[HN Gopher] Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone
___________________________________________________________________
Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone
Author : mmastrac
Score : 1594 points
Date : 2023-02-25 17:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Nice! I've been waiting for something like the FairPhone to show
| up in the US.
|
| A sweet bonus would be if they also provided and fully supported
| de-googled image or at least had an option to download the de-
| googled image after accepting some disclaimers. Or perhaps even
| set up a public community for phone hackers to help them build
| said image _i.e. crowdsource the work_.
|
| An optional large shell for a bigger battery would be a nice
| upgrade too. My current phone has a 10,000mAh battery and lasts a
| very long time after disabling background networking on most
| apps.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I wonder how hackable this Nokia device is.
|
| I have an old Nokia smartphone. I barely use it as a phone;
| really it's just for 2FA, when the provider insists on SMS for
| 2FA.
|
| An inexpensive Android device which is hackable _and_ exposes
| GPIO pins would make an interesting robotics platform. If this
| device supports replaceable CPU, then perhaps it also exposes
| GPIO.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| 10000mAh? Does it fit to your pocket?
|
| Btw degoogling phone almost double battery life.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| It fits in a velcro holster, my jacket pocket and in my snow
| monosuit.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| > snow monosuit
|
| Just makes me picture Maggie Simpson
|
| But to be actually on topic, supporting custom ROMs in
| order to extricate android from Google is my top priority
| when buying a phone.
|
| If this phone gets lineageOS support then it may be the
| perfect phone.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _Just makes me picture Maggie Simpson_
|
| Well, a really old Maggie Simpson with a buzz-cut. I do
| jokingly call them onesies. Expensive onesies anyway.
|
| _If this phone gets lineageOS support then it may be the
| perfect phone._
|
| That would work for me as well.
| cwiggs wrote:
| What phone do you have that has a battery that big?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| ulefone Armor. There are a couple other models that have a
| 13200mAh battery.
| toss1 wrote:
| Wow - what a great find! I'll be keeping track of that crew
| for my next phone! ('tho they don't seem to currently
| support Verizon network)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Yeah I had to go with a TMO reseller here and most of the
| time I am using calling-over-wifi to make up for TMO's
| spotty coverage.
| freddref wrote:
| That's quite a line-up they have! I have a Elephone S3 pro,
| two day battery is really great when traveling, no worries.
| I'll strongly consider an Ulephone next..
| mmastrac wrote:
| I ran a Samsung S5 (?) like this many, many years ago and it
| was pretty cool but holy crap it was a beast. My jeans
| pockets started to stretch out from carrying it, and it was
| impossible to keep it in a jacket pocket at all.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| I did similar with a galaxy S4 (third party battery
| w/special back case to accommodate the larger size). Worked
| nice but eventually the battery bulged.
|
| The tradeoff with replaceable batteries is if when you swap
| the phone loses track of time until finding a cell tower.
| Fine if in range but a risk when hiking far away, and might
| also propagate the wrong time to your smartwatch.
| bombolo wrote:
| It should be able to sync its clock slowly from the GPS
| signal. But I have no clue if the feature is actually
| implemented.
| andrepd wrote:
| >Or perhaps even set up a public community for phone hackers to
| help them build said image i.e. crowdsource the work.
|
| Like xda? :)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I think they would be perfect. I was hoping they had a rom
| for my phone but I could only find one supporting a really
| old version. If they partnered with Nokia to build supported
| images for their phones that would be incredible.
| wesapien wrote:
| Hopefully, the bootloader is unlocked for third party ROMs like
| Lineage and others
| digitallyfree wrote:
| Honestly it would be a huge selling point for this device if
| it had excellent custom ROM support on top of the
| repairability. There are phones from 2015 still being
| supported today by Lineage.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Lineage: My S5 (klte, 2014)[0] still works and is still
| getting updated last I checked.
|
| I did buy a newer phone a few months ago, but I'm keeping
| the S5 around as a spare. In fact my previous S2 is still
| working as well, but I don't think it receives updates
| (also it has no battery right now - luckily it can operate
| with just power plugged in).
|
| [0]: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/klte/
| mmastrac wrote:
| I use a FP4 in Canada and it's been amazing. I suffer from a
| lack of parts, but I make up with that for excuses to vacation
| in Europe.
| colordrops wrote:
| Can't parts be shipped from Europe?
| mmastrac wrote:
| Not that I've found, unless I use a re-shipper but I'm not
| familiar with that sort of setup when Europe is involved.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| You'll still be waiting, I think. The Verge's coverage says
| it's not coming to the US:
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/25/23611844/hmd-nokia-g22-re...
|
| (I've similarly been wanting a FairPhone here.)
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Why do none of the good phone options get sold in the US??!?
| E.g. Sony has one of the few modern smartphones in a
| reasonable size (xperia 10II (might be the dumbest name
| though)), and way too few of the bands work in the American
| market.
| Oddskar wrote:
| As someone who works in e-commerce related to phones, I
| think a big part of the answer is that the US is not a big
| market when it comes to selling phones without a contract.
|
| In the EU it's common practice to buy without a contract,
| whereas this is very rare in the US.
|
| In other words, carriers have _way_ more power in the US.
| happymellon wrote:
| Didn't the US decide to use different frequencies to
| everyone else?
| Klonoar wrote:
| I feel like I recall reading that getting some
| certification here is more annoying than it should be,
| which means some devices are just straight up not brought
| here - curious if anyone knows if this is true or not.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Doesn't 5g fix that? Same radios for everyone.
| happymellon wrote:
| Does it? I thought Americans were still using alternative
| frequencies to everyone else.
|
| [Edit]
|
| It appears that the US doesn't overlap with the majority
| of the world for most of the ranges, except for one band
| at the top which overlaps with Japan/Korea.
|
| https://5gobservatory.eu/5g-spectrum/
|
| > Currently, the most used bands are:
|
| - Low-band: 700 MHz (except in US); 600 MHz (US)
|
| - Mid-band: 3.3 - 3.8 GHz (except US); 2.6 GHz, 3.7 -
| 4.98 GHz (US)
|
| - High-band: 26 GHz (except Japan, South Korea and US);
| 28 GHz (Japan, South Korea and US)
| rglullis wrote:
| Plenty of models that can work with all frequencies, so I
| am not sure if that's enough of a justification.
|
| Anyway, your point reminds me that the my "dream
| smartphone" would be one with no cellular connectivity at
| all. I'm still waiting for some company to start
| producing a keychain-sized 4G (or 5G) hotspot with an
| eSIM, which (I hope) would lead to more people asking for
| the return of the iPod Touch _and_ for something
| equivalent in the Android /Mobile Linux/Windows world.
| crispinb wrote:
| > justification
|
| An odd term in this context. No-one has to 'justify' not
| selling their stuff to Americans.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They do if they're a normal corporation selling an easy-
| to-ship product in mass quantities.
| crispinb wrote:
| Why? Do you suggest the US has intrinsic rights to the
| goods of other nations?
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| I think the point is that if a business is in the money
| making business. Then it seems kinda stupid not to make
| money.
| crispinb wrote:
| Non-US companies have to justify all their decisions to
| their owners, but not to random foreign consumers.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Not a right, and not more than those other nations have
| the same thing, but _otherwise_ yes because markets.
|
| Small entities can do whatever they want but big
| corporations should have justifications for not selling a
| thing.
| crispinb wrote:
| Non-US corporations, of any size, have no duties towards
| US residents whatsoever. It's entirely their choice
| whether or not to enter foreign markets. Americans are
| not default humans, and they do not decide what products
| other nations' companies offer them.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Not a duty to the people buying, a duty to the owners of
| the company. To make a profit out of easy opportunities.
| Or justify not doing it, to the owners.
|
| And the duty to owners is what you said yourself in your
| other comment, so I'm not sure why you seem to not
| understand what I'm saying.
| crispinb wrote:
| You are making the exact blinkered US-centric assumptions
| I'm poking fun at. US companies may be duty bound to put
| increasing owner value above other considerations, but
| fortunately out here in most of the world, your law does
| not apply to us, and our laws are not modelled on yours.
|
| I can assure you, for example, that in many nations
| companies can legally have many reasons for choosing not
| to export a product to a specific country that don't make
| any reference to profit. Again: all you know is your
| laws. Your laws are not our laws. It's a big world out
| here, not encompassed by the mores of the nation you just
| happen to come from.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I'm not talking about laws. I'm talking about the nature
| of a normal to large corporation: to sell things.
|
| They don't have to maximize profit at the cost of other
| things. But if they want to ignore a huge sales venue,
| they should justify it.
|
| Justifying isn't some huge bar. It's due diligence. If
| you have many reasons, then write them down.
| crispinb wrote:
| Shimmy, shimmy. I can't be bothered with your incurious
| chauvinistic prattle and am done with you.
| int_19h wrote:
| A keychain-sized hotspot would have dismal battery life,
| though.
| rglullis wrote:
| Hum, maybe I meant the size of a key fob? It could be a
| bit thicker, I'd guess it would hold something like
| ~2000mAh. For just the radio, and for something that
| would be used only while on the go (otherwise you can use
| your home/your job connection), why couldn't that work as
| long as a feature phone, which could go for a week in a
| single charge?
| int_19h wrote:
| In my experience with hotspots on the go, it's having to
| maintain the WiFi AP that kills their battery fast. Maybe
| there's a better protocol to run between the hotspot and
| other devices, although you'd need one that would also
| allow for 5G speeds.
| happymellon wrote:
| > Plenty of models that can work with all frequencies, so
| I am not sure if that's enough of a justification.
|
| Only some chipsets work with all frequencies and when 90%
| of the population of the planet all use the same settings
| why spend the cost to cover the other 10% which would
| double your chipset costs but would unlikely increase
| sales.
|
| Americans bully each other over the colour of their chat
| bubbles because apparently not buying iPhone makes you
| appear poor. There are lots of justifications to avoid
| increasing costs to try selling to the Americans.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Anyway, your point reminds me that the my "dream
| smartphone" would be one with no cellular connectivity at
| all.
|
| You mean a PDA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_di
| gital_assistant)? Modern smartphones are basically a PDA
| with cellular connectivity (this is more obvious with
| early smartphones like the Treo 650), so if you take out
| the cellular connectivity, what you have is once again a
| PDA.
| rglullis wrote:
| I don't think this distinction makes any sense nowadays.
| A "smartphone without cellular connectivity" is a lot
| more than a "Personal Digital Assistant". Could a Palm
| Pilot stream music? Did it have an app store? GPS?
| Microphone? Could it make VoIP calls? Could it connect
| with an external modem so that it could work as a
| softphone?
| happymellon wrote:
| Personally what I want is a dumb flip phone which can act
| as a 4/5G hotspot for my 7" tablet.
|
| When I'm on the internet, browing maps, reading books, I
| find a phone screen too small. But I don't want a massive
| phone.
|
| A dumb flip phone that lasts a week on a charge so that I
| can camp with it, combined with a 7" tablet that I can
| throw in my bag, for when I want to read, but doesn't
| need cellular connectivity so that it lasts without
| spying on me.
| dmix wrote:
| You can't complain about availability of phones (or any
| electronics) while being in the US. Try living anywhere
| else like Canada.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Actually, you can.
| idonotknowwhy wrote:
| Or Australia. I end up importing phones here and missing
| out on some features our shitty telcos don't provide
| unless you have a white listed phone
| amaranth wrote:
| In the US your phone has to be on the whitelist to even
| get service these days. They're using VoLTE as an excuse
| to lock the networks down again.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Not for T-Mobile, at least not yet.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| We have decent variety in the US, but I think it's fair
| to want phones for specific purposes that aren't
| generally served here. The more repairable phones are
| hard to come by, and as someone who likes trying
| alternative OSes the phones that seem best served by e.g.
| Ubuntu Touch (Volla Phone and Fairphone) aren't
| available.
| bionade24 wrote:
| There are plenty devices that work well with UT and are
| available in the US, e.g Google Pixel 3a/3a XL. Mentioned
| devices still have an Android Kernel and many
| limitations. Waydroid on the Volla phone isn't stable,
| Ubports itself mediocre compared to SailfishOS and
| suffers from competing for developer time over other
| Linux on Mobile OSses.
|
| You're overestimating the Volla phone and Fairphone, 1st
| one still doesn't support VoLTE which I heard is
| essential in the US, 2nd thing isn't even recommended by
| UT.[1]
|
| Either go with an Xperia + SailfishOS [2] if you want
| more than a toy or Pinephone + PmOs [3] if you love to
| tinker on your daily driver. Both have VoLTE support.
|
| 1. https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/
|
| 2. https://shop.jolla.com/
|
| 3. https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/PINE64_PinePhone_(p
| ine64-...
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > 2nd one isn't even recommended by UT.
|
| FP2 is the second device on the "promoted" devices page.
| That feels like a recommendation?
|
| https://ubports.com/supported-products
|
| > Google Pixel 3a/3a XL.
|
| Doesn't support one of the most interesting features to
| me in UBports, which is display output for convergence.
| bionade24 wrote:
| > FP2 is the second device on the "promoted" devices
| page. That feels like a recommendation?
|
| The FP2 is a very old device lacking some features and
| probably got recommendation back then because other
| devices were worse. https://devices.ubuntu-
| touch.io/device/fp2 Otherwise I'd also could have
| recommended the Nexus5.
|
| On FOSDEM 2023 Ubports developers didn't show off this
| old phone, either.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Oh, darn. Well then maybe Nokia will read these comments and
| hopefully add some of my wish-list before it comes to the US.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| 5 years for parts is better than nothing but its still a lot of
| e-waste. Ideally given screens and ports and batteries are
| something that have been around for decades and will be around
| for decades more in similar ways it would be nice to extend this
| out longer. With progress on CPUs/GPUs slowing we do need to
| start to consider much longer usable life times for computer
| products and having obsolence built in at 5 years when a
| consumable like the battery fails isn't OK.
|
| OS updates also very short so this phone is quickly going to end
| up on LineageOS.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >but its still a lot of e-waste
|
| Phones are a tiny amount of waste. Trying to get a few extra
| years out of one is a microoptimization in reducing one's waste
| output.
| palata wrote:
| > Phones are a tiny amount of waste.
|
| Can you elaborate on that? Seems completely wrong to me.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Think of how much people throw away each week. A phone is
| only a couple hundred grams and takes up a small amount of
| space. Think of how many phones could fit in a single
| garbage bag. The number will be way more than the number of
| phones they will go through in their entire life. So in
| your entire life you are saving a fraction of a garbage
| bag's worth of garbage.
| palata wrote:
| Right, but it's not the weight that matters, it's the
| environmental impact. And there I'm convinced that
| e-waste is not negligible.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I'm not sure if the physical volume of the phone in a
| landfill is the only issue to consider. What about all the
| energy and resources used to manufacture it?
| SilverBirch wrote:
| It's kind of sad to see Nokia releasing such niche products. Most
| people really don't care about this "DIY" attitude, and those
| that do immediately shout "Schematics" or "Bootloader". It's a
| bit of a nightmare market to service, and certainly a far cry
| from where Nokia used to be (even in the windows days!). This
| phone is for people who are mad they can't tune the Carburetors
| on their Tesla.
| tony-allan wrote:
| The future I want is more eco-friendly consumer products!
|
| They have outsourced all the repair stuff to iFixit...
|
| https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/self-repair
| snshn wrote:
| You mean like https://www.fairphone.com/en/?
|
| How original...
| user8501 wrote:
| "Partnership with iFixit" just sounds... weird.
|
| You were supposed to destroy the Sith not join them!
| kwiens wrote:
| Our mission is to help everyone fix all their stuff. We'll work
| with any manufacturer that wants to make their products last
| longer.
|
| Nokia has been really great to work with. Their engineers
| genuinely want to make this phone easier to work on.
| flas9sd wrote:
| I'm writing this from a 2016 device that ticks all of the
| boxes of repairability the announced phone has. Without the
| GPL, bootloader unlock and a willing vendor (motorola), it's
| end of life would've been in 2019. Thanks to source
| availability the community gave it another lease up to today
| and it's a candidate for a 10+ year phone thanks to kernel
| mainlining.
|
| While hardware repairability is a pillar, it's only one of
| two and nothing without "software repair". Sadly even the
| ecodesign draft proposal (in the EU) goes soft on this topic
| and criticism of it (by eeb.org) still thinks only in "update
| duration" instead of the real ingredient of sustainability:
| software sources and ability to build it.
| cubefox wrote:
| Does anyone notice the irony of it being partly repairable, while
| offering just three years of security updates, after which you
| basically have to throw the thing away? The repairability sounds
| nice, but it is very irrelevant compared to the limited software
| updates. Imagine buying a Windows laptop and only receiving three
| years of security updates. (I know, most other phones aren't
| better.)
|
| It would have been better if they offered slightly longer
| security updates in exchange of only letting you change the
| battery. Other things probably won't break anyway before the
| security updates stop coming in.
| pentagrama wrote:
| Is _that_ risky have an unsupported Android version?
|
| My Nexus 5 still working ok, some problems started when apps
| started to drop support of the Android version, and that
| happens _several_ years before it stopped receiving OS updates.
|
| Don't want to downplay that will be great that OS updates
| should be longer that the current standard, but sometimes tech
| minded people here in HN thinks that a day after stopped
| receiving updates the phone is a useless brick ais not the
| case.
| HybridCurve wrote:
| When the security updates stop, the phone should be wiped of
| personal data and isolated from both cellular and wireless
| networks. There should be no compromise on this, a phone has
| access to far too much personal information and local wifi
| networks to ever consider using it beyond is support
| lifetime. Additionally, we should all be more diligent
| ensuring our personal devices install security updates as
| soon as they are available especially before going to large
| events (conventions, sports games, F1, etc...) or areas which
| are high traffic (airports, etc..).
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture saying that,
| without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any
| parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for
| a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
| cleanchit wrote:
| Every single one of the thousands of packages you install
| with `npm i` has acces to your `~/.ssh`.
| palata wrote:
| I want updates mostly for security reasons. If your phone
| hasn't received a security update in a year, I can just go
| check security issues that were published online, pick one
| that I like, and write an app that will exploit it.
| [deleted]
| devy wrote:
| I don't see a 3-year security update as an irony. In fact, I
| see that as a great gesture for the budget price point android
| phone has a 3-year software warranty. Nokia probably have done
| research on this pricing segment to know that the averaging
| budget android device lifecycle is about 2.x years and
| guarantee a 3 year security update to make the device more
| worthy, comparing to other brands at this price point. By the
| way, NO ONE offer unlimited years of security updates, even
| Apple iPhone as the gold standard only provide security updates
| _up to_ 6-7 years but Apple charges at least 2 times of the
| price.
| majou wrote:
| You're mistaken; the iPhone 5s--10 years old come Autumn--
| received a security update on January 23rd (iOS 12.5.7).
|
| As the first 64-bit phone and the first phone with a proper
| Secure Enclave (TPM+biometric auth) it's received a lot of
| love from Apple.
| onphonenow wrote:
| My father in his 70s has stuck with one of these old
| phones. I keep on expecting them to end security updates -
| no go. The idea that apple makes unrepairable throwaway
| phones makes me laugh. Easier to resell and easy to get
| fixed (I use applecare with no complaints)
| cvalka wrote:
| The 3 year security update policy was the requirement for
| Android one.
| nilespotter wrote:
| At least 2 times the price... at least, indeed:
|
| > The Nokia G22 will cost from PS149.99
| flippinburgers wrote:
| Yes with phones. It is honestly disgusting because it
| generates so much unnecessary waste.
|
| I have a PC that I build myself over 9 years ago and run
| linux on. I upgrade hardware as needed but I will never have
| to worry about security update nonsense.
| Angostura wrote:
| They should offer paid-for upgrades after 3 years
| el_snark wrote:
| Pretty sure the Custom ROM crew will leap on this one, so
| flashing it with one of those seems like it will be an
| option.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| The long term practicality of this depends on mainline
| kernel support. LineageOS is cool, but the thing no one
| talks about is that while the Android stack might get
| updated, the kernel often isn't, which means any kernel
| level exploits remain unpatched after the support period
| ends.
|
| Which is why this reads as kind of a stunt. A repairable
| phone is great, but if it becomes unsafe to use then
| what's the point? The software needs to be "repairable"
| too.
| IncRnd wrote:
| That would increase the cost of the phone, since they would
| have to support and test the phone long past the expected
| lifetime. But, this is marketed as a budget phone, so they
| aren't going to do that.
| thepangolino wrote:
| That's why he said paid for.
| IncRnd wrote:
| This is a budget phone, so there are very few people who
| would purchase extended security support after three
| years. There certainly won't be enough to cover the
| business costs for keeping the support and testing of an
| old crufty phone used by few people.
|
| It's unsustainable to put the costs on the backend, so
| phone's price would have to be raised to cover those
| extended security updates. But, that won't happen for a
| budget phone. There just won't be enough people willing
| to pay after three years.
|
| That's the problem with purchasing a budget phone. You
| get what you pay for, a phone that will go away soon.
| atleta wrote:
| Unless the price of the upgrades cover the support. Yes,
| of course, it would be a gamble, because nobody can
| predict what the demand would be in 3-4-5 years. But I
| wonder whether they could reduce the cost with smart
| software engineering (i.e whether they could compel
| themselves to do smarter software engineering by
| promising paid upgrades) or whether they could make a
| promise to make paid upgrades OR open sourcing the code
| for the components that will be different from the newer
| versions. (I.e. mainly the hardware drivers.) Yes, I know
| licensing issues may indeed pose problems for third party
| components.
| Pxtl wrote:
| The problem with that "3 years of update" promise is afaik it
| only counts if you buy it on launch day. One would expect
| that kind of guarantee to start on the last day they sell the
| device, not the first one.
| ip26 wrote:
| The irony is that repairable devices are implied to be
| maintainable as well, e.g. you can generally keep them in
| good working order as long as you please. Reasonable or not,
| a security update sunset contradicts this possibility.
| mrelectric wrote:
| Repairable phone implies level of technical competency.
| You're not the target audience. Target audience will have
| no problem installing alternative ROM
| flippinburgers wrote:
| The ROM doesn't cover all of the software that runs on a
| phone to my understanding. We need truly open phones.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Custom roms are a half-solution unless Unisoc have solid
| mainline support in the kernel, so that it can be updated
| past the support period without hacking in blobs. Custom
| ROMs can also be less secure (and less useful as many
| applications annoyingly check for verity) if the
| manufacturer doesn't allow access to low level hardware
| security features.
| ip26 wrote:
| Is that really the market they are going for? I've
| dissected, rooted, etc but that hardly seems like a
| business play or a market of any significant size.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Apple iPhone as the gold standard only provide security
| updates up to 6-7 years
|
| _Laughs in Microsoft_
|
| How about 20 years?!
|
| I have a laptop built in 2006, it runs Windows 10 and will be
| supported untill 2025.
|
| It can also run software compiled in 1999! What platform can
| beat it, an IBM mainframe?
|
| Microsoft is the gold standard! Its a shame they never get
| credit for the one thing they do well.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| The original iPhone had 128MB of memory. The iPhone 6s
| (releasing in 2015, which is the oldest model currently
| receiving security updates) has 2GB of memory. The latest
| iPhone, the iPhone 14, has 6GB.
|
| It doesn't make sense for Apple to support devices that
| aren't even going to be able to run the apps that users
| want. Not many users are going to want to be using a 6-7
| year old device when hardware is advancing and therefore
| the software is becoming more resource hungry.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| There are tons of people who use their phones to make
| phone calls and send texts and read the occasional
| Wikipedia article. They don't need newer hardware.
|
| People who want to play video games on their phones will
| need newer phones, but even they benefit from being able
| to sell their old one to the people who don't need that
| instead of having to throw it away.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| You're completely right, but I don't think Apple is
| targeting those people. Most people don't want an iPhone
| for just the basics.
|
| Aside from that, I'm not sure that even web browsing
| would be very enjoyable on an iPhone 6s today considering
| that the performance demands of web pages are getting
| higher and higher.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And those people couldn't use anything older than 5 - the
| first to support LTE. Many networks wouldn't even support
| that.
| bioemerl wrote:
| Don't credit Microsoft for this, credit the fact that the
| PC is an open platform based on its legacy as an IBM PC
| clone.
|
| We need a good standardized phone and bootloader system so
| that software comes back into the control of users on cell
| phones.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well a lot of people are looking at Windows 11, which
| launched in 2021 and required a ~2018 CPU. Especially when
| Intel's 8th generation chips were barely different from the
| ones going back years. Chips close to that cutoff are going
| to have _awful_ support lifetimes from microsoft if you can
| 't get updates past 2025.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I laughed out loud when the Ryzen 7 1700X (8c/16t @
| 3.4GHz) in my main desktop didn't meet the minimum system
| requirements.
|
| It's just 5 years old now, and I have a funny feeling
| it'll be more than powerful enough for a while yet.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I have a similarly new PC and found there were BIOS
| settings needed to allow it to get windows 11 -- some
| security stuff that wasn't turned on by default.
|
| Of course, then I looked into what windows 11 provided
| and decided I'd wait a bit either way.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I initially upgraded a Ryzen 7 1700 system with the hold
| TPM module, then got an incredible deal on a 5700X. I was
| surprised how much I had to fiddle in the BIOS with a
| year old motherboard to get things like Secure Boot and
| memory isolation working.
|
| It was something like 5 or 6 BIOS expeditions before I
| had all the right features enabled.
|
| Windows 11 is meh... They fixed some of my issues with 10
| and created new ones. I wouldn't rush anyone to adopt it,
| it's a Vista/XP/ME style release. I'm expecting Windows
| 12 to be the keeper.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I was in the same boat with the base 1700. It likely just
| needs a TPM module. My ASRock Fatality (sp) motherboard
| had a port for a module.
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/where-to-buy-
| tpm-2.0-for-w...
|
| Win11's line in the sand requirements aren't nearly as
| "bad" as Vista/XP/ME in terms of disruption. Honestly I
| wish they'd gone a step further and required ECC support.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Honestly I wish they'd gone a step further and required
| ECC support.
|
| That's a non-starter because Intel upsell ECC as an
| "enterprise"/"prosumer" feature and regular, non-high-
| end/workstation/server processors don't support ECC.
| Sadly Intel is still the CPU market leader, so that would
| have meant Win11 not being able to run on most existing
| hardware at launch.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Yes, how different are Intel's consumer CPUs from their
| Enterprise? Is ECC disabled physically in their CPUs or
| is it simply a software limitation?
|
| AMD's CPUs have ECC support but the motherboard
| manufacturers don't support it.
|
| Intel has been shipping TPMs in CPUs for a while. That
| begs the question, is Intel dictating requirements to
| Microsoft or is Microsoft dictating them to Intel?
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > was in the same boat with the base 1700. It likely just
| needs a TPM module.
|
| Oh dear, why is Microsoft upgrade assistant and
| documentation so misleading? I just got a new CPU!
| doubled112 wrote:
| I'm not sure they are.
|
| I can go into the UEFI settings and enable fTPM on the
| system. It still doesn't make it see the system as
| supported.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-
| hardware/design/mi...
|
| It is only 2nd gen Ryzen and up.
|
| P.S. By reverse logic, I have disabled (f)TPM to block
| the upgrade on some machines.
| vxNsr wrote:
| They're ways to get around the restrictions though I
| don't know why you'd want to. Windows 11 is a virus
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| Windows is too much of a resource hog to be a virus.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This is looking at it from the wrong side though. It
| isn't the hardware vendor ending support there, it's the
| software vendor.
|
| PC hardware can be supported indefinitely because it's
| documented, more or less. Windows uses a hardware
| abstraction layer so the old drivers can be used with the
| new Windows. Hardware only stops being supported by
| Windows when _Microsoft_ decides it, not Intel or NVIDIA
| or Broadcom.
|
| The Linux community writes open source drivers, or the
| hardware makers do themselves, so they can be updated by
| the kernel developers when they make changes to the
| kernel and continue to work. You can put run the latest
| Linux kernel on a PC from 1995.
|
| But for phones the hardware support comes as an opaque
| binary blob tied to a specific kernel version, so when
| that kernel falls out of support, the hardware is slag
| unless someone has the resources to reverse engineer it.
| Which they might if it was just the wireless or just the
| storage controller, but it's not.
| [deleted]
| ryandrake wrote:
| You are absolutely right and it is shameful what consumers
| simply accept for software support periods! I try to buy
| things that I hope/expect to work for 10, maybe 20 years.
| Appliances, cars, tvs, and electronics including phones.
| Yet software support for all these things lasts a mere 3-5
| years if that. I have an iPad1 original that still works
| great! But software support ended a year after I bought it
| --over a decade ago. Totally unacceptable. I hate how the
| hardware industry forces obsolescence by cutting off
| software support for devices in the field. Nobody should be
| grateful for a mere 3 years of software support.
| t43562 wrote:
| The companies just do what people want - new phones, more
| capabilities. People will pay up for new physical gadget
| but not support, so the money is only coming from making
| new models. The number of old models gets bigger all the
| time but the number of people updating the software
| cannot because they have to be paid for by the sales of
| the new models.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > People will pay up for new physical gadget but not
| support
|
| I have a windows license I paid for like 10 years ago, I
| upgraded windows 7 to 8 to 10 and now to 11 for free.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes Apple should support a 2G iPhone that no cellular
| network supports
| foepys wrote:
| 2G is still alive in Germany.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why shouldn't you be able to keep using it on Wi-Fi only?
| imwillofficial wrote:
| You can if your router supports it
| josephcsible wrote:
| Yes, but if you can't get security updates for it, then
| you can't do so safely.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So Apple should try to support a phone with 256MB RAM and
| a 400Mhz processor in 2007 that doesn't even work on any
| cellular network?
|
| What do you expect to do with it? The 2010 first
| generation iPad that came out 4 years later could barely
| handle modern web pages by 2011.
| atleta wrote:
| Yeah, and Linux will probably have an even longer support
| period. But MS is in a totally different business. HW
| manufacturers build and sell new devices to customers who
| then buy software from a different company (MS). One of the
| selling point of Windows is that it runs on basically all
| HW. But they can only afford this because they have
| monopolized the market.
|
| The mobile phone business is very different. (But you may
| argue that that's the problem.) The HW manufacturers sell
| the SW bundled with the HW. As soon as they have sold the
| HW, the software is just a liability (while for MS it's a
| recurrent revenue!). Not only that, but the longer and the
| better the SW works, the less likely you are to buy new HW
| from them. (And since that's the only thing they are
| selling, it means the less likely they will see a revenue
| from you.) Now this may imply that the business model is
| flawed and maybe it will change as the market matures and
| people will stop buying newer and newer phones every year.
| Just like it happened to desktops and then laptops. (I'm
| typing this on a 7+ year old Thinkpad and the only thing I
| miss is +16GB RAM.)
| bee_rider wrote:
| Linux is a bit different because you are responsible for
| supporting yourself really.
| asddubs wrote:
| not like microsoft is going to help you if you run into
| problems either. The software supports it in either case
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > But MS is in a totally different business. HW
| manufacturers build and sell new devices to customers who
| then buy software from a different company (MS). One of
| the selling point of Windows is that it runs on basically
| all HW. But they can only afford this because they have
| monopolized the market.
|
| It's really the opposite problem. Essentially all of the
| relevant phones run Android; the monopoly doesn't help.
| And PC/workstation hardware was supported for just as
| long back in the days of Novell Netware and proprietary
| Unix. Some of the hardware from those days is still
| supported now.
|
| The problem isn't the lack of a monopoly, it's the
| presence of one. The majority of the SoCs in phones are
| from Qualcomm, and they provide neither documentation nor
| source code, even though the market is clamoring for the
| longer support lifetimes that would allow, because with
| limited competition they don't have to.
|
| There was some hope that Samsung would do better, and
| they might increase their market share quite a bit if
| they did, but a duopoly still isn't much competition.
| Samsung is already a big enough player that they have to
| be weighing the increase in market share against the
| longer repurchasing cycle. The have to decide if they
| want to be the heroes and capture that much goodwill from
| the people paying attention and making recommendations to
| others, or not. So far so fail.
|
| We need more competition.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| Not much of a gold standard really.
|
| I've also a laptop built in 2006, it runs [any flavour of
| Linux I want] and will be supported indefinitely.
| petespeed wrote:
| Making parallels with phone software, imagine that edge
| AI inference becomes a necessity in few years which makes
| a lot of current hardware obsolete.
| scarface74 wrote:
| This comparison isn't really relevant. Could you run the
| then current operating system in 2006 on a computer that
| you bought in 1986?
|
| A 2010 iPhone 4s can't connect to any network in the US let
| alone a 2007 iPhone. Computers changed leaps and bounds in
| the first 20 years just like smartphones have.
|
| Sure my 2010 Dell Core 2 Duo with 8GB of RAM can run
| Windows 10.
|
| But a computer bought in 1997 couldn't run the then current
| Windows OS in 2010.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Could you run the then current operating system in 2006
| on a computer that you bought in 1986?
|
| Linux can do something very similar. You can run the
| latest version of Gentoo Linux today on an Intel 486 from
| 1989.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The subject was about Microsoft. Could a computer from
| 1989 be useful with the 2006 web? Flash and all?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > This comparison isn't really relevant. Could you run
| the then current operating system in 2006 on a computer
| that you bought in 1986?
|
| The processor available in 1986 was the i386, which was
| supported by Linux until 2012. i486 support is on its way
| out just now, more than 33 years later.
|
| > A 2010 iPhone 4s can't connect to any network in the US
| let alone a 2007 iPhone.
|
| It's not expected to do what modern phones can do. But it
| could still connect to WiFi, so why shouldn't it be
| usable for reading text or listening to music?
|
| Why not connect the USB and turn it into a NAS or a
| doorbell camera or any of the things anybody would do
| with a Raspberry Pi?
| scarface74 wrote:
| > The processor available in 1986 was the i386, which was
| supported by Linux until 2012. i486 support is on its way
| out just now, more than 33 years later
|
| What could you do with it in 2012? A 2010 Core2Duo
| 2.66Ghz Dell laptop can run Windows 10. Browse the modern
| web, mine had gigabit Ethernet, could run the latest
| version of Office decently and had a 500Gb hard drive.
|
| > It's not expected to do what modern phones can do. But
| it could still connect to WiFi, so why shouldn't it be
| usable for reading text or listening to music?
|
| Yes, as far as I know, the iTunes app still supports all
| iPods and iPhones. You can sync your music. And you can
| fill all of its massive 4GB or 8GB of storage.
|
| Even back in 2004 - 3 years before the iPhone. I had this
|
| https://www.lacie.com/support/multimedia/classic-hd/
|
| It was a much better NAS than trying to repurpose an
| iPhone with very bad Wifi.
|
| You are going to "read text" on a 3.5 inch 320x480 Poot
| resolution screen in 2023?
|
| And you want Apple to continue supporting a "phone" that
| can't be used as a phone anymore?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > What could you do with it in 2012?
|
| Now you're arguing against yourself. An original iPhone
| is much more capable than an i386.
|
| > Yes, as far as I know, the iTunes app still supports
| all iPods and iPhones. You can sync your music. And you
| can fill all of its massive 4GB or 8GB of storage.
|
| But as you point out, the storage is quite small. The
| _hardware_ could perfectly well stream over WiFi, until
| you take away security updates and the ability to install
| the app.
|
| > It was a much better NAS than trying to repurpose an
| iPhone with very bad Wifi.
|
| A modern one would be better still, but I'm trying to use
| the thing I already have sitting in a drawer, not acquire
| something else.
|
| And sometimes the performance is irrelevant. If I'm just
| using it for automated backups I don't much care if it
| finishes in one minute or ten.
|
| > You are going to "read text" on a 3.5 inch 320x480 Poot
| resolution screen in 2023?
|
| Maybe I wouldn't, but some kid whose alternative is
| having no device at all, sure.
|
| > And you want Apple to continue supporting a "phone"
| that can't be used as a phone anymore?
|
| It was never just a phone, but hotspot + WiFi calling and
| it still is a phone. To say nothing of Signal or similar.
|
| Your argument comes down to "newer things are better,"
| but that isn't the same as older things are trash. Until
| you stop updating them and refuse to provide the
| documentation needed for anybody else to do it.
| scarface74 wrote:
| > Now you're arguing against yourself. An original iPhone
|
| I'm arguing that my 2010 Dell Core2Duo that had 8GB RAM,
| a 500GB hard drive, gigabit Ethernet and a 1920x1200
| display has specs that in some ways are equivalent to a
| computer you could buy today and has hardware capable of
| running the latest browsers, the latest version of Office
| has enough RAM, has wired Ethernet that is still capable
| of completely taking advantage of my gigabit Ethernet and
| has wireless N.
|
| A 2007 iPhone has a crappy display, not enough memory or
| processing power to run a modern web browser and can't
| actually function _as a phone_. My old first gen iPad
| crashes repeatedly on modern web pages. Of course I have
| newer devices.
|
| The earliest iPhone that has any decent hardware to
| handle the modern web is the iPhone 5s. Apple just a
| released a security update for it recently but
|
| What are children going go do with it if it can't even
| use the modern web? They would be much better off getting
| one of the many $40 unsubsidized unlocked phones you can
| buy on Amazon.
|
| And from working with different educational institutions,
| I know for a fact that they think old computers are more
| trouble than they are worth and would much rather have a
| bunch of low cost ChromeBooks.
|
| If you want to help a child, give money to the
| organizations instead of junk computers.
|
| > It was never just a phone, but hotspot + WiFi calling
| and it still is a phone. To say nothing of Signal or
| similar
|
| The first gen iPhone couldn't support hotspot
| functionality nor could it do wifi calling.
|
| Again, why try to keep an old half functioning phone when
| you could buy a much more capable $30 Android phone.
|
| Even in developing countries the average phone user has a
| much better phone than the original phone. The phone
| penetration rate even in the poorest countries is 80-90%
|
| And on top of that, Apple only sold around 10 million
| first gen iPhones. How many do you think are still in the
| wild?
| smcleod wrote:
| Which Microsoft phone offered 20 years security updates?
| They can't even keep the product line alive let alone
| provide security updates.
| graderjs wrote:
| Yeah that is pretty good. You're right about MS being the
| gold standard for backwards compatibility and forward
| support. Amazon talks about being the best at customer
| service, I guess that's how MS excelled in customer
| service, a key differentiator, super-wide compatibility,
| long lifetimes.
| devy wrote:
| I am talking about mobile phones. Unfortunately Microsoft
| exited Windows phone business. So what are you talking
| about gold standard?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| They needlessly broke the start-menu and taskbar in Windows
| 8 and Windows 11 for no good reason.
|
| And there still isn't a coherent native desktop-app dev
| story for Windows. Even MS is using Electron for their own
| software.
|
| One step forward, two steps back.
| mrweasel wrote:
| If you where to start a new software project in the mid-90s
| and had the benefit of hindsight, there is no argument for
| not starting on Windows NT. Looking back the "correct"
| career choice would be a C++ developer on the Windows NT
| platform, you could build a lifetime career on Windows
| (unless it fails in the next 10 - 15 years, which I doubt).
|
| Sure we have abandon-ware that requires a Windows 95
| desktop or a Windows 2000 installation, but bringing a
| piece of actively developed Windows software forward
| through the version in the past 25+ years has been
| relatively easy.
|
| I picked Linux/Unix and languages like Python 20 years ago,
| so it's a little late for me, but if I could go back in
| time, I'm not sure that Windows and C++ wouldn't have been
| an equally good choice.
| josephg wrote:
| I started programming in the 90s. The other day I found
| some of the first programs I ever wrote (in qbasic), and
| ran them in qbasic 4.5 on dosbox on my Mac laptop.
|
| I was running an arm laptop, emulating a modern x86_64
| chip, emulating an old i386 chip, interpreting a qbasic
| program unmodified from 30 years ago. Sound, graphics
| modes, input events - all of it worked perfectly. I didn't
| try running it on windows, but I wouldn't be surprised if
| it just worked there too without even needing dosbox.
|
| Backwards compatibility on phones is a joke. Decades of
| phone software is totally lost to history, impossible to
| download or run anywhere.
|
| The web isn't much better because old websites go down. But
| at least modern browsers will still happily render webpages
| from the 90s just fine.
| hattmall wrote:
| Phone software is basically a joke anyway.
|
| Is it not possible to emulate phones in the same manner?
| t43562 wrote:
| The point of fixing security holes is sometimes to make
| it not possible to do certain things which applications
| may have been written to "expect". There's a bit of not
| being able to have your cake and eat it.
| josephg wrote:
| Tosh. The fact you can't download old iOS apps from the
| App Store, nor can you run them on modern 64 bit iOS
| devices has nothing to do with apps using undocumented
| APIs.
| madduci wrote:
| Who do we have to thank for this? Apple or Google? The
| old Symbian app were cool enough that could run on
| different versions of the OS, they were basically jar
| packages.
|
| The switch to App Stores and the too fragmented OS
| updates made everything just a mess like this
| jen20 wrote:
| You missed the implied "for phones" in there.
| fencepost wrote:
| By comparison to the Samsung Galaxy A series this is
| unimpressive. Everything in that line is either 2 OS
| upgrades/4 years of security updates or 4 OS upgrades/5 years
| of security updates. That's all the way down to the A03s
| which is <US$100.
|
| Those are from the release date of the phone, but I think
| they're doing roughly annual releases on that line.
|
| Edit: Samsung also planned for longer device life - there's
| an option to turn on a battery saver feature that caps charge
| at 85%, which should significantly increase the years of
| service from the battery.
| ohuhuhu wrote:
| I was recently looking for support cycles for Android
| phones but failed to find anything concrete. Can you point
| me to where Samsung have documented their support cycle?
| paraselene_ wrote:
| This was their original announcement article
| https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-sets-the-new-
| standar...
|
| This is their current security update list (not os
| updates)
| https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb
|
| "... And select devices launched in 2019 or later will be
| supported with firmware security updates for a minimum of
| four (4) years following their global launch, while
| select newer devices will receive up to five (5) years of
| security updates."
|
| It's a good start I'd say, considering that Samsung is a
| major player in the android phone space.
| fencepost wrote:
| On their product pages for each phone, expand the section
| to compare phone models and it's listed for each in the
| Security section.
|
| https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-a53-5g/
| ohuhuhu wrote:
| I wasn't looking at the US website. Samsung don't have
| that information listed in the equivalent page for my
| local market.
| realusername wrote:
| > even Apple iPhone as the gold standard only provide
| security updates up to 6-7 years but Apple charges at least 2
| times of the price.
|
| And it's not a fair comparison either, an iPhone which isn't
| updated is a big security issue due to everything being so
| coupled to the OS, on Android it depends of the security flaw
| affected itself.
|
| I'm not defending the poor upgradability to Android but they
| worked around that a lot.
| cubefox wrote:
| > Nokia probably have done research on this pricing segment
| to know that the averaging budget android device lifecycle is
| about 2.x years
|
| I don't think that's remotely true. People who buy budget
| phones are not typically the tech enthusiasts who buy new
| phones every two years. Instead the market analysis has
| likely shown that people are way more impressed by
| "repairability" than by "long security updates". Otherwise we
| would long have Android phones with security update durations
| similar to iOS.
| lolinder wrote:
| Yes, I came here to say this.
|
| Swapping out the battery is a great improvement only if the
| device's lifetime is longer than the battery's, and my
| batteries tend to last more than three years.
|
| (Writing this on my 5 year old phone that still has the
| original battery.)
| kaetemi wrote:
| The only thing that's dead in all my old phones is the
| battery, and the outdated OS.
| adverbly wrote:
| I've lost multiple phones to dead charging ports.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I think this varies a lot, especially for heavy commercial
| users who talk on their phone a lot. Only last week my sister
| was complaining that iphones need charging twice a day after
| 2 years. It doesn't affect me with my current phone, but I am
| a light user.
| scns wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34944079
| kernal wrote:
| The phone costs $150 and you expect more than 3 years of
| updates? Here's a hack to get 12 years of updates - buy a new
| Nokia every 3 years x 4 and get 12 years of security updates
| for less than the cost of an iPhone 13.
| cubefox wrote:
| That argument would also count against repairability,
| therefore it doesn't show that longer updates are better than
| higher repairability.
| lucakiebel wrote:
| Yes, though they can always make it easy to run a custom rom
| and rely on the community for (security) updates
| RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote:
| Having to use a custom ROM is the same annoying amount of
| work as having to upgrade to a new phone every 2-3 years.
|
| Because custom ROMs usually update to the latest Android
| version ASAP, which moves tons of things around all over the
| OS, and breaks a lot of stuff.
|
| It's super annoying to update custom ROMs.
|
| And frankly some people just want their phone to work most of
| the time, not to have the responsibility to install and
| maintain some pocket-sized server. That's also a reason
| against using custom ROMs.
| open1414 wrote:
| Android manufacturers pick a LTS kernel when developing their
| phone. By the time it is on the market, that kernel version
| only has 3-4 years left of security updates. Custom roms
| never upgrade the kernel so you are still vulnerable to bugs
| that were never backported to your kernel
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Depends on the manufacturer, there are plenty of phones
| with community updated kernels. Some manufacturers choose
| to implement hardware support by poorly forking the Linux
| kernel in ways that make porting those changes to recent
| kernels hard.
| open1414 wrote:
| Can you provide a phone with an updated kernel? I have
| yet to see one on XDA and am really curious
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| > Custom roms never upgrade the kernel
|
| That's not entirely true. There's plenty that bundle a
| custom kernel.
|
| Browse some device-specific development topics on XDA
| developers for examples.
| open1414 wrote:
| Custom kernels are not upgraded kernels. They usually
| just back port a few fixes. No custom kernel running
| Android has a full kernel upgrade because it breaks the
| KMI and kernel drivers aren't usually updated.
| palata wrote:
| Aren't projects like PostmarketOS upstreaming many
| devices? Meaning that you can then update the kernel,
| right?
| open1414 wrote:
| PostmarketOS is the mainline Linux kernel and doesn't
| have all the features that are needed for a proper
| Android phone. There are a lot of Android userspace
| drivers that may break with another kernel.
| lolinder wrote:
| Custom rom support would be helpful for a very niche
| audience, but it's not something that's going to make a dent
| in e-waste at all. I'm a pretty tech savvy user who runs
| Linux on my desktop and _I 'm_ too intimidated to try a
| custom ROM on my phone. The average Nokia customer isn't
| going to even know it's an option, much less be willing to
| take the plunge.
|
| If Nokia is serious about fighting e-waste they _need_ to
| provide a longer lifecycle of updates.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If the average user can't handle flashing a custom ROM
| (which is probably true), they can take it to one of the
| million phone repair shops and give them $10.
| lolinder wrote:
| It's not just a question of flashing it, it's a question
| of living with it. By all accounts I've read the custom
| ROM experience is far from seamless: it sounds worse than
| the Linux desktop currently is, and I wouldn't recommend
| running Linux to just anyone.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Custom ROMs work just as well as the ROMs phones are
| shipped with.
| bentcorner wrote:
| They work excellent for what they are, and are a
| testament to the ingenuity of the android community, but
| as an end user product they're just not there yet. I
| would never flash a custom ROM for someone who isn't
| capable of flashing something else on it to fix a bug or
| restore back to factory.
| paulmd wrote:
| It's really not uncommon to see ROMs with known bugs like
| "camera doesn't work" "3.5mm port doesn't work". When I
| was looking for a phone in 2018 I was looking at the
| Pixel series and that was the bug list for most of the
| ROMs at the time - and pixel was basically the best-case
| scenario that everyone was pointing me at as far as
| support.
|
| It was still in official support at that time but I got
| burned by my first android phone going EOL within 6
| months of when I bought it and I wasn't going to leap
| again without knowing there were actually ROMs that
| worked without major feature loss.
|
| It _probably_ would have worked out, being a pixel and
| all, but I specifically ran into bumps on my previous
| phone (Moto G Falcon) with features being lost on custom
| ROMs. Eventually I found one that worked OK but that 's
| just not acceptable to lose official support 6 months
| after purchase and deal with custom ROMs where random
| shit is broken.
| palata wrote:
| That's right, and that's why you should choose your phone
| based on the ROM you want. Of course if you choose a
| phone that is not supported, it probably won't work well.
|
| Try running the Samsung S23 ROM on a Nokia 7 plus and
| tell me how it goes: that's the same problem.
|
| I have been using /e/ OS on a Fairphone for 2 years, and
| it is absolutely great. I just use it like a normal
| Android, no need to fiddle with it _at all_. Some apps
| don't work because I'm de-Googled (no Play Services), but
| you don't need that (or you can accept that some apps
| don't work).
| hedora wrote:
| This wasn't my experience with de-googled (edit)
| grapheneos.
|
| One week, apps started throwing an uncaught null pointer
| exception on startup because their network permission was
| revoked.
|
| Even without that, random apps (especially for charging
| EVs and parking, and especially if it was raining) would
| just plain break for a few weeks, then start working
| again.
|
| It would be nice if there was a commonly-used android
| compatibility suite for developers (of apps and of roms),
| but there isn't, so everything is flaky once you are
| slightly off the beaten path.
| mikece wrote:
| That wasn't my experience with GrapheneOS: it's been
| rock-solid (and the battery savings from not having apps
| constantly polling for updates means I get 2.5 days per
| charge on both my Pixel 4a and Pixel 6a.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Phone makers make it hard, but it doesn't really have to
| be. You can flash GrapheneOS on a Pixel using a USB
| cable, Chrome and a few pokes at the developer settings
| menu on the phone. The only actual friction comes from
| the Pixel's default OS and that UX flow was a choice.
| palata wrote:
| I have been using /e/ OS on a Fairphone for 2 years now. I
| love it. I would say that the experience is not very far
| from a stock Android.
|
| Most of the issues I have (which is not a lot) are because
| I'm completely de-Googled, but you don't need that.
|
| I really think that there are alternative ROMs today that
| are great, if your phone is supported. Hopefully repairable
| phones will be supported (at least Fairphone is great for
| community support, I find).
| comte7092 wrote:
| People willing to repair their own device is a niche
| audience as well. If you're willing to go through the
| effort of fixing your device, there's a decent chance
| you're willing to flash a custom rom.
| lolinder wrote:
| Screens yes, battery no.
|
| Or at least changing batteries _used_ to be mainstream.
| Anyone born before the year 2000 should not be at all
| intimidated by changing a battery. I can 't speak for Gen
| Z, it's possible they've lost that skill.
| jorvi wrote:
| Replacing the battery used to be just popping off the
| back cover, sliding out the battery then sliding in a new
| one.
|
| These days it's a perilous task that requires multiple
| spudgers and picks, a screen heater, finger acrobatics to
| make sure you don't slash or rip any fragile cables, and
| then you have to wrestle the battery from its adhesive
| coffin.
| lolinder wrote:
| Right, but Nokia supposedly fixed that with this phone.
| angry_octet wrote:
| It's just very expensive. If it becomes affordable they
| will do it.
|
| I remember having spare batteries for my Motorola, and an
| external battery charger, because charging via the built
| in would take ages.
| dlhavema wrote:
| I remember my Old Samsung's and HTC thunderbolt all have
| replaceable batteries, as well as the Motorola Droid
| which was super cool..
|
| Not going to these were the early ones. I think starting
| with the S8 or so they stopped letting you replace the
| battery. I'm on pixels now. And my Pixel 6 doesn't have a
| replaceable battery...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| iunno, setting up a custom ROM is the first thing I do on
| any wifi router I buy. Haven't really touched the concept
| on my phone, but it's totally something I've done for
| security reasons.
| lolinder wrote:
| I can totally see doing it on a router, but I'm scared to
| do it on a phone because I've heard too many horror
| stories about banking apps and similar refusing to run if
| they detect they're running on a rooted phone.
|
| I only have a smartphone in order to use all of the apps
| that people _assume_ you 'll be able to install. If a
| significant percentage of those won't work on a custom
| ROM, I may as well not have the device at all.
|
| (It's entirely possible that my fears are overblown, but
| that I have them is suggestive of how far from mainstream
| custom roms are.)
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| It's fairly easy to bypass most of these with Magisk
| modules, like universal safetynet fix.
| lolinder wrote:
| That's great, and something that I may eventually
| consider doing, but that doesn't help the average user
| who just wants to keep using their perfectly decent
| phone. Rooting their device and installing a custom rom
| is complicated enough without having to go through the
| process of installing extra modules.
| palata wrote:
| > but that I have them is suggestive of how far from
| mainstream custom roms are.
|
| Totally. I think ROMs like /e/ OS and CalyxOS are
| actually getting close to giving the same experience as
| stock ROMs, though (if you choose a phone that is
| supported, that it).
|
| Let's hope it keeps moving forward! Repairable phones +
| long term support with custom ROM sounds great IMO!
| usr1106 wrote:
| To make things worse the 3 years seem to be counted from the
| release of the phone, not from when you buy it. So if you buy
| it a year after it came out, you get only 2 years.
|
| I am so sick of the whole smartphone crap. Google monopoly
| (well, there is Apple, but it's worse), unhandy sizes,
| electronic waste years too early.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| That's not exclusive to this Nokia; all manufacturers do the
| "from release" vs "from purchase" thing. This is one area I
| really wish more manufacturers would follow Apple's lead on.
| gladiatr72 wrote:
| Oh, cmon now. The N900 was the sweetest piece of pocketech
| since the palm 3! That has to be worth something.
|
| Man, if they put out a more modern piece of hardware that was
| designed on the same principle, I'd bye 5. (one backup and the
| others as gifts for skeptics.)
|
| And I'd promise to say at least one sycophanticlly positive
| thing about Nokia for a year!
|
| (sigh)
|
| PS
|
| I do realize that this in no way am actual response to the
| previous. I thought someone who might have an unbidden spasm of
| hope at the thought might have a better day if reminded of that
| one brief moment when an engineer's device made a brief
| appearance on the market's mass :)
| YPPH wrote:
| You're absolutely right.
|
| If they wanted to make a truly repairable phone, they'd release
| the source code for all the binary blobs to enable the folks at
| LineageOS to continue to release fixes past the manufacturer's
| notional end of support period (which does not correlate with
| the possible lifespan of the device).
| hedora wrote:
| Ideally, they would release the source code for the drivers,
| and the manuals for each IP block in the SoC, etc.
|
| For some reason, hardware manufacturers have decided that
| their manuals are secret.
|
| Of course, if you ban distribution of your product manuals,
| then only criminals that pirate your IP will be able to
| properly implement drivers for your product...
| el_snark wrote:
| Pretty sure the Custom ROM crew will leap on this one, so
| flashing it with one of those seems like it will be an option.
| firecall wrote:
| Can you install your own Android versions?
|
| How does it work Android in this regard?
|
| I guess it's not like Windows where if my hardware is supported
| I can install the latest supported version?
|
| I suppose it's somewhat interesting in the industry difference
| between supporting hardware with updates as if it's firmware,
| and supporting software with updates like an OS. (Not
| advocating for windows for anything at all BTW)
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| I've been running custom Android ROMs for years on multiple
| phones. It has brought me modern features and better
| performance than the vendor's ROM.
|
| It's complicated with Android due to closed-source drivers,
| someone needs to create an installer for the specific phone
| model. The installation process is also more complicated than
| installing a new OS on a PC, but it's perfectly doable if you
| can follow written instructions. I recommend checking your
| phone's forum on XDA, you'll see what the community made.
| netsharc wrote:
| Homebrew ROMs often don't have Google's holywater blessing of
| being certified, so some things like banking apps might not
| run on them.
|
| So, say your phone has old Android version x. You're fine
| until a security hole shows up, or your banking app says "Our
| app needs Android version x+1. Please update your phone.".
| Oops, not offered by phone. Install a custom ROM. Banking app
| says "This device is not certified and for your own security,
| we refuse to run on this phone."...
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| Never had this problem, really. The smart people on XDA
| have this figured out.
| eastof wrote:
| Commenting from CalyxOS, which usually receives Android
| security updates within a week of release
| https://calyxos.org/docs/guide/device-support/
| kernal wrote:
| To test this out I installed apps from 3 of the largest
| banks on a Nexus 5 running Lineage OS 20 (Android 13 - yes
| a 9 year old phone with 2GB of RAM running Android 13 very
| well) with a minimum install of Google Play Services. 1 app
| said I was running a modified version of Android, but let
| me proceed to log in. The other 2 let me log in immediately
| with no warning message.
| cleanchit wrote:
| What APIs do the banking apps use to verify the holy water
| blessing?
| IntelMiner wrote:
| Doesn't "Magisk" alleviate a lot of that? Except for I
| believe Netflix and its Widevine bullshit
| Timothycquinn wrote:
| I would love for them to announce them to be Graphene OS ready
| out of the box by contributing a Graphene distro from the get-
| go. I know this is a vendor lock in nightmare but it would open
| up a huge market for the security conscious and those young
| ones interested in getting phones that are just for photos and
| texts.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well it's not like desktop OSes are much better, your average
| LTS Linux distro gets like what, four or five years of updates
| before they pull the plug?
| pxc wrote:
| You continue to get software updates on those devices
| _forever_ or until the distro ceases to exist.
|
| The lifecycle of a distro release is about how long you can
| get security updates _without_ feature updates. But when a
| release goes EOL, you just... have another update, but this
| time it will include new feature releases of applications and
| operating system components as well as the usual security
| fixes.
|
| You also don't really need an LTS for this. In the past I've
| run installations of Linux for much longer than 5 years on
| distros that don't do any kind of LTS releases at all.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| Uh and so you upgrade to the next software version on the
| same hardware.
| RamRodification wrote:
| What's your point? It's not like you are no longer able to
| update your computer's OS when that happens.
| lolinder wrote:
| When I get to year 4 I install the next major version of my
| distro. My hardware doesn't go to the junkyard.
|
| Meanwhile, my _mom_ was just reminding everyone in my family
| that Android security updates stopping means they have to
| replace their phone more often than they would otherwise like
| to.
| moffkalast wrote:
| So what's the actual technical hurdle of doing this on
| mobile devices too? I mean in practice it's because the
| manufacturer blocks it, but I don't really understand why
| (outside maliciously wanting you to buy their new stuff
| ofc).
|
| The architecture has been arm64 forever, memory and storage
| slowly increases but not in any way that really matters for
| an OS. There are specifically optimized apps to get the
| most out of the camera hardware and such, but if OpenCamera
| can handle all phone cameras on the market decently there's
| some level of API standardization and not that much to it.
| Some kernel drivers or wifi chipsets or something they
| can't be arsed to keep supporting? I really don't get why
| one couldn't theoretically just keep updating to the latest
| Android into perpetuity or why it's even an option not to
| do so.
| raron wrote:
| > Some kernel drivers or wifi chipsets or something they
| can't be arsed to keep supporting?
|
| Yup, there is no documentation for these chips, you
| probably gets some SDK with an old version of heavily
| modified linux kernel in a big ZIP file (so no version
| control history, no diffs), sometimes you only got some
| random binary blob. Because every chip manufacturer
| thinks (maybe right?) that with a good mainline driver or
| at least with good documentation all their competition
| advantage would disappear. (Some gigabit Ethernet phy
| chip manufacturers do the same even if 1 GbE is more than
| 20 years old...)
|
| Imagine the same issue as the GPU card support as it was
| a few years ago, just multiply it by ten and apply for
| every insignificant peripheral device. (And nobody will
| start to reverse-engineer it, because you will not be
| able to buy the chip half a year later.)
|
| I do not think this will change without an open chip (do
| no think it is possible, it would have too much NRE cost,
| maybe if some government use it to spin up local
| semiconductor manufacturing?) or some heavy regulation
| (eg. force compatibility between vendors).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Yup, there is no documentation for these chips, you
| probably gets some SDK with an old version of heavily
| modified linux kernel in a big ZIP file (so no version
| control history, no diffs),
|
| We need to legislate that the user has a legal right to
| precise documentation of any hardware they bought.
|
| Including any spying activity it might be enabling.
| 45453836 wrote:
| To be fair the mobile device iteration of the repairability
| movement has always been laden with irony. It's a user
| empowerment movement solving a problem users didn't care about
| or want to deal with, championed mainly by middle and upper
| income individuals in tandem with politicians looking for easy
| karma (bonus points if they're European because it makes them
| look tough against the big corporate Americans plus Samsung),
| all under the guise of helping users who want to save money
| (poor people) even though this category lacks the skills and
| the interest to repair their devices anyway outside of a rare
| few exceptions. At this point a model being easily repairable
| is like "GMO Free" labels on food, a thing you advertise
| because it'll bring in money from the activists while every
| other consumer ignores it and focuses on a combination of
| performamce and price. In short, as long as the device can be
| advertised based on its repairability I don't think the company
| cares much since the objective is already complete.
| quicklime wrote:
| > even though this category lacks the skills and the interest
| to repair their devices anyway outside of a rare few
| exceptions
|
| Most poor people do have the skills to take their device into
| a repair shop to have it repaired?
|
| It makes a big difference to the price of the repair if the
| device is designed to be repairable. Even better if it's
| something a user can do themselves, such as replace the
| battery in a Nokia 3310.
| cubefox wrote:
| Indeed. Some things (GMO free, renewable, partly recycled
| back cover, repairable) sound good to customers, while being
| at best of marginal importance compared to other factors.
| hezag wrote:
| > all under the guise of helping users who want to save money
| (poor people) even though this category lacks the skills and
| the interest to repair their devices anyway outside of a rare
| few exceptions
|
| This is simply not true. At least in my country, poor people
| generally have interest and the skills to repair their
| devices (or to pay someone to do so, as it's cheaper than
| buying a new one)
| britzkopf wrote:
| > ...helping users who want to save money (poor people) even
| though this category lacks the skills and the interest to
| repair their devices anyway...
|
| Sorry, but can you explain this a little more. It's coming
| off as pretty offensive.
| dataflow wrote:
| > while offering just three years of security updates, after
| which you basically have to throw the thing away
|
| Nope, you don't.
|
| It's just that somehow techies seem to have gotten this meme
| into their heads that an unpatched life isn't worth living.
| Can't update my phone within 1 microsecond of a patch being
| released? I guess I might as well just die. Much safer than
| risking the << 1% chance of getting malware on it, and everyone
| knows malware is worse than hell.
|
| > The repairability sounds nice, but it is very irrelevant
| compared to the limited software updates.
|
| I had an Android phone that didn't have OS updates for several
| years and... it was just fine. I was only forced to finally
| upgrade to get better reception on other bands it didn't
| support. If the hardware could keep pace I would've easily kept
| it with its current OS for another half decade, until apps just
| got so bloated that I couldn't use it anymore.
|
| > Imagine buying a Windows laptop and only receiving three
| years of security updates
|
| That's a bad analogy for so many reasons. Android's security is
| WAY more hardened than Windows's, your phone's apps (including
| your [likely] Chrome browser) would still get security updates,
| and even with Windows this isn't as horrifying as you're
| suggesting. (I've done _much_ worse.)
| unosama wrote:
| > It's just that somehow techies seem to have gotten this
| meme into their heads that an unpatched life isn't worth
| living.
|
| This collective delusion is the main justification for SaaS
| which is what the tech industry in current year is dependent
| on .
| cubefox wrote:
| Well, I agree partly. I'm also on a phone which doesn't
| receive security updates anymore. I don't know how risky that
| is. However, it seems clear that longer security updates are
| much more desirable than increased repairability. Most people
| won't need to repair their phone, apart from changing the
| battery after a few years. Especially not when it is a cheap
| phone anyway, where any repair cost is likely higher than a
| new phone would be. So a device with longer security updates
| seems still better than this increased repairability.
| grishka wrote:
| I build Android apps for a living. Let me tell you, _the
| majority_ of users are on "outdated" OS versions. You have
| to support 5-7 years of Android releases to cover a
| substantial part of the Android user base. The app I'm
| currently working on requires a minimum version of 6.0 --
| this came out in 2015. I still test my apps on a Nexus 5.
|
| Many people would buy a phone that will never receive a
| single update. The software it came with is the only software
| it'll ever run. And they're fine with that. They see software
| updates as an annoyance and I fully understand them.
| Sammi wrote:
| Tell your management that usage of v6.0 is as good as gone,
| and you are wasting resources in doing any work to keep
| support for it: https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-
| market-share/mobi...
|
| I you look at that data then you can see that the oldest
| version with any significant usage is v8.1. But even that
| is quite low, and you might do quite well in not supporting
| anything older than v9.0.
| krelian wrote:
| What is the demographic of people who visit sites that
| have statscounter tacked on? It doesn't feel like it's
| representative at all.
| dataflow wrote:
| > Tell your management that usage of v6.0 is as good as
| gone, and you are wasting resources in doing any work to
| keep support for it
|
| How do you say this without any knowledge whatsoever
| about the type of app they work on, or their target
| audience? v6.0 alone is almost 2% of users based on that
| chart. In fact if you include everything before v8.1, you
| seem to get something like 8% of users. What if their
| app, say, provides the poorest people access to public
| transportation? Would you really just drop 8% of people
| on the floor in any scenario?
| dan-0 wrote:
| Exactly this. Even if your demographic is the same as the
| chart, dropping 2% of users can be the difference between
| profit and destruction. Maybe it's margins that you'll
| save but keeping those users, possibly bad reviews, maybe
| market share over a competitor, there's plenty of reasons
| supporting older versions is not a definitive "waste."
|
| Is it a pain to support old SDKs? Yep. But that doesn't
| make it inherently a waste of time to do so.
| grishka wrote:
| What management? I decide this kind of thing myself in
| that project. The app is open-source and for a nonprofit.
| I don't see much reasoning to drop Android versions above
| 6.0 because there aren't _that_ many API changes that
| would make a difference for my case. It 's not like
| supporting 4.x or 2.x, the "you gotta carry the
| reimplementation of a substantial part of the UI
| framework with your app" kind of annoyance. The app in
| question doesn't even use appcompat. The apk is around 3
| megabytes.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> Can't update my phone within 1 microsecond of a patch
| being released? I guess I might as well just die. Much safer
| than risking the << 1% chance of getting malware on it, and
| everyone knows malware is worse than hell.
|
| Malware can indeed be worse than hell. Have you ever had your
| bank account hacked? Or your email account broken into? Or
| your identity stolen and had to deal with dozens of credit
| cards being registered and then hit the limit under your
| name?
|
| I've had friends (and family) deal with such things, and you
| know what? I'll do anything to minimize the risk for myself,
| including throwing away an expensive gadget that can no
| longer receive updates for some totally arbitrary reason.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Malware can indeed be worse than hell. Have you ever had
| your bank account hacked? Or your email account broken
| into? Or your identity stolen and had to deal with dozens
| of credit cards being registered and then hit the limit
| under your name?
|
| To be honest - as an older-phone user, that's part of why I
| never access email on my phone, nor my bank account. I see
| my phone as something that's basically insecure, and take
| into account (no pun intended) the possibility that other
| people will be able to access its contents.
|
| I realize, though, that many old phone users don't hold
| this view necessarily.
| danuker wrote:
| Count me in the same bucket. But this is informed risk
| analysis, something a typical non-techie could not or
| would not have time to do.
| commandersaki wrote:
| Your phone (Android or iOS) is probably more secure than
| your desktop when it comes to accessing bank or email.
| It's more hardened and locked down.
| einpoklum wrote:
| My phone has a large amount of software written and
| installed by Google and by Xiaomi, both of which I
| absolutely don't trust; and it also has software which I
| do trust - but trust to spy on me, like Meta's
| WhatsApp...
| dataflow wrote:
| > Malware can indeed be worse than hell. Have you ever had
| your bank account hacked? Or your email account broken
| into? Or your identity stolen [...]
|
| I've never been to hell (I think?)... I suppose I can't
| assume you're the same, but I'm pretty confident I would
| much rather deal with, say, a stolen identity, than go to
| hell.
|
| Most people's risk-tolerances including many life-
| threatening dangers they face on a daily basis... like
| getting hit while jaywalking, having their phone igniting
| in their hands and burning their homes down, dying in an
| earthquake, etc. If you can't tolerate the same risks as
| most other people, then great, you have lots of alternative
| options to choose from. It's not like Nokia is preventing
| you from imposing your will on yourself or your family.
| atleta wrote:
| That's a fair point, but indeed a lot of people will kill their
| phone in less than 3 years. Either breaking the screen (which,
| IIUC, will be also replaceable/self servicable) or killing the
| battery. Most sources say that the battery will keep an
| acceptable capacity for around 500 cycles, i.e. 1.5 years if
| fully charged daily. (Now I don't know, because I'm very
| cautious not to fully charge and to discharge below 25-30%, so
| mine is pretty good after 1.5 years and the previous phone that
| I've used for 5+ years started draining the battery after a
| software update when it was less than 6 mo old...)
|
| Speaking about batteries, what would be nice if they added a
| setting that allows defining charging limits, e.g. like what we
| have on Lenovo Thinkpads. (You can specify both the upper
| threshold and also the lower one, so that charging doesn't
| start if the battery is above that level even if you connect
| the device. Which you may do to a phone even without wanting to
| charge, e.g. if you use it as a modem.)
| miohtama wrote:
| If they phone is repairable can you replace the battery?
| [deleted]
| scns wrote:
| Tuxedo offers smart charging in BIOS too. The lowest treshold
| i can set in my older model is only 40% but still nice.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Most sources say that the battery will keep an acceptable
| capacity for around 500 cycles, i.e. 1.5 years if fully
| charged daily.
|
| This is what I see online, but this hasn't been my experience
| for any of my devices. My current phone is on year 5 with the
| same battery, and it's still very decent. I charge it every
| day to 100% and often plug it back in while it's still at
| 50%, so it's not like I'm being more careful than usual.
|
| There's a cynical part of me that thinks that these kinds of
| numbers are put forward by the industry to feed the narrative
| that these gadgets need to be replaced regularly.
| scns wrote:
| There was a site posted here on HN that was something like:
| "All you wanted to know about batteries" or something like
| that. About Li-Ion they wrote, that they age faster if the
| charge falls under 20% (don't remember why) or gets charged
| over 80% (more voltage needed to push electrons in, battery
| heats up). GigaSet limits the charging to 90%. I use
| BatteryBot Pro from F-Droid (installed via Foxy Droid) to
| ring an alarm at 30%, 75% and 80%. [add] Depleting them
| completely is very bad for them.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| I have a similar experience.
| max-m wrote:
| My Nokia 8 (bought April 2019) doesn't last a day anymore.
| Not even half a day. The battery is so done, I must
| basically always have my powerbank in my backpack. :) When
| it's cold outside (let's say around 4 degC) it's not
| uncommon for the phone to suddenly shut down while using
| certain apps, even when it thinks the battery is at 50%, it
| just can't provide enough power in those situations
| anymore.
|
| When I bought the phone the battery was one downside I
| thought about but thought "it will probably be OK". I was
| wrong ^^ And due to its aluminum unibody construction you
| must remove the display to replace the battery, nothing I
| would want to risk on my daily driver device.
| josephg wrote:
| Yeah; and batteries can be replaced when they start losing
| their charge. New batteries are pretty cheap.
|
| I had an iPhone 6s that I used for about 5-6 years before
| upgrading and giving it to a friend to use. I replaced its
| battery at about the 4 year mark, and as far as I know it's
| still going strong. I wanted to upgrade it earlier than
| that, and I could afford to - but why bother when my phone
| already did everything I needed it to do?
|
| 3 years of security updates is a joke. The hardware easily
| lasts over a decade if you want it to.
| screamingninja wrote:
| > Speaking about batteries, what would be nice if they added
| a setting that allows defining charging limits
|
| Like Samsung Battery Protection? It limits charging to 85%. I
| would personally have used the 80% threshold, but after 2+
| years of heavy use, the battery has held up quite well on
| this Note 20.
| jorvi wrote:
| I wish you could set both a lower and upper limit. Never
| let it discharge below 10% or above 90%.
| scns wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34944079
| Springtime wrote:
| It's why I've looked to LineageOS and which brands tend to get
| the longest support. There are apparently devotees to the
| Google Pixel line, with the Pixel 2 (2017) being one of the
| longest currently supported, receiving the latest Android 13.
| Granted, it probably wouldn't have hardware patches for say
| Qualcomm's 2020 vulnerability but I'm glad there are users who
| put in the effort to patch older devices.
|
| Support seems to vary even between models though, so there's no
| guarantee support for continue as long for any others.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > very irrelevant compared to the limited software updates
|
| That's the funny thing. Security? I don't want updates and my
| phone is over 6 years old.
|
| But the app developers usually threatens and holds my data
| ransom until I update. Some have the audacity to update upon
| any internet connection in direct contravention of my "no
| background data usage" policy on any connection.
|
| Funny that.
| userbinator wrote:
| _while offering just three years of security updates, after
| which you basically have to throw the thing away?_
|
| "security" is just used as an excuse, in practice there's very
| little in the way of remotely exploitable vulnerabilities. In
| fact the "security" of newer devices seems to be squarely aimed
| _against_ the user, so make of that what you will...
| angry_octet wrote:
| Remotely exploitable does not require it can be hacked
| without user action (although there have been many exploits
| which have achieved that too, e.g. Pegasus) but typically
| involves visiting a web page, opening an attachment, or
| installing an app with a vulnerability. Chrome updates and
| app scanning will protect against some problems, but advances
| are often tied to platform security features.
|
| So really, you've made an absurd comment. If the phone is to
| be usable past 3-4 years it must have security patches.
| Otherwise there will be a pool of devices which are still in
| use and easily targetted.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Otherwise there will be a pool of devices which are still
| in use and easily targetted._
|
| There already are, and the world hasn't ended yet...
|
| It's your paranoia that's absurd (and what these companies
| are relying on to keep the masses under their control, so
| keep drinking the kool-aid...)
|
| The fact that so many here are going on about updates and
| support, when in fact there's _plenty_ of people who don 't
| give a shit and the world works fine for them, just shows
| what a corporate-authoritarian shitshow this cursed
| industry has become.
| angry_octet wrote:
| You've obviously never dealt with people who've been
| hacked and had their life's savings extracted or the
| business made unviable.
|
| Just goes to show, you can lead a horse to security
| patches (or vaccination, or the effects of climate
| change) but you can't make him apply them.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Just goes to show, you can lead a horse to security
| patches
|
| I don't agree with the poster but he has one thing right
| - our industry is a shitshow.
|
| The soviet government handled Chernobyl better than we
| handle security.
|
| Its impossible, even for most proffeshionals, to tell if
| a device is secure It would be easier for me to measure
| radiation.
|
| The british government had Mi5 check Huawei source code
| and even couldn't be sure.
| userbinator wrote:
| I have, but it was ultimately due to being phished or
| similar social engineering tactics, which I'd say is far
| more likely than being hacked remotely by some obscure
| exploit.
|
| _Just goes to show, you can lead a horse to security
| patches (or vaccination, or the effects of climate
| change) but you can 't make him apply them._
|
| Many of us would rather continue fighting for our freedom
| instead of advocating for and cheering on the rise of
| dystopia.
| itake wrote:
| In 2017, there was a remote exploit via the browser:
|
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-5116
|
| Fortunately, this was patched. Not sure if there are newer
| ones
| ccouzens wrote:
| It's worth noting browser updates aren't tied to
| manufacturer's updates.
|
| The majority of Android devices will have updated Chrome
| and web view soon after the Chrome team released a fix.
| userbinator wrote:
| _in V8 in Google Chrome_
|
| Not surprisingly, it's another JS one.
|
| I use JS whitelisting not only on my PCs for that reason.
| astrange wrote:
| Your phone has like 5 different radios in it. Of course
| there's remotely exploitable issues all over the place. You
| should be very worried if you're not hearing about them; that
| just means you're not being told.
| capableweb wrote:
| Seems this new phone costs about 150 EUR, which for three
| years, would be 50 EUR per year, if you keep for as long as it
| gets security updates.
|
| A iPhone 14 costs ~1000 EUR where I am. If you expect to get 7
| years of security updates out of it (I think that's what Apple
| says? Not sure, someone please correct me), then it'll be 142
| EUR per year.
|
| Three times the price, if you calculate it per year.
|
| After three years of having this Nokia phone, you can buy the
| new model, have it for three years again, and repeat this in a
| total of 6 times (900 EURs, for security updates during 18
| years), and you still didn't pay as much as you paid for the
| iPhone.
|
| So with all of this in mind, seems to be a pretty OK guarantee,
| timeline and price, at least compared to the "flagship"
| smartphone that Apple makes.
| sdf4j wrote:
| A budget phone that is just less than three times cheaper
| than the most expensive flagship one?
| capableweb wrote:
| The most expensive flagship from Apple costs around 2000
| EUR (more than 10 times cheaper), I meant "flagship" of
| smartphones in general, but one of the cheaper ones
| recently released from Apple.
|
| You still get the same amount of years of security updates
| though, if you buy the cheapest model from Apple or not.
| cubefox wrote:
| I was comparing repairability to longer security updates, not
| cheap Android phones to expensive iPhones. For that matter,
| iPhones aren't especially repairable either: So if a cheap
| Nokia can be better than an iPhone in this regard, why
| couldn't it be at least as good in terms of updates?
| swatcoder wrote:
| People will note that there are worse problems in the world,
| but tossing a sophisticated piece of electronics every three
| years _by design_ sounds really wasteful, especially when
| practical capabilities change so much more slowly now.
|
| It's a bummer that this is normalized.
| kristopolous wrote:
| In practice I've been cycling phones about every two years.
|
| I just checked and all resources I've seen puts the typical
| lifespan around this. I don't know what the distribution looks
| like though.
|
| I bet the distribution curves change if you bucket the pricing
| points.
|
| 3 years is ok. After you buy it, they've made 100% of the money
| they're going to make in the transaction. They need money to
| come in to support such an effort
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I'm still rocking an iPhone 8, and it's just fine for me--
| came out in Sept 2017.
|
| At this point I consider Apple's commitment to long term
| support to be a key element of my loyalty to them.
| cyanwave wrote:
| It's true. They're one of the best values if you can afford
| them all things considered. Store network, long term
| software. Quality of SOC, all components.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| If you can't afford one at new prices, you can always
| pick them up for a fraction of that 2-3yrs after release,
| and still get a solid few years of supported use out of
| them at that point.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I hear you about support being a big deal. I'm still
| happily using my S10+, and am pissed that it just received
| its last update. It's working absolutely fine, and I have
| less than zero desire to 'upgrade' to a phone that doesn't
| have an audio jack, SD card support, and the ability to use
| swipe-style card readers to pay, three features I use on a
| daily basis. And yet before the year is up, I'll need to
| move on for security reasons alone.
| cubefox wrote:
| Yes, this I consider the key advantage of iOS over Android.
|
| Alas, Apple also supports some highly anticompetitive
| business practices (App Store exclusivity/tax,
| EMS/iMessage) which I do not want to support.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| It wasn't that long ago that Apple were being accused of
| deliberating slowing down older phones. If that has
| improved then I am glad.
| ikt wrote:
| That was a bunch of malarkey, I don't know if it's irony
| but funnily enough they did it to make their devices last
| longer...
|
| https://www.ifixit.com/News/9472/ios-update-slows-iphone
|
| Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers,
| which includes overall performance and prolonging the
| life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less
| capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold
| conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over
| time, which can result in the device unexpectedly
| shutting down to protect its electronic components.
|
| Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s
| and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only
| when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly
| shutting down during these conditions. We've now extended
| that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add
| support for other products in the future.
| lolinder wrote:
| Yes it's normal, but it's incredibly wasteful.
|
| There's no reason outside of software updates why a 3-year-
| old phone can't continue to be used--mine is now 5 years old
| and works fine, and I only upgraded from my now 7-year-old
| phone because my brother had one that he thought he'd bricked
| that I resurrected. Neither phone is fast, but they're
| perfectly serviceable.
|
| What I don't understand is why these updates aren't a solved
| problem. Desktop hardware manufacturers sell equipment that
| continue to be supported for 10+ years by Windows, and they
| manage to stay in business just fine. Why is it that a 3-year
| support window is considered normal in the mobile world?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Probably greed.
|
| Google sunsetting my Chromebox and Chromebook models has
| ensured I will never buy hardware from them again.
|
| By not updating Chrome past a certain expiration date they
| make them worthless doorstops that suddenly can't even
| stream from sites like HBO Max because the version number
| isn't high enough.
| strohwueste wrote:
| There is great research being done by Marina Proske on why
| and when smartphone are being replaced. Recommend this talk
| (unfortunately in German) https://youtu.be/Hen7by8oo7g
| kristopolous wrote:
| Thanks unfortunately I am an English only person.
|
| The two or whatever year cycle certainly shouldn't be
| forced by design.
|
| I'm personally comfortable with it because I'm sold on
| newer and better features and my current phone is starting
| to get dog eared by then.
|
| Probably the "right" thing to do would be to have a new
| "durable" tier for those who value lifespan and do not feel
| tempted by increases in hardware capabilities.
|
| I also buy mid range. I can imagine being sour if I'm
| buying the high end over $1000 devices and see the same
| cycle
| BeefWellington wrote:
| Agreed, it would've been great to see a matching five year
| commitment to security updates.
|
| However, you can run alternate Android versions and get
| security updates even longer, outside of security updates for
| component firmware.
| cubefox wrote:
| It seems slightly unlikely there would be a custom ROM for
| such an unknown phone. In any case, custom ROMs are not an
| option for ordinary people.
| roryisok wrote:
| Stupid question, but what are security updates in a smartphone
| context? Surely Android updates are the security updates?
| Wouldn't keeping this thing up to date with the latest version
| of Android be enough to be secure? Or am I running a horribly
| insecure life right now?
| mayankkaizen wrote:
| I am currently typing this on a 4 years old shitty Xiaomi
| budget mobile phone. I don't recall if I've ever updated mobile
| software (or if there was an update available) but my phone is
| working as good as it should. So far I haven't seen any problem
| in installing any app. I don't see myself replacing this phone
| in next 6 month at least.
|
| I guess tech people are way too much worried about
| security/software updates.
| nektro wrote:
| a different OEM can buy these up with better OS support and ppl
| can install custom ROMs
| shams93 wrote:
| Yeah this is why linux phones would be great, we have manjaro
| with rolling updates, a fully upgradable linux phone would go a
| really long way in getting control over the ewaste issues.
| bionade24 wrote:
| The Jolla phone got 7 years of updates before being sorted
| out. You can buy plenty of "real Linux" phones just now and
| also LineageOS preinstalled phones which will probably be
| supported for a very long time.
|
| https://blog.jolla.com/jolla7/
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Hot take: security updates are overrated. People with fully
| updated iPhones and Pixels still get pwned.
|
| It seems like people's wants and needs change with whatever the
| hell Apple decides to do.
| palata wrote:
| That's a wrong look at security, I think. Everything is
| "pwnable", if you put enough resources into it. The question
| is how much resources do you need to put into it?
|
| If you have a 5 years-old never-patched Android, probably a
| student can go read disclosed security issues, pick one that
| they understand (or for which they found a tutorial online),
| and hack you. It's not the same thing as saying that your
| patched iPhone can be hacked by NSO, though.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| No shit. It's important but I'm wondering if it's
| overrated. It's a phone. I've passed on lots of devices
| because they aren't supported for long. It makes me wonder
| if the security updates are a mere sales pitch that doesn't
| actually benefit the user a whole lot. Great, it's harder
| to hack me. Would I have been hacked if I stuck with my
| Pixel 3? Hard to say. Overrated
| palata wrote:
| > security updates are a mere sales pitch that doesn't
| actually benefit the user a whole lot
|
| Whose sales pitch would that be? I haven't noticed that,
| I believe security is mostly seen a source of cost.
|
| Also we tend to change phone frequently, which is the
| same as a security update. But if you keep it for 5
| years, it starts to matter more.
|
| > Would I have been hacked if I stuck with my Pixel 3?
| Hard to say.
|
| Everyone should fasten their seat belt when driving a
| car, but it does _not_ mean _at all_ that if you don 't,
| then you will have an accident. But if you did, it is an
| established fact that the seat belt would probably help.
|
| People do get hurt by security issues. Remember NSO
| Pegasus? Would you want that to be out in the wild, such
| that a kid in your daughter's school could get access to
| her phone/social media/camera/pictures?
|
| I am pretty sure you do want _some_ level of security.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I like the analogy but there _is_ already a level of
| safety after a phone reaches EOL. It seems more akin to
| selling a 5-point harness to somebody who already has a
| seatbelt.
| palata wrote:
| A seatbelt does not lose its ability with time (I have
| never heard about "changing the seatbelts"). So they
| don't need updates. However, software that connects to
| the internet "loses" security with time (as time passes,
| more vulnerabilities are found). That's why we need
| updates: to maintain our non-zero security level. Then
| you could argue that we could have smaller updates with
| fewer patches, because what we have right now is
| overkill. And maybe some of those updates don't really
| matter much, indeed. But some do.
|
| And for those, you need security updates.
| Kasutaja11 wrote:
| How about a high end phone now? I want a top tier device with sd
| slot and headphone jack and not a pain in the ass glued in
| everything
| dsr_ wrote:
| This "just" needs a better screen and 50% more RAM and it would
| be quite competitive with $600 phones.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| The Librem 5 is still on backorder as of today but is likely to
| reach shipping parity later this year.
|
| Not exactly top-tier hardware-wise. But the Librem is running a
| mainline Linux kernel, so it will have a decade or more of
| software support and security updates.
| bennysonething wrote:
| How would this compare to a pixel 6a?
| fatih-erikli wrote:
| I wouldn't. It'll explode in your pocket.
| peterlk wrote:
| And it comes with a 3mm headphone jack! Hallelujah!! I'm so, so
| glad someone is stepping up to fill this niche. My only
| complaint, and it's kind if a big one, is that the screen is too
| damn big. I'm tired of phone manufacturers forcing me to carry a
| television in my pocket. I want something small that I can hold
| in one hand without a pop socket. I'll trade performance, camera
| quality, basically anything for a phone with a small form factor.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Nokia phones have always kept them, and FM radios as well in
| some models.
| crispinb wrote:
| So very much agree. I just want a pocketable, repairable,
| physically robust generic phone that does all the basic things
| at modest cost. The only circumstance under which I'd consider
| the price tag of a 'premium' phone (notice how corporations
| have trained everyone into this risible use of language?) is if
| it ran a real OS and could be used as a primary computing
| device. But until we reach that Schlarrafenland I would like a
| smaller version of this Nokia.
| asimops wrote:
| Have a look here: https://smallandroidphone.com/
| prmoustache wrote:
| My samsung galaxy a<something> as well as my girlfriend's
| smartphone both have 3.5mm jacks.
|
| I wouldn't call that a niche when most models still have it.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The A range is the middle range for Samsung, and the latest
| ones A33 and A53 no longer have them.
| prmoustache wrote:
| See reply above
| grujicd wrote:
| A<something> is probably A52 or A72. These are the models
| from 2 years ago. A53/A73 from last year don't have headphone
| jack. And that's industry wide trend.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I checked we have A12s and A21s. I looked at what is
| available right now in the A range and the A13 which
| probably replace the A12 still has an headphone jack.
| arran-nz wrote:
| Checkout the Asus Zenfone 8, it's smaller, has 3mm jack, and
| supports LineageOS.
| ocimbote wrote:
| It's +600EUR.
|
| I'd rather buy 4 of the Nokia and live with the unwanted big
| screen rather than having the "right" form factor for 4x the
| price. That's not even a compromise here.
| Zetobal wrote:
| It won't be lagging and force closing apps because of low
| ram though.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| you want a watch (wrist or pocket)
| hedora wrote:
| Does a standalone cellular watch exist (as a daily driver for
| everything you'd expect in that form factor)?
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I absolutely love my watch and mostly stopped using my
| phone since getting it, but it's mind blowing that such an
| expensive and capable device is forced to piggy back off of
| a phone. Why can't my watch be supported by MacOS rather
| than iOS?
|
| I mean, I know why, but it's crazy. As soon as I find a
| high quality standalone watch I'll start to seriously
| consider not having a phone at all. Or perhaps just not an
| expensive iPhone.
|
| Watches cover pretty much every use case I have with a
| phone.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| what do you still need the phone for since they added
| standalone capabilities?
| paulmd wrote:
| You need an iphone at least to register the watch to the
| account, although I don't think anything forces you to
| keep it after.
| varenc wrote:
| Can the Apple watch last all day if it's using cellular
| for data and doesn't have wifi or a phone to piggyback
| from?
| kungito wrote:
| The battery life is horrible if you try to use it a bit
| more often like you would a phone
| [deleted]
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| i'm pretty sure the apple watch is standalone as of some
| years back but i'm not certain
| varenc wrote:
| You still need a iphone for setup. It's a hard
| requirement. But they did semi-recently create a flow
| where one phone could setup a watch for someone else like
| you're in a "Family Sharing" group with:
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211768
| 999900000999 wrote:
| You have full Android phones in a watch, but it's much
| closer to an emergency backup phone than something you want
| to use daily.
|
| I keep mine in Sports mode, which is basically just a smart
| watch , most of the time
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Plenty of jacks if you know where to look. Midrange phones like
| the Moto G line still have them.
| danuker wrote:
| Don't flash LineageOS on the Moto G until you get a year of
| use at least.
|
| My display started failing after 4 months, when I was
| browsing intensely (and it was hot to the touch but I was
| using a pop holder), but they wouldn't fix it under warranty
| because they claimed the software caused the overheating.
| Screen replacement would have cost 70% of the device new.
|
| That is when I started boycotting smartphones. I have a
| 7-year-old device (second-hand) and I do not use it for
| anything security critical.
| bambax wrote:
| I have a Moto G6, bought in 2018, that works perfectly well.
| It replaced a G4 from 2014 that also worked perfectly well
| until I fried it by plugging it into a custom USB plug that I
| had wired backwards.
|
| I don't quite get the appeal of high end phones or of
| changing so frequently. What works, works.
| foepys wrote:
| I will never buy a high end Android phone for three reasons:
|
| - no headphone jack
|
| - no SD card slot
|
| - all come with ad-ware and un-uninstallable third-party apps
| like Facebook (except for Google Pixels, which don't satisfy
| the first two criteria)
|
| Mid range is where it's at. Why pay $200 more for 256 instead
| of 128 GB when I can put in my 1,000 GB mircoSD card?
|
| It's a shame that Fairphone went with the no SD card trend. I
| would have really liked to buy their phone...
| hommelix wrote:
| Fairphone has a microSD card on their phone. At least there
| is one slot for a microSD card on my FP2 and FP4.
|
| Source: https://shop.fairphone.com/en/buy-fairphone-4 under
| specification/storage -> unfold the block "Storage" and
| under the main storage is : External storage capacity:
| microSD up to 2TB (SD 3.0)
| nehal3m wrote:
| I have a FairPhone 4 with a card slot? No jack though.
| foepys wrote:
| It does? Maybe I misread the specs a few months ago,
| sorry. But as you said it doesn't have a jack.
| motiejus wrote:
| Google removed jack from Pixel, and I went shopping for an
| alternative when my last pixel broke down. Here is my
| filter:
|
| https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?chk35mm=selected&sSIM
| T...
|
| Ip68 is important. I went with xperia 10, and am positively
| surprised. Fits all the checkboxes and less undesired
| software than google. I don't have the mandatory search bar
| in the front screen!
| foepys wrote:
| Your filter includes only eSIM but if you also include
| nanoSIM, you get 183 instead of only 5 results which is
| quite a lot. More than I expected.
| motiejus wrote:
| I need the eSim. :) Obviously removing the filter yields
| more.
| thanksgiving wrote:
| Thank you for sharing. You convinced me to create my own
| list, which is also slim pickings
|
| https://gsmarena.com/results.php3?chk35mm=selected&chkAcc
| ele...
| 0cVlTeIATBs wrote:
| For whatever reason, Xperia phones are given the cold
| shoulder in these discussions. I secretly wish everyone
| who has complained about headphone jack/card slot/hole
| punch/screen size would buy one, and then limit their
| complaining to only whatever remains that an Xperia phone
| doesn't provide.
| astrange wrote:
| Are phone SD cards encrypted? Because they're not fast or
| reliable, so one would at least hope they're secure.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, if you want them to be, by default not.
| foepys wrote:
| The newer microSD cards are quite fast. Not as fast as
| built-in storage but fast enough for things like photos
| and videos if you buy a card with the appropriate speed
| class. V30 512 GB costs about 40EUR including VAT here in
| Germany.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#Class
| danuker wrote:
| Because tech companies are about to fill your storage with
| un-uninstallable bloat.
|
| Built-in storage is the next limitation, if you get past
| holding your huge-screen no-grip phone securely (like with
| a pop holder) and the battery that degrades exponentially
| f(time).
| tildef wrote:
| Might be worth having a look at Sony if you want to spend
| more money for whatever reason. Latest Xperia 1 and 5 both
| have 3.5mm jacks and SD card slots. There is some
| preinstalled software (camera apps, Google apps, probably
| FaceBook) but overall not too-too bad.
| toastal wrote:
| Headphone jack and OLED display are my only two musts on a new
| smart phone. Wireless earbuds are scam solution by the problem
| created by removing the jack. But I really can't go back to IPS
| on any display in my life where the experience and color
| matter.
| astrange wrote:
| Wired earbuds are obnoxious for phone use cases because the
| cables get tangled up and cause telephonics - that's when
| walking/running/touching the cable causes it to send
| unintended sound into your ears.
|
| For desktop use cases they have the problem that you have to
| take them off to get up.
| toastal wrote:
| Not saying there aren't use cases where it would be
| preferred, but you can still use truly wireless earbuds
| with a Bluetooth capable phone/laptop/desktop that has a
| 3.5mm headphone jack. You can't however jam a plug into a
| phone without a jack--the option has been removed. There
| was a time before the headphone jack was dropped that very
| few people had wireless earbuds or cared, and now that
| choice to switch was placed on them. When we talk about the
| ethics of e-waste and repairability, which lasts longer: a
| pair of IEMs with detachable cables, headphones with
| detachable cables + replaceable whatever the cup material
| is made out of, or Bluetooth headphones with battery and a
| processor? Do my IEMs ever need a firmware upgrade? Are
| firmware upgrades only deliverable via Android or iOS apps
| only? Some folks would take the minor inconvenience of
| having to take off headphones to get up in trade for a
| product that will last a decade or longer. Some of these
| earbuds, when you buy them and the battery dies or swells,
| you have to throw the whole thing out. Instead it feels
| like the same powers that want us cycling through new smart
| phones every 3 years, want us replacing the same audio gear
| just as often.
| scarface74 wrote:
| USB c headphones are dime a dozen as are headphones with
| lightning adaptares.
|
| But worrying about ewaste from headphones and then buying
| an Android phone with a piss poor history of long term
| operating system support is looking at the wrong place
| astrange wrote:
| > You can't however jam a plug into a phone without a
| jack--the option has been removed.
|
| You can use an adapter? Or a headphone amp with a BT
| receiver, I have one.
|
| Considering the light weight of wireless headphones it
| doesn't seem like they're actually a significant ewaste
| issue, especially since earbuds aren't repairable either.
|
| It is good that larger over ear headphones have
| replaceable cords, but I don't know, people are too
| enthusiastic about audiophile headphones - the ones they
| recommend only work well in perfectly quiet listening
| environments. In the real world you want noise
| cancelling, not open ear cans.
| goosedragons wrote:
| You can get in ear monitors with replaceable cords too.
| You can even get cords for them to make them Bluetooth.
| Not even expensive ones, like $20 ones.
|
| I think Bose still has wired noise cancelling headphones
| too.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Oddly covid made me finally just give up and get wireless
| headphones, simply because i'd go to take off the mask and
| catch my headphones.
|
| Well that and the struggle of finding half decent
| headphones that fit my needs (decent enough they wouldn't
| die in a year, but not so expensive i'm going to regret it
| if they get damaged or lost).
|
| I still hate that I now have headphones that can die, but
| it is nice to be able to walk around listening to whatever
| without having to carry my phone on me while I
| cook/clean/whatever. Not what i paid for them nice....but
| it's something.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| But wireless sucks too. Would rather user high quality
| cabled headphones. No batterylife to care about, better
| audio.
| grujicd wrote:
| I hate removal of 3.5mm port same as you, but wireless
| earbuds are not a scam per se. I have some Sony buds which
| have great sound and there's no more a minute of untangling
| cable whenever I take them from the bag. However, that's not
| the reason to not have headphone jack since it has other uses
| and can perfectly coexist with bluetooth devices.
| toastal wrote:
| I bought the XM3s to try out a while back when my old
| laptop lacked a jack and offerings for a good OLED are slim
| in my country, but these headphones just don't sound very
| good--especially for the price. My IEM cables are thick and
| don't tangle. I would take untangling 100% over dealing
| with batteries. I thought ANC would be better than it was,
| but the passive noise canceling is just as good in real
| world use--just eliminating low-frequency sounds isn't too
| useful when you can hear the crying baby either way.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| I jumped from apple because at the time, all they had were
| $1000 giant phones. I jumped back because they released the SE,
| and my current motorolla was having quite a lot of issues, and
| I couldn't find anything smaller.
|
| I still have it, and don't plan on buying anything new until I
| can either 1. get an iphone mini with a usb C jack or 2. find a
| competitor that's similar sized.
|
| I'm so so sick of these massive phones.
| scarface74 wrote:
| There has never been a time that all Apple had was $1000
| giant phones.
| girvo wrote:
| I will give up my iPhone 13 Mini when it's no longer possible
| to repair it. It's a near perfect phone for me for similar
| reasons. Big phones suck.
| cassepipe wrote:
| You can get a refurbished Samsung Galaxy S7 for under 99$:
| https://www.backmarket.com/en-us/l/samsung-galaxy-s7/d416373...
|
| And it will under guaranty for at least six months. The website
| guarantees a at least 70% of the orginal capable batteryu
|
| That's what I have. Has a jack, a physical home button and back
| button, a microSD slot. Don't know your expectations but the
| camera is better than the expensive camera I bought in 2005. I
| am not ashamed of sending photos to any of my friend.
| Performance is fine. (Usage: I text, use Google Maps, YouTube
| and I browse without an issue)
| scarface74 wrote:
| A used phone with 70% battery capacity and it only supports
| an Android version 5 years old from what I can tell.
|
| The same generation iPhone - the 6S just got a security
| update a couple of weeks ago.
| dajonker wrote:
| If those are the only apps you use, you might be fine for a
| while but lots of apps won't support old Android versions
| which could be problematic if you depend on such apps, e.g.
| for banking or signing into government services.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Nah I use for banking too. I use a bunch of apps and I am
| yet to find any that doesn't work.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| Similarly, I recently picked up a Sony XZ1 Compact for cheap.
| It's a brilliantly sized phone with an SD card slot,
| fingerprint reader, and headphone jack. Turns out flagship
| processors from 2017 still work just fine, especially when
| you have ad blockers to keep the nastiest globs of JS from
| trashing your CPU and battery.
|
| It's a fair bit bigger than my old 2016 iPhone SE, but it's
| actually _smaller_ than the iPhone Mini.
| graderjs wrote:
| Agree! There should be a couple of different form factors? I
| got an iPhone 13 mini specifically because I hate the giant
| phones. My hands aren't small or weak (I do chinups and push
| ups, practically have to as maintenance to prevent nerve pain,
| muscle pain, low circulation with all the typing I do), but why
| do I need to ruin my finger nerves and muscles and wrist
| carrying and using a GigantoPhone. I find phone use to be way
| worse for my biomechanical finger-hand-wrist health than typing
| on a HHKB.
|
| But also...I think this would be hilarious (in a good way) if
| this (thankfully anachronistic throwback) repairability really
| took off and in the next 3 years Apple releases a budget / or
| premium( prolly premium? knowing Apple hehe ) set of products
| like a framework style repairable moddable laptop, and a
| "wePhone" that you can swap parts and mod. Truly I think
| there's a cool cyberfunk future in there somewhere. TikTokking
| teens showing off their latest phone mods, builds and hacks
| (and holoscreens). I mean they already "discovered" the flip
| phone and went mad. I think this is _waiting_ to happen :) ;p
| grujicd wrote:
| I don't know about iPhone, but Android has navigation
| gestures where you sweep from edge for back, from bottm for
| home and few more. I started to get thumb pain from light of
| small phone (S10e), and pain went away after switching to
| these gestures. Yes, these gestures have slight issues in
| some cases but you can't argue with RSI. Took a day or two to
| get used to. I assume pain came from scretching thumb too
| much for reaching controls on the bottom. So give it a chance
| if your phone supports something like that.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Loving my Unihertz Atom (for a particular sports application).
| https://www.unihertz.com/products/atom if you haven't tried
| one. I agree that it would be great if Nokia did this product
| but in a reasonable size.
| paulmd wrote:
| It's interesting hearing in this thread about some of the
| smaller android companies, you mentioned unihertz and someone
| else mentioned ulefone. Something a little different from the
| usual flagships at least.
| donjoe wrote:
| Umidigi is another company to mention. Their Bison models
| pretty much fill the gap between a massive rugged phone and
| a standard phone. The phone's battery @~6kmAh usually
| covers a 2-3 day trip without charging.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Another one, JFYI, is Cubot.
|
| I bought an el-cheapo, small (really small) one (originally
| only to manage EU green passes) that (after that use was
| over) I started using as a "backup" phone when I cannot
| carry the (larger, heavier) "main" one.
|
| It turned out to be not bad at all, of course within its
| limits.
|
| The model I got was a King Kong mini, but I believe that in
| the last two-three years they made some two or three newer
| models.
| komali2 wrote:
| I've been running unihertz jelly 2 for ages and it's
| phenomenal. The only two annoyances I have are no 5g (I'm
| always tethering my laptop) and that google maps scooter mode
| just isn't available on this phone and there's basically no
| solution to get it working (and I'm hard pressed to figure
| out whose fault that is - google for failing to recognize the
| device location? Unihertz for failing to indicate my location
| correctly?)
| officeplant wrote:
| Any idea if these work fine with android auto? First I'm
| hearing of this company and the Jelly 2E for $159 is kind
| of awesome.
| komali2 wrote:
| I wouldn't recommend 2E as the jelly is already a very
| low power phone that struggles with Slack for example
| lol.
|
| No idea if they work with Android Auto but isn't android
| auto some kind of mapping plus music UI? The screen is
| quite small, I don't use it mounted on motorcycle when I
| ride for that reason.
| officeplant wrote:
| Ah no android auto uses my car's display in this case. I
| found reports that it works but lags on the 2E, but works
| fine on the older more powerful 2.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I have one that I use as an mp3 player. My main gripe is
| the awful battery life.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| They basically need four models to pretty much cover all the
| bases:
|
| 1. Budget:
|
| - Basic processor/camera/space with 6 inch screen
|
| - Basic processor/camera/space with 4.5 inch screen
|
| 2. Flagship
|
| - High-end processor/camera/space with 6 inch screen
|
| - High-end processor/camera/space with 4.5 inch screen
| _trackno5 wrote:
| While I enjoy smaller phones, it makes no sense to have high
| end smaller phones.
|
| It doesn't sell.
|
| Just look at Apple's sales and their cancellation of the
| mini. I'd love it to be the opposite so I didn't have to hold
| on to my iphone 12 mini, but it's just how things are. Most
| people don't like smaller phones and would be a waste of
| resources to make high end ones.
| philistine wrote:
| We've been seeing reports for a while that the iPhone 14
| Plus is selling softly. It might not be the mini's fault;
| perhaps Apple simply cannot get four models to sell like it
| wants to.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Plus sales were cannibalised by the Pro coming out
| earlier.
|
| Mini sales were just not enough to justify having to
| order a miniature display by current standards.
| joshspankit wrote:
| _I_ buy them. I'd even suggest a deviation: make them a few
| mm thicker and fill the extra space with battery. I'd use a
| small powerful multi-day battery smartphone far more than
| anything else.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| My own personal itch: a phone with an antenna setup
| allowing it to function as a hotspot just as well as an
| actual hotspot, combined with longer battery life. I'd
| actually be happy with a phone half-the thickness of my
| jetpack but that could replace my jetpack because its
| antenna setup was as good.
| wartijn_ wrote:
| There is a huge gab between high and low and devices. Some
| manufacturers will want to sell - and many consumers will
| buy- a few models that are more expensive than $150 but less
| than $1000.
| gbear605 wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing the hyperbole, but almost all iPhones and
| Google Pixels fit into that gap. The base iPhone 14 is
| $799, the iPhone SE is $429, and there are older model
| iPhones in between. Even the base iPhone 14 Pro is $999,
| technically in the range. A Pixel 7 is $599, a Pixel 7 Pro
| is $899, and a Pixel 6a is $449.
|
| There's perhaps a gap in the $150-$400 range, but used
| phones can definitely be found there, and I would bet that
| there are Android manufacturers that sell new phones there.
|
| (All prices are USA and before tax, so other markets will
| be a bit more expensive.)
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I don't know if the US market is very different, but in
| Spain I'd say like 80% of the phones people buy fit into
| that gap...
|
| Below $150 you only have the cheapest models by brands
| like Xiaomi, and over $1000 you only have the flagships.
|
| There are plenty of models in the middle, not only Pixels
| but also a plethora of offerings from Oppo, Samsung,
| Xiaomi, Vivo, Honor, Poco, etc. Name any [X,X+100]
| interval in that range and there are phones of that
| price. Last week I went with my mother to buy one for
| her, she settled for the Oppo Reno 8 (about $500) but
| there was the Lite version at about $100 less, the Pro
| version at about $100 more, and then other lineups from
| the same brand (Find X5 in Lite/normal/Pro versions,
| etc., and many, many others we didn't even look at); and
| that's within a single brand.
|
| So your parent comment doesn't make much sense to me even
| if it's hyperbolic. Maybe the available offer is really
| different in the US, here there are definitely plenty of
| models of all prices. A different story is that all
| brands tend to make the same decisions and follow trends
| (e.g. ditch the headphone jack, make screens larger,
| etc.) so everything is sameish and even if there are
| hundreds of models to choose from, it's possible to not
| find a model that fits one's needs. I myself imported my
| phone (Pixel 6 Pro) from Australia because no brands
| other than Apple or Samsung seem to sell 512 GB storage
| models here...
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| There's no significant market for a 4.5" screen phone in
| 2023. It's not like manufacturers haven't tried.
|
| I would also argue that small screens are awful for consuming
| content nowadays. People with bad eyesight struggle with
| bigger fonts in a small screen, and publishers tend to try to
| fit more and more content in each screen. It's systemic.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > I would also argue that small screens are awful for
| consuming content nowadays
|
| I wouldn't. Most content is time wasting nonsense and ads.
|
| > People with bad eyesight struggle with bigger fonts in a
| small screen,
|
| My experience with Presbyopia is that a bigger screen is
| still impossible to read without glasses. Without glasses
| my only hope is to pinch zoom or browser zoom which works
| on both large and small screens.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| You cannot pinch to zoom in most apps.
|
| Also, if you think that most content is not worth
| consuming, thus smaller screens are "good enough",
| perhaps you are not part of the target market anyway.
| There are still feature phones out there for the minority
| who holds that sentiment.
| sekai wrote:
| Pixel 5 is the best value small factor Android phone at the
| moment.
| mickotron wrote:
| I just want a phone that gets regular updates and security
| updates for 5+ years. Why give me hardware that can be repaired
| when the software is not supported after a few years?
| roryisok wrote:
| I live waaaaay behind the curve, phone wise. I buy phones from
| about 5 years ago and I don't spend more than about 150 at a
| time. Every now and then a phone comes along that makes me want
| to break that trend and buy something new, and this is definitely
| a strong contender.
| tcmb wrote:
| Out of curiosity, that means you deliberately buy phones when
| they are pretty much guaranteed to not receive any updates
| anymore, including security updates? Or do you install custom
| ROMs?
| dmichulke wrote:
| I suppose he uses a custom OS like LineageOS. I do the same,
| it's cheap and much more secure (threat model is also: google
| tracking you).
| roryisok wrote:
| I don't but now I'm curious
| einpoklum wrote:
| Quite possibly - like hundreds of Millions of other people
| who use older phones.
| roryisok wrote:
| This is the reason. All those people who need to be on the
| absolute bleeding edge, sell perfectly good phones for a
| quarter of what they cost new, to people like me. Everyone
| I know buys new phones for anywhere up to 800 for the
| latest Samsungs (and don't even get me started on the Apple
| stuff) and I just can't fathom it. It's like buying a brand
| new car and then selling it three years later to buy
| another brand new one because there's a slightly better
| entertainment system.
|
| And yes, I know some of you probably also do that.
|
| Maybe I'm just a penny pinching old man
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Maybe I'm just a penny pinching old man
|
| Well, most used phones are sold rather than destroyed,
| and get well past their last update. So maybe a quarter
| the phone-time in the world is post-end-of-update. Plus,
| many manufacturers offer brand-new phones which cost
| under 100 USD (look for Doogee X95 for example - 80 bucks
| or so).
| psmith50 wrote:
| Where do you typically go to buy your used phone? eBay?
| Local shops?
| roryisok wrote:
| You can buy used phones on Amazon.
|
| There are loads of premium refurbishment outfits like
| refurbed.at (Austrian) who will sell you a second hand
| device in mint condition.
|
| There are also high-street tech repair shops that usually
| sell second hand devices, and one chain here (webuy) that
| work a little like Gamestop but also buy back
| electronics. They underpay and overcharge just like
| Gamestop, but it still works out way cheaper than new,
| and they provide a warranty.
|
| I've bought from all three sources for myself and my
| family. I only had an issue with a device from webuy one
| time, and since it's local I was able to go back in and
| get a refund the following week.
| [deleted]
| roryisok wrote:
| the first one. I don't really care about updates. as long as
| it has a browser and takes photos, its pretty much all I use
| it for. I actually was a Windows Phone user until very
| recently (and WP8, not even WP10! how's that for behind the
| times) but the IE based browser is unusable on the modern web
| now, and you can't install apps anymore
| behnamoh wrote:
| I had the worst customer support by Nokia. Purchased a Nokia 7
| Plus in another country. The phone had a design issue which
| resulted in loose USB C port. Many people reported the same
| problem online. When I was back in the US, I tried reaching out
| to Nokia support and they literally said their repair center
| won't even accept my phone for repair because I had purchased it
| in another country!
|
| Third party repair shops told me it takes $100 to fix the USB C
| port, almost 1/3 the phone price. Needless to say I didn't do
| that and the phone died shortly after only because it couldn't
| get charged anymore. Switched to other brands and will never buy
| Nokia again.
| tony-allan wrote:
| See Nokia info:
|
| https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-g-22/specs
|
| https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/self-repair
| f311a wrote:
| > The Nokia G22 will cost from PS149.99 shipping on 8 March with
| replacement parts costing PS18.99 for a charging port, PS22.99
| for a battery and PS44.99 for a screen.
|
| So, after a year of use the cost of replacing a battery and the
| screen will be close the market value of a used phone. A lot of
| people will go for a new phone.
| yazzku wrote:
| 22.99 + 44.99 = 67.98
|
| 149.99 / 67.98 = 2.206
|
| So the new phone costs >2x.
|
| Also, why do you need to replace the battery after 1 year, let
| alone the screen?
| f311a wrote:
| New phone does not mean the same model. New phone usually has
| more features and a newer version of Android.
|
| That's how consumers usually think about the benefits of a
| new phone I guess. Very few people care about sustainability.
| yazzku wrote:
| Can't argue with "few people care", but I'm just not sure
| what "new features" or other nonsense you'd be getting.
|
| I think much of the new phone-buying, Apple fanboys aside,
| is that carriers make it easy to constantly upgrade with
| "$0" upgrade plans (where you basically end up paying the
| full cost of the phone anyway.) Legislation to ban or shape
| this kind of advertising could be beneficial to reduce
| e-waste.
| aaronchall wrote:
| Perhaps close in absolute terms but still less than half the
| total price.
|
| I have never had to replace a screen before, but I have bought
| new batteries to replace on my own. An easily replaceable one
| would be nice.
| interblag wrote:
| According to these numbers the combined cost of replacing the
| battery and the screen is 22.99 + 44.99 == 67.98, which is less
| than half (~45.3%) of the cost of the original new phone.
| Comparing that to the market value of a _used_ phone is a bit
| unfair, since screens and batteries drive the depreciation of
| used phones more than any other components (ignoring EoL
| timelines for OS security updates, etc), and in this example
| you 're getting new ones. Plus not everyone needs a new screen
| and battery every year.
|
| This definitely isn't going to be for everyone but, for what
| they're trying to do, IMO the numbers seem reasonable.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Not they haven't this phone isn't anymore repairable than an
| iPhone it might be just a bit more serviceable.
|
| Users can't do board or component level repairs, and Nokia isn't
| making schematics, diagnostic software and access to low level
| firmware that will be needed to independently repair this phone
| available.
|
| User replaceable battery is nice, however every other component
| is reliant on a supply on parts being made available for the long
| run which is unlikely to happen since there will never be a
| healthy supply chain for niche devices.
|
| I've serviced multiple iPhones replacing a battery and broken
| screens with no equipment other than what came in the kit (and an
| hair dryer) and not the Apple one.
|
| Yes it's a PITA but honestly they open easily with a hair dryer
| and a suction cup.
|
| What is far more important on the "right to repair" front is long
| term software support which the lack of bricks far more devices
| than any hardware failures, a healthy supply chain and not DRMing
| components.
|
| The former 2 is something that iFixIt always seems to ignore
| especially the first one the latter is something I that should be
| the focus of RtR legislation together with a guarantee for parts
| being made available for a period of X years from when the
| devices officially stop being sold just in the same way that car
| manufacturers and in the past appliance manufacturers were forced
| to.
| ali7388 wrote:
| Users can order cheap parts from china just fine.
|
| The problem is with manufacturers. Encrypting parts, so simple
| part swap does not work. Or replacement screen for $300...
|
| Apple is really really bad when it comes to repairability!
| zamnos wrote:
| "Encrypting" parts also has to do with the black market for
| iPhones. If you steal someone's iPhone, they can brick it
| remotely, so you can't just resell it as a whole working
| device, so you part it out to a shady cell phone repair store
| who will reuse the parts and give you like fifty bucks so you
| can score your next bag of drugs. By embedding serial numbers
| on the parts, Apple stops this and makes the parts unusable,
| driving down the value of a stolen iPhone.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| That's not particularly effective since it seems that most
| repair shops even the none official ones have ways to rest
| the devices.
|
| Also the screen can be still easily reused and the rest of
| the parts can be salvaged for components that end up even
| in Apples own supply chain I suspect.
|
| If your iPhone is stolen it will be in an electronics chop
| shop in China within a week.
| qball wrote:
| >driving down the value of a stolen iPhone
|
| And driving up the cost of repairs. If I want to turn off
| the thing that bricks the identification features, there's
| no technical reason why I shouldn't be able to do that- my
| device follows my orders, not the other way around.
| paulmd wrote:
| > And driving up the cost of repairs.
|
| Yes, but Apple provides low-cost replacement parts. Like
| the cost of an iphone battery via apple store or apple
| self-service is objectively reasonable, so yeah, you
| can't use amazon batteries and who cares?
|
| > If I want to turn off the thing that bricks the
| identification features, there's no technical reason why
| I shouldn't be able to do that
|
| The reason is because it encourages the resale of stolen
| goods, which encourages the theft of goods.
|
| "Why shouldn't my dollars do what I tell them to, they're
| paper in MY wallet" well if what you're telling them to
| do is buy a hot stereo out of the back of a truck, that's
| illegal and society is going to discourage that because
| we don't want _our_ stereo to be stolen next. And stereos
| are going to be built with things (like serial numbers)
| that help prevent that. Even if you feel that infringes
| your privacy (serials are the root of all this tracking
| after all!) tough shit.
|
| That's always the problem, the people complaining pick
| out specific elements and whine about that one thing
| being unfair and ignore that they're specific elements of
| an overall system that includes elements to compensate
| the unfair parts.
|
| Yes, iphones will only accept signed parts _because that
| discourages theft_ , because the phone can't be stripped
| and sold as parts. And then Apple provides subsidized
| services (their service division runs at a loss) for
| people who want repair service, and at-cost OEM parts to
| anyone who wants to service their own phone. That's also
| why you have to buy parts individually - because they
| have to be paired to the phone. Yes, this is inconvenient
| for third-party service vendors who can't just keep a
| backroom of parts, but it's not _infeasible_ , they just
| have to have users order their own parts. This is not
| John Deere where nobody but techs can even order parts,
| everyone can, they just don't _want to have to_.
|
| The big-picture e-waste and service picture of iphones is
| completely fair overall for consumers. It's less fair for
| servicemen who have to deal with subsidized services and
| OEM parts being sold at-cost and losing revenue on
| selling those parts (rossman is not selling you a screen
| at-cost), but, that's what auto service centers had to
| learn to live with when RockAuto showed up in the picture
| too. And none of that is bad for _consumers_.
|
| If you're just making a moral stand that you have a god-
| given right to put a $20 battery in your phone every 6
| months instead of a $40 battery every 2 years, and you
| think that justifies unwinding anti-theft provisions and
| increasing e-waste to do it... just use the
| repair/service chains from the vendor like a normal human
| being, buddy. In the meantime we can all enjoy not having
| our phones stolen and stripped.
|
| Or maybe a better analogy is removing immobilizers from
| cars. I have a god-given right to just have a normal
| metal key without needing to take it into the dealer to
| get it programmed, right? It's my car, why should I have
| to pay the manufacturer just to replace a $2 metal key?
| But in aggregate we're all better off not having well-
| developed criminal networks built around stealing and
| stripping cars... so people have just learned that they
| need to keep at least 2 spare keys at all times to
| program the immobilizer if they lose one, or else you'll
| have to take it in to a dealer and have the key
| programmed. It's just not that big a deal to most people,
| and actually the opposite is true - not having your car
| stolen is actually a huge deal to them.
|
| Could you build a car without an immobilizer? Sure. Would
| it be more expensive to insure? Yes. Does anybody
| actually want that, apart from a few weirdos? No.
| qball wrote:
| >well if what you're telling them to do is buy a hot
| stereo out of the back of a truck, that's illegal
|
| You're dodging the question.
|
| If I buy a replacement Home button, I expect the
| fingerprint sensor within to work. The fact is, that
| expectation is _objectively right_ ; it neither breaks
| your arm or picks your pocket.
|
| That's the entire reason why we're getting right to
| repair laws, for that matter; society agrees with me, and
| not you (and so you're wrong, by your own rules).
| dogma1138 wrote:
| The fingerprint sensor is tricky, it's not clear if it's
| actually is Apple's call or not as it's part of secure
| payment flow which would make it quite problematic vis-a-
| vis the certification requirements that the payment card
| industry enforces.
|
| FaceID devices don't have that problem since the front
| camera including the FaceID IR camera simply move from
| the old device to the new one.
|
| It also was technically possible to move the old Touch ID
| sensor just a tad harder.
|
| Apple doesn't lock down screens and battery replacements
| (currently at least) as I've done both on 6-7 devices for
| F&F in the past decade or so.
|
| Apple has by far some of the cheapest 1st party
| replacement services of the major brands, and also the
| cheapest OEM parts now Samsung charges far more at least
| in the UK.
|
| 3rd party parts are also much more readily available.
|
| I've just recently replaced an XS screen with a PS30 kit
| from Amazon for a Galaxy S10 which came out about the
| same time IIRC the cheapest replacement screen kit on
| Amazon is more than PS200 and Samsung does no longer
| offer repair services despite the fact that this device
| isn't even 5 years old.
|
| Apple does a lot of shitty stuff and whilst it's about as
| far from being a right to repair champion as one can
| imagine in reality the long term support they offer for
| their devices and the fact that they release only a
| limited number of SKUs each year whilst moving extremely
| large volumes of them makes that in practice their
| devices are the easiest to repair whether you are using
| 1st party, 3rd party or doing it yourself.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Users can if there is a supply chain for them.
|
| Apple isn't that bad, and being able to find parts for 10
| year old devices and actually having nearly a decade of
| software support makes up for it.
|
| Ofc it would be better if they didn't lock down parts further
| at least the screen and battery aren't locked down yet.
|
| I replaced a screen on an iPhone XS not even a month ago with
| a PS30 kit from Amazon that came with everything needed
| including a new liquid protection seal.
|
| Apple should definitely get flack what what they do but this
| pathetic attempt is just that pathetic this isn't a way
| forward in any practical manner.
|
| If you really think you'll be able to find parts for this
| phone in 5 years then well I got a bridge to sell you. And
| not for nothing it will turn into a paper weight after the 3
| years of software support period will be over.
| gandalfian wrote:
| Shame no compass or gyroscope, both of which I value. I hope the
| idea catches on though the toolkit looks suspiciously like ever
| other mobiles. Lift screen with sucker while prying with pick.
| Then unscrew battery and admittedly wrestle with glue... Still a
| way from the old fashioned, pop off the plastic back and lift the
| battery straight out in 20 seconds.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I worked for a client in 2019 which wanted to make something
| similar to what Nokia is doing now.
|
| They wanted a barebones, no effort to catch up to top
| competitor phone, with more practicality, and everyday
| convenience in mind than putting in 10ghz CPU inside a phone.
|
| We went for a year, and bang... Google probably seen client's
| PR, and _banned_ Android phones without a superfluous gycoscope
| /accelerometer/etc stuff. We spent close to year on it.
|
| I was fuming.
| paulmd wrote:
| In fairness though I had an android phone from 2014 with no
| gyroscope and it was a _problem_. Accelerometer, gyro, and
| GPS are all complimentary features that are used to keep each
| other calibrated. That phone was absolutely terrible in
| cities (NYC and LA) because the GPS would get confused by GPS
| signals echoing off skyscrapers, and all of a sudden it
| decides you 're randomly bouncing around 1/4 mile going
| random speeds and directions. Navigation was unusable in
| dense cities.
|
| Going without a gyro or accelerometer is fine under normal
| conditions because you've got 2-of-3 so you can synthesize
| the output from the remaining sensor (my phone had synthetic
| gyro). But once you lose GPS fix you've lost your last
| degree-of-freedom and the only remaining sensor is the
| accelerometer, at which point the system goes into gimbal
| lock and the platform loses its fix.
| open1414 wrote:
| The problem is after 3-4 years, the only batteries you can find
| are from aliexpress or drop-shippers on Amazon. How does one
| trust these batteries from exploding in the middle of night
| especially if you fall asleep with your phone next to you.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Only one sim slot. What is this, a phone for amputees?
| donutshop wrote:
| If GrapheneOS could support this phone that would be a killer
| combo.
| cristiioan wrote:
| I don't think Graphene OS will support anything else than
| Pixels and posibily in the future a custom phone made for
| Graphene OS[https://www.androidpolice.com/graphene-os-phone/]
| CameronNemo wrote:
| This depends on the phone having an unlockable/relockable
| bootloader.
| s5300 wrote:
| FWIW:
|
| Bought Nokia 7.1 after it came out and it was a great phone
|
| However, because of a chassis design flaw the charge port had
| excess leverage applied on it practically no matter what - had to
| replace charge port 6 times & battery twice over ~1.5 years.
|
| Before that I had a Samsung Moto X Pure for idk how many years
| (got on release date), which I only had to replace an aged
| capacity battery once - no charge port issues to speak of (so it
| wasn't me being excessively clumsy with the Nokia)
|
| Swore off of Nokia after that experience along with a few other
| flaws in the phone... and I _really_ wanted to like that phone.
|
| Currently using 13 Pro Max as first Apple device & have been
| loving it.
|
| Hopefully Nokia can make themselves look good with this phone,
| but it will probably take many years of good faith from them for
| me to ever reconsider
|
| Also: I've been waiting on Nokias Withings watches to release
| their medical applications in the US for _years_ now.
|
| They could perhaps not get folks with medical issues hopes up if
| there is any reason something could be delayed for _multiple
| years_ ...
| herf wrote:
| It's IP52 rated, so not water-safe like the IP67 and IP68 from
| other smartphones. But it probably costs less to fix even so.
| Awelton wrote:
| It isn't going to be available in the US.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| 76.2mm weight is huge. No deal to me unfortunately. Otherwise
| great idea that hopefully be a standard in future.
| shirro wrote:
| My XR20 is the longest I have had a phone without shattering the
| screen. With solidly built hardware the end of software updates
| becomes more of a concern than ease of hardware repairs. You
| can't unlock the bootloader on recent Nokias and install
| LineageOS.
| unosama wrote:
| I had one Nokia, and it was the worst android phone I've
| purchased. The USB-C jack broke after a month of use. The
| firmware never got the bugs ironed out and would constantly
| crash. The battery life was terrible, even brand new.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Wow HN. I really interesting new product comes out, a really
| interesting turn in the right to repair debate, and a return of a
| famous brand.
|
| And instead of talking about that, there are a series of threads
| about how an iphone costing 5 times as much and is famously
| difficult to repair is a better phone than this. Get a grip! Can
| we not have a least one conversation without Apple fanbois wading
| in?
| sva_ wrote:
| Thats like the recent thread where someone asked for a good
| Linux laptop, and the top comment was to buy a mac.
|
| I'll never understand this brand loyalism/consumer mentality,
| and to what lengths Apple folks will go to promote, justify,
| and defend their purchase decisions.
| nazka wrote:
| I don't get it. Why a Mac cannot be a good Linux laptop?
| eptcyka wrote:
| They can, but none of the current ones are well supported.
| nazka wrote:
| Ah ok thanks. Is it because of the new M1/M2
| architecture?
| traviswt wrote:
| I think Asahi Linux is where the progress is. Looking
| promising but rough. Lots of reverse engineering.
| eptcyka wrote:
| T2 chips aren't supported too well either.
| cmurf wrote:
| That's one aspect. They implement UEFI, but no support
| for user loading of certificates. So you have to disable
| Secure Boot, making it considerably less secure than
| alternatives. There's no interface or drivers for T2, so
| again less secure than alternatives with TPM 2.0.
| sva_ wrote:
| I think you'd have to be willing to be extremely
| enthusiastic dealing with all the shortcomings of the
| experimental support currently. Maybe older MacBooks are
| somewhat supported, but the ARM (Asahi Linux) is alpha
| right now, and a lot of stuff simply isn't implemented.
|
| There's also some individual differences, i.e. from what
| I've heard you won't ever be able to run something like the
| Xen Hypervisor as Apple didn't fully implement the Arm spec
| s.t. some opcodes are missing.
| willhslade wrote:
| I'm not going to wade into this flamewar but I will say one
| thing. Apple is what it says on the tin. It's a curated
| garden that mostly just works. At a certain point in your
| life and your career you don't have weekends to spare on side
| projects and, especially in the tools that you use the most
| to interact with the Internet (phone, laptop) you want it to
| work the first time. I've flirted with Linux and for what it
| is, it's great, but I'm mostly done with hunting down drivers
| not working. Apple gives me my time back.
| runarberg wrote:
| I got the Nokia G-100 about a month ago for less than 200
| USD and it worked fine out of the box. In fact I would say
| it worked better out of the box then my partner's iphone
| mini. My nokia has a headphone jack, it came with a charger
| with the correct ports etc. My partner on the other hand
| had to immediately purchase all the appropriate dongles and
| chords to fit the proprietary ports.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Apple works great if you use it to do the 6 things it
| supports natively and that's it.
|
| If you want to go outside the walled garden of apple, even
| windows is better. Old software, incompatible software,
| weird software? Nope. USB->rs232? Good luck finding that
| kext, but it just works on linux, and the cd in the box has
| the windows drivers. Some weird vpn setup? Good luck. Need
| a non standard hotspot setup with wpa enterprise? Good
| luck.
|
| So yes... if you just need a browser, sure,.... if you need
| anything more, as many people here do, then macs might not
| be the best or most flexible choice.
| nextos wrote:
| > [...] hunting down drivers not working
|
| This sounds like a really outdated opinion about Linux.
|
| If you make a little effort selecting decently supported
| hardware, everything should work out of the box.
|
| I actually use Linux (NixOS) because for my particular
| usecases, maintenance burden is _lower_ than macOS.
| smoldesu wrote:
| You don't even need Linux to confirm this for yourself.
| Nix on Mac is a smoother package management experience
| than any of the Mac-native ones I've tried.
| nextos wrote:
| Sure, but NixOS goes one step further than Nix and also
| manages system packages.
|
| These include the kernel and kernel modules such as
| drivers, which was the OP's complaint.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Oh please. Get a grip.
|
| I've honestly got no idea what things are like in this space
| post-ARM-transition. I don't really care, either.
| Historically though, there have been enough people claiming
| that the hardware quality of a MacBook is so good that it's
| worth buying one just to run Linux on it, for it to be
| considered a 'serious option'.
|
| Are you sure that "promote, justify, and defend their
| purchase decisions" isn't just code for "liking something
| that I don't like"?
|
| The undertones of this mentality are so gross and elitist.
| sva_ wrote:
| Apple fanboys calling others elitist. Now I've heard it
| all.
| Klonoar wrote:
| So just to be clear: you want to discuss a smartphone, in a
| vacuum, completely ignoring what - barring a few select Android
| phones - effectively sets the bar for the industry.
|
| It's not "fanbois", it's just reality. HN isn't the one that
| needs to get a grip here.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| People could compare the Nokia to comparable phones perhaps?
| There are other repairable phones available, although I don't
| recall any this cheap?
|
| In other news my Ford is not as comfortable as your Rolls
| Royce, and my Sekonda watch is not going to last like your
| Rolex....
| [deleted]
| Klonoar wrote:
| _> People could compare the Nokia to comparable phones
| perhaps?_
|
| They could! And in fact, do.
|
| OP, however, is complaining about _the existence_ of the
| Apple comparison, which is simply unavoidable. I 'm just
| responding that instead of complaining about it, move on to
| the discussions that float your boat.
| mNovak wrote:
| >> and my Sekonda watch is not going to last like your
| Rolex...
|
| No one tell my Timex! This thing's running for life
| eptcyka wrote:
| Right, when discussing any car, no discussion can possibly be
| good unless it includes the Tesla model s, regardless of
| budget or applicability.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Since when has Apple ever made an easily repairable budget
| anything? This is a niche in which Apple is non existent.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Since last year their phones have best ranking
| https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability
|
| (Yes Fairphone have excellent score too, but they are
| basically ancient)
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Not sure how you read that as the best ranking. Only
| among flagship phones, which is a market where
| repairability is largely an afterthought.
|
| Fairphone is a repairable budget phone. You can't compare
| budget to flagship on performance or modernity of the
| hardware. That makes no sense.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| TBF Fairphone will be far likely to break over the
| isolated iPhone 13. Add the lack of software support and
| it's far more expensive to own.
|
| All that said, bend it whichever way you like and this
| Nokia's value is impossible to beat.
| dartharva wrote:
| The iPhone does not set any bar for budget phones.
| Irrelevant.
| Klonoar wrote:
| It's not irrelevant. :)
|
| Buying a "budget" phone that has no guarantee of long term
| parts availability, OS upgrades, etc is certainly worth
| comparing to Apple's lowest cost devices factored out over
| the sheer number of years they offer support/service for. I
| appreciate the aspect of right-to-repair on this device and
| I'm not saying the device shouldn't exist, but it's the
| height of absurdity to think it wouldn't get compared to
| Apple's devices at some point in the conversation.
|
| Hell, even conversations about the Fairphone end up drawing
| these same comparisons since Apple's recycling program is
| pretty good.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That's one way of looking at it.
|
| On the other side of the coin, _all_ Apple devices have
| an expiry date. Many Android phones unlock their
| bootloader and enable community support after the vendor
| has thrown in the towel. Nothing similar exists on iOS,
| and it 's a damn shame - it forces Apple to depreciate
| usable hardware. In a world where reuse and reduction is
| preferable to recycling, Apple should stop pretending
| like it's free recycling program is a replacement for
| serviceable design and open hardware. Until Apple stops
| being a necessary step of the recycling process,
| recycling iPhones is no easier than disposing of
| Asbestos.
|
| People (rightfully) get pissed when others shit on
| camera-shy companies like Nokia or Dell trying something
| repair-friendly. You're like the person who's saying that
| nobody should buy the Raspberry Pi because your 1u
| rackmount has better performance-per-dollar. You're not
| wrong, but it's an apples-to-oranges product comparison.
| mNovak wrote:
| Maybe I'm a luddite with my 2017 phone, but what's
| meaningfully changed in smartphones in the past 5yrs that
| Apple is setting the bar on? (Besides pushing screens to the
| bezel, and the cameras multiplying)
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's
| tedious, not what this site is for, and destroys what it is
| for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Klonoar wrote:
| I'm pointing out that the comment is inviting a flame war,
| and that it's natural to compare things to the elephant in
| the room.
| dang wrote:
| The GP was obvious flamebait and I replied to it with a
| scolding. But your comment was also flamebait. It's
| important not to reply with more of the same--that's how
| we get a downward spiral.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| sor...
| lopatin wrote:
| I just assumed the repair kit is for anything the Nokia is
| dropped on rather than the phone itself.
| mikkom wrote:
| It's worth noting that even if this phone is called "Nokia"
| it doesn't have much to do with original Nokia phones. It's a
| new company that bought the rights to use the Nokia brand
| name.
| e63f67dd-065b wrote:
| There's a funny story here, HMD Global just so happens to
| have very similar execs and employees as the former Nokia,
| some of whom work in the HQ that just so happens to be
| right across from the old Nokia HQ. The company is very
| much a spiritual successor to Nokia.
| sheeparepayed wrote:
| [flagged]
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Or keeping the price up on the second hand market?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > And instead of talking about that, there are a series of
| threads about how an iphone costing 5 times as much and is
| famously difficult to repair is a better phone than this. Get a
| grip! Can we not have a least one conversation without Apple
| fanbois wading in?
|
| I agree with your sentiment but think we overestimate how much
| people value right to repair. This is some proof.
| justinclift wrote:
| > we overestimate how much people value right to repair.
|
| After all this time, perhaps it's more stockholm syndrome?
| rconti wrote:
| And instead, I join the comments, and the top-rated post is a
| counter-rant about Apple fanbois that's frankly no more
| constructive or useful than the content it's complaining about.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| Probably there was enough people tired of fanbois. Even half
| of this thread is full of them.
|
| There's at least weekly Apple worship thread on HN, about
| laptop speakers, icons they did 20 years ago or other
| largerly irrelevant thing, that Apple apparently did kinda
| well. It's always full of people exclaiming that "Apple is so
| ahead of competition".
|
| Really it's face-palm worthy.
| izacus wrote:
| I've noticed that modern Americans really really really dispise
| choice on the market. If it differs even a little bit from the
| average, watered down "majority" choice, it's immediately
| attacked and disparaged. You need to be part of the ingroup,
| have the same brands in your hand and on your body. Like the
| 1984 Apple ad - everyone with gray iphone, gray MacBook and
| AirPods in their ears.
| zamnos wrote:
| Why do I have such a different impression? I go to a
| supermarket and see 30 different kinds of toothpaste, 50
| kinds of chips, and a dozen different kinds of alcoholic
| seltzer waters in the liquor aisle. The paradox of choice is
| tiring!
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| An easy fix is to have a modicum of self esteem.
| hot_gril wrote:
| No. I have nothing against choice, I just want the best
| phone, and it's not this. If only there were a thriving set
| of standards for mobile/desktop web apps that obviates the
| need to stick to the iPhone/Android OS duopoly cemented by
| their app stores, I'd probably change phones.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You just want the best phone? Why not a phone that does the
| things you want and need? Why the best? The best of today
| is gone tomorrow. The best phone last year is not the best
| things year. The worst phone this year is better than the
| best phone 10 years ago. How long are you going to try to
| keep up the mirage of having the best? Every new phone
| release must cause massive panic
| hot_gril wrote:
| I mean the best phone for myself. That happens to be a
| first-gen iPhone SE at the moment, but I'd be ok with
| whatever iPhone, and I don't care how repairable it is.
| bitdeveloper wrote:
| I mean, I have to figure out which peanut butter to buy from
| a shelf of 37 peanut butters. If anything, there's too much
| choice in a lot of cases. It's tiring.
|
| I've heard way more Android users disparaging iPhones than
| vice versa. If anything, the fault of iPhone users is not
| even knowing or caring anything else exists.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post nationalistic flamebait.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Do you honestly believe that you're so much better then the
| average person? That you've unlocked some sort of increased
| intellectual ability that's granted you access to The Secret?
| That you're just...better than the lemmings?
|
| Statistically speaking, you're probably of about average
| intelligence and just have delusions of grandeur relative to
| "modern Americans", perhaps based on a fundamental
| misunderstanding about their thoughts, intentions, and
| motivations. Do you really think that people "really really
| really despise" choice in the market? Frankly the most
| impassioned and vitriolic view...the one that I'd say
| involves "really really despising" something, or someone, is
| yours.
| tomrod wrote:
| > one conversation without Apple fanbois wading in?
|
| Aye. Almost like we shouldn't have a conversation about Android
| without mentioning the spyware and telemetry that both Android
| and IOS collect being more than enough reason to use Purism and
| other open alternatives.
|
| #stallman_was_right
| rektide wrote:
| Right to repair, but the software is uttely unmaintainable &
| actively rotting.
|
| This is cool, but it shows how bad the Android world is. The
| hardware is only half the picture.
|
| Iphone just happens to be the obvious comparison.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Seriously, what is meant by this?
|
| I'm asking as someone who way back when had a nokia n900, did
| some android rooting, then when that got unrewarding
| essentially switched to "whatever is second cheapest at Best
| Buy at the time" and have had zero major problems doing
| pretty much all the regular life things (and this includes
| e.g. Pokemon Go with the kids?)
| rektide wrote:
| Few phones even support rooting anymore. Most phones never
| ever get a new kernel, & most kernels are incredibly
| difficult vendor-provided messes whose source is basically
| useless, utterly incompatible with upstream Linux & unable
| to be applied at all to newer kernel versions. Maybe maybe
| maybe the new Android plan of creating stable interfaces
| for drivers improves this but it's to soon to tell.
|
| The n900 was from an actual Linux era. Versus Android which
| was a sideways port of Danger's mobile OS onto Linux, &
| unlike Maemo ignoring the entire Linux userland/freedesktop
| stack.
| pimeys wrote:
| I've been looking for a browser extension I could use to filter
| certain things out from my internet feeds. For example making
| anything related to Apple completely vanish for me. I wonder
| could the GPT be utilized for this?
| cwillu wrote:
| I made an Ask HN post on this subject a while back. Got 10
| upvotes before it got flagged and hidden. :)
| pimeys wrote:
| I actually stopped reading HN as much as I used to in the
| past 10+ years because of this. I found out running a small
| fediverse server and just curating my own feed keeps all
| the Apple stuff out from my view, and it's also easy to
| just hide/ban/filter people. It's sad, because I really
| don't want to jump in into many HN threads anymore...
| capableweb wrote:
| User-scripts is what you're looking for, commonly use to
| customize your browsing experience with small JS scripts. Can
| be run with for example TamperMonkey. Writing a script that
| blacks out or filters comments with a mention of Apple would
| be trivial ("if .comment's innerText contains Apple,
| $element.remove()" in short)
| r0fl wrote:
| Why would I care about a DIY repair phone? Am I to assume that
| all of a sudden I'm a phone repair expert and when I take my
| phone apart I'll be able to put it together perfectly and keep
| the same waterproof levels as a manufacturer would?
|
| This is at best an out of the box marketing gimmick by Nokia to
| sell some phones.
| [deleted]
| liendolucas wrote:
| Yes, but is not only the right to repair. For how long Nokia is
| willing to manufacture spare parts for this phone? A year, two?
| What if after 3 year my phone breaks and I can't repair it not
| because a repair issue per se but because of part availability.
| This already happened to me with a Nokia 7 Plus, which is a
| phone I like because it came with Android One. Now on the tech
| side, the phone is just fine, camera specs, screen is really
| good, battery is still good. I broke the charging board and the
| screen. Original parts for it no longer produced, only OEM ones
| with lower quality. So I would take this with a grain of salt.
| So will I need to buy the phone and immediately a pack of spare
| parts just in case because tomorrow they will be no longer
| available?
| bingo-bongo wrote:
| To be fair: "..and genuine parts available for five years
| via.."
|
| ..but even so, it's still a valid concern.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Apple fanboys really need to convince themselves that their
| phones are better, otherwise it's an existential threat for
| their egos.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Let me guess. This is a view you picked up in - at the latest
| - the 2000s, and haven't once reflected on since then. What's
| next? A joke about writing a novel at Starbucks?
|
| People that - especially in 2023 - make your argument, are
| tying technology choices to personality just as much (and
| quite likely way more) than any current "Apple fanboy". I've
| got no doubt that your ego is tied up in your technology
| choices. You're on Hacker News for crying out loud. Your
| impression of the "other team" is just
| particularly...outdated.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's
| tedious, not what this site is for, and destroys what it is
| for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| stodor89 wrote:
| No, it seems we can't. Welcome to 2023!
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Hi dang. I'm sorry it degenerated like this. I generally
| wanted to read what the hn crowd had to say about about this
| new device, but all I saw was the usual trolling by an all
| too loud group. 90% of the comments were (and still are) off
| topic at best. However I understand that moderation is not my
| job and rather than calling it out I should have flagged it
| for you. Since we are in a rare discussion though, I see a
| growing number of comments from users who are getting very
| frustrated by the actions of the fanatically pro-Elon and
| pro-Apple cabal. Since any criticism of them seems to invite
| a flamewar, I am concerned that debate is getting stiffled. I
| really hope they are just enthusiasts and not staff guerrilla
| marketeers, but the effect is the same. We should be
| discussing this phone and instead we are reading Apple
| marketing.
| dang wrote:
| The problem is more the upvotes than the comments because
| it's the upvotes that stick a post like the GP to the top
| of a thread, which creates all sorts of unintended
| escalations, as well as derailing the thread into
| offtopicness. But the only way to prevent this from
| happening is not to post such comments in the first place.
|
| I think you're off base about "trolling" in this and
| similar cases. From my perspective HN readers just like
| different things and have different opinions. I didn't see
| any trolling or manipulation in the current thread for
| example. Internet users are orders-of-magnitude too quick
| to jump to such conclusions.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Fawning over Apple products is inescapable here. Anything with
| a CPU must be compared to overly magical interpretations of an
| M1's capabilities.
| mlinksva wrote:
| The positive (and there's plenty of criticism; search and read)
| point being made about iphone is that it has a longer support
| duration. This seems highly complementary to repairability --
| both seem important to maximize useful life -- and thus an
| entirely fair point, no?
|
| I'm recently on my 4th Android smartphone in 12 years (Galaxy
| S, Moto G, Pixel 2, Pixel 7) and would be still on the Pixel 2
| if not for lack of updates, as it's still completely fine
| hardware wise. I guess if I had been an Apple fanboi, I
| would've had at least 1 fewer phones in that time period.
| Really made me think this last time. Hoping my eventual 5th
| smartphone will have very long support and very good
| repariability.
| logifail wrote:
| > The positive (and there's plenty of criticism; search and
| read) point being made about iphone is that it has a longer
| support duration
|
| Yup, and the OTA updates with Tesla are also better than
| you'd get on a car that's 1/10th of the price. Isn't it just
| a little bit over-entitled to bring up any iPhone _in a
| discussion about budget phones_?
|
| Newsflash: the vast majority of the planet can't afford to
| drop $1000+ on a mobile device.
| mlinksva wrote:
| Newsflash (just looked it up), an iphone se is $429, a used
| one is cheaper, and factoring in support duration, may be
| cheaper yet. A friend who would've been among the last
| people I'd expect to use an iphone blogged this
| https://announce.asheesh.org/2022/09/i-switched-to-iphone-
| fo...
|
| I'm really embarrased by this (I've been a borderline Apple
| hater basically my whole life) but also acknowledge
| reality.
| logifail wrote:
| > a used one is cheaper, and factoring in support
| duration, may be cheaper yet
|
| Q: For all those hundreds of millions of people who have
| paid less than $150 for their phone, how many of them
| even gave a second thought to _the support duration_ when
| they decided what to purchase?
| mlinksva wrote:
| I'd guess approximately the same number as those who have
| given a second thought to repairability, i.e.,
| negligible. I'm all for increasing demand for both at the
| margins, including as part of savvier consumers'
| financial calculus.
| rustymonday wrote:
| I had an iPhone 4 many years ago, and Apple nerfed it with
| software updates when the iPhone 6 came out. These updates
| significantly slowed down the phone, pretty much forcing me
| to get a new one after only two years. So I bought an Android
| and never looked back.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| Wouldn't that be 4 years? I also had an iPhone 4 ruined by
| the last iOS updates, but because of the S years it was:
| 4->4S->5->5S->6, so 4 years before battery life and
| performance went bad.
| whitemary wrote:
| Apple actually lost a lawsuit over this, but of course it
| didn't matter because the capitalist government theatre is
| controlled by the ruling class protecting their own, so
| Apple still came out on top.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| The iPhone 4 slowdown came several years before
| "batterygate".
| naijaboiler wrote:
| i remember my initial ipad2. Yeah new ipads came out,
| updated, and the old one became too slow to use after the
| updates. I hated apple products for a long time after
| that. that was 2013
| qwytw wrote:
| IIRC due to the degrading/faulty(?) batteries they had to
| choose between random shutdowns and slowing down the
| phone. I'm not sure I agree with the way they handled
| this but I don't think they did that because of
| "corporate greed".
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I wouldn't be so generous. Slowing down the phone without
| any notification is a major problem. Had they added a
| notification this was happening, there would be no
| problems at all.
|
| Of course, adding such a notification would've prompted
| many users to seek out battery replacements (and a lot of
| non-Apple-authorized repair shops would've been happy to
| meet this demand) and give a new life to their devices,
| where as silently slowing down their device would prompt
| those users to eventually upgrade once they get tired of
| it.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Yeah, they didn't tell Apple Geniuses either IIRC so when
| users came into the store complaining about a slow phone
| they weren't recommending a $99 battery replacement but a
| $699 iPhone 7.
| bmitc wrote:
| > The positive point being made about iphone is that it has a
| longer support duration.
|
| How so? Apple iPhones have one year warranties, are
| notoriously difficult to repair, and Apple charges an arm and
| a leg to "repair" them (usually by basically forcing you to
| do a trade-in and buy a new phone). Apple products will also
| quickly degrade over iOS upgrades.
|
| For example, my iPad Air 2 can barely browse the web with no
| other apps open.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > How so? Apple iPhones have one year warranties, are
| notoriously difficult to repair ...
|
| I think your parent was talking about OS support.
| mlinksva wrote:
| How so? Apologies for not being specific, I was referring
| to support for security updates.
| tomrod wrote:
| > This seems highly complementary to repairability -- both
| seem important to maximize useful life -- and thus an
| entirely fair point, no?
|
| Repairability is more that once you buy it, you actually own
| it.
|
| Apple does not support this model. Real repairability is when
| you can hack all components of hardware and software in your
| domain (which precludes hacking against cell towers, ISP
| telecom equipment, etc.).
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Nor do most Android vendors.
| tomrod wrote:
| Correct, though that isn't concomitant to the point under
| discussion.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I'm recently on my 4th Android smartphone in 12 years
| (Galaxy S, Moto G, Pixel 2, Pixel 7) and would be still on
| the Pixel 2 if not for lack of updates, as it's still
| completely fine hardware wise. I guess if I had been an Apple
| fanboi, I would've had at least 1 fewer phones in that time
| period. Really made me think this last time.
|
| In regards to longterm OS support, iPhones have been getting
| better and better[1]. 6-7 years is pretty darn good for the
| last batch to fall out of support (6+, 7, and SE). It'll be
| interesting to see when the next batch (8 and X) of iPhones
| falls off the cliff.
|
| ---
|
| 1. https://www.statista.com/chart/5824/ios-iphone-
| compatibility...
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| [dead]
| gambiting wrote:
| On the other hand I can still get modern versions of android
| with all the security updates for some ancient android
| phones, you just have to do a tiny bit of tinkering with
| unlocking the bootloader first. That's something you can't do
| with any iPhone.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Does that compete much against a $150-ish phone with 3 years
| of software support and super cheap, user replacable parts? I
| think it's making excuses that the iPhone isn't just a giant
| burning money pit for customers. Why are folks in a
| completely different market segment comparing the two?
| nhchris wrote:
| They're comparing them because software support _shouldn
| 't_ be a problem, regardless of market segment. You can run
| fully up to date linux on 15 year old computers, but in
| moving to phones, they destroyed what we took for granted.
| This is a manufactured problem, and it's no coincidence
| that it lines the pockets of smartphone makers.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Support costs money, and it's part of the price. This
| moralizing is ridiculous.
| acdha wrote:
| That's why this discussion matters: Apple devices have
| much longer lifespans because their economic model is
| correctly aligned -- Apple doesn't mind if you hold your
| iPhone for years because your use of things like the App
| Store, Apple Music, etc. also fund their OS development.
|
| On Android, that's fractured: Qualcomm wants you buying a
| new phone every year or two because they only get paid
| for CPUs and Google doesn't want to subsidize them with
| Play purchases.
|
| This is amplified because the architecture prevents
| people from doing their own support. A PC user can run
| Linux even if Microsoft gives up because the boot loader
| isn't locked to prevent it, although driver support does
| show there are still problems here for the fraction of
| hardware without robust open source drivers or documented
| firmware.
|
| My ideal fix for this would be legislative, requiring
| mandatory minimum support lifetimes (say 7-10 years for
| at least prompt security updates) and some threshold for
| requiring boot loader unlocking. The only Android device
| I had was a Lenovo tablet which they never updated to the
| OS version released a month or so _before_ the hardware,
| and which became unsafe to use on the internet many years
| before the hardware failed (we used it as a white noise
| generator for a baby). That's a ton of e-waste which
| could have been avoided if they weren't allowed to just
| walk away from support because they didn't sell enough
| units to care.
| nhchris wrote:
| That's my point - it _doesn 't_ cost money on PC. I don't
| need "support" from my motherboard vendor to install the
| latest linux.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Yeah. Part of that is radio support (open source phone
| projects have had this problem) and packaging - you still
| need a separate packaged image per phone model. Openmoko
| had the support problem (iirc) pretty early on.
|
| Until those ecosystem issues are fixed, dumping on a $150
| phone for concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have
| to make us pretty ridiculous.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > radio support
|
| What do you mean? Wireless cards on PCs are dirt cheap
| and have fantastic forwards-compatibility with future OS
| releases. There's no reason mobile network cards should
| be any different.
|
| > you still need a separate packaged image per phone
| model
|
| Only if you insist on packaging the image yourself. If
| you don't lock bootloaders and provide API/ABI
| documentation on how to interact with your hardware
| (through a binary blob if necessary), the community will
| often do the rest.
|
| The Android update dumpster fire is a self-inflicted
| problem.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Wifi is unlicensed spectrum. FCC and counterparts have
| restrictions on what cell transceivers can do and that
| has repurcussians when the limits may not be enforced
| with a misbehaving driver. Check out the old openmoko
| lists for details.
|
| We haven't had an IBM PC-level of openness from a phone
| hardware platform. Not one. Shitting on incremental
| improvements (like the serviceability of this Nokia) is
| counterproductive.
| nhchris wrote:
| > Until those ecosystem issues are fixed
|
| Again, that is my point. No company has any incentive, or
| has made any moves to, fix the ecosystem. They're happy
| how there are no standards or documented APIs, how
| everything is a closed binary blob that changes from one
| insignificant version to the next. They don't demand any
| kind of support or openness from hardware suppliers, they
| don't form any standards or demand adherence to them,
| despite their massive market power (if Samsung wanted
| open or standards-compliant hardware, they'd get it),
| _because they directly financially benefit from the
| broken status quo they created_.
|
| > concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have to make
|
| You can spend 2x that on an Android phone, and the
| software situation won't be any better. This is
| deliberate.
| [deleted]
| lallysingh wrote:
| Actually this phone is less then 1/4th the price
| nhchris wrote:
| And a raspberry Pi costs even less, made by a firm with
| negligible resources compared to Nokia, yet has far
| better software support.
| lallysingh wrote:
| That's neither a phone nor the topic of the article. What
| are you going on about?
| crabbone wrote:
| This is disingenuous.
|
| If price was the reason, we'd have phones with longer
| term support at a higher price point. The problem is that
| support is _cheaper_ than making new stuff, but the
| companies would rather sell a more expensive good if they
| can prevent customers from buying the cheaper option.
|
| Support is cheaper for customers because companies
| providing support have to invest into something customers
| want, but doesn't create the same competitive advantage
| in the market where stakes are always rising. I.e.
| companies are incentivized to replace rather than support
| because they need to amortize the cost of R&D that goes
| into making phones with more memory / storage / cameras /
| hoo-hoo-ga-ga. If instead the effort is diverted into
| support, that effort doesn't generate future revenues as
| much as the effort spent on, well, future technologies.
|
| So, the customers don't get good service not because it's
| impossible or prohibitively expensive, but because of the
| lack of a free platform (equivalent to Linux on PC), and
| a lack of regulation that would make it necessary for
| manufacturers to provide longer term support to their
| products (which would've leveled the field, because
| everyone would have to provide similar length of service,
| and so the competitive edge would stay the same).
|
| As long as the manufacturers are in the rats race for the
| fraction of the future market, they'll cut every corner
| possible to get a bigger slice. The cost and the price
| _today_ aren 't as much of a concern for them as the
| survival in the next few years.
| [deleted]
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Depends how likely either one is to break. I haven't had
| case on my latest iPhones for 4 years and never seen break
| it at all. Also - how waterproof is this Nokia?
| leoedin wrote:
| I think I've had 3 phones in the time my wife has had 1
| iPhone 7. Every time I buy a new phone I'm like "but Android
| is cheaper", but I'm fairly sure the lifetime cost of "phone"
| is in her favour at this point. I think my next phone will be
| an iPhone.
| dmix wrote:
| Don't forget AppleCare+ if you do. Not worrying about
| broken screens ($200/each replacement without vs $30
| service fee, with $100 one time AppleCare fee for 2yrs) and
| getting replacement phones on the spot for other damage is
| really a huge anxiety relief and comes with more savings
| than the initial cost. That what helps turn a "phone a
| year" into 3yrs.
|
| Does Google offer something equivalent to AppleCare for
| Pixel phones? I guess there's think like Best Buy extended
| warranties but I've never had to use one for a phone. I'm
| curious how it compares.
| 1986 wrote:
| They do, with uBreakIFix providing fulfillment: https://s
| tore.google.com/us/magazine/preferred_care?hl=en-US
| dmix wrote:
| Nice looks like it's the exact same service fees for
| broken sceens and accidental damage. They copied it
| wholesale to be competitive. Which is a good idea.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| AppleCare will hand you a new phone if you break a new,
| flagship model before they have spare parts. I suspect
| "UbreakIfix" will not do this.
| ptoo wrote:
| Re the AppleCare+ point. If you are unlikely to break a
| screen more frequently than every 2 years on average,
| it's more economical to just not get the service. This is
| ignoring other benefits the AppleCare+ may provide.
| bombolo wrote:
| I used to never break screens, but the newer larger
| phones crack, at least on the corners.
| crabbone wrote:
| I only ever had one smartphone, and that's Samsung Galaxy
| S7 (bought in the year it hit the market: 2016). I will
| have to replace it very soon though because my banking app
| is going to stop supporting the Android version it has, and
| Samsung doesn't provide upgrades.
|
| But... it's not really Android's fault anymore than this is
| Samsung's fault. The phone itself is in a good condition.
| The battery holds the charge for almost as long as it used
| to when bought. Maybe I'm not a typical user, or have very
| modest use patterns that allowed this phone to survive this
| long. Whichever this is, it shows that it's not really a
| problem of Android (I don't like the system for other
| reasons).
|
| Before replacing, I'm going to try to install LineageOS on
| it, and, we'll see, maybe I'll get another couple years out
| of it.
|
| At the same time span, my wife burned through 4
| smartphones. All of them died for reasons unrelated to the
| operating system they have (i.e. were dropped, stolen etc.)
| It's possible that being, in general, cheaper and more
| disposable, Android phones don't live as long as iPhones,
| but this doesn't mean they shouldn't or cannot live just as
| long.
| carlmr wrote:
| >Whichever this is, it shows that it's not really a
| problem of Android
|
| It kind of is though because Android allows for phone
| brands to tweak the stock OS and stop updating even if
| the OS itself is getting updates.
|
| If Android forced all manufacturers to use the stock OS
| with updates, the phone could still get updates, no?
| asmor wrote:
| At least when I still used Android, some SoC
| manufacturers made unmaintainable hacky patches for one
| specific kernel tree (and sometimes the manufacturer
| would then add more customizations to make it even worse)
| and you'd be stuck on that kernel forever.
| nottorp wrote:
| My iPjone XS will turn 4 years old in 2 months. I see no
| reason to change it.
|
| Maybe in 2 more years...
|
| As for hardware repairs should I need them... there are 3rd
| party shops. Dont care what Apple says about genuine parts
| or approved parts or whatever.
| roywashere wrote:
| I have two teenagers. One has an iPhone and he needed a
| screen replacement already three times. The other is on
| android and he just had his screen broken and bought a new
| one, a cheap Samsung phone. Screen replacements are just as
| expensive on both ecosystems. But sometimes it is nice to
| be able to get an affordable, fresh phone, and not have to
| worry as much about loss or theft
|
| Also the top tier Samsungs are more expensive than iPhones
| nowadays
| gman83 wrote:
| FYI you can get LineageOS 20 (Android 13) for your Pixel 2
| with the latest updates: https://www.xda-
| developers.com/lineageos-20-google-pixel-2-a...
| mlinksva wrote:
| That's defnitely a big benefit. I used LineageOS (whatever
| it was called then) to extend the life of my Galaxy S, but
| at that time not having a working phone for awhile was a
| lot less disruptive to life and work, so I didn't attempt
| this time. But once I'm 100% migrated to my new Pixel 7,
| I'll certainly put an alternative ROM on the Pixel 2 to
| extend its non-phone life!
| moremetadata wrote:
| >I used LineageOS (whatever it was called then)
|
| It used to be called CyanogenMod and it was easily hacked
| by the UK authority's.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Whereas the big vendors don't need hacking, the UK
| authorities just have to ask
| pizza234 wrote:
| I used to be a fan of LineageOS, but after a few devices,
| I've found that it's not very robust (for different
| reasons).
|
| There's a bug where location services don't work (and
| require a fix). Then my latest phone where I've installed
| reboots randomly one or more times per day. Both bugs are
| reported, and affect other users.
|
| The camera app of LineageOS 19 was terrible, and wasn't
| able to handle the two cameras of one phone where I've
| tried it.
|
| I will use it in order to make my phone last longer, but I
| don't have high hopes (and I'm not a big fan anymore).
| scns wrote:
| There is this [0]. Gonna fire up Android Studio tomorrow
| and try to get the release build going.
|
| 0: https://github.com/SebaUbuntu/android_packages_apps_Ap
| erture
| testTED wrote:
| Whose "latest updates"?
| pedrocr wrote:
| Last time I used LineageOS while you got the Android
| updates on most devices the underlying kernel and drivers
| were stuck at whatever the manufacturer originally shipped,
| and that included a bunch of security problems on most
| phones. Android security and updates is still a mess after
| all these years. For a while Android One seemed to help and
| I bought all my phones off that list, but even that's now
| gone. At this point anything that's not a Pixel within the
| (very short) support window is probably a big risk. Google
| really screwed this up.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| This is all fixed now. Android 11 based ROMs introduced
| GSI (generic system images) which allow over the air
| updates and they even work with LineageOS.
|
| Needs a newer underlying linux kernel though, so all the
| outdated 2.x kernel ports won't be compatible.
|
| But I agree with you in your general point. Android OEM
| ROMs are a joke when it comes to support and they usually
| are out of date within the first year due to lack of
| maintenance on the vendor side.
|
| I wish there was a more generic platform approach to this
| where drivers could be just packages instead of this
| whole statically built images mess that is also unusable
| for most endusers.
| dominojab wrote:
| [dead]
| cmurf wrote:
| By unlocking the bootloader to use Lineage, I lost ability
| to do contactless payments. And dm-verity is disabled.
| hammock wrote:
| > The point being made about iphone is that it has a longer
| support duration. This seems highly complementary to
| repairability
|
| Seems like you might call that "software repairability"
| mlinksva wrote:
| No, I'd just call it software support duration, or more
| narrowly software security update duration. "Software
| repairability" basically means FOSS (though I don't want to
| underestimate what creative people will do without source
| or permission).
| cjsplat wrote:
| To be clear, the Pixel 2 is unsecurable at reasonable
| performance against Spectre style attacks.
|
| Might not matter to some.
| ENGNR wrote:
| It's the meta rules:
|
| I agree - upvote
|
| I disagree - leave a comment
|
| But to buck the trend - go Nokia, a phone like an x86 is a
| great thing for hackers and to break monopolies, fingers
| crossed it finds and connects with a large consumer segment
| smoldesu wrote:
| Nothing brings people on HN together like technology, business,
| and valiently defending Apple from any form of grounded
| criticism.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's
| tedious, not what this site is for, and destroys what it is
| for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Unlockable bootloader? HTC Nokia hasn't been permitting that so
| far.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Sweet, $44 for an OEM screen is pretty good. Thank you Nokia. If
| there's a de-google option, this would be the best.
|
| EDIT: 3.5mm headphone jack too! Wow.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| I wonder how this compares to the cheapest basic Samsung Android
| phone, A03 or similar. I'll definitely consider this as my next
| phone should the current one need throwing.
| gt565k wrote:
| XDA developers will make a rom and I'm sure it will be a popular
| phone in that community to the point where open source devs will
| port latest android updates for a while.
| flatiron wrote:
| Is the boot loader unlocked? I didn't see that mentioned.
| aspyct wrote:
| This will be nice if and only if there is a way to install a
| custom android version.
|
| Otherwise it'll be bogged down with bloatware and will be useless
| as soon as security updates aren't available anymore.
|
| But if so, very nice :)
| hakfoo wrote:
| I have a G20, and it's pretty vanilla Android stock.
|
| I'm actually excited for this. My family tends to shop in this
| price range, and you've got a lot of fairly interchangeable
| phones out there. It ends up being sort of frustrating because
| there's no obvious right choice.
|
| Now you have a simple argument. You don't have to deep dive
| explain to Mom the difference between CPUs or manufacturer
| update policies, just "If this one breaks, it can be fixed
| without a huge production number."
|
| There was a time when one of the (admittedly secondary)
| arguments for buying an iPhone or Galaxy S (as opposed to a
| cheaper alternative) was that the local fix shops had a lot of
| dead scrap units and could arrange for a cheap quick fix, while
| if you bought a Nokia or Umidigi, you were waiting weeks for
| them to get parts and it was probably twice the cost because
| they didn't want to work on a phone they weren't wildly
| familiar with.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| If you have a G20, your phone is probably already as
| repairable as this Nokia. I've personally pulled apart a G30
| and it was basically identical to the phone they showed in
| the article.
| studentik wrote:
| I imagine IntelliJ running on Archlinux from Nokia phone with
| wireless high-resolution glasses display
| kornhole wrote:
| Until someone builds an OS variant for it, you can use the UAD
| (Universal Android Debloater) found on Github to remove most of
| that.
| johnny22 wrote:
| are you sure it doesn't? My low end "nokia" from HMD Global has
| an option to unlock the bootloader. Maybe this one does as
| well.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| It's a hit or miss with them... my old Nokia 6.1 (ditto HMD)
| came with no option to unlock the bootloader.
|
| Based on some superficial Googling, this phone's predecessor,
| G21 also comes without an unlockable bootloader.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I just unlocked a 6.1 for free using a method described on
| a website techmesto.com. Not affiliated, just can vouch for
| the process.
|
| Cool thing about 6.1 is that it's officially supported by
| LineageOS
| johnny22 wrote:
| ah. my 6.2 does have an unlockable bootloader.
| cvalka wrote:
| There's no bloatware since Nokia's Android is Android one.
| However, the bootloader is locked and their Android's EOF is
| abysmal which is crazy.
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| Do they seriously lock the bootloader of a "repairable"
| phone? That's the most important feature for me, which has
| prolonged the life of all my Android devices by several
| years.
| cvalka wrote:
| From my experience with some of their models - they had
| been "unlockable". After some quick googling it seems it
| might have changed for some of their phones. Can someone
| with up to date knowledge correct me?
| Groxx wrote:
| As long as there's a way to unlock it, does it matter? Do
| it once and it's done forever.
| roryokane wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding the Android bootloader
| model. All the Android phones I saw when researching one
| to buy came with locked bootloaders, even the easily-
| unlocked Google Pixel series. So it's not even a question
| whether the bootloader will arrive unlocked. What
| differentiates models is whether "there's a way to unlock
| it" - plenty of models don't support any such way. (I
| didn't consider some classes of Android phones in my
| research of which to buy, so this could be a faulty
| generalization.)
|
| The parent comments weren't specific about whether this
| phone's bootloader can be unlocked, but when they talk
| about this phone's locked bootloader, I think
| unlockability is the issue they are really talking about.
| Groxx wrote:
| Fair, but Nokia sells/has sold many unlockable-bootloader
| devices, and nothing in this article suggests either way.
| cristiioan wrote:
| Android one isn't dead?
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I'd love seeing a market for DIY smartphones, in the same vein of
| the good old PC but also DIY drones or mechanical keyboards.
|
| That would be an opportunity for specialized boutique suppliers
| and probably for some innovation, even as a relatively niche
| market.
|
| I have not seen much evolution in this space during the last 5-7
| years, and I think the form factor is pretty much settled.
| Longevity and repairability are things we should prioritize, but
| ownership and customization are also important.
|
| All of that could be built on standardized hardware, something
| close to the Raspberry Pi or Arduino.
|
| I would not mind too much if the device was slightly
| bulkier/heavier in the end, I think we could achieve much better
| value.
| pmontra wrote:
| This phone is already almost 200 g, way too much for me. It's
| also too large but probably just normal sized for most people.
| I wish sub 5" phones would still be a thing.
| hk1337 wrote:
| It seems like a really nice phone and my interest was peaked
| until I saw it's only a 4G/LTE phone. I wonder if they'll come
| out with a 5G version?
| jabl wrote:
| I see it has only 4G RAM. Is that really considered sufficient
| these days? I have a phone with 3 GB, and it's pretty annoying
| how often it kills apps when switching between them. E.g.
| switching from Firefox to my password manager or to some 2FA app,
| and when I jump back into Firefox it has been killed, and reloads
| the page and then the authentication starts from scratch.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I'm happy about this! But, while repairability is always great, a
| major (maybe the biggest) part of phone obsolescence is due to
| software. 2 or 3 years of updates are a joke, Apple does up to 8.
|
| The best hope here is that this phone's repairability will
| attract a software hacking community to provide inofficial
| updates, but what a terrible thing to have to rely on. Besides:
| Phones by other brands like Pocophone are _plenty_ repairable,
| being made for the indian market, and have good community
| software support.
|
| The real next innovation for an Android device maker will be
| providing at least 5 years of updates (I'm well aware of the
| challenges involved, but these are not that hard, make it so).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Wish these chip makers would start playing nice with the Linux
| kernel already. They should me mainlining their drivers before
| their products are even releaaed.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Its a 150 EUR phone, what more do you expect >
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I expect _lifetime_ updates. I get that on my real computers:
| my Linux distribution doesn 't suddenly stop updating just
| because my computer is 3+ years old. Why should phones be any
| different? You're telling me these trillion dollar
| corporations can't match the quality of service of Linux
| distribution maintainers?
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I expect _lifetime_ updates. I get that on my real
| computers: my Linux distribution doesn 't suddenly stop
| updating just because my computer is 3+ years old. Why
| should phones be any different?
|
| No other desktop OS works like that. Both Windows and MacOS
| sunset support for devices. Admittedly - after much, much
| more time than phone OSes, though.
|
| > You're telling me these trillion dollar corporations
| can't match the quality of service of Linux distribution
| maintainers?
|
| I mean, "quality" means different things. There's a reason
| the "year of the linux desktop" still hasn't arrived.
|
| But yes - volunteers do things that corporations won't.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Both Windows and MacOS sunset support for devices
|
| Yeah, and they _suck_ too because of it.
|
| Truth is there should be no need for them to "support"
| anything. All they have to do was get their device driver
| code into the Linux kernel where it belongs. Then
| everything would work out of the box and the Linux
| community would support their device for them. If things
| change, the community will fix their driver for them. If
| no one does, it's because nobody's using it.
|
| But no, they just need to keep making shitty proprietary
| software instead. As a result I get insanity like
| "manufacturer applications" that only work in a single
| version of Windows to control stuff like laptop fans,
| power profiles and keyboard LEDs. Software so shoddy it
| takes over a minute to display a window on the screen. I
| had to reverse engineer that crap and write a Linux
| version to make my system usable again. I went as far as
| my skills allowed me to go and the result was free
| software that will work _forever_. That 's what quality
| means to me.
|
| > "quality" means different things.
|
| "Quality" here means shipping software continuously to a
| diverse set of users and having things not break down
| just because they'd really enjoy it if we bought their
| latest flagship phone. I get that on my Linux laptop, why
| not on a phone?
|
| > But yes - volunteers do things that corporations won't.
|
| Yes, and these corporations should be profoundly ashamed
| of themselves that they can't match what a bunch of
| "volunteers" provide even though they're worth billions.
|
| Some professionals. It certainly seems to be the rule
| rather than the exception with these corporations. The
| copyright industry literally can't match the quality of
| the output of a bunch of "pirates" either: while they're
| streaming to their paying customers some shitty
| compressed video with artifacts in 95% black frames,
| "pirates" get blu-ray remuxes in convenient DRM-free
| formats.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > No other desktop OS works like that. Both Windows and
| MacOS sunset support for devices. Admittedly - after
| much, much more time than phone OSes, though.
|
| 10x more. Windows 10 runs on computers that are 20 years
| old.
|
| You have to remember billions of people don't live in the
| west, they live in india or africa where they use
| equipment much longer.
|
| 10 - 20 years is a real lifespan for cars and appliances,
| it is also realistic for electronics (leaving batteries
| aside).
|
| The pace of improvement for computer hardware is slowing,
| so this issue will become more relevant
| nordsieck wrote:
| > 10x more. Windows 10 runs on computers that are 20
| years old.
|
| 1. The last Apple phone that lost OS suppose was the
| iPhone 6. Apple supported that phone for 7 years.
|
| 2. I'm skeptical that Windows 10 would run on many
| Pentium IV computers. Windows 8 only came out 11 years
| ago. And I remember a whole lot of computers out there
| that couldn't run that at the time.
| deno wrote:
| 2. https://youtu.be/ivrlU73VcHw?t=2110
| nordsieck wrote:
| > https://youtu.be/ivrlU73VcHw?t=2110
|
| I feel a bit vidicated by that video. In the beginning,
| he basically says that he needed to run the rare last
| variant of the Pentium IV to get it to work and that most
| Pentium IVs would be impossible to get it to work.
|
| Pretty impressive that it's possible at all, though.
| deno wrote:
| He goes with 2006 65nm Cedar Mill in the end, which
| granted is the last variant in the Pentium IV family, but
| it's still a mainstream part.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And those billions of people are buying $30-$50 phones
| unsubsidized that are much better than a first gen iPhone
| .
|
| Should the cellular carriers have never moved past 2G?
| [deleted]
| crispinb wrote:
| > I expect lifetime updates.
|
| Do you? Or do you just say/write/comment that you expect
| that? Actual expecting would be refusing to buy a phone
| that didn't provide said updates. Otherwise it's just an HN
| comment, with no (real, physical, 'economic') role to play,
| certainly not that of an expectation.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I absolutely do. I always buy top of the line flagship
| phones and use them until they literally break down.
| Well, I _used_ to do that: my next phone will be an
| iPhone because of stupid problems like this.
|
| Truth is Android's situation used to be _tolerable_ for
| me because I would always trash the official OS and run
| something like LineageOS instead. Unfortunately, that
| will become impossible due to hardware remote
| attestation. Therefore, I no longer care about Android
| phones unless they run postmarketOS.
| crispinb wrote:
| Good for you. Ugly though the phrase is, 'putting your
| money where your mouth is' is an at least partially
| effective lever on reality.
| palata wrote:
| Can't you choose a phone that does not do hardware remote
| attestation?
| [deleted]
| solarkraft wrote:
| At least 5 years of updates. So much so that I think it
| should probably be legally mandated and clearly marketed as
| the device's life span.
| paulmd wrote:
| Yes, EU needs to step in and deal with the software
| lifespan problems on Android just as they have with ports
| and repairability on Apple. It is obvious that this is a
| market failure leading to negative social outcomes
| (e-waste) and phone vendors clearly are not going to deal
| with it on their own.
|
| This really should be from date-of-purchase and not date-
| of-launch as well. Otherwise you're leaving refurbished
| phones out in the cold too. We should be encouraging
| refurbishment and not giving those users a worse experience
| - if anything the law should attempt to favor them, they're
| doing the thing we want.
|
| Requiring bootloader unlock when support ceases is another
| fantastic idea someone pointed out - and that one will hit
| Apple too honestly. But if you're not going to support the
| thing then at least let someone else do it.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Work in progress.
|
| "EU wants to enforce 5 years of security and 3 years of
| OS updates for all phones"
|
| https://www.androidauthority.com/eu-smartphone-updates-
| rules...
| paulmd wrote:
| That actually makes me really happy to hear tbh.
| Unpopular take but the support story scared me away from
| android for my second smartphone (and I buy for 5+
| years), it just was a real mess with my cheapo Moto G
| Falcon, say what you want about iOS lockdowns (as a
| nerd/dev I think there are logical ideas there taken to
| sometimes-unpopular conclusions around eg app sandboxing,
| app store root-of-trust freedom vs permissioning social
| enforceability, etc) but $50 for a battery replacement
| plus a couple otterbox cases for 5+ years of ownership
| (with my 8+) has been a very reasonable overall package.
|
| I don't mind "bundling" service into the initial purchase
| if that guarantees it'll be there and I also get a
| premium phone with walk-in service with first-party
| repair staff and parts (not at+t store or w/e either)
| etc. I've shifted to (lower-end/refurb) apple devices for
| a few things and I know the TCO involved and I find it
| favorable overall given the expected longevity and
| service levels and device quality.
|
| But there needs to be more than one "gets 5+ years of
| solid support" option on the market so that shitty point
| A doesn't lead to a lock-in on shitty point B. At the end
| of the day competition is what keeps the ecosystems
| relatively honest and having options if Apple does a dick
| move is always welcome too.
| abliefern wrote:
| I expect manufacturers not to offer bad options like a 150
| EUR phone with 3 years of updates. Give me a 200EUR phone
| with 5 years? Or a 10EUR service fee per year of updates.
| lucb1e wrote:
| The problem is: you and ten other persons might genuinely
| pay for that after three years (also considering the specs
| of this thing). In silicon valley, I suspect devs can't
| open up their env for that money and still put food on the
| table in the evening after paying for their morning outdoor
| coffee and rent.
|
| I'm curious how much work honestly goes into these updates,
| though. How many patches do they maintain on top of Android
| that security updates would cause them to need to fix their
| patches again? Or how many parts of Android are even
| changed by those updates in a given month? I don't really
| have any idea of either proportion. How much money would it
| require us to pool to get one month longer security
| updates? One year?
|
| May be something to ask Fairphone, they seem like the type
| of business that might be willing to share this for the
| purpose of pressuring the market to offer the support after
| a successful crowdfunding campaign.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > The real next innovation for an Android device maker will be
| providing at least 5 years of updates
|
| pixels starting with pixel 6 have 5 years of updates.
| nevi-me wrote:
| It's unavailable in many markets. Even if one imports it,
| there's a risk that it becomes unrepairable (or costly to
| repair) if it breaks.
| kuschku wrote:
| And require me to throw away headphones that have worked fine
| for decades.
|
| Even this nokia phone has a 3.5mm port, why doesn't Google
| support it anymore?
| riku_iki wrote:
| there are connectors.
|
| > why doesn't Google support it anymore?
|
| maybe preserve space for something else inside.
| kuschku wrote:
| > there are connectors.
|
| Can I still charge my phone at the same time?
|
| Can I also get it with a larger battery?
|
| Should I just hot glue a connector, a powerpack, and a
| case to my phone to get an actual usable device out of
| it?
| riku_iki wrote:
| these are extra requirements in addition to updates and
| ability to use headphones, and which are specific to you.
|
| Looks like you are 0.001% minority, who doesn't pay
| enough money to draw interest from large manufacturers.
| kuschku wrote:
| Am I a minority? The vast majority of phone models built
| and sold today match precisely what I just asked for.
|
| It's only a few top of the line models which doesn't have
| these features. Devices which are more of a fashion
| statement than a device.
| riku_iki wrote:
| I doubt so. Most will lack some of your requirements.
| toastal wrote:
| Why they don't support heodphones? Because Google needs to
| sell matching Pixel buds that can't be repaired due to size
| and operate on flaky Bluetooth connections with
| questionable sound quality.
| topspin wrote:
| > pixels starting with pixel 6 have 5 years of updates.
|
| Nice. Didn't know this. Got a 7 pro shortly after it came
| out; spectrum had a $400 discount on them.
| psydvl wrote:
| Oneplus 11 ships with same support (5 years android updates +
| 4 years security updates)
| schemescape wrote:
| Wait, OnePlus provides 9 years of security updates? That is
| huge!
|
| Apple's update policy (and history) is one of the two
| reasons I own an iPhone (SE). The other reason being all
| the unremovable junkware I've had on Android phones in the
| past.
|
| Next time I need to upgrade (hopefully 6+ years in the
| future), I will take another look at OnePlus.
| riku_iki wrote:
| The big issue is that OpenPlus is Chinese company, so
| they can install some backdoor on your phone anytime if
| CCP will ask.
|
| It may be safer to have another phone without security
| updates.
| xigency wrote:
| > 2 or 3 years of updates are a joke, Apple does up to 8.
|
| Saying an iPhone can handle 8 generations of iOS updates is a
| bigger joke. I'm a cheapskate that somehow uses Apple phones,
| and I'll let you know after 2-3 major OS updates the
| performance is always severely diminished.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Are you sure it's not just that the battery has aged after a
| few years? I've of heard many people (myself included)
| getting their battery replaced and saying their phone felt
| like new.
| cvalka wrote:
| https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-turn-off-
| battery...
| commandersaki wrote:
| I use an 6S that I bought in 2016. It is on its 4th battery
| replacement. So I've got almost a full 7 years out of it.
| It won't receive any major iOS updates anymore, but will
| still receive security updates. I'd continue down this path
| for another 2 years, but as a non-iCloud user I want iCloud
| Advanced Data Protection to sync Notes and Messages.
| paulmd wrote:
| No. Your phone becomes damaged (DRAM and flash and
| performance problems due to battery) but the phone itself
| usually is fine.
|
| I just got a whole new phone out of a failed battery
| replacement for my iphone 8+ - my guess is the OS
| installation was just too damaged to accept the battery
| pairing process and it just flaked out, it was bootlooping
| and refusing to charge the battery. I got a refurbished 8+ in
| consideration, and it's actually great despite being a 5.5
| year old release at this point. It's not the actual
| performance level of the phone itself that's the problem,
| they just tend to become worn out at a hardware level and the
| phone tends to become unstable. It was showing all kinds of
| weird software quirks (discord "send" button would fail to
| appear when posting a meme despite the image being in the
| send box, and you'd have to tab back and forth to a different
| server before the "send" button would show up, etc) and all
| of that vanished as soon as I got a new phone.
|
| While I can't prove it, my opinion is it would have come back
| over time even if I did a factory reset, perhaps even worse.
| Because I had the same experience with my previous phone, an
| Android Moto G first-gen (Falcon), which I owned for just
| about 5 years exactly (early 2014-early 2019). The phone
| simply got more and more unstable due to bad flash/RAM and
| perhaps some glitching caused by the weak battery... first
| I'd have to factory reset once in a while, then the whole OS
| would need to be reflashed, finally the installs were being
| corrupted less than a day after a clean reflash.
|
| The practical lifespan of the DRAM/flash in a phone seems to
| be about 3-4 years in my experience and by the time things
| hit 5 years they are so damaged they are unusable even after
| fresh OS installs/etc. The timeframe is identical for both my
| Moto G and the 8+, I bet if I'd continued to use the same
| handset for another year it'd have started corrupting itself
| even after a factory reset/etc. I don't know why that would
| be - whether phones are writing certain flash cells too much
| and they're burning out, or what. Obviously PC SSDs and DRAM
| can be fine for a decade.
|
| I am very onboard with some degree of refurbishment being a
| critical element of long-term phone repair after these
| experiences. They start to go janky at 3 years, by 4 years it
| is becoming a problem, and by 5 years it is unusable. Even
| with clean software installs (factory resets or OS image
| reflashes), it just is not stable. The Moto G I could write
| off as a fluke, it was a cheap phone to begin with, maybe it
| was just janky. The 8+ failing in the exact same ways on a
| very similar timeline (about 6-12 months later due to higher
| hardware quality) says to me that DRAM or flash is just
| wearing out over time. If it was just battery performance
| problems then it wouldn't have failed to re-pair after a
| fresh battery was installed either.
|
| Again, now that I've got a refurbished 8+ in like new
| condition, I can tell you it's still perfectly fine as a
| phone/piece of hardware, it's more than fine enough to run
| discord and apollo and gmail and banking and all the other
| things I do day-to-day. It's not the hardware spec that's the
| problem, it's a particular unit becoming worn and failing.
|
| This also goes to show the importance of long-term software
| support... I have basically a new handset on 5.5 year old
| hardware. It will probably be 10 years old before I retire
| it. iOS is insanely good about that, I am still receiving
| full software updates at this point, although probably not
| for that much longer. Show me an Android phone with 6-7 years
| of feature updates, please. Most androids won't even get
| _security_ updates for _half_ of that. _That_ is what keeps
| the e-waste down. I 'm sure my handset will be diagnosed and
| refurbished and sent out to someone else for replacement too,
| or sent to APMA region for those customers, the circle of
| life.
|
| I paid $725 for the phone originally (refurb) and $49 for the
| replacement, and I just got my third otterbox commuter for
| the replacement case, probably will kill a 4th one over the
| life of this handset too. So all-up I am expecting to be
| around $900 for all hardware expenditures for this phone for
| 9-10 years. Not too awful overall.
| natdempk wrote:
| If you make a claim like this can you provide details?
|
| My anecdote: I'm using an iPhone XS that has seen 4+ years of
| use across iOS 12-16 (5 major versions) and I haven't noticed
| any real consistent slowdowns. I've seen the occasional clear
| bug shipped where performance dips from time to time doing
| certain specific things, but these seem to be resolved upon
| the next update or two usually.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I felt this way with the 6 because it got downthrottled into
| the ditch with iOS-whatever, but my 5 (which I actually got
| after the 6 cause it, uh, accidentally broke) was a perfect
| phone its entire support life. I even kept it past Apple
| support limits and only left it when my cell carrier stopped
| working with it entirely.
|
| I think with newer ones, the OS updates are fine.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| This was very much the case a decade ago, when using an
| iPhone 3GS was a real slog by year 3 or 4, but is anyone
| still having those problems today?
|
| My daily driver is a 2018 iPhone XS, and it's about as snappy
| with iOS 16 as I remember it being straight out of the box.
| dmix wrote:
| My dad uses a 5yr old iPhone X and it runs perfectly fine
| with the latest software updates. The baseline CPU (and
| RAM) quality has improved dramatically since around then
| where it's not a big deal to upgrade. Or maybe the software
| has matured enough.
|
| My mom had a 3yr old mid-teir Samsung phone and tablet
| (combo deals they always sell) they both became unusable
| when it upgraded to the latest version of Samsung
| basterdized Android 2 months ago. But I'm sure Pixels are
| more similar to iPhone.
|
| Sadly most Android come with vendor crippled software.
| Maybe the >2yr crippling is the goal for them.
| bombolo wrote:
| Don't worry, pure android versions also made my phone
| slow.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Psh 5 years? What kind of standard of quality is that?
|
| We should have several decades of support for all cheap
| electronics at least...
| Spivak wrote:
| And they hated him because he spoke the truth. Phones being
| disposable is something we just accepted. A POTS phone bought
| in the 1890's would work without modification until the
| 1990's and still will work today with an adapter. Why?
| Because we didn't have continuous protocol churn. If it was
| invented today in 2 years there would POTS/2, KETTLE, and a
| draft spec for POTS2.1 written on a used napkin but somehow
| already in production at Google.
|
| Our stuff turns to trash because everything is built on
| shifting sand with no thoughts given to supporting it long
| term and for some reason we like it this way.
|
| Do y'all not long for a future where you can get off the
| upgrade treadmill because the developer facing API is fixed?
| Not backwards compatible because that implies you ought to be
| moving to the next, like once it works you can call it done.
|
| But new shiny thing! Alright, that's great. Is it so much
| better that you want everyone in the world to throw away
| their old devices? Probably eventually but you're daft if you
| think those kinds of events should be every few years. God
| can you imagine if we did that to cars? Sorry, Honda dropped
| support for your Civic, you can keep using it for a bit but
| in a year we're gonna change the roads and it will be
| undrivable.
| bitwize wrote:
| > Do y'all not long for a future where you can get off the
| upgrade treadmill because the developer facing API is
| fixed? Not backwards compatible because that implies you
| ought to be moving to the next, like once it works you can
| call it done.
|
| No. We want modern APIs that prioritize modern concerns,
| usable with modern toolkits and frameworks and taking
| advantage of modern programming principles. Even if we had
| an API intended for longevity, once its creators die we
| will tear it down completely and replace it with something
| that suits our newer-therefore-better tastes. For them it
| was the cornerstone of an industry's worth of innovations;
| for us it is but a millstone around our necks and must be
| replaced. I know this because I've seen it happen many
| times. Once the people who've staked their entire careers
| building upon $THING, and developed some truly remarkable
| software, grow old, up rises the chorus of people who are
| sick of $THING, who can't even fathom how anyone got
| anything done with $THING, who give talks at conferences
| about how $THING is fundamentally broken and how we should
| be using $NEWTHING instead. And these voices grow louder,
| their chants more thunderous, until it's generally accepted
| that $THING is a relic and $NEWTHING is the future. Even
| the things we thought would last forever -- POSIX, C, X11
| -- are now, if anything, well past their expiration date.
|
| This is how things are. This is how they must be. There is
| naught we can do but be like a Japanese person observing
| the seasons, contemplating, with some sadness, the constant
| change and the endless cycle of death and rebirth.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > POSIX, C, X11
|
| There's such a thing as lasting too long without
| deprecating old cruft.
|
| POSIX isn't too bad, but is still kind of a mess. C has a
| lot of broken features. X11 doesn't fit how hardware
| works these days and trying to force it with extensions
| isn't a good fix.
|
| There are real problems with faddishness on the scale of
| 5-10 years, but there are also real improvements that
| happen across decades, and if 40 year old tools don't get
| updated then they should be replaced.
| eviks wrote:
| But you forgot to mention how this requires ignoring the
| old devices. Can X11 replacement not work on old
| hardware? What critical improvement in POSIX would
| mandate the same?
| bitwize wrote:
| > Can X11 replacement not work on old hardware?
|
| Most Wayland compositors pretty much assume you have a
| GPU. Weston can be gotten to work -- slowly -- without
| one.
| eviks wrote:
| Unless that's slowly=unusable that's not a good example
| (would also help if this poor support was a result of
| some "modern programming principles"). Otherwise that's
| way too early to retire in Japan
| [deleted]
| iamsomeone wrote:
| it's a sad day when repairability is a feature
| zwilliamson wrote:
| If they launch a smaller form factor it should gain traction
| quick! No one covers this demand space
| pictur wrote:
| If someone from this site is reading this, I think you should
| cover the whole page for the cookie notification instead of half
| the page. It would be nicer if the site became a cookie consent
| form. I don't want to read news, I want to approve cookies. Can
| you do this for me?
| Cloudef wrote:
| Its like they read my rants about modern smartphones on HN
| BirAdam wrote:
| As other have noted, the lack of updates and locked boot loader
| make this a no go, but the state of fully open-source, non-
| Android phones OSs is likewise abysmal. As such, leaving the
| iPhone isn't going to happen for me. I'm still using my iPhone
| 11, and it's still nice and speedy, the battery is fine, it gets
| updates quickly, and generally doesn't annoy me too much. If the
| PinePhone or PinePhone Pro had a solid, fully functional, open
| source, non-Android operating system that was also good with
| power management... I would switch without hesitation. That's
| just a super high bar, and I don't expect anyone to actually pull
| it off any time soon.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| What do you think about fairphone 4? According to web, it
| supports: Fairphone OS CalyxOS DivestOS /e/OS (Murena) iodeOS
| LeOS LineageOS postmarketOS Ubuntu Touch
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Fairphone isn't and probably won't be available in North
| America, sadly.
| dadoomer wrote:
| I'm curious on why you think this. I really would buy one
| as my next phone.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| See this forum post: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/can-i-
| buy-the-fairphone-4-in-t...
|
| Previous versions of the Fairphone also weren't available
| in the US due to as I understand it hurdles posed by FCC
| approval (and I would assume the Canadian equivalent).
| toastal wrote:
| They also dropped the headphone jack on v4 like other
| flagship phones.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| strange comment, comparing apples and oranges, and concluding
| your much more expensive orange is better for you... yeah I am
| not switch my Samsung s22 ultra for this neither, I find it
| very important to state this to the whole world because my own
| currently-utterly-unrealistic-to-beat set of reasons
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Interesting decision about which one is the orange in this
| analogy :)
| aio2 wrote:
| You have high standards for a more simple and cheap product.
| TheSkyHasEyes wrote:
| > the lack of updates
|
| This is not a high standard in the year 2023.
| sundvor wrote:
| For a device that markets itself as repairable, 3 years of
| updates is a bad joke. So it should at minimum have an open
| bootloader.
|
| My Samsung S10 5G is turning 4 in a few months, still
| receiving regular security updates.
| Entinel wrote:
| Those are high standards? They basically said "I want an
| open-source phone that actually works."
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Is the argument that no open-source phone actually works ?
|
| On parent's point, the Nokia g22 is 180 euros, the iPhone
| 11 at same capacity was 700 euros at launch. You can't
| expect Nokia to contractually promise 8 years of OS updates
| at that price point.
|
| To note, iPhone also don't have 5+years of OS support
| promises, we're just looking at the trend and assume that
| it will continue. I'd also expect this Nokia to have a bit
| more than 3 years of support time, we just don't know how
| much.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _lack of updates and locked boot loader_
|
| The boot loader will probably be unlocked sooner or later. It
| should be open, but I think it's reasonable to expect either
| update support or unlocked booting, not necessarily both.
|
| In a gook device, that is. You have to remember that most
| consumers _do not want_ to know how their phone works or to
| become expert in its configuration. They just want it to work.
|
| A compromise here would be to have an option to unlock
| everything, but with the understanding that by doing so you opt
| out of warranty service.
|
| Is your iPhone's boot loader unlocked?
| jokoon wrote:
| android is open source, nobody can answer me why the pinephone
| doesn't use android instead
|
| android doesn't require google services to work
| khimaros wrote:
| Glodroid is an AOSP build for PP.
| wolfskaempf wrote:
| In fact there are versions of Android that run on the
| PinePhone like GloDroid, but it's really not the goal.
|
| The goal behind efforts like the Librem 5 or PinePhone is not
| to create yet another Android phone, which Open Source or not
| will strengthen the Duopoly of Google and Apple in the Mobile
| Phone Operating System market. The goal is to create hardware
| that can jump-start the development of a true GNU/Linux
| Mobile Operating System.
|
| With its real world use case, it has brought great advances
| to Mobile "Desktop" Environments like Plasma Mobile or Phosh
| by motivating developers who could finally use their
| creations and improvements on a real phone.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >of a true GNU/Linux Mobile Operating System.
|
| Why is GNU important? toybox's coreutils is a good enough
| replacement. If you really wanted you could install GNU's
| core utils. 99% of users don't want to be messing with
| command line tools anyways.
|
| Android already brought Linux as a mobile operating system
| to the mainstream.
| jokoon wrote:
| why is not the goal?
| fsflover wrote:
| Having the same OS on my laptop and phone is amazing.
| Android turns a general-purpose device into a restricted
| one, without a possibility to run desktop apps.
|
| Desktop OS allows to use desktop apps on the phone and
| enjoy convergence:
| https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-
| wiki/-/wikis/Freque....
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Android turns a general-purpose device into a
| restricted one
|
| Android still runs the Linux kernel and the only reason
| you can't have shell access on it is user-hostile
| restrictions, which an open-source build wouldn't have.
|
| I think it would be a lot easier to add desktop apps
| capability to Android for the minority that actually
| wants to run Linux apps on their _phone_ than building a
| touch-optimized userspace from scratch.
|
| If your desire is to run Linux desktop apps on Android I
| bet you can already do it if you find an X Server APK and
| got your Linux app to use it as your X display - that
| would've been a quick, pragmatic solution to satisfy the
| "Linux desktop" requirement while taking advantage of
| Android's mature & battle-tested touch-optimised
| userspace.
| fsflover wrote:
| It's the minority, because people didn't realize yet how
| convenient and logical it is. There should be no
| difference between a phone and a desktop, except for the
| screen size. You don't need to develop independent apps.
| You don't need to learn independent tools.
|
| I can connect a screen and keyboard to my phone and use
| it as desktop: https://puri.sm/posts/converging-on-
| convergence-pureos-is-co....
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > You don't need to develop independent apps
|
| That's kind of irrelevant because they are currently
| developing a lot of apps to replace the functionality
| they'd get in Android for free. They'd save an insane
| amount of time and actually deliver a product competitive
| with mainstream phones _right now_ , which would give
| them funding & marketshare to continue refining it down
| the line (potentially replacing it with non-Android
| components one at a time).
|
| > There should be no difference between a phone and a
| desktop, except for the screen size
|
| And the input method, which is a massive difference -
| touch and mouse are completely different, and so are the
| contexts in which phone vs desktop apps are used. If you
| try to merge the two, you'd look like the idiots who gave
| us Windows 8. So there's still effort in making specific
| UIs for different mediums.
|
| > I can connect a screen and keyboard to my phone and use
| it as desktop
|
| I'm not sure there's an actual need for it? This has even
| been tried by large companies such as Samsung and
| Microsoft and didn't go anywhere - in practice this isn't
| a problem the vast majority of people has and seems like
| an absurd thing to start with for a resource-constrained
| company in a very competitive market.
| astrange wrote:
| Your desktop has active cooling and storage rated for
| enough daily writes that it can have swappable VM. Your
| phone has neither.
| palata wrote:
| Android runs the Linux kernel, but the rest of the OS is
| very, very different from typical Linux distributions.
| jokoon wrote:
| > Android turns a general-purpose device into a
| restricted one, without a possibility to run desktop
| apps.
|
| You should not run desktop apps on a phone, because
| smartphone have much less power. This is an important
| design feature. This is why smartphones OS are built
| differently.
|
| And even then, I don't see how android "restricts"
| things. It's software. Android does not "restrict". It's
| an OS.
| [deleted]
| HybridCurve wrote:
| Not just that, but the pinephone camera is complete garbage.
| It's basically a deal killer for many since we've grown to rely
| on our phone producing quality digital images and video. If
| they fix that and battery life you will draw enough developers
| to help make a reasonably decent mobile experience. But as it
| is now, there are few devices which have both adequate
| capabilities and driver support for it to work.
|
| Reducing cost and making it more repairable is a step in the
| right direction, but there is no reason why shouldn't get 5-6+
| years of life out of a mobile phone.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| [dead]
| bitL wrote:
| Ugly notch and no Linux... Not sure what the appeal is? I believe
| HMD sales tanked right after they introduced the notch (they
| aren't Apple to get away with it) and this phone seems like a way
| to clear out unwanted displays via "repairability fans".
| college_physics wrote:
| Its wonderful to see for once a race to the top rather than the
| bottom of mindless, engineered consumerism. Fairphone led the way
| with repairability and will hopefully continue innovating in this
| space, but Nokia's entrance is hopefully an indication this is
| not a niche market segment but has acquired critical mass.
| homero wrote:
| Why can they never use flagship CPU? Power users who would buy
| want the latest snapdragon like myself
| mrtksn wrote:
| What I wonder is, is it open enough to do software defined radio
| and fiddle with the GSM infrastructure?
|
| Probably not, for that you need Nokia 1100 made in Bochum.
| anderspitman wrote:
| Kinda sad that a removable battery is considered a repairability
| feature. It used to be the standard, and without removing any
| screws. And the phones weren't that much bigger. Still good to
| see though.
|
| What I've always wanted is a phone with swappable batteries and a
| tiny lipo that keeps the phone on for the few seconds it takes
| you to exchange batteries. Unlimited battery life without
| rebooting as long as you have charged batteries lying around.
| rc_mob wrote:
| i never planned to ever leave apple but this here puts a "maybe"
| into me
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| As someone who has repaired a few phones for friends and family,
| this looks to be more marketing spin than an actual new type of
| product.
|
| That teardown is almost exactly identical to a Moto G30, and
| probably dozens of other budget smartphones with plastic cases
| and screws.
|
| Parts availability was (and still is) great on the G30 too.
| roryisok wrote:
| I hope this trend continues. I wonder will people find uses for
| the components in the same way they do with the framework laptop
| parts?
| neverrroot wrote:
| Nokia, what it once was, and where it's playing at now. They
| weren't very friendly nor open back in the days, but time has its
| ways. Happy to see them do this now.
| kwiens wrote:
| Well it depends on which days you're referring to! The 3360 was
| pretty easy to work on...
|
| Let's bring back the glory days of Nokia phones that stand the
| test of time.
| openplatypus wrote:
| > Security updates: 3 years of monthly security updates
|
| That is such a let-down! If Nokia is serious about
| sustainability, it needs to make it 5y+.
|
| I get it, it is not easy. But with the proliferation of malware
| and exploits, after 3y (since release, not purchase) this phone
| is nothing but a liability.
| tomComb wrote:
| That just refers to the security updates that require a full
| firmware update. I think people get focussed on that because
| they're used to the iPhone where that's only way to fix
| security issues. On android, the majority of security issues
| are patched immediately and silently through the play store, so
| that continues pretty much for the life of the phone.
|
| In other words, updates are much less important on android than
| they are on the iPhone.
| uallo wrote:
| > so that continues pretty much for the life of the phone.
|
| I'm on a Pixel 1 with Android 10. Last security update it got
| was from October 2019 which is about three years after the
| phone was introduced.
|
| Is this supposed to be different on newer Android versions?
| tomComb wrote:
| That refers to the formal (full firmware) updates, I'm
| talking about security updates that get pushed to the phone
| without you having to do anything.
|
| It started with the browser component many years ago, and
| has grown its coverage with each version. The limitations
| are mainly in the kernel, but they now even do graphics
| drivers this way (though that requires vendor cooperation,
| unlike everything else), but you wouldn't have that with
| Android 10.
|
| This capability has steadily grown to cover more of the OS
| over time, particularly recently, so unfortunately, Yes,
| Android 10 does have much less of this ability then later
| versions.
| uallo wrote:
| > That refers to the formal (full firmware) updates, I'm
| talking about security updates that get pushed to the
| phone without you having to do anything.
|
| It is called "Android security patch level", that is not
| a full firmware update. It may still be something else
| than you have in mind, though. (How) can I check the
| patch level of the security updates you are relating to?
| tomComb wrote:
| My understanding of this capability is that it started
| with the browser component and grew from there,
| suggesting that it happens automatically and there is
| nothing you need to check. But someone has pointed out
| that all the Framework vulnerabilities are still listed
| as being addressed by full, old-fashioned security
| updates, so I must admit that there is something I'm
| missing here.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It isn't. The situation is so dire on Android right now
| morsch wrote:
| Here's the security bulletin for January:
| https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/2023-01-01
|
| How do I determine which, if any, of these is fixed via the
| Play store update mechanism?
| nevi-me wrote:
| The bulletin specifies only CVE-2023-20912 as being fixed
| by Play Store. https://source.android.com/docs/security/bul
| letin/2023-01-01...
| abliefern wrote:
| Wow. So "the majority of security issues are patched
| immediately and silently through the play store" seems
| catastrophically incorrect.
| tomComb wrote:
| Well, yes, I have to agree. See the other comment I just
| posted. My understanding is that they are at the point
| (at least now with Android 13, which is what the Nokia
| will presumably ship with) that they can update most of
| userland (and even graphics drivers though that requires
| vendor participation), so they should be able to address
| Framework vulnerabilities, which is the critical
| discrepancy here.
| tomComb wrote:
| I'm puzzled ... I can understand why the BLE drivers
| would still require a firmware update (and that is fine
| since drivers for older hardware shouldn't be much of a
| problem), but why wouldn't all of the Framework
| vulnerabilities be handled via Play Store updates. I
| believe that all of the Framework is updatable in this
| way. Perhaps it's because that is not true of Android 10
| so they need to address it in a firmware update anyway?
| openplatypus wrote:
| Never had an iPhone.
|
| I don't know what comes through Play Store, only thing it
| tells me is that specific app was updated.
|
| All I know is that my cell phone vendors tells I am not
| getting more security updates.
|
| Consumers should not understand CVEs to feel safe.
| gidis_ wrote:
| Yeah PS149.99 sounds like a budget phone. There are literally
| hundreds of Android devices that cost less
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Cheap phones are becoming an interesting decent proposition.
|
| I could get one of these, add that to my laptop and a full frame
| mirrorless camera I bought recently. I could buy all of them for
| less than my daughters new iPhone. A proper computer, a proper
| camera and a smartphone!
| squarefoot wrote:
| Close, but no cigar. After 3 years or 2 major Android versions it
| still becomes an unsupported doorstop doomed to rot in a drawer
| until the owner throws it into a landfill. I totally understand
| not wanting to put resources into supporting old products, so the
| punchline should have been "...and after support is ceased, we
| unlock the bootloader". Now that would have made it interesting.
| hackernewds wrote:
| additionally
|
| > available for five years through ifixit
|
| this is not the win-win it's touted to being vs a high quality
| phone that just works for 5 years.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Bootloader should be unlockable, via a process that prevents
| accidentally doing it, from release.
|
| Custom ROM from day 1 may delay the need to replace the
| battery.
| pengaru wrote:
| I think a lot of the people talking about battery replacement
| intervals being so long that it's pointless for this or that
| reason don't realize how quickly LiPo pouch batteries swell up in
| hot climates.
|
| Every mobile android device I've used through a desert summer has
| ruined its own battery from charging in the heat. It's basically
| a yearly replacement schedule if I stay through summers.
| Sometimes more often if I require the device and it's entirely
| useless with a swollen battery.
| rokweom wrote:
| My 100$ phone from 2017 - Xiaomi Redmi 4X - had the same level of
| repairability: just unclip the back cover and you have access to
| internals. Replacing the battery was a matter of unscrewing the
| battery connector. How exactly is this new?
| chagaif wrote:
| It's the marketing, people don't know they can fix it, now they
| know. The guide will help, you would still have the guarantee
| when it you replace parts. But the main thing is awareness
| haunter wrote:
| https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=nokia+g22
|
| It's on the level of a 2017 Google Pixel 2. I mean not bad but
| it' also PS150/200EUR. For that much I'd rather get a used iPhone
| 11.
| Illotus wrote:
| Largely depends on the market, where I am used iPhone 11
| without major flaws costs little over 300 euros.
| mikejarema wrote:
| Why doesn't Nokia allow me to preorder or sign up to be notified
| when the device is released/available in my market?
|
| A search for g22 on nokia.com yields zero (!!) results.
| https://www.nokia.com/search/global/en/G22
|
| I'll be shopping for a new phone soon and am interested in this
| model. But wow, they've missed a huge opportunity to capture that
| interest and let me know when I can buy!
| luckyshot wrote:
| I can get notified with this link (in spanish, though):
| https://www.nokia.com/phones/es_es/nokia-g-22/buy?sku=101S06...
| mikejarema wrote:
| Thank you for sharing, I'll give it a try
|
| Update: "Lo sentimos, algo ha salido mal. Comprueba la
| direccion de correo electronico y vuelve a intentarlo."
| leke wrote:
| Replacing screens has always been a pain point for me. I wonder
| if these screens are also glued in.
| louison11 wrote:
| People, don't fight. There is a different consumer persona for
| each of the brands you're comparing. People who like to be geeky
| and fix their own phones and install custom ROMs etc will keep on
| loving Android and phones like this one. People who have other
| priorities, just want the best phone on the market, just want it
| to work, and don't mind paying more to fix it if it breaks, will
| go Apple. I don't think anyone here will question that Apple
| always is 2 years ahead of Android phone makers. Don't compare
| what's not comparable.
| mclightning wrote:
| Nokia, brand, has been milked to the brim at this point...
| a1371 wrote:
| This seems like a Savvy move from Nokia. At least in my country,
| Nokia phones are remembered for the following:
|
| - nearly indestructible
|
| - well priced
|
| - back pops out
|
| Nokia is doing the most sensible thing to reuse these as its
| differentiator.
|
| I understand people taking about the OS. But Nokia has little
| control over the software and it has also never been its selling
| point for me with Symbian, and later Windows Phone.
|
| I sure miss their wonky phones with weirdly arranged buttons and
| their random quirks.
| aspyct wrote:
| I applaud this initiative by Nokia, and can't wait to lay my
| hands on one of those phones when mine dies, but let's be real:
| it won't be as tough as the 3310.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Did Nokia used to manufacture there own phones?
|
| Or have they always just done design - like Apple - and someone
| else manufactured them?
| cromulent wrote:
| They used to make them. A manufacturing company from way
| back, they were the biggest manufacturer of phones from about
| 1998 to 2011.
|
| Now HMD make them, I think.
| Yujf wrote:
| HMD designs and sells them, Foxconn makes them
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Just like Apple then?
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Nokia nowadays has nothing to do with the original company. The
| name was moved around, first to Microsoft, now it's some
| Chinese company I think?
| b1ue64 wrote:
| HMD Global, a Finnish company, currently runs Nokia's phone
| business.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Oh. For some reason I thought they are Chinese... I guess I
| confused it with BlackBerry ownership, that's now...
| Chinese? I think? I don't know.
| b1ue64 wrote:
| TCL produced Blackberry-branded devices for a few years,
| but they stopped a few years ago. Blackberry is still an
| independent company doing other things (mostly in the
| enterprise security space I think)
| calacatta wrote:
| Apple seen backing up an all-new Brinks truck to Stephen Elop's
| WindowsCE-themed garage...
| poisonborz wrote:
| Why is it so hard to add a removeable back cover to have
| swappable battery?
|
| Seemingly battery replacement can still be done "in 5 minutes"
| but this still makes pop-out/on the road battery swapping
| unpractical. https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/nokia-g22
| crazygringo wrote:
| Waterproofing is the main reason.
|
| But then thickness and aesthetic "cheapness" is a secondary
| one.
|
| A removeable cover and battery is always going to introduce a
| _little_ bit of thickness, which on a thin phone _is_
| noticeable even if not major.
|
| And then whether you have screws or the ridges for removing the
| cover, it just always feels a little "cheap". You can't get the
| same kind of rounded smooth glass or aluminum backing that
| wraps seamlessly around the edges.
|
| And when people are comparing two phones in their hands, the
| one that feels more "premium" is often the one they'll go with
| if they feel they're already paying a premium price. This is an
| object they hold in their hand _all day long_. And if you live
| in a major city, it 's really not a big deal to get your
| battery replaced after 2 years at an Apple Store.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Wrong. There are plenty of waterproof devices with removable
| batteries. That's the excuse given to take away your freedom.
| userbinator wrote:
| Look up the Jiayu G5, from around a decade ago. They
| basically cloned the iPhone 5 and gave it a removable battery
| with a latching metal back cover.
|
| https://3dnews.ru/assets/external/illustrations/2014/03/25/8.
| ..
|
| https://mobi-
| center.com.ua/image/cache/data/Jiayu-G5S-MTK659...
| dsego wrote:
| > Waterproofing is the main reason.
|
| Samsung Galaxy S5
| scarface74 wrote:
| As long as you don't forget to close the flap.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's definitely not something I would trust. Just watch
| yourself:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1MDGQzNMYI
|
| It's a thin, twisty rubber gasket held in place by a flimsy
| plastic back.
|
| And in my experience with anything involving thin rubber
| gaskets, they degrade and just flat-out break _incredibly_
| easily.
|
| E.g. with wristwatches, it's common knowledge that as soon
| as you replace the battery in a water-resistant watch, you
| shouldn't consider it water-resistant anymore. You _might_
| get lucky once or twice in recreating the same seal it had
| at the factory, but you should probably assume you didn 't.
| toastal wrote:
| That's how my Pebble watch died. It's a shame since it
| was a hackable device with good battery, but I misjudged
| resealing the device.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Huh, guess I am just that gullible to buy the marketing to
| the point where I now wonder: how the heck can you have a
| removable battery and also survive being held under water?
| (It has an IP67 rating.) I guess waterproof everything
| except the battery contacts and trust that the salinity is
| low enough that the 5V doesn't jump between the poles, plus
| it not being wet for long enough to start rusting (IP67
| afaik doesn't require it to work a week later still)?
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| S5 checking in here - there's a rubber gasket all around
| the back cover.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Thanks! Seems so simple after all.
| acdha wrote:
| Older devices I used had gaskets around the battery
| contacts and a tight fastener. That seems to work well
| until the gasket eventually degrades over time.
| rg111 wrote:
| Only forced obsoleting by the company. No other reasons exist.
|
| I and tens of millions other people used removable back cover
| phones for years before the sealed phone became the norm.
|
| Edit: Can anyone explain why they think that this is wrong? I
| am genuinely interested.
|
| I really used user-removable battery phones for close to a
| decade. I found no issues.
| michaelteter wrote:
| > Can anyone explain why they think that this is wrong?
|
| I suspect it is this: > Only forced obsoleting by the
| company. No other reasons exist.
|
| While companies do want you to buy the newest version every
| year or two, it is more likely that cost-benefit analysis
| tells them to build the way they build; they know they must
| release newer better phones periodically because the
| competition will do this also. But to support older phones
| has a cost, and at some point those old phones don't generate
| enough revenue to justify the cost of supporting them.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| You can't think of another reason? Not maybe any of those
| mentioned in the thread?
|
| And then you can't think of reasons for the downvotes?
|
| I see a pattern, maybe?
| glenstein wrote:
| >Why is it so hard to add a removeable back cover to have
| swappable battery?
|
| This is one of the delights of the Moto z series phones because
| they have magnetic batteries that can be swapped on and off
| with your bare hands without even having to open up a battery
| cover or power off the phone.
| petee wrote:
| Could be wrong (please correct me) but i recall hearing that
| allowing a customer to change a battery (e.g, 3rd party) on a
| chargable device can change the safety of the product/UL rating
| or whatever, so it could simply be a certification thing.
|
| Not exactly the same thing, but I have a Garmin heartrate chest
| strap with a replaceable battery (no charging) -- in the US the
| cover swivels open to change, but in Australia it requries a
| screw, for child safety rules. I Thought that was interesting
| Zak wrote:
| There's a specific issue with young children eating button-
| cell lithium batteries, which I'm guessing is what your
| Garmin device uses. Australia appears to have a law requiring
| the battery compartments of such devices to be child-
| resistant.
|
| I'm not sure if any countries have similar regulations
| related to larger Li-ion rechargeable batteries.
|
| https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2022C00445
| throwanem wrote:
| The tradeoff is "back cover that comes off in an instant,
| whenever you want it to" versus "back cover that comes off in
| an instant, even when you don't want it to."
| atchoo wrote:
| I never had a problem with a Note 4.
|
| The way you could buy cases that replaced the back cover
| meant for a much thinner profile phone than the typical metal
| case wrapped in silicone.
|
| Replaceable batteries are glorious. I never plugged-in my
| phone, just flipped the battery with one from the charger
| when I left the house. Instant 100% battery. Travelling? Just
| take a few charged batteries at a fraction of the weight of a
| power-bank and much more convenient.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Somehow this very important use case is lost on modern
| phone makers.
| cptaj wrote:
| My decades of experience with easily removable back covers
| tells me this is a complete non-issue.
|
| The back cover coming off accidentally has never happened to
| me.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Moreover, the battery coming out seemed to act as a shock
| absorber. If you do throw it hard enough for it to come
| out, and that was rare for me, at least something gives
| instead of breaks.
|
| Ah, the memories of classmates playing soccer with phones
| in high school... phones could run MSN, browse websites
| (without JS! The .mobi site owners were just forced to make
| sites lightweight), play Java-based games, had replaceable
| screen covers, honestly what more should we want? That it's
| now open source Android instead of proprietary Symbian is
| great, but slap a touchscreen on it for web browsing and
| upgrade it from GPRS to 4G or so, and theoretically we
| could just have nice things.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| For me, it's more of a fidget-spinner. I keep popping it
| off and on when bored.
| dsr_ wrote:
| It happened to me repeatedly with two different phones, but
| never when I had a protective case on the phone -- and I
| always buy one.
| Animats wrote:
| It has for me, and that was a Caterpillar ruggedized phone.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Why can't the back cover just screw on and off?
|
| How often do you need to replace your battery? Maybe twice in
| 4 years? What percentage of people keep a phone for more than
| 4 years? 5%?
| billfor wrote:
| Not so much replacing as swapping for a spare to double
| life without recharging.
| userbinator wrote:
| Samsung even made an ad about it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hIoyb9L5g0
|
| ...but then stopped making removable batteries after
| that.
| toastal wrote:
| Like Google teasing Apple for removing the headphone jack
| and then following that anti-usability trend on next
| year's model.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Nowadays? Never, obviously. The odds of me breaking the
| phone are so large, and the tools I need specialized
| enough, that I need a new phone on stand-by anyway. No
| point replacing the battery if I already bought a new one
| just in case I break the old one by trying to do something
| as weird as replacing a wear-heavy part.
|
| So it has fallen out of style. There is no market for spare
| batteries and using them as range extenders is not common
| use. It seems like an outlandish thing to do now.
|
| I think I went through three batteries on my Galaxy Note 2
| (first Android phone) before upgrading. Apps dropping
| support became a problem... nothing wrong with the hardware
| at the time where I felt forced to trash it. Anyway,
| carrying an extra battery for long travel days was not a
| weird thing to do. I also remember non-tech people having
| spare batteries for Nokias (when they became more capable;
| not when the only use was calling your mom to say you were
| going to a friend's after school).
| 6510 wrote:
| I had a dumb phone back in the days that ran on 4
| conventional AA batteries. Opening the lid and swapping 4
| batteries is less convenient than swapping a single flat
| cell but its so much better than being wired to the wall or
| using a clumsy power bank with a cable that is always to
| short and to long at the same time. The whole charging
| ritual is far more absurd than it seems. The screen needs
| to power down, there has to be a power savings mode. With
| intense use (normal?) and erratic charging patterns
| batteries degrade much faster than advertised. I mean, I
| read _" lifespan is 2 - 3 years, which is about 300 - 500
| charge cycles"_ when actually used you get about 5 hours
| out of a charge. real use say 3 months, running from socket
| to socket. LOL
|
| Cant stop laughing thinking about it, luxurious homes with
| all the trimmings then have the whole family gather around
| the extension cord. Like on a construction site. Imagine
| guns worked like this. We can glue in the cartridge and
| you'd be able to shoot people for many years? 6 shots
| should be enough for 3 years when the software expires.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| With the Samsung S5, I'd take a couple extra batteries with me
| when traveling. Never had to worry about a dead battery or
| bother with a power bank.
|
| That phone was waterproof but had a special ridge around the
| back panel.
| aspyct wrote:
| I actually prefer power bank to spare batteries.
|
| Spare batteries can only be used with the phone, whereas
| power banks are standard and usable with many other devices
| if needed.
|
| Also, small phone batteries usually don't come with a
| carrying case. They're fragile and you could accidentally
| short them.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Check out the Samsung XCover phones if you want that kind of
| battery swap.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I suspect waterproof-ness is one issue.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| 3 years of updates? Meh
| sasas wrote:
| With this handset, does repairable == right to repair the
| operating system == supported jailbreaking?
|
| I recently went though some frustration to root a Samsung handset
| - it required sorting through endless blog posts linking random
| executables from megaupload or google drive. Fragmented
| instructions on various forums; many incomplete or incorrect.
|
| Which Android handsets best support rooting/jailbreaking by the
| vendor which provides a supported way to both unlock the
| bootloader and provide root access?
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| I have owned a fairphone 3, and honestly it was a let down - very
| expensive to buy and also expensive to repair (the replacement
| mainboard cost more than a newer better phone). Perhaps this was
| because of the sustainable sourcing they used but the upshot was
| that it became ewaste just as quickly as any other phone. This
| one should at least be cheap to repair!
| palata wrote:
| I think the point of the Fairphone is that _usually_ , the
| motherboard lives longer than the rest. The goal is to keep the
| motherboard for as long as possible, by replacing the modules
| around.
|
| If your motherboard died... well that's unfortunate, but I
| believe it's not supposed to be the norm.
|
| I, for one, am super happy with my 3+.
| IronWolve wrote:
| Wow SDCard and 3.5mm headphone jack. Very nice.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I didn't notice that. I really miss my headphones jack. A
| couple of nights ago I couldn't sleep, and wanted to put on a
| guided meditation without waking my wife... and I had to turn
| on my headphones, wait for the beep....wait for the led to stop
| flashing... I for one am much happier with wired headphones.
| ta8903 wrote:
| It's nice that this phone is "officially" repairable which means
| you can buy the parts straight from Nokia and do the repairs
| yourself but keep in mind that most popular Android phones (even
| the cheap Chinese ones) are already repairable, you can look up
| instructions on how to open the back panel on youtube and buy the
| parts off aliexpress and do the repair yourself, or with brands
| like Xiaomi which have large presences in some countries you can
| have them do it, for much cheaper than it would cost for this
| phone.
| davesque wrote:
| ... _and_ it comes with two guitar picks!
| userbinator wrote:
| I still remember when removable battery, storage, and dual SIMs
| (at least on some models) was the norm with Androids. For a lot
| of unbranded/lesser-known low-end Chinese brands based largely on
| reference designs, that's still true today.
|
| Given that there are underlying standards for many of these
| components, I wonder if we might see the emergence of industry-
| standard de-facto form factors, at least for Android phones.
| octacat wrote:
| Just unglued my samsung to replace battery/usb c. The mobile
| network does not work now. I guess getting something repairable
| is not a bad idea. Probably shorted, because you cannot
| disconnect battery without removing mid frame (and oh god that's
| hard).
| circuit10 wrote:
| Why does it have a notch but a thick bottom bezel? I thought the
| point of the notch was so that you could make the screen cover
| the whole display? Why can they not just move the screen down a
| bit to get the bezel to the top, remove the notch and put the
| camera at the top?
| rokweom wrote:
| Because LCD connectors require space. On phones where the
| bottom bezel is very small, the display is actually bent.
| indymike wrote:
| This is pretty common on lower-end devices and I think the
| answer is it looks more "high end" to they buyer.
| bitL wrote:
| Ask HMD, they made some boneheaded design decisions in the last
| gen, thinking they are Apple to get away with it. Their sales
| showed otherwise and now they probably need to get rid of
| components they bough in advance, so here comes a repairable
| phone.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| It would be nice if some company went against this obsession with
| ultra thin phones. Then we could go back to ACTUAL replaceable
| batteries, maybe durability too, something Nokia used to take
| pride in.
|
| Yes I'd like a 2mm thick phone with 6 cameras I can replace every
| year. I'd like my phone to get closer and closer to toilet paper
| clogging the pipes of this planet.
| system2 wrote:
| Time flies and 3 years update is nothing. Remember the beginning
| of covid days? More than 3 years ago. So if you bought this phone
| those days now it was in the garbage bin. I don't want to spend
| time and effort to buy a phone every 2-3 years. Buy an iPhone,
| they replace the battery for you for $69 even after 3 years.
| iPhones are rock-solid and get 6-7 years of updates.
| cromulent wrote:
| Totally agree. But I would love a competitor. This smells like
| the start of one, if compromised by committee.
| aeyes wrote:
| But your device is still perfectly usable after the last
| update. It will probably take at least 2 years before apps
| refuse to work on that version.
|
| By the way: In 3 days iPhone battery replacement price will go
| up by $20, not such a good deal anymore. I can buy a budget
| phone at this price point.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| This is excellent. However, I wish they released a more powerful
| version with the same repairability. I believe this would better
| appeal to the audience that values the repairability, as well as
| put pressure on other vendors to do the same.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That seems like the natural progression, if this model has any
| success.
| jw14 wrote:
| Supported with updates for 3 years? So you'll change the battery
| once, I guess.
| whatsthatabout wrote:
| The Nokia website only states 2 years of OS updates - so its
| e-waste from the beginning. What a joke *EDIT: And 3 years of
| security updates
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| If it gets popular enough on XDA, you can bet on another few
| years of updates from the community.
|
| - Sent from my Xiaomi A2 Lite (released 2018), currently
| running Android 13
| user3939382 wrote:
| I once put my own root cert on Android and over 2 weeks
| intercepting, analyzing, and cutting off every phone home
| background process, until it could only send traffic arising
| directly from my UI activity.
|
| The amount of privacy abusive traffic was astonishing. Stopping
| it made the phone basically unusable. I hope some day a real open
| source, user rights focused OS can accompany something like this.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Can you install your own OS on this device?
| [deleted]
| totetsu wrote:
| I keep stripping the heads of screws in my electronics Im trying
| to repair. they are made of such soft metal. Any one have any
| suggestions of good repair tool kit that fits well?
| paulmd wrote:
| Eh, they're only doing this because they're required by EU
| mandate to have removable batteries in a few years right?
|
| They get as much credit as Apple gets for switching to USB-C to
| ensure legal compliance with _that_ EU mandate: zero.
|
| Doing it 5 years ago would have been brave, you don't get brownie
| points for complying with a legal mandate you opposed and fought.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| I must say, I'm quite surprised that just by having a removable
| back it's suddenly a DIY repairable... My previous phone (Lenovo
| Note K3) that I replaced last year because it started to blue
| screen also had a removable back and the battery just slotted in,
| like it did with the old phones, which I find even easier to
| replace then what this phone offers.
|
| When I read the title I thought it was going to be a phone that
| costs <200EUR and really just plug'n'play with all the parts. I
| was thinking of buying it just for the sake of supporting the
| movement, but now I'm just disappointed...
|
| Was I expecting too much? I mean any repairability is better then
| none, but still this feels a bit too little...
| nilespotter wrote:
| You can replace the display on this one too. Sounds like if
| your Lenovo Note K3 had that feature, you'd still have it.
| sdze wrote:
| Who repairs a 180EUR phone that is slow out of the box with an
| old version of Android?
| Ninjinka wrote:
| > "allowing users to swap out the battery in under five minutes"
|
| Wow, I remember when that was 5 seconds, and came standard on
| Android.
| kleiba wrote:
| Why does Nokia's website then say that the battery is non-
| removable?
| https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-g-22/specs?sku=101...
| 97s wrote:
| Supported for 3 years. LOL. Just don't get this one bit.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| The previous option for a budget repairable phone was 0 years
| support.
| 97s wrote:
| Yea I mean I get that, but I had my pixel 2 for over 5 years.
| Without repairing it at all. I assume my samsung S22U will
| also last 5+ years. So I just don't see the point of repair-
| ability if the support cycle is only 3 years. What is going
| to break in 3 years of a cell phone unless its very poorly
| made?
| LegitShady wrote:
| they should raise the price $20 and give 5 years of updates.
|
| gsmarena says this g22 will have a 3.5mm headphone jack too.
| [deleted]
| shp0ngle wrote:
| I never ordered Fairphone because honestly the camera is absolute
| crap and making pictures of my kids is maybe #1 thing I do with
| my phone.
|
| If the camera on these is less crap... I probably still won't buy
| it, because it has the same 3 years update policy as most
| Androids do.
|
| But hey I might think about it harder.
|
| edit: conversely, if fairphone ever ships with camera that's
| better than 7 year old iPhone, then I'm game.
| mvkel wrote:
| Fine as long as the software will continue to support it, which
| will last about two years
| everdrive wrote:
| This looks like a step in the right direction. If someone could
| make it easy to get another OS on here, we'd really be in good
| shape.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| Nokia phones are notorious for not having unlockable bootloaders
| and substandard performance. Maybe this one is different, but
| neither factor seems mentioned in the article
| pxc wrote:
| If you can't update it to fix security flaws, it's not
| repairable. Software and firmware updates is 100% a repairability
| issue, as is the ability to customize those things with your own
| patches.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Uniherz Titan is also a fully repairable phone (came out years
| ago).
|
| Also it's better because it has a physical keyboard :) Just IMO
| obviously :)
|
| Recently got spare parts for mine such as battery and new charger
| port circuit. The manufacturer posts Youtube videos online on how
| to DIY it. Totally amazing IMO.
| Groxx wrote:
| Interesting brand - how's the OS customizations and security
| update velocity? Those small phones are awfully tempting...
| askvictor wrote:
| I have a Jelly 2; the OS is mostly stock Android - a couple
| of minor tweaks to support particular hardware (e.g. the
| customisable button).
| forinti wrote:
| The thing I really cared about was being able to swap the
| battery. So I got a Neffos C5 many years ago. When time came to
| swap the battery, I could only find crappy ones (probably used)
| from China.
|
| So, while I see this as positive, I'll just wait a few years
| before I praise anybody.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Going to wait and see how many "iPhones are so unrepairable"
| folks are gonna buy this phone.
| notorandit wrote:
| > will be supported for three years
|
| So, after three years either you will be lucky and it will be
| supported by someone else (read LineageOS and friends) or it will
| be seen and a security problem.
|
| We don't need just hardware repairability, but also software
| support.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| This is pretty awesome. I lost my original SurfaceBook to a
| failed battery (pillow of doom mode). I hope it enjoys a lot of
| success and inspires others to make it easy to fix the "obvious"
| breaking things (screens, batteries, mainboard).
| tuetuopay wrote:
| > It runs Android 12 and will be supported for three years of
| monthly security updates and two major Android version upgrades.
|
| And that's why I stick to iPhones for long-lasting devices, those
| two major versions are a joke. Apple has the crown with _seven_
| on the iPhone 6S. When will someone make Android phones other
| than Pixels with non-abysmal software support? Yes, I know you
| can install alternate ROMs on your phone, but this is not what
| the general public does, especially with a phone at this price
| point. The average joe will definitely change his phone after
| three years when they cannot install whatsapp or messenger or
| their banking app anymore.
|
| That said, kudos to Nokia for entering this market, I genuinely
| hope it will be profitable enough for them to keep it up!
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, I had to throw away my perfectly capable phone because my
| banking app refused to work at some point because the version
| of Android was too old and the phone stopped supporting newer
| versions of Android.
|
| Edit: not sarcastic, 100% serious.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Can't you use web app tho? I only seen one bank that would
| limit features on a web app (I don't understand why), but
| there are tons of banks out there nowadays, many digital ones
| with features where no traditional bank will ever even dream
| to implement.
| cvalka wrote:
| Security updates are a must. Without them it's not a usable
| device
| amelius wrote:
| The fault is not with the bank, but with the vendor of the
| phone. The hardware is perfectly capable of running newer
| Android versions, but the phone simply doesn't support
| them.
| Descensus wrote:
| This is especially the case with lower end phones. My
| mother (an immigrant whose family communicates via
| WhatsApp, and other free services) buys a new phone every
| year or so because her BoA, or transit app can't be used
| without the version of Android that was never released
| for her phone.
|
| It's some real "serpent eating its own tail" sh*t if I
| ever saw it.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Not everyone cares about security updates.
| cvalka wrote:
| Not everyone cares about using condoms for one night
| stands. Would you apply the same approach to Windows
| workstations?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I, personally, do care. But I saw lots of computers with
| old Windows, like XP, 2003 and so on. On my current work
| we have dozens of customers with Windows Vista which
| causes lots of headache and significantly limiting us
| with development tools. Well, it works for them, so who
| am I to judge. All I can see is that not everyone cares
| about security updates, including Windows workstations
| which handle quite important data.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Not everyone cares about security updates.
|
| OK.
|
| But surely banks ought to. If you care about having a
| banking app, then you ought to care transitively.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Do they really? All they care is about some particular
| version of Android (like any other app). I don't think I
| ever saw any banking app which would check for presence
| of some particular security updates (not even sure if
| it's possible).
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Right, like the good old "we care so much about security
| that we blocked rooted devices, but we make no effort
| whatsoever to check the security patch date":)
| serf wrote:
| None of my banking apps will work on a rooted phone, so I
| need to keep a 'clean' android phone around if I care to
| use their app. (I don't.)
| [deleted]
| bmacho wrote:
| AFAIK if I use a bank app on an insecure phone, and they
| stole my money, the bank should give it back to me.
| Authentication is their job after all.
|
| But it is not much of as a problem right now. They
| definitely try to push people towards more secure and up-
| to-date systems, but as now, you still can bank from
| insecure systems as well, and allow your account to be
| stolen.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Banks don't even do 2FA properly. They don't care.
| amelius wrote:
| Banks don't care about security. See e.g. credit cards
| where the numbers are just printed in plain sight for
| everyone to copy them.
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| It's supposed to never leave your pocket or your hand.
| Besides, if someone gets your credit card number and
| purchases something, you can charge it back. The vendor
| is supporting the risk, not you.
| amelius wrote:
| > It's supposed to never leave your pocket or your hand.
|
| If you buy something in a store, you have no certainty
| that your CC number doesn't end in the hands of store
| personnel.
|
| > Besides, if someone gets your credit card number and
| purchases something, you can charge it back.
|
| You have to keep an eye on it. It is easy to overlook if
| the amount small is enough.
|
| All in all, I wouldn't call this good security practice.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| > Security updates are a must. Without them it's not a
| usable device
|
| That belongs on https://twitter.com/shituserstory
| cvalka wrote:
| Don't be arrogant and wrong at the same time. Not a very
| good combination.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| As a _bank customer_
|
| I want to _buy a new phone when trying to access to my
| money_
|
| So that _an IT manager at the bank can put a check mark
| next to a policy OKR_
| aspyct wrote:
| I suggest you complain to your bank about it. If you can,
| maybe switch to another one if they don't fix the issue.
|
| I know it sounds extreme, but it's time to send the signal
| that it's not ok to force people to throw electronics to
| landfill because of shiny new APIs.
| camhart wrote:
| I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
|
| I have 5+ year old Android phones that have no issue with
| banking apps. I'm not sure where this rhetoric is coming
| from, but it doesn't align with my experience on Android.
|
| Capital one/wells fargo requires android 8+. Citi bank 7.1+.
| (I stopped looking it up at this point). 8 was released in
| 2017. So assuming 2 years of major OS updates, that means
| roughly phones from 2015 can still work with it.
|
| Also... even if the app stops working, you can use a web
| browser still.
|
| Phone batteries die off long before this becomes a reality.
| 8K832d7tNmiQ wrote:
| 2017 and above android phones are generally considered to
| be mature enough on both hardware and OS version side
| compared to a decade-old phones released on 2015 and below.
|
| I would not surprise if we'd gradually get longer software
| support on future phones as time goes on.
| xnyan wrote:
| >I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
|
| My local bank requires 9 or above
|
| >Also... even if the app stops working, you can use a web
| browser still.
|
| It's not uncommon at all for banks to have a website that's
| virtually impossible to use on mobile browsers.
| camhart wrote:
| Even at 9, thats supported from devices bought in 2016 or
| later. Who's battery lasts > 6-7 years?
| benj111 wrote:
| But why should the device life be limited by the battery?
|
| This thread is discussing a phone with replaceable
| battery. For at least 5 years.
| paulmd wrote:
| > Who's battery lasts > 6-7 years?
|
| I think the relevant question is whose _phone_ lasts 6-7
| years? Because you might well replace the battery a
| couple times over the life of the phone and that 's fine.
|
| Anyway I just got a whole new iphone 8+ out of a failed
| battery replacement and it was showing all kinds of OS
| and application glitches, just as the moto G I had before
| it did too. The flash and DRAM doesn't last forever, the
| practical lifespan of the handset itself is about 3 years
| for complete stability, 4 years for moderate glitchiness,
| and 5 years for complete unusability, same pattern across
| both phones.
|
| But yes, this means I will be using a 2017 phone for
| another 4 years, so the software lifespan probably needs
| to be close to a decade, and Android's lifespan is
| absurdly far from that level.
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, using the website is cumbersome compared to using
| the banking app, in my bank's case, especially on mobile.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Can't carriers lock OS versions? I remember a long time ago
| circa Android 4 I had to replace a bunch of deployed
| devices because Verizon wouldn't allow upgrades.
| bitbang wrote:
| Chase now requires 9+
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| If you're using a banking app to do online banking, security
| doesn't seem to be a priority in the first place. Or what is
| your banking app's second factor for authentication?
| Fingerprint? On Android? On the same device you bring with
| you everywhere and use for surfing all sorts of websites?
| Zigurd wrote:
| It's the oems fault in this case. And they have no excuse.
| Google has modified the architecture of Android to make it
| possible for oems to update as quickly as possible, as well as
| all of the previous efforts to enable updating user-facing
| features without updating the OS. But it's all still a kludge
| compared to iOS.
|
| The bottom line is I don't think this is solvable with
| technology. Google should have gotten much tougher with OEMs
| once Android got widely accepted.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They had their chance with Project Treble, and took the
| decision to make updates optional and not a requirement for
| Play Store contracts, so naturally nothing changed.
|
| The Android team is the one to blame, several times on
| Android Fireside sessions they have answered that they rather
| have the fragementation of the ecosystem where partners are
| allowed to experiment and come up with new ideas.
|
| Well one of the ideas is to sell newer devices instead of
| free beer upgrades, with Google's complacency.
|
| I still rather be on Android, because even with them screwing
| up Sun and leaving it to implode, I like that they push a
| managed OS no matter what.
|
| Those that unaccept it and keep diving into the NDK with GL
| based UIs, always get a few scars in the process.
| duxup wrote:
| I agree about it being impossible to solve the update issues
| with tech.
|
| There are too many benefits for the OEMs to dump phones on
| the market and not update. No reason to care otherwise so
| far, sadly.
| rock_artist wrote:
| Also Pixels usually gets less official OS iterations than
| iPhones.
|
| Only nice thing on Android is the aftermarket ROMs since it's
| AOSP. Sadly from my experience the aftermarket ROMs for newer
| OS iterations arent polished or miss features that the OEM roms
| had.
| camhart wrote:
| Less official?
| xnyan wrote:
| They meant fewer, as in "Android gets fewer official OS
| iterations than iPhone."
| nortonham wrote:
| what they mean is iPhones receive updates (OS upgrades and
| security updates) and are officially supported by Apple for
| a longer period of time than any Android phone.
|
| The Google Pixel receives new android versions and security
| updates for a longer period of time than any other android
| phone, but that's fewer than the equivalent iPhone
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah my wife's old iPhone 8 Plus still gets updates, still
| runs. Many of my android devices from that time are dead, no
| more updates, and/or borderline unusable due to random android
| slowdown performance issues.
|
| In fact running across that old phone is what convinced me to
| switch.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Not to dismiss, but I have a pixel 3, still snappy, android
| 12. It was released 1 year after iphone 8 if I'm not
| mistaken, but still, it's about ~5 years from today
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Yep, that's the lifecycle of iPhones.
|
| I usually get the latest and greatest from work every 2
| years. Then I pay a nominal fee to get it for myself (because
| of taxes or accounting or something).
|
| I get a new phone from the company, my old one goes to my SO.
| Their old one goes either to my kid or to mine or my SO's
| parents, depending on which part of the lifecycle they are
| at.
|
| Can't do that with Android, the 5-6 year old ones would be so
| bad and out of date that I wouldn't want to be the one doing
| tech support for them.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| > when they cannot install whatsapp or messenger or their
| banking app anymore.
|
| Hyperbole much? That's a ridiculous claim. I've been sporting a
| _" renewed"_ Samsung S10E since early 2021. There's still
| nothing it can't do. Prior to that I owned a Galaxy S7 since
| 2016! That's a 5 whole years without any phone issues on an
| Android phone. I turned on the S7 a few months back and after
| an update, all the apps still work.
| fdaryfdyfgd wrote:
| that's at least 3 years each using a phone with absolutely no
| security updates to network, wifi, cryptolibs, html/js engine
| etc.
|
| not that iphone are any better. you have zero idea what you
| get on a new ios for old devices since the binaries are not
| the same. only thing you can be certain is the extra slow
| down loop
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| On the S7 I got security updates up until September 2020
| IIRC. I anticipate the S10E will continue to receive
| security updates for just a little while longer and it's
| currently on Android 12.
|
| My point was that old Android phones "not working" after a
| few years is complete bs. The S10E was launched in March
| 2019 and still going strong.
|
| EDIT: Looks like the S10E is still getting monthly security
| updates too:
| https://doc.samsungmobile.com/sm-g970f/xeo/doc.html
| piperswe wrote:
| The HTML/JS engine does get updated, it's contained in a
| component called "Android System WebView" on the Play
| Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.go
| ogle.and...
| kyriakos wrote:
| A big benefit of Android, its modular and bits and pieces
| can be updated independently. Part of the reason iPhones
| require to have long term OS support is the fact that
| their browser would otherwise be stuck at an old version.
| IshKebab wrote:
| You have it backwards. In the early days Android didn't
| have any components in the Play Store and Apple still
| provided updates for much much longer than Android
| manufacturers.
|
| Google moved the web browser component to the Play Store
| _because_ Android 's OS updates are so bad. They had no
| choice but to do it.
|
| Apple could do it too if they wanted to but they don't
| need to because they actually provide OS updates for a
| decent period.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Regardless of the history though, now, Chrome (+ webview)
| and Firefox on Android receive at least one update per
| month (sometimes more frequently). Thats a plus.
| eganist wrote:
| Samsung supports 4 years of updates as of last February.
| The S10E is in that window, too.
|
| https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-android-
| updates-114...
| gandalfian wrote:
| Though I'm on android 9? Five year old phone and while I'm not
| a power user nothing seems to care? Apple apps are much more
| picky of versions.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Security is a complicated matter; you only realize you should
| have cared when it's too late.
| thrashh wrote:
| What Apple apps? I just went from an iPhone 10 (6 years old)
| to 14 last week and I didn't have any change in my apps.
| b1ue64 wrote:
| The difference here is that an iPhone X (damn, that came
| out 6 years ago?) is still supported
| throwaway472919 wrote:
| I guess what they meant is that third-party apps are much
| stricter on iOS (at least partly because Apple updates
| faster and for longer, probably). I was on Android 8 (2017)
| until recently without any issues, whereas iOS apps only
| seem to support 1-2 versions back generally. Plus the
| Safari rendering engine doesn't update independently so you
| can't fall back to the web.
| circuit10 wrote:
| That's because the iPhone 10 is still being supported so
| you likely have the latest iOS version
| kyriakos wrote:
| PS149.99 with 3 years of software updates + repairable sounds
| good enough to me.
| bg24 wrote:
| I am an iPhone user. Irrespective of software update, the
| device gets really slow at 3yrs mark, forcing me to change. So
| I do not know if supporting a phone software for >3yrs is a
| good idea or just marketing.
| nabakin wrote:
| Small to medium Android phone manufacturers need to team up and
| support a single ROM instead of maintaining individual flavors
| like this which only last for a few years.
| therealasdf wrote:
| Samsung offers 5 years of support.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Certain models and only starting last year. So an
| improvement, yet still requires one do research.
| pjmlp wrote:
| iPhones drag to a crawl after a couple of OS updates when the
| hardware is no longer up to the stuff of the latest iOS
| versions.
|
| I only change phones when they die in some form, so 300 euros
| every 5 years on average is more than enough, I am not buying
| phones with laptop prices.
|
| I have anyway access to Apple devices via project assignments
| in consulting projects.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| So you'd prefer a phone that has no updates, functional or
| security, to one that is _slower_? Because that's the reality
| for functional updates after less than two years, and
| security after 3 for this phone. 7 major OS updates is over
| twice as long.
|
| Ok. Sure Jan. I think the majority will take that slow phone
| in a heartbeat.
| bmacho wrote:
| Why not? A phone that has no updates, functional or
| security still can do a lot of things very well.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| It's also a _massive_ security risk.
| flykespice wrote:
| How often do you run into security riskd when using your
| phone everyday?
| serf wrote:
| Would you know what to count? Most wouldn't.
| flykespice wrote:
| First is common sense, computer viruses is a so common
| knowledge thing that scares many people, even my parents
| who are dummy on technology fears them and avoid
| suspicous sites and malwares from unknown sources, same
| thing carries for apps (ie. don't install from second
| sources)
|
| Second is even if an android version lagging behing on
| security features from later versions, play store enforce
| enough harsh policies on app submissions requiring access
| to external data and collect user data, that you can
| trust most of it. Sure some apps can slip under their
| radar but play store bots can eventually catch up to
| them.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Considering the increase of putting your entire life into
| your phone, your phone's security should honestly be
| among those you care about the most.
|
| Most people will access all facets of their life on their
| phone, from social, to financial, to work. If anything,
| the risk is only going to increase as time goes on.
| dageshi wrote:
| Given androids market share vs iphone... the majority are
| indeed taking a phone with no updates over a slower phone.
|
| As long as the apps they use work ok I'm not sure the
| majority cares about updates security or otherwise.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I mean, no. Their market share says nothing about
| people's wants and needs on this topic, it just means
| that on the whole the Android package is more appealing.
| Which could be for _many_ reasons, of which price is
| going to be the biggest.
|
| If people could choose a longer period of updates, I
| don't really expect any to refuse.
| dageshi wrote:
| You don't get longer updates without increasing the
| price. If people did really care about updates outside of
| HN it would be a marketing feature.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| The fact that Android phone releases (like the one we're
| commenting on right now) generally announce the supported
| feature and security updates indicates that it very much
| is one already, at least on the Android side.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is no different from how feature phones and smartphones
| used to be.
|
| Only rich people care about iPhones, or those that buy
| everything on credit.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Or, you know, those that want their phones supported for
| longer than two years.
|
| Minimizing a group of people does nothing but stroke your
| own ego. There are many reasons to buy an iPhone. There
| are many reasons to buy an Android. Buying one or the
| other says nothing about you as a person and implying
| otherwise is absurd and childish.
|
| We're not on Reddit; this is supposed to be adults having
| conversations not preteen fanboys blindly worshipping a
| mobile OS.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Who is worshipping iOS here then?
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Nobody. Did you even read the comment you replied to? The
| one that says there are reasons to buy each OS? Pointing
| out a clear advantage is not worshipping, it's just
| _pointing out a clear advantage_.
|
| Price is a clear advantage for Android phones. Does that
| make me an Android worshipper now?
| system16 wrote:
| My experience does not align with this at all. I've been
| using an iPhone XS for nearly 5 years. Other than wishing it
| had a more powerful camera, I haven't felt the need to get a
| new phone at all. Sure, it's not as snappy as my wife's brand
| new iPhone 14 Pro, but I can easily live with it for another
| year or two.
| qwytw wrote:
| After a couple of OS updates any iPhone is still faster than
| an average Android phone sold at the time.
| eropple wrote:
| _> iPhones drag to a crawl after a couple of OS updates when
| the hardware is no longer up to the stuff of the latest iOS
| versions._
|
| Not really, and definitely not with more modern ones. I have
| an iPhone 11 from 2019. It was released with iOS 13. It is
| now running iOS 16.1.1. It is as snappy as the day I bought
| it. I'm considering a phone upgrade, but that's because of
| the improved camera, not performance (or even battery life).
|
| My old iPhone 8 (2017) is still getting updates, and now _is_
| moderately pokey with nontrivial apps, but the OS is fine.
| And I get it with regards to apps, as the perf and battery
| improvements between the A11 and the A13 chips was pretty
| significant.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I wasn't talking about the modern ones, naturally they
| still aren't old enough to suffer from that.
|
| As you tell yourself, the iPhone 8 isn't its former self
| with its original iOS version.
| eropple wrote:
| It's also _six years old_ and where it 's pokey tends to
| be _apps_ , not the OS. The browser, mostly. Turns out we
| all like to write a lot of JavaScript, I guess?
|
| Even if that weren't the case, a six-year-old iPhone 8
| has out-survived the useful, secure life of, what,
| _every_ Android device not made directly by Google? Hell,
| a 3.5-year-old iPhone 11 has out-survived the useful,
| secure life of the overwhelming majority of Android
| devices, too. And, further, given that A11- >A13 was the
| most significant period of perf improvement and energy
| reductions (the A14/A15 are moderately faster but the
| tail certainly appears to be here), that bodes well for
| its continuing usefulness.
| pjmlp wrote:
| 80% of the world doesn't care about those performance
| enhancements at the price of a laptop replacement.
|
| Apps or OS doesn't matter, they are interwined.
| eropple wrote:
| I have bad news for you about the performance of flagship
| Android devices from 2017, man.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I am all ears, given the devices I have around here.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > Not really, and definitely not with more modern ones. I
| have an iPhone 11 from 2019. It was released with iOS 13.
| It is now running iOS 16.1.1. It is as snappy as the day I
| bought it.
|
| I mean.. that is (on average) roughly 2.5 years old. If
| your phone was expensive and is still fairly new, then it's
| not going to be affected by the stuff that pertains old,
| mid-tier phones, before it gets even older than those.
|
| That's not an Apple/iPhone property but I find it
| fascinating, that they are able to sell it as such.
| eropple wrote:
| I bought mine at release, to replace an iPhone 6 (which
| itself replaced an Android device of higher spec because
| I was tired of the treadmill and a friend sold it to me
| used). So mine's closer to 3.5 years old than to 2.5.
|
| And when you slot that against Android options, 3.5 years
| is a lot for a usable, secure life of a mobile device. I
| can safely assume I'll get five years of good, secure
| perf out of any Apple device from the last five years and
| another 2-3 years (at minimum) of tolerable performance,
| and that's pretty hard to argue with in this market.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it's not _enough_ and I 'd like it to
| be better; I'd like _all_ hardware reusability to be
| better. I 'm pretty big on it; I still have an iPad 3 and
| a Nexus 7 in use as house kiosks (which sidesteps the
| security issue that phones necessarily have). But if I am
| maximizing useful life, buying Apple devices has been
| less fraught for most, if not all, of my adult life.
| irowe wrote:
| I'm now to the point where I frequently have first party
| apps crash on my iPhone 7, plus the screen has phantom
| touch issues. I really don't want to replace it though.
| paulmd wrote:
| See my comments elsewhere but this is handset damage
| (flash and DRAM wear and battery performance leading to
| processor throttling) and would go away if you had your
| handset replaced with another 7. It's not the hardware
| spec that's the problem, it's your particular unit.
| irowe wrote:
| You're definitely right that some of the slowdown is due
| to physical wear. I have had the battery replaced once,
| about 2 years ago back when Apple was offering it at a
| reduced price, but it's back to "significantly degraded"
| status. I have a hard time thinking that the system
| software load increasing over time doesn't also have a
| significant impact, though.
| thrashh wrote:
| I was using an iPhone 10 with the latest iOS versions until
| last week and didn't have any issues
| pjmlp wrote:
| Now try the same with an iPhone 5.
| system16 wrote:
| If we are going back to 2012, how are the Nexus 4 and
| Samsung Galaxy S3 holding up compared to current Android
| phones?
| pjmlp wrote:
| It was a random model, as iPhone 11, released in 2019
| wasn't what I consider old, rather those on their last
| update legs.
| crazygringo wrote:
| They really don't.
|
| IIRC, there was only one prominent case of that happening
| (slowing down noticeably), I think it was iOS 7 on the iPhone
| 4 but I might be wrong about that. And I think they fixed it
| a bunch in 7.1, so it wasn't even for that long.
|
| But ever since then Apple really _hasn 't_ pushed updates
| that slow the phone meaningfully. Instead they gatekeep new
| features to newer models that can support it, which makes
| sense.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Well I'm happy to have a bit slower phone to be able to use
| it fully for 7 years, with all security updates and current
| apps (again, with their respective security updates).
|
| Did you actually daily drive one? Because I did use an iPhone
| 6S for its full software support span (7 years) and yes, by
| the end of 2022 it was definitely the fastest kid on the
| block. But to run messaging apps, play music, grab quick
| pictures and scroll memes in the subway, it's more than fine.
| pjmlp wrote:
| When doing projects on Apple ecosystem, yep.
| ck2 wrote:
| It will likely be running LineageOS (formerly Cyanogenmod) for
| a decade to come.
| secondcoming wrote:
| My current Nokia phone has 3 years of support
| input_sh wrote:
| Fairphone that's mentioned in the article has 7 years of
| support (IIRC).
|
| Never used it though, my last 3 phones were all from Nokia.
| It's pretty much the only manufacturer that still releases new
| stock (Android One) models regularly.
|
| (Excluding too-expensive-for-my-taste Pixels and some Motorolas
| I could never find in my country).
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > and some Motorolas I could never find in my country
|
| Hm? Writing this on g30 and Motos aren't popular here for
| years.
|
| Edit: like I bought the cheapest Samsung last year and the
| experience is night and day.
| input_sh wrote:
| G30 isn't an Android One phone.
|
| Android One = nearly the same stock Android you'd get on a
| Pixel, no (non-Google) bloatware, no custom UI.
|
| It was never quite popular, but if you scroll through the
| Wikipedia list of devices
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One), you'll see
| it's pretty much only Nokia nowadays.
|
| Some Motorola models as well, but I couldn't find those
| specific models back when they were still new and I was
| looking for a phone.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Honestly modern Motos are as close to the stock A. as you
| can get. Not really sure about E4, flashed it to LOS
| pretty soon, but g8 and, now, g30 has a minimal Moto
| integrations and some are actually useful, eg on g30 I
| finally adopted MotoActions (flash by chop-chop and
| camera by uugh doggo shake? lol) despite ignoring them
| for years, since XT720/RAZR. With g30 I even left the
| default launcher, it is good enough that I didn't bother.
| Lapsa wrote:
| I'm using some kind of 3310 reincarnation. it's a great phone,
| even has a radio.
| timonoko wrote:
| Apropos. You can make any kind of new battery simply by
| dismantling the original battery and reusing the connector and
| charging electronics and raw unprotected LiOn-cells. This is
| safer than ordering god-knows-what batteries from Aliexpress.
|
| Size issues can be solved by sawing off protruding areas from
| back cover and duck tape (or 3D-printer). Thus you can have
| cellphone with swapable Lion AAA-cells for example.
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| Does it have a headphone jack?
| haunter wrote:
| Yes
| jonas-w wrote:
| yes it does
|
| https://www.nokia.com/phones/nokia-g-22/specs
| Beaver117 wrote:
| Yeah you could repair this, but after two years you won't want to
| ummonk wrote:
| 3 years of software updates is rather mediocre from my
| perspective as an iPhone user.
| harvie wrote:
| Nokia phone with replaceable battery. Such a novel idea...
| WhackyIdeas wrote:
| I have an iPhone Pro Max 13, and you can mark my words - I am
| selling this and getting a couple of these G22's. This sounds
| fantastic. I cannot wait.
| hajola wrote:
| Curious, what is the reason you would consider buying more than
| 1?
| WhackyIdeas wrote:
| Work and personal, but also as dedicated offline password
| managers. If I don't need camera functionality or wifi, then
| can simply pop those out. The options are endless.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Spare parts?
| tastysandwich wrote:
| > It runs Android 12 and will be supported for three years of
| monthly security updates and two major Android version upgrades.
|
| They couldn't get Android 13 in time? Seeing as it's already a
| major version behind, and 14 will be released in August 2023,
| you're really only getting another six months of software support
| (plus security fixes).
|
| I'm not an Android dev but my understanding is that a lot of work
| has been put into making Android easier to upgrade major versions
| (eg, core functionality being split out into separate services).
| It doesn't look like that is translating into longer upgrade
| support, which is a shame. But I suppose that's why we're getting
| 5 years of security updates? (which is probably most important)
| Groxx wrote:
| Given how much of an absolute mess 12 was for me on a Pixel
| phone, and the massive delays and pushback from other
| manufacturers, I would kinda have hoped they would use 11 or
| jump to 13.
|
| 12 was easily the least stable Android I've ever used, and
| that's _including_ three years of constant beta (sometimes
| nightly) use while I did Android development.
| cristiioan wrote:
| Outside the major brands(Samsung, etc), many cheap phones ship
| with an older version from release. Probably because it is
| cheaper?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| PostmarketOS support?
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