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Comment by rm_-rf_slash | Hacker News Reader

That's the "eat your vegetables" line of smartphone marketing. Good for you but a hard sell. Besides if battery life really matters to you then you would get much more utility from an external battery that can store far more than a single smartphone charge.

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My charging brick is almost as big as my phone. I think I can charge my phone 3 times with it. Sure, it has its uses for times when I might be away from a charging source for a few days or I need make sure multiple devices stay charged or when I might be on it way more than normal (ie, train/plane travel). But while those use cases do exist, they are actually pretty rare. I don't want to have to carry it every single day just to get through the day. I rarely have a bag with me during my normal day-to-day activities so any external battery is going to be in my pocket (or I guess left in my car if I know I'll have access to it when I need a charge). But 95% of the time I would much rather just have a phone ~10% thicker that could really go all day instead of needing to always carry a second device w/ 3 days of charge. I don't really need 3 days of charge very often. I just need a good solid day, every day.

Why is it hard to sell people vegetables? I agree with you but I don't actually know why. Is it just because there's no industry group running a "got carrots" campaign?

I sell people vegetables professionally. It's not difficult at all. People will pay a fair price for quality organically grown tomatoes, cucumbers, kale, chiles, peas and snow peas, and various Southern and Asian vegetables. There's too much hand work involved in root vegetables to pay easily for first world labor, but you can make it work.

The problem being invoked is that the junk food market is much bigger.

Hu, no?

There's only one phone maker that is getting to absolutely ridiculous levels of thinness, and that's Apple, while everyone else has understood that people enjoy 3000+ mAh batteries and care more about screen size, overall compactness and weight. I've never heard anyone say they wanted a <7mm thick phone (rather the opposite in fact).

Speaking as someone who's owned every model of iPhone (except the iPhone SE, but that's the same form-factor as a previous model), I actually do appreciate the thinness. Picking up an older phone is kind of weird now since it seems crazy thick. Heck, I don't even use a case on my phone, and a big part is because they make the phone significantly thicker.

I don't give a rats ass about shaving off an extra 1mm of phone thickness. I wouldn't even be able to tell the difference, to be honest.

On the other hand, being unable to both charge my phone (which needs it, because the short battery life) and listen to my conference call on headphones is ridiculous.

Only one vendor is pushing for crazy thin phones, and they are sacrificing the needs of their users to do so.

On the other hand, being unable to both charge my phone (which needs it, because the short battery life) and listen to my conference call on headphones is ridiculous.

That would be ridiculous. good thing that's not the case in reality, huh? Thanks, twenty year old Bluetooth!

I have $300 non-Bluetooth headphones. I'm not going to toss those out, much less change to something I need to charge separately.

I've got an external battery that has usb plugs, it's situationally awesome to have.

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