I have been looking for a phone that I can retire as a portable workstation to get some extra mileage out of it after I’m done wasting its potential by exclusively watching YouTube videos on an $800+ device. The Zenfone 9 16/256 with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is nearly as powerful as my gaming desktop (minus the GPU). I’d have picked it up in a heartbeat if I could go USB C to HDMI through a hub, but it, for some reason doesn’t. The truth is that I don’t think most people would consider it bloat if you added little something something in the code to make that happen.
That being said, I’ll most likely pick up a Zenfone 9 8/128 once my current contract is up. But unless this feature gets added in the future (as I *will* want to make my old phones into portable workstations) this will be a onetime thing. I believe in function over form, and I will eventually need that function.
