[HN Gopher] Google Is Forcing Me to Dump a Perfectly Good Phone
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Google Is Forcing Me to Dump a Perfectly Good Phone
Author : ciprian_craciun
Score : 506 points
Date : 2022-01-25 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| formvoltron wrote:
| It's a good point. If you work at Google, just know that I'll be
| doing the same. If Google refuses updates for perfectly good
| hardware, then I'll move to the iPhone.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Not to mention that if you root them or install a custom firmware
| to keep using your device, most banking apps, Netflix and any
| games will simply refuse to run or weirdly crash (e.g. the
| Nintendo Switch companion app - which is a _voicechat_ ffs).
| tombert wrote:
| For all the crap that Apple gets, I gave a friend my old iPhone
| XS Max purchased in December of 2018 that still gets updates, and
| doesn't seem to have any EOL warnings. Since the hardware doesn't
| appear to be showing any wear, I think there's a reasonable
| chance my friend will get two more years out of this phone.
|
| I think 5-6 years is a fairly reasonable amount of time for
| nearly any computer, let alone something that lives in my pocket.
| ballenf wrote:
| Regulation to require jailbreaking any device that reaches EOL or
| support would be welcome.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Google's phones aren't locked - they're already 'jailbroken'
| when they're new. What would that regulation accomplish here?
| causi wrote:
| What else is new? AT&T recently forced me to dump my perfectly
| good OnePlus 6.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| I'm still using my Google Nexus 6P that I purchased five and a
| half years ago. Yes, it hasn't been updated for years but I
| almost never download new apps to it and I haven't been
| compromised so far (as far as I am aware).
| Sunspark wrote:
| If security updates were truly that critical, Google would push a
| play services update that would immediately kill all Google
| service connectivity to underscore that a no-longer-supported
| device is forbidden to use and force everyone in poorer countries
| to go forth and purchase a new one.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Is the Pixel 3 outside the standard window for EOL, or is a
| 3-year lifecycle par for the course?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| this is a long article about a weird flex. The device is still
| very much usable for majority daily usage and until hardware
| starts to go shouldn't be tossed out or even feelings of pressure
| to ditch it. Weird. Have had old Nexuses, Moto Gs etc lying
| around in case something goes wrong with current device and
| they're all still very usable even if the OS is a few versions
| back. Any regular apps still work and have their own security
| built in via SSL, passwords, 2FA, whatever, which is enough for
| the average user. Overreacting.
|
| And as mentioned numerous times they've been slowly improving the
| commitment to longer device updates etc! The technology is more
| suited to it/not as fast-moving as previous years.
| sulam wrote:
| Google has actually started extending its security update policy
| for its hardware to 5 years. I don't know what "enough" is, but
| as someone who has to do these updates (ironically, for Fitbit
| devices, yes we are owned by Google now) I will say that
| continuing to ship updates for products you shipped 5 years ago
| is far from trivial. It forces you to develop in ways that are
| not natural for people that work with hardware (the natural thing
| is to branch per product, but good luck managing that if you need
| to land a security fix on the 15 or so products we shipped in the
| last 5 years). This is manageable now that we're owned by Google,
| but prior to the acquisition it was a serious drain on my team.
| And folks on my team would tell you that they don't love it even
| today -- having to support 5-yr old MCUs when you're trying to
| keep your BOM down can be very challenging, especially managing
| available memory.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Thanks for contributing first-hand experience. Your story
| highlights how dysfunctional historical hardware dev practices
| are for the connected age. Forking for each product absolutely
| does not scale in an era of continual updates, and
| manufacturers that don't figure this out are not gonna make it.
| People don't forget having to discard working hardware because
| of some stupid software EOL.
|
| The memory limits of old devices is a real problem, and I don't
| know the solution besides doing the hard work to fight the the
| bloat, and produce a modular solution. Apple pretends to
| support the Apple Watch 3, but you can not upgrade the os
| without a hard-reset every time because the local flash can't
| hold the update and user config at the same time. But I can't
| help wonder if they _really_ need multiple GB for the core OS
| in a watch.
| sulam wrote:
| Heh. Not going to comment on Apple Watch for obvious reasons,
| but I will say that we measure free memory in 10s or 100s of
| bytes on most of our older products. Even a single GB would
| be amazing, but also amazingly expensive.
| michael1999 wrote:
| The lower end might be considered semi-disposable, like
| anything with a non-replaceable battery. I was thinking of
| things large enough for a full CPU.
|
| The tooling and modular design to support back to an
| original Fitbit Tracker might be beyond our current skills.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Not your responsibility I know but given that Google can't seem
| to be able to notify everyone who is impacted by their GSuite
| changes I do worry about the path they seem to be going down.
| To me it seems that very simple things are falling by the
| wayside more and more these days which doesn't bode well for
| the future.
| bradfa wrote:
| Google has generally supported Chromebooks for about 6 years
| and just recently seem to have started extending that duration
| to about 8 years. Some recent Chromebook launches have support
| through 2029.
|
| https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en
|
| If Google can do this for Chromebooks, most of which aren't
| even designed by Google (although usually based off reference
| designs), clearly they can also do this for the actual phones
| they make and sell under the Pixel brand. And Chromebooks span
| quite a wide variety of hardware capabilities, from school-
| targeted low cost models with eMMC and <4GB RAM all the way up
| to devices with NVMe and gobs of RAM on cutting edge CPUs from
| a variety of manufacturers, both ARM and x86.
| BakeInBeens wrote:
| Chrome OS is proprietary (Chromium OS is not) and it also
| cannot be modified by any manufacturer. Every chromebook
| manufactured also is developed with Google being aware so
| that the chipset and underlying hardware can be supported.
| It's quite a different licensing model than Android and
| that's most likely why giving eight years of updates was much
| easier.
| bradfa wrote:
| Sure, but Google has all the source code and all the design
| files for their Pixel phones. I'm not saying Google needs
| to support ALL Android devices, just Pixel devices. It is
| definitely possible for them to support Pixel phones for
| more than 5 years if they wanted to. It's just an economics
| question of if it's worth it to Google to do so and clearly
| it hasn't been.
|
| Even 5 year support for Pixel phones is new with the Pixel
| 6 line. Previously it had been 3 years max.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| But they really don't have all the sources. Up until
| Pixel 6, they've all used Qualcomm chipsets.
|
| Qualcomm is such a ridiculously horrible company to deal
| with. They're in the business of selling new SoC designs
| every 6 months and trying to support a device for more
| than a few years is considered a massive opportunity cost
| for them.
|
| It's the same concept as Apple mulching old MacBooks so
| they don't enter the used market except killing them by
| lack of software support instead.
|
| They have an absolute stranglehold over the SoC market in
| the US. Samsung made a stupid deal back in the 90's to
| license CDMA patents in exchange for not selling SoCs
| (eventually Exynos) in the US or to any other
| manufacturer for that matter. At the time it probably
| made sense because Qualcomm agreed to use Samsung to
| manufacture their chips, but the deal is so hilarious
| lopsided these days. 30 years on and Qualcomm still won't
| renegotiate. It might've drawn regulatory ire if Samsung
| wasn't a foreign company.
| phh wrote:
| > It forces you to develop in ways that are not natural for
| people that work with hardware
|
| My employer still upgrades 10yrs old TV boxes just fine.
| (Rocking Linux 5.4 LTS, launched on 2.6)
|
| It is not natural for companies whose business model is selling
| hardware. Or course their business incentive is not to make
| long-term support!
|
| But my employer's business model isn't about selling hardware,
| but a service, hence the incentive to upgrade perfectly working
| hardware.
| deburo wrote:
| That's pretty funny considering the amount of tech consumers
| that hate having subscriptions attached to their hardware.
| There's no happy ending :^)
| sulam wrote:
| Yeah, a pure service model would be lovely in many ways. If I
| ever start a company that makes HW (fat chance) my experience
| at Fitbit means it will certainly be service-based.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Sorry to go off topic, but do you have an insight on what is
| going on with the Versa Light issues?
| sulam wrote:
| Unfortunately not with such a broad statement. Our CS team is
| usually abreast of issues with products that are in market
| and keeps me and others in the loop when there's something we
| need to fix from an engineering side.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Within the last couple of weeks, people have been having
| issues with syncing, time being accurate, and sleep
| tracking. Seems like it is tied to a forced update of some
| sort.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It forces you to develop in ways that are not natural for
| people that work with hardware (the natural thing is to branch
| per product...)
|
| The problem rather seems to be that close-to-hardware
| developers are unwilling to adapt to modern software
| development practices: modularity (i.e. drivers and sane HAL),
| automated (regression) testing and, at least for some cases,
| _even using version control_.
|
| Since the market hasn't managed to achieve that, the government
| needs to step in and mandate stuff like repairability,
| longevity and update support - then there won't be any other
| _choice_ than to drag the industry by its ears into the 21st
| century.
|
| > having to support 5-yr old MCUs when you're trying to keep
| your BOM down can be very challenging, especially managing
| available memory.
|
| And again, the answer is government regulation: when the
| tradeoff between extra cost on the BOM vs ability to update
| shifts towards extra cost for an actual Linux-capable CPU, you
| _won 't have_ that problem any more.
| sulam wrote:
| You seem to saying a lot of things here rather declaratively.
| I will speak to my experience only, but we have used version
| control, drivers, various HALs, and automated testing (plus
| some manual, this is HW after all and some end to end tests
| are simply not worth automating) throughout my time here. So
| those things have not been holding us back.
|
| With respect to government regulation, every dollar on the
| BOM is $2-3 to the customer. Many of our competitors are not
| based in the US. When buying memory you're probably competing
| for supply against large car companies who have longer
| contracts with more committed volume. These are just facts,
| but they affect what the solution space here looks like.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Been there with 30-year support-life (HC11 FTW!).
|
| Do you see any prospects in terms of Fuscia making long-term
| support _perhaps_ a matter of just keeping legacy drivers
| within the available mix?
| phh wrote:
| Google's big argument to say they aren't upgrade pixels, is
| that they can't guarantee security of binary blobs. Fuchsia
| does nothing to help this.
| sulam wrote:
| I don't know much about Fuschia. I'd be surprised, though, if
| updatability wasn't a major concern. Part of why I don't know
| much about it, though, is that AFAIK it's 64-bit only, and
| the MCUs we run are 32-bit affairs.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Okay, so NEST is 64-bit, apparently -- 64-bit IOT. I can
| see 32-bit at Fitbit.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I get that I'm not the target market here, but the headline is
| quite amusing.
|
| I bought a Pixel 3 specifically _because_ it had support in
| Lineage and I could whack microG on it.
|
| I have some >8 year old tablets running Lineage and variants.
|
| I do wish though that Google would just IBM PC the ecosystem
| though. It'd make 1% less money or whatever, so it ain't ever
| happening.
| paxys wrote:
| It's bizarre that a company like Google doesn't realize that
| supporting older devices actually helps them in the long term.
| Apple has the most dedicated customer base in the world who will
| gladly upgrade all their devices every year or two, yet even 6-8
| year old iPhones and iPads regularly get software updates. This
| increases the value of Apple devices across the board and
| sustains a very large resale marketplace. This means more people
| are coming into the Apple ecosystem at the low end and eventually
| working their way up.
|
| If I know that my $900 purchase is going to be worthless in 2-3
| years, why will I even bother?
| YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
| I dropped my iPhone 11 and the screen got destroyed send it out
| for repair and picked up my old iPhone SE from 2016. Updated it
| to iOS 15.2 and it trucked along without problems until the
| replacement was here. Amazing. (I have to admit I got the
| battery changed when they had the free battery exchange program
| running).
| timeon wrote:
| Heh iPhone SE from 2016 is what I still use. Not sure why is
| it considered as something old.
| Otek wrote:
| Screen? Camera? Speed? Battery? I get that it is enough for
| you, and that's great, but let's not try to fool anyone
| that 6yo phone is a little bit old for most users in 2022.
|
| Edit: Apple is dropping support for 2016 SE this year, so
| let's just not recommend it to anyone right now ;)
| asciimov wrote:
| Another 2016 SE user chiming in. Other than a Battery
| Swap, everything still works great. I can get on the
| internet, send texts, make calls, do facetime.
|
| Screen is still in perfect condition, but I'm not hard on
| screens. Camera is fine, sure others are better, but for
| snapshots the camera still works great. Speed is a non
| issue for me, as don't play games on the thing. All the
| apps I use putt around just fine. Battery... I would love
| for it to have been easier to replace.
|
| I did recently replace my partners SE with a 13 mini
| because of the battery. It had been through 4 of them, 3
| apple replacements and 1 I did. I believe that it was a
| hardware issue that was killing the batteries. I'll keep
| using this phone until the current battery dies or I can
| no longer use my banking apps due to lack of updates.
|
| Personally I like the size of the device the most,
| followed the fact apple has kept it up to date for so
| long.
| abruzzi wrote:
| I'm still using a first gen SE as well, specifically
| because every phone available today doesn't have the one
| feature I'm looking for that the SE has--size. I'm
| considering keeping it in service, and just removing
| anything that might be a security risk--like my bank's
| app.
|
| (Yes I know there are tiny Android phones, but pretty
| much all of them are from iffy sources where I'm unlikely
| to get a year of updates, let alone 6 years. Most have
| aweful screens, or other reasons not to buy. I have come
| close to trying them, but always found too many potential
| issues. The closes I came to trying is the Palm phone.)
| mobilio wrote:
| Yet another SE 2016 happy user!
|
| Size is perfect!
|
| SE 2020 is still on box
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| The claim isn't that the phone is competitive on a
| feature or spec level to new phones, but that those happy
| with the old feature set can continue to use them.
|
| Of course the battery is a consumable part and you can't
| expect that to continue functioning well indefinitely.
| slices wrote:
| If the screen, camera, and speed were good enough in
| 2016, what's changed to make them not good enough now?
|
| (rhetorical question)
|
| As for battery, it's a lot cheaper & less wasteful to
| replace the battery than to get a whole new phone.
| falcolas wrote:
| > what's changed to make them not good enough now?
|
| Modern websites' greater processing requirements.
|
| Modern apps' greater CPU, GPU, memory and pixel density
| "needs".
| captainbland wrote:
| We need all that performance to render 4K ads.
| xoa wrote:
| >* If the screen, camera, and speed were good enough in
| 2016*
|
| You say it's a rhetorical question but I'm not clear on
| why or why this sentiment is so persistent. After all,
| the screen, camera, and speed absolutely WEREN'T good
| enough in 2016, any more than regular computers were good
| enough in 1986, 1996, 2006 or 2016. They were simply what
| could be managed at the time with technology at the time.
| The only aspect of electronics that is "done" for typical
| audiences [0] is audio, where we have microphones,
| recording and reproduction that can (easily) exceed the
| biological limits of human hearing. In contrast exceeding
| human visual acuity in capture, storage and reproduction
| remains a work in progress (though it's conceivable we'll
| hit it in the next decade or so which will be a very
| interesting change for our industry). That in turn itself
| drives some demand for computation, storage and
| processing, though more fundamentally it's hard to say if
| there is any real limit on how much computation might be
| put to use. Storage has been on a fast enough upward
| curve that I think it might be said it's approaching the
| point where regular people always have enough merely in
| the course of normal upgrades, but to handle an entire
| lifetime.
|
| So yeah, come back in 2032 maybe.
|
| ----
|
| 0: Scientific applications of course are frequently
| interested in sounds that well exceed human limits,
| though even there we have the tech for it albeit not in
| non-specialized devices.
| vel0city wrote:
| The big difference I see comparing computers from 1986 to
| today is that our demands for computers today are vastly
| different. The way we use computers today might have some
| similarities to 1986 for some, but for the average person
| its massively different.
|
| However, comparing a computer from _2016_ to today, its
| not nearly as far. A desktop at home I use pretty
| consistently is running a Core i5 from _2012_ and
| otherwise works fine. Other than VR gaming there 's
| rarely a task I have that the old computer can't
| otherwise do, other than run Windows 11 I guess.
| Everything I do today on a phone, I did the same on a
| phone in 2016. Messaging, phone calls, email, calendars,
| apps that are largely interacting with web services to
| render images and text on a screen, streaming video, etc.
| All things I do today, all things I did in 2016.
|
| Honestly my phone use cases haven't evolved much since
| 2010, maybe even several years before then. Things maybe
| look a little fancier, the cameras are for sure fancier,
| but the fundamental use of the device _for me_ hasn't
| changed.
| fundad wrote:
| Google's business is selling ads, Apple's business is selling
| hardware.
|
| Too many customers don't know the difference between buying an
| appliance and something to watch ads from Google.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I mean, considering all most people use their phones for is a
| web browser and their collection of social media apps I think
| the ad coverage on both is pretty darn similar.
|
| I switched from an iPhone to Android because I won't carry a
| phone I can't deploy my own software to, and I stopped buying
| Macs, so I can't build for iOS anymore now that the last one
| died.
|
| I don't really see any more or less ads because they're
| served through whatever app or website you're using.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Interesting. One of the two triggers to investigate iOS in
| my household (the other was deprecating Hangouts) was
| noticing that pihole was showing about a third of the DNS
| requests were blocked, and those were overwhelmingly from
| mobile devices.
|
| Moving to iOS dropped that to 3%. This is a few years ago,
| so I'm sure that the adware companies have got harder-to-
| block mechanisms for their surveillance capitalism. But
| certainly at that point, it was a very significant
| difference.
|
| Apple's requirement to be clear about how customer data is
| being used by third parties has only reinforced the value
| of that change for me.
| thastings wrote:
| This is a very important point. Xiaomi is selling premium
| phones with unreal amount of ads (like im their Calculator
| app...), but these phones have amazing support from the
| communities, both from Lineage and upcoming alternatives like
| Ubuntu Touch. So for cost-conscious, privacy-oriented people,
| Xiaomi is a good option. And so are the Pixels, because they
| also recieve similar community support, and unlocking the
| bootloader is a single command.
|
| In the end of the day, every company have their own
| incentives (Google, Xiaomi or Apple), but the users still
| have power over Android, while that is so not the case for
| Apple and iOS.
|
| Edit: fixed typo
| ng12 wrote:
| I recently switched to an iPhone 12 for this reason. It's been
| almost a year and I still hate iOS. It's significantly dumber
| than Android and has some truly baffling UX choices. However, the
| phone is undeniably better than any Android phone I've ever used
| so I can't convince myself to switch back.
| drewg123 wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I used nothing but
| Nexus and Pixel and finally switched to an iPhone 11 Pro from
| my Pixel 2 in 2020 and I have the same opinion.
|
| The phone itself is so much better, but the UX is so bizarre
| and full of what seems like "its this way because its always
| been this way" stuff. Almost every day I go to change a
| setting, and have to choose between the "Settings" app, or the
| app itself. It still irritates me that I can't assign a
| specific sound to an app. So now when I get a generic
| notification sound I have to check my phone to see if its
| urgent (food delivery) or trivial (twitter), because Apple
| forces both of those apps to sound the same.
| dublinben wrote:
| Why do you even have "trivial" notifications like Twitter
| making a sound? You can allow only truly "urgent" apps to
| make sounds, so there's no confusion.
| drewg123 wrote:
| I have a friend who sometimes likes to contact me via
| twitter rather than SMS. Those messages are not urgent, but
| I do want to know about them.
|
| The other annoying issue is multiple urgent apps, but one
| is sending spammy notifications regarding promos. So if
| they all have the same sound, I don't know if that's my
| instacart melting on my porch, or grubhub annoying me with
| a promo. (which I just disabled).
| post-it wrote:
| > So now when I get a generic notification sound I have to
| check my phone to see if its urgent (food delivery) or
| trivial (twitter), because Apple forces both of those apps to
| sound the same.
|
| It's not ideal, but I've disabled sounds + banner and
| lockscreen notifications for almost all of my apps, allowing
| them to only display notifications in the notification
| centre. It lets me check trivial notifications when I want
| instead of being interrupted by them.
| acd wrote:
| One could load Cyanogenmod or a Linux based phone. Old
| electronics is a reason we must by law requiere manufacturers to
| have open devices. A phone should function like a personal
| computer. Open boot loader, standard boot process, standard
| chassi.
| FirstLvR wrote:
| ahem, this is the main reason i ditch android for iphone a few
| years ago... Apple devices keep on running years after they
| supossed to
|
| is design flaw from the industry, top brands should do better
| iqanq wrote:
| This is what happens when you don't buy an iPhone.
| sgt101 wrote:
| The really odd thing is that my daughters 3XL just died - it was
| under guarantee so I returned it and they gave me a new one. It's
| got a years guarantee to go! Can I return it because there are no
| updates?
| beebmam wrote:
| I still use a Pixel 2 as my phone and I had no idea it was EoL.
| I've been using this thing for more a year after it is apparently
| not getting security updates. That's extremely fucked up that
| this isn't communicated to users. Many people I know are using
| androids that are totally out of date. This is a giant security
| concern I now have for our society.
| curiousgal wrote:
| I'm surprised no mentioned what an absolute shitshow Android 12
| is. Getting "stuck" on Android 11 is a blessing. I regret
| updgrading from my Pixel 5 to the 6.
| jdlyga wrote:
| If your device is no longer able to get updates, and there is no
| viable alternative OS that you can run, it is no longer perfectly
| good. Perfectly good for electronics recycling perhaps.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > "We find that three years of security and OS updates still
| provides users with a great experience for their device."
|
| What about the 4th year?
|
| It's ludicrous to throw a perfectly functioning thing to buy a
| new one just because the gazillion dollar company behind it needs
| to make even more money without regard to the environment (oh but
| rest assured the next version will be 5% greener ... yeah right).
|
| My Pixel 4 XL will be EOLed at the end of the year (bought it in
| January 2020) and I'm torn between security and wastefulness.
| all2 wrote:
| There are several aftermarket OSs that work on the Pixel 4.
| LineageOS is one of those. You might consider going that route
| if you want to sustain your hardware.
|
| This makes me wonder if there's a market for "save my phone",
| where you send your cellphone in and have a new OS installed...
| jmnicolas wrote:
| But are they secure though? AFAIK Google doesn't support the
| Pixels longer because Qualcom doesn't offer security updates
| for its chips.
| rglullis wrote:
| In the spirit of recycling, let me repeat the remark I made on
| the thread about the problem of software subscriptions: _this is
| what you get for not supporting FOSS, especially its R &D_.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| If Android is what I get for $800, I'd hate to see what I get
| for free.
| rglullis wrote:
| I am saying exactly that free (as in speech) software is not
| free (as in beer), and the $800 never went to the support of
| a FOSS alternative. If your quip was an attempt at humor, it
| was bad. If it was an attempt at dismissing free/libre
| software, it was even worse.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| Until something fundamental changes about human nature,
| people will continue to find me unfunny, and _gratis_ and
| _libre_ will remain theoretically distinct but practically
| equivalent.
| [deleted]
| ubermonkey wrote:
| My god, I'd heard that Android support over time was not great,
| but 3 years? That's really, really short.
|
| I'm a gadget nut, so for a long time I got a new phone every
| 18-24 months -- and for most of that time, the year over year
| gains on phones were sufficient to justify the upgrade, at least
| for some users.
|
| But we're in a more mature market now. YoY updates on phones are
| pretty incremental. I kept my iPhone 8 for about 3 years before
| handing it off to my wife (who, lest you think me a jerk,
| absolutely DID NOT WANT to spend the money on a new phone for
| her), who then used it for almost 2 more years.
|
| The phone I replaced it with is an 11Pro. I expect to get AT
| LEAST 3 years out of it. (What finally tempted me out of the 8
| was the camera, which I assume is a common story no matter which
| kind of phone you like -- they got a LOT better between 2016 and
| 2019.)
|
| Pixels are high-end Android handsets, right? I would have assumed
| that they'd have similar useful lives; I don't blame Android
| folks for being up in arms, because sunsetting a 3 year old
| handset is just BANANAS.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| A new Moto G Pure is $140. You're gonna be fine.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Am I taking crazy pills? Everyone here is saying "Yeah, but how
| long should we ask them to produce updates? Let's not be
| unreasonable."
|
| People, the mobile hardware ecosystem is fundamentally broken. On
| my desktop PC, I can keep upgrading Windows versions until the
| hardware craps out. I can move to Linux if Windows doesn't run
| well or has some functionality that's not compatible with my
| machine. There's an already existing model, but we don't apply it
| to mobile and we suffer through these locked-down ecosystems
| where Qualcomm and other hardware providers have the final say in
| when your hardware becomes unsupportable.
|
| The answer to the question of "how long should we expect Google
| to provide updates for a device?" is to reject the question and
| say "why can't Google just release the software that I then
| install on my device?"
|
| If the answer to that question is "well, because the devices are
| locked down and a software company can't actually make platform-
| agnostic software in this environment," that's a _problem._
| mindslight wrote:
| The entire mobile ecosystem is an insecure exploitative dumpster
| fire. People are way too willing to trust it, because companies
| spend billions of dollars on advertising to push it. But
| ultimately you should do the least amount of computing possible
| with it, and favor traditional user-representing PC operating
| systems that have been developed over decades.
|
| > _Installing security updates is the one basic thing everyone
| needs to do for their own digital security_
|
| This is only true to the extent that you trust a device. My phone
| is _way_ down on my trust DAG. When I setup services for it to
| access (eg rsync or CalDAV), I basically consider it an attacker.
| It is a herolte that stopped receiving microG /Lineage updates,
| but continues working alright for my purposes. Would it bother me
| if a drive by attacker got ad hoc access to my occasional usage?
| Of course. But they're nowhere near positioned to exploit my
| information as much as the Advanced Persistent Threats that the
| phone shipped with would have!
|
| Furthermore most exploits are going to require interaction, so if
| you aren't browsing websites on the phone then staying patched
| matters even less. Of course you have to avoid giving in to the
| massive temptation of the surveillance industry pushing you to do
| all these things in your phone. They do this precisely _because_
| it is one of the least secure environments and thus they can
| better exploit you - you 're not particularly thinking about
| opsec when you're relaxing on the couch.
|
| But alas the upgrade treadmill still marches on and it looks like
| I will have to upgrade that phone if I keep wanting native voice,
| due to the looming AT&T 4G deprecation. Although I'm tempted to
| just keep on using it with VOIP-over-data because the less money
| going to that fetid ecosystem the better.
| lambic wrote:
| It's not an ideal solution, but when I have to get a new phone
| the old one becomes my tv remote. I'm not too worried about
| security updates on a device that just has netflix and kodi on
| it.
| a-dub wrote:
| even worse, verizon won't unlock the bootloaders on the now
| unsupported phones so you can't even install a third party
| supported rom.
|
| also, i don't care how much fawning comes out of the press... the
| pixel 6 is an enormous impractical behemoth that barely fits in
| half my pockets.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I have had a 2XL, 4XL, and now a 5a... and the 5a looks nice but
| is actually a piece of crap. I can't recall EVER having a phone
| with this many network hiccups.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| Until last month I was still happily running a Google Nexus 6.
| For the past 5 years, I have been getting regular updates for it
| via Lineage OS (running Android 11 now). The only reason I had to
| stop using it is because the cell networks in the US are dropping
| support for its radio hardware.
|
| Still using my Nexus 7 tablet from 2013 (running Android 11 via
| Lineage OS). Huge shout-out to the awesome folks at Lineage who
| are keeping these devices viable for years!
|
| Honestly, when I went to buy a new phone, one of the biggest
| factors I considered was if it was popular enough with the
| custom-ROM crowed to be supported long-term...
| Snuupy wrote:
| One possible solution is to flash a custom ROM.
| lghh wrote:
| That's probably a good option for someone who writes for Vice
| or you and I, but for the average user that's pretty
| unfeasible. I think even with this knowledge, the point of the
| article still stands.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > One possible solution is to flash a custom ROM.
|
| Honestly, that's way too much trouble to actually be a
| solution. Custom ROMs should be a hobbyist thing for people who
| want to spend their time tinkering with their phone, not a way
| to support a not-very-old device.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| That sounds like what someone could say about Linux:
|
| ~ Linux should be a hobbyist thing for people who want to
| spend their time tinkering with their computer, not a way to
| support a not-very-old device. ~
|
| Whether it comes to phones or computers, I disagree
| respectively when it comes to custom ROMs or Linux.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > That sounds like what someone could say about Linux:
|
| So? The problem is both Linux and a Custom ROM take a few
| orders of magnitude more technical skill and effort to
| install and maintain, which is completely unreasonable to
| expect from a typical non-hobbyist retail technology user.
| Such users should be able to click "update" on their
| system, get up-to-date with patches, so they can go on to
| do what really want to do (which probably isn't "maintain
| their technology"). I'm even someone who's capable of doing
| that, but I don't want to because I've got much better and
| more important things do with my time now.
| ecdouvhr wrote:
| Installing Linux is often far easier than installing
| Windows nowadays, and multiple distributions offer long-
| time support. It's an excellent way of getting more life
| out of semi-old systems.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Installing Linux is often far easier than installing
| Windows nowadays, and multiple distributions offer long-
| time support.
|
| Even if that's true, most computer users don't install
| Windows. It comes preinstalled.
|
| > It's an excellent way of getting more life out of semi-
| old systems.
|
| Maybe so, but it's not nearly as good of an option as
| getting continued support for your preinstalled OS.
| TwoNineA wrote:
| > One possible solution is to flash a custom ROM.
|
| Been there, done that, got the tshirt (a nice CyanogenMod one).
| Then I switched to iPhone years ago, and my regret is that I
| should have done that WAY earlier.
|
| I had a: Nexus S, Galaxy S3, Sony XPeria Ultra, Nexus 6, Moto
| S. All those were bought with custom ROM support in mind. My
| experience was love and hate:
|
| - Clean minimal Android is really NICE.
|
| - Not having (insert Facebook bloatware here) on your phone is
| NICE!
|
| - Custom ROMs break often, the moment you move away from a big
| project like CyanogenMOD (later LineageOS), you are pretty much
| depending on one or two people. If those people change phones,
| you are sol. Hell, it happens with big projects as well.
|
| - Some apps don't work unless you install Magisk to bypass
| Google's Safetynet.
|
| - One slight mistake flashing a device and you risk in having a
| nice paperweight.
|
| - Flashing/modding your phone takes a LOT of time.
|
| - Bootloader unlock might void warranties (might not be legal)
| but as an individual I can't fathom to sue a megacorp.
|
| I realized that my time was way more precious than fiddling
| often with a phone, so I just went over to the iOS camp, never
| looked back. My mom is now using my old iPhone 6S Plus with
| latest and greatest version of iOS.
| josephcsible wrote:
| This will get you updates for Android itself, but still not for
| any of the vendor blobs like drivers.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| The author is dumping his Pixel 3 and seems to be very concerned
| about wasting hardware.
|
| If only he knew about CalyxOS:
|
| > If you have a Pixel 3 or newer, you can install CalyxOS on your
| own device.
|
| https://calyxos.org
| danuker wrote:
| Funny how third-parties offer updates for free, where Google
| will not. I guess it's part of how Google makes money.
| petre wrote:
| Plus countless other options which all work for Pixel devices.
| It's why I bought Google hardware, to install a custom ROM.
| [deleted]
| Aissen wrote:
| CalyxOS won't update the multiple binary blobs (drivers,
| firmwares) on your phone, so no that wouldn't change much to
| the article.
| nr2x wrote:
| Knowing about ROM flashing and being able to do it or wanting
| to spend the time on it are very different things.
|
| The author specifically says they want their phone to be a
| reliable appliance. I do not think they have the appetite for
| reflashing the ROM, nor should a consumer be required to do so.
|
| -----
|
| This is from the website, this is not something an average
| person should attempt:
|
| Open a terminal on your host computer, change to the directory
| where you saved device-flasher, and then run:
|
| shasum -a 256 device-flasher.darwin
|
| And ensure the result says 04b4cf9912d853e0f108b42a756fd74db7a1
| 1cc6c951e05820e96d28ce56e543.
| zucked wrote:
| Furthermore - should the user succeed in flashing CalyxOS,
| they will inevitably be faced at one point with something
| about their device that doesn't work quite right. Maybe it's
| tied to Google Play Services (and the g-apps shim that Calyx
| supports) or a banking app that won't pass the security
| checks and thusly, won't open.
|
| I've not run Calyx myself, but those are issues I've
| personally experienced with other ROMs. If the author just
| wants a phone that works, this isn't the best option. I find
| the "is forcing me to.." a bit hyperbolic, but their point
| stands.
| nr2x wrote:
| And you also void the warranty...
| frouge wrote:
| Guys, we're all frequent readers of HN here and it's pretty clear
| Google is not a company that we can trust. Data privacy, product
| stoppage, advertisement collusion, their search engine becoming
| an ad engine, obsolescence, monopoly, we're talking about a
| company that collects huge fines every 6 months. There is nothing
| good in Google World, so please, let's all change the world
| together and stop using the services of inhuman companies.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| Viable, better alternatives need to be built before that is
| possible
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| tablespoon wrote:
| Honestly, Google needs really needs to do better. Samsung has
| raised the bar by supporting its devices with 4 years of patches:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295639/samsung-galaxy-d....
| And frankly, how hard/expensive would it be to support these
| devices for _far_ longer? Google is a massive company, and I see
| little reason why that can 't employ a team of devs backporting
| patches to older phones. Current versions of Windows and Linux
| run happily on decades-old hardware, so a phone should at least
| be able to get patches for known security issues for a decade.
| Dev resources would be far better spent on this than yet another
| hamfisted attempt to build a messenger app that they'll kill in a
| couple years anyway.
| Hokusai wrote:
| The problem is usually complexity and opportunity cost.
|
| Once you have a team that can keep Android patched, someone at
| Google is going to use them to speed up another product or
| create a new one.
|
| Why not add another team more? First, the situation will repeat
| itself, other needs would be prioritized higher. And there is a
| limit on the number of teams an organization can manage without
| non-linear manager cost increase.
|
| Linux runs on old hardware because big corporations own old
| hardware and are willing to pay to not have to replace it.
| Replacing a phone is a cost for the individual owner. And my
| experience with company phones is that they are seen as a
| retention perk. So newer flashier phones are worth the cost, it
| could be different in other industries, thou.
|
| One common solution to these problems is regulation. The
| government forces phone makers to patch the software for X
| years. Now there is a strong incentive to do so if the phone
| makers want to continue operating in that market.
| nouveaux wrote:
| > The problem is usually complexity and opportunity cost.
|
| > Once you have a team that can keep Android patched, someone
| at Google is going to use them to speed up another product or
| create a new one.
|
| Apple is still supporting phones made in 2016. Given Google
| size and profit margin, it is a business choice.
| SilasX wrote:
| A lot of those costs go down with good interface design and
| interoperability.
| robotnikman wrote:
| To be fair, part of it is due to supporting the SoC, and that
| means dealing with Qualcomm. Samsung has the advantage of being
| able to develop their own SoC's and so can support them for far
| longer with updates and such
| phh wrote:
| Samsung definitely makes Qualcomm devices. So that argument
| is bullshit.
| coder543 wrote:
| This excuse doesn't hold much water anymore since the Pixel 6
| is based on Google's own SoC, yet it also only offers 3 years
| of Android version updates.
|
| Why can't Google do like Apple and offer _many_ years of
| version updates? The iPhone 6s is still running the latest
| version of iOS.
| boudin wrote:
| I really hope there would be some regulations enforcing a
| decade of software support, not just for the operating system
| but also to provide drivers for hardware. After that, having to
| continue providing support or provide the source code with a
| permissive license and documentation.
| someguydave wrote:
| I'm pretty free-market oriented but I think this might be the
| right answer. If you sell a network-connected device you
| should be on the hook for at least security updates for 10
| years.
| t-writescode wrote:
| > Samsung has raised the bar by supporting its devices with 4
| years of patches
|
| For all its warts, Apple set the bar and Android as a whole has
| never really reached it. The 6S is still supported right now,
| right? And we're on the 13?
| wiredfool wrote:
| Yep. Though, the 6s was sold for quite a long time, and I
| think it's the guts of the original SE, so we're probably
| still in the 5 years from last sale time frame.
|
| My 6splus is still in the "not a bad phone" range for what I
| need it for today, and I haven't managed to destroy it in 4
| years.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Pixel 6 gets at least 5 years of security updates and 3 years
| of Android updates.
| Bud wrote:
| This is not really an improvement. 3 years of OS updates is
| pathetic and unacceptable.
| trog wrote:
| Based on Android 12, I'd rather zero years of OS updates
| and more years of security updates.
|
| Sick of each Android update requiring relearning where all
| the stuff I've been doing for the last year (or longer) has
| been moved to.
|
| Android 12 made one of my major workflows start failing -
| leaving browser tabs open and coming back to them later.
| Something about how Android 12 works (I'm guess to do with
| how it swaps out background apps) means now most of the
| time when I go back to my browser, it forces a page reload,
| meaning I lose context of whatever I was doing before.
|
| Bunch of other small irritating changes. I guess it doesn't
| matter now that it's out of support - I'm too scared to
| keep using it. Just gives me the shits.
| queuebert wrote:
| Not even one U.S. presidential term.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| To me, security updates are imperative. The first security
| update that I don't receive is when I look for a new phone.
| OS updates are practically window dressing- I can go
| without.
| mynameisash wrote:
| Not that having another big player would _solve_ the problem, but
| I do wish we at least had Microsoft still in the game as a foil
| against Google and Apple.
|
| In lieu of that, it's still on my very long to-do list to figure
| out how to flash my Android phone to finish extricating myself
| from the Google ecosystem. One of these days...
| postalrat wrote:
| How about expecting at least 1 year of service for every $150 in
| the price of the phone.
| [deleted]
| totalZero wrote:
| Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I had a
| Nexus 6P and after that experience I promised myself that I will
| never buy a Google hardware device ever again. The company has
| the wrong mentality regarding its handsets and how to take care
| of the customers who buy them.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I jumped off when the third Nexus 5X replacement Google gave me
| also bootlooped. Total junk and probably the most frustrating
| product experience I've ever had.
|
| The writing's on the wall when it comes to Android SOCs now
| anyway, Apple phones from 4 years ago perform better and still
| get updates. They have their own issues, but they're not
| existential level problems.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| This is sort of what I wonder about the Tensor in the new
| Pixels... but after Pixel 3 I'm not willing to gamble that
| much money on what looks like yet-another of Google's
| attempts to shift blame about why they can't support their
| phones. If Pixel "6a" has Tensor and is priced like a phone
| that will only be supported for 3 years, I'll consider it.
|
| But frankly it's really hard to justify not getting an iPhone
| anymore. I have three kids and they all want iPhones and all
| their social life is on iMessage. Not to mention that all the
| apps I have to use for work are better supported in iPhone
| and have issues on Android but IT doesn't really care. It's
| becoming really difficult to justify not just getting my wife
| and I iPhones in the next cycle and planning to hand them
| down.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Apple makes some really nice devices, but there's a lot of
| people (myself included) that have a strong aversion to
| their "you don't want this, you want this other thing that
| we decided" mentality. Their software commonly does
| something totally different than what you tell it to do,
| because they decided it's better. Because of that, I will
| never own an iphone.
|
| Its frustrating that all the big companies act like "we're
| big, so we'll do what we want, no matter how annoying it is
| to the end user" ... and the small companies really can't
| compete/disrupt the market because they're not big enough.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| I guess I'm at the point where I just don't care to futz
| with the device much anymore and try to limit my use of
| the phone. In the early days you'd load custom ROMs and
| tweak things and that was a lot of fun. Nowadays I just
| want something that is secure and works. Nexus and Pixel
| devices have always been very good at that for me. But
| now that I don't care so much about that it means the
| focus is on device lifetime, security and long-term cost.
| Apple wins those.
|
| But also so many of the people around me use iOS devices
| now that I end up having to learn how to use them anyway.
| Yikes I sound like an Apple shill... but the opposite is
| true. lol
| RHSeeger wrote:
| As a more mundane example...
|
| My wife went into iTunes and moved a bunch of songs onto
| her phone. Then she went out and tried to play those
| songs... and it tried to download them off the cloud
| (using data, which is a limited resource). Apparently,
| copying to the phone didn't _actually_ copy them, just
| put sort of "shortcut" there pointing at it on the cloud.
| That was definitely _not_ what she wanted, but the
| software decided otherwise.
| SilasX wrote:
| Similar pet peeve: how you can have a tab open on iOS
| Safari, even for a static page, leave it for 20 seconds,
| and come back, and then it has to re-download the entire
| page. It somehow won't even cache what you had to local
| storage.
| jeromegv wrote:
| I mean.. that's not a feature. That's a bug (likely due
| to RAM being full). I rarely if ever have this issue, but
| I do remember it happening at some point, but that's
| definitely not a feature that iOS thinks is better.
| SilasX wrote:
| Really? I mean, I've seen it over ten years of usage, and
| it's never been any other way, so that sounds like a
| deliberate decision. At the very least, not using
| internal storage -- when RAM is needed for something else
| -- is a decision.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Mobile device OS's do not swap to storage because the
| typical mobile storage is bottom-of-the-barrel eMMC and
| the wear-and-tear of swapping on the flash would be a
| killer.
| SilasX wrote:
| It would only need to do it in the few occasions when the
| tabs have filled up the available RAM and they're large
| enough to be worth dumping. iPhones use bottom of the
| barrel storage?
| acdha wrote:
| I see that sporadically but it's uncommon enough to be
| noteworthy on an iPhone 11. Do you have an extension
| installed or are switching to a very RAM-hungry
| application? I typically only see that if I switched over
| to do something like edit a video.
| SilasX wrote:
| No, nothing RAM hungry. Only extensions are adblockers.
| And it's an iPhone 8, which, yes, I know, is from the
| Dark Ages where no one could ever expect any amount of
| data to be stored ever, but this has happened with every
| iPhone I've had back to 2012, including ones that were
| bought close to release.
| acdha wrote:
| > Apple makes some really nice devices, but there's a lot
| of people (myself included) that have a strong aversion
| to their "you don't want this, you want this other thing
| that we decided" mentality. Their software commonly does
| something totally different than what you tell it to do,
| because they decided it's better. Because of that, I will
| never own an iphone.
|
| I feel like this gets talked about a lot in the abstract
| but it's rare that I actually run into a limitation in
| normal usage, and when it is I usually agree with the
| decision behind it (e.g. limiting cross-application data
| access for security reasons or moving away from kernel
| extensions). I think the best example is not supporting
| different browser engines but I have very mixed emotions
| there because I'd love to be able to use Firefox but iOS
| is basically the main thing keeping "the web" from
| meaning "what the Chrome team chooses to support".
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I get this, but honestly it's more important for me to
| have a phone that works... I can deal with inexplicable
| software changes, I make some of my own. At one point I
| had the same iPhone for 4 years.
|
| When I tried Android I couldn't get the same device to
| stick around for more than a year. After my 5X bootloop
| fiasco I tried another manufacturer and found out I
| couldn't even upgrade my software to patch a security
| issue because I had to wait on the vendor to add their
| crapware before releasing the update. I waited 6 months
| after Google released their update and then gave up... I
| don't know how Android users deal with the update
| nonsense.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Different experiences for different people.
|
| I had my last Android phone for 5 years, and never had a
| problem until the last month; when it was just too slow
| and would reboot every now and again. It had security
| updates for the first 4 years.
|
| My wife just switched off her iphone to an android
| because there were just too many places where it would
| ... just do it's own thing instead of what she told it to
| (like I noted in another response; placing songs on the
| cloud instead of on her phone like she told it to). It
| didn't "just work" in a lot of cases, for any sane
| definition of that phrase.
| thefuzz wrote:
| > I get this, but honestly it's more important for me to
| have a phone that works
|
| This right here is what sums this topic up for me.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| The update period on iphones is mind boggling good if you
| are coming from Chinese android phones for example. I've
| seen android phones ship a version behind and never get an
| update.
|
| Apple were releasing updates to the 6s in 2021 still.
| That's a 7 year old device. Security updates only pretty
| much - but still its crazy. My wife will not upgrade her
| old phone as a result (I get one every year through work
| and just sell my old one).
| wiredfool wrote:
| I think I got an update to my 6splus last night, it's
| still supported on iOS 15. same with the original SEs,
| the kids have them and still supported.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Apple released another security update for the 2013
| iPhone 5s last September.
| Osiris wrote:
| I fixed the screen on an old iPhone 7 Plus. After
| rebooting it, it updated to iOS 15. As an Android user
| that's always made me jealous.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| I know - it's just crazy and a totally different world.
|
| It also really helps with resale value. I can't believe
| what I was getting for my old iphones.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| From what I remember, the Nexuses 5x had a manufacturing
| error, which caused them to spontaneously desolder some
| components from the board, resulting in the bootloop. This
| was a problem in a lot (maybe even most) phones. Mine was in
| a bootloop too. There was a class action about it too, see if
| you may still be able to claim cash: https://www.theverge.com
| /circuitbreaker/2018/1/31/16957332/l...
| naasking wrote:
| > I jumped off when the third Nexus 5X replacement Google
| gave me also bootlooped
|
| Shame, because my Nexus 5 and Nexus 4 still run great. I
| don't use them as phones, but they're still solid devices I
| use for other projects.
| johnnyb9 wrote:
| My 5X died in my pocket before a year of usage. Just died and
| wouldn't turn on. I called support and they said to ship it
| out, and I would have a new one in about a week. Never mind
| 1) phones shouldn't just randomly die, and 2) a week without
| a phone??? Switched to iPhone and never looked back.
| tzs wrote:
| I've considered a cheap backup phone just in case I ever
| have to have a repair on my phone that will either require
| leaving it at an Apple Store or Best Buy longer than I can
| wait in store or will require sending it away.
|
| There are unlocked 4G phones such as the Nokia 225 for
| under $50 and the Nokia 6300 for under $70.
|
| I could then either use the SIM from my iPhone, or if I
| didn't mind using a temporary number instead of my regular
| number while the iPhone is being repaired Mint Mobile has a
| "try before you buy" kit for $2 that includes a SIM and new
| number that is good for one week of service. It is meant to
| let people test out Mint Mobile before switching to make
| sure coverage and service are satisfactory, but seems like
| it would also work for someone who just wanted temporary
| service.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> 2) a week without a phone???_
|
| Does Apple give you a replacement before sending in your
| existing phone?
|
| Maybe in the US, on Apple's homeland, but I doubt they do
| this in the EU. Would be cool if they did though.
|
| Whenever I upgrade phones, I still keep my previous device
| around so that when I had to send my last gen to the
| service, I can always quickly switch to the previous one
| for a couple of weeks until it's back
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you can just go to an Apple store and be
| taken care of. No physical stores, or real people at deal
| with at Google, is a problem.
| wincy wrote:
| Normally you'd go to an Apple store and there's a good
| chance they'll just give you a new phone.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| You can walk into an Apple store and walk out with a
| replacement.
|
| If you had backups running to your Mac or PC (which can
| happen over WiFi automatically when both the phone and
| mac are on line power), you've got a whole-device backup
| that will have you up and running as fast as it takes the
| backup to restore.
| pjerem wrote:
| If you backup to iCloud, you can even walk out with the
| phone showing a progress bar while it is restoring to the
| exact state you left the older.
| kesslern wrote:
| In situations like this I've usually had the manufacturer
| provide an option to immediately ship a replacement and
| charge the full cost of the replacement if the device
| isn't received within 30 days.
| disposableuname wrote:
| I can't speak to the EU, but living in the non-California
| US, yes. I've gotten next-day replacements accompanied by
| a box for returning the bricked phone. This is
| accompanied by the caveat that if they don't receive the
| bricked phone in something like 30 days, you're on the
| hook for the full purchase price of the replacement they
| sent you.
| jdkjs wrote:
| In the EU too.
| CollinEMac wrote:
| Hey, my 5X did the exact same thing. I couldn't find
| anything on the web about it happening to anyone else. I
| thought it was just me.
|
| The thing died on my desk at work, wouldn't even turn on,
| just a few days before I was going on a long trip so after
| a few hours of looking for fixes and talking to support I
| just went to an Apple store and got an iPhone. Now I at
| least feel comfortable that if I have an issue I can go to
| a physical store and get help in a pinch.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I had the 5 as well that constantly boot loaded. A couple
| years later I really wanted the photos off it that hadn't
| been synced and so I took it apart and found the issue to
| be a design flaw in the power button. I made a custom
| power button replacement and it booted right up. I have
| no idea who's idea it was to have the entire phone's
| functionality dependent on a thin, flimsy piece of
| plastic, but it made me never buy a google product again.
| I had a google pixel 2 at the time and it's the last
| google phone I've had.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Personally, I support ecosystems where the people in power
| _don 't_ apply pressure on social media networks to ban any
| remotely sexually explicit content, or discussion of
| depression and PTSD.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/29/tumblr-ios-tags-ban-apple/
|
| I escaped from such a world as a child. Apple's sanitization
| of the internet is fundamentally unethical.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Let me know when you find such an ecosystem. Google bans it
| too, they only get a pass because you can enable
| sideloading.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Tumblr didn't have to censor its Android app last month.
| BTCOG wrote:
| Well, they also have the wrong mentality on virtually
| everything else that Google does. They've shut down many more
| half-baked projects, far more than their successes. Google at
| least to me was/is solely successful at search, and ads. Even
| those are quickly turning to junk and the bane of the entire
| internet. Google should be busted up, sooner than later. But
| that's just me!
| MisterTea wrote:
| I had one of those defective google Nexus 7 tablets which
| suffered from bad hardware and software rendering the device
| unusable. It died after a year. Well not completely dead, it
| booted but was so slow as to be totally unusable. Google did
| nothing to compensate save for some bullshit discount on a new
| nexus device. Like I'm going to give them more money after
| telling me to go fuck myself.
|
| I also bought a Nexus/Pixel 5 phone or whatever around the same
| time and that too had issues after 2 years. I forget the issues
| but it had to be rebooted frequently, at least once a day due
| to slowdowns. Replaced with an HTC that ran much better for 4
| years until I accidentally killed it.
|
| After those two turds I will NEVER buy google garbage ever
| again.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah, I jumped ship earlier. I had the Nexus One, Nexus S, and
| Galaxy Nexus (which was a horrible phone) and then jumped to an
| iPhone 5. It's hard to find hardware as consistently good as
| the iPhone and after the redesign from 12 onward it's been
| really great (I wish they'd keep the mini around).
|
| I would have thought Google finally bringing the hardware
| design in house with the pixel phones would let them create a
| real competitor, but they seem to be just okay?
|
| Lack of focus maybe? Might just be a case of commoditize your
| complement, in this case the complement for Google is the
| hardware.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| Galaxy Nexus was a great phone at the time for the price. I
| had just gotten the galaxy 2 then realized that sprint had no
| coverage in Portland so I cancelled my contract (didn't have
| to pay because I proved they mislead there coverage area).
| Moved to a GN on T-Mobile and loved it until I replaced it
| with a nexus 5x. GN was a good little phone to learn android
| dev on as well.
| Osiris wrote:
| I've had an Android phone since the TMobile 3G (second ever
| Android phone) and I'm starting to seriously consider an
| iPhone.
|
| I'm not an Apple fan. I don't use any Apple products right
| now. However, it's impossible to deny that Android phones are
| always 2-3 years behind Apple in terms of hardware and
| software.
|
| I also never spend more than $500 on a phone, which has
| iPhones out of reach.
| pjerem wrote:
| You can get a lot of used iPhone for $500. I bought my XS
| maybe 3 years ago for a little less than 500EUR. I'm still
| using it. The battery starts to age but not enough for a
| replacement (it generally finishes the day but I have no
| more extra buffer). Other than that, I can't imagine what
| could make me buy anything else.
|
| I would totally love an iPhone mini because i find the Xs
| too big but i don't feel like it's worth spending money. I
| would also totally buy a non-googled Android (because I
| don't like nowadays Apple mentality) that I could keep
| updated for years but it just doesn't exists.
|
| So here I am, with my Xs, which honestly, feels like, to
| me, an exceptional phone for 2022: beautiful, fast,
| updated, nice picture quality, reliable, and totally cheap.
| It would be a total dream if the App Store wasn't a
| dictature or if side loading was possible.
| kingaillas wrote:
| >I also never spend more than $500 on a phone, which has
| iPhones out of reach.
|
| I migrated to Android back in the IPhone 8 and IPhone 10
| Max Plus++ whatever era. I just couldn't deal with a $1000
| phone.
|
| But now Apple has the IPhone SE which goes for as low as
| $399.
| wand3r wrote:
| I think the iphone SE is under $500. I used an apple iphone
| 8 up until this Christmas. The iphone SE is basically a
| slightly upgraded iphone 8 which i think has 1 more gb of
| ram or something.
|
| I will sometimes just buy a model or 2 back used or
| refurbished since they last for quite a while. You could
| probably get the 11 for under $500 as well.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| iPhone SE is $400 (64GB) and $450 (128GB):
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-se
| schmorptron wrote:
| Ah, same here. I really like the positives the iphone seems
| to have, but can't justify buying a phone that's as
| expensive as they are to myself, and then still be bogged
| down with consciously user-hostile design choices like no
| headphone jacks, sd card slots or app-sideloading. Sucks,
| because everything else about iOS is super cool and well
| thought-out IMO.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Have things changed in the Android space, though?
|
| My impression is Google's are still the most updated. I've had
| a Nexus S, 4, 5 and currently have Pixel 3. I've never really
| had any problems with the Google-managed devices. Motorola and
| Samsung... let's just say I will never, ever buy a phone from
| them ever again. The choice is between Pixel and iPhone. But
| after the Pixel 3 I will not pay for the "premium" class
| Pixels.
| zrm wrote:
| When is a hardware maker going to figure out that selling
| something that works like a PC in terms of third party system
| updates will immediately become the thing that techs buy and
| recommend?
|
| People are willingly paying iPhone prices for Purism and
| Pinephone hardware with low specs and old chips. Does Samsung
| not want this money?
| throw10920 wrote:
| > People are willingly paying iPhone prices for Purism and
| Pinephone hardware with low specs and old chips.
|
| ...for almost certainly tiny numbers of sales in both
| cases, and nowhere near "iPhone prices" for Pinephones.
| Samsung cares about _money_ , and their current strategy is
| far more lucrative than selling very small amounts of
| Librem devices at modest profit margins.
| zrm wrote:
| > nowhere near "iPhone prices" for Pinephones
|
| iPhone SE is $399. PinePhone Pro is $399. Samsung is
| averaging ~$250.
|
| > ...for almost certainly tiny numbers of sales in both
| cases
|
| They're doing preorders and are regularly sold out and
| backordered, despite having high prices and old hardware
| and weird bugs. That is what high demand looks like.
|
| Meanwhile no change to the hardware is required and
| Samsung could carry on selling to everyone they currently
| do, _plus_ all of those people.
|
| This whole comments section is full of people complaining
| about this. If you give them a choice between two
| otherwise fungible phones, one that has open source
| drivers etc. and can therefore run an up to date vanilla
| kernel indefinitely, why wouldn't they all choose that
| one?
| post-it wrote:
| > They're doing preorders and are regularly sold out and
| backordered, despite having high prices and old hardware
| and weird bugs. That is what high demand looks like.
|
| The custom Linux phone I make is _also_ sold out! I 've
| made zero units and there are zero available. That is
| what high demand looks like.
| zrm wrote:
| Is it sarcasm because you can't point to anyone who _isn
| 't_ selling out?
|
| There is clearly more demand than there is supply.
|
| This is the weirdest position to stake out. That nobody
| wants this because everybody who makes one has a line of
| customers around the block and mainstream media outlets
| are writing stories about how much people want this,
| which go to the front page of tech news aggregators
| because of all the people who feel the same way.
|
| What evidence of demand are you looking for? A larger
| production run which is also commercially successful? You
| can't expect that as a precondition for doing one.
| mattl wrote:
| It's probably such a small amount of money that it's just
| not worth bothering with.
| dsr_ wrote:
| It used to be that people talked to their local techies
| before making technology purchases.
|
| Now people look at the ads and the product placement. If
| you want to sell millions of a device, that's how you do
| it.
| zrm wrote:
| People still regularly ask me what kind of phone to get.
|
| I start by excluding the ones with literal malware and
| after that the primary determinant is price, because if
| it's going to be rapidly disposable anyway then there's
| no point in making a large investment.
|
| "Let's force them to buy a new phone more often" is the
| kind of first year on the job MBA move that sounds
| profitable on paper as long as you fail to notice that
| the average Android phone now sells for less than a third
| of the price of the average iPhone. And that's revenue;
| the difference in margins is even bigger.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Not a single one of my friends or family (n=50) has asked
| me for phone recommendations in the past 4 years (and I
| can only recall two recommendation requests _ever_ ).
|
| It's certainly not common enough that you see mentions
| about it on HN or Reddit - and yet, you see mentions of
| adjacent things like requests for tech support. So, it's
| clearly not very common.
| Bud wrote:
| I'd say it's very common. I get requests on a nearly
| weekly basis. From both friends and family. Some have
| asked me several times.
| zrm wrote:
| People vent about getting asked to do free tech support
| because it's time consuming unpaid labor.
|
| The premise of asking for a recommendation is that the
| tech has already done the research (e.g. for themselves)
| and can provide a two word answer off the top of their
| head. There is little reason to complain about this on a
| message board or even bother to remember when it happens.
| But it does.
|
| You even admit to doing it yourself. How many swings of a
| $400 purchase from one vendor to another does it take per
| capita to be enough to care about?
| blihp wrote:
| The thing that changed is that Google started pitching, and
| pricing, the Pixel phones as premium phones. At least with
| the Nexus line they were more modestly priced. So the lack of
| long term updates was still an issue, but more people were
| willing to swallow it given the price differential vs. the
| iPhone.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Exactly. Google played the "pay Apple prices for an Apple
| experience" tactic and already reneged. They're in a tough
| spot because I won't trust them again with anything not
| priced to be replaced in three years. So when you get to
| the question of wanting a device that lasts longer, the
| answer seems to be Apple.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >the answer seems to be Apple
|
| Until Apple bricks your phone with a stealth update
| because you haven't upgraded quickly enough.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-iphones-settlement-
| idU...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I had one of the affected phones and concur that it was
| shitty of them to try and sneak that by people, but
| "throttled the peak CPU boost" is a long way from
| "bricked"
|
| Upside of the settlement was I got a battery replacement
| for $30 (performed same day in store) and coming up on 6
| years since release the original iPhone SE is still
| running the latest version of iOS.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Honestly I think this is the real issue: batteries barely
| last three years and when they start to go things go
| strange and people blame the phone rather than replace
| the battery. I expect somewhere inside Google they grok
| that supporting a phone beyond three years becomes the
| root cause problem being dying batteries.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| >people blame the phone rather than replace the battery.
|
| If their phone doesn't have a replaceable battery then
| blaming the phone is correct.
| Bud wrote:
| No, it's simply not. Not when the battery can actually be
| replaced for $49. The battery _is replaceable_.
| post-it wrote:
| The opportunity cost of having to look up a vendor store,
| go there, and wait an hour+ for them to replace my
| battery may as well be infinite.
| google234123 wrote:
| That's bullshit. I guess overturning cost for repairing a
| car is also infinite by that logic.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Which is about the same thing for an iPhone? Apple stores
| don't magically replace batteries in seconds. On my
| iPhone 6s, I had both a bad battery, and a defective
| display - took 7 hours to get my phone back after
| scheduling an appointment at the Apple Store.
| schmorptron wrote:
| I wonder how much of this could be extended by phones
| just auto-limiting charging to 90% (current phones
| already time charging so when left on overnight it only
| reaches 100% when you wake up) most of the time, since
| that seems to increase battery longevity by a lot.
| dont__panic wrote:
| If you pick and choose your hardware correctly (waiting for
| reviews and news of major defects to come out), you can do
| fairly well -- my SO has the 4a, and it works admirably for
| her. Had a 3a before that and she only upgraded because the
| screen broke and it would cost more than the phone to replace
| it.
|
| But I'm inclined to agree. Just look at the 6 and 6 Pro. They
| rolled out an upgrade, ruined cellular connectivity for a good
| chunk of users, and then all of the engineers peaced out for
| the holidays, with no way to downgrade to a usable release for
| effected users other than wiping their entire phone and
| starting from scratch. For their flagship phones.
|
| With word that the 6a is ditching the headphone jack and rear
| fingerprint sensor, and also inching up in size to gargantuan
| phablet dimensions, it'll be easy to switch away in the future.
| thefuzz wrote:
| I respectfully disagree. I had a 3a until very recently and
| was happy with it.
|
| Then it downloaded the update for Android 12 (I think), and
| got corrupted, and essentially became unstable and unusable -
| things like bluetooth headsets would crash the device.
|
| This was a phone that was working great, until it wasn't. I
| wasn't able to find others with the same issue. Their
| customer service is non-existent. End of the line.
|
| This is what pushed me to get an iPhone recently - at least I
| can walk into an apple store if the thing crashes completely.
| I've bought multiple android devices over the years, and its
| always been underwhelming and disappointing. The only upside
| has been that its been cheap. Now that I can afford one, I
| think an iPhone is the only viable choice (for me).
|
| I know there are people who own Google devices and this has
| never happened with them, but this has been my experience of
| being a life-long android user.
| matwood wrote:
| If there is an Apple store nearby, being able to walk in
| with a broken phone and walk out a half hour later with a
| new/replacement phone is more valuable than people realize.
|
| I was an Android user back in the Nexus days, and had
| something similar happen to my Nexus 7 tablet. It worked
| fine, updated Android, became unusable. I read they finally
| addressed it later, but I had already moved on.
| newprint wrote:
| I'm having exactly the same issues with bluetooth on my
| Pixel. You are not alone. I can't connect to my car or any
| wireless device, it just crashes the phone.
| dont__panic wrote:
| This is a fantastic point, thanks for bringing it up. I
| mentioned in my original post that my S.O. uses a 4a these
| days -- I'm still using an iPhone from 2016, the SE. Which
| is still receiving current iOS updates. Things aren't all
| rosy on the iPhone side of things (some iOS updates,
| particularly iOS 12, iirc, were full of bugs, and battery
| estimation has occasionally fallen apart after system
| updates)... but overall it's nice that I've been able to
| use the same phone for 6 years now. And it only cost me
| $400, so... the same as the 3a.
|
| It's very, very nice that you can go into an Apple store
| for iPhone support. Mailing in your phone to another
| manufacturer to deal with an issue is a miserable
| experience, and Google's uBreakifix relationship is not
| perfect for regular customer service and manufacturer
| defects.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I've still got a pixel 2 and it works swimmingly. Sometimes
| the 4k video stops recording and sometimes there's a bit of
| slow down but it hasn't convince me to change devices just
| yet.
| bartvk wrote:
| Does it still get security updates, or don't you do
| anything sensitive on the phone?
| matt_heimer wrote:
| Also rocking a Pixel 2 (XL) 128GB here, even recently
| swapped the battery and its like new again. Replacing it
| with an equivalent or better phone would cost a good bit
| of money.
|
| What security issues should I be concerned about? It's
| difficult to spend the time going through the CVE
| database to figure this out, I see a lot of privilege
| escalation issues but I don't install apps that I don't
| trust anyway. I still get browser updates. I care less
| about the bugs and more about the attack vectors.
| notyourday wrote:
| > Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I had
| a Nexus 6P and after that experience I promised myself that I
| will never buy a Google hardware device ever again. The company
| has the wrong mentality regarding its handsets and how to take
| care of the customers who buy them.
|
| Regardless, as of 2020 the only non absolute shit Android
| phones are Pixels. Essential, which was another non-shit
| Android, is dead because rather than re-iterating its
| boneheaded founder decided the market was in the TV remote
| control like device.
|
| Samsung's flagship phones _push ads as a part of the operating
| system_. Let that sink in. On a $1,200 phone!
|
| OnePlus can't make its interface not crash. Neither can it
| convince the carriers to whitelist its profiles in the United
| States for 5G and Wifi calling.
| mr_aks wrote:
| I believe Samsung cancelled ads last year. Source:
| https://www.engadget.com/samsung-removes-ads-pay-health-
| weat...
| jjkmk wrote:
| It's hit or miss, I have had a number of Nexus and Pixel
| devices and haven't had any issues.
| [deleted]
| joelthelion wrote:
| Other hardware companies tend to have even worse update
| policies...
| akamaka wrote:
| The last time I bought a Google-branded phone, they cut support
| after only 18 months. I'll never buy a Google hardware product
| ever again.
| duffyjp wrote:
| I bought an LG G7 from Google Fi, and it was exactly 18
| months from the phone's release to when they stopped updating
| it. I didn't buy it on day one either, so I got even less. I
| vowed that was the last e-waste phone I'm buying and moved to
| an iPhone last year.
|
| There are still a lot of things I like better on Android, but
| it's not worth it.
| Accujack wrote:
| My Pixel XL bricked itself one morning due to a software update
| that triggered some kind of hardware bug. Great phone until
| that point, then poof, and it wouldn't even connect with a
| debug connection to my PC to replace the firmware or recover
| itself.
|
| I've put it on a shelf until I can get time/money to recover
| the data from the flash, but lesson learned.
|
| I bought a Samsung.
| jonty wrote:
| Regret to inform you that it almost certainly isn't a bug -
| the flash died. It's unrecoverable.
|
| Large numbers of pixel 3/3xl's have started dying in the last
| year and it looks like it's the flash wearing out on all the
| early adopter/heavy user devices. This happened to me too.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Same here, except it was the Galaxy Nexus that pissed me off so
| much to switch to Apple.
| SakiToki wrote:
| I would agree also as 3a user. The phone has been my favorite for
| a long time and its usage is pretty sweet for the price point.
| But the overall lack of support that google is showing for its
| old devices is saddening and has kinda put the nail in the coffin
| for getting a iphone and rolling with it at such a high price
| point.
| robocat wrote:
| > then you're vulnerable to every security flaw discovered since
| your last patch.
|
| You do continue to get security updates to Chrome and Google Play
| Services for many years. The App Store and other external systems
| may protect you from some other vulnerabilities.
|
| An iPhone gets updates for longer, but the cheapest iPhone costs
| 3x the price of the Nokia phone I have, so only comparing support
| period is nonsense. I buy a cheap phone so they are cheap to
| replace (broken/stolen/lost, often when travelling).
|
| > For millions of years, these metals formed underground
|
| Also geological and biological processes on the surface: some
| ores are formed underground but some are not.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_genesis
| secondcoming wrote:
| I was eventually forced to upgrade my iPad because the YouTube
| app stopped working due to a required update that was unavailable
| for my device. Several others such as banking apps stopped
| working before that.
|
| Before that I had to ditch my otherwise perfectly fine OnePlus
| phone for similar reasons. I went with a Nokia because they
| promised several years of Android updates, so we'll see how that
| pans out.
|
| Quite annoying.
| zibzab wrote:
| At this point the only safe bet is S-series Samsung which are
| part of their enterprise program.
|
| Nokia wad okay-ish for a while but I don't think I would buy
| one today.
| null_object wrote:
| > I was eventually forced to upgrade my iPad because the
| YouTube app stopped working due to a required update that was
| unavailable for my device
|
| Which iPad is this? I'm running YouTube Premium on an iPad Air
| from 2013 - soon 9 years old.
| secondcoming wrote:
| iPad 4 I think (model MD514LL/A)
| foobarian wrote:
| You know, I am so bummed Microsoft gave up on a mobile OS. I
| feel by this time they would've been be a real refreshing
| alternative to the <expletive>show we have right now.
| froggertoaster wrote:
| Perhaps one of the strongest arguments for owning Apple tech is
| that _they support their devices for long after everyone else
| would stop doing so_.
|
| Android has classically been a dumpster fire compared to Apple on
| this front.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Where is the f'ing legislation forcing these companies to provide
| software updates for a number of years? The e-waste this kind of
| abandonment creates is unimaginable. I'm so frustrated that my
| government continues to do jack shit about issues like this that
| really matter and instead tries to ban encryption every six
| months.
| j0ba wrote:
| Honestly I doubt congresspeople worry too much about the price
| of buying a new phone.
| oezi wrote:
| European union is working on legislation that manufacturers
| must declare lifespan of product for consumer to make a
| informed choice. Plus there is talk about 5 to 7 years of
| security updates being required to sell in Europe.
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/06/germany-eu-require-7-ye...
| fundad wrote:
| filibustered
| mips_avatar wrote:
| Say what you will about Microsoft, but Windows support is
| designed to last a long time.
| boznz wrote:
| windows phone?
| yob22 wrote:
| unknown2374 wrote:
| surprised to see no mention of CalyxOS [0], which is still
| pushing security updates to their oldest supported phone, the
| Pixel 2.
|
| [0] https://calyxos.org/
| spoonjim wrote:
| There should be a federal law of a tax for non-user-serviceable
| batteries and a requirement to support devices with security
| updates for 20 years.
| ejj28 wrote:
| 20 years is very extreme. It's not realistic for anyone to
| support 20 year old hardware.
| gkbrk wrote:
| For most devices, supporting a device indefinitely is just a
| matter of letting the user flash their own firmware or
| replace the existing one using an SD card.
|
| Using your devices for a long time is not possible not due to
| the difficulty of the community maintaining the software, but
| because the original company put user-hostile signature
| checks on the firmware.
| spoonjim wrote:
| It's not realistic because tech companies have conditioned us
| into that expectation. My dad has a 40 year old high end
| sound system which works flawlessly. Why can't Google
| maintain some servers and push some fixes for 20 years?
| elif wrote:
| I'm really surprised at the lack of support for recent pixel
| models... especially considering how terrible the pixel 6 release
| has been.
|
| For the first week I couldn't get it to charge because they
| didn't include a power brick and my existing power bricks, my
| PC's USB ports, etc. would charge slower than the battery
| discharged by sitting idle talking to 5G towers. Like literally
| plugged in with screen off it would drain the battery.
|
| Then the second week there were 2 days where my phone calls would
| fail to complete on my end but continue to ring on the other end.
| Really annoyingly frustrating failure mode.
|
| To top it all off, they removed the toggle for turning off the
| cell modem.. You have to open up a menu every time you want to
| change internet types.
|
| I've loved the pixel 2 so much it lasted until now... but google
| seems to be turning into the bloated carrier they tried to
| displace by launching fi.
| sylware wrote:
| webmaven wrote:
| I currently have a Pixel 5a. I got it via the Google Fi
| "Subscribe and Save" option, which works out to a pretty decent
| discount from the retail price on top of paying it in
| installments over 2 years.
|
| I don't know how many of these subscriptions Google is selling,
| but it will be interesting to see what happens in when a bunch of
| Google Fi customers start becoming eligible for their upgrade to
| a new phone subscription around November 2023.
|
| Will customers upgrade immediately to the then presumably extant
| 'Pixel 7a', or wait?
|
| If customers wait for the next (hypothetically, a 'Pixel 8a')
| model to come out, will that actually be offered as an upgrade,
| or will the upgrade offer stick to the older model for a while?
|
| Because of these unknowns, the calculation the customers have to
| make is interesting: On the one hand, the 5a should still have
| almost another year of updates, so _not_ upgrading immediately is
| viable and saves money, and if you wait your upgrade may be to a
| newer phone.
|
| But, if the '7a' remains the upgrade offer for a while even after
| the '8a' comes out, what is gained from maxing out the life of
| the 5a phone at the tail end is lost from shortening the life of
| the '8a' upgrade from the head end.
| rhengles wrote:
| Reading only the title, I thought "I am having this problem
| exactly now!". However, it is not about lack of security updates
| (it's an old Motorola phone). It is a smartphone that belonged to
| my late father who passed away in 2020. He had a google account
| with password and the phone has a pattern to draw in the lock
| screen.
|
| I know Google and the phone manufacturers are concerned with the
| stealing of phones, so they make it as hard as they can to use a
| phone without authorization, even if you try to reset the phone
| and erase all user data. Does anyone know if there is a process
| to remove a google account from a phone even if I have to prove
| to Google that he died of natural causes?
| julienfr112 wrote:
| On thing where google / android / pixel really shine is for
| google workspace integration and work profile. I do BYOD, and I
| ve got a work profile, with segregated apps and content. You have
| no equivalent with iphone.
| billpg wrote:
| My Windows machine is something like 5 years old. Microsoft will
| keep supporting it until 2025 and even by then I will probably
| have switched it to Windows 11.
|
| Smartphones go unsupported after a few years? Why do we put up
| with this?
| nix23 wrote:
| Here you vice crybabys:
|
| https://download.lineageos.org/blueline
| freebreakfast wrote:
| > The planned obsolescence is frustrating enough, and I'm
| certainly annoyed that I have to spend hundreds of dollars on a
| new phone when I really shouldn't have to.
|
| You don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on a new phone.
| That's the problem. We don't need these things. We want these
| things.
| belval wrote:
| That might have been true in 2010, but it certainly isn't
| anymore. I need a QR code on my phone to prove that I am
| vaccinated. My banking, insurance and bills all are on my phone
| because no company will send paper anymore. It's also the
| device I use to take pictures, although I suppose you could
| classify that as a "want" more than a "need".
|
| Bottom line is: I have a Pixel 3 and it works flawlessly. It
| takes better pictures than my friends newer phones and just
| plain does everything I need it to. I bought it in 2019 so
| that's more like 2 years of update as the end consumer. I don't
| care about Android 13, but I want security updates and honestly
| feels like I gave them enough money to pay for it.
| freebreakfast wrote:
| What's wrong with a $50 smartphone?
| yc-kraln wrote:
| Did you miss the part where using an unpatched, always internet
| connected device is a huge liability? That's the point, he
| can't not get a new phone because they're cutting off security
| patches for the one he is using.
| freebreakfast wrote:
| You can purchase <$100 smartphones at any Walmart, Target,
| Kroger, Dollar General, cell phone shop, online, and so on.
| +$100 smartphones are rarely a need. They are mostly a want.
|
| Edit: And least we forget...
|
| https://www.softstech.net/list-of-best-custom-roms-for-
| googl...
| robocat wrote:
| Your $100 smartphone is often insecure when you purchase
| it, and often gets no security updates.
|
| I have bought Nokia for the last few years because they
| were cheap, reliable, had zero crapware, and got updates
| quickly. The Android One program (no vendor crapware) seems
| to be winding down, and I value security more highly now,
| so next phone will be an iPhone. Currently I use an iPad
| for anything where security matters to me (I haven't
| trusted Windows for a decade, and Linux relies on too few
| eyeballs).
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I buy cheap (but not bottom-tier) Android phones. I've been happy
| with Motorola phones. If they stop getting updates after a few
| years, I can replace them without feeling like I'm scrapping a
| phone that I paid a lot of money for.
|
| Pixel phones are way out of my price range.
| newfonewhodis wrote:
| I kept my OG Pixel for 5 years and had the battery replaced twice
| (2.5 years and ~4 years in). It worked fine until the last moment
| when it just died on me (like, absolutely bricked).
|
| I stopped getting software updates after 3 years but the hardware
| continued to be very capable until the very end. The battery was
| expected to degrade after some time, and the phone didn't feel as
| snappy with modern apps, but it was perfectly fine as a phone.
|
| I'm now on a Pixel 5 and expect to go through something similar.
| It is absurd to me that people switch phones every 2-3 years (or
| even annually).
| hughrr wrote:
| This is why I buy iPhones.
|
| My mother has my old 2015 iPhone 6s. It runs latest iOS 15. Got a
| new battery at an apple store in under an hour mid last year.
| Looks like it just came out of the box.
|
| It's over 6 years old now.
| rock_artist wrote:
| The main problem is SoC lock-ins. You can find aftermarket AOSP
| for Android devices.
|
| Sadly it's inferior of the days where you can run a mainline OS
| on 20 year old device (eg. it is possible to run 32bit Windows 10
| on first Intel MacBook from 2006).
|
| Another thing is apps, usually us developers drop "legacy" OSes
| as it's hard to support them (or worse a mobile store enforces
| dropping such support). So someone with old phone can't even use
| it anymore.
|
| There are some "open-source" SoC or more environmental/reusable
| approaches but it's just a drop in the ocean.
| detcader wrote:
| Nothing will change until a large scale/large target hack or
| until ecology activists can successfully get photos of huge piles
| of e-waste in front of people.
|
| Needing to trash your phone every 5 years is still ridiculously
| wasteful. Just stop making so many new phones. Regulate it so
| it's so illegal/expensive that they can't keep doing this. I
| can't even stop using smartphones if I wanted to, because the
| people who came up with 2FA decided to make the Authenticator App
| a mandatory part of modern life, instead of physical security
| keys like they should have.
| prosody wrote:
| If you didn't already know, the standard OTP schemes used in
| many systems have desktop and hardware security token
| implementations. Doesn't help with systems that use non-
| standard schemes unfortunately.
| sdoering wrote:
| Call me an idiot, but for corporate work stuff I am still using
| my 2XL that hasn't received updates in a long time.
|
| As this is company provided hardware I actually just don't care
| to switch to a Samsung (as the company only offers these if I do
| not want to pay additional money - and why would I for a company
| provided phone)
|
| The phone still lasts longer than a day, I can use it to read my
| mails, see appointments, use slack, ms teams and use it as a 2nd
| factor to access corporate stuff.
|
| It just works.
|
| I don't see me throwing it out if I am not forced by It because
| of security reasons (but I actually doubt they care as long as
| they can install corporate spyware on these devices).
|
| Why would I trash the ressources that went into making of this
| thing, as long as it does what it should?
| pavelevst wrote:
| iPhone 6 still get security updates sometimes, just can't be used
| with latest iOS
| johnmarcus wrote:
| I keep my old phones as backup for either myself, or that poor
| soul you come across whom just smashed their screen and do not
| have money for a new one.
|
| Or sometimes I just keep it in my car as a an emergency phone /
| for pandora / for maps. It almost never goes to waste that way.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| I own a pixel 3 in good working condition.....do I really need to
| get a new one?
| kazinator wrote:
| > _I think of phones in much the same way I think of
| refrigerators or stoves._
|
| Is that so?
|
| I've never heard anyone complain about their fridge not receiving
| security updates any more, making it dangerous to use.
|
| (Though the Internet of Idiotic Things wants to change that, of
| course.)
| toss1 wrote:
| Same for Google/Android and Samsung. My perfectly fine working
| and unblemished like-new Galaxy S8 is now off of regular updates,
| and behind a couple versions of the OS.
|
| So, it and I are basically running on borrowed time until a
| vulnerability strikes.
|
| It should definitely be mandatory to provide support any device
| over a certain level of cost and total sales for at least 7
| years. Sure, people hate regulations and mandates, but otherwise
| we're stuck because a herd of sociopathic managers would rather
| pad their bonus pool then do the right thing, which is entirely
| within every company's budget, from Qualcom right through Smasung
| and Google.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| I just bought a new phone because OnePlus just stopped supporting
| my 6T which was released in November 2018, so for all intents and
| purposes 3 years ago as well.
|
| It was (well, is, I'm still using it while I await its
| replacement) a perfectly good phone aside from some wear on the
| USB-C port which I would have had serviced had this not happened.
|
| Frankly, if manufacturers aren't willing to continue to offer
| support for these devices they should just stop making phones.
| g051051 wrote:
| All too common. I've had several devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod
| Touch) killed because Apple stopped providing any sort of
| software support until practically everything I used them for
| bitrotted away. The only old Apple device I have that still works
| fine is my iPod Nano, since it's too dumb to have this problem.
|
| I also have had to replace two otherwise pristine phones as 2G
| (Motorola Razr) and 3G (iPhone 5) services were discontinued, so
| there's that too.
| oxymoran wrote:
| It was always a security risk because google has always been
| spying on you...nobody is forcing you to buy android phones.
| pdpi wrote:
| This is not a helpful attitude.
|
| I have plenty of issues with Google's posture on privacy, but I
| don't expect them to steal credentials for other services,
| drain my bank account, blackmail me based on personal
| information, or any such thing. Conflating the two removes a
| lot of much needed nuance from the discussion.
| 8note wrote:
| I believe that a bad actor within google could do those
| things.
| pdpi wrote:
| "A bad actor within the manufacturer" and "the manufacturer
| itself" are entirely different threats. There's no
| particular reason why Google would be more exposed to that
| sort of bad apple than Apple, or any other provider.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| You say this like there's an alternative. Closed source iOS
| that scans all your messages for CSAM?
|
| Ironically I hated financially supporting Google but felt I had
| no choice but to get a Pixel to use GrapheneOS and have 5 years
| of security updates
| taspeotis wrote:
| iPhone 5S
|
| First released September 20, 2013; 8 years ago
|
| Operating system iOS 12.5.5, released September 23, 2021
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_5S
| farzher wrote:
| ok boomer. maybe ask your kid to install a custom rom for you
| since you can't figure it out
| ccouzens wrote:
| I think about phone updates as layers in a stack.
|
| At the lowest level of the stack we have software written in
| literal ROM. As such, it can't be updated without switching out
| the hardware. For an example of a vulnerability here search for
| "iPhone Checkm8". No doubt there are examples in the Android
| ecosystem too.
|
| Next layer up there are operating system updates. Unfortunately
| these are hard to compare across ecosystems as the scope of what
| an operating system is is poorly defined. Things like the web
| browser, HTLM rendering engine and SMS app are part of the iOS
| operating system. But on Android they're just apps and are
| updated the same as any other app.
|
| At the top of the stack we have app updates.
|
| Knowing what might contain known unpatched vulnerabilities helps
| me determine my risk and behaviours to combat it. For example I
| may not be comfortable running disreputable apps on an unpatched
| operating system. But on the same phone I may not worry about
| visiting websites as the browser is up to date.
|
| Personally I use web apps as much as possible and native apps as
| little as possible, so most of the security issues that affect
| old phones don't concern me.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Everyone always talks about how, with Google's free web services,
| "you get what you pay for" - however, Google's hardware division
| seems to be aspiring to reach that same quality standard as the
| rest of the company:
|
| > In response to an email asking Google why it stopped supporting
| the Pixel 3, a Googles spokesperson said, "We find that three
| years of security and OS updates still provides users with a
| great experience for their device."
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| > So here I am, with another piece of premature junk, made by the
| company that pledges to "maximize the reuse of finite resources"
| and "enable others to do the same."
|
| Some pledges are cheaper than others. Bottom-feeding pledges
| (whether well-intended or malicious) do not detail the steps that
| will be taken to implement them. As such they live in the misty
| realms of wishitude, along with campaign promises, and depend on
| trusting customers to imagine a positive outcome.
| trwhite wrote:
| Unrelated, but I think the latest Android update is ghastly and I
| have no way of changing back to how it looked before. I'm all for
| progressive design but some of the new UI changes (for example
| the clock app which I use every day) make it way less usable for
| me.
| marcodiego wrote:
| No no! If you can't control the software your device runs, you
| can't consider it "perfectly good".
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I think it's time someone ask if Google's vaunted claims about
| being carbon neutral count all of the Android and Chromebook
| hardware that Google forces consumers to discard due to their
| poor support lifecycle. I think they hide the sheer environmental
| waste tsunami behind third party manufacturing.
|
| (tbh, this might be a good area to kill two birds with one
| law/stone: Force companies to account in their environmental
| impact for decisions which drop product support. Dropping updates
| from a hardware model then is weighted by the carbon cost of all
| of them in use. As governments turn the screws on environmental
| regulations, this may also help product support lifecycles and
| more long-lived products.)
| a9h74j wrote:
| First part there I was suggesting two years ago. Very glad to
| see this as almost common sentiment in the thread today.
|
| Still hoping that Fuscia will have some advantages in legacy
| support, but personally not buying any Android phone.
| danuker wrote:
| Funny how LineageOS can afford to support the Pixel 3, while
| Google can not.
|
| https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#google
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| Yeah supposedly, but I wasn't able to buy a used Pixel 3 that
| wasn't boot locked. I tried 4 of them, all were locked by the
| carrier.
|
| Should be illegal imo to stop supporting a phone that's also
| locked. All it does is generate waste.
| boudin wrote:
| I do use Lineage base OSes and I'm really thanksfull to its
| contributors allowing me to extend the life of my devices for
| years, but there is still a tradeoff in term of security, the
| firmware blobs which are closed source cannot be updated so
| those do not receive any security update. Unfortunately,
| there's not much that can be done about that without forcing
| manufacturer to open source those blobs or maintain their
| hardware for longer periods of time.
| dataexporter wrote:
| Its not just Google. All the network providers in America are
| pushing forced consumption down consumer throats by giving a
| deadline for upgrading their phones - beyond which it would stop
| working.
|
| I have two perfectly working (though a little older) phones -
| OnePlus 3 and a Galaxy S6 Edge. From February both these phones
| will not work with my phone carrier. I am aware that these are
| older phones and don't receive security patches etc, however I
| was perfectly fine using them and didn't have any issues with it.
| Too concerned about the consumerist lifestyle that is forced by
| this capitalist economy instead of providing updates/upgrades to
| their user till the phone's full life.
| olliej wrote:
| Wait so the actual _google flagship_ only gets three years of
| support?
| lmilcin wrote:
| I am waiting for delivery of my new iPhone. I am switching from
| Pixel 2 XL which looks brand new and is fully functional and does
| everything I need. There is literally not a single thing that I
| miss in this phone other than newer OS and updates.
|
| I have been delaying this decision for a year, but as a
| professional I can not continue using a phone that is not
| regularly updated. And so I will switch to a platform that will
| allow me to keep the device alive for much longer.
| happytiger wrote:
| Well I used to have nest smoke detectors. My recent call to ask
| why all of my nests have stopped working came with a "oh well,
| your on firmware v1 and we aren't releasing for that device
| anymore." So I have a thousand bucks worth of smoke detectors
| going in the trash. The box said 7 years, but the firmware
| updates ended after 6, so recycling here we go. But the thing HN
| needs to understand is that the way google enforced expiring was
| to make the smoke detectors, one after the other, start chirping
| at high volume, often in the middle of the night, and with no
| warning in the app. So even if a corporation deciding that I have
| to replace all my smoke detectors after 7 years is reasonable,
| understand that the devices are worse than bricked -- they are
| literally beeping to be replaced and there is no way to stop the
| behavior. We ended up with a stack of them on a counter trying to
| figure out what was going on, as one after the other hit their
| manufacturing date and expired in the same way. It was strangely
| dystopian. Like the company has spoken and you peons must
| upgrade.
|
| My favorite call was after I put in the next thermostat and had a
| $1500 bill. Apparently if your kids come home from school and
| it's hot, they crank the AC down but being young they just turn
| the dial all the way. We learned of it after a particularly hot
| period (the kids would apparently always adjust it up again
| before we got home from work). This the system "learned" to make
| it arctic cold at 3:25 every day and stop doing so before 6. A
| well time vacation later, and our utility company was sending us
| quickly to the bill (it was regularly less than 300). Google
| support said, "yea, we hear about problems like that all the
| time," and told us, "my suggestion would be to turn off the
| learning feature of your thermostat and just use it as a regular
| thermostat." Ok. Will do. But wow, to find out it wasn't an
| unusual use case was mind blowing.
|
| I stopped using Google for devices some time back because of
| firmware issues with support on phones. I realized after we have
| a series of iPhones hit 5 years or even six years old that I
| found them, batteries barely holding a charge but still working,
| charging for use above a drawer filled with my old android
| devices which were collecting dust, but were years younger, that
| the value isn't there. Our form of response to the current fast
| fashion electronics industry to to use our devices as long as
| possible. Apple is a better value in that respect, despite their
| outright hostility to independent repair -- which definitely
| dents their reputation in our house -- so we ended up
| standardizing on their technology. Common sense environmentalism
| is making sure you minimize how much you buy.
|
| It's interesting how much the longevity of devices (and privacy
| concerns) are becoming the major criteria for which devices we
| allow into our lives these days. Google has failed us repeatedly
| and lost our trust and we probably won't ever buy another device
| from them. There was a time when I loved and adored them. Their
| growth seems to have lost what made them special in their DNA
| (transforming towns with savior Internet service, connecting the
| Worlds information > explaining yet another ocean of ad fraud,
| sunsetting every product we liked, afore mentioned firmware bugs)
| and we kind of look at them as the company we used to love.
| Honestly makes me sad. It was at one point one of the best hacker
| groups on the planet, insanely innovative, and run like one.
|
| I hope durability and reliability becomes a major tech trend.
| solidrake wrote:
| How long should they provide software updates for? 3-years?
| 5-years? 10-years? What would be an acceptable cut off date for
| providing updates? I wouldn't expect companies to provide updates
| for their old hardware forever, but what would be an acceptable
| date that will benefit both consumers and the company itself.
| [deleted]
| criddell wrote:
| What I want is for them to commit to supporting a device for
| some number of years after it's introduced so I know what to
| expect when I buy one. It should be one of the things
| manufacturers compete on.
| renewiltord wrote:
| https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en#z.
| ..
| WolfRazu wrote:
| Google commited to five years of security updates for the
| Pixel 6. It was one of their big selling points for the
| device.
|
| https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en-G.
| ..
| tempnow987 wrote:
| 5 years minimum - 7 years would be competitive with apple.
|
| The thing is - apple has the history / reputation here. Google
| has promised updates forever with various initiatives, rarely
| delivers.
|
| Apple doesn't actually promise much here that I know of, but
| seems to deliver and deliver.
| BakeInBeens wrote:
| They offer five years of security updates on the Pixel 6 and
| eight years of security updates for any chromebook from 2020.
| Nest and Chromecast devices also all get five plus years of
| updates. The minimum should be this across all android/chrome
| OS manufacturers though.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| If I buy a pixel 6 today, I'll get updates for 2 years.
|
| On apple, iOS 15.2 is available for a phone that is 8 years
| old?
|
| Based on past experience, I expect if I bought an iOS
| device today - I'd have updated for at least 5 years.
|
| Apple was releasing updates for iOS 12 as recently as 2021.
| That's for phone back from 2013 (!).
| BakeInBeens wrote:
| If you buy a Pixel 6 today you get OS updates until
| October 2024 and security updates until October 2026
| which is shown on Google support pages. Similar to if you
| were to buy an iOS device except you'd only have past
| experience to go off because they won't actually promise
| you anything.
| zwieback wrote:
| Right, that's the calculation any consumer good producing
| company has to do. When we buy industrial equipment we pay a
| huge markup for vendor promises that they'll support for 10+
| years. It's painful at the time but we have automated
| manufacturing equipment that's been running 20+ years. When I
| purchase controllers, sensors, motors, etc. it cost me double
| or triple what I could have paid but now I'm happy I did.
|
| But I also know that our products (PCs and printers) can't have
| that same support model, we'd be out of business and we don't
| have a lucrative ad business that could buy us customer loyalty
| via loss leaders. I think 5-8 years is reasonable.
| YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
| It's easy you know from testing when your silicon or other
| parts of the phone are going to degrade beyond the point of it
| being useable. If you sell hardware that is not obsolete for
| your customers but you make it obsolete because of software you
| pulled the trigger to early.
| akamaka wrote:
| Apple now is managing to give 7 years of support for iPhones,
| so that's a good number to aim for.
| nr2x wrote:
| As this article aptly demonstrates every time a phone is bought
| it is an opportunity to leave an ecosystem.
|
| The manufacturer cannot guarantee that that the phone sold to a
| consumer will be replaced with a phone from the same company.
| So it's definitely within the interest of the company to
| support the phones for longer to keep consumers in the
| ecosystem.
|
| Pretty sure that's the whole point of pixel 6.
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| What if vendors released the source code for the hardware
| drivers after the devices fall out of official support? Even if
| nobody at the company has time to support the hardware there is
| always a chance that the community can take over.
|
| This is how Linux maintains driver support for hardware long
| past the point where it doesn't work on modern Windows or
| MacOS. I've noticed several occasions where the support stops
| because the kernel was updated and nobody wants to make the
| effort to port the drivers forward, especially since those
| drivers were delivered as a binary blob.
| jokoon wrote:
| How about improving software standards so it can last longer?
|
| Why must software always need to be updated? Software can be
| stable.
|
| This industry makes throwaway software just so it can keep
| pumping hardware forever.
| flatiron wrote:
| Or improving updates. Why can my Linux distro not care what
| model I whatever I have but every bit of android is
| specifically tailored to that exact phone model
| post-it wrote:
| Forever, until they release the firmware source. It's a "shit
| or get off the pot"-type situation.
| ak217 wrote:
| At least as long as their main competitor, which currently has
| a phone that has been supported for 6.5 and will probably
| remain supported up until 8 years from its release date (iPhone
| 6S).
| sigmar wrote:
| >Unless you routinely destroy your phone within two or three
| years, there's no justification from a sustainability perspective
| to keep using Android phones. Of course, Apple is only good by
| comparison, as it also manufactures devices that are difficult to
| repair with an artificially short shelf life. It just happens to
| have a longer shelf life than Google.
|
| Most of the iPhone users I see are using a phone they purchased
| within the past three years. Does the average iPhone get used for
| longer than the average Pixel?
| mantas wrote:
| My iPhone 6 held up fine for 6 years and was still getting
| security updates last fall.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Yes, because that old iphone is handed down to a kid or sold to
| someone else. The android resale market was trash last I
| looked. I still have family using iPhone 7 pluses but the
| battery is showing wear (but thats pretty cheap to replace).
| null_object wrote:
| > Most of the iPhone users I see...
|
| Instead of making knee-jerk anti-Apple assumptions, you might
| try to check some facts.
|
| edit: apparently the statistics I linked are behind a paywall,
| but the stats from the app I'm working on show me that approx
| 10% of users are on iPhones that are 7 years or older.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/626631/smartphone-market...
| sigmar wrote:
| Just speaking from my own experience and asking if my view is
| not representative. That link just goes to a paywall for me.
| whacim wrote:
| I think iPhones get 6-7 years of support. I believe the new
| Pixel 6's are up to 5 years.
| zibzab wrote:
| Note that that 6-7 year "support" includes updates that will
| make you hate your phone.
| null_object wrote:
| > Note that that 6-7 year "support" includes updates that
| will make you hate your phone
|
| My kid is still using an iPhone 6s and loves it. It works
| perfectly.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Sure, back in the iPhone 4/4S days iOS 7 trashed older
| phones. Unusably bad. Should never have rolled out those UI
| updates if they couldn't perform well on older hardware.
|
| These days? I'm using a 2016 SE with iOS 15. Works great. I
| do not hate my phone. In fact, the small size, fingerprint
| sensor, and headphone jack make it a better buy than any
| modern smartphone. I can live without AI text recognition
| on my photos, which seems to be limited to newer phones.
| The app switcher, settings, browser, and everything else
| are still as snappy as the day I bought this thing. Only
| thing that doesn't run well? Spotify, which apparently
| doesn't bother to test their UI on small hardware
| (constantly clips links and text off the bottom of my
| screen), nor older CPUs (the app takes forever to start up,
| regularly freezes up when searching for songs, and can take
| anywhere from 1 second to 30 seconds to load even already
| downloaded albums).
|
| So uh... good on Apple. Shame on Spotify.
| chomp wrote:
| We can't tell because Apple is a little opaque with the devices
| that are in the wild, and Pixels are such a small slice of the
| entire Android population. What we have are only third party
| accounts of the iPhone population, e.g.
| https://deviceatlas.com/blog/most-popular-iphones
|
| According to that (maybe selection-biased) source, it looks
| like the most popular iPhone is the one released the same year
| the first Pixel was released. We can't conclude anything about
| which is used longer, but Android app updates are required to
| target API level 30 I think for Android, which is no longer
| supported on the first Pixel, so there's probably a pressure
| that urges users off of that phone. I'd be surprised if
| percentage-wise, a larger share of Pixel users are on the
| original Pixel than iPhone users on iPhone 7.
| mp9 wrote:
| karolist wrote:
| Still using Pixel 3XL, perfectly good phone with a processor that
| is faster at multicore than that in Pixel 5. I'm with the author
| here, sad to see this perfectly good phone getting obsoleted
| artificially.
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/android_devices/google-pixel-3...
| donatj wrote:
| My 3a XL has been completely and totally bug-ridden since
| upgrading to Android 12. I have used Android for the last 12+
| years across inumerable phones, and this is the worst Android
| experience I have ever had.
|
| - Sometimes I'll unlock my phone and the stupid new fade in
| effect gets stuck half way and my phone screen will just be dark
| until I sleep/unsleep.
|
| - Sometimes the buttons in my top menu decided to just not
| render, like yesterday when I was under my car trying to activate
| the flashlight. Requires a full restart.
|
| - The Google Assistant crashes _every single time_ I try to use
| it, and I 'm a big fan/user of Google Assistant. I just can't use
| Google Assistant. She goes to reply and it just dies mid reply.
| Every. Single. Time.
|
| - So much more little crap. My phone has become completely
| unreliable.
|
| When I got the OTA upgrade 6-ish months ago I was certain "oh,
| Google will fix these problems in no time." My phone is very
| quickly reaching EOL and I suspect Google is not going to fix any
| of this.
|
| I am, for the first time, contemplating switching to iOS.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| "Forcing" is melodramatic, they dropped support. They aren't
| directly advising you to stop using your device or else.
| alyandon wrote:
| My Pixel 2 will be the last Google phone I own. I really
| shouldn't continue using it but since I take excellent care of my
| electronics it works just as well as the day I bought it so I'm
| reluctant to ditch it until it actually develops problems.
|
| It's going to be far more cost effective for me to move to an
| iPhone and I never thought I'd ever say something like that non-
| ironically.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I use a pixel 2 as well, what sort of iPhone are you thinking?
| I'd like something as small as the pixel 2.
| waterproof wrote:
| I just switched from my pixel 2 to a hand-me-down iPhone 11
| Pro for exactly this reason. Initially I installed LineageOS
| on my Pixel 2 but then you can't relock the bootloader,
| leaving the device completely exposed in the case of a
| physical attack.
|
| I was skeptical of the iOS transition but it was pretty easy
| and I will probably never go back.
| rbrbr wrote:
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's too bad ubuntu's and firefox's UIs for phones died.
|
| Maybe it is time for linux to stop obsessing over PCs and move to
| mobile.
|
| But given how badly they continue to screw up desktop Linux with
| balkanization and failed support of settings and other things...
| well, maybe it's an opportunity to do it right, but I doubt it.
|
| But the need is there. You'd thing there would be a company to do
| this. Maybe now that hardware in phones is somewhat stabilized, a
| competing long term support OS company will appear.
|
| It probably is a lot of grunt work and labor, so it won't scale
| and SV won't fund it.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| LineageOS supports the Google Pixel 3 with LineageOS 18.1 (aka
| Android 11). It's definitely worth giving this a shot and you can
| revert to the standard Google release if you'd like. Word of
| warning on Verizon devices, though. If you bought from Verizon,
| they generally place an OEM lock on it. So, the device is
| "unlocked" in terms of carrier, but locked in terms of OS. Don't
| buy Pixels from Verizon.
|
| How To: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/blueline/install
|
| Download: https://download.lineageos.org/blueline
| waterproof wrote:
| I did this on my Pixel 2, but unless I'm mistaken you have to
| unlock the boot loader to do it, leaving your device completely
| unsecured if someone has physical access to it.
|
| I gave up and got a phone from a manufacturer who provides true
| 6+ year security support. I was surprised to find that iPhone
| was essentially the only option.
| unknown2374 wrote:
| Try out https://calyxos.org/, their support is exclusive to
| Pixels, but without compromising security.
| contravariant wrote:
| In what sense is it completely unsecured? As far as I can
| tell the data partition at least is protected and installing
| another OS should require wiping this partition.
|
| I mean given unfettered physical access someone could
| conceivably install malicious hard/software in it which might
| spy on you in other ways, but it takes some very strict
| security requirements for that to be an issue.
| Liquix wrote:
| grapheneOS (https://grapheneos.org) also still supports the
| Pixel 3, albeit in legacy/sunset phase now
| mfer wrote:
| > In 2021, an estimated of 57.4 Mt of E-waste was generated
| globally [1]
|
| This is an increase over 2019 and before. The way things are
| designed and companies drive for profits on electronic things
| leads to more and more e-waste.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste#E-waste_data_...
| intrasight wrote:
| Two thoughts:
|
| 1. Just get a new phone every two years. Sell or donate the old
| one. It's not being "dumped". Or keep as your backup phone.
|
| 2. As the owner of a 2004 Volvo who will soon be looking for a
| new car, should I be concerned that the same issues will soon
| plague cars? Have they already?
| nsp wrote:
| for 2. Yes to some degree, at least in terms of degraded
| functionality It's happened in the past with built in
| navigation systems where the manufacturer stops releasing
| updated dvds with new maps, and recently with the retiring of
| the 2G/edge cellular network -
| https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43187/how-the-3g-shutdown-in-2...
| [deleted]
| markstos wrote:
| I was a Pixel 3 phone owner and switched to an iPhone after using
| Android since I bought my first smartphone over 10 years ago. The
| author nailed it: Google's lack of ongoing software support for
| their hardware is a problem.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| People love to bash apple for their "expensive" products but I
| see it as I'm paying for support as well. My 3(?) years old
| iPhone XR works like new, receive regular updates and the battery
| still hold fine (never changed it).
|
| Whereas my android phone before that never saw an update besides
| a couple odd security patches after a lot of delay.
|
| I intend to use this iPhone until apple drop support for it.
| Maybe in a year or two I will replace the battery. But so far
| it's the best phone purchase I ever made.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I wrote a thread[0] on Pixel 3 (trying to convince Google to
| extend the support) a few months before it went EoL[3] (Oct '21).
| Here's the important bits:
|
| - 10M+ Pixel 3 devices that were sold worldwide
|
| - 72% of Pixel 3's estimated lifecycle emissions are from its
| manufacturing[1]. Using your phone is _not the source of most of
| the emissions during a phone's lifecycle_.
|
| - It has gotten worse over time, but Google hasn't offered better
| guaranttes. Pixel 5's emissions-over-lifetime are 30% higher than
| that of Pixel 3.
|
| The alleged reason Google can't offer support beyond 3 years is
| because of Google's dependence on Qualcomm for the support[2].
| Apparently Qualcomm asks for a ridiculous amount of money to
| support any chip beyond a measly 2-3 years. Apple gets away with
| it by building their own chips, and Pixel 6 is guaranteed to be
| supported for 5 years as a result.
|
| However, the fact that Google - one of the world's richest
| corporation can't convince or pay Qualcomm to support a perfectly
| functional device in 2022 is astonishing.
|
| [0]: https://twitter.com/captn3m0/status/1427908406086553601
|
| [1]:
| https://storage.googleapis.com/mannequin/sustainability/repo...
|
| [2]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/the-
| fairphone-2-hits...
|
| [3]: https://endoflife.date/pixel
| ashtonkem wrote:
| This is one of the things that keeps me with Apple. They're far
| from perfect in the reliability front, but they will keep
| supporting the software for much longer than I expect my phone
| to last. Looks like the oldest phone they still support is the
| 6s, and typically they support phones for a bit under 7 years
| after launch, and 5 after discontinuation.
|
| Obviously they get slower and fewer features, but that's better
| than "Good luck LOL".
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > However, the fact that Google - one of the world's richest
| corporation can't convince or pay Qualcomm to support a
| perfectly functional device in 2022 is astonishing.
|
| Not really. You need to compensate Qualcomm for a pile of lost
| sales from people not getting new phones.
| jedmeyers wrote:
| > You need to compensate Qualcomm for a pile of lost sales
| from people not getting new phones.
|
| Why would people continue to buy phones with Qualcomm chips?
| The fact that my 4th gen iPad still works and my mom uses it
| to watch youtube and browse internet is one of the top 3
| reasons I would pay a bit extra for Apple devices.
| eugenekolo wrote:
| The pixel 3 doesn't stop working after support for it runs
| out. Same as how that 4th gen iPad hasn't received the last
| 5 major version releases. (It runs iOS 10, we're on 15 now)
| js2 wrote:
| This was due to the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit. The
| 5th gen iPad has an A9, the first to support iOS 11
| (64-bit only).
|
| The last iOS 10 update is 10.3.4, shipped in July 2019, a
| bit more than 6.5 years after the release of the 4th gen
| iPad in Nov 2012.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| [deleted]
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Don't see why we are blaming Google for not bowing to
| Qualcomm rather than Qualcomm's low level of support.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Because Google controls the vast majority of phone
| manufacturing on the planet: They have to approve every
| new hardware model. I think if Google said it was
| dropping support for Qualcomm in new models of phones
| unless an extended support lifecycle was reasonably
| offered, that Qualcomm would respond with "okay, bye".
|
| Google likes to hide behind "the OEMs make those kinds of
| decisions", but it's not reality: The Android MADA still
| gives them complete control of every Android hardware
| platform sold with support for Play Services.
|
| And, considering Google is one of the three most valuable
| companies on the entire planet, sitting on massive piles
| of cash stashed everywhere they can possibly stash it to
| avoid paying taxes.... Google can afford to pay for
| support if it wants to.
|
| If Google wanted to support phones more than three years,
| it would do that. It doesn't want to, and it's time to
| stop pretending otherwise.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Google leveraging its control of android to extract
| better terms from Qualcomm for the Pixel business would
| be a blatant violation anti-trust statutes and they would
| get demolished in court
| Brendinooo wrote:
| What kind of market share does the Pixel business have?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Considering how blatantly Android is already violating
| antitrust statues (the Android MADA mentioned above which
| governs the relationship between Google and OEMs is...
| flagrantly illegal, and has only gotten away with it by
| being kept very secret), I am quite doubtful that the
| government will yet do anything any sooner because Google
| chooses to support users better.
|
| It would not be leveraging for the Pixel business either,
| it would leveraging Android for Android as a whole:
| Presumably Google could drop support for hardware that
| does not provide five years of support from the Android
| codebase. It would then be on Qualcomm to either meet or
| fail to meet that requirement, and set their license
| pricing accordingly.
|
| Having a support lifecycle of at least five years is...
| bare minimum for the industry. Nobody could argue that it
| is an antitrust issue to require it.
| troyvit wrote:
| Yeah exactly. Both google and qualcomm benefit from this
| arrangement. They might "blame" qualcomm but they're not
| going to go out of their way to try to change the
| behavior and therefore make less money on phones.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Google is the one selling you the phone.
| new_stranger wrote:
| The Pixel 3 was a great phone. If https://lineageos.org/ or
| https://calyxos.org/ had been able to come up with an AI
| assisted camera which could match the Google Camera app (The
| lens is trash, Google uses software to make good images) then
| it would have been great.
|
| Benefit of actual quality camera lenses is these open source OS
| can still provide good photos using a stock android camera app.
| floatboth wrote:
| You can get Google Camera on anything:
| https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/
| phh wrote:
| I want to answer that Qualcomm-is-the-issue again.
|
| You're pointing out how ridiculous it is, but let me expand:
|
| So, as an order of magnitude, the price asked by Qualcomm for
| extended support is 1M$. That's 10c/device. The VoLTE license
| costs more than that. The H264 license costs more than that.
|
| Also Pixel makes Android, so surely, Android can't become
| incompatible with older hardware because of Android, or if it
| does, it's Google's own doing!
|
| There is the question of security of binary blobs for which
| Google doesn't have the source code, ok!
|
| Well let's see: - Billions (ok, maybe just hundreds of
| millions) of Mediatek devices have their bootrom "open". Should
| we stop upgrading those, because of physical access issue? -
| Everyone considers 2G utterly broken, allowing downgrading
| attacks, thus Google gives Android 12 the possibility to
| disable 2G. Yet, Google "refuses" devices launched with Android
| 11 Treble HALs, like devices launched with Snapdragon 888, to
| have this "disable 2g" [1] - Pixel 6 stayed 45 days on an
| """obsolete""" security patch
|
| So, maybe we should stop saying that security is the alpha and
| omega, and all or nothing. It is important. Reducing our
| e-waste is more important.
|
| [1] This is a weird thing, related to Treble, Google
| Requirement Freeze, and Vendor System Requirements, I can
| explain in details if anyone is interested
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > So, as an order of magnitude, the price asked by Qualcomm
| for extended support is 1M$.
|
| Do you have a source for that? That does seem pretty low.
| modeless wrote:
| I'm calling BS on this. There is no way you can get years of
| extra support out of Qualcomm for $1m.
|
| As for e-waste, well unlike other major manufacturers every
| Google phone can be unlocked and you can install any OS you
| want. So there is no need to discard the hardware after
| support ends. You just have to bear the support costs
| yourself. Too expensive? Well, you're the one saying it's not
| too expensive, so why not start a company to provide extended
| support for devices like this? Charge $1 per device, that's a
| healthy profit over the $0.10 you claim it costs.
| phh wrote:
| > You just have to bear the support costs yourself. Too
| expensive?
|
| I ported Android 12 on thousands of Android devices. I'm
| already bearing the support cost myself.
|
| Small proof, Android 12 on 17 of devices I bought with my
| money to support that cost, 7 days after Android 12 is
| released
| https://twitter.com/phhusson/status/1447824974396497924
| londons_explore wrote:
| Supporting it for 3 extra years for $1M is only $333k per
| year, which probably only pays for 2 junior developers.
|
| Would you like to be one of two developers whose
| responsibility is looking after all security patches and the
| build and release process for a 100 million line codebase?
|
| Sounds cheap to me.
| alksjdalkj wrote:
| > So, as an order of magnitude, the price asked by Qualcomm
| for extended support is 1M$.
|
| I'll second the request for a source for this, $1M seems
| ridiculously low.
| akjfhasfuhef wrote:
| > $1M seems ridiculously low.
|
| If you see the entire picture, it's the most expensive cost
| any department can ever present.
|
| it is a "revenue-less $1M"! pure Career suicide.
|
| Specially because marketing can't even use it. today only
| false-equality sells. Eco-thinking is so 90s.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I know PLENTY of people who bought a Samsung, Pixel, or
| iPhone because of the software support lifespan being a
| market leading 3/4-3/5 years, 3/5 years, or 7/7 years
| respectively compared to the standard 2/3 year support of
| Android OEMs. The average person now is going north of 4
| years with their phone and rising. It's not about wanting
| to be "eco friendly" it's security, software support, and
| OS features being supported by some corpo instead of some
| teenager making a ROM.
|
| This is a huge part of the reason why Androids depreciate
| so much faster on the used market, if you compare the
| Galaxy S20 to the even older iPhone 11, the iPhone 11
| will likely receive 5 years of OS updates compared to 1
| year for Samsung. Other OEMs like OnePlus or Sony will
| have already had support end. Maybe your average customer
| doesn't really understand why this stuff matters but they
| do understand that an old iPhone seems to work better
| than an old Android that cost the same at release.
|
| Of course this is a great decision because people will be
| forced to buy a new phone more often right? No! People
| using your phone are a captive audience for selling high-
| margin services and accessories. If you don't support the
| phone they'll still use their old phone anyways but will
| be annoyed and likely to switch to the competition next
| purchase cutting off all your profit streams.
| catach wrote:
| > but they do understand that an old iPhone seems to work
| better than an old Android that cost the same at release.
|
| I suspect that the majority of Android-using techies that
| notice this are either on a faster new phone cycle than 3
| years, or have already priced that difference into their
| total value calculation.
|
| I also strongly suspect that the average customer does
| not indeed understand.
| rxhernandez wrote:
| > if you compare the Galaxy S20 to the even older iPhone
| 11, the iPhone 11 will likely receive 5 years of OS
| updates compared to 1 year for Samsung
|
| My galaxy note 10 (purchased 2 years ago) is still
| receiving updates.
|
| In fact Samsung is saying they'll support most phones for
| 4 years while others are supported for 5:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295639/samsung-
| galaxy-d...
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I'm referring to FTA
|
| >Samsung did guarantee support for at least three
| "generations" of Android OS updates in 2020
|
| The 4/5 year support is for security updates. I will
| correct that some samsungs are now receiving 5 years of
| security updates, I didn't realize that.
| chasil wrote:
| There is an easy solution to this problem.
|
| Pass a new "right to repair" law, such that any OEM that
| halts software patches on _any_ network-connected device
| for more than 6 months will be _required_ to unlock
| bootloaders and publish technical specs.
|
| Apple and Android will see enormous and wonderful
| community involvement if that were to happen, and
| congress could force it, should we motivate them.
| buu700 wrote:
| I've had some similar ideas:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247651
|
| _> We need a lemon-like law for consumer electronics._
|
| _I wonder how this should apply to planned obsolescence
| of devices like smartphones._
|
| _On one hand, it 's obscene that manufacturers expect us
| to routinely spend ~$1k on a device that will in the best
| case scenario last for three years. There's no inherent
| reason that a flagship Samsung from 2017 shouldn't be
| perfectly serviceable today, and likewise for a Pixel 6
| or iPhone 13 in 2030. However, the discontinuation of
| security updates makes it so that for all practical
| purposes they are not._
|
| _On the other hand, we can 't exactly compel speech or
| labor. It would be one thing if there were a kill switch
| triggered after N years, but in this case the
| obsolescence isn't caused by an active update, rather a
| lack thereof._
|
| _Here 's a possible middle ground:_
|
| _1. Block device manufacturers from arbitrarily
| deprecating hardware. We can 't compel the release of new
| software, but we can block the release of new software.
| Require manufacturers to submit a filing with request for
| approval before the release of any new mobile OS update,
| which must include an exhaustive list of all supported
| devices. In the event that a device is dropped from the
| list in a subsequent filing, it must be explained to the
| satisfaction of regulators that a specific hardware
| limitation makes continued support for the device
| problematic or impractical. Given approval to drop
| support for a device from an OS release, there would be
| no obligation on the manufacturer to backport security
| updates to prior releases._
|
| _2. Block component manufacturers from arbitrarily
| deprecating hardware. Any hardware included in a publicly
| available consumer electronic device must have its
| manufacturer commit to providing up-to-date driver
| software with support for the latest OS for the lifetime
| of the device. Failure to provide this within a certain
| time frame (say, three months) following the request of a
| device manufacturer would open them up to a lawsuit,
| wherein they could be compelled to publish the most
| recent release of the driver as open source / public
| domain. #1 would provide the incentive for each device
| manufacturer to proactively enforce this, as their entire
| product roadmap would be effectively frozen if they
| allowed component manufacturers to drag their feet._
|
| _3. Ban irreversible bootloader locking in new devices.
| Maybe an initial bootloader lock would be acceptable, but
| power users should have some way to override the lock and
| install a custom ROM without relying on vulnerabilities
| in the software._
| gruez wrote:
| Disagree. For certain vendors you can already get
| unlocked bootloaders and kernel sources. That's how
| various aftermarket android ROMs are built. However, even
| for a project like lineageos, there's only one or two
| maintainers per device. Do you think one or two volunteer
| maintainer (presumably working in their free time), can
| keep the entire kernel up to date and patched?
| pyrale wrote:
| Not a fan to drop maintenance on the community.
|
| Pass a law that taxes Google punitively for each app sale
| on an unmaintained phone, and see how quiclky they'll
| find a way to support their phones.
| spion wrote:
| Which is why the solution is to write these blog posts to
| warn people off of buying any Google phones as they
| become dangerous after 3 years.
| nwiswell wrote:
| By this logic Google should do away with their QA
| department and product support staff.
|
| You spend the $1M because it improves customer value by
| far more than $1M and that works out for everyone in the
| long run. This thread is a testament to what happens when
| you pinch pennies.
| akjfhasfuhef wrote:
| customer value only exist [in current US corporate
| culture] when you can use it to extract actual monetary
| value.
|
| QA exists to keep the sales/avoid returns/refunds. Not
| for pure customer value.
| danaris wrote:
| > So, as an order of magnitude, the price asked by Qualcomm
| for extended support is 1M$.
|
| ....and even if that estimate is _two orders of magnitude too
| small_ , it's still basically pocket change for Google, which
| (based on about 30 seconds of Googling, so if I've misread I
| apologize) has been making tens of _b_ illions of dollars
| _per quarter_ the past few years in _net_ income.
|
| [edit] Figured I'd link the source of my figures for clarity:
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-.
| ..
| drstewart wrote:
| I hate these arguments. It doesn't matter what their
| overall revenue is, it only matters what the cost is
| relative to the product at hand and to the value of the
| thing they're paying for. Nobody is sitting there approving
| expenses relative to their overall revenue.
|
| Would you pay $50 for a stick of gum? Why not? If you make
| hundreds of thousands of dollars, surely it shouldn't phase
| you?
| brnaftr360 wrote:
| You're right, the relative expense to the revenue isn't a
| good argument when you're framing it in the light of
| efficient business practices.
|
| On the other hand if you consider the real intention of
| illuminating Google's cashflow it's pretty damning. Do
| you pay some relative pittance to keep devices supported,
| adding value to customers, reducing waste, increasing
| convenience? 'Cause this is a moral argument, not a
| financial one, and if you're fleecing the public at large
| (in myriad ways) it's more a question of the lord giving
| alms to his subject than it is paying $50 for a piece of
| gum.
|
| Should Lord Google be a beneficent ruler, or a shitpile?
| webmaven wrote:
| If Google starts subsidizing their physical devices from
| their infinite money bin of advertising revenue, they'll
| run afoul of antitrust and anti dumping laws.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Whaaa? Nope, not how that works.
|
| You can't run afoul of antitrust laws without being a
| monopoly. It's why Apple can make it so safari is the
| only browser available on the Iphone whereas microsoft
| lost a bunch of money (particularly in the EU) for
| installing IE by default on everyone's computer.
|
| Android phones are nowhere near antitrust territory,
| specifically from google. Before they'd run any risks
| they'd need to actually outsell someone like samsung or
| apple.
|
| Just because you are rich and potentially a monopoly in
| one market, doesn't mean you are in all markets.
| spion wrote:
| And this way, they risk running afoul false advertising
| and class action lawsuits. Its not mentioned anywhere
| that the phone becomes dangerous to use after 3 years.
| curt15 wrote:
| If Google charges Apple-level prices, surely it's
| reasonable for customers to expect Apple-level support.
| catach wrote:
| If Apple-level support was a decisive factor for Android
| customers either they wouldn't be buying Android phones,
| or Google would have offered it long ago.
|
| It seems reasonable for Google to offer that level of
| support, certainly. But anyone expecting it isn't paying
| attention to Google's record.
| sasavilic wrote:
| For somebody that uses Linux privately and
| professionally, Apple support was one of the major
| reasons I switched from Android to iOS based devices.
| Just until recently I had iPhone 6s (I keep my devices
| until they break or go out of support).
|
| Apple used to look expensive to me, but if I divide
| initial cost per number of year of device exploitation,
| it actually gets cheaper then Android devices.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Google has a _profit_ of ~20 _billion dollars per
| quarter_. That is, it has a _profit_ of ~80 _billion
| dollars per year_.
|
| There's only so much you can do with money. Their yearly
| _profit_ (once again, not revenue, _profit_ ) is larger
| than the entire state budget revenue of more than 150
| countries (not combined) [1].
|
| So yes. The argument is very valid.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_go
| vernmen...
| callmeal wrote:
| >Would you pay $50 for a stick of gum?
|
| There are people who do.
|
| https://wakkinews.com/2018/12/18/worlds-most-expensive-
| chewi... The gums were repackaged and
| auctioned off to fans who would do anything to have
| something already used by Britney Spears, including an
| already been chewed, sticky bubble gum. The gums were
| sold for between $50 to $100.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| I'd happily pay 10c a year for extended support on my
| phone that I don't want to replace.
| KerryJones wrote:
| For perspective, they could have asked each additional
| Pixel purchase $.50 from the starting price to support it
| for an additional 5 years. (also pixel 3 owner)
| drstewart wrote:
| That's a different and fair argument (and so would I as a
| Pixel 3 owner).
| littlestymaar wrote:
| That's a different argument, but this one too works even
| if _"the estimate were two orders of magnitude too
| small"_. Even $10 a year is a bargain when the
| alternative is throwing the phone away.
| tikhonj wrote:
| Google's operating income is like $50B. A more
| proportionate question would be whether I was willing to
| pay $10 for a reusable shopping bag since it's marginally
| better for the environment compared to a free plastic bag
| --and the answer is yes, absolutely, it wouldn't even be
| a question.
| danaris wrote:
| Personally, I don't care what's "efficient" and what will
| make Google the most money. What I care about is how they
| treat a) their users, and b) the planet.
|
| Money is _a means to an end_. The fact that so much of
| our society treats it as their score in the game of life
| --something to be maximized at all costs as an end in
| itself--is a disease of the mind.
|
| If Google (and, yes, literally every other major
| corporation) made more decisions based on what was better
| for their users (not just "their customers", because in
| certain aspects of their business that's advertisers, not
| regular users) and for the health of the planet, while
| simply making sure that they had a reasonably comfortable
| financial cushion, we would all be better off, and
| Google's executives and shareholders would _barely notice
| the difference_ in their high scores.
| hcnews wrote:
| 1 million dollars for million of users sticking around
| for 2 extra years on Google services is _EXTREMELY_ cheap
| all things considered.
| eecc wrote:
| Problem is those millions will still be using Google
| Services, just on a new phone paid by themselves.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Not necessarily. Every time you force a user to abandon
| their current product you risk them looking over the wall
| at your competitors. In the U.S. at least, iPhones are
| really attractive, and I say this as an Android user.
| When my Pixel 3a is EOL'ed in May 2022, I think I may
| take the plunge and finally switch. If I do that, Google
| immediately loses my valuable telemetry, they lose my
| usage of Chrome mobile, and they risk my switching to
| iCloud - something I can't use on my Android phone.
| megablast wrote:
| Almost everything is pocket change for google, so why
| aren't they buying almost everything every year. Genius!
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Given Google's track record we will see exactly how well
| supported it is in years 4 and 5. I expect it will be just the
| bare minimum.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| You're correct. Google is promising 3 years of OS updates and
| 5 years of security updates.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Wasn't Project Treble supposed to reduce Google's dependency on
| Qualcomm updating their drivers?
|
| https://www.xda-developers.com/list-android-devices-project-...
| captn3m0 wrote:
| The OP covers this in the article:
|
| > I've bought too many Android phones over the years
| believing Google when they say they've figured out how to be
| better with updates, whether it was the Google Play Store
| promise or the Android One promise or "Project Treble." None
| of it has mattered. It's too little, too late from Google.
|
| which links to
| https://www.theverge.com/22881882/android-12-google-
| pixel-6-..., which says:
|
| > By its nature, Android is a fragmented ecosystem. There's
| no straight line from Android 12 to the Galaxy S21 or OnePlus
| 9 -- every major update sees handoffs between the
| manufacturer, carriers, and Google, all of which result in
| delays. Initiatives like Project Treble seem to have helped
| speed up some parts of the process, but unless Google takes
| some drastic actions, nobody can completely fix the problem.
|
| Case in point, Treble came out in 2017, one year before Pixel
| 3. Didn't help.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| My rule of thumb is that Google products or initiatives
| with "Project" in the official name never work out. If it
| was a real thing they would have given it a real name at
| launch.
| acchow wrote:
| I haven't heard about Project Treble till your comment. A
| quick google:
|
| "Project Treble (take a deep breath) is Google's ambitious
| effort to rearchitect Android in order to establish a
| modular base in which the lower-level code created by
| silicon vendors is separated from the main Android
| operating system"
|
| As in abstracted away hardware code? As in...how operating
| systems have been built since before TikTokers were even
| born?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Everything is on a spectrum, they are further siloing off
| hardware from software and cutting out some spaghetti
| code between the two. Before hardware manufacturers had
| to merge in google's code with theirs before they
| release, with proper segregation google's aim with the
| project is to make a clean cut between the two so that
| kernel and up aren't so tightly coupled and they can
| upgrade their OS without breaking the hardware.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Further than they siloed it before, yes. In comparison to
| the competition (which sadly withdrew for other reasons),
| they are extremely far behind: Windows ME worked fine
| with hardware and drivers from Windows 95. But the whole
| problem is the consequence of Linux not having a stable
| driver interface.
| vetinari wrote:
| There are many adjectives that could be used for Windows
| ME, but "worked fine" is not one of them. Whether with
| Win95 drivers or its own.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| My honest opinion is that I think the whole Qualcomm thing is a
| canard. What I think is really going on is that after three
| years the batteries are at death's door. Too many people will
| just replace/trash the phone rather than know to replace the
| battery.
| tomrod wrote:
| Pixel 3A user here. Battery works great 2.5 years in. Should
| I be worried?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| My 3a xl battery is at 91% design capacity(1), 3385 mAh, and
| is still utterly sufficient and far better than any other
| phone I've had.
|
| Hardly death's door...
|
| (1)As measured by Accubattery just now
| fouc wrote:
| That's absolutely not true, as the other comments mention,
| there's still plenty of battery life after 3 years.
|
| Not everyone watches youtube or plays games on their phone.
| With light usage, a phone that might only last 2-3 hours of
| youtube watching, can last all day instead.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| iPhones have the same issue, and users either live with it or
| get their batteries replaced. We need replaceable batteries
| to make a comeback. Maybe the right to repair movement can
| get us there.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Eh, I don't really mind if the batteries are a pain to
| replace as long as they only need it every 3-4 years.
| Especially if the tradeoff is that the battery is bigger
| and more water resistant thanks to its internal placement.
|
| I recall back in the era of user replaceable batteries they
| tended to not last very long, and were of incredibly spotty
| quality.
| Bud wrote:
| The batteries are "replaceable"; your own comment
| acknowledges that. What you mean is batteries the user can
| easily replace, which means you have to make compromises in
| the design of the phone and its structural integrity.
|
| The market has chosen against that. What you're talking
| about is forcing people to accept your personal preference,
| by law, because your design preference didn't win in the
| market.
|
| Personally, I oppose that.
| silisili wrote:
| I feel like there's a missing middle ground here. Sure,
| we don't have to go back to the days of peel off or slide
| off backs. But why not allow the phone to be opened
| easier? Perhaps a few tiny screws and a gasket vs...glue?
|
| Replacing a battery is technically possible still, it
| just requires a ton of patience, a heat gun, maybe a
| suction cup, maybe a razor knife. And even then you run
| the risk of breaking the back glass in the process(been
| there, done that).
|
| I don't think we need to go back to being able to hot
| swap batteries on the fly, but surely we can come up with
| something everyday people can realistically do at home.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Modern iphones all require a fancy laser to remove the
| back glass. [1]. You won't be doing that with a
| screwdriver at home.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X07j5deVIfU
| oneplane wrote:
| No need to go lie on the internet. You don't need to
| remove the glass to open the case, it's still two screws
| and a sealing gasket. Removing the glass is more like an
| industrial process to replace a broken glass backing but
| retaining the rest of the back cover.
|
| After you remove the cover you still have to remove a few
| pieces of the top layer of components, as described in
| guides like this iPhone 13 Pro battery replacement one: h
| ttps://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+13+Pro+Battery+Replace
| me...
|
| Now, say you tried a DIY repair and you broke the glass,
| that'd be a different case of suckage, but that doesn't
| really mean that suddenly batteries aren't replaceable.
| There could be a discussion around ease of replacement
| but there is ease of manufacture and sealing properties
| to consider as well.
| vecinu wrote:
| By remove you mean completely melt and destroy. There's
| no easy way to remove it without breaking the entire
| glass back, this is bonkers.
| acdha wrote:
| Or simply supporting local repair shops: it might require
| some special tools or equipment but if the phone store in
| every mall can have that, it's a lot more accessible than
| if you need to pay top dollar and/or not have the device
| for a few days.
| mh- wrote:
| like https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpbgy/apple-will-
| tell-you-h...?
| acdha wrote:
| Exactly - there are good arguments for tightly sealed
| devices but that should be paired with right to repair
| laws requiring minimum part & tool availability and
| capping prices.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _The market has chosen against that_
|
| Did it though? Or did the manufacturers choose that for
| us by choosing to market phones based on millimeters of
| measurement and grams of weight and one piece glass backs
| that most people cover up with a case anyway.
|
| This seems kind of like the car manufacturers saying that
| they are only meeting demand when they sell large SUV's
| and trucks, while running ads showing SUV's on dirt
| trails touting the freedom that a large SUV/truck gives
| drivers, even though most high end SUV's and trucks won't
| go any farther offroad than a gravel parking lot at a
| winery.
|
| If phone manufacturers started competing on environmental
| costs of their phones instead of being the
| smallest/lightest, then maybe replaceable batteries would
| come back.
| [deleted]
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Wish my phone could report a bad battery. I installed
| Accubattery which reported 68% of designed capacity. I went
| to one of the ubiquitious mobile stores in Indian cities and
| got a new battery and charging port. The guy said battery
| doesnt look bulged and port doesnt look work either, so if I
| still have issues, he will replace a board. He is right, and
| I have to do that shortly.
| zepto wrote:
| Apple foresaw this and made the appropriate investments because
| they explicitly value device longevity. Google could easily do
| the same.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Meanwhile the original iPhone SE from 2016 can boot the latest
| iOS. And you can get a battery replacement from Apple right at
| the store, same day for... 49$! It just works.
|
| In just 4 months the Pixel 3A is officially getting EoL'd. This
| phone was released in 2019 (fall), same time as the iPhone 11.
| It just shows the wide gap between iOS and Android.
|
| > Apparently Qualcomm asks for a ridiculous amount of money to
| support any chip beyond a measly 2-3 years. Apple gets away
| with it by building their own chips
|
| I can believe it. Qualcomm makes money per chip sold, Apple
| makes money by building an ecosystem. Linux support is a cost
| center for Qualcomm past the initial launch kernel, and we can
| only imagine there's a difference in caliber between the
| engineers writing patches and hacks around the kernel at
| Qualcomm vs building the OS that powers the iPhone.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Not defending Google here at all, but that $49 battery change
| was a hard-fought victory from Apple.
| deeviant wrote:
| > However, the fact that Google - one of the world's richest
| corporation can't convince or pay Qualcomm to support a
| perfectly functional device in 2022 is astonishing.
|
| This reasoning is... really bad. If I were a "rich corporation"
| and decided to sale a product at a loss or significant
| reduction in margin for a feature that obvious(based on sells
| numbers) was not a factor in deciding to buy the phone or not,
| I wouldn't be a "rich corporation" for very long.
|
| The "richness" of a company has nothing to do, marginal cost
| does. It obviously didn't pencil out.
| [deleted]
| acdha wrote:
| It's not that simple: Google makes money off of other
| services, a fair fraction of which is from Android users. If
| an Android user has a phone which is >3 years old, they are
| still likely to be buying apps through the Android store,
| using the phone to access Google's paid services, or
| generating data which Google uses for their ad sales.
|
| The underlying problem with Android is that they're competing
| with Apple, where all of those sources generate ongoing
| revenue from older hardware devices, but haven't found an
| effective way to share revenue between the different parties
| involved to pay for long-term support. Apple has no problem
| shipping iOS updates because they don't need you to buy a new
| phone nearly as much if you're subscribing to iCloud, using
| Apple Music, and buying from the App Store.
| Aissen wrote:
| The 5 years for Pixel are for security updates only. OS updates
| are still 3 years. IMHO it's still too low, but it's a (small)
| step up.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| What "support" does Google need from Qualcomm after three years
| beyond driver/firmware blobs, which three years into a SoC's
| lifetime should be pretty stable?
|
| We're talking about a company that maintains its own fork of
| the Linux kernel with something like 19,000 patches against
| mainstream. Anything not in a blob should be easily within
| their abilities to address.
|
| Also, Nexus and Pixel devices have a long history of software
| and hardware problems, many of which are immediately obvious
| within a day or two of devices hitting people's mailboxes, and
| are never fixed over the life of the phone. It's not like
| google seems to be picking up the phone very often to talk to
| Qualcomm for support, even during a device's development, much
| less after?
|
| The Pixel line jumped the shark when Google started permanently
| carrier-locking phone bootloaders for Verizon.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Can you guarantee that no one will hack Qualcomm's "blobs"
| tho? And if Qualcomm says "that's your problem, we only
| support it for 3 years", now you have millions of customers
| calling you a liar when you say "sorry can't fix the security
| issues, it's in Qualcomm's code that we don't have access
| to". They won't blame Qualcomm they will blame google. That's
| why I had real hope for Intel there for a while until they
| sold off their modem chip business.
| phh wrote:
| Can you guarantee there won't be an unpatchable boot ROM
| security flaw in three years of devices' "support" span?
| spaceflunky wrote:
| You need access to the software that runs those SOCs which is
| owned by Qualcomm. Qualcomm isn't just going to give the
| sourcecode of those SOCs for Google engineers to tinker
| around with it. It creates all kinds of crazy legal problems.
|
| It's not just the main Android OS that needs to be patched,
| the chips have their own proprietary software too.
|
| The problem is that after 3 years, most of those chips have
| gone EOL and QC wants to put their resources into developing
| new chips because that's where the revenue comes from (e.g.
| how they pay their employees). Meanwhile new security flaws
| keep getting discovered on EOL chips that provide zero new
| revenue.
|
| So what do you want here? Do you want the break neck pace of
| innovation to continue which is ultimately very good for
| everyone? Or should we spend all of our time making sure your
| Apple IIc still has security patches for 2022? At some point
| you just have to move on and that's just the trade you make
| for all technology. You can't simultaneously benefit from
| this cycle and then bemoan it. If all we ever did was make
| security patches for your Commodore and AppleIIc you wouldn't
| have a Pixel3.
| SecurityLagoon wrote:
| Ultimately most people don't need the rapid pace of new
| chips. The pixel 3 level is sufficient for the foreseeable
| future. There isnt a binary innovation or support. Just as
| we have LTS branches of software we should have LTS
| firmware. I would buy a LTS device in a heartbeat. But
| there are those who want the bleeding edge and they should
| be catered for too.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Point taken, however: modern apps don't run on 80s
| hardware, but they do run on a Pixel 3. The line in the
| sand just needs to align a bit more with the physical
| capabilities, for e-waste reasons.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Or should we spend all of our time making sure your Apple
| IIc still has security patches for 2022
|
| Microsoft's timilene for OS support is easily 10 to 20
| years. Windows XP was released in 2001. It's final ecurity
| support ended in 2019. _18 years later_.
|
| I know, it's hard for modern "programmers" to fathom such a
| level of commitment.
| notyourday wrote:
| > You need access to the software that runs those SOCs
| which is owned by Qualcomm. Qualcomm isn't just going to
| give the sourcecode of those SOCs for Google engineers to
| tinker around with it. It creates all kinds of crazy legal
| problems
|
| QCOM Mkt cap 188.12B
|
| Alphabet Mkt cap 1.70T
| H1Supreme wrote:
| > So what do you want here? Do you want the break neck pace
| of innovation to continue which is ultimately very good for
| everyone? Or should we spend all of our time making sure
| your Apple IIc still has security patches for 2022?
|
| I want my perfectly good phone, that I bought 3 years ago,
| to still get updates. In all honestly, my old Motorola G4
| would still be a good phone if it had more storage (and
| didn't eat SD cards).
|
| Everything about my Pixel 3a (which is EOL in 4 months),
| works absolutely perfect for all my needs. Great camera,
| still very good battery life, plenty of storage / power.
| This is forced obsolescence for a device that is more than
| capable of handling most everyone's mobile workload. And,
| as a mobile minimalist, mine especially.
|
| This kinda shit makes me want to go back to a fucking flip
| phone. I'll probably roll the dice with Lineage or Calyx,
| but the absurdity of all this is really frustrating.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I haven't owned an Android device in a while but I always
| thought the argument here is if the manufacturer stops
| supporting the device, you can always get support through the
| community via custom ROM's.
|
| With so many devices in the wild, I wonder if the Pixel 3 will
| become our generations HTC HD2 (which got community support for
| seemly an eternity).
| rst wrote:
| That's the argument here, but as a defense of Google, it's a
| really bizarre argument. If a volunteer-run effort like
| LineageOS can manage to get recent AOSP Android (including
| all the hardware-dependent bits) running on a Pixel 3, what's
| Google's excuse?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| LineageOS does not provide real, production support for
| these devices. If a random binary blob turns out to have an
| unfixable security issue, this is likely not a showstopper
| for the typical LineageOS user: they can easily deploy
| workarounds, reassess their risk etc. Most users would want
| to rely on rather stricter support than that.
| rlpb wrote:
| > ...I always thought the argument here is if the
| manufacturer stops supporting the device, you can always get
| support through the community via custom ROM's.
|
| That doesn't apply for kernel support. Custom ROMs generally
| use the last supported kernel from some official ROM. Then
| they start to accumulate known security vulnerabilities,
| because they never get updated again.
| lvs wrote:
| Downloading a rom from an internet forum to stay up to date
| with security patches seems like potentially flawed logic.
| phh wrote:
| Obviously YMMV, but last year there was exactly one OEM
| merging kernel LTS (Sony). While many (dare I say most?)
| Custom ROMs do.
| lostmsu wrote:
| I've read a few times that Sony is doing good work in
| terms of their kernels, but details eluded me, and as the
| result I never owned a Sony Android phone. Are they
| really good in that regard? Do they upstream? How long do
| they publish security patches for?
| rodgerd wrote:
| They upstream their changes and have a user-unlockable
| bootloader, which puts them ahead of approximately all of
| their competitors. Unfortunately they don't really seem
| interested in selling their phones in most English-
| speaking markets.
| lostmsu wrote:
| By upstreaming you mean Android project, not Linux right?
| E.g. not to mainline?
| phh wrote:
| Yeah so uh, Sony is super weird. There is the production
| side of Sony, and the developer side of Sony. They barely
| coexist, they are two completely different minds. Think
| I'm exaggerating? They have two bootloaders, one for
| developers, one for production. (The led changes color).
| Once you have unlocked your bootloader, you have to
| download and use a different flash tool to flash Sony's
| ROM. They are not available on the same page. That being
| said: - the "production" side is a meh OEM. Usually only
| one major upgrade, annoying lock-ins - the developer side
| is amazing. They make contribution to mainline Linux,
| they provide AOSP build trees, they upgrade major Linux
| kernel versions, their AOSP build tree is much more open
| source than Google's, they provide very clean fixes for
| stupid Qualcomm issues that is not fixed even on Pixels,
| they provide more android major upgrades
|
| So yeah, weird. I believe their AOSP side is funded by
| some governments who want the most maintainable and
| auditable Android on their devices
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| While adding ROMs to the Pixel line (if unlocked) is pretty
| easy, however other Android phones is usually a nightmare and
| only geeks will ever attempt it. I only did it because of EOL
| android phones. I gave up about 3 years ago and just got an
| iPhone. I do still have an Pixel 3 with CalyxOS on it tho. I
| like the hackability of android, but it's just not worth it.
| I just don't like mobile hacking, I do that with my desktop,
| pi's, and various embedded boards that are much more open to
| fun hacking.
| bipson wrote:
| Yeah, custom ROMs.
|
| Most devices never get custom ROMs any longer than you would
| get regular updates anyway (since newer Android versions
| would not run on this chip).
|
| Custom ROMs are a mess anyway:
|
| - Untrusted sources
|
| - Random annoying bugs (What, you need a camera?? Pff)
|
| - Flaky "Android-Experience" (Yeah, you might be able to
| install Google Apps... after the 6th try)
|
| - Device is "untrusted" - no Google Wallet or banking apps
| without yet another hack
|
| - "Security Updates? You can get a full image every 2 weeks
| if you want that, but no idea what is included and what will
| break, sorry"
|
| - Performance and stability of the device usually takes a big
| dive
|
| Most importantly: You cannot build AOSP for a device, if
| there is no support from the firmware (Qualcomm), which is
| the main reason why there are no Android updates in the first
| place - at least that's the problem nowadays.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Google 'blueline' (the codename for Pixel 3) shows
| "partial" mainline kernel support, and work in progress for
| more -
| https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Google_Pixel_3(google-
| blu... So there is some hope that this might become at
| least a semi-usable device with reasonably trusted, non-
| flaky sources. Android app support can then be provided on
| top of the mainline kernel as a custom "container" via
| Anbox/Waydroid.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Custom ROMs are the Pareto principle in practice. Yes, you
| can relatively easily modify & build out 80% working
| functionality. As for the final 20%...
| evilduck wrote:
| Custom ROMS are locked out of every Verizon device sold as
| well. Locked bootloaders have relegated a huge chunk of
| Pixel 3s to the landfill prematurely.
| floatboth wrote:
| > newer Android versions would not run on this chip
|
| Why would all the Android Java stuff actually _require_ a
| newer chip?
|
| e.g. OnePlus 3 started with 7.x, was officially updated
| only to 9.x, but with LineageOS it runs 11.x currently.
|
| > Untrusted sources
|
| As if the vendors are super trustworthy...
|
| > you might be able to install Google Apps... after the 6th
| try
|
| Google services are "just one more zip to flash" and I've
| never heard of having to retry multiple times.
|
| > no Google Wallet
|
| Not too hard to carry the actual physical cards, or use a
| separate device (smartwatch).
|
| > or banking apps
|
| Complain to your bank / switch to a better bank.
|
| > no idea what is included
|
| LineageOS shoves the commit log right in your face, you can
| have a pretty good idea when it's really important to
| update.
|
| > Performance and stability of the device usually takes a
| big dive
|
| Really? Performance and stability are typically the
| _reasons_ to switch to custom.
|
| CyanogenMod/LineageOS have been, in my experience, the most
| performant and stable Android experiences by far, since the
| 4.x days at least.
| kombine wrote:
| Thanks to this article I learned that my perfectly functioning
| OnePlus 6T received its last update in November, 2021. I think
| enough is enough and I will switch to Apple as soon as I can
| uhtred wrote:
| Just install an alternative android OS on the phone and it will
| last you longer. Pretty sure Graphene supports the pixel 3.
| Probably Calyx. Probably /e/OS.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If it has software, it's not your property, and since software is
| everywhere, your right to private property is gone.
|
| You can't eacape this, now even batteries refuse to work without
| a software update.
|
| https://twitter.com/internetofshit/status/148496134391649485...
| danuker wrote:
| > You can't escape this
|
| You can. Use a "dumb"phone.
|
| Funny how "dumb"phones are better at reliability. No need for
| updates, and battery lasts for more than a week.
|
| Funny how they still offer replaceable batteries, even though
| they cost a fraction of "smart"phones.
|
| To avoid financing the software-planned-obsolescence empire,
| you can use a combination of cheap second-hand "smart"phones
| for maps and chat apps that are important for you, and a dumb
| phone for reliable stuff like alarms, calls, and SMS.
| fabioborellini wrote:
| Now when dumb phones also have internet connectivity, is this
| really sound advice? Having no updates only means that
| vulnerabilities are not getting fixed. Since 4G connectivity
| and WhatsApp have become the minimum requirement for the bulk
| of the market, dumb phones have become Linux pcs with always-
| on internet, too.
| bradfa wrote:
| Unfortunately, it seems that modern "dumb" (or feature)
| phones now are being required (or only) to support LTE and
| their stand-by battery life has declined quite dramatically.
| Many now seem to advertise battery life of quite a bit less
| than a week.
|
| It's unclear to me why LTE appears to consume much more power
| to "do nothing." But I recall easily getting a week or so of
| actual battery life being completely normal a decade ago.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Oh, you mean the ones that come with spyware preinstalled?
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/unremovable-malware-found-
| prei...
|
| It is irrelevant if they have a touchscreen or are 'cheap
| second hand', it has a processor and it runs software.
|
| You want dumb phones, use analogue ones that plug into a
| socket with a rotary dial and use a paper map for navigation.
| heurisko wrote:
| I doubt the restyled Nokia 3310 comes with spyware
| https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_gb/nokia-3310
| floren wrote:
| I've been curious about the KaiOS phones for a few years
| now... the OS is derived from the old Firefox mobile OS, but
| most KaiOS devices seem to be candybar/flip-phones; the OS is
| "smart"ish, but the hardware looks "dumb".
|
| It's kind of hard to find information about them, but if I
| could get a basic flip-phone that has a maps app, I'd be
| reasonably happy. I used to get by with a dumb phone and just
| write down directions before I left the house, but now that
| I'm married, plans tend to change more often.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I have the Nokia 8110 4G bananaphone, it has what's app and
| maps, and syncs with your google account, thr battery lasts
| about 2x as long as thay of a smartphone. It imagined using
| it on trips or hikes, but its just collecting dust in the
| drawer
| julianlam wrote:
| Doesn't Google publish the images for their phone, making it
| easier to load custom ROMs?
|
| https://www.androidauthority.com/unlock-pixel-3-bootloader-9...
|
| Then
|
| https://lineageosroms.com/blueline/
|
| Done, now your phone will be supported damn near forever.
|
| ----
|
| I get that Google themselves should be supporting their phones
| for longer. I completely agree. I just can at least say that
| they've given you the tools to still use the phone after the
| updates stop.
|
| That's a damn sight better than other manufacturers... e.g. Nokia
| 6, the bootloader is locked, and I had to pay some kid in some
| random country to unlock it for me with his reverse engineered
| tool.
|
| So no, I give Google a lot of shit about their behaviour, but
| phone updates? Could be longer but I won't hold them to it.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| > lineageosroms[.]com
|
| While that site links to official LineageOS builds, that's not
| the official LineageOS website.
|
| - https://lineageos.org/
|
| - https://download.lineageos.org/blueline
| julianlam wrote:
| Thanks, I just quickly googled on my phone. Appreciate the
| correction as I can no longer edit the comment.
|
| By the way, I really like your Google Camera ports! Keep up
| the good work.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| I bought 4 used Pixel 3 devices and all were bootloader locked
| by the carrier.
|
| Verizon refuses to unlock Pixel 3 devices if you don't have an
| account with them.
| mcnichol wrote:
| How long though? This is the painful economics of technology.
|
| I think a more pointed argument is the relationship the software,
| hardware, and consumer has in this.
|
| As consumers we really can only vote with our purchasing and much
| of it is mired in learning by induction what we do/don't want.
|
| The walled garden and immense control of iOS is great until it
| isn't. The open landscape and diversity of Android is great until
| it isn't.
|
| The hardware manufacture and telecoms are an added pain in the
| mobile ecosystem. They want a hook into getting advertising in
| front of you so some of this hardware is subsidized through
| bloatware and system level apps that can't be removed. I have an
| Amazon Prime app that I cannot uninstall (only hide) because it
| is a system app!?! Hardware manufacturing is a loss at the start
| of the sale and supporting it is an added cost.
|
| The economics of the system are problematic and going to iOS will
| only work long enough until it doesn't. Point I'm making is the
| problem is upstream.
| Kique wrote:
| As a current Pixel 3 user, I think this article is slightly
| hyperbolic. The phone still works great other than a worse
| battery, definitely not "garbage". The author is making it sound
| like the phone stops working. But then again I still use Windows
| 7 which also doesn't have security updates.
| ploxiln wrote:
| Yeah - and it's worth noting that you still get updates for
| your browser and messaging apps (because the android version
| isn't _too_ old). Just don 't install risky apps. If you're a
| minimalist, you're fine with a phone that stopped getting base
| system updates in the last year or two. I still use a Galaxy S8
| that got its last security update 10 months ago.
|
| If there's a vulnerability like _stagefright_ in the base
| system that could make many up-to-date apps vulnerable, you 'll
| hear about it on the news.
| asciimov wrote:
| What drove me off of Android was my bank stopped supporting my
| device because of security updates. When I bought the phone it
| was a just released LG flagship, I got a full 18 months worth
| of sporadic at best updates, followed by nothing.
|
| My bank disabled the app on my phone some 4 months later, when
| some major vulnerability was still unpatched on my phone. They
| told me to get a new phone, so I picked up an 2016 iPhone SE
| and went on my way.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Frankly I don't get why you still use Windows 7. For the Pixel
| I understand that you make a choice between throwing perfectly
| good hardware and security but for 7, I'm not aware of any PC
| that can run 7 that can't run 10.
| josephcsible wrote:
| It's really dangerous to suggest that it's okay to continue to
| use anything Internet-connected that doesn't get security
| updates.
| Aissen wrote:
| It's not hyperbolic, your security profile and risk aversion is
| just different from the author's.
| neogodless wrote:
| > forcing me
|
| That's a bit hyperbolic. Your point stands, otherwise.
| singlow wrote:
| Its not hyperbolic. I wrote the policy for my company's
| phone policy. If an employee wants to access any company
| resources from their personal phone (optional) they must
| submit to a phone audit. The audit is a checklist of
| security best practices including verifying that the phone
| is receiving security updates for the OS. So if they need a
| phone for work, they either upgrade to a newer phone or
| carry a second phone with security updates for work
| purposes. Either way they have to get a new phone. What
| else would a company do? You can't just have employees
| storing credentials for company accounts on a device that
| is likely to get pwned.
|
| Personally I don't see how anyone could justify having an
| out-of-date phone. Assuming you have it configured to read
| your email, it becomes a gateway to every account you own,
| which can have its password reset over email. MFA might
| help as long as that MFA isn't an app on your phone. But
| most websites don't support hardware security keys. If you
| care enough to have a dedicated TOTP device, then why would
| you want a phone with no security updates?
|
| This use of "forcing" does not require bricking the phone.
| Creating a situation where the only reasonable choice is to
| upgrade the hardware qualifies as "forcing" in my opinion.
| The phone is no longer capable of performing the job for
| which it was designed in a safe way.
| saltminer wrote:
| Google isn't holding a gun to anyone's head or
| intentionally bricking devices, but if you use your phone
| for work (or it's a work-issued phone) and your employer
| requires you update to the latest security patches
| (enforced via MDM), the Pixel 3 is now useless.
|
| And you're probably thinking "oh but this is an old device,
| just get a newer one for work." True, but consider that
| Pixel 6/6 Pro users got screwed over when the December
| update was yanked [0] and the January update got delayed
| for them [1] - while it was good for most users not to take
| the buggy update, anyone whose device had those security
| requirements ended up getting work-related functionality
| disabled.
|
| Of course, the companies that set these policies are
| generally ones who will not make exceptions, so even though
| you had the latest and greatest from Google, you couldn't
| use it for work for several weeks until they finally pushed
| out the January security update.
|
| "People who have MDM-enforced security requirements" might
| not be a large part of the smartphone market these days,
| but every little bit counts when it comes to reducing the
| volume of e-waste that usually ends up being dumped in
| third-world countries.
|
| [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/rxiv5r/en
| terpr...
|
| [1] https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/143968432/
| googl...
| dont__panic wrote:
| Did we read the same article? Without security updates, you
| really shouldn't rely on a phone for banking/payments/secure
| messaging. Google has effectively killed the Pixel 3 for real
| usage.
|
| You should be able to throw LineageOS on there as long as you
| don't have a locked Verizon bootloader. But there are a lot of
| caveats to that, in terms of which apps will work when rooted,
| which won't etc. etc.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| There's also the fact that LineageOS will fix only Android-
| related bugs, you're still stuck with the unpatched vendor
| firmware (which includes the kernel, unless I'm mistaken).
| h4waii wrote:
| LineageOS backports security patches when possible,
| including kernel-related ones since they ship their own
| kernel.
|
| Firmware doesn't include kernels, generally speaking.
| Aunche wrote:
| How important are these security updates to your average
| user? If they're meant to prevent hypothetical targeted
| attacks, I honestly wouldn't be too worried about them.
| Plenty of people continue to use their Android phone despite
| not receiving security updates, yet I haven't heard anyone
| having a issue with this.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Without security updates, you really shouldn't rely on a
| phone for banking/payments/secure messaging. Google has
| effectively killed the Pixel 3 for real usage.
|
| There is a _lot_ of real usage which is not
| "banking/payments/secure messaging". Besides, stopping
| security updates does not mean the phone suddenly becomes
| open to the whole world. Many vulnerabilities might be
| exploitable only when running code natively on the device, or
| only when within radio range, or only when plugged directly
| to the USB port.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > There is a lot of real usage which is not
| "banking/payments/secure messaging".
|
| In fact, I don't do any of those on my phone. Unless maybe
| you count email as secure messaging in some way.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| > Unless maybe you count email as secure messaging in
| some way
|
| I would say yes, considering email is often used as a
| primary means to reset account passwords. Most services
| support MFA (which could be somewhat of a mitigating
| security control), but a LOT of services still don't.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| I'm amazed that Lineage OS still supports Pixel 1 while Google
| can't provide support and updates for Pixel 3. Google just
| doesn't care about long term support which makes business sense
| since most people want to upgrade phones in 2-3 years. However it
| is completely antithetical to themselves calling an
| environmentally responsible company.
| United857 wrote:
| Perhaps for an end user, but from a developer POV, the Pixels are
| some of the most developer friendly Android devices -- very
| easily rooted, little unnecessary bloatware by default compared
| to the likes of Samsung, Huawei etc.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| It's always funny to me that companies pay developers to make
| worse versions of Android instead of just not doing that.
| Although obviously it's to force in some unremoveable
| shovelware.
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