Smartphone buyers meh on AI, care much more about battery life

2010: We want bigger batteries, they give us colorful phones
2015 We want bigger batteries, they give us 1mm thinner phones
2020 We want bigger batteries, they give us 5 cameras
2025 We want bigger batteries, they give us AI
Phones are a great example of the utter failure of capitalism to address what people actually need and want.
- They also keep taking away features, like removable storage (microSD) and headphone jacks. There's a few phones that have them, but it gets more difficult to find them as time goes on.
  
  Create a problem, sell a solution. It's so annoying.
  headphone jack -> sell bluetooth headphones
  microSD -> sell cloud storage
  
  Sony Xperia flagship has both. I think it's the only Snapdragon 8g3 phone that does.
  
  @Zerthax They’ll say they are responding to consumers who “want cloud storage and wireless headphones,” but options are always better, in my opinion.
  
  @Zerthax @AbsoluteChicagoDog some people just refuse to live in the now and would prefer to stay in 2014. What a shame.🤦🏻‍♂️
- folds phone in half
  That's two batteries for the price of one.
  
  More like two batteries for the price of two phones; foldables are still expensive AF
- I would like colourful phones back though, they were so much more fun compared to the sea of black/white/grey + ONE option in the blue-purple spectrum we have today.
  Can we get that AND bigger batteries?...bigger colourful batteries even?
  
  And cameras! Don't replace 12mp 2x telephotos with 48mp 1x digital zoom cameras pls
- Steve Jobs proved that consumers don’t actually know what they want until you tell them. And it’s the manufacturers job to tell them what they want and deliver it.
  Since Apple doesn’t want a bigger battery that means no one gets a bigger battery.
  
  jobs was an ass. and smelled like it
- @AbsoluteChicagoDog @AlphaneMoon nobody has been asking for bigger batteries, people already cry about the weight as is. Apple switched to using a titanium frame just to drop a few grams of weight because people were crying about the weight. So, no, people haven’t been asking for bigger batteries, they have been asking for devices that last the day and then some, which we currently have. You also have the ability to recharge your battery to full in about a half 1 🧵

Literally just give us phones that can do what they could do 10 years ago, with modern batteries.
- this. put the sensors, audio jack, notification led, ir blaster back!
  And fuck off with the ai!
  
  LED notifications and physical keyboards. I miss my Blackberry
  
  I just want both the Touch ID and the Face ID on my damn phone…
  
  You know, almost every phone still has an ir blaster... It's just not made Available to you.
  (Auto focusing in cameras is largely done via an ir blaster and corrisponding receiver)
- My ideal would basically be a modern version of the lg v20 - give me that removable battery, headphone jack, microsd slot, etc and just give me the current gen on chipset, screen, camera, etc.
  No AI, no preloaded nonsense I can't get rid of, I don't care that it could be 0.000004mm thinner without the jack.
  Its never been about what the consumer wants, its about driving "features" that will make more profits.
  
  If it works with some custom software like GrapheneOS I'd buy this in a heartbeat
- You know what would be good? Headphone jack, and great batteries yes, but how about something easily self repairable? Or shit replaceable batteries would be nice too.

It feels like yesterday some guy was arguing against me here on Lemmy about my personal choice of wanting a longer battery life.
WELL LOOK AT ME NOW BRO
- No bro, it's totally better to get 5-6 hours of battery and AI cause like it's so incredible bro
  
  Thank you for the verification can daddy
- Your battery's still short of 4 hours. 😁
  
  Battery usage:
  86%
  3 days ago (last charge)
  18 days left
  That's what I currently have with close to no usage. With usage it's around 10 days in total. When using GPS it depends.

People have been asking for thicker phones with more battery for years. Wth

I think the battery system that's best for everyone would be user-replaceable batteries. That way you can have an extra battery on hand to swap in as needed, or even extra-capacity batteries that make your phone a little thicker for people who are okay with that.
Those of us who do actually prefer thinner, lighter phones can still have them (maybe with a slight increase in thickness to accommodate the attachment mechanisms). Plus bigger batteries are a huge waste of resources if the capacity isn't going to be used.
- that was a thing in the early days. most clamshells had em and a few flat panels (called candybars)
  
  First few galaxy phones. Pretty much all of the first few generations of smart phone except apple
  
  In fairness the removable battery came with a pretty significant tradeoff.
  Water resistance.
  Many would happily take a reduction in water resistance for replaceable batteries, the problem is no one gives us the choice
  EDIT: inaccurate statement. Fairphone offers removable batteries
- At that point I think many would just get a decent powerbank. I'd prefer a larger capacity battery, 7000-10000mah even if the phone is slightly heavier and bigger. Especially for travel.
  
  I disagree, swappable battery > power bank.
  Used to have a swappable battery. It was great, you could have like 3 of em and instantly be able to get back to 100% without having to be attached to a cord. I wish I could do the same for my SteamDeck now, it would be great :'(
  
  yeah and with a swappable system with a couple battery sizes you could do that. and I could choose a slimmer battery.
- yeah I agree those are a good option too, but that doesn't solve the issue of replacing a worn out battery. that's why I think we need swappable batteries.

When I replaced my 5 year old phone the only two benefits I saw was OLED screen (never going without again) and the battery life going from maybe a day to like 40 hours
- I just replaced my iPhone older than six years old with a 16 Pro Max… OLED to OLED, but now 120hz. Magnificent. And yeah, the battery lasts forever now.
- Maybe your old phone's screen sucked. I switched from flagship 2021 OLED phone to mid-tier IPS 2020 phone. I prefer IPS, because it crisper and have more neutral colors. And more important, it doesn't have stupid waterfall edges.
  
  My old phone screen was fine, I just hate bright lights and OLED gets way darker.
  My new phone doesn't have waterfall edges, presuming that's a curved edge thing. Flat display on all sides, no side bullshit.
  Another benefit of OLED, at least in my case (nothing phone 2a) is there's no polarisation layer so I can wear my sunnies and look at my phone on any angle I please, instead of rotating it making the screen vanish. Laptop still does that and it's super annoying, if I'm outside watching videos on it I just can't use sunglasses.

I like AI and my phone to be separate. Chatgpt is just an app, it shouldn't be a core feature

Oh wow shocking, people actually cared more about usability than trashy feature? That's unheard of

I don't get what those companies try to achieve by automating writing (by spewing statistically probable prose), reading (by badly summarizing text cobbled from excerpts without the ability to make any sense of it), art, photography, music, all standardized to the lowest common denominator.
I'm not buying a new device that will try to impose any of this hype. For now, Apple has decided to "punish" the users in the European Union by holding the Apple Intelligence features hostage. FINE BY ME!
edit: typo/phrasing
- Yea. There are very few machine learning driven features that would actually improve my life in a meaningful way. I feel much more „punished“ by the omission of iPhone mirroring on mac than any Apple Intelligence feature.
  
  Serious question: What would you do with iPhone mirroring? Because I have it, and I have no idea what to do with it.

How about making a phone that's a whole millimeter thicker just to make the glass thick and strong enough that it won't break if you drop it?
Great idea! Unless of course the replacement of parts and broken phones is a core part of the business model.
- Rubbish. If my phone isn't so thin that it can double as a knife, it's not worth buying.
- Even if it were thicker I'd still slap on a sacrificial glass screen protector atop it. I've dropped my phone only a handful of times, and so far have only ever broken the protector.
  Just slap a shield on it, there's your added thickness and better drop resistance all in one!
- There are a few ruggedized phones out there. I bought some cheap Oukitel phones to use as an order pad in restaurant I used to run, because I was fed up with two waitresses dropping and breaking pads. When I sold the business, I kept one. I use it mainly in my boat, as GPS, plotter, speedometer, weather...
  The thing drops, gets wet, handled without care.
  These phones exist. They are not top performance dogs, but can be quite decent. Why arent they in the front line? Because demand

Do people here actually use AI? And if so…for what?
- I use AI for what Google used to be able to do: Finding answers to simple questions. Usually about tech but sometimes movies or music. Like how do I add a physical volume to LVM, or what are the specs of this little fan model? Or who was that actress in a movie about kids buried in a collapsed building? Things like that…
  
  But does it actually link the source or does it just say a basic answer and you have to take a leap of faith?
- Summarizing, drafting things, understanding complex things that are filled with jargon, etc.
- So here's the path that you're envisioning:
  Someone wants to send you a communication of some sort. They draft a series of bullet points or short version.
  They have an LLM elaborate it into a long-form email or report.
  They send the long-from to you.
  You receive it and have an LLM summarize the long-form into a short-form.
  You read the short form.
  Do you realize how stupid this whole process is? The LLM in step (2) cannot create new useful information from nothing. It is simply elaborating on the bullet points or short version of whatever was fed to it. It's extrapolating and elaborating, and it is doing so in a lossy manner. Then in step (4), you go through ANOTHER lossy process. The LLM in step (4) is summarizing things, and it might be removing some of the original real information the human created in step (1), rather than the useless fluff the LLM in step (2) added.
  WHY NOT JUST HAVE THE PERSON DIRECTLY SEND YOU THE BULLET POINTS FROM STEP (1)???!!
  This is idiocy. Pure and simply idiocy. We send start with a series of bullet points, and we end with a series of bullet points, and it's translated through two separate lossy translation matrices. And we pointlessly burn huge amounts of electricity in the process.
  This is fucking stupid. If no one is actually going to read the long-form communications, the long-form communications SHOULDN'T EXIST.
  
  The problem is basically this: if you're a knowledge worker, then yes, your ass is at risk.
  If your job is to summarize policy documents and write corpo-speak documents and then sit in meetings for hours to talk about what you've been doing, and you're using the AI to do it, then your employer doesn't really need you. They could just use the AI to do that and save the money they're paying you.
  Right now they probably won't be replacing anyone other than the bottom of the ladder support types, but 5 years? 10? 15?
  If your job is typing on a keyboard and then talking to someone else about all the typing you've done, you're directly at risk, eventually.
- Write stream of consciousness and have AI turn it into a decent email
  Tell me the name of this thing so I can research it
  Coding, but don't expect it to be a good coding tutor
  Bedtime stories where kids decide what happens next and I don't always have to tax my brain after a long day of work
  I'm taking a road trip to San Francisco. Plan it for me with stops for sightseeing, eating, and sleeping.
- Mostly stupid stuff involving sailor moon for me, using the lie machine for anything but funny pictures seems like maybe a bad idea at the moment:
- I use it to summarize things for me. Or rewrite something I’ve written a bit better. I usually need to spot check it, but it’s still nice to have.
  
  rewrite something I’ve written a bit better
  Woah, that’s the biggest bummer of a reason I’ve seen for it. If you read good stuff and write stuff you’d get better at it.

Can we please stop calling LLMs artificial intelligence?
- No. Strictly and technically speaking, LLMs absolutely fall under the category of AI. You’re thinking of AGI, which is a subset of AI, and which LLMs will be a necessary but insufficient component of.
  I’m an AI Engineer; I’ve taken to, in my circles, calling AI “Algorithmic Intelligence” rather than “Artificial Intelligence.” It’s far more fitting term for what is happening. But until the Yanns and Ngs and Hintons of the field start calling it that, we’re stuck with it.
  
  Where intelligence in spitting out samples from big data vaguely related to prompt?
  
  Let's just settle on SI, Schrödiger intelligence.
  
  I like your definition. Algorithmic intelligence fits much better. And thanks for giving me a rabbit hole (AGI) to dive into.
  
  Approximate Intelligence fits just as well me thinks
- If you don't think this counts as AI, can you give us an example of some function or behavior that you would consider AI?
  
  Reasoning, sentience, and the ability, over time, to improve. There’s more, but that’s the top three.

It would be mice to have better battery life.
2008 and onwards.
Edit: was so confused about the answers til I noticed the error :-p
- Still got to feed the mice if you want to keep your battery topped off. 😉
  
  I always drop breadcrumbs on my mousemat for this purpose.
- Logitech 'pebble' with an AA battery.

I barely use my phone as anything more than a glorified pager. I don't need fucking AI.

No! I don't care about battery! I want to become more dependent on advertising companies to arrange my daily life!

Give me a phone that’s 1.5 cm thick (before the camera bump) and lasts two days and I’ll buy fucking 10 of them.
JUST STOP. MAKING. THEM. THINNER.
- They have. The iphone 6 was I think the thinnest iphone at 6.9mm thick. The X was 7.7mm, and the 15 is 7.8mm thick. And at least for my use I do get 2 days of battery life. Even with the 80% charge cap.
  
  No, they want a thicker phone, not thinner
- Overall phones have been getting chunkier, larger too. I dislike the size, but like the added battery life from the thickness is nice. My pixel 8 is perfect in both regards for me :)
  Edit: just saw the sub. Don't really know a lot about apple phones specifically.

yeah but you can't set inflate your stock value based on hype about battery life.
people forget that these features aren't for users. it's for idiots who invest in ridiculous shit hoping it to be the next big thing.

Smartphone buyers care more about that thing that they've been begging for, for years? You don't say... And mobile phone manufacturers are again and still going to ignore what people actually want in favor of expensive and non functional vaporware, like they always do?
You don't say!

They're pushing AI so hard but most people just see it as a gimmicky thing. The only people who care are the investors.

I just bought two brand new three year old phones to replace the identical broken ones we currently have because the current models have less functionality for more than we paid for these.
To get the same functionality cost twice as much.
And we still get three years warranty..

I really hope the AI hype dies off

The features customers actually want vs what the shareholders tell them they want.

I still would take an extra mm for more battery life. At this point it's no difference if it's a bit thinner.

"The only thing we bothered changing in the new model is we added a robot that hoovers even more of your data and then lies to you confidently!"

Also I want my OS to be an actual OS with root access. I want Linux in particular.
- Like you know, you can setup a file share to back up files. You can back up your phone and get a new one easily. If you lost a phone you can bring it back. Your files organized the way you want and not some things here and done things there like the apps want.

I totally forgot it even had that. The people I talk to only talk about the new side button.

Give me back my physical keyboard, and I'll be happy alongside better battery life (or removable batteries).
The last thing I want is a phone I can mistake for a table mat when I'm tired, which I feel is how phones are going. What's the new average screen size now? 27" or is that next year's model?
- Meh, phisical keyboards are a pain if you think how much hardware failure you add. At least now if you know what you are doing, you can keep alive a phone for a decade with custom roms
- I just want a persistent number row. There's plenty of room. Why can't I have that, Apple? What possible benefit is there to anyone, of you holding that back?
- I miss the formfactor of my Nokia E7....
  
  My favourite keyboard was on my BlackBerry Bold 2.(9700 I think was the model number). The keys were shaped in a way that made touch typing an absolute breeze with the perfect amount of tactile feedback.

Fuck Siri with ChatGPT. I just want third party app notifications to actually play a sound and vibrate on my watch again. I really hope the next iOS update will fix that. I'm not the only one with this issue currently.
- Siri, with a local model so that it can actually figure out what albums want to listen to, is one of the only use cases I have for an LLM

I just got a 16 Pro. I still have my 7 Plus. Form factor of 7 plus is still the best of any of the iPhones, for my money. It feels THE best in-hand.
- I got a 16 pro max and it’s horrible without a pop socket.
  With a pop socket, it’s the best sized phone I’ve ever had.

Prefer no AI, require high battery life

I’m staying on iOS 18.0.1 without the AI Apple crap

yeah gewgull added the gemini bullshit to their sms app with the last update. disabled as first act

AR needs to kill the smartphone screen soon. Make my phone a keyboard and an external processor for my wearables.

Welcome to the Luddite convention here.
- It's so gimmicky compared to something actually useful, like better battery.

Insanely true, I didn't give a shit about 90% of the features on my new phone once my old one broke down and I got a Pixel 8, but I was delighted to go from a worn-out 12 hour battery life to a 64 hour battery life. I would actively like to uninstall any sort of current AI function from my phone if it could increase my battery longevity by even 1%.
Also: ew, Apple.
Edit: Really annoyed it doesn't have a headphone jack though
- Kinda dumb to post in an Apple enthusiast community with your bullshit tho
  
  Nobody's ever accused me of being smart! But hey, at least I'm honest
- I'd actually be willing to accept a loss in battery life to not have a device be infested, but luckily that's not a likely trade-off

@AlphaneMoon someone wanna tell them that AI can be used to increase battery life? 😂
- In this context it's more about generative ai etc... in the operating system.