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I had an Epic 4G. It supported WiMax, which was a legit 4G service. It lost out to LTE due to higher power consumption and inferior bandwidth utilization. Sprint eventually converted its WiMax towers to LTE, but that was long after I'd replaced the phone. In the areas which had WiMax coverage, I typically got 15-20 Mbps, vs about 1-3 Mbps for 3G. (Course the phone wold die in 2 hours from the battery drain of using WiMax...)

I refuse to buy a phone without a 3.5mm jack and SD card slot

I don't think there's ever been a phone with both 3.5mm jack AND SD card slot. Probably could find an old landline phone that supports patching in 3.5mm, but it wouldn't have an SD card

I hope you are joking. Samsung S9 is one that has 3.5mm headphone jack and 512GB microSD card slot. https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s9-8966.php

And yet thinner phones (2mm thinner) already existed - and kept the 3.5mm jack. Not to mention a hacker added 3.5mm jack internally to an iPhone 7. Clearly it can be done, and clearly thinner phones can be made. It was dropped because Apple was spending $3.2 billion buying one of the biggest Bluetooth headphone brands in the world - Beats.

That's a lie. This guy added a phone jack to an iPhone 7. If he could do it - then why couldn't Apple? And The Gionee eLife s5.5 is just 5.6mm thick (thinner than any iPhone) - and has a headphone jack (and was released in 2014, with pretty good specs even back then). Are Apple's engineers not as good as a random hardware hacker in Hong Kong, or a 3rd tier Chinese phone brand?

Apple wanted to monetize its buy of Beats. Beats was - and is - one of the biggest Bluetooth headphone brands out there. It's no coincidence that right after Apple bought Beats (Q3 2014), their new iPhones (iPhone 7, Q3 2015) lack a jack - and essentially require a Bluetooth headphone. Which Apple, conveniently, sells a crap-ton of.

Xiaomi has its own line of Android One phones for stock fans.Check out the MiA2: https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaom...

They're not comparable, no. But Intel had healthy 14nm production in 2014, now they're saying late 2019 at the earliest for 10nm so five years with nothing more than enhancements. And TSMC is shipping 7nm in the iPhone Xs right now and has just announced they expect 20% of their 2019 revenue to be from their 7nm process, which is fairly equivalent to Intel's 10nm. Samsung says their 7nm is ready for production too. Basically they've lost their entire lead and is already trailing a bit, they'll be fully competitive if they can launch their 10nm but they no longer get the holy trifecta of a better manufacturing process: Lower cost, better performance and higher power efficiency.

I think the greatest danger to Intel is that Apple finds it's able to produce comparable light desktop/laptop performance on ARM, if Intel can't provide superior chips there's very little reason for Apple to stay. They've done arch changes before from Motorola -> PowerPC -> x86, they know what it's like and with the iPhone/iPad CPU/GPU design in-house you know they'll be lusting for the Mac business. If they do I expect a full volley with new MacBook, MacBook Air, iMac and Mac mini ARM models but to leave MacBook Pro / iMac Pro / Mac Pro on x86 initially. If the rumors are true there'll be a new iPad Pro out soon with a A12X processor, that'll be a good clue as to how far it's off.

The iPhone SE has dimensions of 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm

You can use the Phone Finder at GSM Arena to find a phone that matches your criteria. There really aren't many current phones that are the same size or smaller than the iPhone SE. Don't look at screensize though. Look at actual phone dimensions, because bezels have become a lot smaller in recent years. Something like the Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact is probably going to be about as small as you can get.

The iPhone SE has dimensions of 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm

You can use the Phone Finder at GSM Arena to find a phone that matches your criteria. There really aren't many current phones that are the same size or smaller than the iPhone SE. Don't look at screensize though. Look at actual phone dimensions, because bezels have become a lot smaller in recent years. Something like the Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact is probably going to be about as small as you can get.

Lenovo has a different name for this in China - the Lenovo Z5 - they're using the Motorola brand in North America because it's probably worth more in market awareness than "Lenovo."

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro is amazing for the price

https://m.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_...

You're assuming that each pixel is represented exclusively by four other pixels.

I can't be arsed reading up on it...

No, I've read up on it, and you're projecting your tendency to assume onto me.

Except that wasn't your response. Your response quoted a subset of the original message and didn't reply to all of it. Had you not quoted the text or had you quoted the entire requirement list your reply would have been in a very different context.

I'm sorry, my original reply does, in fact, quote the entirety of the original requirement list. Did I bullet-point every bit and give my reasoning? No. Because if you follow my link it is apparent why I point out this handset. The price difference is readily apparent, the screen size it right at the top in 18 point type, trumpeting this is one of those (now rare) Android phones with a screen under 5" in size. A scanning of the features list will tell someone versed in phones this is not a cheap low-performance handset.

As far as battery power, that's a bit harder to gauge. I don't own a Xperia XZ1 Compact, I have the previous year's model, which was done as a more mid-range phone than this one. I get almost five days on one charge, and this newer one is supposed to be a little better in endurance (talk/music/video playback) than that, although the standby time is allegedly less. Battery is hard to recommend as it depends on the user's individual habits and what apps they run. Get rid of Facebook completely from the device (and any messaging apps that run in the background all the time), and you'll be surprised how much longer your phone lasts.

I didn't mention the current model because it's gotten bigger in ways that don't benefit the user much. An 18:9 screen will be wasted space on most modern media and the extra thickness does not come with a comparable increase in battery capacity. Jumping to a 1080p screen has hurt battery longevity as well. In addition, there's no headphone jack in this newest iteration, something the OP specifically wanted.

I see nothing written by you justifying your choice of the Galaxy S9. Pot calling Kettle what?

The end result is someone didn't understand the conversation. Regardless of how you defend it, someone didn't understand. You failed to communicate properly.

My reply was directed to the OP, and he would understand as we was being directly replied to. It's not my job to make a digest of the entire thread in my individual post for future readers. If you want to be in the conversation, make the fucking effort to read the context for yourself. Quoting every previous post ad nauseam is how we end up with those joke "corporate email chain" stories where a one sentence reply becomes a 3 Mbyte message on server.

Except that wasn't your response. Your response quoted a subset of the original message and didn't reply to all of it. Had you not quoted the text or had you quoted the entire requirement list your reply would have been in a very different context.

I'm sorry, my original reply does, in fact, quote the entirety of the original requirement list. Did I bullet-point every bit and give my reasoning? No. Because if you follow my link it is apparent why I point out this handset. The price difference is readily apparent, the screen size it right at the top in 18 point type, trumpeting this is one of those (now rare) Android phones with a screen under 5" in size. A scanning of the features list will tell someone versed in phones this is not a cheap low-performance handset.

As far as battery power, that's a bit harder to gauge. I don't own a Xperia XZ1 Compact, I have the previous year's model, which was done as a more mid-range phone than this one. I get almost five days on one charge, and this newer one is supposed to be a little better in endurance (talk/music/video playback) than that, although the standby time is allegedly less. Battery is hard to recommend as it depends on the user's individual habits and what apps they run. Get rid of Facebook completely from the device (and any messaging apps that run in the background all the time), and you'll be surprised how much longer your phone lasts.

I didn't mention the current model because it's gotten bigger in ways that don't benefit the user much. An 18:9 screen will be wasted space on most modern media and the extra thickness does not come with a comparable increase in battery capacity. Jumping to a 1080p screen has hurt battery longevity as well. In addition, there's no headphone jack in this newest iteration, something the OP specifically wanted.

I see nothing written by you justifying your choice of the Galaxy S9. Pot calling Kettle what?

The end result is someone didn't understand the conversation. Regardless of how you defend it, someone didn't understand. You failed to communicate properly.

My reply was directed to the OP, and he would understand as we was being directly replied to. It's not my job to make a digest of the entire thread in my individual post for future readers. If you want to be in the conversation, make the fucking effort to read the context for yourself. Quoting every previous post ad nauseam is how we end up with those joke "corporate email chain" stories where a one sentence reply becomes a 3 Mbyte message on server.

Not too sure, but the Axon 7 was quite a popular phone on XDA forums, so I imagine you can get custom firmware:

https://forum.xda-developers.c...

There's also quite a good following on the ZTE's US community:

https://community.zteusa.com/c...

This page claims it has band 13 too:

https://www.gsmarena.com/zte_a...

It's a bit dated though.

For what it's worth I just went to GSMArena and did a search for phones with the above spec. To be fair I included 2016 and 2018 but, seriously, even a conservative search will find quite a few phones. They say 268 results. The first one that comes up is a Samsung J series, which IIRC is Samsung's budget range. I manually checked each item and it met the spec, albeit it's the 2018 model. Which, I guess, proves my thesis that Android phones for some reason get worse the more expensive they are.

All of those features are common. Why do you think it's "trolling" to propose you have a phone with all of these features?

For what it's worth I just went to GSMArena and did a search for phones with the above spec. To be fair I included 2016 and 2018 but, seriously, even a conservative search will find quite a few phones. They say 268 results. The first one that comes up is a Samsung J series, which IIRC is Samsung's budget range. I manually checked each item and it met the spec, albeit it's the 2018 model. Which, I guess, proves my thesis that Android phones for some reason get worse the more expensive they are.

All of those features are common. Why do you think it's "trolling" to propose you have a phone with all of these features?

They removed it because 3.5mm is a lot when you're making a phone that's only 7.1mm thick.

Note that budget-Chinese-brand Gionee figured out how to go thin AND have a 3.5mm jack back in 2014 with their eLife S5.1. It was 5.2mm thick and had a 3.5mm jack. I owned one for about 8 months, but the reality was that it was simply too thin to hold comfortably. I think something around 8mm is a realistic thickness from a user-interaction standpoint. Thicker and it can get bulky, thinner and it feels too delicate and is almost too thin to wrap your fingers around comfortably.

But if thinness is the excuse - er, courage - that Apple wants to use, it's kind of damning on them that someone else figured it out 3 years ahead of their move to no jack...

Here's more proof: iOS continues to lose market share and even in the US, all iOS devices now number about the same as just Samsung, one of multiple Android players. Was that from the headphone jack, or the general slide in iOS quality overall? I tend to think it's both, given the headphone market is continuing to explode and Apple basically locked themselves out of a vast majority of it.

So where's your proof?

The problem with that figure is that includes ALL Samsung phones; not just those that compete head-to-head against Apple's models. When you start breaking it out by model, an entirely different picture emerges, with Apple holding the first AND second place, in terms of units sold, with a low-end Samsung phone in third place (and no other Samsung models in the top 5) :

https://www.bbva.com/en/top-se...

In fact, it is really hard to figure out exactly what Samsung is selling significant numbers of, with THIRTY ONE NEW models of Samsung phones INTRODUCED in 2016 alone! But I bet my bottom dollar that the vast majority of 2017's UNIT sales figures for Samsung are actually cheap-shit "giveaway" phones. :

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Samsung is still selling phones with a 5 MP back camera and 4 GB of storage, FFS!

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

Or how about this beauty? Released in 2014 (!!!) and Still available! 2 MP main camera, 4 GB. Looks like it came straight from 1999:

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

You may laugh: But every one of those phones counts as Samsung's UNIT Sales:

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

And, although Apple's unit sales were down 1.3% year-over-year in 2017, Samsung's unit sales were down a whopping 4% in the same time period. Plus, despite the somewhat lower-than-expected sales of the iPhone X, Apple bested Samsung in unit sales in Q4 of 2017.

https://www.idc.com/promo/smar...

But we can go back and forth with statistics all night long. Both companies are doing quite well, and neither has any real signs of drying up and blowing away any time soon. Can we just agree that's the REAL answer to all this?

Here's more proof: iOS continues to lose market share and even in the US, all iOS devices now number about the same as just Samsung, one of multiple Android players. Was that from the headphone jack, or the general slide in iOS quality overall? I tend to think it's both, given the headphone market is continuing to explode and Apple basically locked themselves out of a vast majority of it.

So where's your proof?

The problem with that figure is that includes ALL Samsung phones; not just those that compete head-to-head against Apple's models. When you start breaking it out by model, an entirely different picture emerges, with Apple holding the first AND second place, in terms of units sold, with a low-end Samsung phone in third place (and no other Samsung models in the top 5) :

https://www.bbva.com/en/top-se...

In fact, it is really hard to figure out exactly what Samsung is selling significant numbers of, with THIRTY ONE NEW models of Samsung phones INTRODUCED in 2016 alone! But I bet my bottom dollar that the vast majority of 2017's UNIT sales figures for Samsung are actually cheap-shit "giveaway" phones. :

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Samsung is still selling phones with a 5 MP back camera and 4 GB of storage, FFS!

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

Or how about this beauty? Released in 2014 (!!!) and Still available! 2 MP main camera, 4 GB. Looks like it came straight from 1999:

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

You may laugh: But every one of those phones counts as Samsung's UNIT Sales:

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

And, although Apple's unit sales were down 1.3% year-over-year in 2017, Samsung's unit sales were down a whopping 4% in the same time period. Plus, despite the somewhat lower-than-expected sales of the iPhone X, Apple bested Samsung in unit sales in Q4 of 2017.

https://www.idc.com/promo/smar...

But we can go back and forth with statistics all night long. Both companies are doing quite well, and neither has any real signs of drying up and blowing away any time soon. Can we just agree that's the REAL answer to all this?

Here's more proof: iOS continues to lose market share and even in the US, all iOS devices now number about the same as just Samsung, one of multiple Android players. Was that from the headphone jack, or the general slide in iOS quality overall? I tend to think it's both, given the headphone market is continuing to explode and Apple basically locked themselves out of a vast majority of it.

So where's your proof?

The problem with that figure is that includes ALL Samsung phones; not just those that compete head-to-head against Apple's models. When you start breaking it out by model, an entirely different picture emerges, with Apple holding the first AND second place, in terms of units sold, with a low-end Samsung phone in third place (and no other Samsung models in the top 5) :

https://www.bbva.com/en/top-se...

In fact, it is really hard to figure out exactly what Samsung is selling significant numbers of, with THIRTY ONE NEW models of Samsung phones INTRODUCED in 2016 alone! But I bet my bottom dollar that the vast majority of 2017's UNIT sales figures for Samsung are actually cheap-shit "giveaway" phones. :

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Samsung is still selling phones with a 5 MP back camera and 4 GB of storage, FFS!

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

Or how about this beauty? Released in 2014 (!!!) and Still available! 2 MP main camera, 4 GB. Looks like it came straight from 1999:

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

You may laugh: But every one of those phones counts as Samsung's UNIT Sales:

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

And, although Apple's unit sales were down 1.3% year-over-year in 2017, Samsung's unit sales were down a whopping 4% in the same time period. Plus, despite the somewhat lower-than-expected sales of the iPhone X, Apple bested Samsung in unit sales in Q4 of 2017.

https://www.idc.com/promo/smar...

But we can go back and forth with statistics all night long. Both companies are doing quite well, and neither has any real signs of drying up and blowing away any time soon. Can we just agree that's the REAL answer to all this?

The Gionee eLife S5.1 is just 5.2mm thick, and has a 3.5mm jack. It's 30% thinner than an iPhone 8 - and keeps the jack. The jack thickness is NOT a driving factor in its drop from iPhones, unless you mean that Apple cannot design a phone as well as the engineers at Gionee.

He couldn't, on account of prior art

Apple also copied the original iPhone design from the LG Prada.

https://www.gsmarena.com/compa...

I think people's nostalgia for Nokia products is largely misplaced.

Because they weren't the smartphone of today?

They are of course judged their competition of the time.
Relative Ericsson at the time when people started to move over I guess the two features Nokia may have had over Ericsson was the antenna not poking out of the shell and possibly better battery life. Did snake or easy of use / the use of just one button for navigation affect anything too?

T28s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The T28 was the lightest and slimmest mobile phone at the time, with a weight of only 83 grams.[1]
Unlike mobile phones of the time (1999-2001) it had a fixed, stubby external antenna. It was probably best known as the first phone that used lithium polymer batteries. At one point, it was the best selling mobile phone in America."
https://www.gsmarena.com/erics...
" Removable Li-Po 500 mAh battery
Stand-by 50 h
Talk time 3 h 30 min
            Ultra Slim, 600 mAh Li-Pol, 89 g
Stand-by 65 h
Talk time 4 h 30 min"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The Nokia 8210 was, at the time of its release in 1999, the smallest, lightest Nokia mobile phone on the market,[1] thus its selling point was based on its design and customization, with removable Xpress-on covers. Six differently coloured Xpress-on covers are available, as well as many third party ones."
"Weight 79 g (Lithium Battery)"
"Battery Standard, 650 mAh Li-Ion (BLB-2)"
https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia...
"Stand-by 50 - 150 h
Talk time 2 h - 3 h 20 min"

By the time places like India, other parts of Asia, the middle-east, Africa was flooded with Nokia phones though Sony-Ericsson phones was likely not common and Nokia was what existed and what they saw so there it's brand recognition simply because it was the very common cheap phone around. Now it's chinese brands instead.

I doubt people would care much about the phone being able to push out a part.. They will of course still see it's not a smart-phone. If anything that it's yellow and bent will likely draw more attention ..

Old lookers:
http://abouthandphone-infor.bl...

When I replaced my T28s I looked at the Ericsson T66 and the Siemens C55. Took the later because it supported a higher Java version number but I never installed any Java programs on it. I've so wished I had gotten the T66 instead:
https://www.gsmarena.com/erics...
"Weight 59 g (2.08 oz)"
"Stand-by 150 h
Talk time 2 h - 5 h"

Interesting how the T66 was discontinued in 2001 Q4 and the T28s was around 1999-2001. Make you wonder how long mine lasted ... But I guess it still worked then because it was bought on a 24 month contract so it was likely just out and I got a new one.

I think people's nostalgia for Nokia products is largely misplaced.

Because they weren't the smartphone of today?

They are of course judged their competition of the time.
Relative Ericsson at the time when people started to move over I guess the two features Nokia may have had over Ericsson was the antenna not poking out of the shell and possibly better battery life. Did snake or easy of use / the use of just one button for navigation affect anything too?

T28s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The T28 was the lightest and slimmest mobile phone at the time, with a weight of only 83 grams.[1]
Unlike mobile phones of the time (1999-2001) it had a fixed, stubby external antenna. It was probably best known as the first phone that used lithium polymer batteries. At one point, it was the best selling mobile phone in America."
https://www.gsmarena.com/erics...
" Removable Li-Po 500 mAh battery
Stand-by 50 h
Talk time 3 h 30 min
            Ultra Slim, 600 mAh Li-Pol, 89 g
Stand-by 65 h
Talk time 4 h 30 min"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The Nokia 8210 was, at the time of its release in 1999, the smallest, lightest Nokia mobile phone on the market,[1] thus its selling point was based on its design and customization, with removable Xpress-on covers. Six differently coloured Xpress-on covers are available, as well as many third party ones."
"Weight 79 g (Lithium Battery)"
"Battery Standard, 650 mAh Li-Ion (BLB-2)"
https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia...
"Stand-by 50 - 150 h
Talk time 2 h - 3 h 20 min"

By the time places like India, other parts of Asia, the middle-east, Africa was flooded with Nokia phones though Sony-Ericsson phones was likely not common and Nokia was what existed and what they saw so there it's brand recognition simply because it was the very common cheap phone around. Now it's chinese brands instead.

I doubt people would care much about the phone being able to push out a part.. They will of course still see it's not a smart-phone. If anything that it's yellow and bent will likely draw more attention ..

Old lookers:
http://abouthandphone-infor.bl...

When I replaced my T28s I looked at the Ericsson T66 and the Siemens C55. Took the later because it supported a higher Java version number but I never installed any Java programs on it. I've so wished I had gotten the T66 instead:
https://www.gsmarena.com/erics...
"Weight 59 g (2.08 oz)"
"Stand-by 150 h
Talk time 2 h - 5 h"

Interesting how the T66 was discontinued in 2001 Q4 and the T28s was around 1999-2001. Make you wonder how long mine lasted ... But I guess it still worked then because it was bought on a 24 month contract so it was likely just out and I got a new one.

I think people's nostalgia for Nokia products is largely misplaced.

Because they weren't the smartphone of today?

They are of course judged their competition of the time.
Relative Ericsson at the time when people started to move over I guess the two features Nokia may have had over Ericsson was the antenna not poking out of the shell and possibly better battery life. Did snake or easy of use / the use of just one button for navigation affect anything too?

T28s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The T28 was the lightest and slimmest mobile phone at the time, with a weight of only 83 grams.[1]
Unlike mobile phones of the time (1999-2001) it had a fixed, stubby external antenna. It was probably best known as the first phone that used lithium polymer batteries. At one point, it was the best selling mobile phone in America."
https://www.gsmarena.com/erics...
" Removable Li-Po 500 mAh battery
Stand-by 50 h
Talk time 3 h 30 min
            Ultra Slim, 600 mAh Li-Pol, 89 g
Stand-by 65 h
Talk time 4 h 30 min"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The Nokia 8210 was, at the time of its release in 1999, the smallest, lightest Nokia mobile phone on the market,[1] thus its selling point was based on its design and customization, with removable Xpress-on covers. Six differently coloured Xpress-on covers are available, as well as many third party ones."
"Weight 79 g (Lithium Battery)"
"Battery Standard, 650 mAh Li-Ion (BLB-2)"
https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia...
"Stand-by 50 - 150 h
Talk time 2 h - 3 h 20 min"

By the time places like India, other parts of Asia, the middle-east, Africa was flooded with Nokia phones though Sony-Ericsson phones was likely not common and Nokia was what existed and what they saw so there it's brand recognition simply because it was the very common cheap phone around. Now it's chinese brands instead.

I doubt people would care much about the phone being able to push out a part.. They will of course still see it's not a smart-phone. If anything that it's yellow and bent will likely draw more attention ..

Old lookers:
http://abouthandphone-infor.bl...

When I replaced my T28s I looked at the Ericsson T66 and the Siemens C55. Took the later because it supported a higher Java version number but I never installed any Java programs on it. I've so wished I had gotten the T66 instead:
https://www.gsmarena.com/erics...
"Weight 59 g (2.08 oz)"
"Stand-by 150 h
Talk time 2 h - 5 h"

Interesting how the T66 was discontinued in 2001 Q4 and the T28s was around 1999-2001. Make you wonder how long mine lasted ... But I guess it still worked then because it was bought on a 24 month contract so it was likely just out and I got a new one.

Samsung do one with a 5" screen but it's only 0.38" thick
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...
You didn't even have to ask, they already made it.

If you don't mind the bigger screen Samsung have also done a S5 Active, S6 Active, S7 Active and an S8 Active. All supposed to be rugged phones.
They're the same phone inside as their plain Galaxy Sx's except a little bigger, with a bigger battery too and shock proof.

Your information is several years out of date. On "newer" versions of Android (basically any phone made in the past 3-4 years)

Let's correct a common misconception to help open a few eyes; there's a few grim reasons for the "out of date" statement... it's not that out of date. Here's the gist of what turned out to be a long post:
"Android has had granular permissions for a while" only affects people on Android 6 (Nov 2015) and newer. It's just December 2017. Most people repeating the factoid also don't tend to consider that there's only a near-coinflip chance (46 versus 54 per hundred) that their Android-wielding listener lacks that assumed protection due to grim realities in Android version penetration issues.

To see why Android usage is an important part of smartphone versions, here are some numbers. Smartphones make up about 35+ % of site visits with some projections from 2016 estimating 2017 ownership at close to 5 billion around the globe. Though /.ers have known that Apple had a commendable granular permissions setup for a long while, about 85% of those worldwide smartphones are on Android.

I can't find numbers on whether Android phones for most non-tech folks are OEM-upgraded flagships phones. Apparently Apple and Samsung (and HTC) dominate the vast majority of phone purchases, so perhaps things aren't too bad given the first 2 are known for expensive flagships. Flagships are important because other phones in Android land usually get stuck with no updates, and even dare ship with the Android version from a year or two PRIOR to their release date.

Version SIX is where all the touted granular permissions came out for Android.. That it was a new feature back in 2015 is discussed on paragraph 3 of this read for a beta of what was released some months later in 2015. This other read is more useful but puts up an anti-popup warning)

I bought an LG G3 phone in May 2015, (it had been LG's newest flagship 12 months earlier and had already been phased out by the G4 when I bought it). It runs a version 4.4 build that I did not bother upgrading to v5. Apparently version 6 did get released over the air for my carrier, but today is first I've heard of it. That release was in May 2016. Marshmallow, Android version 6 came out in November 2015.

We're STILL in 2017. This permissions empowerment is slightly over 2 years "new", not 4. The number TWO is also associated with the years a US contract lasts out there*. There are probably a thousands of US consumers out there that are still tied to that contract with a phone built with the old all-or-nothing permissions model, or just got a new phone with that model, living under 2 years of app tyranny.

Versions 6 and 7 of Android have this model, but only make up 46 percent of Android phones as of September, but this leaves a whopping 54% of Android users in the all-or-nothing world. Here's a chart from Sept 2017

It feels good denying random crap to apps. Maps wants "Contacts" "Location" "Phone" and "Storage". It freezes when I deny it location access, but the funny thing is, it then lies about this:
"This app won't work properly unless you allow Google play services' request to access" Calendar, Camera, Contacts, Microphone, Body Sensors, SMS, Storage. Notice that even with the new model, that shows a clear, dubious discrepancy be

Bring back five-row hardware keyboards, slider phones, and optical trackballs. Bring back phones that don't suck and stop shoving apps down our throats.

I have a BB Passport. The keyboard doubles as a touchpad so you can scroll with it.

Works for me because the few android apps I want to run work fine on the BB (Actually, Words with Friends runs better on the Passport than on Android because in-app advertisements do not get downloaded).

Better display than an iPhone too, which is a nice bonus.

I have a 7" phablet. It has a 5AH battery, it lasts about 36 Hrs with normal use and about 18Hrs with heavy use and it was nowhere near as expensive as similar power phones because no one wants one. I personally cant understand it, I'm of average size (5ft 10) and I find its far better than the average phone in almost every single way.

Replaceable battery? Rugged/IP68? SD card slot? Headphone jack?

There are phones on the market that have all of those things. You should buy one of them.

Not that I personally care about any of these features, but there is in fact just 1 android phone ever released that has all of those if you include the need for a fingerprint reader (modern phone).

The moto x ^4 is headlining Android One for Project Fi in the US is a mid-range device ~$399 with a Headphone jack, SD-Card slot, and Micro-USB.

See: Motorola Moto X4 - Full phone specifications

I doubt it's about patents. Although HTC has been in the market for a really long time. They manufactured smartphones, before they were even called that, like the HTC P3330. They were probably the best Windows Mobile manufacturer around. Back when Microsoft made a phone OS worth considering. They are a Taiwanese company and these typically do not have a lot of experience with patent warfare.

What would make this sale weird to me though was that HTC is owned by the daughter of the founder of the Formosa Plastics Group. He's one of the richest men in the island. Their family could probably keep HTC as a going concern indefinitely if they wanted to. I have heard many times in the past of a buyout of HTC when they were in similar dire straits but they were never interested in selling the company at all.

I wouldn't buy one just because of the shitty screen it has. 1920x1080? Really? Even my old ass G3 puts that to shame.

You can buy an unlocked G5, which is superior to the Xiaomi Mi A1 in almost every way, on Amazon for $235.

It's not the only one. The one I have is the 16GB/2GB-model of the Mediapad M2 8.0 ( http://www.gsmarena.com/huawei... ) The hardware is the same on both the 16GB/2GB and 32GB/3GB-models, except for the amount of RAM and storage, and between the LTE and non-LTE models the only difference is that the latter has no LTE -- it's still the same SoC, and all these models have received the Marshmallow-update elsewhere in Europe, but not here.

No, neither phone came with Win10. Both phones can be upgraded.
Citation needed?
Here you go:
http://www.gsmarena.com/micros...

http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_...

No, neither phone came with Win10. Both phones can be upgraded.
Citation needed?
Here you go:
http://www.gsmarena.com/micros...

http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_...

Does anybody really truly trust that their phone is waterproof. I have a Samsung Galaxy A5 which is IP68 certified. However, I don't really think I'm willing to deal with the headache that will inevitably come if it does get water damage. For me, it means I really don't worry about it in the rain or if I accidentally drop it in the water, but I'm not going to risk actively submerging it for more than necessary. I've heard enough stories about waterproof phones not being waterproof to know that I really shouldn't be pushing the limits. If it does get water damage, how do you prove that it wasn't due to the device being deeper or longer underwater than it was rated for?

(didn't came as hostile ^_^ I hope my long post didn't either. Internet these days will take any tongue-in-cheek as offense which is kind of a lost art clearly lost in the transition from the real world - quite a shame for light-hearted talkers like me)

OLED is tantalizing, everybody gets it. The guys at GSMArena had this to say 7 years ago in their GS1 review: "...And the majestic Super OLED display is a great reason on its own to buy the Galaxy. Be warned though, you're unlikely to ever go back to TFT again. Meaning that at this point, the question to ask yourself is whether you're ready for a long-term affair with Samsung.".

I have a power-user family member who got an unwanted S2 for free about 2 years ago, and now that it's become faulty he can't grasp the possibility of shelling out big money for the OLED experience, yet he feels he has to. I have tried to make him understand that OLED is an illusion of quality and a big trade-off for either performance or cost (low-end Samsung devices, or expensive Samsung and Moto devices. Oh and that Samsung bloat that doesn't seem to go away). I usually go about like this to him - "look , I have used countless phones as daily drivers, switching from OLED to LCD multiple times - GS2->Nexus 4->Moto X->OPO->GS6->Xiaomi RN3->GS7, and I constantly play around at work with new devices - and every time I switch, I see benefits both sides. The one thing I don't see is actual OLED improvement other than resolution. OLED is just visually ticking your senses with a wow factor on over-saturated colors and, granted, infinite contrast" - thing is he, like most, doesn't care much, so did I in my first year or so with OLED. Now I have to hunt around for a used GS4+ for him... Why submit yourself to this necessity. But enough with evangelizing something clearly personal preference for just about anyone.

Ceramic is great for scratches. It's a no brainer for people that roll without a case. Shatter-proof-wise, I don't know really. And screens are always glass. I'm not sure how any corner protection can save a screen shattering without some sort of cushioning/elasticity like the one provided by rubber cases, and that's why I rarely use a phone without one (even cheap chinese 2 buck variety have saved me many flagship phone falls multiple times).

I would argue that with fast charge you will rarely have a scenario when u run out of juice mid-movie. I would also argue that you're forgetting the point of jack-less phones - use Bluetooth, you can still charge.

FP-reader is definitely about how one holds it, but I have found that 99% of my screen-on + unlock combo comes from taking out of pocket "maneuvering", and just practicing the best way to do so is enough for the most seamless experience. With back FP readers, usually a one-move action works best, since unlock is done at the same time as power on.

On Motorola, I love them but I feel they've fallen out of shape on the top-tier since Lenovo acquired them. I am, nonetheless very confident with Moto and Lenovo partnership going forward, as management seems to have caught the hint of light software tweaks from vanilla droid being the way to roll. I am hoping for vanilla-droid sensibly priced Lenovo devices, with the (not Moto premium, yet) very decent build quality and superb battery life they provide.

So, maybe we should just, like, compare them?
Nah, just too much of a hassle, right?

Resolution wise the pixel is better as it isn't diffraction limited as google went with a wider aperture than apple did. However the sensor on the google pixel seems to have less dynamic range than the iPhone. So pick your limitation. Here is an objective comparison and you can select other cell phone cameras as well. I still prefer my old film SLR and when talking objective measures only the best digitalis now (the last 2-3 years) surpass it but to get what I have now I would have to dump probably $15,000 to go digital. For that kind of money I would prefer to jump to medium format film and really get some good gear. Add in that I like film for purely subjective reasons so when my 40+ year old film camera gives up the ghost I will very likely go medium format film.

Well that Nokia 1020 was a very diffraction limited camera. you don't have to take my word for it as a purely objective test clearly shows it (those are some really bad diffraction artifacts). Not to mention it really lacks dynamic range and is a pretty noisy sensor to boot. So while you would get 40 million dots there really isn't 40 million dots worth of data, and from a quick eyeballing of that test it looks like it would be about 8 megapixels of noisy low dynamic range information.

If only some site actually had an ISO12233 test image (to see things you need to allow scripts from gsmarena.com) and did proper testing for an objective comparison. It would be nice if they also had a few other test images as well, but no one would ever be interested in that, nor would they every go through the trouble of doing such a thing. /sarcasm

Unfortunately this will tend to blow a lot of peoples' inflated worth of their iPhone camera out of the water. Also it appears that apple's cameras aren't as good as they claim.

That isn't to say that you can't take a really nice photo with proper framing, exposure, composition, and what not with an iPhone or any cellphone but those are all subjective items. One can also take nice photos with a Holga toy camera but don't go on about the objective image quality aspects of those images, just like one shouldn't do the same with cell phone cameras.

Even back then the judgement was clear: the LG Prada mobile is not a smartphone.

Usually one big problem I see with these projects is that it's difficult to both build a phone OS and come out with hardware at a manufacturing scale that allows selling the hardware people want at a price people can afford. Sony has some decently nice hardware involved in their Open Devices project. HTC also has released kernel source code. Maybe it would be valuable to bring the new OS first to one of these devices that already has market share and look into building mobile phone hardware later on in life.

Jokes are funny because they say something about reality.

Apple release 1 new phone per year in 2 sizes.

Samsung released more than 30 phones in 2016, and have released around 15 already in 2017.

On top of this, Apple have a recycling program, a refurbishing program, years-long hardware and software support, and their devices have astonishingly high resale prices considering they're, well, computers. They're great "hand-me-down" phones in families because of how easy it is to backup/restore/upgrade the software across generations of devices.

So I dunno man. I'm not saying you're wrong about many Apple users, but the news is about Apple itself increasing its environment efforts, perhaps with the eventual goal of being able to sell phones every year and for that to be cool ecologically as well as fashionably.

it's as close to the whole front of a phone being display as I've seen

The Xiaomi Mi Mix doesn't f up the screen with the front camera by adding it at the bottom, where both this and theirs don't have a screen.
Some screenshots give the impression the screen isn't so large, but that's due to the on screen controls having a black background.

• RAM: 2GB
• ROM: 16GB
• Display: 5" HD (720x1280)
• Battery: 3120 mAh
• Rear camera: 13Mp

I.e. better in every aspect.

http://www.gsmarena.com/bq_aqu...

Nearly stock Android, reasonably priced.
2 GiB RAM, 16 GiB Flash + microSD.
Root and unlocked boot loader included.
Previous Bq models have LineageOS support. This one will most likely follow.

Lasts 48 hours on a charge most days, and cannot self-discharge within 16 hours with all radios active and CPU bouncing off the thermal governor

I think the closest you get is the Japan-exclusive LG V34, or the US version LG V20 Dual-sim option, Plus find yourself some kind of IP67 case to seal it up in.
Gotta disqualify the Samsungs, Because when you use the Dual-Sim feature, you lose ability to use the Micro-SD storage slot,
since they make both of them use the same tray.... Like you would ONLY want Either Dual-Sim OR External storage, but not fscking both?!.

You're gonna have to make some compromises anyways, that's a physical fact.... The battery that could do what you would like to see would literally weigh 10+ pounds. Have enough RAM and CPU power, and it will Seriously drain some major mAh, and the battery density to get what you want has not been invented yet.
 
Nobody wants to be lugging around 20 pounds of cellphone. Why wouldn't people just grab a laptop or put a 30000mAh power bank in your pocket with a USB cord plugged into your phone (protected by a rugged cover/shield), in that case?