I am so amused at the “HiLight” feature (lighting up colored LEDs for notifications so you can see them “at a glance” without looking at the screen). This is a feature that was on the Android phones of old (including the original G1) and I loved it, but it got phased out in favor of “always on displays”… which apparently now we want less of!

It’s funny how trends like this are a circle sometimes.

This is precisely why I left Android.

Google can't seem to decide on a direction and stick with it. Years of new features that inevitably ended up abandoned 2 versions later resulted in a constantly changing and unpredictable user experience.

It was fun while I had free time in college and enjoyed flashing ROMs, but as I got busier with life this lack of refinement pushed me away.

The RGB leds were one of my favorite features of early Android phones. I even backed a terrible Kickstarter campaign that synced those colors to an RGB wristband (this was before smartwatches were a thing).

> Google can't seem to decide on a direction and stick with it. Years of new features that inevitably ended up abandoned 2 versions later resulted in a constantly changing and unpredictable user experience.

I'm guessing cultures that reward shipping new products (e.g. 67 different messaging apps) don't turn out great for consumers.

Conversely, I was surprised to learn that the temperature sensor introduced on the Pixel 8 Pro in 2023 was only removed this year. No one knew why it was there in the first place.

I heard that it was a COVID feature. I guess people thought you would be scanning your friend's foreheads before socializing.

That sensor would be much better if it was integrated with the camera and LIDAR, so that you could "paint" a scene with thermal data by moving the phone around.

That's the only plausible scenario, but it also came out in 2023 and people stopped caring at least a year before. And it persisted for a few years so either someone thought they could salvage something from it, or no one had a better idea what to put there.

That probably means the board was being designed a year or two before that... so quite possibly they had put it in the design when it still seemed relevant and the cost/hassle/delay of a new revision of the board design and manufacturing changes made it easier to just leave it there and ignore.

The sensor is damned handy because it has plenty of range and good options in the software for estimating emissivity. I use it in the kitchen.

How exactly do you use it ? Another app or default ?

I just use the stock Pixel Thermometer app (actually not even sure if it's stock or you have to install it from Play Store). Some developers online have complained that there is no public API for it, which may explain lack of other apps. I have never used it for its health purpose. I only use it for objects like walls and cooking pans.

its definitely a meme feature but I use it here and there to estimate ambient temperature (by measuring different surfaces).

also use it to measure the temperature of the bath, things like that.

definitely could do without, but its a fun feature.

I'm sad to see it go. I use it quite frequently for cooking and baking, and have used it for checking if the heating works properly or checking my own body temp. It also makes for a good party trick sometimes.

> The RGB leds were one of my favorite features of early Android phones. I

Right man. I had forgotten that my nexus 7 had this kind of LED and I really liked it and missed it later.

On BlackBerry i had an app that could do colour patterns, rhythms and so on depending who contacted you on which medium. Got a mail from you boss? Blue led. Got an sms or call? Red alarm. U could also group people and or mediums together (this was a basic feature of blackberry os)

That eventually became an OS feature, where you could set the LED color for every app.

Its a smartphone feature and not operating system feature. This is like saying "I left Windows because my Windows Laptops doesnt offer fingerprint scanner anymore"

Google only controls Pixel, but why did Samsung, and Lenovo, and Xiaomi and Motorola remove the LEDs?

Same reason almost anybody in the phone and laptop spaces seem to do almost anything these days: to copy Apple. It's the new sympathetic magic.

Apple hasn’t been innovating in the smartphone space since at least half a decade, compared to the android landscape

And yet every time Apple does something, Android vendors are happy to drop their innovations and realign to whatever Apple’s doing.

Case in point, the latest Samsung foldable that just happens to be the exact same unseen before form factor as the upcoming Apple foldable, released the month before, even though Android has been “innovating in the foldable space” for like 10 years now.

Because until now no one working on those foldable phones had the guts to say “wait let’s not just the take the existing phone screen aspect ratio and make it foldable, this new screen technology should make us rethink the overall form factor” - it took Apple to make that step.

1 month doesn’t seem like enough time to copy something so fundamental as the screen geometry.

Supply chain leaks around this device have been around for quite a while.

The iPhone came out almost 20 years ago, this is a very mature industry.

I don't want my phone to be innovative anymore, I want it to be good and reliable. And Apple has remained so consistent on that, their 2 notable stumbles over the past 2 decades (antennagate, bendgate) are still remembered as notable while Android devices from all manufacturers regularly have major issues like that and no one thinks twice because it's business as usual.

In reality it was because Always On Displays were deemed a better replacement.

They had it as a hidden feature up till the nexus 5 or 6 I believe. Someone bothered to include hardware for an LED even if the stock software never supported it.

I remember my old nexus had it, and it was very customizable. I had it flash different colors for different chats. Definitely funny seeing this make its way back as if it's some new revolutionary feature

This used to be a critical feature for me I used to customize the colour per-app so I could see what notifications I had at a glance. However always-on displays have supplanted this use case for me.

I remember having this on a Sidekick in like 2007.

Just wait until phones get headphone jacks!

My Nexus 5 had that feature and it was really useful to see if the phone had a message pending. They also did the same thing for wireless charging, dropping it and then bringing it back. The PM probably gets paid good money to go in circles.

> lighting up colored LEDs for notifications so you can see them “at a glance” without looking at the screen

My old Blackberry Bold had this feature and I loved it! I had it customized so it would pulse a different color depending on who had messaged me.

Blackberry got a whole bunch of things right but, alas, almost everything else was a bag of rusty spanners.

I do still miss mine, though, slightly.

been waiting for this feature to come back forever. hope it's still around the next time I get a new phone.

One day I hope for a future innovation that brings back 3.5MM jacks and I can have audio as convenient as it was in the 1950s, but until then my bluetooth can connect to my speakers while I'm not in the same building and switch device automatically with no setting to change it and with no warning deafen the people in my house, where the only way to switch back requires a mere 20 screen taps (which i can partly blame graphene os for, not their fault i can use a wire though)

Maybe I take this a little too close to heart.

Just vote with your wallet and don't buy phones without a headphone jack. That's what I do, and I've always had a phone with one.

There is literally no way this can ever result in any impact on the market. Literally no one will ever be able to tell how many sales are made or lost because of whether or not there is a headphone jack. Therefore it is impossible for it to affect anybody's future decision.

This is also my problem with people saying you can vote with your wallet about laptops. No company will ever be able to figure out which features someone bought the laptop for, or which decisions caused others to pass it up. Therefore it is impossible for your (or anybody's) wallet to show companies what you want.

This also means it is impossible to vote about software. Or really anything that has multiple features. You can't vote about cars this way. You can't vote about houses this way. You can't vote about fast food this way. You can't vote about online shopping this way. You either buy all of something or you buy none of it. You can't buy into the parts you want while leaving out the parts you don't want. You incentivize the full package, or you don't, and lost sales are invisible and inscrutable.

Similar things could be said for voting itself.

Absolutely, you can often only really hope for the less overall bad option

Welcome to the world of trade offs. I also want a half decent camera. When I switched from. a Google Pixel to a Samsung s20+ to keep a headphone jack, the camera got worse, even though the pixel was at least half a decade old.

I can't trust Samsung again after that. So much marketing claiming how good their cameras are, but the Pixel and iPhone both blew it out of the water.

Nothing that runs GrapheneOS comes with a jack AFAIK, so that didn't work out. Have to use a different device for anything involving headphones.

I only take phone calls on speaker mode and don't listen to music on my phone anymore, it's that bad. I'll bring the dongle for an airplane, and even that is glitchy.

Plug a USB-C-to-3.5-mm adapter into the end of the audio cable. Plug it into your phone. Done.

You can even keep the connector on the end of the audio cable permanently.

If Google ever fixed Android/AOSP to fully support Apple's adapter for complete volume control, that would be swell.

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/242221770?pli=1

After Google discontinued their own adapter, Apple's might be the next best alternative. But not with that issue unfixed.

fiy, the Apple adapter does seem to work fine now on Android 17 on Pixel phones.

you can also buy a "USB C to 3.5mm audio cable".

USB-C is far easier to break than rca plugs in my experience and then you lose data and rapid charging or charging completely if the phone doesn't do wireless. Until phones get repairable like the current generation of laptops where you pop the port out and can replace it we aren't in a great spot.

It's annoying. Especially if you use those headphones on another device that has 3.5mm headphone jack and no easily accessible free USB C port. And if you need to charge and use headphones...

When I come home in my car, sometimes my daughter's phone (who's already at home) will connect to my car, and her music will stop in her headphones, and I get K-Pop. What a time to be alive.

Better than having your teen’s porn viewing come through the speakers. That was a fun conversation.

USB-C to 3.5mm adapter is about $5 tbf. The rest is just poor configuration on your part.

'You're holding it wrong'

Why shame a customer because they have a preference ?

Their preference is for 'audio as convenient as it was in the 1950s', but they instead go on to describe a basic configuration issue with their use-case.

The reality of consumer audio in 1950s was closer to a physics lab than a residential convenience. The expectation for the end user was an understanding of impedence and ohms in order to pair up an amplifier with passive speakers, terminating bare copper wire with Spade/Pin Connectors or Binding Posts to connect same, dealing with phase cancellation and ground loop issues, maintaining and operating valve based equipment... and that's before we even get into the vagaries of the cartridge, stylus and associated maintenance for a record player and its media.

For reference, Vinyl only replaced Shellac records in the early 1950s - with the very first 12-inch 33⅓ RPM vinyl record released in 1948, and the first 45 in 1949. Similarly, it wasn't until the early 1960s that transistor based playback units superseded valve based.

Thus I wholly refute the claim that the OP would manage in a 'convenient' way when compared with a contemporary audio enthusiast, and that even with experience they would struggle to match the dynamic range and fidelity of a mono AM Radio with a significantly larger degree of hassle.

...or they could just buy a $5 adapter.

I remember my little Motorola flip phones from 25+ years ago had an LED that would blink for things like voice mails or unread SMS. I can't remember if it also did missed calls, and maybe could do orange or green? I seem to recall it did a unary pattern to blink out the number of queued events.

The problem with this kind of feature is that it falls apart if you're the type who leaves things unread or gets them all the time. Then, it is little more than a beacon to say "phone still exists"...

My Nexus One had that colored trackball, and rooting / custom roms allowed you to set specific colors to whatever type of notification or alert you wanted. Good times.

One day those autostereo displays and 3D cameras from the early Androids will return too.

I am only 75, but in a few years I have thought of downsizing to one device (and a VPS for a little coding). A future version of this phone that is triple fold would work for me.

You know, maybe cameras are good enough, and I don't want a tumor at the top edge of my phone that gets tiresome to hold after 5 minutes.

Meet the Vivo X300

https://www.vivo.com/en/products/x300-ultra

What a terrible website to open on your phone. Text and image is clipped, it jumps up and down, loads for several seconds, refreshes entire page several times... I opened it and have no idea what this hardware supposed tonbe.

New phones are so boring now, bring back Nokia

I was looking forward to this one because of the IP68 dust and water protection rating, but the fact that it has the same cameras as the base Pixel 11 instead of the Pro is very sad. I also wish the HiLight feature was more used at launch - for example, having it glow red while recording.

How many people actually care about phone tech anymore?

Like, of course there are subcultures that love this stuff, and I'm not criticizing that. And these folding phones are neat tech. But at some point phones for the 99% got "good enough", the model to model upgrades aren't even worth it.

If that were true, then so many people wouldn't keep buying new high end phones. Yet they continue to do so.

I'd imagine a great portion of the people buying these high end phones are just duped into paying for an overpriced subscription model. They're not really buying phones at store prices.

Well I buy the latest pro phone, and you are right I don't pay store price. AT&T gave me the 17 Pro for free when I traded in my 3 year old 14 Pro.

And my monthly cost of the cell plan with them is only $30 plus taxes and fees which works out to about 36/mo, so it seems like a great deal in the end.

Basically I pay 36/mo, and every 3 years I trade in my phone for the latest pro model and it only costs me sales tax and some $30 "activation fee".

The Fold still has 16GB of RAM. The 11 Pro and 11 Pro XL both got nerfed to 12GB.

You also only get 6 months of a free Google AI Pro subscription (a $120 value) as opposed to the 12 months with the 10 (a $240 value). It's hard to see the 11 as an upgrade.

12gb is a huge downgrade.

I was going to buy an 11 Pro, but now I might just grab a 10 Pro instead. What is the 11 buying me, some extra attention grabbing lights and a small redesign? in exchange for less memory? Oy vey.

Just a note that the 12GB nerf only applies to the base storage version of the pros.

I can’t say I’ve ever found myself thinking “I wish I had more RAM” on my phone. On laptop, I’d take it in a heartbeat but on my phone (which has 6GB) I’m perfectly happy.

I had issues on my iphone 13 pro where switching between two apps would lead to one app "forgetting" what screen it was on. Particularly painful on Safari! Hard to know how much of that is memory pressure but its not a problem I have encountered on recent flagship android phones.

Some of the coming AI features are likely to be gated on how much RAM you have. So it may matter more in the future.

Why is Google averse to larger batteries? The Chinese makers have been stuffing 8000ish mah batteries in rather diminutive phones for two or three years now, and Google is releasing one in 2026 with about half that.

Shipping regulations. >20Wh can't go by airpost in the west.

Oppo doesn't have that issue in EU and ships 7500mah just fine though. Some also split batteries into two just to accommodate this.

Split batteries are also better for efficient space usage (depending on the chassis) and longevity.

They split it up into multiple smaller cells to do that. Or don't ship by airmail.

Is this enforced?

A better phone sent by horse would get to my hands sooner than a phone I don't give a shit about that can be shipped by airpost.

I moved from high end to a "mid-range" Samsung phone that's way better than it needs to be given how boring phones have become. The only upgrade I wish on it was more open source software.

Because those are a different kind of battery, silicon-carbon and they wear out much quicker. I am sure they will eventually though.

Might be longevity concerns. Those new batteries are impressive, but the concern is that they will degrade a lot.

Also, remember the exploding Samsung phone. Experiments with batteries are risky for those companies.

I used to be a "cutting edge phone guy" where I'd get the latest iPhone ever year and the thought of having the older phone just didn't sit well with me. These days though the upgrades are so marginal I don't even care. I'm looking forward to upgrading my three year old phone this year, but not because I expect it to be more than "better camera, faster and thinner" but just because its time.

These updates are so boring now!

Why is it "time" after 3 years? They should hopefully still be getting software updates, at least security updates.

I'm on an iPhone 13 since launch (almost 5 years ago) and still see no reason to upgrade. There just hasn't been anything 'exciting' in phones in many years.

EDIT: should add, I've only used 50% of the 256GB storage and battery life is still fine (comfortably gets through an entire day+night). But I'm not a heavy phone user so that's perhaps atypical for a 5yo phone.

My daily driver is still a Samsung Note 8. Yes, from 2017. Screen is almost unusable in sunlight, usually needs a mid-to-late-day charge, and I officially can't use banking apps. But it still does 90% of what I need it to; not bad for $600 used (so less than $80/yr). I think it's a route everyone should consider. Less resource consumption, better for the environment, and if you're a smarter person than I am, you'd take the hint from any decreasing utility and ween yourself off your phone reliance altogether.

I've thought about using my experience as street cred for a gimmicky YouTube video - "I'm selling ONE $60 iPhone 17 case for $5000, to encourage the lucky owner to keep using their phone for at least 5 years! (You're not buying a case, you're buying a promise to yourself~)" - but I had enough trouble selling mobile accessories at MSRP in a past working life, so...

It’s a fair question. The battery is on the border of needing to be replaced, which is a $79 repair and would probably buy me another three years or so. But at this point I want something a bit snappier and I’ll probably replace the battery and use it as a backup phone.

Not a fix for the battery, but if you're on Android, enable developer settings and change your animations to 0.5x speed (there are three settings to change). Every OS animation will take half as long. It makes an aging phone feel much snappier.

Won't 0.5x speed make it slower (Driving 20mph instead of 40mph will get you somewhere in double the time).

I just checked my phone, the phrasing is "Animation scale .5x" (Among other numbers), meaning it's scaled to take n times the time.

Thanks for the assist, I typed it up from memory.

That really did make using my old phone less painful, thanks for the tip!

This, but set it to disable all animations. It makes using the phone so much quicker, not having to pause for pointless animations.

There used to be a jailbreak app for iphone to increase animation speed, it was soooo nice, it felt like you were actually using the phone instead of the phone using you. Anything out there for iPhone right now? Edit: cowabunga on iOS 17 (broken in iOS 18+) https://cowabun.ga/

Same here. Battery health is 84% which is not disastrous. But charging is a chore. The charging port doesn't work half the time (a problem in the car especially). I would also like it to be lighter, which I probably won't get.

The charging port might just need cleaning. I’m still using an iPhone 11 and the charging port was getting super unreliable. I cleaned it a couple of weeks ago - gently, with a toothpick and a flashlight, there was some lint stuck inside - and it’s worked perfectly since then.

This - I have the iFixit cleaning kit which has a really tiny plastic pick / brush thing - I think it might be a dental crevice cleaning tool, like floss but for bigger gaps. I got a wad of lint out of my lightning port and all of a sudden CarPlay works perfectly. Same thing happens to USB-C ports.

Is it just me, or was Lightning the most prone port to get clogged up with crap and have moisture end up inside it? Used to happen to me all the time, but USB-C hasn't been a problem at all.

>The charging port doesn't work half the time

Give it a blast with an air compressor.

If you like taking pictures with your phone, the cameras are still improving steadily enough that you'll see meaningful improvements if you upgrade every three years

Anecdotally, every iphone I've tried since my iphone 11 pro seems to take worse photos. I do take a lot of photos with a standalone camera though so I imagine I am biased.

I can't remember which generation exactly had this shift, but yeah around the iPhone 12 they went really heavy on the processing, so instead of a noisy but sharp image you got a smudgy mess. Later generations improved on that but you still see this when zooming in or in low light.

The processing pipeline also started imposing its own opinions on your photos, adjusting the brightness of dark areas and bright areas to even things out, increasing saturation, etc. This has generally trended towards more processing over the years.

In a picture from a standalone camera (or an old phone back when the processing pipeline was basically just debayering, white balance, chroma denoise, and a gamma curve), you'll actually have contrast between shadows and highlights, which, when done well, looks great. When done poorly, it looks terrible (blown highlights, noisy shadows), which is the whole point of the processing pipeline -- on average (random user, random scene), you're better off reducing the overall contrast in the image with local adjustments, even if that turns some excellent photos into boring ones, because it'll turn a lot more bad photos into acceptable ones.

I recently picked up an old Olympus OM-D EM-1 to play with, along with a couple of prime lenses. The photos it produces aren’t as high-resolution than those of my iPhone 16 Pro Max, but they look a lot nicer regardless.

Part of that is due to the larger sensor which no phone is going to be able to compete with, but it’s also because it allows contrast to exist and photos don’t turn into smudge/blotch soup when zoomed in a little. Thanks to that, its photos capture mood better and feel closer to what I see (or remember seeing).

I’ve toyed with alternative camera apps (of which many exist on iOS) and those are a bit better, but still fall short of an decade+ old standalone camera.

You can avoid a lot of the smudgy processing on an iPhone by shooting ProRAW with the default camera app, or using something like Halide to take a single shot RAW.

I used to adjust exposure a lot on phones like the iPhone 5s, so I would, for example, get the highlights exposed properly and have the rest be nice and dark. Can't do that anymore, or not as well at least, because my modern phone will bring those shadows back to make it all even. I really miss those older phone cameras.

I miss non-computational phone cameras. I remember really enjoying the camera in my iPhone 5s.

Anecdotally, I can't tell much of a difference between the newer phone of my girlfriend (latest iPhone) and my iPhone 13. Maybe if I nitpick on it, but for my untrained eye they all look 'good enough'.

Plus, many people who take photos on their phone will upload it to a service like instagram/discord which compresses the photos so you lose some of the quality anyway.

I have seen huge improvements in low light performance. Not worth a brand new phone, but very cool.

Thank you. We need to hold corporations accountable to make devices that continue to work and don't include planned obsolescence. When people buy into the psychology of needing to buy the newest version every year or even that "it's just time" to upgrade without any specific need for it, they undermine that

So we're going to ask them to not advance their operating systems and apps to take advantage of newer hardware?

What?

Devices get slower over time due to their operating systems becoming increasingly complex as they're updated. This increased complexity is due to the OS developers taking advantage of the newer models' improved hardware. This leaves owners of older models facing a decision between staying on the older OS version and retaining the current performance vs. updating to the latest version and risk performance degradation. But it's not even that simple. Over time, app developers stop targeting older OS versions, which means you could be stuck with old versions of apps, some of which will refuse to do anything until they're updated.

The way to solve this is for device vendors and their OS developers to simply stop updating the OS in a way that takes advantage of new models' improved hardware because that same code slows down older devices.

I've upgraded from iPhone 12 to 17 a few months ago and I agree, I could have waited 1 or maybe 2 more years. At this point I just upgraded because I wanted to and could afford it, not because I needed to (even though I'm a heavy phone user, unlike you according to what you're saying).

The iPhone 12 was my first iPhone and I've been really impressed by how long it lasted, and I'm only hoping I won't need to upgrade before the iPhone 22 release.

My iPhone 13 is likewise still ticking along, most nights I put it on the charger with over 70% battery remaining. Of course, about the only thing I use it for is reading e-books, which isn't very taxing. Also a little photography.

If the upcoming folding iPhone supports the Apple Pencil Pro, that'll be the first tempting phone feature in years. It would be fun to have a digital sketchbook in my pocket. Of course the price tag will probably cancel the temptation.

Part of me is sad to see so little innovation in new phones, but another part of me enjoys keeping my money.

what a strange comment! It's totally fine, you do whatever you want, but it sounds like "I used to be an alcoholic drinking two 12-packs a day, now I don't even care about beer: I just have 6 a day and that's not because I want to be drunk but just because I feel like it". Like, sure it's quantitatively better but... it's not really qualitatively very different is it

I agree; but I'm not sure it is fixable. Without some technological advancement to actually move the needle, most manufacturers are just stuck with marginal hardware changes and then some cheesy software-locked exclusive to the latest models.

it is a phone. you use it to look up content and maybe endlessly scroll. i am very sure a new iphone is not boring to a young person getting their first phone. i am sorta sure that phones feel they've plateaued because present day app store policies no longer support high quality ideas.

> but just because its time

If you already know the new phone isn’t going to do anything better for you, why is it time?

Might be cheaper than replacing the battery. Might want more storage.

I have a Pixel 7 I'm still happy with other than 2 issues. Battery wear is starting to be noticeable. There's a loose cable or something that causes the screen to go to static sometimes. If I press firm on the bottom it's good again. With the cost of getting these issues repaired, I just started looking into getting a new phone instead.

An official OEM battery for the Pixel 7 along with all the tools you need is $50. It is not expensive. The process to replace it is easy. Certainly nerve racking the first time but I've opened up my pixel phones at least 6 times now and it is pretty trivial (on the non-folding pixel phones).

https://www.ifixit.com/products/google-pixel-7-battery-genui...

And you can easily find someone in any city who will replace it for cheap

I have never got a phone repaired before. Got quoted $130 for parts and labor for a Pixel 7 battery

That sounds like a lot, I’ve never paid more than 70€ for iPhone battery replacement

I’m also getting ready to upgrade from my 3yo iPhone. For me, my phone is running out of storage, starting to feel a little slower, and the battery has less capacity. I’m sure I could wait another year, but I’d rather be a little ahead on updates than be behind on updates where my phone is creating problems for me.

What the hell are you doing to your phone to make it slower after only 3 years? I am running a pixel 6a, so lowest end and 5 generations behind current models and it doesn't feel slow, even compared to the phone my partner bought new last year. Or is it just psychologic?

Given the price increase in storage chips, are 2026 phones even coming with more storage than 3 years ago?

Could be psychological tbh. It’s really not a big issue, but I’d rather refresh earlier. Although the storage problem is real and frustrating. And despite the chip shortages, the newer iPhones still come with far more storage than what I have now.

Have you tried just wiping your phone and starting fresh?

Have you tried… deleting data and apps you don’t actually need?

Almost weekly at this point

Damn, that does sound frustrating. I have an iPhone SE with 32GB (I think) and have to remove things maybe twice a year to make space for something. I never understood how people fill their storage, but 32GB already sounds pretty large to me, and I see that apps size has increased a lot over time :(

It’s purely psychological

Phone advancements between 2007-2017 was insane. I wonder how much of it was Apple catching up to the cutting edge of phone tech leveraging its iOS advantage, vs just natural pace of innovations. Feels like there had been an invisible war.

between the cost, lack of interesting new features, and often addition of features i do not want, it’s starting to seem like i may never get a new phone, and i’m ok with that

I'd like my next phone to be a flip one. But really what I want is a Linux phone.

I don't remember which iPhone I even have. I have a phone that does what I need and doesn't annoy the crap out of me. That's all I want.

My last Pixel was rendered useless by a software update though.

Nobody wants to cut the edge, when it comes to foldable phones, it seems.

Also, more than 5 yrs after Galaxy Fold (I've never seen or held one IRL):

is it really that valuable to have "marginless" foldable displays?

Often times, users will divide the screen into halves, at least, when using large resolution.

And users are also not too interested in curved or mangled output surfaces, the ideal is an evenly lighted 2D surface.

If you were working on military technology, that's irrelevant of course. Then, the consumer tech is just a small venture capital driver.

No "foldable" real currently comes close to two flexable screens placed close to each other.

Consumers have repeatedly rejected this hype.

The only interesting value is in completely flexible material with fixed-distance OLEDs on it, and that's a very complicated engineering problem approaching a digital "invibility coat".

In-between these extreme uses, I struggle to see the benefit of foldable screns.

A cheap and robust e-ink screen would be a welcome exception, but I have no idea how much the science overlaps with marginless, foldable LED panels.

I used the Microsoft Surface Duo, and the experience was terrible. I carry a Pixel 10 Fold, and 90% of the time I use it closed. But when I want to watch a video, or I want to show someone something. The bezel very much ruins that experience. And the Duo went even further by having hidden pixels, which made some UIs completely unusable.

That said, I hardly think that foldable is the peak. I'd prefer a rollable phone that I can expand the screen on, with maybe an edge display.

And the price is the real kicker. For the vast majority of the Android population, a phone at a price point about $1000 is just a non-starter.

Foldable screens are amazing when it comes to looking at code changes in pull requests

true, though for me it’s an ipad mini, just small enough to fit on my pocket but big enough to read a whole page of code (and it only goes for a few hundred bucks vs thousands)

... and for older eyes.

And sometimes the updates are a step backwards. For example when Apple went to the Intel modem. Perhaps when they move to their own modem this year there might be a repeat, we'll have to keep our eyes peeled.

But you can fold it.

I have a Z Flip 7. The Z Flip 8 is practically indistinguishable except for the SoC where they've gone from an Exynos to a Snapdragon.

My wife's iPhone is 11 years old now, and it's still better than having a latest flagship Android

As someone that has used pre-paid phones most of my life, starting with TMN Mimo in 1997, I have always replaced my devices when they break down or got stolen, and that was it.

Back in the day there were no updates anyway, until Symbian or Windows CE/Pocket PC became common, and even them had at most a single firmware update during their lifetime, which had to be installed via the developer tools SDK.

I find this to be great, less e-waste.

Let's hope we can have phones that last 10+ years.

What would it take for them to add a spring to the hinge? I would love a foldable that opens with a flick of the wrist without the need to pry it open.

Ugly as ever. Bleh. Hire a proper industrial designer.

Does anyone had a good experience with foldable phones? The only people I know that bought one had them broken near the 2 year mark.

My phone from 2018 it's still working perfectly.

My pixel fold 9 got 3 hardware failures (battery, speaker and folding sensor) and was warranty replaced for a fold 10. While it was being replaced I was using a non foldable phone and was totally missing the folding experience (large screen and multitasking for some personal use cases), so I am team foldables for now. otoh I do not get the idea behind the flip phones

I am very happy with my Pixel 9 Pro Fold, the replacement because of early models losing 5G on unfolding was swift and it's been one of my least annoying phones so far, and I used many models, OSes

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold had a lot of warranty replacements due to a failing internal cable. The 10 seems to have resolved the issue, but time will tell.

Other than that, the Pixel Fold has been a great phone. It's like having a tiny tablet with me everywhere I go.

I tested out last year's foldable phone for a couple of months.. borrowed it from a friend.

Maybe I'm just losing interest in phone tech - but to me, it was only down sides and no upside.

The phone was bulky. Fragile.

The larger screen you get when you open the phone - was absolutely useless for most of the content I watch. The screen is 4:3 and most of the content I watched was 16:9. The black bars at the top and bottom of the video meant that the actual video content is exactly the same size as my non foldable Motorola Edge 40.

That's an excellent point. If it's not close to 16:9 you hardly get more space, or you zoom the video a bit and cut off the sides. 16x9 seems to make more sense. But if you fold it in half, then I think you a weird sized device (wouldn't it be pretty long for cell p hone) - that's probably how we got here

I had a flip phone. It was silly, and a waste of money, but I’d buy another one. It was fun, quirky and a bit different to the general black rounded rectangle.

While I daily use an iPhone now, my original Pixel Fold is still working and running GrapheneOS. Besides a bug caused by GrapheneOS where the outer screen wouldn’t work, it has been flawless, and I can’t really blame Google for that one.

Giving it up was tough, as I consume a lot of books and mangas. I’m just waiting for Apple to release their foldable before I ditch this iPhone.

Been a folding phone user for multiple generations now.

The flip-phone style ones: Excellent! The folding aspect really aids in switching between a small device with minimal controls to a normal phone. I would use these over a standard phone. No question.

The portrait-to-not style ones like pixel fold? Is nice on occasion but the software is a complete let down. For reasons I do not care: The orientation is either wrong or the software cannot handle the form factor. The end result is a poor user experience.

Considering "usable space" as a percentage of the screen that contains useful content these are worse when unfolded than folded. Yes the screen is larger but most of the screen ends up useless. The actual useful chunk suddenly becomes horribly small in proportion.

The default layout showing composing an email in gmail is a prime example. The actual content area of the email: Same size as when folded. The rest of the screen is unused or taken up by the keyboard. Yes the keyboard is now larger but it's somehow weirdly proportioned.

There are adjustments that can be made to improve that. Some have to be applied every time the phone is unfolded or the apps restart (or neither or both who knows?)

Oh and my pixel fold screen has failed 2x in 3 years - I do not treat it gently.

I go on a longer rant about this here https://youtu.be/WHxOosmJt_U

> The portrait-to-not style ones like pixel fold? Is nice on occasion but the software is a complete let down. For reasons I do not care: The orientation is either wrong or the software cannot handle the form factor. The end result is a poor user experience.

Just to +1 on this; my second folding phone was the pixel 9 fold. That phone was released several _years_ after android OS added support for multiple screens, in preperation for samsung shipping the first ever folding phone before covid!

Despite LITERAL YEARS ELAPSING, a decent number of popular apps _still_ - in aug of 2026 - do not handle the aspect ratio changing well let alone transform to actually take advantage of the additional real estate.

It remains to be seen if apple's rumored folding iPhone will be the catalyst that gets most devs to actually care about this.

The main reason that I do put up with the fragility is because I can do side-by-side multi-tasking and give my aging eyes a break when I need to read something.

I love mine, but I used to try and stuff a Kindle into my jeans pocket because reading on a large screen is so much more enjoyable for me.

With fewer and fewer interesting things getting added from one generation to the next, freedom, security, and privacy have become my main selling point when deciding on a phone. 7 years of updates, strong hardware enforced security and the ability to run graphene is have been the deciding factors in the last 3 phones I've bought for myself and my family.

With direction Google has chosen to go with the Pixel 10, it might as well be that GrapheneOS will never be available on the Pixel 11. They started by not publishing device trees anymore, squashing commits in AOSP, publishing open source drivers as a tar ball dump only after the requester has entered personal data in a web form, instead of having them public in an version control system. I wonder what dumb ideas they come up with next in order to make the GrapheneOS people suffer even more.

LineageOS has been managing with the same problem (no device trees) for years.

Which was not the point. Each one of these changes made it harder, not yet impossible to make a custom Android or Linux variant. The harder it is the more likely people will continue. At some point it might be too hard. Or, one of these changes will finally make all of that impossible.

I agree with your conclusion, but I think it's likely that GrapheneOS will support the Pixel 11.

These phones are getting larger each release, and it's the opposite of the trend I prefer now. I really am starting to miss the SE phone sizes and not feeling like I'm carrying a literal brick in my pocket wherever I go now. I don't think Apple is cutting back on the phone size either when their Fold comes out, and we're slowly just moving towards the point where a phone is just a mini tablet.

Are they? The Pixel 11 Pro and regular screens are only a tenth of an inch larger than the 3 year old Pixel 8s. The screen sizes have largely stabilized IMO with people who want any larger screens being pushed into the folding phone category. I get it's larger than the mid 2010s normal but they're not really getting much larger in the last couple years.

The Pixel 9-11 Pros are all smaller than the Pixel 6-8 Pros. "Pro" initially meant "larger and better" but more recently just "better" and if you want a huge phone you buy the Pro XL.

I was caught by surprise on this. I have P8Pro and while its fine, I was just kind of curious about how much of an upgrade it would be to the 11Pro, especially since I haven't really given the last two years releases any attention.

But the P11 Pro is now 6.3" and the P8 Pro was 6.7" meaning you have to go up to the P11 Pro XL (for another $200) for the same size. Well technically its 6.8" vs 6.7 but I feel this is just a form of shrinkflation and enshittification. Literally no other improvements on the XL as far as I can tell from the specs, not even a larger battery.

While I certainly don't need a bigger phone, I would be pissed if I just hit the buy button and what came out of the box was half an inch smaller.

Portability is a feature. 6.7" have are so big and heavy they are annoying to carry on many pants or while doing many physical activities.

I find my 6.1" Pixel 6a way too big already. I really loved the size of the Samsung Galaxy S6 that preceded it, I think it was the sweet spot at 5.1", large enough to read text, navigate on a map or watch a video while still being pocketable and light.

On the flip side, losing the half inch was the only reason I updated from the P8P to the P10P. Everything else about the P8P was adequate.

We don't even need to reverse the trend! Android is flexible, so it wouldn't be a big ask for one of the many models to be smaller! Each pixel is larger than the last. I was a Pixel 4 holdout until a few months ago when they stopped supporting tap-to-pay. The 10 is a monster, and the trend is as you say.

There are small Android phones, they just aren’t very premium: https://www.techeblog.com/bluefox-nx1-mini-iphone-hands-on-r...

I was legitimately excited to get an iPhone Mini. Every new phone feels like a downgrade. I don't care if the phone is faster if it's an annoyance to carry, or hold in one hand.

Every time I pull my old SE off of the shelf, I am blown away by how small it is. It really feel more high tech to me than these giant phones we have now.

To be clear, this is slightly smaller than the pixel 10 by ~1mm in each direction, but they are still too big.

iPhone 13 mini -- the last mini is still supported, will be supported by iOS27, and, given continuation of trends, will be supported by iOS28. That gives you a three year runway. They are plentiful on eBay and FB marketplace, and for $79 apple will replace the battery for you with a new one.

Also weight. While the 11 Pro Fold apparently is a bit lighter than it’s predecessor, it’s still 239 grams. I miss the days of the 113g SE.

seems the big phone makers are going with the phone-2-tablet fold.

very few have gone with the ultra portable and pragmatic fold like razr-ultra.

hopefully apple comes out with a razr-ultra like fold.

I've been pleasantly surprised at how robust my 2024 Razr (regular edition) has been. I think if the outside screen was a hair bigger (like on the Plus and Ultra), it would be significantly more useful.

I tried the Clicks keyboard case, and it was cute, but wasn't actually better to type on, especially while the phone was open. It was fun pretending to have a Blackberry / Razr hybrid (2007 called!).

I think it would be neat to have a small square phone like the size and shape of the folded Razr but that doesn't actually unfold, and has the camera on the back. It would be a pretty handy device and encourage me to read more paper books or on a Kindle or something instead of scrolling.

It’ll probably be 2 iPhone Airs attached with a hinge, no?

Phone manufactures have settled on the term "flip" for phones that start as a long rectangle and fold in half vertically to roughly a square.

The most popular flip phone is Samsung Galaxy Flip but other brands like Motorola and Oppo make these kinds of phones.

I didn't end up getting one but a friend with the galaxy flip 7 tells me he likes using the square screen when the phone is folded to help reduce his screen time.

Here's to fast GrapheneOS support for all the get the 11 line.

What genuinely disappointing result. Long time pixel user here and I've been routinely buying these phones with the argument that you're getting the most value of any modern smart phone. Now? I'm just waiting for the pixel 10 family to drop in price. Happy to just wait.

Here, the Pixel 10, especially in more niche variants like Pro and with larger flash has almost disappeared from the market, or is as expensive as the equivalent Pixel 11 offers.

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but all the benefits in the video intro are either things that aren't benefits of the hardware (screen calls without looking, Gemini, tap less do more) or they're compensations for the foldable screen (30% more durable, 20% brighter ... than the last Fold, but likely still worse than non-folding phones.)

I don't see that as a product video that's telling me why I need one. It's just telling me that they've iterated on the last model. I mean, congrats, well done, but why should I buy it?

I'm looking forward to when "fold" is not so equivalent to "premium". I'm interested in a folding phone, but I don't think I've spent a cumulative $2000 on my last 4 phones. I'd have a hard time justifying spending even $1000.

I'm also looking forward to nomenclature settling so the horizontal-folding passport-style folding phones (like this, which I find interesting) can be more clearly distinguished from the vertical-folding flip-phone style folding phones (which don't remotely interest me).

I have a feeling that making durable fold in half cell phones is just not something we can do cheaply, so they have to be billed as premium to justify it.

Also isn't that terminology settled? Fold for passport, flip for flip phone. I'm sure Apple will invent a new word but everyone doing foldables seems to use those consistently.

I'm sure that's why there aren't cheap ones yet, but technology marches forward, and I'm sure we'll get there eventually.

And in many contexts yes, but I still see plenty of articles listing best/cheapest foldable phones that conflate the two. I can't even fully fault them either, because the "flip" ones do "fold".

Are they durable?

If I can ruin the screen with my fingernail, I'm completely uninterested.

The inner screen is definitely not as durable as the outer one. I've not tried it, but it does feel like a hard press with a fingernail will leave a mark.

My dad is in construction and has gone through at least 4 flips that I know of in the time that I've had my S25, probably more.

By durable I guess I mean they don't destroy themselves just by existing.

I've had three different galaxy fold zs and each one has had a broken interior screen. My current fold has a broken internal screen and I'm on vacation.

I have been using the iPhone for something like 10 years now. I am getting the urge to de-apple since I fell down the slippery slope and now have an iPad, watch, apple TV, MBP, etc.

Exercising less dependence on a single company for everything seems like a good thing, but I'm struggling to really ground that principle against the convenience of just buying "what works." Does it really matter at the end of the day?

I assume all the companies have zero respect for any of their users now. At least Apple can maintain a tablet and laptop line for more than a few years without the urge to restart it with "brand new ideas".

I am surprised foldable phones have survived. I thought it was a terrible idea how they worked and still think it is. A flimsy screen with a crease looks and feels opposite of what a phone should be.

somebody pitch me on upgrading my note 10 plus i'm still rocking

We need companies able to reimagine the devices we use every day in a more sharp way.

I have the pixel 10 fold (got it on offer) and honestly it already feels excessive. I welcome these incremental upgrades but the number dropping in the marketing material and the "moar AI" stuff doesn't appeal to me at all.

I still think stylus support (both hardware but especially software) is going to be a killer app for these things. They've gone in the wrong direction for now, but some of the Asian phone companies (Huawei?) still have stylus support.

- wake me up when you can make a fully transparent phone

I always ask myself why Google's Gemini integration still feels that bad despite the company having full control over Android, the Play Store, and the Pixel hardware stack. If one could fully operate any feature on the phone with Gemini (and combine actions into workflows and tasks), that would at least for me be the next evolutionary step in "smart" phones.

Because Android does not just run on Pixel devices, and the level of control you suggest isn't something that can be bolted on at the manufacturer level.

They're slowly adding some of that functionality in, but obviously relies on third party adoption for anything more than UI automated control:

https://www.androidauthority.com/gemini-automation-control-o...

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/an...

What would you use that for? That feels very gimmicky to me

Mostly when driving or not being able to hold the phone. E.g. things that don't work: open my garage door using an action in an app; yesterday I wanted to send an address stored in Gmaps to a contact via messaging app; using controls currently displayed by Android Auto without having to touch the screen.

>The dual screens on Pixel 11 Pro Fold are ideal for real-time translation, especially with our new sign-to-text feature. Developed in partnership with the Deaf community, it lets signers express themselves in Live Transcribe and Gboard in their native language.

That is big news if it's actually good enough to use. People have been trying to build sign-to-text and sign-to-speech systems for decades and they've never been usable.

I've got a pixel 9, I don't see any meaningful changes here worth upgrading. The hardware looks essentially the same, except for a better camera and a ruby but if more battery. What am I missing?

That texting UI is rough, text is way too big and the long input box and split keyboard really feel like the laziest UI.