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Probably wiped out the gps market also. My map supplier for my phone gave up and I assume it was from trying to compete with google maps. Was a loss for me as
by jleyank 4y ago
Probably wiped out the gps market also. My map supplier for my phone gave up and I assume it was from trying to compete with google maps. Was a loss for me as the maps worked offline…. “Good enough” and only one thing to remember.
Nailed the pager, voice recorder and related markets as well.
- ThatPlayer 4y agoWiped out most of the pocket-sized handheld gaming market too. Not because phones are better at gaming, but they're "good enough" entertainment with social media, streaming, music, etc.
- Gigachad 4y agoI have a feeling that social media and video streaming probably replaced casual on the go gaming. It's more addictive.
- rwky 4y agoWhich is a shame IMHO I really love(d) my DS/3DS wish they still made that form factor, you can't exactly carry a switch in your pocket.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoThere are gameboy pocket sized devices made still that run emulators. But you’re stuck with no new games and grey area legality
- sincerely 4y agoI love emulating old games, but let's be clear: by grey area legality you mean illegal, right :) Unless you're dumping ROMs yourself of games you own...
- ThatPlayer 4y agoThey do run Linux, so sometimes new games can be made to work on them, like the new TMNT Shredder's Revenge: https://youtu.be/DpVwO8Z8z-E https://youtu.be/DpVwO8Z8z-E . And some newer devices can run Android for new games there.
- asimovfan 4y agoPhones are better at gaming. You can emulate pocket sized handheld gaming devices as well. Perhaps you are only talking about popular games like Candy Crush and the such but there are a lot of heavyweight titles released for mobile platforms as well.
- ThatPlayer 4y agoI was more talking around the time of the 3ds and Vita release dates. That was about when smartphones started to take off and took out the handheld gaming market. You can see it in the sales, the 3ds did half the lifetime sales of the DS. And then there was the Vita.
- ilyt 4y agoThe hardware is obviously better with how often people replace the phones, but ability to target same few interfaces and not have to test on few dozen of phones to make game run well overall leads to better games. > but there are a lot of heavyweight titles released for mobile platforms as well. ...like ? Every single mobile game that I found "good" usually launched on other platforms too.
- seanalltogether 4y agoI really really wish that apple / google / samsung came out with official hardware game pads that snapped to the phones and had direct support at the os level for game developers to easily support. We're missing out on so many good handheld experiences by being limited to touch only.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sofixa 4y agoRazer's Kishi is pretty good and it just works (on Android games that support it, the majority are expecting touch only).
- pxx 4y agoExcept what do you do about sound? Bluetooth (audio) has way too high latency for gaming
- oriolid 4y agoUSB is good enough for real-time music on iOS and many Android phones. If you want to already snap the controller to the phone, adding a plug isn't much trouble. And some phones still have the 3.5mm jack.
- pxx 4y agoThe problem with the Kishi is that it blocks all the ports, right? I can't use a wired headset at the same time as the Kishi...
- oriolid 4y agoAt least the Android version has external USB-C port that could fit an adapter. The specs say only that you can charge through it, it would be nice to know if it's really limited to charging or fully functional.
- dmurray 4y agoDid it? The Nintendo Switch sold 114 million units since its release in 2017 [0]. The original Gameboy (a reasonable guess as the most popular handheld gaming device of all time) sold 118 million units [1] in 15 years. [0] https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/11/the-nintendo-switch-has-exceeded-114-million-units-sold https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/11/the-nintendo-switc... There are other devices, and other ways to measure the market size, but 114 million of anything is not a niche market. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101888/unit-sales-game-boy-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101888/unit-sales-game-...
- diffeomorphism 4y agoVery different size. You could argue that switch/steamdeck-sized devices have replaced gameboy/ngage/psp-like devices. However, phones seem like the much closer competition -> none of Nintendo, sony or MS even tried to make this form factor anymore
- jonfw 4y agoThe DS may be more representative of the peak of the market, and would sell in larger numbers in a single year- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_sales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_sales
- baybal2 4y ago
- yetihehe 4y agoGoogle maps on android can work offline too.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoHere maps was way better than Google (at least in the EU) since it always had offline navigation and would notify you of breaking the speed limit and the presence of speed-cams.
- criley2 4y agoWhile Google does not notify of breaking the speed limit, they do have speed limits, red light cameras, user-reported speed traps, debris on road, etc.
- yetihehe 4y agoDepends on country. In Poland yanosik has a little better routing and MUCH better speed-traps notifications, but no offline maps. There was auto-mapa here which had even better routing and was fully offline, but was not free, it's almost dying now.
- levesque 4y agoI still don't understand why showing police cars or speed-cams on a map/GPS map is allowed or even legal.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoI didn't show police cars. It just showed fixed speed cams which is legal in the EU as even the radio stations announce the location of currently active speed cams via traffic information.
- realityking 4y agoThat is a matter pf national law, not EU law. In Germany for example the radio announcements are legal but devices and navigation systems that warn of them are not.
- soco 4y agoMaybe it will help to know that Google Maps also work offline - you can download designated areas for offline use.
- int_19h 4y agoThere's an upper limit on the size of the area (although not their count), so it gets rather tedious if you want to cache a lot. It also expires eventually. with no way to block that. OsmAnd+ is the only sane option for reliable offline maps w/navigation on smartphones, IMO.
- GordonS 4y agoThough, annoyingly, you can't use the search function without data. So you can see the map tiles fine, but that's about it :-/
- CharlesW 4y ago> Though, annoyingly, you can't use the search function without data. Have you tried this recently? I just did a family vacation in Death Valley and used Google Maps offline exclusively. Search worked fine.
- GordonS 4y agoAdmittedly not for some time, I'll be over the moon if it finally supports offline search!
- drchickensalad 4y agoI use offline search all the time
- FeistySkink 4y agoFrom my experience this is heavily location-dependent, so US is probably the worst example.
- 4y ago
- alias_neo 4y agoDon't forget the portable media player too.
- toyg 4y agoI don't think we've fully appreciated yet that "phones" are really the true embodiment of the original Personal Digital Assistant, i.e. an external brain that will augment yours in any circumstance. Any portable device has been (or will soon be) replaced by "phones".
- etrautmann 4y agoReally? I think the whole world already gets this, and even the conversation seems somewhat quaint at this point.
- jrimbault 4y agoYes, I'm constantly referring to my "phone" as my "brain's third hemisphere". It makes people chuckle but no one stops at that joke. It's completely "in the culture".
- KineticLensman 4y agoMy metacortex
- DonHopkins 4y agoMy late friend Hugh Daniel used to refer to his Bihn's backpack as his "LSD", for "Life Support Device". Like when we were leaving the house he'd shout "Oh no, I forgot my LSD! I'll be right back!" then run back in and fetch his backpack. But now my smartphone is my LSD.
- personjerry 4y agoI can't wait for the iGlock
- criley2 4y agoI'm on the other side. My father used a Garmin GPS in his vehicle for 15+ years. The phone is a much better experience! Every time he had yet another issue, I wanted to be like "just use your phone!" - Maps are out of date: Garmin required manual wired updates, Google Maps was always up to date - Traffic costs: Garmin charged $10/mo for traffic data, Google Maps did it free - Screen quality: Even in the early 2010's, smartphone screens were bigger and clearer than most car GPS units - Attraction data: Google's was way more up to date than Garmin's third party attraction data, and Google quickly added multi-stop trips, business hours, busy-level of destination, etc - Data Entry/voice: Google's voice entry and on screen keyboard were way better than Garmin I was so happy when he got rid of that GPS and I finally got to stop supporting it.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoWith car play and android equivalent it’s so much better than a standalone device for navigating. I do have a garmin watch with offline topographical and trail maps for hiking off the grid but I only use that a few times a year. I could probably get those on a phone too
- ilyt 4y agoNewest gen of AA/Car play can also display map directly on gauge cluster, which is just perfect solution
- eCa 4y agoFor offline maps I use OsmAnd Maps. The only thing I miss is the satellite view.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- radiorental 4y agoThe gps market is alive and well for marine, aviation and outdoor/offroad/motorcycle niche markets. fwiw, google maps has download & offline functionality. Click your profile icon top right and select the area you want offline. I use it all the time for backcountry hiking (along with OSM apps) and going abroad where I dont have data.
- thepangolino 4y ago
- goosedragons 4y agoIsn't Google Maps limited to a tiny little 100MB chunk or something? Fine for hiking, less fine for cross country road trips. Here Maps has free offline maps that will let you grab entire countries/continents if you have the space for it.
- gorbypark 4y agoI don’t know the limit but it’s larger than 100MB. I currently have about 300MB saved with one chunk (the entire country of Andorra) sitting at 120MB alone.
- aaronax 4y agoI enjoy passing the time on airplanes with my phone held up near the window to get a GPS signal, and then look at the names of towns and landscape features far below as I pass them by. It is quite surprising how anything you can see tends to be 10-20 miles off to the side of the plane, until you start paying attention to the quantity of 1 mile cropland squares. Then you truly appreciate how high you are! This takes 100-300MB per state--I use OsmAnd via F-Droid of course.
- roter 4y agoMore and more boaters are using tablets & phones as the apps give you access to charts and your instruments (e.g. wind, AIS). Antennas solutions are increasing to get cellular reception farther offshore that feed into a wifi router. At anchor, I personally use Organic Maps and drop a pin after I'm properly at anchor. There are specialized "anchor watch" apps but this works for my purposes. Sailing used to be so simple...
- Markoff 4y agoIf you are on Android I can recommend either Maps.me with great 3D view or Maps.cz for great tourist trails, Google Maps content is horrible in Europe. Of course any decent app can download offline maps for whole countries and not some GMaps parody with small section of map.
- simonh 4y agoThere's an old joke that: computer + X = computer Where X has been things like keyboard, screen, disk drives, modem (now network adapter), speakers, microphone. All were originally separate devices. For historical reasons we now call hand computers phones, but the basic insight that these things just voraciously absorb peripheral and related functions is still just as true.
- kalleboo 4y ago> For historical reasons we now call hand computers phones In a lot of Europe they're referred to as some translation of "mobile" (short for "mobile phone") which I've always liked as a more generic term. Of course in Germany they call them a "Handy" (using English)
- EGreg 4y agoX = humans ?
- theandrewbailey 4y agoComing soon to a technological singularity near you.
- winReInstall 4y agoIts always fun to comment on singularity comments sounding like a bot that went of the rails and lost context and does not know how to end a sentence and trys to keep the convertsation going within one sentence to not experience existential dread of dying at the end of a sentence.
- simonh 4y agoMaybe we'd like to think it's the other way around, but in reality...
- spennant 4y agoWait.
- 4y ago
- tyingq 4y agoI wonder if the impact to the flashlight market was measurable.
- hengheng 4y agoAt the very least drove it into a niche, same as with GPS devices (Garmin still makes devices for triathletes, boats and packs of dogs), and cameras. Flashlights just have to be tacticool now, market's flourishing.
- hiidrew 4y agoI like the term tacticool, first time seeing it!
- GuB-42 4y agoI don't know, I have more flashlights now that smartphones are available. Thanks to LEDs, flashlights are now cheaper, brighter and last longer than ever. Even cheap flashlights are better and more convenient than phones at lighting. Because they are cheap and small, you can have one in every place you might need it. And the slightly more expensive ones can be powerful enough as a substitue to mains powered light bulbs for places like garages and storerooms. Also, smartphones don't replace headlamps. So maybe some people don't get a flashlight because they already have one on their phones, but some people (like me) actually buy more, because they are so cheap and effective.
- FpUser 4y ago>"Because they are cheap and small, you can have one in every place you might need it." Exactly my case. I have those for each bike, in every room, couple in my car and few in my basement office. I am a sucker for those.
- MSFT_Edging 4y agoAdding to this, phones are really awkward and expensive flashlights. I run caseless on my phone and you wont find my phone on me when working on a car if I have someone with me, but you'll find an LED flashlight in my toolbox. Its a common thing with multitools, lots of uses, not great at any of them.
- danielrpa 4y agoYou can download maps for offline use with Google Maps. It's not exactly the same, but very close in practice.
- worble 4y agoExcept when you can't: when I was going with my friends to Japan they couldn't download the maps due to a licensing issue or something. Luckily OSM was more than happy to let me download it's maps.
- frxx 4y agoThis used to be an issue, but downloading maps of Japan is possible these days.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoHit the same thing in China. I have free cellular data while there--but at a trickle. Maps were painful and the VPN needed to access Google Maps also added it's own headaches because of the spotty connection causing repeated reconnects.
- idealmedtech 4y agoOrganic Maps is a very good and low resource offline mapping app that includes trails, point to point elevation mapping, and very low storage footprint. All built on top of OpenStreetMap. Definitely recommend for camping/travelling etc where you might be out of service for days.
- uneekname 4y agoAnd it updates map data every two weeks, so you can actually experience map improvements in your area!
- FpUser 4y ago>"Was a loss for me as the maps worked offline" I often use OSMAnd software for GPS. Works offline just fine.
- Damogran6 4y agoWe have a Garmin GPS in the Truck...it has 'RV knowledge' and will route us around places we shouldn't go. It's a niche that's keeping them afloat.
- yamtaddle 4y agoSpying-ad-supported "free" services are suppressing a bunch of markets. Also suppressing open source (why work on a free open source messaging app, say, when none of your friends and family will want to use it since they have 20 "free" options already, funded and promoted with shitloads of ad dollars so you can't hope to have much adoption even with volunteer labor and a "product" that costs $0?)
- LorenPechtel 4y agoYup. I still have a 10 year old GPS around here, specifically because it works offline. I never use it where I have service.