this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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I'm no fan of foldable phones, but it's impressive that Huawei remains strong in the smartphone market, despite the restrictions imposed on them.
My wife still uses her 10 year old Huawei P7! And she dreads having to buy a new one, because of the enshittification of Android.
She wants the Nokia G42 for repairability, but you can't friggin remove the stupid google search on your home screen! What an idiotic design decision by Nokia!?!?
She can use a different launcher to get rid of the Google search
Thanks, that's what I've heard, do you know a launcher that is free and close to original functionality?
Lawnchair https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.lawnchair.play
Thanks, that looks like the perfect option. 👍 😀
I wonder if adb-disabling Google services would work.
It might depend on the specific Android flavor. I tried that on an old phone, and while I could disable the actual Google search (tapping in the search bar did nothing) I could not remove the search bar. I also could not find a way to have it open my preferred search engine.
huawei is down 7% globally from 10% market share to 3.5%, they're not doing great, I think they're hanging on because of their Asia sales supplemented by federal support.
the not removable Google search on the home screen and non removable date on the home screen means that I will never buy another Google phone.
also, non-expandable storage? you fucking kidding me? what is even the point of a phone if it comes with 128 GB of storage. That's like eight good videos. It's insane.
I have been disappointed by the pixel in literally every way, and I don't know where to go next except probably Sony because their phones have front-facing speakers, and if I can't get decent software on any platform at least I can listen to music with decent hardware and root the thing.
I'm fairly sure that's just a launcher limitation, you can swap out the entire launcher to whatever you want. If you don't want something radically different I think lawnchair is still around.
https://lawnchair.app/
thanks, I'll check it out.
Her current phone only has 16 GB storage, and no that's not RAM. 🤣
But what format video are you using? H265 Video at about 1.5 GB for a full movie look great on the phone. But needless to say she doesn't use it for that at all.
I looked at Sony when I bought my current phone, but I like big screens and a Sony with comparable features to my Xiaomi 13T Pro cost almost twice what I paid, and then it still only had half the storage.
But message LED is a major feature IMO, it's almost a Sony exclusive now.
I really miss the flashing LED from my BlackBerry Z30 - so long ago.
when you record video, It's almost 4 MB a second in default, so you're using up a gig every 2 and 1/2 minutes.
sunset+walk on the beach, a gig.
say 30 minutes of a video, and you're between 15 and 20 gigs.
Go to a concert, or a wedding, whatever and you just lost a huge percentage of your phone storage and you aren't allowed to add more storage?
insane, very consumer unfriendly
The longest video I ever recorded was 18 years ago, about 10 mins, just to see what the camera was capable of with a new SD card I bought. Generally my videos are less than a minute now.
Obviously you wouldn't use a 10 year old phone for your use case.
However my Xiaomi 13T Pro 512GB would probably be fine. But I currently only use 10% of the storage.
I shot a 4 hour interview on my 2016 Moto G4. The last hour or so was audio only because the phone ran out of internal storage (32GB) and I didn't have an SD card in it. It has a slot though.
Ooh you had the big one. 😎
That's actually pretty cool, both that it was able to take a 3 hour video, and that it goes audio only, instead of just cutting off.
Back in the day when we used FAT32 you couldn't have files bigger than 2GB. 😜
I did the audio-only part with a separate audio recorder because the phone was full. The video is in a bunch of parts but I don't remember if any are larger than 2GB. It is FAT32 so maybe they must be smaller. I remember the phone ran out of battery power after maybe an hour, and I plugged in a power bank (10000 mah) and that was enough for the rest of the session.
Oh boy, that must have been fun. 😋
Ah yes I remember messing with all those part files because Microsoft always had such poor foresight.
This was some years back but I think the multiple files were primarily because we took breaks in the interview and stopped the camera. I don't remember if any parts hit the file size limits. I still have the files on a server someplace, so might check.
2nd note:
Yes Huawei is not #1 as they probably would be without the sanctions. But still last I heard they are taking market share again, and that's even without the Honor brand phones. And they are still strong on innovation and very popular in Asian markets.
Instead it's Xiaomi that is trying to take the position Huawei once had, but they are not quite as strong as Huawei in the design department, Huawei is IMO clearly #1 in the world in that regard.
I would never buy a Google phone, it's too much control for Google IMO. Also although their cameras are generally good, your pictures may end up basically fake, and not at all look like what you took a picture of. I saw posts about someone trying to take a picture in foggy weather, and the Pixel phone cleared it all up, so the foggy effect disappeared completely, and he couldn't disable the AI treatment that did it. So he couldn't take a picture of what he was seeing!!! Other phones use filters too, but not filters that essentially makes the photo fake.
I don't know where you're getting the Huawei news, but their market share has been nose diving since 2024.
Pixel, though, I can't believe the automatic filters that are impossible to turn off.
Even if you take a photo with .raw, there's still post processing on every single photo so they look like dog shit.
how's Huawei number one in the world for design? do they do anything innovative? The Huawei phones I've used seem pretty unremarkable, indistinguishable from oppo.
which I would also throw in a gutter.
I haven't been impressed by anything I've seen on the market in years, except for the Sony Xperia, because I love front-facing speakers and I didn't know any major companies still made them.
I'm pretty sure that's where I'm going next.
https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/china-smartphone-share/
Huawei Market share in China increased 50% this year compared to last.
The Dr Dre of cameras. cheap hardware with a shitload of filtering to make it ~~sound~~ look good.
No doubt 10 years ago Huawei was clearly THEE leader in design. They had both amazing build quality and design. Heralded for beating Apple at the game, and putting others to shame.
Beyond that, the friggin 10 year old phone my wife has still takes amazing pictures. Huawei was very strong in innovation that actually worked, which is also why they so quickly became #1 in the world.
Even today after they've been handicapped in sales which limit development budgets they are still strong in the design department.
https://carisinyal.com/en/the-slimmest-smartphone/
These are examples of Huawei still stretching what's possible in the physical aspect of making phones thinner. Just like they beat Apple in that game more than a decade ago, while maintaining a build quality that was as premium as Apple.
The triple fold phone the OP is about, is a world first, not something that interest me personally, but still a design win over competitors.
How they look is of course subjective,
other companies made triple fold phones before Huawei, you mean that they brought it to the mass market first?
like 3,000 bucks or something right?
It's difficult to call that innovation when we already have foldable phones, and they haven't found a new way to do anything, they just added one more standard screen.
It's as thick as three phones put together.
It's good for them that they went up 50% in China, but it's been literally federally subsidized since its inception, so a bump not crazy, and they went from 20 to 30% only in cihinq, still 3% total market share.
it sounds like you have nostalgia for Huawei, which i get, I still have nostalgia for my HTC one, that was the best phone/os I ever had, and definitely the most innovative phone company I used, 468 ppi, still higher than almost every other phone 10 years later, aluminum body, with front-facing speakers and an IR blaster, expandable storage, but they've gone the way of apple and Huawei and Google and the rest of them in modern times
"10 years ago Huawei was clearly THEE leader in design"
this is when I used Huawei, and my memories of it are pretty bad. plastic frame, identical iphone hardware setup, pretty low power even for the time, pretty low battery, I don't remember them leading anything.
I remember the pictures being standard, but I don't remember anything remarkable or innovative about them.
can you post photos from your wife's phone versus your modern phone?
Literally from the article:
I haven't seen one, and three separate screens don't count, because that's apples and oranges.
I saw the headlines, but there were definitely trifled phones before Huawei released theirs.
I'll check though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiHK07J7Bxk&t=33
first result is the Tecno trifold, and he's talking about the Samsung trifold Z, which of course, it's just one more screen, The natural evolution of folding phones to get to the tablet size.
I don't think innovation is the word here.
innovation is a new idea resulting in some sort of paradigm shift or surprising development, not the logical progression of a known process like a foldable phone.
let me control my TVs and other devices with an IR blaster again please.
that was innovative.
I'm glad Huawei is forcing other companies to develop better tri-fold phones so that eventually we have viable phone tablets.
He says "It's gonna be..." these products do not exist.
Doesn't exist as far as I can tell. Maybe they couldn't make it work?
https://www.techradar.com/phones/the-worlds-first-tri-folding-phone-could-finally-land-soon-and-not-from-samsung
So no even if you may have seen it, those were not actual products, but development prototypes.
That's just childish, obviously you need technological innovation to make the idea possible. It's easy to say "flying car", and that has been done for a century, the innovation is to actually make it happen.
The tri folded phone is not like previous folded phones, because the screen needs to be able to fold both ways. From THAT point it's just continuation so you can make any number of folds.
The Xiaomi 13T / 13T Pro have that.
It's more childish to pretend huawei made the first trifold phone when they may the first commercial trifold phone.
they didn't develop or innovate new technology to add one more fold.
"you need technological innovation to make the idea possible"
someone did, I hope you'll notice that Huawei is not claiming to have developed some new innovation.
which makes sense, considering there are other companies that already made trifold phones.
they added one more fold to a phone using the established and developed technology of foldable screens, and have brought it to mass market first, that's all.
there are no new features, no efficiency gains, certainly not cost effective, nothing is significantly different about this phone except that another screen and hinge has been added.
a third fold to reach true tablet size that people have been talking about and companies have been developing for years is a logical development in foldable phones and foldable screens, established technologies, not innovation.
I hope people enjoy it (for that price tag they better), and I hope it spurs development in the field.
I'm excited to see the reviews once it's been used for a few weeks.
False
False
False
Making the screen fold on the outside of the fold is not the same as making it fold on the inside. Which is probably why Samsung didn't manage to beat Huawei to market.
Why won't you acknowledge when all reviews say that Huawei made the first trifold?
To have a prototype that isn't production ready is not the same. It may not even work!
"False".
you are not convincing.
you insist that using existing technology is the same thing as developing new technology, which it isn't.
were you similarly blown way when Gillette added a third blade to the safety razor?
"Why won't you acknowledge when all reviews say that Huawei made the first trifold?"
because 1. they are specifically referring to a commercial launch, not new technology(a hinge).and 2. I don't value or believe doubtful headlines without evidence.
Tecno released a demonstration of a tri-fold phone in August, it took me one second to find that video, so with almost zero I've heard, we found at least one company showing off a tri-fold phone before Huawei's commercial launch.
other companies were working on and build prototypes of trifold phones, Huawei decided to bring one to market first.
we'll see if that was a good idea after people have the chance to actually purchase it and use it.
It's good for huawei you are excited about the extra hinge, that excitement is necessary for the $3,000 price tag,
Here, this will blow your mind;
5 hinges that fold on the inside and outside:
what will they think of next?
6 hinges?
that would be a coup.
https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_nexus_6p-7588.php
This was clearly the most innovative Android phone at the time.
It was... minus the battery failures after a year or so of use. The 6P was supposed to be their foot in the NA market, and they fucked it. Mine failed, family members' failed, friends failed. The LG was no better for that year, something about a mobo shorting after X amount of time with the 5X. Again, family members' had them, failed.
Never heard about that, here (EU) it would be under warranty though.
Stateside you get a 1y warranty from G, this hasn't changed since they started the nexus (pixel) program. So when mine shit the bed, I was sol.
That sucks, but if it's systemic, they can't legally deny responsibility even in USA AFAIK, as it's clearly not a fault due to wear.
That's also the reason Intel is extending warranty with their CPUs that have the crashing issues. If they didn't they'd be facing a class action suit.
isn't nexus a Google phone?
it has slightly upgraded specs from the HTC one, but the One came out 2 years previous, with truly innovative features like front-facing speakers so that you could hear the audio clearly and an IR blaster, plus it had self-diagnostics so that you could test a second hand phone before you bought it or troubleshoot yours very easily with the series of diagnostic tasks.
what's the innovative part of the 6p?
ooh, I do like that the Nexus adopted the front-facing speakers and aluminum body from HTC One, that was a smart move.
not innovative 2 years later after those features were developed, but definitely a smart move by a hopeful company.
a slightly weaker battery, but 2 years after the HTC One, I would have been interested in the 6P as the logical next step; add 1 GB of RAM, add the new bands, slightly higher ppi.
I was disappointed when the M8 went backward with PPI, HTC one had 468 in 2013, new huawei phones in 2024 have 402 ppi.
that's rough stuff, all the companies are doing it too, skimping out on screens in favor of shitty proprietary software.
WHAT? It's a Huawei phone adopted by Google, and marketed and sold by google with Googles update plan for Android.
https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_nexus_6p-review-1355.php
This phone was widely praised for innovation, the build quality and camera quality, the rear fingerprint sensor, and just all around being amazing. I'm shocked you don't even remember...?
Obviously my 4 times as expensive 9 year newer phone is superior. Especially in low light conditions.
It's not the idea that's innovation, it's developing the technology that folds both ways seamlessly and is durable.
Just because an idea is easy to get, doesn't mean it's easy to make. Ideas are easy, it's making them work that is hard.
And I'm not aware of a phone that existed previously that could do this and fold out to a single 10 inch screen.
Even if it already existed, this is apparently the first good one.
Maybe you can dip your toes into using lineage os or graphene os?
I used AOSP for years to minimize my Google exposure, but it became too cumbersome, and I stopped when I accidentally bricked a phone modifying the boot loader.