Who'da thunk, battery life sells battery powered devices.
So let's keep making phones thinner and thinner while simultaneously growing the camera bump instead of making a flat profile with, say, 2 days of life!
So on one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, I think lightness is a thing people care about. I recently needed to get some photos backed up off an old phone of mine, and I didn’t realize how heavy my current one is until I picked up my old one. Thinness is irrelevant, but a 50% weight difference is not. Other than that, I don’t think most people get much utility out of more than a day of battery life, so 1.5 days new degrading down to 1 seems reasonable and in line with what most people want.
I think lightness is a thing people care about.
It is. Specifically it is something people do not want.
I have had a LG V30, Pixel 4a and 5, all of which are incredibly light. When I hand it to an iPhone user they tell me it "feels cheap". You can see this sentiment reflected in phone reviews also.
I agree for first impressions that heavier is perceived as more premium, but after months of actually using a device I can’t fathom that a reasonable person would actually prefer a heavier phone given an equivalent, lighter phone. Even Apple, king of making devices with mass appeal, decided last year that shedding weight was a priority when moving some iPhones from aluminum to titanium.
Okay well try convincing a consumer that they just need to try it for a few months before they'll like it.
I mean nobody had to convince me. I just picked up an old phone and was immediately “why am I carrying around this brick when clearly this exists”
Harder to drop a heavier thing to a concrete floor, if it's only held in your palm.
Well, cheap or not, but in terms of fitting into my pocket a fat rubber-covered dumbphone is better than a modern thin and light one. That plate is just inconvenient. It's too big. I don't care how thin it is. A newspaper is thin too.
Ask them about the lack of a headphone jack 😉.
I have a Samsung A71. It permanently lives in its protective case which gives it good bumpers around the easily-breakable edge-to-edge screen. It's now 4 years old and has survived numerous tumbles and drops over the years.
Occasionally I have to swap the SD card in it and I am always astonished at how thin and light and fragile it is when not in the case.
I would quite happily have an actual similar size phone to what "I have now" if the battery size was bumped up another 50 percent.
You're blaming the wrong thing again. Newer phones have higher capacity batteries than the old bricks by far. The issue is the screen, SoC, and modem power consumption has gone up too.
In the phone world, the jump in capacity that modern phones have from my 4370mAh battery in my A71 is negligible. They haven't increased power density much because that way leads to fires and lawsuits when users bend or otherwise damage their ridiculously fragile phones
My point was, if modern phones had the physical space that my phone + case has, they could have a bigger battery, and that bigger battery would then power all the hungry, hungry electronics.
Totally agree! I picked up an old iPhone 6s yesterday and I just couldn’t believe how much lighter and thinner it is than the latest models.
On the other hand, I think lightness is a thing people care about.
Yeah, my Galaxy S3 is half as heavy as my current phone. It couldn't do less but had superior battery life. Smartphones and their OS all have grown bloated.
Exactly. I really liked my old phone, the Moto G Power, which:
had no camera bump
had 2+ days battery life
was pretty affordable (I think it was $250 new?)
I still have it for stuff around the house (gets like 3-4 days w/o the SIM), and I would totally still be using it as my main phone if it still got security updates. The screen is a little larger than I want, but it has been a solid phone for me.
I got a Pixel 8 mostly because of the longer software support and GrapheneOS support, and I honestly don't care about the camera, and the big bump is pretty annoying. I really wish I could just have my Moto G Power w/ a small screen and longer software support. In fact, I'd totally use a Pinephone if it had reliable calls and texts, better battery life, and better audio quality. I really don't need much, I just need a phone that will keep working for years and not need to be recharged throughout the day...
You're missing something though: phone cell or battery capacity has been getting bigger, not smaller. The issue isn't the batteries, it's the other hardware and software needing more and more energy. Modern phones are much faster, have better screens at higher resolution, brightness, even refresh rate. All of this uses energy, even with modern technology being as awesome as it is. Qualcomm, TSMC, ARM, and Apple put quite a bit of work into making these things as efficient as they can be, but we keep demanding more and more from these devices. For many they replaced laptops after all.
It's a bit like complaining that your new ultra high performance sports car is getting bad range, and complaining about the fuel tank or battery instead of the engine. The tank has only gotten bigger or at least stayed the same, but the engine has gotten hungrier and hungrier with each generation.
That's a contributing factor to battery life remaining stagnant. Manufacturers use those advances while continuing to slim phones rather than making an actually flat brick that uses those advances to drastically increase battery life. Regardless of the energy needs of the phone manufacturers can use the difference in height between the back of a phone and the camera bump to include more battery capacity and it will increase both the daily and usable life of the phone.
My phone has a 22000mAh battery. I never consider charging it unless I'm going to the woods overnight, and then only to be sure I have a power bank.
So this thing looks absolutely amazing, but still sports a 19oz size(560g). For reference, my phone is only 7oz (201g). The steam deck (roughly 22oz), which i regularly hold with two hands, can start to cause pain in the wrists.
I'm sure the kind of person to buy this phone isn't holding it for numerous hours, but thats still A) a lot of weight to lug around B) I'd imagine it will begin to strain the wrists quickly. Maybe that's a pro though...
Edit: Mind didn't complete my thought, added words.
Wow, that's only 100g less than the Steam Deck... That's nuts.
It's 6.8", that's called a tablet or phablet at that point. Change my mind.
Phablet is the new phone. The term was introduced around iPhone 6 Plus era, now look at the average size of recently released phones and compare it to the 6+. I have a 6.8" phone and I sometimes wish I got a tablet with cellular lol
I was curious, so I looked it up.
iPhone 6 Plus frontal area: 158.1mm x 77.8mm = 12,300mm²
iPhone 15 frontal area: 147.6mm x 71.6mm = 10,568mm²
iPhone 15 Plus frontal area: 160.9mm x 77.8mm = 12,518mm²
So (TL;DR:) the 6 Plus is 16% larger than the current iPhone, and 1.75% smaller than the current Plus model.
In the past decade, phones haven't actually got bigger, despite people online saying they have. Screens have, while the bezels have shrunk.
How so? My phone screen is 6.4in and id hardly consider that to be tablet sized. Anything smaller physically hurts me to be honest.
People mistakenly use screen size to measure the size of their devices, as opposed to the actual size.
People think 6.4"??? That's huge! My old phone was only 5.2"!!, but once you factor in how much bezels have shrunk, the phones we have now are about the same as they were a decade ago.
I actually compared a 10 year old Samsung Galaxy S5 (2014) against the current model. The current model is 0.6% larger by frontal area. That's it.
If that had a screw on antenna, and a smaller Flashlight, I would replace my pixel 8 for that.
Flashlight brightness is usually adjustable on phones
I bet you didn't even look at that flashlight.
Sounds like my old Ulefone! I once dropped it while getting out of my car and it put a 1.5" diameter dent in the door frame.
Damn and here I thought my 13200Ah phone I charge once a week was big. I wish more phones went down the route of massive batteries, it's so much better than being thin and barely lasting a day of normal use.
Ah but if our batteries last longer people won't have to buy phones as often, someone think or the shareholders
Who'da thunk, battery life sells battery powered devices.
So let's keep making phones thinner and thinner while simultaneously growing the camera bump instead of making a flat profile with, say, 2 days of life!
So on one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, I think lightness is a thing people care about. I recently needed to get some photos backed up off an old phone of mine, and I didn’t realize how heavy my current one is until I picked up my old one. Thinness is irrelevant, but a 50% weight difference is not. Other than that, I don’t think most people get much utility out of more than a day of battery life, so 1.5 days new degrading down to 1 seems reasonable and in line with what most people want.
It is. Specifically it is something people do not want.
I have had a LG V30, Pixel 4a and 5, all of which are incredibly light. When I hand it to an iPhone user they tell me it "feels cheap". You can see this sentiment reflected in phone reviews also.
I agree for first impressions that heavier is perceived as more premium, but after months of actually using a device I can’t fathom that a reasonable person would actually prefer a heavier phone given an equivalent, lighter phone. Even Apple, king of making devices with mass appeal, decided last year that shedding weight was a priority when moving some iPhones from aluminum to titanium.
Okay well try convincing a consumer that they just need to try it for a few months before they'll like it.
I mean nobody had to convince me. I just picked up an old phone and was immediately “why am I carrying around this brick when clearly this exists”
Harder to drop a heavier thing to a concrete floor, if it's only held in your palm.
Well, cheap or not, but in terms of fitting into my pocket a fat rubber-covered dumbphone is better than a modern thin and light one. That plate is just inconvenient. It's too big. I don't care how thin it is. A newspaper is thin too.
Ask them about the lack of a headphone jack 😉.
I have a Samsung A71. It permanently lives in its protective case which gives it good bumpers around the easily-breakable edge-to-edge screen. It's now 4 years old and has survived numerous tumbles and drops over the years.
Occasionally I have to swap the SD card in it and I am always astonished at how thin and light and fragile it is when not in the case.
I would quite happily have an actual similar size phone to what "I have now" if the battery size was bumped up another 50 percent.
You're blaming the wrong thing again. Newer phones have higher capacity batteries than the old bricks by far. The issue is the screen, SoC, and modem power consumption has gone up too.
In the phone world, the jump in capacity that modern phones have from my 4370mAh battery in my A71 is negligible. They haven't increased power density much because that way leads to fires and lawsuits when users bend or otherwise damage their ridiculously fragile phones
My point was, if modern phones had the physical space that my phone + case has, they could have a bigger battery, and that bigger battery would then power all the hungry, hungry electronics.
Totally agree! I picked up an old iPhone 6s yesterday and I just couldn’t believe how much lighter and thinner it is than the latest models.
Yeah, my Galaxy S3 is half as heavy as my current phone. It couldn't do less but had superior battery life. Smartphones and their OS all have grown bloated.
Exactly. I really liked my old phone, the Moto G Power, which:
I still have it for stuff around the house (gets like 3-4 days w/o the SIM), and I would totally still be using it as my main phone if it still got security updates. The screen is a little larger than I want, but it has been a solid phone for me.
I got a Pixel 8 mostly because of the longer software support and GrapheneOS support, and I honestly don't care about the camera, and the big bump is pretty annoying. I really wish I could just have my Moto G Power w/ a small screen and longer software support. In fact, I'd totally use a Pinephone if it had reliable calls and texts, better battery life, and better audio quality. I really don't need much, I just need a phone that will keep working for years and not need to be recharged throughout the day...
You're missing something though: phone cell or battery capacity has been getting bigger, not smaller. The issue isn't the batteries, it's the other hardware and software needing more and more energy. Modern phones are much faster, have better screens at higher resolution, brightness, even refresh rate. All of this uses energy, even with modern technology being as awesome as it is. Qualcomm, TSMC, ARM, and Apple put quite a bit of work into making these things as efficient as they can be, but we keep demanding more and more from these devices. For many they replaced laptops after all.
It's a bit like complaining that your new ultra high performance sports car is getting bad range, and complaining about the fuel tank or battery instead of the engine. The tank has only gotten bigger or at least stayed the same, but the engine has gotten hungrier and hungrier with each generation.
That's a contributing factor to battery life remaining stagnant. Manufacturers use those advances while continuing to slim phones rather than making an actually flat brick that uses those advances to drastically increase battery life. Regardless of the energy needs of the phone manufacturers can use the difference in height between the back of a phone and the camera bump to include more battery capacity and it will increase both the daily and usable life of the phone.
My phone has a 22000mAh battery. I never consider charging it unless I'm going to the woods overnight, and then only to be sure I have a power bank.
What phone has a 22000 mAh battery?
Energizer did make a phone with a 28Ah battery
https://www.unihertz.com/products/tank
So this thing looks absolutely amazing, but still sports a 19oz size(560g). For reference, my phone is only 7oz (201g). The steam deck (roughly 22oz), which i regularly hold with two hands, can start to cause pain in the wrists.
I'm sure the kind of person to buy this phone isn't holding it for numerous hours, but thats still A) a lot of weight to lug around B) I'd imagine it will begin to strain the wrists quickly. Maybe that's a pro though...
Edit: Mind didn't complete my thought, added words.
Wow, that's only 100g less than the Steam Deck... That's nuts.
It's 6.8", that's called a tablet or phablet at that point. Change my mind.
Phablet is the new phone. The term was introduced around iPhone 6 Plus era, now look at the average size of recently released phones and compare it to the 6+. I have a 6.8" phone and I sometimes wish I got a tablet with cellular lol
I was curious, so I looked it up.
iPhone 6 Plus frontal area: 158.1mm x 77.8mm = 12,300mm²
iPhone 15 frontal area: 147.6mm x 71.6mm = 10,568mm²
iPhone 15 Plus frontal area: 160.9mm x 77.8mm = 12,518mm²
So (TL;DR:) the 6 Plus is 16% larger than the current iPhone, and 1.75% smaller than the current Plus model.
In the past decade, phones haven't actually got bigger, despite people online saying they have. Screens have, while the bezels have shrunk.
How so? My phone screen is 6.4in and id hardly consider that to be tablet sized. Anything smaller physically hurts me to be honest.
People mistakenly use screen size to measure the size of their devices, as opposed to the actual size.
People think 6.4"??? That's huge! My old phone was only 5.2"!!, but once you factor in how much bezels have shrunk, the phones we have now are about the same as they were a decade ago.
I actually compared a 10 year old Samsung Galaxy S5 (2014) against the current model. The current model is 0.6% larger by frontal area. That's it.
If that had a screw on antenna, and a smaller Flashlight, I would replace my pixel 8 for that.
Flashlight brightness is usually adjustable on phones
I bet you didn't even look at that flashlight.
Sounds like my old Ulefone! I once dropped it while getting out of my car and it put a 1.5" diameter dent in the door frame.
Damn and here I thought my 13200Ah phone I charge once a week was big. I wish more phones went down the route of massive batteries, it's so much better than being thin and barely lasting a day of normal use.
Ah but if our batteries last longer people won't have to buy phones as often, someone think or the shareholders