Samsung sees 95% drop in profits for a second consecutive quarter::Today, Samsung posted its Q2 2023 financial results. The report says Samsung’s profits have dropped considerably compared to last year.
When money is tight you might use your phone for a year or two longer. 1000 Euro phones also don’t help the matter.
While I don’t use a Samsung, I am over half way through my phones fifth year. Other than a battery replacement I’ve had literally no problems whatsoever.
If only lifespan and right to repair were written into law everywhere.
Developers require money, and software maintenance requires lots of developers, testers and other people.
It also seems like the whole you gotta upgrade every other month hype has long since died down. It’s not the exponential improvements that it was ten or twelve years ago.
I couldn’t agree more. I have a Zfold 2 that I’ve had since launch (3 years) and I look at the phones on offer now that I have an upgrade available and I see no reason to upgrade to a new phone for a marginally better camera and processor, there hasn’t been enough innovation in mobile tech in that time to warrant paying another £1000+ over another 3 years, I’ll rock this phone phone until it dies the same way I did my Note 9.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve still got an S10 from launch, although it’s noticeably wearing down in performance now. I’ll wait to the holiday season to see if I can get a deal on a new Samsung. At that point I’ll have used the s10 for almost 5 years. Used to get a new phone every other year but that’s not needed or wanted now.
Yeah, I’ve had my LG G8 for four years now and I’m just starting to look for replacements. Unfortunately the G8 is known for the battery being very hard to replace or I would be looking into a battery replacement service instead to get a couple more years of useful life.
Foldable devices seem like the 3d TVs of the last couple of years. I will not be getting one any time soon.
After having one, it’s really amazing and the form factor and random utility it brings (built in tripod, easy to aim flash light and be hands free). The screens just need work. The crease is a non-issue as far as using the phone, but the little screen protectors that manufacturers say not to take off will deteriorate after like 6 months.
I think it’s close though and I do often miss my foldable.
Have had a samsung foldable and in a 2 year time period I’ve had to replace the factory installed screen protector twice. It started w a little crack that crept upwards until the whole protector was split in half. Ended up just peeling it off after the 2nd replacement started cracking. I imagine ppl don’t like the idea of not being able to protect their screens for one of their premium products…
On the flip side I did watch the superbowl from a hotel pool with this phone and it was perfect for that.
and who even wants this? a couple of friends have them, and it seems like nothing more than a weird novelty. in sci-fi, the phone unfolds to become a tablet, not folds in half to become… uselelss while potentially damaging the screen for no good reason.
this is a classic example of one of those technologies that you think would be cool, but once you have it, you’re like, “eh, never mind.” but Samsung went all sunk cost fallacy and doubled-down on it, losing billions. brilliant!
from what my friends have told me, that novelty wears off real quick, and is replaced with the concern it will break or wear out— which happens more frequently than manufacturers claim. if not the screen itself, then the hinges, which were a common problem with the old flip-phones, too, back in the day.
I mean, you like what you like. I’m just speaking from a practical standpoint in that any moving parts = a high manufacturing cost and higher rate of defect and breakage. the primary advantage of the “candy bar” form factor is that it reduces/eliminates moving parts and potential points of failure from the physical design.
I admit… I really do miss the idea, even the feel of flipping a phone shut. hell, I even miss slamming a phone down to end a call. angrily jamming my finger into a screen to end a call is REALLY unsatisfying, and often ends in my throwing my phone across the room, and I’ve thankfully developed the habit of throwing it at my couch to save on replacing expensive smartphones, lol. but, until tech evolves tot he point where we get phablets a la Westworld or Legion that can unfold into a super-slim tablet rather than fold down into a flip-phone from the past whose screen could actually just break at any moment because the tech was rushed…. yeah, I’m not interested.
I had flip phones before smartphones became default, I loved the intuitiveness of answering, locking, etc, and I love the idea of a foldable smartphone because of the size of the screen that you can get into a pocket
Same here, was on flip phones for the longest time. I loved the compactness. They became scarce some years ago so I started buying smart phones, currently a Samsung. That thing is huge and unwieldy. It does not fit well in a pocket so I don’t carry it around. I always have to find someplace to stow it, often in the center console of my car.
A folding smart phone could be a solution, but they’re all really expensive. I don’t spend a lot on phones and never will. Right now I’m looking to replace my under $300 Samsung with an under $300 Motorola. Functionally my Samsung works well, but I hate all the Samsung bloatware on it. I know Motorola uses a fairly stock Android image and hopefully it will be a bit more compact.
I see why you’re saying that but I love my fold and I don’t think I could go back to a regular phone anymore, you quickly get used to the screen real estate and its difficult to give it up imo. While the outside screen is too thin on my fold for my fat fingers you get the best of both worlds of a phone and a more portable tablet, I get it if its not your thing but I find it very handy to have that extra work space on my phone.
While the outside screen is too thin on my fold
Yep, I’m hoping they’ll do a slightly wider tri-fold model at some point. I’d like to have a wider front screen, like Galaxy S22 Ultra sized, and then be able to unfold twice to get a ~3x sized tablet-sized screen.
Not that that would help with the already astronomical price-tag of the Z-Fold.
Maybe they could stop taking features away from their phones. Put a micro SD and aux jack back and I’d buy one
Yeh it’s expensive but I vote with my wallet. Sony’s build is the best I’ve ever had. Software is close to stock AOSP with nice Sony improvements. Only issue I see is Sony are slow to roll out major OS updates. All in all, I’d argue it’s one of the best devices I’ve had over the last few generations.
What do they need all this space for?
They removed the keys for the screen. Ok.
Phones got bigger for the screen. Ok.
Phones got thinner, monolithic-like and they removed replaceable batteries. Why?
They removed the 3.5mm jack. Not ok, full stop.
They removed the SD card slot. A cloud’s not a storage card.
I heard they’re removing SIM card slots as well.
Gradually making phones into TV’s with sensors is bad. What if next you’re considered dead or criminal when offline?
Maybe I am in the minority but I’ll never need an aux jack again and I see it as another point of failure for water damage.
A lot of people use the headphone jack still. Bluetooth will never be as good as direct connection. Some people don’t own cars with all that Bluetooth bullshit, or just prefer to use the jack since it is lossless audio. People want to charge and listen to music at the same time.
This is why I’m still using my LG v60, it had the best headphone jack and dac at the time and probably still does looking at everything else currently on the market.
Ahh like I get the argument but it is technology progressing, lots of cars didn’t have cd players when the world moved from tapes. The infrastructure responds to demand.
Some people don’t own cars with all that Bluetooth bullshit, or just prefer to use the jack since it is lossless audio.
I really hate that cars seem to drop a built in music solution in favor of smartphones. Give me a good radio and a cd player or sdcard slot over any smartphone connectivity and I’m happy.
Maybe I am in the minority but I’ll never need an aux jack again
There is still significant lag for bluetooth audio on both ios and android platforms. It’s doesn’t really impact calling, and it doesn’t really impact watching video content (because they figured out how to measure that latency in real time and inject artificial delay into the video stream so that audio and video sync). But what they haven’t figured out yet is the answer for bluetooth audio for gaming. When gaming, you can’t arbitrarily delay the video feed so that it lines up with audio, so the bluetooth audio experience is complete dogshit for any gaming scenario. If you game, you have to use the physical cable or the constant audio lag will drive you mad.
Also, there used to be (still are) a fair number of accessories designed to work through the aux port. Examples: mobile credit card readers that connect through aux jack (like square/paypal) that are used heavily by small vendors (especially for shows/events); also things like selfie sticks that use a cable plugged into the aux jack connected to a length of wire running inside the selfie stick to a button on the end of it.
The market is starting to come up with wireless versions of these things, but the modern wireless versions now require unique ios and android versions of them when the aux-jack solution used to be platform independent.
Also, the audio quality of an aux jack is an order of magnitude superior to anything that can be piped through bluetooth…still.
I very much appreciate devices still throwing traditional aux jacks onto mobile devices. Ideally, there will be a wireless technical solution that eventually is superior, but that technology is definitely not bluetooth and we’re still waiting for it to be invented and hit consumer availability.
Maybe make better products, return to high QA, and deal with customers as customers and not enemies?
Nah, take on another L instead.
Sorry. I’m just trying not to get evicted due to living in a country with the highest rent, internet, food, and data plan prices.
Seeing that you’re from Canada, why is this so? Why is living in Canada so expensive relative to elsewhere?
It’s big and cold. How much food do you think grows there? There’s actually plenty of cheap land but people like to live with other people.
If you don’t want modern conveniences, I bet it’s cheap. I bet you can live off of potatoes and chicken for like $0.
It’s not cheap. Buying a crack shack in a shitty province with basically no job opportunities costs more than a nice place in LA.
Actually.
Getting a piece of shit, run down, SHARED town house in Nova Scotia costs more than a decent house in LA.
Government. Not liberals or conservatives, but the government as a whole. Canada has had many years where both liberal and conservatives were in charge, and nothing changed.
Canada doesn’t allow competition. We have 3 main internet providers, 3 main phone plan providers, like 2 grocery store chains, a couple airlines, etc.
When other companies attempt to come in to break up monopolies, they lobby, and get them shut down.
I mean where are we going to go? America isn’t really an alternative, as much as Americans think it is. Our healthcare, gun laws, etc are things that make Canada really good. We could move to some European or Scandinavian country, but that’s not as easy as it sounds, especially when you need to learn a new language, get accepted, move your entire life, and live in such a different culture.
So people in Canada just accept it. Maybe one day monopolies will be broken up, but there are no parties that are going to do that now. Left or right leaning.
Government. Not liberals or conservatives, but the government as a whole. Canada has had many years where both liberal and conservatives were in charge, and nothing changed.
Huh, it’s almost as if they don’t encompass as much of the political spectrum as they’d like us to believe.
I haven’t even seen a North American have a kind of acceptable political understanding in the 2020s until now.
The Economist explains it well in their article Australia and Canada are one economy—with one set of flaws. The competition regulators in both Australia and Canada aren’t doing their job, allowing oligopolies to form.
It’s a type of endemic corruption and Transparency International should start calling it out.
At least you don’t live in the city with the highest rent prices. Our countries treated housing like and investment scheme which drives up local tax revenue resulting in reduction year in year of new developments (assuming Canada has the same supply Constraints as here) . The reduction is fueled by the tax revenue however also by the increasing amount of investors and owners who vote. They don’t want their asset values to decrease so it’s artificially kept high the value component of the assets left long ago, we are in fictional valuations now.
Regarding food, their is no other way around monopoly or duopoly other than supporting farmers markets. By supporting them they can grow their base and bring down prices. Not sure what else can be done here. It’s a real problem for us here.
Electricity prices are skyrocketing here and that’s squarely landed at the feet of poor renewables planning. Mandatory coal plant shutdowns without having replacement capacity in place is killing people when the elderly & vulnerable can’t afford AC during the heat waves.
