

Yeah that’s exactly what I was thinking, maybe we will start to see this type of thing elsewhere soon. The whole Y2K millennial bait thing is very popular at the moment, lots of people are feeling nostalgic about tech.
Yeah that’s exactly what I was thinking, maybe we will start to see this type of thing elsewhere soon. The whole Y2K millennial bait thing is very popular at the moment, lots of people are feeling nostalgic about tech.
I don’t know if anyone else feels this way but the newer design actually looks less modern to me. Blending the colours makes the logo feel more complex, gives me more of a late 2000s Windows Vista kinda vibe. I’m not sure if it actually has a subtle light reflection effect going on as well, but that’s another design trend that used to be a lot more common around that period.
The Sony Xperia 1 VII runs Android 15, with a promise for 4 OS version releases and 6 years of ongoing security fixes
Damn, this is truly great phone now with that extended security promise. It was always the major thing holding back Sony’s flagships, but they’ve addressed it without compromising on some of the things that make their phones unique (headphone jack, microSD expansion, side-mounted fingerprint reader, dedicated two stage camera button, etc).
inb4 Bendgate 2.0
and companies would just give up trying to design a separate app for the Chinese market
I’m not so sure about that. Some of these brands (and their sub-brands) enjoy significant market share outside of China. I suspect it would be in their financial interests to continue to maintain “global” versions.
It has microSD and up to 3 major Android upgrades (so probably 3 - 4 years of security), according to GSMArena. If it’s anything like the first one, the “modularity” aspect has nothing to do with repairability and is just a gimmick.
Android journalists do the same pump and dump with the 9 - 12 month newer Motorola every year now. It’s quite funny how they all just collectively ignore desynced release cycles and pretend like their comparison between the 2025 Motorola and the 2024 Samsung is a fair and/or useful one. Wouldn’t you know it? The newer Motorola wins every single time! How surprising!
Not sure if it’s a practical choice but that ‘Mountain Trail’ one with the “wood” back looks amazing.
Haven’t they had major issues with the OneUI 7 rollout on other devices? I don’t think this has anything to do with OneUI being “bloated” as others are saying, like you my family has many mid-range Samsungs and none of them ever had performance issues. Last year’s weren’t anywhere near this bad, either. To me it sounds like something is seriously fucked up with OneUI 7, which these new phones are launching with, and that is the major reason why it the weaker chipsets are suddenly struggling.
That white one is a thing of beauty, such a clean design. I always loved the look of these phones with their uninterrupted displays (kinda crazy that is actually a feature now).
No reason? The XZ1 Compact only came with 32 GB of internal storage. If I wanted to use that phone, 32 GB was it. You seem to have extreme difficulty understanding the very simple concept that not everyone wants or needs the same things as you in life. We aren’t all you, we don’t all want to live like you. You’re not the main character.
Let’s stop defending companies
Let’s stop making strawman arguments. Nowhere did I “defend companies”, I talked about my own experience using a 32 GB phone. It is enough for me. Nothing you say can will change how I use my phone or what I require out of it.
I just explained all the ways in which a 32 GB phone is sufficient for my needs, with room to spare. Not everyone is glued to their phone 24/7, some of us still just use them as basic tools and 32 GB is enough storage for that.
32 GB is enough for phone calls, messaging, internet (social media, email, browsing), banking, 2FA, news, shopping, calendar, weather, podcasts, music and video streaming, navigation, basic camera usage, etc. I used an XZ1 Compact with Android 14 for a large chunk of last year and only used 23 GB of the 32 GB with all of this and more.
What would you suggest as a good alternative? Lineage?
Nothing is really a direct alternative to GrapheneOS overall, it leans into security a lot more than other privacy ROMS. However, if you just want to deGoogle your Pixel and improve its privacy, another option is iodéOS which is a fork of LineageOS with some further privacy enhancements and an inbuilt tracker blocker. Updates are a couple of weeks slower than GrapheneOS, but you can lock the bootloader following installation. You can check if the Pixel you want is supported here. There are also community builds for some of the unsupported Pixels. The 9 series hasn’t been added yet beyond a community build, although I’m sure it is coming soon.
OnePlus has designed “a very interesting function” for the button, which will be revealed soon.
inb4 AI assistant, just like Nothing. Kinda funny how quickly we’re circling back to the days of Bixby buttons.
Yeah they are a bit of a fad with Gen Z for this reason. Though from what I’ve seen, a lot of these young people have trouble sticking with them for more than few weeks because they didn’t actually grow up with the technology and are quite clueless about what the experience of living with one is actually like. I think the best solution to this problem of screen time and smartphone addiction is to modify your existing phone and develop behaviours that help you regulate its use, but for Gen Z this is difficult because a) they aren’t old enough/have enough life experience yet to be capable of this kind of personal transformation and b) their lifestyle is so centred around presenting themselves favourably online and to their peers. Offloading all the effort on to a Y2K style product is a much more attractive solution for them.
If you’re capable of building LineageOS or something for it then don’t let me stop you! I just assumed that you, like most users including myself, would be relying on someone else doing that bit for you and I just don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.
I’m not sure if “things have gotten so bad”. The native English speakers who actually use this stuff are probably the ones who struggled with writing in school and have always been terrible at it. That’s obviously not everyone though, a lot of people are still competent enough to type their own emails.
That was my first thought too. I thought the whole reason Android moved away from animation bloat was to improve performance, but everyone seems to be heading back in the opposite direction now. Samsung’s OneUI 7 also added tons of animations that have no functional benefit.