It’s time for my Festivus phone rant, and these smartphones have some explaining to do
In the spirit of FestivusI voice my grievances for the smartphone world. Gather around the Festivus Pole! To paraphrase the impeccable Frank Costanza, ‘I’m having a lot of problems with your phones, and now you’re going to hear about it!’ While I’m sure there will be time for strength benchmark test performance later, I would now like to discuss the ways my loved ones have disappointed me over the past year.
Do you think I’m going to keep talking about AI? Don’t worry, I’ll get there. It will be a Festivus miracle when I finally see AI features that make a smartphone worth buying. I’d settle for AI that doesn’t tell me my son is selling the family dog every time he texts football practice updates.
These are my biggest issues with some of the best phones I’ve seen this year, and just like I say to my own family, if I didn’t love these phones, I wouldn’t spend so much time criticizing every way they are not perfect.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold I really want… only in Korea and China?!
From Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 has a downside: Z Fold phones are simply too narrow when closed. The front screen looks clunky and some apps don’t fit properly. I was hoping Samsung would solve the problem with the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but the new phone was only slightly wider than the previous Galaxy’s Z Fold. The problem persisted while the OnePlus opened And Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold showed what a foldable tablet should look like.
Then Samsung solved the problem! It launched a Galaxy Z Fold special edition with a larger screen on the front and a good aspect ratio. It also got a big 200 megapixel camera upgrade, but I don’t care because I forgive foldable phones their camera problems.
But wait, the new Galaxy Z Fold 6 Special Edition phone is only available for purchase in Korea and China!? Okay, so those countries are actually spending money on foldable phones. Sorry readers from the US, UK and Australia, if you had spent just a few thousand dollars on a Samsung foldable last year, you might have the right Galaxy Fold model this year. I hope the Galaxy Z Fold 7 does not disappoint.
The iPhone 16 Camera Control is not a shutter button
I was very excited about the new Camera Control on the iPhone 16 And iPhone 16 Pro models. I had hoped that two-stage shutter buttons would make a comeback (any Windows Phone had one!), because it makes shooting much easier when you want stable focus and a sharper shot.
Then the camera controls appeared and it looked nothing like what we had seen before. It was so much more than just a shutter release with focus lock. I really like the Control! And I love that every iPhone 16 model gets camera controls. I think there is a lot of potential.
I just have one big problem: it doesn’t do what I wanted. I wanted a button with a halfway stop point – a two-stage shutter that you can press a little bit and then press harder. This can be done with the Camera Control, but there is no real stopping point, you get haptic feedback from the iPhone when you get there. I’m not very good at holding my finger exactly at the right point without any physical resistance.
Additionally, the focus lock feature was not available at launch; it took a few months to arrive, and by the time it did, the Camera Control became known more for its Apple Intelligence capabilities than its camera convenience. Maybe that was the point all along? Hopefully, when Samsung inevitably copies this button, it will offer a true two-step shutter release like I wanted.
I can’t buy a Xiaomi 14 Ultra. Or a Huawei. Why?!
There is a camera phone that haunts my dreams: the Xiaomi 14Ultra. It may be the best camera phone on the market today, but not my market. You can get a Xiaomi phone in plenty of other English-speaking countries. But the US doesn’t have an official sales channel and I wouldn’t buy an import model because I don’t get full network or warranty support.
So I borrowed a Xiaomi 14 Ultra from our UK team, and the cameras are stunning. I captured photos that were light years ahead of what some of our favorite American camera phones can produce, especially when shooting macro photos, portraits, and enhanced zoom shots. The level of control is astonishing, with the best aperture control I’ve seen on a smartphone.
I never got a satisfactory answer explaining why I can’t buy Xiaomi phones. By the way, why can’t I buy cool Huawei phones like the Huawei MateXT?! I’ve heard from industry analysts that there is more of a political reason than a technological barrier. Whatever the case, it’s clear that the US market is missing out on something good.
Stereotypes of generative AI, now on your smartphone
There are so many problems with generative AI that it’s hard to pinpoint my favorite bugbear. Is there rampant and blatant copyright infringement? Supervillainous levels of energy consumption? I think my favorite generative AI problem to whine about is the way AI image generators usually create images that are racist, sexist, ableist… pretty much every stereotype you can think of, and probably a few we haven’t yet have defined.
That’s not a bug, it’s a feature because of the way they were trained, and it’s now a feature on your smartphone. Google and Samsung have avoided the worst problems by limiting AI background features. But when I got the Motorola Razr Plus 2024the results I got from the image generator showed a strong pattern of anti-Semitic and misogynistic stereotypes. It was shocking.
This is not acceptable. These AI image generators are not useful enough to justify the danger. Why do I need a problematic wallpaper app on my phone? When did it become acceptable for electronics companies to force offensive features on users? I guess that’s when we decided we weren’t going to buy those foldable phones.
If AI works well, I will be happy to use it. Until then, I don’t need it, just like I don’t need a texting app that can’t send text messages, or a web browser that goes to the wrong URL. AI features don’t work, and that’s the end of it.