Re: Things That Kinda Suck About Modern Mobile Devices
 

I will add some more.

• Devices Keep Getting Bigger - This isn't exclusive smartphones at all. My Samsung :) feature phone is thicker, wider, and taller than my previous Motorola Razr. The Tablet I currently own is a Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 which I bought for the form factor, Ir blaster and Active Digitizer pen as a replacement for my HTC Flyer. The HTC Flyer was getting old in terms of both hardware and software features being stuck on Honeycomb, but there were no real replacements as 7" tablets had been relegated to the low end and the 7" offerings were low end at best. If I wanted the stylus and the high end features simply put there were no real choices. The HTC Flyer I owned I bought as a replacement for my Archos 5. The Archos 5 became outdated from an OS perspective being stuck on Android 1.6 cupcake and the LCD got damaged so I looked for a replacement. I liked the Archos 5 for the resistive touchscreen enabling stylus use, having Android plus linux in the form of angstrom, high storage capacity, and not having to buy it on contract or buying something that was 400+ dollars unlocked. When I looked to replace my Archos 5 there were no replacements, 5" tablets/UMPCS/MIDS died as a product category and phones became 5" and tablets became 7". So my only real choice was as a replacement was a 7" tablet. Now 8" are being relegated to the low end and being replaced by 8 - 9". I won't use any tablet larger than 8" as 8" is the maximum of pocketable. The trend is similar with laptops. 7-10" Laptops used to be the very low end being netbooks, 11.6 -12.5" laptops being ultraportables, 13 - 14" being mainstream with some higher performance options, 15.6" - 17" being very high end performance. Now 10" or smaller netbooks have disappeared, 11.6" laptops have been relegated to the low end replacing netbooks, 12.5 -14" is now the ultraportable form factor with fewer higher performance options, 15.6" has become the mainstream form factor with some higher performance options and 17" has become a niche. The smallest ultraportable is now 12.5" or a 12.1" or smaller tablet with a core i5. In short each generation of devices I have has gotten an inch or two bigger with each generation. I might just keep my Core i5 Acer v5-171 running Ubuntu and My Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 for as long they can last, I have no reason to replace either technology wise (until the next processor architecture change any ways), both devices are in reasonable shape and nothing has come out that can truly replace either in terms of both form factor or functionality. The problem is that even though laptops, tablet, and phones are thinner they are footprint wise bigger and are thus less portable. Device manufactures seems to forget the importance of portability.
• User Interfaces - I guess this is subjective but I am not a fan of these newer minimalist interfaces. They lack depth in terms of color and shape. The use of minimalist interfaces is one of the reasons I switched to Ubuntu, I found the color schemes and shapes of Unity of KDE more visually pleasing.

Re: Things That Kinda Suck About Modern Mobile Devices
 

Devil's advocate reporting in. Color schemes and desktops certainly aren't exclusive to a distribution. That seems like an odd reason to pick one distro over another. I do like Ubuntu's color scheme and highlights, which is why I chose that kind of theming for my MATE desktop.

Re: Things That Kinda Suck About Modern Mobile Devices
 

Slightly off topic:

Anyone else here, that had the feeling that Gnome3 somewhat resembles the way Hildon-desktop works?

I used to dislike the whole new "idiom", beit Unity, Gnome3 or whatever. So I stuck to Gnome2 and Awesome, untill last month, when I finally made the switch to Gnome Shell.

After a week or so, it dawned to me, that the way we go to applications and multitask-view on the N900 is very similar to the procedure in Gnome3. You press a "hotspot" once (top-left) and it will bring you to your opened applications, press it twice it'll bring you your applications list.

I suppose Unity also resembles that, but Hildon is part of Gnome, if I'm not mistaken, so it made me wonder to what extent, if any, Hildon influenced or inspired Gnome3.

Anyone else with Gnome3 experience and thoughts on it?

/off topic

Re: Things That Kinda Suck About Modern Mobile Devices
 

Am tempted to buy the surface pro, stick ubuntu on and put gnome 3 onto it, thats a win right there.

to answer the ques ton

battery life, its terrible, especially with the 720p and up screens. Don't tell me to uninstall things and turn my radios off, because what the hell is the point of having them if i cant use them.

Multitasking is also annoying as **** to get right, even Jolla aren't perfect.

Re: Things That Kinda Suck About Modern Mobile Devices
 

Hmm. I'm not so sure about that combination. The thing that won me over for Gnome3, the same thing I had overlooked when I first disgarded it, is the use of keyboard shortcuts. It makes operating the desktop amazingly quick, to the point it can compete with something like a well configured E16 (Enlightenment) desktop. I have trouble seeing how a virtual keyboard would give me that experience.

That being said, lots of people seem to enjoy keyboardless devices, so my judgement holds no more value than that: I'd find it difficult to work with, I guess.

I have an Archos tablet idly laying around because of it.

Re: Things That Kinda Suck About Modern Mobile Devices
 

for me it was the erie N900 like multitasking. But am sure a bluetooth keyboard could be hooked up

Re: Things That Kinda Suck About Modern Mobile Devices
 

What really sucks about most modern devices is the desire to be thin and unergonomic, often at the expense of battery life. Often I see people holding a clunky portable charger under their phone whilst they're using it, so it kind of defeats the purpose of skimping on battery to keep the bloody phone thin :mad:

Re: Things That Kinda Suck About Modern Mobile Devices
 

You guys totally missed the ball.

What is truly sad is that people have these beautiful devices and their clad with ugly and fat cases....most of the time it doesn't even offer an imimprovement in function or form.

Re: Things That Kinda Suck About Modern Mobile Devices
 

No, Kangal. Stupidity of their users is about the only thing that is not the devices' fault.

Re: Things That Kinda Suck About Modern Mobile Devices
 

Be very careful about which version you buy if you choose to try,
the versions have different driver requirements.
x
The other excruciatingly discouraging thing is the one-USB -port.
-
The phrase brain-dead does not do any justice at all
to the situation of a single USB port which doubles as the
charging port. All the Mscrap is like that.
I know how bad this is after putting up with it for months
of trying to hack linux onto an Acer W4 which has exactly
the same ****** design.