP

Can’t wait for this to get LOS/EOS support
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- KingRandomGuy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Most “50 MP” cameras are actually quad Bayer sensors (effectively worse resolution) and are usually binned 2x to approx 12 MP.
  
  The lens on your phone likely isn’t sharp enough to capture 50 MP of detail on a small sensor anyway, so the megapixel number ends up being more of a gimmick than anything.
  
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  - MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Now, if the camera isn’t the reason anymore, why would you still pay $1200 for a flagship if you get essentially the same for $300?
    
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princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

The global smartphone screen protectors market size was estimated at $49.73 billion in 2022and the global protective cover market was anticipated to reach $21.89 billion in that same year.

That’s insane, are screen protectors really twice the market size of phone cases??

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- scintilla@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Screen protectors need to be changed way more often than a good case and they are usually similar is prices so this makes sense to me.
  
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- propitiouspanda@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  You only need 1 case, but screen protectors can crack if you can believe that.
  
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partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
The article is disappointing. It appears author of that article only has one narrow view and assumes the rest of the world has the same.

They buy the most fragile and aesthetically pleasing phones, and complain they are fragile. They advocate for manufacturers to stop making fragile aesthetically pleasing phones, and only make rugged or repairable phones instead. They make an inference that phones should be repairable like cars with accessible parts and non-proprietary tools, but they appear to not know that today’s cars have difficulty getting replacement parts and absolutely contain mechanical and electronic proprietary tools to repair the cars.

Mr/Ms author, if you want a phone that doesn’t break so easily when dropped, you can buy such a thing right now. Something like CAT phones:

Image

… or other ruggedized Android phones.

I think the last time I dropped a phone an broke the screen on it was maybe 2007. I don’t even use phone cases. If your particular use case has you dropping your phone more, buy one that exists and is designed to take those kind of conditions. There’s no shame in that, but don’t advocate for an entire industry shift because of just your own use case.

Smartphones/technology are still incredibly young in the grand scheme of things. Each of the new generation of devices that comes out adds more functionality for features that people want. Until that stops, it doesn’t make sense to try to switch everyone to a “buy it for life” approach. My Commodore 64 computer still works, and is very easy to service, however I wouldn’t have wanted technology to stop back then just because its a sturdy built machine. The paper thin laptops with 8 hours of battery and high speed CPUs are not as rugged or repairable as my venerable C64, but I’m quite glad to have the fragile laptop instead.

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- Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Theres this pervasive mentality in online spaces that completely disregards the consumer’s role in all of the design choices of products. They completely ignore that it is the consumer who signaled they wanted this and continue to signal they want this by buying more of the same. Corporations cannot create desires, they only fulfill them. Consumers have demonstrated they want sleek devices that are easy to operate and last only as long as they are not outclassed by next thing. The alternative of course is coming to the realization that consumers prefer convenience and novelty than durability above anything else but once you realize that you become elitist and that’s a big no no. So it must be the corporations fault!
  
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  - GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    You also ignore the role marketing has to play in convincing people that they need those things. Most people don’t need an SUV, let alone a truck, yet I see plenty of people driving these, and even thinking they’re safer than sedans. But they cost more money, which means more profit, and why would it be surprising that people who sell something with a relatively inelastic market want to maximize profit dollars per sale?
    
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amotio@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I have had few phones over the years, few of them I damaged by using them in bad conditions, mainly on construction sites.

As far I can remember I have never cracked the screen. Phones are and always were fragile, its a piece of condensed technology, with large glass screen. What do people expect from glass dropped from 1m? Just take care of your shit.

It always amazes me how can people cary their phones in back pocket or just throw it in the bag with keys or other sharp objects.

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tal@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Smartphones are fragile without a case. They should have one, and maybe manufacturers should make that clearer, but a world where removable cases didn’t exist would just mean that the case you get is the one that the manufacturers chooses for you and permanently attaches to the smartphone. Less options for you.

Just get a case.

I am also more than willing to carry a slightly thicker device if it means greater durability and easier repairability.

Me too. It’s why I have a case.

And I am certain many others would gladly trade their bulky, overpriced cases and bumpers for a sturdier device that inherently provides the protection we now have to purchase separately.

If you want a built-in case, you can get them. There is a whole collection of “ruggedized” smartphones from various manufacturers in China that are large, usually have a hefty battery, and have shielding built into the device.

Look at Doogee for one such manufacturer.

www.doogee.com

Oukitel for another:

oukitel.com

Ulefone for another:

www.ulefone.com

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- JcbAzPx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  They don’t have to be fragile, though. I have several old, cheap smartphones that didn’t need a case and weren’t bulky by the standards of the day. Even now all they would need is a new battery (easily replaceable btw) and they would work as good as new.
  
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