Using phone for "primary" internet browsing? An experiment.

[wilds]

you say Auto CAD photoshop? we are talking about surfing the internet i thought. when im on a slow pc google chrome will take 30 seconds to load. but on my phone i can touch chrome, open the tab complete my task and close browser turn off the phone before the desktop even loads a new tab. I guess it depends on your hard drive and cpu,

The $300 computer concept still should beat the phone if it has an SSD. I completely forgot how offputting using an HDD is.
But I still find browsing the web on a phone completely acceptable.

Ok, but you could have used a much cheaper Chinese cable from amazon to do the same exact thing, minus the convenience of a dock.

The keyboard and mouse would work via blutooth.

That's what I did. USB hub with built in HDMI for under $10. I barely use the thing. If I used it more, DeX would be an easy choice.

 

[killster1]

The $300 computer concept still should beat the phone if it has an SSD. I completely forgot how offputting using an HDD is.
But I still find browsing the web on a phone completely acceptable.



That's what I did. USB hub with built in HDMI for under $10. I barely use the thing. If I used it more, DeX would be an easy choice.

show me a new desktop for 300 that comes with a SSD that will beat my phone. or are you saying a custom built with used parts pc.

 

[Zaap]

show me a new desktop for 300 that comes with a SSD that will beat my phone. or are you saying a custom built with used parts pc.

You sure can beat a dead horse.

There's NO SUCH real world limitation to a PC as it *having* to cost $300. It doesn't matter if it's built or prebuilt. It's called an EXAMPLE, and I already explained I gave you a serious handicap.

Stop wanking like everyone has a $1000 phone. Most people groan how they'd never spend that on a phone.

If I spend equal amounts on a phone or a PC, the PC SMOKES your phone and beats it into dust every.single.time.

You keep saying things like 'with a slow PC...' what are we back to your 386 'example' again?

You couldn't crack open your phone and add a $80 storage upgrade that blows the barn doors off it's original performance. (Unless your phone magically has an M.2 slot). Amounts of RAM we think of as awesome on a phone (6GB-whee!) are absolutely piddlesome on a PC. Ditto storage, dedicated GPU's etc etc.

If you're going to purposefully handicap yourself with a PC (like when I use a slow one so I can gripe about Chrome!) vs spend a fortune on a phone just to navel gaze the web with it, I'm sure you can fanagle phones beating desktops.

But since in the real world there's no need for that ...

 

[wilds]

show me a new desktop for 300 that comes with a SSD that will beat my phone. or are you saying a custom built with used parts pc.

I just put this piece of junk together (not really):
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/s7chJ8

Under $300, with KB+M, monitor, speakers. Windows not included obviously, but Linux is free!

SSD's are going below $0.20 per GB now.

I would use this PC over a phone for serious web browsing. Then I would throw it in the garbage.

 

[killster1]

I just put this piece of junk together (not really):
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/s7chJ8

Under $300, with KB+M, monitor, speakers. Windows not included obviously, but Linux is free!

SSD's are going below $0.20 per GB now.

I would use this PC over a phone for serious web browsing. Then I would throw it in the garbage.

That desktop has every part bad, i would never use any of those parts in a build. I guess a used laptop for under 300 would be a better prebuilt.

Lulz pretty sure a self built computer for 300 is not what we are talking about. when i say a NEW DESKTOP, buying parts off part picker and putting it together doesn't count. We are talking about regular people or computer nerds?

SOrry you are both so upset about the fact of the matter. I often use slow DESKTOPS because its the only thing im allowed to use. right now this desktop has a7200rpm 2.5" hitachi, 4gb ram 3.8gb usable, i3 3200. Im sure it cost way more than 300 when it was purchased. HP compaq elite 8300. So yea its way slower than using my phone. It was purchased long ago im sure but there are no upgrade plans for the next few years i can guarantee.

Its weird that no one knows people with 1000$ phones (mine was 400 used btw galaxy9+) i guess all your friends are computer nerds with fast desktops and slow cellphones?

Can i come in and bring my own 80$ m.2 for this pc? nope, can i upgrade the regular ram nope. Why? because its not my desktop like most of the desktops i use. (maybe you carry a live OS on usb drive and m.2 in your pocket? i dont! )

 

[killster1]

You sure can beat a dead horse.

There's NO SUCH real world limitation to a PC as it *having* to cost $300. It doesn't matter if it's built or prebuilt. It's called an EXAMPLE, and I already explained I gave you a serious handicap.

Stop wanking like everyone has a $1000 phone. Most people groan how they'd never spend that on a phone.

If I spend equal amounts on a phone or a PC, the PC SMOKES your phone and beats it into dust every.single.time.

You keep saying things like 'with a slow PC...' what are we back to your 386 'example' again?

You couldn't crack open your phone and add a $80 storage upgrade that blows the barn doors off it's original performance. (Unless your phone magically has an M.2 slot). Amounts of RAM we think of as awesome on a phone (6GB-whee!) are absolutely piddlesome on a PC. Ditto storage, dedicated GPU's etc etc.

If you're going to purposefully handicap yourself with a PC (like when I use a slow one so I can gripe about Chrome!) vs spend a fortune on a phone just to navel gaze the web with it, I'm sure you can fanagle phones beating desktops.

But since in the real world there's no need for that ...

no one is talking about 386 i showed what pc i am using now, i have no choice this is what i get to use, there is not going to be a upgrade to any part of this pc. if it breaks it will be replaced, usually its a i7 4770s with 8gb ram but today i am lucky and use this slower i3 3220 4gb ram and 300gb spinning hd i can check if its even a 7200rpm. yea it is Hitachi HTS725032A7E630 Hard Drive Notebook Drives 320GB-7.2K RPM. No m.2 in my pocket or usb os drive to run after installing the drive to a pc that i dont own.

Most people i know dont even own desktops. funny enough most of them own a phone that at one time msrp over 700.

with a phone i dont have to carry a laptop/desktop, carry a dslr, carry a modem. and good luck showing me a desktop with modem/ camera even close to as good as a msrp 1000$ phone (hell even a used prebuilt is fine ) , so it seems unless you cant live with out games or photo shop. i dont know many people that play computer games anymore either. THe best part about a desktop is the giant monitor, mechanical keyboard, and the ease of insanely fast massive storage. But those things can be easily fixed with a nvidia shield and nas.

i noticed your post about how you HAVE to get teh note 9 as soon as it comes out no matter what the price so its funny that you talk about no one having 1000$ phones. i guess we are both nobodys (but the only phone i spent alot on was the iphone 7 plus 256gb 700$ last year nov to give as gift)

 

[Zaap]

Lol keep beating that dead horse.

"No one can build a PC!"
"No one games!"
"No one has a decent laptop or desktop!"
"Everyone has an ultra expensive phone that beats laptops, desktops, DSLRs.... "

The phone wins!

Lol!

 

[wilds]

SOrry you are both so upset about the fact of the matter. I often use slow DESKTOPS because its the only thing im allowed to use. right now this desktop has a7200rpm 2.5" hitachi, 4gb ram 3.8gb usable, i3 3200. Im sure it cost way more than 300 when it was purchased. HP compaq elite 8300. So yea its way slower than using my phone. It was purchased long ago im sure but there are no upgrade plans for the next few years i can guarantee.

So why not get that $20 120gb SSD?

 

[killster1]

So why not get that $20 120gb SSD?

for this pc? or for any pc? i can give you 3 reasons, 120gb are very slow compared to higher capacity (check benchmarks, reliability, and 120gb is way to small for anything with out a spinner along side.

 

[wilds]

for this pc? or for any pc? i can give you 3 reasons, 120gb are very slow compared to higher capacity (check benchmarks, reliability, and 120gb is way to small for anything with out a spinner along side.

That $20 SSD is faster than my first SSD purchase in 2009. That SSD which is turning 10 soon, allows for a modern computer experience with sub 10 second boot time. 120gb SSD + an HDD is a pretty common budget combo. I've even bought used and factory refurbished SSD's for older computers for an even lower gb/$.

That $275 computer on pcpartpicker included peripherals which most users who own an ancient pc already own. The CPU is also incredibly fast for its price and it comes with a decent motherboard for expansion and upgrades.

I don't even know why this $300 cut off is important. Phones have a long ways to go before they can come close to perf/$ a PC can have.

 

[lakedude]

This isn't at all just a perf/price issue. A phone performs perfecly for a great number of tasks. It is very rare that I need more CPU horsepower than what the phone has. The phone that we leave hooked up to the TV functions flawlessly in this role. Netflix, network streaming apps, and YouTube could not be better. One can also check e-mail, texts, or Facebook with said phone on a 55 inch 4k screen using a real keyboard! The cell phone also doubles as our home phone using a cool feature called Link-2-Cell so in spite of having zero land based services we can still get and make calls with our home phone. Can a desktop do that?

Every day I have a choice between a very powerful i7 desktop, a fairly powerful i5 laptop (with SSD and 1050ti) or my phone hooked up to the DeX. I almost never turn on the desktop anymore. Sure there are plenty of things that the more powerful machine can do but I just don't do those things all that often and neither do most other people. A desktop is like a car that can go 500 mile per hour on streets that have at most a 75 MPH speed limit, it is pointless most of the time for the average person. In this example the laptop would clock in at say 300 MPH and the phone at perhaps 150 MPH.

We have told all the land based internet companies to go jump in a lake for various reasons, cost being perhaps the most significant. Our cell phones are our only link to the WWW now. This move will save us roughly $900/year. This gives the advantage to the phone because now the computers must use a 0.6 Mb/s teather vs 70 Mb/s using the phone directly (with or without DeX).

DeX is not perfect or without a learning curve but it IS replacing the computers at our house.

 

[lakedude]

My Samsung Galaxy S9 cost $199 dollars plus tax. The DeX Pad cost $38.70. Internet service for the phone costs $20 even per month for 70Mbps unlimited (reduced priority after 50GB). This is your budget. $237 dollars for a desktop computer (box only) and $20 a month for internet service. We will assume we both already have a keyboard/mouse/monitor/speakers/headphones/cables/etc.

Even if we allow the original $300 for the desktop how are you going to compete with $20 per month for internet service? All of a sudden when you look at the cost per month the desktop becomes very much more expensive unless you are getting a deal from your ISP better than any I've ever heard about.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Even if we allow the original $300 for the desktop how are you going to compete with $20 per month for internet service? All of a sudden when you look at the cost per month the desktop becomes very much more expensive unless you are getting a deal from your ISP better than any I've ever heard about.

Internet Essentials by Comcast, is $9.95 / mo, equip. included, no taxes in my state, for 15/2 internet. Which, is livable. You can stream YouTube 1080P with that, and download somewhat acceptably for Windows Updates.

 

[lakedude]

Internet Essentials by Comcast, is $9.95 / mo, equip. included, no taxes in my state, for 15/2 internet. Which, is livable. You can stream YouTube 1080P with that, and download somewhat acceptably for Windows Updates.

That is excellent! I'd go for that in a heartbeat. Is that a promotional price?

 

[lakedude]

I’m not eligible for that service...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, "must qualify". https://www.internetessentials.com/

 

[mikeymikec]

My Samsung Galaxy S9 cost $199 dollars plus tax.

Where? I'm not in the US but amazon.com has it going for a minimum of $400. In the UK it's on Amazon for a minimum of £475 UKP which is probably about $600 USD. Even an S8 on amazon.com is more than $400. Some refurbished S7's are going on on amazon.com for the $200 you mentioned.

If we're going to start talking about "special offers", things are going to get absurd really quickly, because if you're in the right place at the right time, I'm sure one can pick up just about anything insanely cheaply.

 

[mikeymikec]

for this pc? or for any pc? i can give you 3 reasons, 120gb are very slow compared to higher capacity (check benchmarks, reliability, and 120gb is way to small for anything with out a spinner along side.

This is flat-out wrong on every count.

I've used many 128GB SSDs in my computer builds and in terms of general usability they perform just as well as well as bigger drives. Sure, they don't benchmark as well, but this topic is about browsing. There's not a single benchmark you'll find that shows a decent 128GB SSD being outperformed for anything relevant to browsing and for good reason: Browsing benefits from fast read/write disk access, but aside from that it's not remotely demanding. As soon as you have data access times in the realm of SSDs and not HDDs, that's where the noticeable difference is.

128GB SSDs are perfectly big enough for browsing even on Windows 10. I'm happy to sell 128GB SSDs to customers with up to 40GB of data, and I've only had to upgrade one 128GB SSD to date for capacity reasons. There's literally no reason why browsing should inherently use up lots of capacity. 2GB gets you a browser cache and a browser. Most of the 128GB SSDs I have in the field have approximately 50% capacity free.

 

[VirtualLarry]

128GB SSDs are perfectly big enough for browsing even on Windows 10. I'm happy to sell 128GB SSDs to customers with up to 40GB of data, and I've only had to upgrade one 128GB SSD to date for capacity reasons. There's literally no reason why browsing should inherently use up lots of capacity. 2GB gets you a browser cache and a browser. Most of the 128GB SSDs I have in the field have approximately 50% capacity free.

I agree. I upgraded my friend's SSD, his first SSD, like mine, was a 30GB. (Well, I ordered like five of them, and gave him one.) Pretty tight for Windows 7 64-bit, especially a few years in, when they started to pile on updates.

When that started stuttering, due to less than 2GB free, I upgraded him to a 120GB Crucial M500. (Not MX500, the older, 2D MLC one.) He's using that to this day, like 4-5 years later, and hasn't run out of space.

Around three years ago, I gave him parts to build his GF's PC's, an FM1 rig, and included 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600 RAM, and a 120/128GB-class SSD. She hasn't complained or indicated any warnings about running out of space either.

Yeah, I've bought a few larger SSDs, and thought about trying to talk him into upgrading to a larger one, along with an upgrade to Windows 10, but thus far, he hasn't been interested in the least.

 

[killster1]

This is flat-out wrong on every count.

I've used many 128GB SSDs in my computer builds and in terms of general usability they perform just as well as well as bigger drives. Sure, they don't benchmark as well, but this topic is about browsing. There's not a single benchmark you'll find that shows a decent 128GB SSD being outperformed for anything relevant to browsing and for good reason: Browsing benefits from fast read/write disk access, but aside from that it's not remotely demanding. As soon as you have data access times in the realm of SSDs and not HDDs, that's where the noticeable difference is.

128GB SSDs are perfectly big enough for browsing even on Windows 10. I'm happy to sell 128GB SSDs to customers with up to 40GB of data, and I've only had to upgrade one 128GB SSD to date for capacity reasons. There's literally no reason why browsing should inherently use up lots of capacity. 2GB gets you a browser cache and a browser. Most of the 128GB SSDs I have in the field have approximately 50% capacity free.

LULZ, So because you and your customers dont do anything but browse the internet on budget pc's i should suffer with a bad brand, small slow ssd?


we all have personal preferences, mine is to never use more than 70% of a ssd capacity, and buy the best reliability with best performance/price point. Even 256gb ssd are to small for my liking (AND STILL SLOWER THAN 512gb). 2 games and your already at 99% capacity.

you think i ONLY use my computers for BROWSING?

120gb is a terrible size, reliability will suffer if you use 100% of your ssd capacity, the speed is slower than bigger drives. You can pretend your 120gb is great but the only reason is that you are trying to make a extra $ or save one. Sure if its your grandma's pc she can use the 120gb but even a 10 year old is going to want more space.

So this thread is about using your phone for primary internet browsing so anyone with 120gb or smaller ssd would be perfect candidate for using their phone instead of a crappy pc anyway

 

[killster1]

Internet Essentials by Comcast, is $9.95 / mo, equip. included, no taxes in my state, for 15/2 internet. Which, is livable. You can stream YouTube 1080P with that, and download somewhat acceptably for Windows Updates.

heh no comcast here and not on welfare sorry.

My Samsung Galaxy S9 cost $199 dollars plus tax. The DeX Pad cost $38.70. Internet service for the phone costs $20 even per month for 70Mbps unlimited (reduced priority after 50GB). This is your budget. $237 dollars for a desktop computer (box only) and $20 a month for internet service. We will assume we both already have a keyboard/mouse/monitor/speakers/headphones/cables/etc.

Even if we allow the original $300 for the desktop how are you going to compete with $20 per month for internet service? All of a sudden when you look at the cost per month the desktop becomes very much more expensive unless you are getting a deal from your ISP better than any I've ever heard about.

well, 199 galaxy s9 sounds to far for me to reach, there must have been something else you had to do to get it. The internet 70mbps for 20 a month? unheard of . lets hear how you get that too! Have never hooked any phone or seen a "dex" in person but i guess i can recheck them out now.

 

[lakedude]

So here is the story on the $199 S9 for $20 a month. In the beginning we had a land based service (like most everyone). We depended on this service for everything, home phone, internet and even our cell phones (which got poor reception at the house) needed the wifi to get a signal. We were paying over $100 for 30Mbs and home phone service.

When the wire was cut we had no way of calling to complain so we went looking for a cell phone service that had a good signal at work and at home. We scored 2x Samsung Galaxy S8 phones for $199 each and got on T-Mobile’s senior plan at $70 for 2 lines or $35 each.

The land based service continued to be unreliable and we were forced into using our phones for everything while the land based service was out. The phones worked remarkably well so I got the idea to use them exclusively but our plan was for 2 phones only.

Around Black Friday T-Mobile calls us and tells us that we can add a line for $25/month or $20 if on autopay. About the same time they offer a free S9 with a trade in of an S6 or better. I was going to buy a used S6 from eBay but decided that would be too chancy so instead I bought a brand new Straight Talk Samsung Galaxy S7 from WalMart for $199. 5 minutes later I swapped the S7 for an S9 at T-Mobile. So yeah I got a deal and could have done even better if I wanted to take my chances on a used phone.

Full disclosure, I am committed to T-Mobile for 2 years on the S8 phones and 3 years on the S9.

The S9 sits in a Dex dock and directly powers the TV at full 4G LTE speeds. It also runs the kid’s laptop at 3G speeds, as well as the home phone with a Bluetooth “Link-2-Cell” feature. The S9 also hotspots our Amazon Echo. The Echo functions as a "keep alive" for the hotspot feature. The hotspot feature will automatically turn off if there are no active connections.

We could have managed all this with the 2 original S8 phones (which come and go with us) but it is nice to have the one phone that just sits and stays connected all the time.

The picture represents the speed of the T-Mobile connection which is twice as fast as our land based service was.

 

[killster1]

lakedude thats interesting! i was actually thinking of trying out a tmobile line to see how fast and good the coverage is now. The best solution just a 4g modem plugged into a nice router. You can still use the phone with wifi but i guess that would kill your other lanline app?. Biggest issue (besides crazy contracts) is the 50gb limit that is where lanline always wins (to bad i have 1000gb limit then 10$ per 50) Im sure this month i went over 1200gb with the new games and updates alone taking half.

 

[lakedude]

As I understand it 50GB is the point at which you are lowered in priority meaning you will run slow during times of network congestion but you still run at full speed during the less busy times. The plan is billed as unlimited.

 

[lakedude]

As far as I know T-Mobile does not offer an unlimited plan with their hotspots or modems. They may when 5G hits the market.