Stuff like a pretty case with slots for optical drives, a laptop with a shitton of ports and all-day battery life or anything else that seems to go against the trends.
This thread is for complaining about how you can’t find it and (maybe) finding it thanks to someone else.
I’d really love to find a new radio for my car that: 1) can serve as a monitor for my back-up camera, and 2) isn’t a fucking touch screen.
There are models that are one or the other, but I haven’t found anything that’s both. The closest I’ve found is a compromise - a touchscreen that also has a few tactile controls. But I don’t want to have to rely on any touch screen when I’m driving. I simply don’t feel compelled enough to spend $400+ for a frustrating half-measure.
I settled on a SPH-10BT a few years ago. It didn’t have backup camera support though IIRC there is a radar add-on, but don’t know how available it is anymore.
It seems insane to me, especially with the prevalence of Apple/Android Auto, that no car company is willing to have the phone be the supplemental screen in the car.
That there’s no built-in phone mounts in cars still bugs me. Put wireless charging on a spot on the dash, NFC/Bluetooth to get it to automatically snap into car mode. Don’t have to develop an in-house UI that everyone hates and can focus on making a car.
There are plenty of portable second screens for laptops now. But it seems weird you can’t just hardwire a second laptop without having to resort to internet based screen sharing solutions.
some cheap all-in-ones i’ve worked on have hdmi in and out.
one of 'em i have here is an old atom celeron dell aio with 1600x900 native screen but on its hdmi input, it’ll run at 1920x1080. and yea, running that instead of its true native res sucks about as bad as you think it would–but it is still ‘usable’. the real sucky bit, though, is the pc has to be on in order to switch it to hdmi in.
a lenovo aio that went through here a couple years ago had to be rebooted to switch it from hdmi input mode (acting as a standalone monitor) back to pc.
if you’re saying what i think you’re saying you may be interested in something like a nexdock
Basically a laptop with no internals that acts as an external monitor, battery bank and peripherals for another device
A low power 17 inch or larger laptop in a sub $1K price point. I have big hands and I use the fuck out of numpad, but i really dont need a gaming GPU or a higher end cpu in a laptop.
If you don’t need much power, you could probably look for something used and get a good deal on a 17" laptop.
the battery thing is real. I basically can not find a laptop with weak/low power cpu and igpu, but a huge battery. I get that we can not do more than 99whr, but for weak stuff, I can not find anything above 50 practically.
well, if you carry around a bag anyways a battery bank could alleviate that
yes, but that is a separate investment
A 3.5mm-to-Bluetooth adapter that can do simultaneous headphones + mic. I have a device with no Bluetooth, only a 3.5mm TRRS jack (headphones+mic). I want to connect it to a wireless Bluetooth headset but the only adapters I can find won’t do both at the same time, only one or the other.
On top of that, it’d be nice for the Bluetooth spec to roll out a higher bitrate version of HFP, as it’s common 16 kHz monaural configuration is awful when listening to multimedia while on video calls, like for remote watch parties or just listening to music or playing video games while hanging out on discord. I ended up just buying a USB to TRRS adapter with pass through Power Delivery in order to use my Android device with proper AV quality.
A smaller phone with flagship-level cameras and a headphone jack. I know I’ll have to charge it more often or it’ll be thicker. I’m willing to make that trade-off.
And not a slimmer phone. Make it as thick as a wallet full of business cards. I don’t give a shit. I use my phone for reading text, listening to music, and taking pictures. Just make the fucking camera top of the line and let me use my good headphones. If it’s several millimeters thicker, so be it.
Perhaps an Xperia 5 V? Depends on where you are, and just keep in mind no telephoto but it has a pixel-binned 2x (48mm) zoom :)
rip Asus Zenfone line :( It was almost exactly what you wanted.
A cheap ARM laptop.
Pinebooks have been sold out for ages, and then it’s a massive leap up to MNT Reform or Copilot+.
I just started watching eBay for used Pinebooks, but nothing has popped yet.
This is adjacent, but it’s worth pointing out that framework has recently started selling risc-v motherboards for their laptops for adventurous folks.
A high-quality laptop without any branding.
I’m currently using a 9-year-old, woefully underpowered laptop made by Xiaomi. Full aluminium unibody, and NO logo. Not printed on, not etched in, not glistening only in the right light. NO LOGO.
I’m not a billboard. I’m not responsible for your brand recognition. Ironically though, far more people have come up to me and asked “hey, what laptop is that” than ever would have cared if there was a logo on it.
It also just looks and feels fantastic, all-aluminium-no-logo just looks so sleek.
So yeah. I will not be upgrading until I find another laptop of the same build quality, with no logo. Tuxedo has that option for most of their laptops, but for some reason not for their only current full-aluminium body -.-
Oh, and don’t come at me with stickers.
Fully agree with the sentiment, and at the same time I think it’s a lost battle. Even more so with more niche tech like cameras (where one is usually invested into an ecosystem instead of having just one piece like a laptop that can be sold on its own 5 years in).
I’ll extend that to every product as well. I hate branding specially in clothing.
Oh, and don’t come at me with stickers.
Well then. Maybe you could wrap your heart in duc-ta-a-ape! *runs away sobbing*
A Linux phone with colour e-ink screen and writing capabilities like the reMarkable.
I’ve realized that for a lot of things that a phone does, e-ink is too slow to refresh. Even web browsing becomes painful to navigate sometimes. Maybe a dual-screen approach would work with e-ink on one side and a regular screen on the other?
I’m reminded of something I saw recently where a guy had a mini old screen for typing, but an e-ink main screen. It was a DIY cyberdeck, and weird enough that I don’t think it’s useful for you or OP, but I figured you’d find it interesting to hear that your suggestion seems to be on the right track
- remember netbooks? yeah so i would love a 10"-ish laptop (with current hardware) for taking notes etc.
why not use a tablet you might ask? i love the handling of a solid, non-detachable keyboard.
- also a smartphone that reacts quickly to user input with an OS that doesn’t look like the love child of windows mobile (remember that?) and the first iphones. looking at you iOS18 settings menu (among others)
I have a GPD laptop with a tiny screen, it’s good enough to run most games. I changed the no name NVMe to a Samsung and it’s way more reliable and faster. Also runs Linux now. Built in game controller works well for most games (shows up as Xbox controller or a mouse using a switch).
last i looked at them (some time ago now) they either:
- had very out of date hardware
- were incredibly expensive for what they offered
- the only middle ground model that seemed fitting for my purposes (gaming wouldn’t be on that list but linux indeed) was nowhere to be found.
i should probably have a look at their models again in the near future, thanks for reminding me. are you happy with yours (and willing to share which model you use)
My unicorn phone would be one that is both small enough to use with one hand (currently have a Zenfone 10 largely for this reason) and has a secondary camera lens that’s a telephoto rather than an ultra ultra wide.
It bugs me that phones with a long lens are so comparatively rare, it’s always just wide (verging on ultrawide) as default and when a second lens is added it’s even wider again because people love distortions or taking photos in tiny rooms or something. Sometimes I just want to take a photo of something further away than a few metres and actually have it visible without zooming in, I’d even take a normal lens FoV as an improvement over ultrawide. Those phones that do have one tend to have it as a third lens and also tend to be huge, so get disqualified by the ‘usable with one hand’ criteria even before I reach the massively expensive part.
I’d also like an Instax back for the Hasselblad V series that was cheap enough that I could actually justify the cost of buying (say ~$200 AUD or less) though I will admit that’s a pretty niche thing to be after.
Water bottle that auto seals and is easy to clean.
You can easily get a case with an optical drive slot if you just get an older case. You can fit an older case with more modern components just fine. My current PC case is from 2017 and has an optical drive slot (which is fitted with an optical drive—though I’m afraid I’ve not used it in years…)
As for laptops with ports, they’re out there but you may have to either get an older one or pay more money annoyingly. I wish it was standard for laptops to have ethernet ports. My modern, fairly mainstream trend-following laptop has all the other ports I need (USB obviously, HDMI, and 3.5mm headphone jack).
I need an ecmascript library that demuxes mpeg when fed individual frames. Every lib just wants to take in a whole file or URL to a stream. I need to filter the websocket sending the data so I need to feed individual frames to the lib. I’m only finding commonjs libs that do this
I’ll join the ranks asking for a perfect phone.
Mine would have:
- Unlocked bootloader
- All week battery (or at least 3 days) I don’t care if it’s super thick.
- User replaceable battery
- Headphone jack
- Very high specs (like at least 16 GB RAM and 1TB storage)
- SD card slot
- Probably more I’m not thinking of right now.
Payment with NFC without google play services.
but that depends on the vendor. highest chance to do it is with Monero, even considering that basically no one knows it
Only thing I could figure out (except maybe looking into Chinese payments systems which… No. Just no) is Garmin Pay.
Once set up, works with the smartwatch and does not use the phone, or the internet, at all.
I know it’s not exactly what you asked, but its what I managed to do. Garmin watches also work pretty great with Gadgetbridge :-)
You just made me consider a smartwatch… I haven’t wanted a watch that can become obsolete because of its tech but if that helps me degoogle it might be different
I don’t wear a watch but if it fixes the problem, might be worth looking in to.
Do bear in mind that not all banks and/or cards are supported. Out of my 6 payment cards, over 3 banks (I know, ridiculous), only 3 are compatible. One bank is not compatible at all, the other one supports the debit card on Garmin Pay but not the credit card.
I knew that before hand. Garmin has a list… Somewhere.
Global Xperias (Xperia 1 VI [XQ-EC72]) fits most of this.
i don’t even need good specs or sd card, just a good camera, foss rom and good battery
the pixel line is what you’re looking for. Sounds odd but they’re the easiest to degoogle.
i know, but i in my right mind can’t give any money to google
Then buy second hand
And then install graphene OS
Excuse me, waitress… I’ll have what SHE’S having.
I’d like to add some strength too. I don’t give a shit about the latest AI fuzzy on any phone, but if it would please last at least a year without cracking the screen or the back that would be amazing. And a record for me. Doesn’t have to be razor thin either. Just make it beefy.
