As much as I lean to hate this despite it not even affecting me as a Linux user…

I’m going to structure this as a Q&A with myself now, based on comments online

What is that? “I’m going to pretend to ask questions that I’ll then answer myself the way I think it’ll outrage that most people do I’ll get a lot of clicks on this shitty article”? What crappy excuse for content creation is this? I hate it.

Hey angel, did you give the dinosaurs more muscle like I asked?

Yeah. That’s the one I considered more deeply. Still too big. Still only 3 years of promised security updates and only two major revisions of android. Nah, hard pass.

/edit just saw that I mixed up the Roman and Latin numbers in my previous post. Yeah, the 5 is what I meant by 5.

Last year I needed a new phone. The Xperia V (I think) just got released and seemed perfect… But in the end I decided against it because of their horrendous update roadmap and large phone sizes. I’m not going to buy a new phone every three years and I hate phones that can’t be used with one hand - and despite doing a lot of things right, those two points are just not addressed by Sony. I want their compact range back and I want Fairphone levels of updates.

If the alternative is Windows which is increasingly filled with ads or Linux which shifts the burden of computer administration to a user who might not have a clue about what they’re supposed to do if their WiFi doesn’t “just work”, paying for a managed walled garden that doesn’t try to install candy crush without you asking for it isn’t such a bad option.

Removed by mod

This. Had to replace my trusted s10e. Picked the smallest I could get, which was an s23. It’s too big.

You bet they could place shortcut icons to websites on a grid of icons? Pretty bold statement there.

Yeah, I’m writing this on an s10e but the battery really isn’t that good anymore and the lack of security updates doesn’t feel good either. The current s series phones are roughly the same size as the e though, so I hope it’ll be okay.

That said, even the e is a bit too large for my taste. The top left corner is pretty much out of reach without adjusting your grip, so about half an inch less of screen would be preferable imho. Samsung’s one handed mode is much better than the android default though, which kind of makes up for it - and there’s just nothing smaller available.

This. I just ordered an S23, just because it’s pretty much the smallest phone you can get (apart from the zenfone, which has a worse update policy).

I’m one of those shipments.

And then I returned it. Hated the phone.

As I have a tau army, I just so happen to know that they just look much better than those crumpled pieces I thought I’d seen in the thumbnail.

Saw the thumbnail and thought those were W40K minis and “muting the next table” would be everybody leaving the café as soon as you pull out some awesome orks and a measuring tape.

Man, the US really are a dystopia.

That’s just not true. Convenience and support matter.

Ah, the 10 is already out… I checked the 9. So at least it’ll be one more year of updates, but it still just is really not much for a device that’s 850 €.

That wasn’t on my radar, but the same point that kinda keeps me away from the Sony that I’d really like to like otherwise applies to the zenfone as well: really short update cycles. The zenfone even more so, as the Sony is just about to be released while the zenfone is already available for almost a year. I tend to keep my phones longer, so that really is a factor.

It’s too damn big. I got a Fairphone 4 and got rid of it because I just couldn’t properly use it (and because of the poor camera performance on top of that). Now they’re releasing an even bigger phone? I may be the minority here, but that’s a deal breaker for me. I’ll need a new phone in the next few months, but right now I’m only considering the s23 or the Xperia 5 V, just because everything else is just too fucking huge.

I find this hard to believe

Okay.

You mean passive cooling? I thought that had been invented some time ago.