[rootsudo]

I checked out a Huawei store - they're the same asthetic as an apple store with a ton more useful tech then an ipod, macbook and imac.

The phones were impressive and very affordable. We're talking $200-300 for 6gb ram devices, 128gb storage, etc.

Google, Apple are right to be worried.

[takeda]

Google and Apple are just milking it. Smart phones were introduced a decade ago. Flagship phones costed then around $500, now we got to the point that they costing $1,000+ like if mass producing wouldn't cut the cost down. On top of that making a battery be non removable and constantly over-volting the batteries to reduce their life. Ultimately phones become useless after 2 years, unless you replace batteries yourself or pay someone to do it for you.

[perl4ever]

A few years ago, I got annoyed with a Google phone (Nexus something I think) that broke, given how expensive it was, and replaced it with a Motorola Android phone that was well under $100. I didn't really sacrifice the basic necessities - sure, the screen was small and side by side with a high end phone obviously less bright and lower resolution, but providing you didn't care about processor intensive apps/games, it served the same purpose.

Edit: Of course, I am assuming there wasn't a substantial subsidy from somewhere, but from my point of view, it didn't have a contract attached.

[pbourke]

Another way of looking at things: Today’s phones are quite a bit more capable than the first generation of smartphones, and they only cost twice as much.

[FpUser]

So tomorrow's smartphone will be 20 times faster and only cost 10 times as much?

[GhettoMaestro]

No... that's pure hyperbole.

But 10x faster (or capable) and 2x the cost? That's not outrageous. BTW that's where we currently are.

[onion2k]

10x faster and more capable at what? The tech in phones might be progressing but the use cases aren't. What most people do on their phones now is the same as they did 10 years ago. Eventually people will realise they don't need more speed, and the focus will switch to things like power effeciency and weight. Just like laptops.

[diffeomorphism]

Mostly photography gets noticeably better, but I still hope that at some point "convergence" becomes good enough. It has been tried again and again but always fell short due being not quite good or easy or convenient enough (getting docks, cables etc.). With usb-c/usb4 as a single connection and "good enough" processing and storage maybe in a few years?

https://maruos.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G#Webtop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_DeX

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/Continuum

[GhettoMaestro]

> Eventually people will realise they don't need more speed, and the focus will switch to things like power effeciency and weight. Just like laptops.

Have you been in a coma for 5 years? That has already happened.

[gruez]

>Smart phones were introduced a decade ago. Flagship phones costed then around $500, now we got to the point that they costing $1,000+ like if mass producing wouldn't cut the cost down.

If making smartphones is really as easy as you make it out to be, and smartphone prices are rising, then why isn't that being captured in the global profit share? Considering that Androids are vastly more popular than iOS phones, there would be no reason why Apple's getting 62% of global profits.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/780367/global-mobile-han...

[takeda]

Can't view your link.

[gruez]

seems like you need a search engine referrer to unlock the paywall.

[dghughes]

Xiaomi is even more impressive. A friend of mine from China showed me a video (2017 or 2018) of a man who ordered from a Xiaomi store. The video was of the man receiving the item he ordered 5 minutes after he ordered it! It was around midnight not sure of the day but 5 minutes to his door step from ordering it!

I asked my friend how is that possible so he showed me an image of a map of Xiaomi warehouses. I can't recall if he said there were dozens or hundreds per city.

[gruez]

>The video was of the man receiving the item he ordered 5 minutes after he ordered it! It was around midnight not sure of the day but 5 minutes to his door step from ordering it!

Feels like a viral marketing stunt to me. There's zero reason why anyone would want a phone within 5 minutes (or even same day). In the off chance that they do, they could simply walk into a physical store and buy it there. There's no need to set up a real time delivery network for that one guy who needs a phone delivered the same day and can't walk into a store.

>I asked my friend how is that possible so he showed me an image of a map of Xiaomi warehouses. I can't recall if he said there were dozens or hundreds per city.

I have a feeling they're closer to "stores" than warehouses.

[dghughes]

> Feels like a viral marketing stunt to me.

Possible. But he looked really pissed that there was a camera filming him.

I'm not sure if it was a phone he ordered.

[QuarterReptile]

Their computers are also matched with Microsoft's for the tallest screen (3:2) you can get, while also being pretty high quality. If you don't want 16:9, the only other options I'm aware of are the newest Dell XPS convertible and Apple (both 16:10). I would get a Huawei Matebook except that it would really rock the boat at my work, and that's not something I want to do.

[wozniacki]

   I would get a Huawei Matebook except that it would
   really rock the boat at my work, and that's not 
   something I want to do.

Is this really a thing in American (I'm assuming here) workplaces? Are all Huawei products persona non grata or just some ? I thought it was just the P30 Pro phone and some enterprise stuff that were explicitly barred.

Could you elaborate on where things stand as of this writing, and if they are ever likely to improve, post-trade war?

[80386]

IME, workplaces are all HP or Dell. Nobody in America uses Huawei anything - I was a little surprised when I went to Europe and saw signs for Huawei phone accessories.

Americans who have even a vague understanding of technology typically assume everything is backdoored by at least one government. So the Intel Management Engine is a fed backdoor, Yandex forwards all your mail to the KGB, Huawei spies on you for the Chicoms, and so on. And the Chinese have a reputation for industrial espionage, so nobody would use Huawei at work.

[perl4ever]

I have no idea, but everywhere I've been in the US, both public and private sector, seems to have Dell products, very occasionally HP. I'd expect them to be made in China too, I dunno.

[benbristow]

Google might be worried but Apple will be just fine. Apple have the (some might say superior) iOS platform which sets them apart.

After being on Android devices for years and recently switching to iOS I'd be reluctant to go back

[layoutIfNeeded]

* Subsidized by the Chinese govt. and intellectual property stolen from western companies.

[periya]

I’ve no dog in this race but I feel the selective outrage to Huawei and other chines tech companies hypocritical while America consumes more and more goods produced in China without batting an eye.

[onepointsixC]

US market has been open, so when a Chinese state-owned entity dumps products American consumers buy said products as they only see a product at a cheaper price. How is that hypocritical? The only thing that has been hypocritical was the Chinese blocking of market access via tariffs and nontraditional market barriers in order to favor local entities while demanding market access to others.

[deathanatos]

Could someone actually vote with their wallet here and buy an American made — not assembled — phone? (I'm under the impression that the best case is that the parts are fabricated in China and assembled in the US, e.g., Apple phones.)

[onepointsixC]

You have it backward, the parts themselves are usually created in Fab's outside of China while they are assembled (most labor-intensive process) in China. The whole article is about how Huawei is extremely dependent on components outside of China but has shifted from mostly US chips to EU, Taiwanese, Japanese, and South Korean Chips.

[monocasa]

The article seems to say that they're mainly shifting to HiSilicon, their in house chip design wing.

[papito]

The problem also, is that tech companies in Russia and in China have no choice but to cooperate with the state and be part of espionage. This is not just about open and fair markets, yada yada. This is only "clean" in theory.

[monocasa]

That's true of the US too. Lavabit got shut down for not being willing to cooperate with the state and be a part of espionage.

[onepointsixC]

Huawei is special in that beyond even requiring to cooperate with the state, it has a corporate structure that is seen in State-Owned Entities and could be thought of as a CCP entity.

[skybrian]

Maybe that's true but I think we should assume they do their own R&D as well.

[DoreenMichele]

I know a few Natives on Twitter who say similar things about the US -- only talking about real property, not intellectual property -- and who would like their land back.

[oh_sigh]

People are free to say stupid things. Native Americans aren't a monolith -it was never 'their' land - there were hundreds of native nations who were variously at peace or at war with each other over the years.

I wonder how those Natives you know on twitter would carve up the land once they got it back - do Apaches need to go back to Canada, since they invaded the southwest only in the ~16th century and pushed out the Pueblo people?

[simonsarris]

moral relativism across space conjoined with moral absolutism across time is a silly combination

[DoreenMichele]

I don't actually have any idea what you are saying.

[dx87]

They're saying that your comment is irrelevant because you're comparing current issues between the USA and China with issues between the USA and Native Americans in a completely different time period. Today's morals aren't the same as they were hundreds of years ago, so it doesn't make sense to excuse current IP theft in China by pointing out historical theft of land by the USA.

[gretagretagreta]

If A criticizes B's behavior on moral grounds, with the hope of, say, "making the world a better place", then it would be logical mistake to respond to the criticism by pointing to bad behavior on A's own part.

If, however, A's criticism of B is not an attempt to "make the world a better place" but to prove one's own relative moral superiority, then not only is it highly pertinent to point out A's own moral failings, but also there need be nothing relativistic about it, since ex hypothesi the conversation no longer concerns the morality of this or that action but only whether one party has a legitimate claim to feel superior to the other.

It's not always easy to tell whether one is in the one or the other situation.

[DoreenMichele]

From what I gather, Natives don't see that theft as historical. They see it as still ongoing.

[dirtyid]

It makes sense when your view is that morals correlate to development which is time invariant. Developing nations steal IP to establish orphan industries, burn cheap and dirty coal to rapidly build industrial base, repress minorities to establish stable cultural hegemony. There are no other proven models to development, especially one on large country scales, and pretending it can be done ethically and insisting on those standards are possible when it has yet to be demonstrated is just ladder kicking hypocrisy. At some point we just have to accept that development is a dirty business full of hard moral calculus and judge progress and methods accordingly.

[mixmastamyk]

Translation: comparing apples and oranges.

[slimed]

Couldn't agree more. Well put.

[partiallypro]

This is the weakest whataboutism I've ever seen

[DoreenMichele]

It's not whataboutism. So that might be why.

[corndoge]

I fail to see how this anecdote about a Twitter comment is relevant to a comment about IP theft.

GP is correct - any older Cisco employee can count off a laundry list of things Huawei directly stole from them, and the Chinese state absolutely subsidizes them. GP is making the point that it isn't fair to compare Huawei prices to Apple prices given the amount of engineering Huawei stole from other companies and their government subsidies.

[DoreenMichele]

It's not an anecdote about a Twitter comment. It's a nutshell version of American history.

China also has lower labor costs generally. Lots of things cost less in other countries for the same reason.

It's rare for anyone to come up with something genuinely original. We depend on education and culture and many things to develop anything. Then we argue about things like intellectual property rights because such conventions are an attempt to sort out how to make society work given that ideas are easily "stolen" and if we don't allow for some means for originators of new things to profit, we actively discourage our best and brightest from contributing to forward progress.

But this forum skews American. Most people will argue "for" the American side and "against" the Chinese for that reason alone.

I'm only pointing out the hypocrisy and silliness of arguing this as if America has some absolute moral high ground.

I follow Natives on Twitter because, according to oral family tradition, I'm a small part Cherokee. I'm pretty sure most full-blooded Natives would happily ship me back to Europe along with the rest of the whites.

I don't know the right answer going forward. I just believe that you need actual facts to find it.

The implicit assumption that China is The Bad Guy and America is The Good Guy is unlikely to yield a real solution when there is so much low hanging fruit for saying "The two nations aren't all that different."

But it seems my thoughts are likely wholly unwelcome here, as is so often the case.

[barry-cotter]

> I checked out a Huawei store - they're the same asthetic as an apple store with a ton more useful tech then an ipod, macbook and imac.

If you cannot tell the difference between the design aesthetic of an Apple store and a Huawei one I will heavily discount your taste as a guide to my I own. I’ve only been to Huawei stores in China, perhaps it’s different elsewhere. The tables are plastic fake wood. The stores smell bad when new, like cheap plastic or putting your nose right next to the benches in a just opened McDonald’s. I assume the same kind of care for aesthetics and design goes into their products so if you want a bad cheap copy of the surface level of good design go with Huawei.

[dirtyid]

> I assume the same kind of care for aesthetics and design goes into their products so if you want a bad cheap copy of the surface level of good design go with Huawei.

If you've been to Huawei stores then you should be familiar with the build quality of Huawei products, otherwise your opinion is incredibly hard to square. And the insinuation that current crop of Huawei devices are copy cat designs is out of touch. The exception being the MateBook line, which if anything, has superior derivative design given Apples poor track record in notebooks these last few years.

[monocasa]

Offgasing is common in brand new stores, even Apple ones.

[barry-cotter]

If the floors are tile rather than vinyl and all the furniture is solid wood rather than veneered chipboard they almost the only outgasing will be from the products sold in store. Even in a new Apple store outgasing should generally be minimal. If you’ve been in a new store that stinks of formaldehyde I bow to your experience.

[monocasa]

The fixtures at my Apple store use copious amounts of wood glue. I woodwork on the side and am well aware of the kinds of techniques used.

[barry-cotter]

I bow to your superior expertise.