• Kairos@lemmy.today
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      11 days ago

      Welcome to the phone innovation center! We’ve got

      1. Foldable
      2. “AI”
      3. Way too big camera
      4. Phone, but oddly shaped
      5. Your OS but worse
      • Dave.@aussie.zone
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        10 days ago

        Oh your new phone can fold in half and it’s got a 600MP camera and it has a 37Ah battery that lasts for 3 days even when it’s churning on its internal navel-gazing AI 24/7? That’s greaaaaat.

        But I want crazy shit!

        I want a row of clicky buttons down one side as direct shortcuts to apps.

        I want a TV tuner and a pull-out antenna so I can watch Judge Judy serve some proper smackdown to some entitled neighborhood dispute when I’m on the bus, nearly poking someone’s eye out when we hit a pothole.

        I want a phone with a laser pointer and an IR blaster (again).

        I want a phone that looks like the palmtops of old, with a clamshell case and a little hardware chicklet keyboard and it runs on AA’s, except it’s also a phone.

        I want a phone that slots into a boom box and fully controls and plays tapes with auto-reverse.

        I want a phone that’s a drone, throw it in the air and it takes group photos.

        I want a phone that has gyros and can self-balance on one of it’s corners, and do little party tricks, and can hop along behind you if you leave it behind somewhere.

        I want a phone that’s also a mini 1080p laser projector.

        I want its calculator to also have an I Ching mode and print “a suffusion of yellow” instead of any answer greater than 4.

        Where’s all the FUN stuff?

        • fartographer@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          I want a phone that’s also a mini 1080p laser projector.

          My phone is also a 720p projector. The new models project in 2K and have full prism polygon trapezoidal auto adjustment, not just keystone like my phone.

          Also, there’s an infrared camera and a 1200 lumen camping light. But only an 11Ah battery… But it’s got the IR blaster! Only two clicky buttons, and one is dedicated to the camping light.

          No pull out antenna, but it would be really weird to put a pull-out UHF antenna on anything when modern digital antennas are so much more compact and efficient.

          This phone also has literally the worst camera I’ve seen on a phone since my Nexus 6 Shamu. But there’s an active cooling fan built into the phone, and the whole thing is so heavy that my toes still hurt from when I dropped it on them over 3 hours ago.

            • fartographer@lemmy.world
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              10 days ago

              Almost. My previous smart brick was the Ulefone Power Armor 13 with the endoscope. This one is the Unihertz 8849 Tank 4 Pro. The new Tank 5 has a 2K projector.

              I just needed to get off of iPhone and couldn’t afford the phone that I wanted, so I got something within my budget with the best gimmick so that I’d find some joy in it.

              • brachypelmide@lemmy.zip
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                10 days ago

                ah damn and i wanted to guess unihertz but decided not to lol. i was thinking about getting a brick like that but their custom ROM support (or lack thereof) puts me off. is the stock OS bearable on your unihertz?

                • fartographer@lemmy.world
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                  9 days ago

                  Bearable, but only barely. It’s still significantly better than iPhone, but I honestly nearly bricked my phone the first weekend I got it because I was trying to root it and put it into a red state boot loop. In the end, I had to run a full firmware upgrade and reformat the entire phone, manually add the IMEI/MEID, recalibrate the gyroscope, and refocus the projector.

                  When I have some more time, I’ll probably try it again. If you decide to get a Unihertz and try rooting it but get stuck, send me a message. I documented everything that I tried and what eventually worked, so I might at least be able to help you restore functionality.

          • Dave.@aussie.zone
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            9 days ago

            Oh man that’s sweeeeet. This is the kinda shit I want to see at trade shows , not yet another iteration of “world’s thinnest phone with a chunky camera bulge”.

        • Melonpoly@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          I think my point still stands, outside of China there’s one company that’s trying something different. I think the interesting phone you were talking about was the LG wing? LG has since exited the industry. The only Korean brand still making phones is Samsung.

          • HM King Charles III DG FD@feddit.uk
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            10 days ago

            Nevermind, it was a Chinese brand lol. I was thinking of iKKO’s phone.

            China is also more innovative at AI, the deepseek project releases the software for the models while american companies just sit on their models requiring that you pay them and only them to use them. The Open-Weight AIs, while inferior, are better for human development as a whole.