4 ms·

One thing not mentioned yet is what happens when you've got a cheaper phone filled with photos and videos. At various times I've had to spend a few minutes dele

by tdeck 2y ago

One thing not mentioned yet is what happens when you've got a cheaper phone filled with photos and videos. At various times I've had to spend a few minutes deleting things just to download some stupid 100 meg app that I need to use for a total of 5 minutes to complete some basic task.

philipov 2y ago
Is your cheaper phone unable to interface with a computer? I'm no advocate of an app-based economy, but your phone shouldn't be the archive for your photos.
- tdeck 2y ago
  I back my photos up using adb backup, but I don't keep them in cloud services.
- layer8 2y ago
  That doesn’t solve the problem of having to spend time deleting photos and later restoring them back from the archive.
  - philipov 2y ago
    plug in USB cable, drag and drop entire directory from one drive to another with file explorer, is the only reasonable way to manage photos. Get everything off the device at the end of each day. Why would you ever put things back on the phone?
    - tdeck 2y ago
      And then if I want to look at my photos while I'm out, or show them to someone, I don't have them on my phone anymore?
      - genewitch 2y ago
        I hear you; in practice I can use my nextcloud server for this, or if I have tailscale turned on in the phone I can even use the synology photo app. Being forced to upgrade phones... Ugh. I don't have a solution if you're not me and you're not paying me, though.
    - layer8 2y ago
      Because I want to be able to search for and show or send photos to other people on the go. A smartphone is like a little computer you can use on the go, in case you weren’t aware.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      If only phone vendors didn't try to break this functionality.
      - kjkjadksj 2y ago
        Yeah when was the last time image capture got an update? 2010?
    - lucb1e 2y ago
      Ah yes, let me just walk home for 20 hours instead of taking a train because I need to first transfer the pictures I took on a trip to my computer before I can install the local transport company's app to get home now that they removed ticket machines from platforms and are telling people to use their app to buy tickets... I can think of various solutions (from companies not requiring an app in the first place to inserting an SD card) but suggesting that people simply not store user data on their phone is a new one
zulban 2y ago
If you have a place to live, you shouldn't carry all your belongings with you in a backpack when you go outside. Similarly, a phone should not be your archive of all your media.
- tdeck 2y ago
  Perhaps I can be patient and explain the underlying concepts here, since they seem to be unintuitive to a small minority of very condescending commenters: 1. I like to have access to my photos and videos while I'm on the go. You never know when the subject of some trip or experience from 2 years ago will come up in conversation, and I'll want to show a photo of it to someone I'm talking to. Since photos and videos don't weight anything inside my phone, it's no trouble to carry them. 2. I don't like to give cloud services all my photos and videos. Despite the extremely dark pattern in Google Photos where it tries multiple times a month to trick me into enabling cloud backup, I've kept it off. Some of my photos may be sensitive things like personal documents, I'd rather not have to think about what's in the cloud and what isn't, and what is deleted where. These services also often aren't free and I'd prefer not to pay for them. 3. I back up my phone regularly to my personal computer, so losing my phone doesn't mean I lose all the media on my phone. 4. And since I know someone will ask, I lock my phone. Not with a fingerprint; with a passcode. It's not perfect but I'm comfortable with the level of security.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    > Since photos and videos don't weight anything inside my phone, it's no trouble to carry them. But in your example they -do- weigh something, measured in megabytes. So there is an obvious tradeoff in terms of what you can fit on your phone with some spare empty margin, similar to physical goods that you need to fit into a backpack when you know you might pick something else up along the way.
    - kxrm 2y ago
      No, they don't "weigh" anything. Digital storage is so far removed from this concept. Let us not excuse poor business practices by trying to offload a piece of their business systems on to their customers' devices. I shouldn't have to provide space on my property to conduct business with another organization.
shipp02 2y ago
A lot of suggestions ask the poster to not store photos on their phone, but this takes away the functionality from their phone that they actually want in service using 1 app for 5 minutes.
flocciput 2y ago
I feel your pain. I managed to use my first smart phone, an iPhone 6s, for almost 10 years. In that time the system data took up more and more of what little space I had on there (16GB I think? So unthinkably small to most people that they think I'm confusing it with RAM) to where I was basically dealing with a few mb of storage to use for photos and work-critical apps like Authenticator. I also refuse to use iCloud on principle (tried it once, and realized when I wanted to download all my photos onto my computer that it would only let me do 1 at a time, or low quality versions, or something scummy like that). It got so bad I had to do things like delete my Internet history if I even wanted to copy and paste something! And I would do everything I could to not have to pick which photos and conversations I needed to delete forever just to download some fucking app I would only use one time to order food or park somewhere or do first-time router setup. Finally I had to give in and get a new phone, because managing phone storage was making my life much more difficult than it needed to be. But I'm still so mad that I had to, because daily living seems to demand more and more storage space. And people accept it!! Ugh. The dang thing didn't even have a scratch on it either. Would've used it for 20 years if I could.

by tdeck 2y ago

philipov 2y ago

Is your cheaper phone unable to interface with a computer? I'm no advocate of an app-based economy, but your phone shouldn't be the archive for your photos.

tdeck 2y ago
I back my photos up using adb backup, but I don't keep them in cloud services.
layer8 2y ago
That doesn’t solve the problem of having to spend time deleting photos and later restoring them back from the archive.
- philipov 2y ago
  plug in USB cable, drag and drop entire directory from one drive to another with file explorer, is the only reasonable way to manage photos. Get everything off the device at the end of each day. Why would you ever put things back on the phone?
  - tdeck 2y ago
    And then if I want to look at my photos while I'm out, or show them to someone, I don't have them on my phone anymore?
    - genewitch 2y ago
      I hear you; in practice I can use my nextcloud server for this, or if I have tailscale turned on in the phone I can even use the synology photo app. Being forced to upgrade phones... Ugh. I don't have a solution if you're not me and you're not paying me, though.
  - layer8 2y ago
    Because I want to be able to search for and show or send photos to other people on the go. A smartphone is like a little computer you can use on the go, in case you weren’t aware.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    If only phone vendors didn't try to break this functionality.
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      Yeah when was the last time image capture got an update? 2010?
  - lucb1e 2y ago
    Ah yes, let me just walk home for 20 hours instead of taking a train because I need to first transfer the pictures I took on a trip to my computer before I can install the local transport company's app to get home now that they removed ticket machines from platforms and are telling people to use their app to buy tickets... I can think of various solutions (from companies not requiring an app in the first place to inserting an SD card) but suggesting that people simply not store user data on their phone is a new one

zulban 2y ago

If you have a place to live, you shouldn't carry all your belongings with you in a backpack when you go outside. Similarly, a phone should not be your archive of all your media.

tdeck 2y ago
Perhaps I can be patient and explain the underlying concepts here, since they seem to be unintuitive to a small minority of very condescending commenters: 1. I like to have access to my photos and videos while I'm on the go. You never know when the subject of some trip or experience from 2 years ago will come up in conversation, and I'll want to show a photo of it to someone I'm talking to. Since photos and videos don't weight anything inside my phone, it's no trouble to carry them. 2. I don't like to give cloud services all my photos and videos. Despite the extremely dark pattern in Google Photos where it tries multiple times a month to trick me into enabling cloud backup, I've kept it off. Some of my photos may be sensitive things like personal documents, I'd rather not have to think about what's in the cloud and what isn't, and what is deleted where. These services also often aren't free and I'd prefer not to pay for them. 3. I back up my phone regularly to my personal computer, so losing my phone doesn't mean I lose all the media on my phone. 4. And since I know someone will ask, I lock my phone. Not with a fingerprint; with a passcode. It's not perfect but I'm comfortable with the level of security.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  > Since photos and videos don't weight anything inside my phone, it's no trouble to carry them. But in your example they -do- weigh something, measured in megabytes. So there is an obvious tradeoff in terms of what you can fit on your phone with some spare empty margin, similar to physical goods that you need to fit into a backpack when you know you might pick something else up along the way.
  - kxrm 2y ago
    No, they don't "weigh" anything. Digital storage is so far removed from this concept. Let us not excuse poor business practices by trying to offload a piece of their business systems on to their customers' devices. I shouldn't have to provide space on my property to conduct business with another organization.

shipp02 2y ago

A lot of suggestions ask the poster to not store photos on their phone, but this takes away the functionality from their phone that they actually want in service using 1 app for 5 minutes.

flocciput 2y ago

I feel your pain. I managed to use my first smart phone, an iPhone 6s, for almost 10 years. In that time the system data took up more and more of what little space I had on there (16GB I think? So unthinkably small to most people that they think I'm confusing it with RAM) to where I was basically dealing with a few mb of storage to use for photos and work-critical apps like Authenticator. I also refuse to use iCloud on principle (tried it once, and realized when I wanted to download all my photos onto my computer that it would only let me do 1 at a time, or low quality versions, or something scummy like that). It got so bad I had to do things like delete my Internet history if I even wanted to copy and paste something! And I would do everything I could to not have to pick which photos and conversations I needed to delete forever just to download some fucking app I would only use one time to order food or park somewhere or do first-time router setup. Finally I had to give in and get a new phone, because managing phone storage was making my life much more difficult than it needed to be. But I'm still so mad that I had to, because daily living seems to demand more and more storage space. And people accept it!! Ugh. The dang thing didn't even have a scratch on it either. Would've used it for 20 years if I could.