Tech that we want (but they never seem to give us)

I was just reading the story about the phone manufacturers' squeezing ever more pixels into their screens, and I was thinking about what things you want but the industry never seems to give you. Here's my list: Phones that compromise their thinness to give you more battery life (OK, Motorola have tried this) …

This topic was created by Ossi .

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      1. Slap

        Re: Can anything be on my Christmas list?

        Apple, for some reason, seem to be getting away with it. I can't remember a micro USB adapter being included with any of my recent devices.

        That said, I do live in Switzerland which is outside the EU, but which adopts certain EU practices - if it's to their advantage. So that may be the reason.

        However, I'm sure Apple will sell me one at a jackbooted price should I require one.

        1. Sean Timarco Baggaley

          Re: Can anything be on my Christmas list?

          "Apple, for some reason, seem to be getting away with it. I can't remember a micro USB adapter being included with any of my recent devices."

          Did your non-Apple device not come with a suitable USB-to-micro-USB cable?

          Apple's chargers all have a standard USB socket. There's nothing non-standard about them. You can plug any USB cable you want into the things and they'll charge it just fine.

          The Apple-specific component is the separate USB-to-Lightning cable, which is only a problem if you have multiple devices to charge including some non-Apple ones. Is having to unplug one cable and plug in another really such a painful ordeal, given that you'll be doing that at the other end of the cable anyway? Do your pretentious hipster neighbours keep you awake all night with their incessant pointing and laughing? Oh, the humanity! Heaven forfend! How will you survive?

          Of course, you could always just buy one of those third-party chargers with multiple USB sockets instead. There: problem solved.

          Now, if you'll all please stop interrupting me, I'd like to get back to work on world peace.

      2. Charles Manning

        Isn't that mico-USB and now mandatory in the EU?

        UKIP is mandating Good Old USB A/B.

        1. Michael Hawkes
          Joke

          Re: Isn't that mico-USB and now mandatory in the EU?

          If a 9-pin serial port is good enough for Nigel Farage, it's good enough for me.

  1. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Everything that 1960's SciFi "promised" us (and more)

    > what tech do you want that industry does not deliver?

    Natural language AI (that doesn't need a shopping trolley for the batteries)

    Screens that can be viewed in sunlight

    Electric vehicles that are as good as petrol for range and speed

    Cheap solar power

    TVs that "know" what programmes I like and will record them all for me

    Room temperature superconductors

    Fusion

    One remote that controls *everything* (no, not a Logitech Harmony)

    1. Dr. Ellen

      Re: Everything that 1960's SciFi "promised" us (and more)

      "TVs that "know" what programmes I like and will record them all for me"

      I've run into machines that "know what I want". And they've insisted on doing it, whether I tell them to or not. Even when I tell them not to. No fun. NOT getting one of those has been my Prime Directive of Tech ever since.

      1. MrT

        Machines that "know what I want"...

        ... resulting in something that tastes almost, but not entirely, unlike tea.

        The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation welcomes you to the future. Share and enjoy!

        Actually, we had one of those MaxPack dispensers at a former employer whose best effort at "leaf tea" tasted like they just picked random leaves fallen from roadside trees, lightly marinated in oily puddles and mixed by Goodyear, so maybe the future has already happened... sadly.

        1. Retired Spy

          Re: Machines that "know what I want"...

          I'm still waiting for my Intelligent Programming Assistant. A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, Byte magazine had an article on the perfect personal development environment. It consisted of functionality in the vertical direction (scroll up and down to go from feature to feature) and level of abstraction in the horizontal direction (tabs across the top, like Firefox, with Requirements on the left, then Design, Detailed Design, Pseudocode, and finally Code). Change a requirement and the design would change, all the way down to code. All you would then have to do is make decisions, from the choices laid out by your trusty Intelligent Programming Assistant, starting at the highest level of abstraction and working your way down to the code. It would let you pump out Elegant, Functional, Robust, and Correct code at unprecedented rates, just like Geordi La Forge on the Enterprise.

          Sadly, I'm still waiting ... :(

    2. Gerardo McFitzpatrick-O'Toole

      Re: Everything that 1960's SciFi "promised" us (and more)

      Oh, are we going to be playing that game, then?

      In which case... Strong AI.

      (Because nothing could ever go wrong with that: http://berglas.org/Articles/AIKillGrandchildren/AIKillGrandchildren.html)

  2. jglathe
    Thumb Up

    A KVM switch that follows the Eyes

    or better yet intention, regardles how many machines / OS types are involved. I often have two or more machines, several screens and remote sessions open. Finding out that you've typed on the wrong keyboard is annoying.

    1. The BigYin

      Re: A KVM switch that follows the Eyes

      Synergy. http://www.synergy-project.org/

      Doesn't follow the eyes, but does follow the mouse pointer. The eyes thing could probably be hacked in using a Kinect or similar.

    2. P. Lee

      Re: A KVM switch that follows the Eyes

      Holographic webcams which allow you to look at the screen (who you are talking to) but transmit a picture of you looking directly at the camera, so you don't always look as though you are watching something else.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    We Were Promised Jetpacks

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Were_Promised_Jetpacks

    1. Muscleguy

      Re: We Were Promised Jetpacks

      It is here and has been for a while now http://www.martinjetpack.com/

      Technically it's a double cowled fan personal helicopter running off a hi-spec 2-stroke engine (for robust reliability) but it comes with a parachute installed and can run for much longer than an actual jetpack and you will not need asbestos trousers.

      Start saving now.

      Made in New Zealand.

    2. Midnight

      Re: We Were Promised Jetpacks

      http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IWantMyJetPack

    3. Mike Flugennock

      Re: We Were Promised Jetpacks

      Jetpacks, for me, rank right up there with flying cars as far as things that look really cool in the movies but which would be positively hellish in real life.

      Remember all our discussions of how horrible air traffic would be if all those idiot drivers on the highways suddenly had flying cars?

      Now, imagine all those knucklenobs with their own personal jetpacks... if you dare.

  4. The BigYin

    Uplink module.

    Our phones make calls, take pictures, play music, play video, play games and, by and large, are a bit shit at them all bar the first one.

    What I'd like to see is a phone with a smaller screen and decent battery that can make calls. It also offers it's up-link connection to other devices. No need for multiple SIMs or crap like that. Your camera, laptop, whatever just links to you phone and uses that to get on the Internet.

    The phone itself becomes optimised to that job and lasts a lot longer on a single charge. A side effect would be that you could make calls from your tablet, laptop, watch as these could simply access the contact details your phone already store (using CardDAV, say).

    No need for proprietary bullshit. Do it all on open standards

    1. petur
      Coat

      Re: Uplink module.

      You mean a modem?

    2. Havin_it

      Re: Uplink module.

      I think this concept was in the Bluetooth standard from early on (Personal Area Network + Dial-Up Profile IIRC), but it's never been implemented worth a damn, let alone to the extent that you (and I) dream of. Shame, because if it hadn't been so fragmented and inconsistent it was a strong enough brand that it could have gotten us there. But the interests sponsoring and implementing it were just too abstruse.

      Current wifi kit in today's smartphones has probably got us closer to the sweet spot TBH, since most smartphones can share their data connection via tethering, as long as the mfr. or carrier hasn't nobbled the capability. I'd have killed for a phone that did that ten years ago.

      What would be really spesh would be if the phone could tether wifi-to-wifi, so I didn't need to duplicate the wifi credentials across all the secondary devices (nor indeed put possibly redundant extra load on the AP, nor increase the attack surface on what might be an untrusted network beyond a single device). I know the hardware can do it (it's pretty ubiquitous on white-label Atheros kit anyway) but it's not a feature I've seen in phone software. If anyone has, I'm interested.

      I would say, though, that it's arguably a bit of a "niche" use-case at the present time. Currently most people have, at most, one specialised net-ready device besides their phone/data-enabled-tablet that they'd actually carry around with them. For me it's my laptop, because I'm far too verbose/sausage-fingered to type all this drivel on my phone ;) For others, it might be a DSLR camera that's better than you can find in a phone (though I suspect that example's days are numbered). When you're at home, none of this matters as much - although if a single device could really smartly wrangle being my router for all the possible connections I might use both at home and everywhere else, in a sane manner or at least following policies I defined, I'd be into that.

      Be a bit of a bugger if I lost it down the pub though.

      1. chris 143

        Re: Uplink module.

        bluevpn + android tablet + reasonably basic 3G phone might work

  5. Ralph B

    My Three Cents

    1. Colour eInk display (for the new Psion 5, new Kindle, and/or new mobile phone)

    2. Unlimited flat-rate mobile data at £10/month

    3. An ad-hoc wireless-network/video-streaming broadcast app, so that people at the front of a concert can record and stream the performance to all those behind them who want to share the view. (Could also be used for "citizen news" coverage.)

    1. Craigie

      Re: My Three Cents

      £12.90, sim only, unlimited data on 3 (rolling 1 month contract).

      I think it's even under a tenner if you take a 12 month one.

  6. Yordan Georgiev

    FUSION

    NUCLEAR FUSION

    1. DropBear
      Boffin

      Re: FUSION

      ...you mean like this? http://bit.ly/focusfusionindiegogo

  7. Steven Raith

    ATX for Laptops

    I mean form factors - I know it's practically impossible as that's how manufacturers create product varaitions etc, but I'd love to be able to swap the guts out of a laptop I'm used to with the guts from a more modern counterpart (IE 2012 MBP guts into 2008 MB chassis) and have it relaibly work.

    Genuinely working DLNA/multiple different client streaming without the need for specific codecs (H264 decide will be useless once most media is H265) or additional hardware (Roku, Chromecast, etc); just have a standard <n> output and transcode capable FPGA in all tellys (where N = 720p, 1080p, 4k, etc) filled with FFMPEG stack running in hardware, how hard can it be? (Hint - probably far harder than I made is sound).

    The ability to get DSL without having to pay for fucking phone line rental at full whack.

    All pipe dreams I suspect.

  8. Christopher Reeve's Horse

    1. Shops that sell just sell unlocked sim free phones, with nice a range of OS's.

    2. Proper Android permissions manager, including blocking network access to individual apps.

    3. Ability in Google to search, edit or delete every bit of information or analysis regarding your account and data.

    4. As above for facebook, amazon etc...

    5. Windows (or your op of choice) to natively support Sequoia style square tree views of file systems.

    6. Tagging of files in Windows documents library (like gmail) rather than folder heirachy

    7. If failure of point 3, then an app (or something?) that constantly barrages Google with search terms and fake user behavior that makes it impossible for your user data to be in any way usefully personalised. (I'll admit this might not be possible...)

    8. If failure of point 7, a 'paid for' equivalent to Google services that does not collect or sell personal data. (How much money does Google make from my account alone? Is it more then I'd be prepared to pay for the services?)

    9. Music stores that sell a decent range of music in 24/96 resolution FLAC files, without overcharging for the privilage.

    10. An Excel VLOOKUP function that allows you to lookup against the n-th occurence of your matching reference.

    1. Charles 9

      To answer #8, YES. For the money Google makes for rich contact information, you couldn't pay them enough to stop. Plus there are genuine benefits to their crowd-sourced data (traffic maps, et al). So it's basically a deal with the devil with no way around it.

      As for the permission, remember it's YOUR phone but it's THEIR app. And they wouldn't have published the app on Android without that level of control. The only way you're going to change the game is to basically make the Android app permission model toxic by either defecting from Android altogether or sticking to ONLY stock apps: not downloading anything. Are you prepared to go the long haul?

    2. theModge

      point 7 exists

      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/googlesharing/

      sort of: it takes everyone's requests for anything that google doesn't need you to sign in for, aggregates them and gives you your results back. It's a firefox add on. Defeats analytics in particular (assuming you haven't used ghostery to get rid of it in the first place, which I'd commend)

    3. Piro Silver badge

      #2 - XPrivacy

  9. Michael Neumann

    laptop battery life

    Greyscale laptop like the original Macbook pro which has kindle-level battery life.

    1. Mike Flugennock
      Gimp

      Re: laptop battery life

      "MacBook Pro"? I don't recall there being an MBP with a grayscale screen.

      You may be thinking of the first-generation PowerBooks.

      1. P. Lee
        Facepalm

        Re: laptop battery life

        First gen Mackintosh?

    2. Craigie

      Re: laptop battery life

      Kindle-level battery life would be good, but not super amazing. Their '8 weeks' figure is based on a whole 30 minutes of use per day, which makes it 28 hours.

  10. John Savard

    UMPC

    Well, this is pretty much in the neighborhood of "A New Psion 5"; what I would like is to be able to buy a UMPC at a reasonable price in North America or Europe. This was a small form factor of laptop or netbook available in Japan and South Korea.

  11. EddieD

    Print dialogs

    To have a JFP* button.

    (just f***ing print)

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Print dialogs

      In addition...

      Printer drivers that don't use metric tonnes as the unit of measurement for the file size, can cope with something exotic like changing the connection between USB, cable, or Wifi without having to reconfigure/reinstall everything, and don't pop up useless information often to people who aren't even printing at the moment.

      Printer dialogs that use every print opportunity to decide that the user wants to go back to printing in colour unless they find where the checkbox is hidden.

      Printers that don't get through ink like a fish gets through water.

      1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

        Re: Print dialogs

        Or printers that do not refuse to print a black and white document just because the yellow ink has run out (again!). Funnily enough, some Linux printer drivers will allow B&W printing, whereas the windows version won't

        1. Slartybardfast

          Re: Print dialogs

          If run out of a colour or two in my Epson printer it allows me to print B&W, but only if you select "bordered" prints rather than "borderless". Why this should make any difference goodness only knows.

        2. DropBear
          Trollface

          Re: Print dialogs

          "printers that do not refuse to print a black and white document just because the yellow ink has run out (again!)"

          Ah, but we can't let you print without adding those invisible fingerprint dot-patterns identifying your printer. Why do you think the yellow ran out in the first place?!?

        3. Robert Sneddon

          Yellow ink

          The reason it won't print B/W if it's out of yellow ink is probably because of the forensic yellow dots code printed on each page, courtesy (we think) of the US Government. The pattern of yellow dots encrypts information like time and date and a serial number of the printer according to the EFF.

          https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots

          I wonder if printing a faint yellow background on each page would defeat this coding scheme?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Print dialogs

      The reason it doesn't work that way is because "JFP" is different things to different people, plus what if you have multiple printers available: which one does it default. If it's color, do you want it to default to B&W and so on? IOW, JFP has as much potential to tick people off as the full-fat dialog. Until your computer can understand, "Print to the main room printer, 5 copies, collated, duplex lengthwise, first and last pages in color, rest in black and white," AND the next request you make which can be completely different, this is the best we can come up with.

    3. ElReg!comments!Pierre

      Re: Print dialogs

      "To have a JFP* button. (just f***ing print)"

      :hardcopy

      (OK, on MSWindows it only brings up the annoying dialogs. Just refuse MSWindows!)

    4. Mike Flugennock

      Re: Print dialogs

      I can't say for sure for other applications, but Photoshop has a simple "print one" menu choice. It doesn't throw up the standard print/setup dialog, it Just Fucking Prints One.

  12. anatak

    modern smartphone with physical keyboard

    shape of the sharp is14sh and sharp is15sh would be good

    clamshell would be even better.

    laptops with a mat screen and better vertical resolution or a laptop where you could put the screen in letter mode.

    1. Hollerith 1

      Re: modern smartphone with physical keyboard

      Or a touch screen that can, as it were, re-shape itself to 'press up' to give us the feel of the keys being displayed. I'd like the keys to rise up about .3mm so I can feel them. I wouldn't mind this along the edges of all icons. Having some visual difficulties and fat fingers, I could then know I'd hit it. When watching a movie or viewing photos or messages, the raised areas would melt away.

      1. Spassmonkey

        Re: modern smartphone with physical keyboard

        Its certainly possible. Check this: http://tactustechnology.com

  13. James Micallef Silver badge

    - Electric cars and motorcycles with comparable range to diesel ones that can be fully charged in <10 minutes

    - Smartphones that (a) last a full 2 days on one charge and (b) offer fine control of what data is being sent anywhere by each app individually

    - Self-driving cars

    - Baby translator

    - Solar panels with 30%+ efficiency

    - Fusion

    - Real 3D TV with a proper 360 degree "walk-all-the-way-around-it" viewing angle (possibly even walk inside it)

    I'm aware that a few of these items already exist in exclusive super-expensive versions, so in these cases I mean something affordable

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      A baby translator would be constantly saying this all day...

      "Something suboptimal has been detected, the assistance of a primary caregiver is requested to correct it."

    2. Spanners Silver badge

      @James Micallef

      - Baby translator

      Hasn't Paxo left the BBC? He was quite good at translating baby talk from politicians...

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

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