Why are android phones so massive these days?

[caja-dglh]

Why are people so invested in trying to convince others that their purely personal aesthetic choices are misguided?

Because Toby's shoes.

[Jimski]

My phone is costing me about £530 over two years on a contract.

That's not so bad, given it presumably includes all costs, so you're not paying anything else per month?

[DCI Harry Batt]

That's just the cost of the phone. And separately I'm paying for whatever it is one pays for. Internet access, I suppose, as I don't really make phone calls. I can't remember how much that is.

[Stumpy Pepys]

See the thing is, you're still thinking about them as phones. And £850 is a lot to make phone calls. But they're not phones. They're fully spec'd minature computers that happen to be able to make calls. There's basically nothing you can't do on a phone that you could do on a laptop and as most of them will stream to bigger screens, you're not even losing that.

For a lot of people, yes. For everyone else (including me), no.

As soon as lockdown kicked in, PC sales skyrocketed, because you can't do real work on a phone.

[Jimski]

That's just the cost of the phone. And separately I'm paying for whatever it is one pays for. Internet access, I suppose, as I don't really make phone calls. I can't remember how much that is.

Ah ok, more than I thought then.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Well, it was £9.94 last month, but I think there was some reason why it was lower than it should be. Or maybe not. I don't really know.

[Sporting]

There's basically nothing you can't do on a phone that you could do on a laptop and as most of them will stream to bigger screens, you're not even losing that.

Maybe, but ease of use when using Excel, Teams, Zoom etc.? There's no way I could do my job on a mobile phone. And when you say bigger screen do you mean a laptop screen? Cos then I might as well use the laptop in the first place.

[Sporting]

Also, on the laptop I have many more Control + F and so on functions. Nor does my eyesight suffer so much. Nor is it so easy to lose.

[Moonlight Shadow]

I don't use my phone for work, I have a laptop and a monitor provided by my employer to do so. 99% of my leisure stuff is done on phone however.

[Fussbudget]

I don't care how much people spend on their phone because how they choose to spend their money is none of my business and if they use their phone that much and think it's worth it then all power to them. But the idea that even the best phone can do everything a fully-specced computer can do is clearly ridiculous. Try running After Effects on a phone and let me know how that goes

[ursus arctos]

The Voice of Reason

[WOM]

I don't care how much people spend on their phone because how they choose to spend their money is none of my business and if they use their phone that much and think it's worth it then all power to them.

Fair. But can we still direct scorn at the people who line up at the Apple store to get stuff on day 1? Please? I'll make up for it somewhere else.

[San Bernardhinault]

Try running After Effects on a phone and let me know how that goes

That's why you need a 42 inch wide aspect ratio phone screen tethered to a big phone that sits under your desk. It's not very portable... but you have to make trade-offs.

[Jimski]

Hah, I don't mind how much people spend on their phone either - it's their money - but I reserve the right to be shocked by the amounts!

[blameless]

This ^

[Moonlight Shadow]

Anyhow it's ordered and now i wonder what to do with that pair of Bose headphones, I have a pair of those noise cancelling gyzmos already that I rarely use...

[ursus arctos]

Android 12 appears to be designed (at least in part) for those of us whose eyesight is not was it once was.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I was just thinking the same, ua.

[caja-dglh]

This would explain the size component - they are trying to stroke your ego by letting you have the same number of characters in each row...

[Toby Gymshorts]

Anyhow it's ordered and now i wonder what to do with that pair of Bose headphones, I have a pair of those noise cancelling gyzmos already that I rarely use...

I mean, I could take them off your hands for the right price...

[Moonlight Shadow]

I mean, I could take them off your hands for the right price...

Received them .. Bose Quiet Comfort 45...

[Kevin S]

My Galaxy A51 lies in a box of rice, in the hope that a few days' drying time might see the screen come back to life. Was great fun this morning with the alarms going off and all I could do was snooze it and wait for it to go off again soon after.

Yes, it's my own fault for dropping the thing into the toilet yesterday but I've dropped that phone more times than I care to remember. It's just so bloody big. The contract was August 2020-2022 so if it comes back to life then I'll stick with it until the end, but I am not holding out all that much hope.

This morning I rescued the nano SIM - bit damp in there, maybe taking that out will will help - and put it into my 2017-2020 phone, which fortunately I still have around (Galaxy A5). It's so much better to hold. Yes, it has a 'screen' rather than the whole glass being the screen, but I can live with that for a while if need be. I do however need to wait 24 hours for Google to let me back in as the two step verification would be on... the phone in the box of rice.

The real downside, and the reason I gave up using the old phone in the first place, is how quickly the battery drains (more than 10pc an hour even when idle) and the fairly knackered charging port that means the cable drops out easily and it doesn't do fast charging any more. I wonder if I can live with it for a bit again though, just to get a bit closer to the 'free' upgrade date. But I bet I won't find anything the same size again :-/

[Ginger Yellow]

At this point I don't think I'd ever buy a phone that isn't capable of withstanding a fall into water. Pretty much all the flagship phones are waterproof these days, and a lot of the mid-range ones too.

[WOM]

I have a theory that a salad spinner would be more effective at getting water out of a phone. Like, put it dead centre of the spinny part and tape it down and then spin it like mad for a while. The water to make for the exits due to centripetal force. That's my theory anyway.

[Kevin S]

I have one of those. I'll give it a go if you like.

Oddly the phone was weird for a little bit (things started opening and closing) and then was fine for about 7 hours. Suddenly it all went a weird orangey colour and then totally black.