this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Okay but I'm absolutely serious and I bet a lot of the upvotes on that ARE unironic. There is a market for chunky, powerful portable devices -few manufacturers seem to want to cater to that type of customer however, probably because of a worldwide capitalism hegemony that exists to make you as placated and dumb as possible rather than empower you as a individual or something
It's definitely more than the market is not large enough or willing to pay enough to make it worth while. A phone with 3 USB ports, a physical keyboard and a huge ass battery?
That's not a phone, that's a laptop. The amount of people willing to pay for that is going to be miniscule.
Capitalism isn't purposeful in that way. One company might be, but if there was really a huge demand for that kind of thing someone would make it.
You're mistaken. Imperialism is capitalism, my friend. War is just easy profit to some. Regardless, tech companies LOVE to work with the state to design products; most motherboards do have backdoors used by the likes of the NSA. So I think there's a fair case to be made for it being more of a don't-piss-off-the-government decision rather than scarcity of parts or demand.
There are products like the pinephone or what have you and they aren't very successful, because most people demand convenience and not seeming weird to their peer group, both understandable impulses even as they lead us astray.
The government isn't stopping manufacturers from making phones with bigger batteries and headphone jacks.
@invaderDJ @Porous_gray_matter. SBCs and their recent popularity show there IS a demand, as well as the existence of the pinephone period. I'm not convinced either. The government, -especially the USA's undeniably has a vested interest in keeping versatile, powerful technology out of reach for most.