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The war has already been lost. Headphone jacks are basically only in low end phones now. They used to be in mid range devices too, but even there they are gone.

The war has already been lost. Headphone jacks are basically only in low end phones now. They used to be in mid range devices too, but even there they are gone. You have to really compromise to get it which is a shame. What I do wish is if somebody at least made is a USB C phone dock similar to what Apple made for 30 pin and lightning iPhones with audio out jacks. There are dongles that let you charge and do audio out but not in nice dock form.

AtlasBarfed 2y ago
It is truly bizarre that flagship phones are the ones that are dropping the most features. And yet, we are approaching the day very soon where there's no point in getting the next year's flagship phone. It's not faster. It's not better. It doesn't have a better battery. The camera's not going to get any better. It's going to be the same form factor. At some point phones will stop charging ridiculous amounts of money for 128 GB of RAM, when a terabyte of storage is approaching $50 in retail cost. More ports SD card. I can see all of it coming back on the table. Cuz you're going to want features if you get a nice phone.
- NoboruWataya 2y ago
  I think the flagship manufacturers' approach has always been to find the two or three things consumers will pay most for and aggressively optimise for them. So phones got thinner, cameras and screens got progressively better, for a few generations at least. Other features that got in the way and didn't add a huge amount to the phone's mass market appeal got dropped. It will certainly be interesting to see how the manufacturers continue to find ways to differentiate themselves. Right now, unsurprisingly, all the hype seems to be focused around AI. So possibly future phones will be ruthlessly optimised for running LLM models. But if, instead, the phone manufacturers just decide to use cloud-hosted AI (or if the hype around AI dies down), then they'll need something else. The foldable form factor is the only other one that occurs to me right now.
Klonoar 2y ago
The Sony Xperia is the only high end model I know of that’s not dropped it.
- piperswe 2y ago
  And the latest Xperia isn't even available in the US anymore.

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

It is truly bizarre that flagship phones are the ones that are dropping the most features. And yet, we are approaching the day very soon where there's no point in getting the next year's flagship phone. It's not faster. It's not better. It doesn't have a better battery. The camera's not going to get any better. It's going to be the same form factor. At some point phones will stop charging ridiculous amounts of money for 128 GB of RAM, when a terabyte of storage is approaching $50 in retail cost. More ports SD card. I can see all of it coming back on the table. Cuz you're going to want features if you get a nice phone.

NoboruWataya 2y ago
I think the flagship manufacturers' approach has always been to find the two or three things consumers will pay most for and aggressively optimise for them. So phones got thinner, cameras and screens got progressively better, for a few generations at least. Other features that got in the way and didn't add a huge amount to the phone's mass market appeal got dropped. It will certainly be interesting to see how the manufacturers continue to find ways to differentiate themselves. Right now, unsurprisingly, all the hype seems to be focused around AI. So possibly future phones will be ruthlessly optimised for running LLM models. But if, instead, the phone manufacturers just decide to use cloud-hosted AI (or if the hype around AI dies down), then they'll need something else. The foldable form factor is the only other one that occurs to me right now.

Klonoar 2y ago

The Sony Xperia is the only high end model I know of that’s not dropped it.

piperswe 2y ago
And the latest Xperia isn't even available in the US anymore.