Battery swapping is a workaround for flawed phones.
FWIW, though I'm not happy about the non-removable battery, I currently use a Nexus 4. It's gotten worse over time, but I used to be able to comfortably get about 2 days of runtime on a full charge. Now it's about a full day, though it sometimes needs a little help if I'm in an area where reception is weak.
Useful when out of charging range for an extended period, like when hiking or cycling.
The main attractive of a swappable battery, to me, is replacing it 2 after 2 years of use.
The rest of my phone is perfectly fine but I can either keep it tethered to the wall or scrap it. That said, it would be dead already because I did drop it in water and the waterproof case saved it :)
> This means that batteries of mobile phones, or other hand-held devices in daily use, are not expected to last longer than three years. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Battery_li...
Plugging a phone in on a daily basis is a workaround for flawed phones.
Kudos to LG for actually taking this step though. With luck this will whet the appetite for phones that are truly modular (and show manufacturers that there is a market for swappable parts).
I can wait 30 seconds while the phone is off.
- Proper camera handle and better DAC too, but not as mutually exclusive modules
What I want is:
- A robust and replaceable bumper that integrates with the design (i.e. isn't ugly). The phone should not be designed as if the user isn't going to slap an ugly case on it.
- A hole for a wrist strap so I don't worry I'm gonna drop my phone. All cameras have one, but now that phones are taking over, none have it.
- An unlocked bootloader that doesn't void your warranty. Or even better lets you set the signing key on first use (a sort of Trust On First Use that the user is the owner).
I, like probably most of you, flash a new image to the phone when the stock software starts showing its warts. I agree with this idea but I do understand where phone manufacturers are coming from. You can obviously avoid the problem of software-bricked phones by having the factory image as a secondary ROM that can be hardware flashed with a button sequence.
The real problem is, I recall a bad Android kernel floating around for the TyTN II (a long time ago) that would toast the CPU after extended use. That's permanent damage that would be covered by warranty and would cost LG money. Maybe what they could do is only lock down the kernel. Who knows, it's a difficult problem to solve.
To add one feature:
- A slide-out tactile keyboard[1].
The TyTN II is the greatest smartphone that I have ever owned for this reason. Touch keyboards just don't cut it. The answer isn't to have predictive text (i.e. SwiftKey) but instead to not botch up the text in the first-place.
My idea of a fair compromise between manufacturers and customers is:
- Let the customer run any OS will full hardware warranty. If a problem looks like it's caused by software, require the customer to flash back to official software, and provide warranty if the problem persists.
- Bolt down the hardware to restrict use out of specs (no overclocking, no software defined radio, ...)
- Provide an engineering pin. When removed, the phone is out of warranty and you can flash any firmware (you can have OC, SDN, custom SSD firmware, ...)
Google really could show a whole more love for tinkerers. A better OS isn't getting made because it's so difficult to flash on your own device, let alone flash it on thousands of user devices.
Regarding your point about keyboards, I personnaly don't like typing without all my fingers, so what you propose wouldn't suit me. But do you think an addon that bolts to the back would be okay for you?
A bumper-design (maybe a groove to hold a bumper) is a good idea too. One can argue that making phones easier to damage encourages people to replace it with new ones so manufacturers have hidden incentive to avoid such safety features, but ultimately if someone comes up with a better design like you state, people will flock to it.
It really bugs me when consumers ask for more features regardless of their feasibility, here we have a great phone with changebale batteries and yet we ask for it to be still on while we swap the batteries! Hasn't it occurred to us that maybe it's technically difficult to add in a supercap. Just be thankful. This is like constentaly asking for phones with more RAM and processing power, I am really glad Moore's law has come to end, maybe now consumers will be faced with the harsh truth that it is not simple to keep on creating more powerful devices for them to watch cat videos on.
People should be very thankful for these feats of technology, but their wants literally drive the innovation there. Until truly impossible desires start to become the criticisms, I honestly don't mind them.
I'm pretty sure most people realize that, and everyone I've ever heard complaining about battery life also added that they wouldn't mind a thicker phone.
Same deal with constantly wanting more RAM and CPU. Computers have been getting steadily more powerful at a nearly constant rate for maybe half a century now. Asking to keep that going is totally reasonable!
they both charged via a single USB port.
Yes, this made it bulky compared to most things on the market right now.
And frankly i would love to see less anorexic phones. Heck, my next one may well be the recently unveiled Cat model that has integrated FLIR. This time round it seems they didn't skimp on the internals while still retaining the rugged construction.
Longer battery life, swappable battery, greater durability, better camera, etc. I can absolutely handle the phone being a few millimetres thicker to get these things.
What's LG's track record like with releasing sources? Nexus devices don't count.
I'm not sure who "lg-devs" are, but they seem to have a full source tree for the G4 at https://github.com/lg-devs/android_device_lge_h811. No idea if it boots, though.
Global warming dictates that we as consumers not only our politicians are responsible for the future we create. If manufacturers can help make devices that last longer I´m going to choose such a device the next time I buy a phone.
I think its bold of LG to think differently and stick out of the crowd of similar phones. Like that you can upgrade the storage capacity via MicroSD cards.
Will be getting this phone as an upgrade. For me removable battery and SD Card in a flagship phone are a must. Then comes camera quality, then price.
Apparently, catastrophic bootloop failures of the G4 were such a widespread problem, that a petition has so far gained a couple thousand signatures [0] to get LG to officially recall the bricked phones. I personally experienced the bootloop of death on my G4 only a couple of months after getting it, and their customer service has been atrocious - even refusing to fix my phone after they've now admitted its due to a known hardware defect [1] because mine was the international, unlocked version. So, just a heads up to beware LG's "Caveat emptor" practices.
[0] - https://www.change.org/p/lg-mobile-launch-a-replacement-prog...
[1] - http://www.androidauthority.com/lg-admits-g4-bootloop-proble...
Funny enough I experienced a similar issue with my S4 a few years ago. One day it just died - no messages, no nothing. Completely out of the blue, no falls or anything.
I took it to Samsung repair, they sent it off and returned it to me in a few weeks. I looked on the forums and apparently it was a fairly common (ie thousands of people affected) issue. Same reason - a random hardware chip malfunction that manifests itself after 6-9 months of use.
I think this was the issue: http://forums.androidcentral.com/telus-samsung-galaxy-s4/380...
So basically I think any manufacturer can fall prey to this - a faulty component that takes months to manifest itself.
Incidentally, several years ago Chinese manufacturer Jiayu made an iPhone-looking phone also called the G5 and having a dedicated button to release the back cover:
http://amirexpress.ir/index.php?route=product/product&produc...
Sorry if you've been down this road already.
If you want a decent article by a respectable pub, check out the Ars version (linked below). It has all of the technical info that Engadget missed, minus the comments on how 'fantastic' the device feels.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/lg-g5-hands-on-lg-may...
The horror!
http://www.androidcentral.com/lg-g5-keeps-sd-card-shuns-adop...
http://www.androidcentral.com/galaxy-s7-regains-microsd-card...
Adaptable storage would prevent me from doing this.
