To point out that: even on the operating system/platform where the YouTube app comes from, it is pointless. Works fine in a browser.
There's no reason to even use the YouTube app. One of the first things I uninstall on Android.
They don't even need to push an update, they just need to send a kill command from their activation servers.
I want a metal back phone
Steve Jobs did too, they still needed a plastic window for some antennae on the OG iPhone, then went to full plastic. It has become worse now, the back isn't just for wireless charging. It is also for NFC, UWB, and often cellular/gps/wifi/bluetooth may share antenna connections through the back.
Right there with you though. NFC could probably be packed in a band at the top of a phone. UWB seems of dubious value thus far.
Sounds like they may have set it up to wipe for security paranoia, and maybe not to be jerks?
That's fascinating software! Thanks for the share!
That OG Moto X with rubberized back was delicious. First phone in a long time that felt worse with a case, and fit so deftly in the hand. Camera was pretty amazing too for the time.
Would kinda work on T-Mobile but no 4G/5G band 71 as another commenter mentioned. Would work ok on AT&T but they probably would block it. Would be terrible on Verizon without band 13.
Would be a good Wi-Fi mp3 player though.
No, they don't care about privacy. It is just marketing buzz. They give Google and Facebook access to internal data for money. They give governments access to iCloud data for market share.
They then design the OS full of dark patterns to trick you into enabling iCloud. They have telemetry on every aspect of the operating system from a timeline down to the millisecond as to when and where you opened and closed browser tabs, to what application was consuming power at a given time, to where you go and what bluetooth and wifi devices you saw along the way. Metadata scrapers index the contents of your devices under the guise of making it "smart and helpful." The health monitor is ostensibly capable of dead reckoning location tracking, and you have to jump through hoops to even shut off BTLE when the phone is off.
Their communications platforms log all sorts of metadata, (this can easily be seen by requesting a GDPR data dump) and if one believes they don't tee every iMessage conversation off to three letter agencies and who knows where else, one would be sorely mistaken. (This, I don't know of direct evidence of, so it is more inferred based on how the messaging technologies work and how the government(s) wouldn't truly allow privacy to exist.)
One can't even stop their Apple product from talking to Apple servers, as they run access to their own systems on a layer of abstraction above the user's userspace network layer. If they so choose, they can brick your phone at a moment's notice using their "activation" infrastructure.
Nothing they do is privacy-oriented, beyond making it slightly difficult for Johnny the bicycle thief to gain access.
All without any of the code being available for inspection.
I live in a low humidity climate, there is no pain quite as obnoxious as wired headphones static shocking you right across your brain.
It started as a hardware problem and doesn't seem to be slowing down. LTE needed more and larger antennae for lower frequencies than older tech. Four cellular antennae are now pretty standard. Then you have wifi, Bluetooth (which can share if they can TDM), wireless charging, NFC, ultra wideband, GNSS. Then the chips are so powerful they need heat dissipation systems installed (or just lame thermal throttling like what Apple does.)
The modems require more power, (especially at the beginning of LTE) which means bigger batteries. LTE and NR have reduced range compared to the older narrowband technologies, so the phone needs to use more power to transmit, especially when carriers like Verizon didn't backfill cell sites to compensate for the reduced coverage.
Then, cameras, one wasn't enough, 4 or 5 are very common now (usually 3 primary and depth or low res sensors for aiming.)
When tablets became popular, many people decided to just have a large phone screen rather than a tablet, further entrenching the size.
The tech is more mature now, a 2-antenna MIMO antenna for cellular would suffice, albeit at the expense of network performance. Likewise one camera with a depth sensor would work, although mobile photography would be more limited. Dropping some limited-use items like wireless charging and ultra wideband could further shrink space.
So it would be possible now, but as others here have mentioned, the supply side focuses on larger hardware.
Ironically, at this point I'd almost prefer a smart watch with LTE and stop carrying a phone altogether. However, the aforementioned antenna issue makes it so watches generally have poor to unusable signal, poor battery life in cellular mode, no camera, and the 5G NR low power spec/chips aren't fully done yet, so it's LTE only on them, which, with carriers transitioning to 5G will make it so watches can only access a handful of congested bands.
Also, that device manufacturers tend to design smart watches to be companion devices to a smartphone rather than primary makes that concept's execution problematic.
Another idea I had that was anti small phone but huge battery boost was to just bring a backpack or a satchel or whatever. Carry a full sized tablet around, and use a Bluetooth headset for calls. However, tablets are also often crippled by carriers/manufacturers so they can't do common things like SMS or voice calls, and Apple has basically monopolized that market.
Try the bank’s web site. Companies all push apps to harvest all your data. Very few compute services actually need them.
...that's hilarious, as Google Home is a terrible husk of an app that feels like some beta thing written by an intern 5 years ago and they've never went back to actually flesh it out. Settings buried in random menus, no UI consistency, is it a ... menu or a gear to get to settings? Is it for the device or the routine? Oh, how do you get to your camera? How do you reboot your camera? Wait, it controls the thermostat like the Nest app but doesn't quite do all the features of the Nest app? Media controls, sorta! Maybe your TV shows up, maybe your neighbor's Google product asks to join when you launch the app. It's just a mess.
Or that they would de-duplicate photo storage. Currently, if you upload one from phone+tablet+computer or some other combo of devices, the photos all count towards your storage limit rather than storing one object and having references to that same one object. It is a problem already solved multiple ways.
The second part, about why sim is not very private, well it has a unique identifier and the technology was specifically designed to pinpoint your location, as this helps keep a good connection.
SIM cards contain authentication keys for the cellular network so it knows who to bill and which cells to send a paging signal over to ring a call. The use of SIM cards does not pinpoint your location, and SIM cards have absolutely nothing to do with keeping a good connection (pSIM or eSIM). The network and handset are constantly re-evaluating signal strength across various bands and modes and the network tells the handset to switch to what works while moving about the network. The SIM just auths the user account. It is ostensibly a key to your service, nothing more.
All the network band/mode hunting will continue with or without a SIM card, the phone would just be limited to emergency calls in that state.
And that's just the last three years!
I would guess it is probably mostly not worth the overhead at this point. Applications are generally compressed archives. The primary data created on mobile devices would be photos and videos, both of which use lossy compression algorithms to generate and wouldn't compress any smaller. The remaining data that may be created on a phone like documents, PDFs, text files, would either already be semi-compressed, or so tiny in the grand scheme that the compression overhead wouldn't buy much value.
Motorola released the Skip tag line around 2013, including a keychain battery that could charge your phone, and had Bluetooth and could use that service to locate whatever it was attached to.
...in 2013.