One day I hope for a future innovation that brings back 3.5MM jacks and I can have audio as convenient as it was in the 1950s, but until then my bluetooth can connect to my speakers while I'm not in the same building and switch device automatically with no setting to change it and with no warning deafen the people in my house, where the only way to switch back requires a mere 20 screen taps (which i can partly blame graphene os for, not their fault i can use a wire though)

Maybe I take this a little too close to heart.

This is precisely why I left Android.

Google can't seem to decide on a direction and stick with it. Years of new features that inevitably ended up abandoned 2 versions later resulted in a constantly changing and unpredictable user experience.

It was fun while I had free time in college and enjoyed flashing ROMs, but as I got busier with life this lack of refinement pushed me away.

The RGB leds were one of my favorite features of early Android phones. I even backed a terrible Kickstarter campaign that synced those colors to an RGB wristband (this was before smartwatches were a thing).

My Nexus 5 had that feature and it was really useful to see if the phone had a message pending. They also did the same thing for wireless charging, dropping it and then bringing it back. The PM probably gets paid good money to go in circles.

They had it as a hidden feature up till the nexus 5 or 6 I believe. Someone bothered to include hardware for an LED even if the stock software never supported it.

> lighting up colored LEDs for notifications so you can see them “at a glance” without looking at the screen

My old Blackberry Bold had this feature and I loved it! I had it customized so it would pulse a different color depending on who had messaged me.

I remember my little Motorola flip phones from 25+ years ago had an LED that would blink for things like voice mails or unread SMS. I can't remember if it also did missed calls, and maybe could do orange or green? I seem to recall it did a unary pattern to blink out the number of queued events.

The problem with this kind of feature is that it falls apart if you're the type who leaves things unread or gets them all the time. Then, it is little more than a beacon to say "phone still exists"...

This used to be a critical feature for me I used to customize the colour per-app so I could see what notifications I had at a glance. However always-on displays have supplanted this use case for me.

been waiting for this feature to come back forever. hope it's still around the next time I get a new phone.

I remember having this on a Sidekick in like 2007.

My Nexus One had that colored trackball, and rooting / custom roms allowed you to set specific colors to whatever type of notification or alert you wanted. Good times.

Just wait until phones get headphone jacks!

Why is it "time" after 3 years? They should hopefully still be getting software updates, at least security updates.

I'm on an iPhone 13 since launch (almost 5 years ago) and still see no reason to upgrade. There just hasn't been anything 'exciting' in phones in many years.

EDIT: should add, I've only used 50% of the 256GB storage and battery life is still fine (comfortably gets through an entire day+night). But I'm not a heavy phone user so that's perhaps atypical for a 5yo phone.

As someone that has used pre-paid phones most of my life, starting with TMN Mimo in 1997, I have always replaced my devices when they break down or got stolen, and that was it.

Back in the day there were no updates anyway, until Symbian or Windows CE/Pocket PC became common, and even them had at most a single firmware update during their lifetime, which had to be installed via the developer tools SDK.

Phone advancements between 2007-2017 was insane. I wonder how much of it was Apple catching up to the cutting edge of phone tech leveraging its iOS advantage, vs just natural pace of innovations. Feels like there had been an invisible war.

what a strange comment! It's totally fine, you do whatever you want, but it sounds like "I used to be an alcoholic drinking two 12-packs a day, now I don't even care about beer: I just have 6 a day and that's not because I want to be drunk but just because I feel like it". Like, sure it's quantitatively better but... it's not really qualitatively very different is it

I agree; but I'm not sure it is fixable. Without some technological advancement to actually move the needle, most manufacturers are just stuck with marginal hardware changes and then some cheesy software-locked exclusive to the latest models.

I'd like my next phone to be a flip one. But really what I want is a Linux phone.

Nobody wants to cut the edge, when it comes to foldable phones, it seems.

Also, more than 5 yrs after Galaxy Fold (I've never seen or held one IRL):

is it really that valuable to have "marginless" foldable displays?

Often times, users will divide the screen into halves, at least, when using large resolution.

And users are also not too interested in curved or mangled output surfaces, the ideal is an evenly lighted 2D surface.

If you were working on military technology, that's irrelevant of course. Then, the consumer tech is just a small venture capital driver.

No "foldable" real currently comes close to two flexable screens placed close to each other.

Consumers have repeatedly rejected this hype.

The only interesting value is in completely flexible material with fixed-distance OLEDs on it, and that's a very complicated engineering problem approaching a digital "invibility coat".

In-between these extreme uses, I struggle to see the benefit of foldable screns.

A cheap and robust e-ink screen would be a welcome exception, but I have no idea how much the science overlaps with marginless, foldable LED panels.

I don't remember which iPhone I even have. I have a phone that does what I need and doesn't annoy the crap out of me. That's all I want.

My last Pixel was rendered useless by a software update though.

I find this to be great, less e-waste.

Let's hope we can have phones that last 10+ years.

My wife's iPhone is 11 years old now, and it's still better than having a latest flagship Android

I have a Z Flip 7. The Z Flip 8 is practically indistinguishable except for the SoC where they've gone from an Exynos to a Snapdragon.

it is a phone. you use it to look up content and maybe endlessly scroll. i am very sure a new iphone is not boring to a young person getting their first phone. i am sorta sure that phones feel they've plateaued because present day app store policies no longer support high quality ideas.

And sometimes the updates are a step backwards. For example when Apple went to the Intel modem. Perhaps when they move to their own modem this year there might be a repeat, we'll have to keep our eyes peeled.

between the cost, lack of interesting new features, and often addition of features i do not want, it’s starting to seem like i may never get a new phone, and i’m ok with that

But you can fold it.

> but just because its time

If you already know the new phone isn’t going to do anything better for you, why is it time?

Are they? The Pixel 11 Pro and regular screens are only a tenth of an inch larger than the 3 year old Pixel 8s. The screen sizes have largely stabilized IMO with people who want any larger screens being pushed into the folding phone category. I get it's larger than the mid 2010s normal but they're not really getting much larger in the last couple years.

We don't even need to reverse the trend! Android is flexible, so it wouldn't be a big ask for one of the many models to be smaller! Each pixel is larger than the last. I was a Pixel 4 holdout until a few months ago when they stopped supporting tap-to-pay. The 10 is a monster, and the trend is as you say.

I was legitimately excited to get an iPhone Mini. Every new phone feels like a downgrade. I don't care if the phone is faster if it's an annoyance to carry, or hold in one hand.

Also weight. While the 11 Pro Fold apparently is a bit lighter than it’s predecessor, it’s still 239 grams. I miss the days of the 113g SE.

To be clear, this is slightly smaller than the pixel 10 by ~1mm in each direction, but they are still too big.

iPhone 13 mini -- the last mini is still supported, will be supported by iOS27, and, given continuation of trends, will be supported by iOS28. That gives you a three year runway. They are plentiful on eBay and FB marketplace, and for $79 apple will replace the battery for you with a new one.

I have a feeling that making durable fold in half cell phones is just not something we can do cheaply, so they have to be billed as premium to justify it.

Also isn't that terminology settled? Fold for passport, flip for flip phone. I'm sure Apple will invent a new word but everyone doing foldables seems to use those consistently.

I can’t say I’ve ever found myself thinking “I wish I had more RAM” on my phone. On laptop, I’d take it in a heartbeat but on my phone (which has 6GB) I’m perfectly happy.

12gb is a huge downgrade.

I was going to buy an 11 Pro, but now I might just grab a 10 Pro instead. What is the 11 buying me, some extra attention grabbing lights and a small redesign? in exchange for less memory? Oy vey.

Just a note that the 12GB nerf only applies to the base storage version of the pros.

Meet the Vivo X300

https://www.vivo.com/en/products/x300-ultra

Because Android does not just run on Pixel devices, and the level of control you suggest isn't something that can be bolted on at the manufacturer level.

They're slowly adding some of that functionality in, but obviously relies on third party adoption for anything more than UI automated control:

https://www.androidauthority.com/gemini-automation-control-o...

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/an...

What would you use that for? That feels very gimmicky to me

Shipping regulations. >20Wh can't go by airpost in the west.

Might be longevity concerns. Those new batteries are impressive, but the concern is that they will degrade a lot.

Also, remember the exploding Samsung phone. Experiments with batteries are risky for those companies.

Because those are a different kind of battery, silicon-carbon and they wear out much quicker. I am sure they will eventually though.

Been a folding phone user for multiple generations now.

The flip-phone style ones: Excellent! The folding aspect really aids in switching between a small device with minimal controls to a normal phone. I would use these over a standard phone. No question.

The portrait-to-not style ones like pixel fold? Is nice on occasion but the software is a complete let down. For reasons I do not care: The orientation is either wrong or the software cannot handle the form factor. The end result is a poor user experience.

Considering "usable space" as a percentage of the screen that contains useful content these are worse when unfolded than folded. Yes the screen is larger but most of the screen ends up useless. The actual useful chunk suddenly becomes horribly small in proportion.

The default layout showing composing an email in gmail is a prime example. The actual content area of the email: Same size as when folded. The rest of the screen is unused or taken up by the keyboard. Yes the keyboard is now larger but it's somehow weirdly proportioned.

There are adjustments that can be made to improve that. Some have to be applied every time the phone is unfolded or the apps restart (or neither or both who knows?)

Oh and my pixel fold screen has failed 2x in 3 years - I do not treat it gently.

I go on a longer rant about this here https://youtu.be/WHxOosmJt_U

I am very happy with my Pixel 9 Pro Fold, the replacement because of early models losing 5G on unfolding was swift and it's been one of my least annoying phones so far, and I used many models, OSes

While I daily use an iPhone now, my original Pixel Fold is still working and running GrapheneOS. Besides a bug caused by GrapheneOS where the outer screen wouldn’t work, it has been flawless, and I can’t really blame Google for that one.

Giving it up was tough, as I consume a lot of books and mangas. I’m just waiting for Apple to release their foldable before I ditch this iPhone.

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold had a lot of warranty replacements due to a failing internal cable. The 10 seems to have resolved the issue, but time will tell.

Other than that, the Pixel Fold has been a great phone. It's like having a tiny tablet with me everywhere I go.

I had a flip phone. It was silly, and a waste of money, but I’d buy another one. It was fun, quirky and a bit different to the general black rounded rectangle.

My pixel fold 9 got 3 hardware failures (battery, speaker and folding sensor) and was warranty replaced for a fold 10. While it was being replaced I was using a non foldable phone and was totally missing the folding experience (large screen and multitasking for some personal use cases), so I am team foldables for now. otoh I do not get the idea behind the flip phones

I love mine, but I used to try and stuff a Kindle into my jeans pocket because reading on a large screen is so much more enjoyable for me.

I tested out last year's foldable phone for a couple of months.. borrowed it from a friend.

Maybe I'm just losing interest in phone tech - but to me, it was only down sides and no upside.

The phone was bulky. Fragile.

The larger screen you get when you open the phone - was absolutely useless for most of the content I watch. The screen is 4:3 and most of the content I watched was 16:9. The black bars at the top and bottom of the video meant that the actual video content is exactly the same size as my non foldable Motorola Edge 40.

With direction Google has chosen to go with the Pixel 10, it might as well be that GrapheneOS will never be available on the Pixel 11. They started by not publishing device trees anymore, squashing commits in AOSP, publishing open source drivers as a tar ball dump only after the requester has entered personal data in a web form, instead of having them public in an version control system. I wonder what dumb ideas they come up with next in order to make the GrapheneOS people suffer even more.

I've been pleasantly surprised at how robust my 2024 Razr (regular edition) has been. I think if the outside screen was a hair bigger (like on the Plus and Ultra), it would be significantly more useful.

I tried the Clicks keyboard case, and it was cute, but wasn't actually better to type on, especially while the phone was open. It was fun pretending to have a Blackberry / Razr hybrid (2007 called!).

I think it would be neat to have a small square phone like the size and shape of the folded Razr but that doesn't actually unfold, and has the camera on the back. It would be a pretty handy device and encourage me to read more paper books or on a Kindle or something instead of scrolling.

Phone manufactures have settled on the term "flip" for phones that start as a long rectangle and fold in half vertically to roughly a square.

The most popular flip phone is Samsung Galaxy Flip but other brands like Motorola and Oppo make these kinds of phones.

I didn't end up getting one but a friend with the galaxy flip 7 tells me he likes using the square screen when the phone is folded to help reduce his screen time.

It’ll probably be 2 iPhone Airs attached with a hinge, no?

If that were true, then so many people wouldn't keep buying new high end phones. Yet they continue to do so.

I assume all the companies have zero respect for any of their users now. At least Apple can maintain a tablet and laptop line for more than a few years without the urge to restart it with "brand new ideas".

Here, the Pixel 10, especially in more niche variants like Pro and with larger flash has almost disappeared from the market, or is as expensive as the equivalent Pixel 11 offers.