this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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My siblings, there are stockpiles of refurbs to last us until the end of capitalism or life on earth.
I'm using a 9 year old phone rn now and I've got zoomers oooing over its "minimal" design (lol it's just old).
I had the perfect phone. Sony XZ2 Compact. released in 2018 so not even that old
5" screen. No headphone jack, but I was honestly just glad to have a screen that small. Ran LineageOS like a dream.
Then came the 3G tower shutdown. Now, the XZ2c is capable of 4G LTE calling. Lineage even had the settings option for it unlocked (as opposed to stock). So I call up my carrier and ask them to please enable 4G LTE calling for my phone so that it'll receive calls again.
Turns out, the major carriers in the US decided not to support 4G LTE calling for the XZ2c. There's a line of code sitting somewhere that could be flipped to "true" and my perfect phone would work again. But no, fuck me for wanting to resist CONSOOM NOO FONE EVERY SIX MONTH.
Fuck capitalism I'll never forget what they took from me
That's a beautiful phone. I'm sorry to hear of your tale of woe. Sadly, there are many like it
Looks stupid, I'd much prefer a more powerful tablet that's cheaper. Gimmick.
While I get the sentiment, you can’t really fit a tablet in most pockets. While a tri fold phone would fit just fine.
This isn’t for situations where a more powerful device is needed. Power doesn’t matter when watching a video, or reading a book, or scrolling the internet. Sometimes you just need more screen.
I may be an outlier on Lemmy, but I explicitly want a decent trifold device. Specifically for the situations I listed. I’m not looking to use the tablet “mode” for performance hungry tasks, I just want more screen sometimes.
Wasn't their last folding phone super fragile
Year 2026, Huawei unveils 4 folds smartphone! You can now watch 4 gooner videos at the SAME TIME! BUT wait there is more if you RESERVE NOW you get a Huawei's smart watch f2 now has TWO FOLDS! Imagine the possibilities!
Hey, if we're doing quirky pones only 1% of users will ever consider buying again can you bring back hardware keyboards please?
"nah, you cunts had your chance" -Blackberry.
This was an interesting video / project I quite enjoyed.
For those with ADHD or just don't have the time to watch:
He bought a Samsung Flip with a broken inner screen, removed the screen and split the phone in half, and turned it into a modern take on a slide phone.
To do so, he 3D printed a custom mold to replace the bottom half of the phone, and then shoved a Blackberry keyboard into it. Designed a custom hinge so that instead of flipping the phone open, you slide the keyboard out from behind and it drops below the cover screen—which is now the main screen—because he used a 3rd party launcher to make it behave as such. That way the phone is fully functional without the inner screen.
The only thing he didn't do (nor did he attempt to), is figure out a way to move one or both of the cameras. Since the phone no longer flips open, the two main cameras are now both selfie cameras and there is no main camera(s).
Tl;Dr: he cut a phone in half and gave it a keyboard.
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I saw an 85" Samsung TV for $1000 at walmart today.
Kinda crazy (stupid) how people spend that much on a fucking phone.
I saw a Pixel 10 Pro with 128 GB storage online today.
Kinda crazy (stupid) how people spend that much on a fucking TV.
The cost of that TV is heavily subsidized on the expectation that you connect it to the internet and it feeds Samsung data on you.
Just don't do that? The same argument could be made for their phones.
I think you're talking out of your ass.
Oh my sweet summer child. The privacy community is all over this and any economics course will explain how we got here.
Anyone making equipment needs to come in just below competitors in terms of price. How? By using telemetry and data collection to sell for advertising. This is seen as a subsidy to make the equipment more competitive to get it in more homes for long-term rent-seeking for income lasting years from every user. Same as with any smart appliance. The TV, connected to the internet, monitors what you watch even when you've connected by HDMI.
Can you just not connect the TV? Absolutely, yes. That's how low the bar is, that simply not giving the TV a connection and using 1 extra device in between is all it takes to come out ahead. That's a gamble worth it to Samsung. I have a Samsung TV, and that's all I need to do to come out ahead. But many, many people think the TV needs to do it all and just give it a data connection.
Whole that may be somewhat true, I don't think the magnitude of that expectation is that huge.
I'm not saying they don't track, I'm saying the amount of money they expect from it is not as large as hundreds of dollars a unit.
I used to run trainings on personal cybersecurity and explaining to people how much their data is worth. I've been paid to study this.
So, specific data about what you're worth to a company is proprietary. I can't find a link to a PWC or McKinsey report, but IoT device data typically sells for a range that's an estimate of cost per user per year. On the upper end, I've seen estimates of up to $50 per user per year. Low end is $1. So if the assumed lifetime of the TV is 4 years and a "household" is 2 adults and 2 kids, you end up at ($50x2 and $25 x 2)= $150 x 4 years = $600. So if Samsung sudsidizes the cost of a smart TV by $400, they're coming out ahead $200 on average, just on the subsidy. That's the kind of math going on for TV sales. Again, that's proprietary data, so short of trying to track down reports I saw years ago, all I can explain is that data monetization is a well-known cornerstone of business. Here's a quote for you about companies needing to know the value:
The exact same dataset, when sold to a financial services company, was being used to make multimillion-dollar decisions, so the data aggregator could charge $100,000. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/what-data-wrapping-and-how-does-it-make-products-better
That's for companies operating legally and in the clear. What's crazy is that our data is treated sort of like student loan debt with them, because it's seen by them as debt we owe to the company and paid back over the life of the device. For criminals, it's pennies-on-the-dollar fire sales because nothing is guaranteed to work. So the data needed to steal your identity as a single line on a spreadsheet might only be $20 a person because the list of 10,000 records might only contain 200 winners. So you buy a $200,000 spreadsheet and hope to commit at least $1,000 per successful hit to come out ahead. which is a fairly low bar for fraud. Then the whole list is burned and you start over.
I personally am waiting for the OLED handkerchief.
Comes out to $2,250 USD in China for the 256gb model. $3,500 USD in Malaysia for the 1tb model ($15,000 MYR).
Look at my new phone!
That's literally the audience these "boutique" phones are for.
looks like shit
Please pack a keyboard on the back of the lowest third, so you have a smartphone-with-keyboard if ⅓ folded up.
This guy did just that:
Thought it was a really cool idea / project. Essentially a modified Z Flip.
I admit i had to stop watching after 5 minutes. Do kids like videos cut confusingly and ...hyperactive like this one nowadays?
Oh, you havent seen the videos where someone literally includes random other videos on the screen at the same time cause they got bored editing?
Do they enjoy it? Probably not but hey they got bored.
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Why is the fact that it's before the iPhone 17s reveal important it's not like the iPhone 17 is a folding phone all that Apple have a folding iPhone at all.
It is because Apple has been dominant in the premium smartphone market for years, including in China. Huawei have started to make a big dent in that tier in China after eating Apple's lunch in the lower price categories.
This is a feature that Huawei brought to market before Apple, which was kind of a first. Until recently, they were just following Apple's innovations. It's early and I wouldn't want one now, but I wouldn't be surprised if smartphones-that-fold-out-into-tablets was the standard by the end of the decade.
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Honestly, if I could get a phone that unfolds to a tablet size like that + Desktop Mode, I’d combine it with a portable keyboard and trackpad combo and be perfectly happy using that as my laptop solution. One cellular plan, large screen, and super portable too, not to mention phone controllers like the GameSir and Backbone for when I want something more gaming handheld-esque, Linux ARM64 virtual machines, and more!
I just want a phone that can fold out for reading comics, sounds pretty nice, only reason I bought a tablet was the constant zooming required, I forget to bring my tablet places constantly or just don't want to because its another thing to carry around
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