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HTC's New Flagship Phone Has AI and a Second Screen, But No Headphone Jack (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Verge: HTC is getting 2017 off to a flying start with an unseasonably early announcement of its next flagship phone: the U Ultra. This 5.7-inch device inaugurates a new U series of smartphones and is joined by a smaller and lesser U Play, which scales things down to 5.2 inches and a humbler camera and processor spec. HTC is touting a new Sense Companion, which is its take on the growing trend for putting AI assistants into phones, plus the addition of a second screen at the top of the U Ultra. As with Apple's latest iPhones, Lenovo's Moto Z, and the HTC Bolt, neither of HTC's new handsets has a headphone jack. The other big change on the outside is the U Ultra's second screen, which is a thin 2-inch strip residing to the right of the front-facing camera and immediately above the Super LCD 5 screen.
Does it have an SD slot and a removable battery. If not, still a non buy.
Because the engineering mantra of designing something that's the minimum needed to do the job properly has been supplanted with a long-term strategic goal to attempt to sell more things to consumers by selling them devices that don't do everything they need out of the box.
The biggest flaw in the concept of this approach is assuming that the consumer will go to the original supplier for future accessories. You'd think they'd learn that consumers will go to whoever is cheapest, or whoever offers the actual best solution, depending on the penchant of the consumer, and that the original supplier is not necessarily the default option. Unfortunately nearly every company that makes products with modules or consumables makes this mistake.
So instead of providing the simple, robust solution they run themselves in circles attempting to influence the market to benefit them only for all that effort to amount to nothing. Apple has historically been the only company that has managed to do this, but even then, there are plenty of users that will go third-party for accessories.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You'd think with their lacklustre performance over the last 5 years they'd play it safe rather than trying to pretend they are Apple.
Get this message through your thick skulls HTC: You are not Apple. Your customers are not Apple customers. The Android world is a very different place and you aren't in any position to cram user-unfriendly features down people's throats. You will fail if only because there is always some other Chinese company ready to give people what they want.
Because it takes a lot of space.
With those notes 7 exploding because the battery was too tightly packed in. That extra empty space can be used to allow for that extra room.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Fuck dongles. Seriously, fuck needing a dongle to get a 0.01mm thinner phone with worse battery life.
They are particularly bad for headphones, because you tend to use headphones while moving around where as charging is done stationary. That means strain on the connector, and the headphone socket is fairly robust but the USB port is much more prone to damage.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Great and now how are you going to charge and use your phone?
Must be a shitty ploy, my brand new HTC bolt came with wired headphones.
Pushing more expensive headphones might be a bonus short-term side effect, but the real victory here is the potential of closing the analog hole for mobile devices. I fully expect someone to introduce "end to end" DRM within a year or two which will require an authenticated and encrypted connection from the source (file or stream) through the mobile processor, to the headphones. Non-compliant headphones won't be able to authenticate with the host device and therefore won't be usable with certain DRM'd media.
Don't be surprised when Apple shows more "courage" and removes the analog audio connectors from their next lineup of desktops and laptops (if they haven't already). The desktop / laptop market will swiftly follow once people accept it on mobile.
Take a look at HDCP for an example of how this has already been done elsewhere.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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