Hot on the heels of Samsung’s announcement…
Except it’s a Huawei.
True, but I just think it’s interesting that they went in an almost completely different design direction. Wrap-around screen on the outside rather than on the inside.
This is only the start. I’m telling you, we’re gonna be doing LCD origami. No exaggeration.
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One form factor I see people fucking with is Smart Slap Bangles.
Also at what point will the displays be discrete from a computation core/dock? Even with folding screens the need to fit the other elements of phone bullshit make it beefy. Just need a battery with some IO and a logic board in one unit, while what you actually take out of your pocket is a simple thin, ultralight touch screen.
The thin client goal even since the '90s is to have only I/O devices with a network connection and to centralize all computation and storage on real computers aka, someone else’s computer, aka the cloud.
There are positives and negatives. Luckiily, or unluckily, our networks have never been good enough for this to be a feasible idea.
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Yeah the cloud based thin client wouldn’t work for cell phones where a portion of the time you will not have signal. (Even when we eventually have great signal everywhere) But having the cellphone as a host for an external monitor/display that you interface with doesn’t have those particular challenges. Eventually the phone’s own screen would be superfluous.
This has been the goal since the freaking 1960s. It’s all cyclical.
Once upon a time, you just had basic terminals and I/O devices attached to a big honking machine located either in your basement or across town (AKA the 1960s version of “the cloud”). Back then, even 300 bps was a fast enough “network” as you were just sending plain ASCII text using line-oriented applications (think “ed” on Unix or “edlin” on DOS) to your thin clients, which happened to be teletypes.
Eventually, teletypes were replaced with various forms of CRT-based terminals (there is a subtle difference between “dumb” and “smart” terminals that I won’t get into here, but most of what people refer to as “dumb” terminals these days aren’t actually “dumb”) that allowed for screen positioning commands as they were using actual screens and not giant rolls of paper. 2400-9600 bps were fast enough “networks” for these sorts of applications.
The late 1970s and into the 1980s were when things started to change with the introduction of personal computers. No longer were computers some giant collection of machines housed in some underground bunker somewhere that you needed to pay homage to a “priesthood” of system operators in order to get any sort of access to. Now you can finally have one on your desk! And do useful (and sometimes fun) things with it!
“The cloud” is just the same old stuff, just updated with more modern technology, although some of the tech isn’t really all that different (Unix was used with terminals back in the 70s, after all!). Only now the priesthood is even smaller. Instead of every sufficiently large enough organization basically having its own priesthood, we’re basically down to just 3: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some things that are a natural fit for outsourcing to someone else in the cloud or whatever. However, it’s a lot of hype over something that isn’t really all that new.
Fuck April Fools Bullshit.
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Walked past an Apple store today and just checked in to see just how big the new iPhones are because whatev.
The Xr and Xs+ are, obviously, ginormous. Nope, nope, nope.
The regular Xs, however, is actually not significantly larger than the 7 I have now.
5.44 x 2.64 x 0.28 in for the 7.
5.70 x 2.80 x 0.30 for the XS.
Both phones are still too big, but if I was forced to get a new phone today, I guess the XS is it. If my 7 dies, it’s good to know I won’t have to suffer a phone that is drastically much bigger than what I have now. When they come out with new models worth upgrading to, perhaps when 5G is real, hopefully they will still offer a model in this big, but less big, size. Assuming of course they don’t come back with a small phone again.
One bonus is that the screen on the Xs does cover the entire device. It’s a lot more screen real estate without the dead areas at the top and bottom.
Well shit. I knew first gen would be dodgy at best but not this bad.
To be fair, at least two of those were caused by reviewers breaking the phone being stupid, and there are other reviewers(Gizmodo and Reckoner for two I know of) that haven’t failed yet.
Yeah, this feels like a similar situation to bent iPhones or whatever. Something happens a few times and it gets inflated into being a huge deal by media looking for a story.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of hardware flaws out there that aren’t dramatic and sexy like a very expensive phone being visibly super broken. They mostly get ignored by the media even though they are huge problems that probably do deserve a recall. That Macbook keyboard problem was huge.
I’d say having a vital layer of the phone look likes like a temporary screen protector feels like rather flawed design.
I’m not mad the phone isn’t ready for prime time, but then I don’t have a job/stock options riding on this phone’s performance.
I do hope they can get it to work. Having a phone that can double as a tablet, is something that I would be in the market for the next time I’m looking for a phone.
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While it’s a little more niche, there’s a similar problem with Logitech G29 racing wheels - some units will just squeak like mad when you turn them. Eventually, the squeaky ones break, it significantly shortens their lifespan. They know what the problem is, but it’s not worth the money it would take to fix, so the official solution is just RMA them until you get one that doesn’t squeak. Or at least, doesn’t squeak for long enough for it to get out of warranty to RMA it. Nobody seems to particularly care.
Plus, these are review units for an as of yet unreleased device, with the first run at a new technology. It’s not unusual for them to have problems.
Oh, there are tons of niche problems. I had a Logitech G603 mouse with the opposite scrolling problem. It basically made the scroll wheel completely useless.
I had good experiences with Logitech stuff since the '90s, but lately I’m falling off their boat.
Basically, the only things I’d buy from Logitech at this point are anything with a Saitek logo on it, or had one on it in the past - even after the acquisition, Saitek stuff has been rock solid. Well, either that, or it would have to be MAD cheap, to the point where I won’t mind that much if it breaks or fucks up six to twelve months down the road.