We’re like 10+ years past the point where new smartphone features were worth something. Now we’re back to buying new phones because the last one finally died, not to upgrade.
My phone was 5 years old when I got it second hand. What really would a new one give at this point? Just look for the supported device list on calyx/graphene/etc and pick one that fits your budget that you can get second hand.
I’m currently using a Samsung Galaxy phone that’s old enough to still have an SD card slot. I’m dreading the day that it dies and I have to pay 10x the amount for 1/2 the storage capacity.
If you keep it long enough till it wont work on newer networks, your carrier might offer you one for free. I got my Pixel 6 pro for free because my old Galaxy didn’t support the 5g networks. I was forced to upgrade so they gave me the phone.
Some Chinese phones are interesting. I particularly like the ones with lofic camera sensors, or crazy attachable lens modules, but there are all sorts of niche devices.
What made them boring is the homogeneity. Like aliens designed them, have no idea what an actual human would want, but know they have to build one bland universal thing for everyone.
I want the Xaomi 18 Pro Max pretty hard. I record a fair bit of selfie video so being able to use the back camera for that with the preview screen would be dope.
The LG Wing is also my favorite phone of all time. I like fun phones. Unfortunately, fun phones don’t really seem to sell very well.
…This is better than the results we got for the current leader in terms of dynamic range, the ARRI Alexa 35 (and, there is a factor of 100x in price between the two).
That, plus a gimble, means its basically better than any near-term phone. I’d already have one, but… TBH, I don’t really do selfies.
The specific weird use case is making a quick short vertical video on my walk that I just upload without editing from my phone while still on the walk. They’re companions containing BTS and whatnot to my high-effort long-form videos where I do use different cameras. The whole point is that it’s low effort and low friction for me.
Xaomi 18 Pro Max, while with a really weird name looks really beautiful & sleek, it’s like the optimistic future frutiger aero phone, if I HAD to pick a smart phone & I had a thousand pounds to spare it would probably be that.
But I don’t find the LG Wing appealing personally based on a glance, the screen thing just feels bloaty, I don’t see the milage you can get out of it.
As for the Wing, I don’t think another phone (aside from foldables) allows you to run 3 apps at once. It’s great for multitasking. I often watch a video on one screen while texting on another. It’s just great.
Depending on what google do over the coming years I may just go back to a brick phone and get a small cheap laptop with Linux on it to carry around for anything fun. Backpack with a power bank for mains voltage perhaps? Some low spec laptops have pretty low power requirements though.
We’re like 10+ years past the point where new smartphone features were worth something. Now we’re back to buying new phones because the last one finally died, not to upgrade.
My phone was 5 years old when I got it second hand. What really would a new one give at this point? Just look for the supported device list on calyx/graphene/etc and pick one that fits your budget that you can get second hand.
I’m currently using a Samsung Galaxy phone that’s old enough to still have an SD card slot. I’m dreading the day that it dies and I have to pay 10x the amount for 1/2 the storage capacity.
If you keep it long enough till it wont work on newer networks, your carrier might offer you one for free. I got my Pixel 6 pro for free because my old Galaxy didn’t support the 5g networks. I was forced to upgrade so they gave me the phone.
Sprint made me buy a new phone to ditch my pixel 2a, then never turned off the 4g network where I live.
My phone is a couple years old, but is a flagship. I bought it because I love emulators and ROMs, and now GameNative opened up my whole steam library.
That, and the camera are the big selling points. An older, cheaper, phone would not have 16 gigs of RAM, or a processor that can handle any of that.
Whether that’s worth $1,000 to you is definitely a question.
Some Chinese phones are interesting. I particularly like the ones with lofic camera sensors, or crazy attachable lens modules, but there are all sorts of niche devices.
What made them boring is the homogeneity. Like aliens designed them, have no idea what an actual human would want, but know they have to build one bland universal thing for everyone.
I want the Xaomi 18 Pro Max pretty hard. I record a fair bit of selfie video so being able to use the back camera for that with the preview screen would be dope.
The LG Wing is also my favorite phone of all time. I like fun phones. Unfortunately, fun phones don’t really seem to sell very well.
For selfies, have you considered a pocketable gimbal cam instead?
They’re getting ridiclously good. The DJI 4P in particular has more dynamic range than most cinema cameras: https://www.cined.com/dji-osmo-pocket-4p-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-exposure-latitude/
That, plus a gimble, means its basically better than any near-term phone. I’d already have one, but… TBH, I don’t really do selfies.
The specific weird use case is making a quick short vertical video on my walk that I just upload without editing from my phone while still on the walk. They’re companions containing BTS and whatnot to my high-effort long-form videos where I do use different cameras. The whole point is that it’s low effort and low friction for me.
Xaomi 18 Pro Max, while with a really weird name looks really beautiful & sleek, it’s like the optimistic future frutiger aero phone, if I HAD to pick a smart phone & I had a thousand pounds to spare it would probably be that.
But I don’t find the LG Wing appealing personally based on a glance, the screen thing just feels bloaty, I don’t see the milage you can get out of it.
As for the Wing, I don’t think another phone (aside from foldables) allows you to run 3 apps at once. It’s great for multitasking. I often watch a video on one screen while texting on another. It’s just great.
Squints.
…I thought that looked silly at first, but that’s actually not a bad design. Its way more practical than Apple’s foldable for sure.
Calling it Apples foldable when foldables have been made for years is weird but yeah. It was great.
I bought a new smartphone because I wanted to escape US tech oligarchs. One could call that a feature as well I guess.
Depending on what google do over the coming years I may just go back to a brick phone and get a small cheap laptop with Linux on it to carry around for anything fun. Backpack with a power bank for mains voltage perhaps? Some low spec laptops have pretty low power requirements though.
Same, the “best” features of my current phone is the user replaceable battery and certfied fair wages for employees involved with making this thing