> unfortunately for most laypeople it's security and privacy that's on the chopping block.

I think this is why we need legislation: The free market obviously can't sort this out to peoples' benefit.

I have a couple Android devices I can't figure out how to update, so I'm afraid to use them for anything serious. If the author isn't responsible for writing crappy code, and I can't fix it, then where's my lemon law?

I agree, but have one nitpick - it's not that the free market can't sort this out, but that this is exactly the solution the free market is set up to organically create. Can't afford the tech? Sell your identity to marketers! That's all free market and I don't think we give the "free market" (scare quotes because we're so far from that in actuality it's painful) enough credit for creating these exact problems.

It is not a better solution to take away the freedom of people who are willing to sell their privacy. For some, it’s the only way to afford a computer.

> Ultimately Apple's pricing means all their users are first class - hence security

Yeah... Good luck running the latest version of iOS on an older iPhone. (Many are still have a 5/6 and you really don't want to update those if you value a reasonable experience and latency.)

You do realize you're attacking the _one_ company which supports their phone for the longest period, do you?

IOS 12 can be installed on the 5S, which is the oldest 64 bit phone. It was launched in 2013.

iOS 12 runs on everything through the 5S, and notably improved performance over iOS 10/11 on the same devices. [1] is a bunch of benchmarks from back in the beta period.

My kid has it on a 6, and it's legitimately good performance there.

Good luck getting the latest Android onto a 5 year old handset without jumping through some non-trivial hoops.

[1]: http://www.iphonehacks.com/2018/09/ios-12-performance-improv...

I'm not speaking hypothetically, but from experience. I have a 4 year old 200gbp Android phone running Pie, took 10 minutes.

I also have an iPhone 8, this is an Ok phone but is a worse experience than the 4 year old Android phone. Despite the cost being much higher, the screen is worse quality, for instance.

My partner has a 6 and it is remarkably slower than both. To the point where you sometimes just want to give up on whatever you were trying to do while waiting for a map or Spotify to load.

Maybe your experience is different to ours, but I'm only reporting what I see from using all 3.

> I'm not speaking hypothetically, but from experience. I have a 4 year old 200gbp Android phone running Pie, took 10 minutes.

You're lying. Installing a custom third-party Android ROM is way more than a 10 minute process, your OnePlus X is barely more than 3 years old, and there's a huge difference between a random OS image you downloaded from a forum online and manufacturer-supported OS updates for a 5 year old phone.

Which cheapo Android has a better screen than an iPhone 8??

At the risk of wading into the iPhone vs Android battle...:

iPhone 8 vs Nexus 6 from 2014, back when Google marketed that series as reasonable Dev devices, not necessarily flagships.

326 ppi vs 493 ppi

750 x 1334 pixels vs 1440 x 2560 pixels

IPS LCD vs AMOLED

Somewhere there is a tongue in cheek meme comparing a sister phone, the Nexus 4, from 2012 against a 2016(?) iPhone and it's quite interesting how many features the Android phones had and were mildly credited for that when copied to iPhone were /world changers!!1/

Granted, Android phone manufacturers have wised up and besides things like the Nokia 6.1 you can't really get a good mid-range Android phone any more... it's mostly clustered around either the humble Moto E or the Note 9 price points.

I know my G1 had online contact syncing and updates while the iPhone still required a USB adapter.

OnePlus X specifically, but pretty much any that has a decent AMOLED.

>Yeah... Good luck running the latest version of iOS on an older iPhone. (Many are still have a 5/6 and you really don't want to update those if you value a reasonable experience and latency.)

Spoken like someone who's never actually used a 5 or 6 running iOS 12.

Nope I speak from experience, we have a 6 with iOS 12.

Also have an 8, which admittedly is an ok phone if horrendously overpriced but work paid for it so I can't complain.

I have a couple Android devices and I can't get them to update at all. I'm sure there's some kind of solution, but my time is really valuable to me: If all I have to do is spend £1k every four years (£20 a month) to not worry about this, it's a done deal.