I will still look for a jack on my next phone, current Samsung has one, will likely buy another so I will probably buy top of their entry range

An AI that can turn YouTube videos into written articles? Take My Money! I have been wanting this for a long time, I far far prefer stuff in writing to videos, I dont take information from audio/video anything like as well

Same here. Whatever I have now is more than good enough. What I had before was good enough too

My last phone upgrade was about four years ago (Nokia 6 to Samsung A31) and that was only to try and get YouTube Music’s shitty app to work properly (spoiler : it didnt). Broke the screen on it dropping it while trying to put a mask on, got that fixed (that was over two years ago). Its still going, and will keep it until it dies

I dont upgrade my phone because I’m interested in upgrading, I upgrade when I have to

We have an app here in New Zealand (and Australia as well I believe) called Gaspy which shows gas prices for all stations within a set customisable radius, in price order, or on a map. And believe me we need it here with gas averaging between $2.60 to $2.90 a litre. Thats $9.80 to $10.96 a US gallon

I paid NZ $469 for my current Samsung A31 almost four years ago, I wasnt fussed about the camera but wanted a 3.5 mm jack and lots of storage. Its now looking fairly shabby but still works well. I’ll use it until its dead and get another phone around the $400 mark. Midrange, not top end, but not a budget phone either. It needs to do a number of jobs (play music, navigation, web surfing, record rides and hikes, camera, find cheap gas, tell me how much UV dosage I’ll get at any particular time, weather, messaging on 3-4 apps plus calls of course) and be reasonably robust. Style and status dont come into it, I dont care about any of that

The photo and videos I’ve got on the card are all backed up to Google Photos (so backed up to their cloud) It is useful, only downside is Google Photos seems to remove older photos from my storage and it is very difficult to bulk download them back into my phone from the cloud. Not a big deal but really irritating if I want to access my photos somewhere with no Wifi or cell service

All those playlists are on Deezer and synced to it, so if the card shits the bed I can just replace it and download the playlists again

I store all my music in there from my streaming service so I can have uninterrupted music when driving, cycling etc. Have about half a terabyte in there. My phone has enough memory that I dont need to store my apps on there. Also keep pics and video on SD card

I usually give mine away, that said by the time I’m done with a phone it’s usually pretty used up

What phones cant hotspot? If have had some really cheap bottom of the barrel phones and never had one that couldnt hotspot

A few mobile plans offered by Telcos here in New Zealand used to have this as well, not sure if they still do

1. I’ll break it

2. I dont need what a foldable offers

They do appear to be genuinely useful for some people on this thread though. I’m not one of them - a headphone jack is far more important to me too, that and durability

Since I need a phone that can withstand being dropped on concrete every other day and having tools, hammers, 4x2 offcuts dropped on it etc every so often I dont think a foldable is for me. My current phone has two screen protectors and a case and its still got a cracked screen

We’re doing a major house renovation at the moment, wonder if I can get a boy/wife kitchen snuck into the building contract for shits and giggles

Not Made In China. My A31 is made in Vietnam. Primary reason I bought it

Yes, there is bloatware, but I have disabled a lot of it, and put Nova Launcher on it to clean up the UI and customise to my liking

I have been happy with it, have had the screen replaced on it when it got broken, was not that expensive

I moved to Deezer from You Tube Music a couple of years ago. I was on YTM for about six months after Google shut down Google Play Music (which was awesome). You Tube Music was a steaming turd, flakiest app I have ever used.

Deezer has been fantastic. Android app very rarely gives me any issues, and has probably the most extensive catalogue of any streaming service I have ever used (although it is a bit disorganised and shambolic at times), The Premium subscription is reasonably priced, especially if I use the yearly sub rather than the monthly one, and sound quality is great (although I only use HQ audio, not Hifi). I believe they pay artists more than most others

Other big upside is that there is NO limit to how many tracks you can download into a device if you are a Premium user! I have half a terabyte of country music in my phone. The only limitation is how much storage your device has. You can only download playlists / music into a maximum of three devices, I only have my phone and a waterproof media player so not an issue for me

Only downsides are the somewhat disorganised catalogue I mentioned - some artists have more than one artist profile with different albums scattered across them, and when two different artists share the same name they often get mushed together into the one profile. Discographies tend to be a bit random in the way they are organised. But careful use of the search function will find almost anything and everything.

Reorganising/ rearranging large playlists on the web client/ browser can get a bit flaky, with a really big playlist I find its sometimes easier to just rebuild it from scratch rather than move large blocks of tracks around

The MP3 upload tool is pretty clunky and has no folder feature, and a limit of only 2000 tracks upload. But because they have such an extensive catalog you shouldnt need it much

The downloaded music section in the app has no folders either which would be nice but isnt a deal breaker. Only other issue I have is that the Play button for playlists on the Android app defaults to shuffle mode which is a flaw shared with Spotify, and there is no way to disable shuffle even for Premium users. This is the ONLY thing YouTube Music gets right

I havent used Tidal but I have heard their catalogue is much more limited and what little exploration I did bore that out

Are there any waterproof USB-C headphones?

It is strange, it may be a small market niche (pun intended) but surely its worthwhile for someone to jump into it, particularly given that it could be satisfied with existing technology, no great advances required