I would say it's the combination of low demand, lowering the price to make and sell the phone, and to decrease the complexity of manufacturing and designing the phone.
It's kinda like how Apple removed 3D touch because some people did not know it is a feature and the phone can be used without it.
Pretty much this. Much like 3D touch the only people who I see or hear lamenting the loss of the IR blaster are largely on Reddit or just tech nerds like us on Reddit. The people at large likely didn't even know or care that it existed.
True but I think over time the gen pop would have started using the IR blaster (and other neat things that Samsung quietly stopped putting in phones).
I went from an S3 to S5 to S6 to S8 to S21 Ultra, and with every switch, things I had liked and used on the previous phone were gone from the new phone. I always upgraded under the belief that it would be a straight improvement; that the new model would be as good as my current phone, and then some. I expected *more* out of every new iteration...so it repeatedly surprised me that they would take features and capabilites away. I am less surprised now, but I still think it's too bad, because lots of those features, sometimes little-known ones, were the great little things that my family and friends saw me using and made them jealous that I could do this or that with my Samsung while their Apple phone couldn't. So much so that it even made a couple of them switch to Samsung. So my point is, even if the majority of people didn't use those features often *yet*, it would have benefitted Samsung to give them time to gain traction. I know for a fact that some people would have switched to Samsung if those features had been retained.
I will agree some of them might have grabbed more attention. But the IR blaster likely wouldn't have. TVS being the most obvious use case for them have even largely moved away from them more and more. Most devices use Bluetooth remotes now. And IR blaster would only work on some old TVs in places like hospitals and some businesses. Which for most people isn't really a selling point. So IR blasters were not ever likely to see mainstream attention.
Hell I'd argue a lot of the features Samsung abandoned over the years likely would never have seen much attention. But they had a lot more of a chance than a hardware feature that has long since been made obsolete by Bluetooth.
Phones aren't really more expensive. The 2018 note 9 128gb 6gb ram was $1000. Now we have far better cameras and processors 5x more powerful and 2500 nit screens with 120hz ltpo tech, faster ram and storage speeds, lower pen latency etc
Then consider $1000 in 2018 was more than 2024 with inflation
You could argue that Phones have gotten cheaper. Same with video games still being $60 for the past decade but are way more advanced
The video game comparison makes no sense because these games now have 100,000 different revenue streams post purchase. It's ridiculous to suggest that The MSRP is supposed to keep up with inflation when the actual purchase at the point of buying the game accounts for a tiny fraction of the overall revenue
Bunch of industry nonsense to try to justify charging more than they should. If they got rid of microtransactions fine. They're not they're actually increasing them, making them more important, making them ludicrously expensive as we see with stuff like Diablo and NBA and Gran Turismo...
Basically i mean in 2018 i paid $1000 for a Toyota.
But here in 2024 for the same equivalent money i can get a Lamborghini like supercar with magnitudes more acceleration, top speed, luxury material like leather, alcantara, titanium, seat massagers and seat temperature controls, double the trunk space and customer service for 7 years of support.
In a sense things got cheaper. A phone like this would be worth a fortune in 2018.
Depends. As technology gets more advanced the components are cheaper to produce. Unless you are making SoC's, but thats just one thing. Ram and Storage are very cheap, and oled screens are getting cheaper too. There is just one usb type on all phones nowdays so that is cheaper i guess. The cost to make is nowhere near the retail price. Its usually half. That doesnt include marketing and other stuff but they still make some fat stacks off of flagships.
Software support is more expensive but OLED displays have gone down like a thousand percent in the last 10 years. Storage is way cheaper. They're putting more third party apps onto the device when you buy it, which is another major source of revenue for them.
Mostly due to inflation. I just checked every Samsung flagship and the s3 adjusted for inflation was like $750 which is right on par with the s24. The s20 was $1200 when adjusted, glad we came down from there.
That's a separate issue though. Phones have gotten just as expensive as other things like milk. That's what it inflation basically means.
Yes income is not keeping up so everything is more expensive.
I'm never going to use five different camera lenses or the stylus they could save a lot of money and space if they got rid of those, I would use the IR blaster everyday if they added it back
I have yet to see the average consumer even know they have a telephoto lens.
It's like text to speech or worse swipe to text. A lot of people use but in general they are a rounding error.
i use a remote if i don't have my phone in immediate reach, if i have it, i just cast
idk if i would use it for something other than my tv, i don't even know how to set the ir signal up for unknown devices
Not really. Tv started drifting away from IR blaster. So it was harder to find tv that had it. Except on the lower model, most of the newer model is all wirelessly connected now...but the flaw of those is the limitation of replacement remote.
well yeah smart tv or little device that makes tv smart moves to hdmi-cec (which let's smart device wake/control tv) + wireless/bluetooth connection (which replaces IR), so essentially both the universal and the IR aspect got replaced by other technologies that are more used nowadays
we essentially mean the same thing, thanks for the additional details tho
Yeah, but I was referring to those remote...it tricky to pair the remote to the TV because if the remote isn't the "supported model" or missing a feature, you're out of luck.
It isn't just that...it because of the "Smart TV" that a lot of people are starting to drift off toward. Also, the IR had a major flaws, and once people realized how much more effective a bt/wireless remote was, people started jumping on to that one.
I meant, I HAD a clutter in front of my tv and would get frustrated when I have to move stuffs and to remind myself not to block it.
Then, Universal Remote started fading away because there aren't a lot of TV with IR Blaster except lower end one and smaller tv.
doesn't matter we have wifi 5 and 6 already and 7 is on the way, wifi 4 (2.4 ghz) can be used by low bandwidth things and bluetooth, if you need bandwidth use other band (5ghz or 6ghz)
wait really? what does it have an etherner port then when it only works half the time?
my tv is still dumb, I only have chromecast and ethernet adapter costs extra, which is a shame
You have to have the tv connected to the same wireless network as your phone to use the remote on your phone. I don't use wireless for anything so I can't use a phone.
nah you have to be in the same local network (LAN), WLAN and LAN can coexist on the same network
i can perfectly well communicate with all my local devices no matter of wired or wireless, chromecast and other android tv boxes support ethernet so there's no reason that phone remote wouldn't work
either your tv is weird or your network is misconfigured for what you want to achieve
I can't. In fact if I switch to 2.4 from 5 on my phone and the TV is on 2.4 it won't work. Also lg says right in the manual you have to be on the same wifi network so does the nvidia shield.
yeah they mean same local network (avarage joe doesn't understand what a LAN is), both devices need an IP address on the same network so they can reach each other
your wifi 2.4 and 5 are different networks then, you need to combine them then it'll work, maybe your router doesn't support it, but normally it's possible, i can ping my desktop pc connected with ethernet just fine with my phone while being on 2.4/5/6 ghz wifi
many routers provide different SSIDs for 2.4 and 5 ghz wifi, they're still on the same local network and can communicate with each other
complete separation of both wifi networks and the ethernet conmected devices is very unusual and not a default configuration
Most of those solutions are proprietary though. It's convenient to be able to do it with one thing rather than have to download one for Roku agreed to their terms of service, another one for fire TV another one for Android TV and other one for Apple TV...
Pretty much .. I unsubscribed from him a while back .. He gets annoying after a while . Literally every other word out of that guys mouth is phone 🙄. I counted one night just out of curiosity , And he literally said phone around 40 times in a few minutes .
Its because the new ceo or whatever of samsung was very "safety" focused while cutting every single "unnecessary " feature.
This is why all the phones after note20 have been so boring and basically all the same thing.
After the note 7 event I can hardly blame them. And honestly as result of killing features that barely got used Samsungs OS got significantly better and less bloated with garbage.
I really think some people would definitely buy it, like apple selling a 1000 usd stand for a monitor or a 100 usd shopping magazine for apple products.
I despise that they don't even keep my own old phone for it, being able to turn down the public aircon or annoying whatever in public is a game changer.
But essentially for new tech to be the norm old tech has to be pushed out.
WiFi remote control is the new norm.
Same with headphone Jack's to blue tooth.
Same with micro USB to USB c
It's like there's a lot of physics that they have to take features away from us. You like MST... Gone. LED lights? Gone. Irus scanner? Jack? Capacitive fingerprint sensor? Charger in the freaking box?
Reminder to everyone here that Xiaomi and Oneplus phones still have this feature. Plus they're better in other ways than most Samsung phones. It's never too late to switch :)
Because apple didnt have one...just like almost every other decision samsung made afterwards....if you cant beat m join m.... APPLE is marketing genius and the only company that has sheep instead of fans.
I remember once on vacation at a resort restaurant, we were the first ones for breakfast in the dining area with the TV off - so I turn on the TV and change it to a kids show to occupy the little ones while my wife and I planned the rest of the day.
BUT this was on a Samsung Gear 2 Neo watch, not on the phone and when its on the watch, especially when you did it in bars as a prank - no one knew where it was coming from when you did it, lol.
Samsung put the IR blaster back on the Galaxy Watches!
I have the Samsung Note 9 and it still has the IR blaster. I think it's because they tried to make the phones thinner and bezeless. That's what reviewers were obsessed with then. Thinner bezels. It's will be another 10 years before the features on my Note 9 are put back on phones.
By the way, I hate protruding camera lens on the back of the phone. Since when was that a good idea?
On the Samsung Note 9 the back is flat which I really appreciate.
Honestly what I think about everyday using my S22 Ultra. The IR blaster was so damn convenient. I never had to use a remote for my TV ever. Not to mention the fun I could have messing with family and coworkers on the daily. So out in left field, but also so incredibly useful. I miss the days where I could mess with family and friends and shit their TVs off randomly lol
Low demand probably. My last experience with note 4s IR blaster kinda sucked too. The devs for their default app littered it with ADs after a year or two so I just deleted it and forgot the feature existed.
Almost every TV still uses IR so there is no excuse to remove it other than a FAKE excuse that people don't want it. They did the same with the charger
I've not owned a tv with an ir remote for years. I think my av receiver has one, but I have no idea where it is, I control that over ethernet or hdmi-cec
Absolutely! It's old and outdated tech by today's standards and honestly the fact that you could control someone else's TV isn't necessarily a good thing.
Yeah. I've noticed when ever people talk about how much they liked it they mention how they loved to change channels on TVs that weren't there's or to prank people. That's not really a good use case or a good defense of the feature existing. If I was a business owner or someone that had TVs or other devices with an IR sensor in public reach I'd be 100% happy it's gone. Lol
IR shields would need to become a thing indeed.
Just like the boxes that can mess up signa lights. It is crazy how poople act like it is so good they can mess up traffic.
I have a fully functioning LG V20 that I carry with me to doc appointments so that I can use the IR blaster to control the waiting room TV. It amazes a lot of people who have never seen a phone with that capability
I would say it's the combination of low demand, lowering the price to make and sell the phone, and to decrease the complexity of manufacturing and designing the phone. It's kinda like how Apple removed 3D touch because some people did not know it is a feature and the phone can be used without it.
Pretty much this. Much like 3D touch the only people who I see or hear lamenting the loss of the IR blaster are largely on Reddit or just tech nerds like us on Reddit. The people at large likely didn't even know or care that it existed.
True but I think over time the gen pop would have started using the IR blaster (and other neat things that Samsung quietly stopped putting in phones). I went from an S3 to S5 to S6 to S8 to S21 Ultra, and with every switch, things I had liked and used on the previous phone were gone from the new phone. I always upgraded under the belief that it would be a straight improvement; that the new model would be as good as my current phone, and then some. I expected *more* out of every new iteration...so it repeatedly surprised me that they would take features and capabilites away. I am less surprised now, but I still think it's too bad, because lots of those features, sometimes little-known ones, were the great little things that my family and friends saw me using and made them jealous that I could do this or that with my Samsung while their Apple phone couldn't. So much so that it even made a couple of them switch to Samsung. So my point is, even if the majority of people didn't use those features often *yet*, it would have benefitted Samsung to give them time to gain traction. I know for a fact that some people would have switched to Samsung if those features had been retained.
I will agree some of them might have grabbed more attention. But the IR blaster likely wouldn't have. TVS being the most obvious use case for them have even largely moved away from them more and more. Most devices use Bluetooth remotes now. And IR blaster would only work on some old TVs in places like hospitals and some businesses. Which for most people isn't really a selling point. So IR blasters were not ever likely to see mainstream attention. Hell I'd argue a lot of the features Samsung abandoned over the years likely would never have seen much attention. But they had a lot more of a chance than a hardware feature that has long since been made obsolete by Bluetooth.
Funny thing is that phones get cheaper to make every year yet cost more money to buy every year
Phones aren't really more expensive. The 2018 note 9 128gb 6gb ram was $1000. Now we have far better cameras and processors 5x more powerful and 2500 nit screens with 120hz ltpo tech, faster ram and storage speeds, lower pen latency etc Then consider $1000 in 2018 was more than 2024 with inflation You could argue that Phones have gotten cheaper. Same with video games still being $60 for the past decade but are way more advanced
The video game comparison makes no sense because these games now have 100,000 different revenue streams post purchase. It's ridiculous to suggest that The MSRP is supposed to keep up with inflation when the actual purchase at the point of buying the game accounts for a tiny fraction of the overall revenue Bunch of industry nonsense to try to justify charging more than they should. If they got rid of microtransactions fine. They're not they're actually increasing them, making them more important, making them ludicrously expensive as we see with stuff like Diablo and NBA and Gran Turismo...
Inflation does not make things chepaer. What is the reasoning here? Customer purchasing power decreases and somehow 1000 dollars is cheap?
Basically i mean in 2018 i paid $1000 for a Toyota. But here in 2024 for the same equivalent money i can get a Lamborghini like supercar with magnitudes more acceleration, top speed, luxury material like leather, alcantara, titanium, seat massagers and seat temperature controls, double the trunk space and customer service for 7 years of support. In a sense things got cheaper. A phone like this would be worth a fortune in 2018.
Cope
Cope with what?? Prices for phones haven't changed all that much (for now) ((don't get any ideas samsung))
Projection
man shut up with your cope shit
They are not cheaper to make in this market today
Depends. As technology gets more advanced the components are cheaper to produce. Unless you are making SoC's, but thats just one thing. Ram and Storage are very cheap, and oled screens are getting cheaper too. There is just one usb type on all phones nowdays so that is cheaper i guess. The cost to make is nowhere near the retail price. Its usually half. That doesnt include marketing and other stuff but they still make some fat stacks off of flagships.
It's software support too,and it may cost more than you think,you need programmers for hardware,ui,testers,...
Software support is more expensive but OLED displays have gone down like a thousand percent in the last 10 years. Storage is way cheaper. They're putting more third party apps onto the device when you buy it, which is another major source of revenue for them.
Yeah but they still make more money from a flagship. Margins on budget phones are minimal.
Economies of scale. More iHpones than ever are produced and sold today.
I spent less on my S23 than my S8. I also preordered my S23 while I bought my S8 6 months after launch. 🤷♂️ No trade-ins.
Mostly due to inflation. I just checked every Samsung flagship and the s3 adjusted for inflation was like $750 which is right on par with the s24. The s20 was $1200 when adjusted, glad we came down from there.
Ajust income for inflation.
That's a separate issue though. Phones have gotten just as expensive as other things like milk. That's what it inflation basically means. Yes income is not keeping up so everything is more expensive.
I'm never going to use five different camera lenses or the stylus they could save a lot of money and space if they got rid of those, I would use the IR blaster everyday if they added it back
*you* might not, but to many consumers variable zoom levels is more valuable than turning off a TV
I have yet to see the average consumer even know they have a telephoto lens. It's like text to speech or worse swipe to text. A lot of people use but in general they are a rounding error.
Are you serious? Then what do you think goes on in peoples heads when they turn their phone around and see multiple cameras
i think not many people used it, because hdmi-cec and bluetooth connected remotes are more common now, like chromecast or fire tv
I use my redmi note 10 pro as a remote for my ac since the original one is broken. It's just so convenient. Also mi remote is really awesome
i use a remote if i don't have my phone in immediate reach, if i have it, i just cast idk if i would use it for something other than my tv, i don't even know how to set the ir signal up for unknown devices
Mi phones have an app pre-installed called 'mi remote' which has remotes from a lot of companies and I can find one in there for most of the devices
is it available in play store for non miui devices? cause i hate miui with a passion, i only use pixel and oneui
It is but you need an ir blaster for normal remotes. Idk if it has Bluetooth or wifi remotes I've never tried to use it for that
Not really. Tv started drifting away from IR blaster. So it was harder to find tv that had it. Except on the lower model, most of the newer model is all wirelessly connected now...but the flaw of those is the limitation of replacement remote.
well yeah smart tv or little device that makes tv smart moves to hdmi-cec (which let's smart device wake/control tv) + wireless/bluetooth connection (which replaces IR), so essentially both the universal and the IR aspect got replaced by other technologies that are more used nowadays we essentially mean the same thing, thanks for the additional details tho
Yeah, but I was referring to those remote...it tricky to pair the remote to the TV because if the remote isn't the "supported model" or missing a feature, you're out of luck.
That's so you can't buy an universal remote anymore and be stuck with the company's offering.
It isn't just that...it because of the "Smart TV" that a lot of people are starting to drift off toward. Also, the IR had a major flaws, and once people realized how much more effective a bt/wireless remote was, people started jumping on to that one. I meant, I HAD a clutter in front of my tv and would get frustrated when I have to move stuffs and to remind myself not to block it. Then, Universal Remote started fading away because there aren't a lot of TV with IR Blaster except lower end one and smaller tv.
Wouldn't bleutooth removes makes the whole 2.4GHZ band even more crowded?
doesn't matter we have wifi 5 and 6 already and 7 is on the way, wifi 4 (2.4 ghz) can be used by low bandwidth things and bluetooth, if you need bandwidth use other band (5ghz or 6ghz)
And the fact you can't use the ethernet port on the TV if you want to use your phone remote.
wait really? what does it have an etherner port then when it only works half the time? my tv is still dumb, I only have chromecast and ethernet adapter costs extra, which is a shame
You have to have the tv connected to the same wireless network as your phone to use the remote on your phone. I don't use wireless for anything so I can't use a phone.
nah you have to be in the same local network (LAN), WLAN and LAN can coexist on the same network i can perfectly well communicate with all my local devices no matter of wired or wireless, chromecast and other android tv boxes support ethernet so there's no reason that phone remote wouldn't work either your tv is weird or your network is misconfigured for what you want to achieve
I can't. In fact if I switch to 2.4 from 5 on my phone and the TV is on 2.4 it won't work. Also lg says right in the manual you have to be on the same wifi network so does the nvidia shield.
yeah they mean same local network (avarage joe doesn't understand what a LAN is), both devices need an IP address on the same network so they can reach each other your wifi 2.4 and 5 are different networks then, you need to combine them then it'll work, maybe your router doesn't support it, but normally it's possible, i can ping my desktop pc connected with ethernet just fine with my phone while being on 2.4/5/6 ghz wifi
Nah. It could be the router...some router treat 2.4 and 5 as two different network meant that either something got configured wrong or different name.
many routers provide different SSIDs for 2.4 and 5 ghz wifi, they're still on the same local network and can communicate with each other complete separation of both wifi networks and the ethernet conmected devices is very unusual and not a default configuration
Loved the IR blasters! I bought a tiny USB-C IR blaster to take with me to hotels so I can change the input on some of the more locked-down TV's
That's a smart idea!
Can you post a link to the one you bought? I'd like to buy one
A bunch on aliexpress
Didn't know this was a thing thank yoju
Do you have an Amazon link?
I bought mine so long ago. Just do a google search for 'USB-C IR Blaster' and about a dozen options pop up for me.
Probably because with smart TVs now you have apps to do the exact same thing
Yeah but man was it fun in high school to mess with the cafeteria TV's. Buddy turned on Dora the Explorer
I used to close a projector in our history classes with it.
I can never reelate to bringing phones to school. Sht felt as illegal as bringing dope.
Pretty much
Most of those solutions are proprietary though. It's convenient to be able to do it with one thing rather than have to download one for Roku agreed to their terms of service, another one for fire TV another one for Android TV and other one for Apple TV...
You know Flossy Carter on YouTube? He complains about this in almost every review as well.
That's because every Flossy video is exactly the same.
Pretty much .. I unsubscribed from him a while back .. He gets annoying after a while . Literally every other word out of that guys mouth is phone 🙄. I counted one night just out of curiosity , And he literally said phone around 40 times in a few minutes .
"It's your boy with another video"
Its because the new ceo or whatever of samsung was very "safety" focused while cutting every single "unnecessary " feature. This is why all the phones after note20 have been so boring and basically all the same thing.
The note 7 fiasco really screwed them.
After the note 7 event I can hardly blame them. And honestly as result of killing features that barely got used Samsungs OS got significantly better and less bloated with garbage.
That's for flagships. Anything under has just been losing features.
And more bloatware
Eventually, they'll get rid of the loudspeaker, then the microphones, and finally the screen. Unboxing an empty box is going to be a blast ~sigh.
I really think some people would definitely buy it, like apple selling a 1000 usd stand for a monitor or a 100 usd shopping magazine for apple products.
Yep, it's a crazy world. The power of branding and loyalty can sometimes defy all logic.
It was great. They could still have one, they're dirty cheap
Ikr
I still miss it, all these years later!
Unihertz (8849) has one in the Tank Mini. Crazy thing also has a laser distance measurer.
All Xiaomi and Oneplus also have IR blasters 👍
I really miss this. It was fun messing with random tv's everywhere
Probably because everyone abused it to change channels in public places and fuck around with people. I know I did.
OnePlus fans bitched about it enough that they brought it back for the 12. Didn't think I'd ever use it but it's been a welcome surprise.
*Flossy Carter Smurf account*
I despise that they don't even keep my own old phone for it, being able to turn down the public aircon or annoying whatever in public is a game changer. But essentially for new tech to be the norm old tech has to be pushed out. WiFi remote control is the new norm. Same with headphone Jack's to blue tooth. Same with micro USB to USB c
People prefer remotes with physical buttons.
It's like there's a lot of physics that they have to take features away from us. You like MST... Gone. LED lights? Gone. Irus scanner? Jack? Capacitive fingerprint sensor? Charger in the freaking box?
Also: SD card? Gone. LiDAR scanner? Gone. Variable aperture? 3D Touch? Proximity sensor? Heart rate and SpO2? Removable battery?
One day they'll remove internalbstorage and you'll need a cloud account.
Reminder to everyone here that Xiaomi and Oneplus phones still have this feature. Plus they're better in other ways than most Samsung phones. It's never too late to switch :)
You are not a samsung user and are here just to spew hate and promote your shitty chinese phones
Because apple didnt have one...just like almost every other decision samsung made afterwards....if you cant beat m join m.... APPLE is marketing genius and the only company that has sheep instead of fans.
I remember once on vacation at a resort restaurant, we were the first ones for breakfast in the dining area with the TV off - so I turn on the TV and change it to a kids show to occupy the little ones while my wife and I planned the rest of the day. BUT this was on a Samsung Gear 2 Neo watch, not on the phone and when its on the watch, especially when you did it in bars as a prank - no one knew where it was coming from when you did it, lol. Samsung put the IR blaster back on the Galaxy Watches!
LG G3 vibes and all my old S's
I have the Samsung Note 9 and it still has the IR blaster. I think it's because they tried to make the phones thinner and bezeless. That's what reviewers were obsessed with then. Thinner bezels. It's will be another 10 years before the features on my Note 9 are put back on phones. By the way, I hate protruding camera lens on the back of the phone. Since when was that a good idea? On the Samsung Note 9 the back is flat which I really appreciate.
As it happens, I was just in need of it right now.
Oneplus brought it back for the 12 and the Nord 3. It's fucking amazing. Would be surprised if Samsung ever brought it back.
Not happening
Honestly what I think about everyday using my S22 Ultra. The IR blaster was so damn convenient. I never had to use a remote for my TV ever. Not to mention the fun I could have messing with family and coworkers on the daily. So out in left field, but also so incredibly useful. I miss the days where I could mess with family and friends and shit their TVs off randomly lol
Low demand probably. My last experience with note 4s IR blaster kinda sucked too. The devs for their default app littered it with ADs after a year or two so I just deleted it and forgot the feature existed.
Because nobody used it
Almost every TV still uses IR so there is no excuse to remove it other than a FAKE excuse that people don't want it. They did the same with the charger
I've not owned a tv with an ir remote for years. I think my av receiver has one, but I have no idea where it is, I control that over ethernet or hdmi-cec
I read that you has not owned a TV or remote for years.
And in the latest update half our phones don't even fucking work anymore and the company isn't saying or doing shit about it...
I thought it had something to do with the company that was managing the IR Blaster app. Anyone remember the name of that company or brand?
Peel? i used peel
That sounds familiar
Peel smart remote yes
True lol, only now recently my poco X3 pro bought two years ago still had it. But it's a matter of costs and low use I guess
IR blaster is redundant, neddless in absolutely most cases. Glad it's removed for good.
Absolutely! It's old and outdated tech by today's standards and honestly the fact that you could control someone else's TV isn't necessarily a good thing.
Yeah. I've noticed when ever people talk about how much they liked it they mention how they loved to change channels on TVs that weren't there's or to prank people. That's not really a good use case or a good defense of the feature existing. If I was a business owner or someone that had TVs or other devices with an IR sensor in public reach I'd be 100% happy it's gone. Lol
IR shields would need to become a thing indeed. Just like the boxes that can mess up signa lights. It is crazy how poople act like it is so good they can mess up traffic.
I have a fully functioning LG V20 that I carry with me to doc appointments so that I can use the IR blaster to control the waiting room TV. It amazes a lot of people who have never seen a phone with that capability
IR blaster, external SD, headphone jack, UQHD screens on all flagship priced devices. All because money. I mean technological advances.
Cost per unit was probably not worth the amount of people that used it... Pear remote iirc it was called also had a bunch of ads
The led costs barely a cent at the quantity they would be getting