IR blaster? Really? I control my tv linked over wifi.
Unfortunately, my Element TV in the kitchen is not a smart TV. My Yamaha surround sound has no wifi, only controllable via IR. I would rather use a phone vs. keeping up with multiple remotes. I did try the Harmony Hub but it constantly kept dropping the wifi making controlling impossible.
My Samsung Smart TVs tend to drop wifi to 'save power' after being off a few days. So I depend on IR a lot. Wifi seems great for Roku and Apple TV though.
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Hmm, actually the market has stated what they want. Larger screen is what majority wants. And when I said majority, I don't mean Americans who have desktops and laptops and only use their phones to make calls. I'm talking about the bulk majority of people who only have their phones as their primary device. They will use their phones for anything, including productivity and entertainment, thus the market prefer something with a large enough screen but still relatively handheld. The sweet spot seems to be merging at around 6".
If the market wanted smaller screens, any of the Android OEMs will make such phone to fulfill that demand. Reality said otherwise, and even Sony and Samsung gave up on that niche.
Do I like phablets? Not really. But I'm just glad Apple still make non Max phones and the new SE.
Correction. Most OEMs and companies today subscribe to the mindset of 'We make x, you will buy it and like it! If you do not, you'll get used to it and like it!'
No company in this day and age cares about the free market. It has become the reverse. They make a product, be it garbage or great, and people will line up anyway because either it carries and Apple logo or because it's the 'next big thing' and upgrading is a favored fashion given most folks feel like outcasts if they can't get something new every few years. keeping something until it breaks, repairing it and failing that, only then replacing it, has unfortunately become a lost art. The reality of a company going bankrupt by making a garbage product and people avoiding that product died off in the '70s.
Fact: NO ONE demanded that a product lose a headphone jack. The market had literally no say in that matter. It happened, no company lost sales, interpreted it as 'hey they buy it anyway, let's keep it without a jack!'
Same for IR blaster, SD cards, removable batteries, etc etc. If the tech reviewers didn't start it with their constant blasting of phones made of 'plastic' the whole metal and glass thing would not have happened. NO one, I mean NO ONE clamored to lose features and consider it an 'upgrade'. More like a very expensive downgrade. No one asked companies to get rid of the headphone jack, or the above. Consumerism and it being 'the norm' these days are the only thing keeping these companies from shooting themselves in the foot.
It really disappoints me that not long ago there was literally a phone for every person. Slider phones (Motorola Droid, Samsung Galaxy Relay), keyboard candy bar phones (BlackBerry), phones that were pretty universal (Samsung Omnia, Nokia N series) and phones that blended smart features with music and had very excellent speakers (HTC One M7, M8, Sony Walkman phone), gamer phones (the early Sony Xperia Plays), the works. Phones with any size screen. Total variety. Phones that had built in kickstands to double as small media players or alarm clocks(HTC Evo).
Now? All metal glass slabs devoid of buttons and carrying 1/3 the feature set of a phone made in 2009. But triple the price. Does that even make any sense? Oh but it has a gizillion cameras though! It is shiny!
Everytime a company starts to cater to the 'mainstream market' aka the consumerist idiots who MUST have something new every few years, things start to suck. Windows is one example. It has been completely dumbed down. Android too, Android is a shell of its former self doing a horrible impression of iOS, rooting killed both by locked bootloaders and Google SafetyNet.
Even the Mac has been dumbed down. When they start targeting morons, the whole tech world suffers. I'm dreading the day that gaming PCs and the level of control over them you get is taken away because some moron decided to overclock their CPU and burned the house down by leaving it unattended and the power supply exploded.
I have a similar case for my 11 Pro which I use when I’m going abroad.