I really wanted YotaPhone to succeed. Both a normal screen and a very very battery friendly e-ink for reading etc for hours...

I love my Boox Note 3. It's am older device but still gets updates lots of tweaks for tuning the display on a per app basis, runs Google apps etc. I use it mainly as a reader for books and manga but also for drawing notes and browsing the Web.

Ooh, looks interesting. Though the size would be a disadvantage to me—I can imagine some situations where using an ereader is acceptable where a phone would not be, and other people won't be able to tell them apart this way.

Honestly if the Palma would have cellular radio it would check all my phone need boxes.

Colour eink is still very limited, but can't they make eink (semi-)transparent? Just put eink above the usual LCD/oled and enable/disable them as needed?

OLED over transflective, do you get all the bright colors but it can go transparent and use the sunlight readable and low power screen when that makes sense

Transflexive displays can work, but they arent as easy on the eyes as e-paper and they have poor contrast in direct sunlight.

These companies learned their lesson with the open BIOS of pc's preventing them from really controlling DRM.

Android, not having a standardized BIOS, really gives them the opportunity to provide devices they can fully control.

If you can't unlock boot, you can't root, so you can't fully control the device.

That's the long-term goal: get people used to devices they don't actually control.

Lots of people already don't know the massive difference between using a full desktop app and a limited mobile app, many actually prefer the mobile because it's simpler! (I admit I do too, for certain use cases and maybe day-to-day use, but not for all use).

And then all the people who argue against having root access on your own device. 🤦‍♂️

There are good arguments for much of what Google does to improve Android security, it's just very frustrating to know their real agenda is to lock us out.

Fortunately, businesses will always need MDM (Mobile Device Management), which will require root access in some fashion, and there are already Open Source/low cost/free versions of MDM out there, and plenty of smart devs always working on root, like Magisk by topjohnwu and the new KernelSU by tiann (which gets root at the kernel level!)

I like SD cards and headphone jacks, but I don't quite understand the fuss over box contents. If you need another pair of low-end earbuds at the time you're buying a new phone, just buy them. If it helps with the mental accounting, consider whether you'd buy the same phone if it cost $15 more.

It doesn't make sense to me to include earbuds and chargers in every box. That's wasteful, and everybody ends up of drawers full of unused shit.

How's the ROM support on them?

SD cards and wired headphones too if that's your thing

At the moment asus really is the last noteworthy manufacturer of phones that can be considered as small and even there were rumours they might stop…

Makes me glad I bought my iPhone 13 mini when I did. It’s the perfect size but sadly also the last of its kind.

The problem I have is not so much how well they sit in my hand, but if I can reach everything on screen with one hand without having to shift the phone around or resting it somewhere. I have huge, way above average pianist hands (they make Xbox controllers look small). I can’t do it higher than ~6.5 inches, and it’s way easier under 6.2.

Even then, the large phones are so flat thin, human fingers can't bend at those angles easily. Thick cases generally help with that, but if the phone were a normal size, it would be easier to hold, could have a larger battery, and not need a case.

Also, since the manufacturers are all anti-bezel now, there's no safe place to set one's fingers without delicately holding the phone by both sides or side+back in some balancing act. Razr 5G 2020 was a neat combo, pretty thin borders, (but a notch), but the traditional old Razr bump at the bottom for nostalgia, which gave the phone a chin one could easily grab onto without fear of hitting touch buttons.

These companies quest for a thin sheet of touchscreen as the entire device and completely discard the fact that human hands have to interact with the device.

Then again there are people who don’t buy the higher end steam decks cause they want a fully gloss screen

Pfftttsshttt.. Outside. Kids these days.