Welcome to a new subseries of posts called “It’s Good but It Sucks!”
The idea for these soon to be posts is simple. When you look at a product, it’s good and usable. But when you start to look at external factors, your enthusiasm for it diminishes greatly, leading you to not get it. And worse, it actually makes it you look like a fool for doing so. Meaning… It sucks!
This first chapter will be about new phones in general. Let’s get to it.
Regular Slab Phones
Regular slab phones are pretty much the entire market. And let me tell you, there’s a bunch of them that suck the big one.
If you wanna get the low end stuff, you can find plenty of brand new options that just sucks if you decide to buy it. Case in point: The Samsung Galaxy A06. One of the cheapest phones you can buy, Samsung pledged that they’ll update the phone for 7 years. I’m not sure if that will be real because it has issues right now, about 6 months after launch. For less than 200 USD or regional equivalents, you can have this phone. But you shouldn’t. While the price isn’t too bad, the hardware and other things it has aren’t up to make it an usable phone for basic stuff today.
Moving to the highest end tier, we have stuff like the Samsung Galaxy S25 lineup, and even the iPhone 16 lineup. But… Why would you get that? My reasoning is simple: These come out every year. And we essentially plateaued in terms of performance anyway, so the previous years’ flagships are still usable.
Then it comes down to the software experience. But even if you want to justify that, phones that came out in the last 3 years will get the latest software experience. The difference will be marginal and it’s pretty much down to preference over one or the other. The part that it sucks is that you spend that much on a phone only for the previous generation (which is much cheaper in comparison) gets the same updates, but a month later. And if you use an iPhone, everyone gets it at the same time. So what was the point of dropping so much on a flagship if its features will be available to everyone?
Foldable Phones
Ah yes. What is old, will be new again. Clamshell foldable phones are back and a new style too, Book foldables. These are essentially 1% of the entire smartphone market and while they might look good, they all suck the same way.
The first big point they suck is the price. Looking on Amazon, a Galaxy A55 is 370 USD. And a Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a 1500 USD. You can buy almost 5 A55s for the price of a single Z Fold 6 and I can tell you, the experience of using one does not equate 5x the price.
The second big point is the experience. For clamshell foldables, it sucks more than book ones. Once you open the shell, you get a regular slab phone. Meaning it’s just pointless to get a phone that fold in half if the experience to use it normally is a regular slab phone. With book foldables, things are a little better because they can open like a book, but they have a front cover screen, which is just a regular slab phone. Meaning if you don’t use the foldable part all that much, it’s just pointless again. Oh and forget about having a built-in pen like in the old Galaxy Note series and Galaxy S Ultra lineup, only if you pay for more for a case that has a pen.
The third big point is availability. If you wanna buy a foldable, chances are that you’re getting a Samsung. Samsung is the only company that sells them internationally, and while several brands like Xiaomi and Oppo/OnePlus have them, the really good ones are all China-only. Meaning you’re gonna have to get it from Aliexpress or equivalent or get a Samsung one. Oh and they are still pricey.
The fourth one is durability. A worthy concern for many is the fact these phones are pricey but what happens if they break? The screen might crack and how do you fix a foldable LCD screen? Many just decide to drop them or not even buy it outright, afraid of killing the phone and having to spend a lot to fix it.
Combining all these factors, foldables might be the coolest thing in tech recently but they all suck in some way. The price being the biggest point, in my opinion.
Avoid the Suckage
It’s really easy to avoid the suckage. Don’t overspend on something you don’t need.
Flagships might be exciting but performance has plateaued ages ago. A Galaxy S22 is just as good as a A35.
The headphone jack is starting to become uncommon, even on midrange, which can be funny, a phone might come with a headphones but no jack to put it on. I’d say to avoid it as much as you can and if you can’t, you can buy an adapter for cheap.
Some markets don’t come with the charger on the box, so instead of being cheap and get the charger from the company, get a third-party one that has multiple connection ports, so you can charge more than one thing, and you’ll be certain that it’ll charge at the correct speed.
Make sure to look up how many years it’ll be supported, software wise. Several companies do 2 years of updates, others do 4. I’d say anything like 3 years is good enough, which is enough time for you to swap to a new phone.
And last tip, buy a case. Always buy a case. Try to get ones that are a little taller than your phone.
Next on ‘It’s Good but It Sucks!’, we’ll talk about PC parts.