However, if I pick up a 2 year old Windows/Mac computer or iOS device, I can still run the latest OS.
I switched to an Android from iPhone when Galaxy Note 1 came out.
Apple did not have the audacity or innovation to release a phone with a large screen. Over time, every Android manufacturer except Google and BlackBerry proceeded to let me down with out of date security patches, if any at all.
Samsung makes some of the very best devices, but pushing 6 month old patches as a current update doesn’t fly. Projects like LineageOS have made inroads too.
I'd buy a Galaxy Note in a heartbeat if it ran Android One.
My hope is every manufacturer uses Android One distribution, Android has come far enough that the UI modifications/customizations aren’t as critical as they used to be. I’ll only consider a Pixel or Android One device moving forward if I don't end up on an iPhone.
Still, I’m typing this on an iPad, and have been on Mac for over a decade.. maybe it is time to look at an iPhone again. Part of me is exploring leaving Mac and head to Ubuntu. A palm phone with a great camera could be interesting if lineage might work on it.
Edit: Typos
Their TVs are loaded with spyware and push notifications, full screen ads, menu ads, all unremovable. You pay thousands for the privilege of this garbage.
All of their phones have unremovable bloatware and spyware. They push vulnerable, ancient, forked AOSP software like "samsung browser" and send full screen image ads via push notifications, unremovable Bixby stuff, unremovable Samsung Store. And the US versions can't be unlocked to install Lineage or stock android.
I never said that Apple could defy the laws of physics and prevent battery degradation.
Also, if I bought a brand new phone that was released in 2018 and even if it did have an old operating system - but a new battery, I could update to the newest OS. If it was a used phone with an old battery - I could replace the battery for $70.
My son just replaced an iPhone 6S that I bought in 2015 late last year. I replaced the battery before giving it to him. It was and still can run the latest OS version. It will be running the latest OS until at least September 2021.
Blame Qualcomm. If you’re a OEM with comparatively low volumes there is very little leverage you have to get your SOC vendor to give you the latest updates. When I worked on Android HW, Qualcomm were basically a year behind whatever the latest Android was, because our volume was so small we weren’t a priority.
If you as a PC OEM, no matter how small, if you used popular components, Windows would support it.
That said the larger OEMs could easily provide updates since they can simply compel Qualcomm to support newer kernels heck some of them like Samsung even produce their own SoCs.
They don’t want too, planned obsolescence has pretty much been integrated into the android ecosystem.
This is why I left it, OnePlus One was my last Android phone, iPhone 6S was my first iOS phone (I had an iPad and a iPod touch before but didn’t really used them, these were gifts and a raffle win).
The iPhone 6S will still get iOS 14 this year.
Overall I could sum up my Android experience as - lost weekends of tinkering with ROMs and kernels trying to get my phones in-line with new releases.
Not to mention the worst shit they cam up with and that was when updates were linked to carriers so sometimes you had to wait a year to get an update if you didn’t want to risk bricking your phone by applying an update form a different region.
Honestly if there was a $300 iPhone coming out each year I don’t think Android would have gotten above single digit percentage in the west.
And while I’ll probably get flack here for saying this but Android is the biggest piece of shit out there not because the OS is bad but because even Google cant get their asses out of their head long enough to provide support for more than a couple of years to their own devices.
And the worse thing about this is that because of how utterly garbage the Android ecosystem is we are somehow supposed to pat Apple on the back for supporting devices for 5 years.
Apple also released a point update to correct bugs in devices going back to the 2011 iPhone 4s last July. Apple supported a phone that was 8 years old.
Phone manufacturers are at the other end of the spectrum. They sell the hardware and it's their vested interest to sell as much as they can. Making it obsolete by not offering software updates and taking advantage of the free work from XDA works perfectly for them. Being able to blame Qualcomm is even better since it's a "boogieman" that doesn't need to look good for consumers.
But Google doesn't control the hardware in the same way that Apple does. It seems odd to blame Google for the lack of hardware support when the target platforms are not homogenous and have no single entity controlling the platform.
If Windows ran on something that esoteric 25 years ago, why can’t Google solve the problem now?
They should, but they don't. Can be said about many aspects of our lives generally, humans are on average not that clever. Voting with wallet is something companies understand very well, I don't see any other fix (maybe EU could force them into something, till they find a way to skip it).
That's victim blaming. Companies are the ones who shaped this situation and they managed to because each intrinsically acts as a unified entity with a unified goal and a lot of power behind it. People may be many but have little to no individual power, and they don't act in any coordinated fashion.
Users accept this because they can't really imagine it differently. Many of them never saw it working any other way. And phones never had the same kind of flexibility and repairability that PCs offer so people unwittingly assume this is normal and not even give it a second though.
Not in any significant number certainly, there haven't been any wildly successful Android worms like we've seen on Windows even in recent years.
The nature of sitting behind NATs, implementation of modern exploit mitigations in even older versions of Android, the diversity of devices, installation only via a marketplace, sandboxing and being able to rapidly update apps like browsers and email clients that do interact with network services makes those big OS-level exploits almost entirely unimportant.
The Average Joe has limited reason to care even if they stop getting security updates.
This is just one exploit that can’t be patched by the app level and is dependent on the OEM.
https://threatpost.com/mediatek-bug-actively-exploited-andro...
https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Android-One-program-is-a-s...
I do hope as Android One devices are easier for projects like LineageOS or Postmarket to support.
I also very frequently now leave my iPhone at home. This takes a little planning in the form of having an audio book and a few podcasts on the watch.
Apple Watch + AirPods makes me feel set free when I am hiking or out of the house with family and friends. It is so easy to ignore the light vibration notification for incoming text messages or emails, and easy to ignore calls.
Oh ok - yes it does. And wi-fi !
Apple Music and maybe Spotify will work off line. The cellular Apple Watch has 16GB of storage.
Shockingly, Pandora seems to have offline playback: https://9to5mac.com/2020/04/29/pandora-shows-spotify-how-to-..., so I'll chalk this one up to "Spotify spends all its time complaining instead of actually building the app"
The flash based Zunes similar to the Nanos came out at the same time as the second generation iPod Touch.
The Zune HD came out with no apps around the end of 2009. Peak iPod - including the Touch - was 4th quarter 2008. The iPod was already losing steam and even then it was being propped up by the iPod Touch.
All I use: email, browser, maps, phone, txt, calendar, camera (non essential for me).
I'm not sure how you got "three months before the iPhone" when the Zune 30 was released in Nov 2005 and the iPhone was released in June 2007. That's not 3 months, that's 19 months.
It didn’t matter if they were “competitive”. The market had already spoken. People preferred the flash based smaller players to the larger players. MS went after the smallest part of the market.
Which Apple Watch cell version does she have. Do you happen to know the third party ear clip? I hadn’t thought of getting that. I just ordered AirPods arriving today.
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This is the perfect post for me to see. I am in my second deep dive in trying to make the Apple Watch a major priority, possibly upgrading to a cellular Watch if this proves to go well. Your wife is another key point for me to push this attempt.
I fit the same demo where a minimalist sort of phone like this would have been right for me. But there is no perfect and the Watch is as good or better than any other option. Especially with my lack of passive phone usage discipline.
Another time I might waste a lot of time contemplating getting something like this. But I’ve finally gotten over a few remaining “needs” for always having phone on me:
(1) detailed location history logging —- don’t think there’s an alternative to this. Won’t have it without a phone.
(2) Siri isn’t very good at dictation on the Watch —- just have to deal with it
(3) Not enough apps on the Watch —- same pattern of just deal with it. I am starting to use a few apps to put stuff into and later I can organize the info. Drafts App and Things are two main ones. Some chat/messaging apps lack proper/any Watch support. Again deal with it :p.
https://www.amazon.com/New-EARBUDi-AirPods-Slides-Earhook-Am...
She uses them when she is teaching online fitness classes and they stay in her ear so they are pretty good.
If I were still an outdoor runner I would probably get the PowerBeats with the over the ear clips.
I haven’t had any problems with Siri doing decently well for voice dictation and I have a southern accent.
The Zune was a great device yo.
Android 8.1 to be precise. As long as google is releasing security updates it should be okay.
https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8....
Even on Symbian best days, you would be lucky to get at very least one time update, and Symbian was the exception, as no else every provided any kind of updates.
I agree it is very stupid, but if Google prefers to have Android in every piece of mobile CPU without arm wrestling OEMs, that is never going to change.
Note that while Project Treble has actually turned Linux into a pseudo microkernel, where standard Linux drivers are "legacy" and everything else runs on their own process with Android IPC, the situation has hardly changed, because Google is still leaving to the OEMs the responsibility for the update process.
On a side note, any of my Windows Phones has gotten more updates than all my Android devices combined.
But as I mention in another thread today, iDevices aren't for price sensitive pre-pay customers that use the devices until they die or get stolen. The majority of the world isn't US with free exchange programs every two years.
In some locations, the hard paied for unknown brand Android device is the first computer many people manage to own, so they aren't even on Apple's target demographic.
It hasn’t work that way since the iPhone came out - in 2007.
I agree it is very stupid, but if Google prefers to have Android in every piece of mobile CPU without arm wrestling OEMs, that is never going to change.
Yet and still not only can I update my Windows PCs directly from Microsoft without having to wait on the OEMs, I was also able to stick a Windows 7 DVD in my 2006 era Core Duo Mac Mini, install it and it recognized all of my hardware flawlessly. Apple abandoned it years ago, I could still run a supported version of Windows through the beginning of this year.
Microsoft figures this out on PCs over 15 years ago with WinHEC and plug and play.
It would be 100% like everyone else had Apple allowed for iOS based OEM devices.
Indeed, but that is only thanks to IBM's failure to close back the PC and only applies to desktop and server devices.
Even Microsoft isn't able to do much regarding laptops and Windows tablets, and was forced to start their own Surface line.
But yes, they still do much better than Google, because Google just doesn't care.
Project Trent would have been the opportunity to change contracts for accessing Google services, and they just kept everything regarding OEMs as before.
The proof that they don't really care is the support for their own Pixel devices.
However as mentioned before, not everyone on this planet can afford to be an Apple customer and OS updates aren't certainly on their daily worries.
Microsoft however does allow 3rd party OEMs for Windows and PCs don’t have that issue. MS makes sure the most popular or even some obscure hardware is supported.
Even Microsoft isn't able to do much regarding laptops and Windows tablets, and was forced to start their own Surface line.
I have an 11 year old Dell E6500 Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz running Windows 10 perfectly.
I'm not sure why people don't admit that Windows does backwards compatibility well. Windows has many issues, but running well on old hardware isn't one of them.
Any other Windows 7 version, or more recent versions, the internal fan is not able to make for the generated heat due to missing power management settings.
So I just got used to the noise of having two fans running all the time when I need to do something with that laptop, which has long lost the laptop capability, but hey it runs Windows 10.
As an example, the webcam drivers and power management settings that without OEM drivers will just fry the CPU until the security takes over and forces a hard shutdown.
This as an argument I heard for using older android versions for low end phones around 50$, because newer versions run horrible on them.
I'm not enough into mobile phones to judge whether this is true, but OS version is a tradeoff I would be willing to make dependent on what I'm looking for
So, to turn the question around, assuming this is your stance, why is it not okay?
My wife’s iPad that is a year newer will get much better operating system wide support for the Pencil.
How long is the Windows beta available for major updates to give the ecosystem a chance to test for compatibility. Google just doesn’t know how to handle an ecosystem.
Did she use her phone to read articles on the go? If yes, how is she getting this done with this setup?
Email isn’t really used that often anymore for personal, immediate communications. If someone is emailing you, culturally it’s really not considered urgent.
Read articles on the go? Sure you can read news snippets on the Watch using the News app, but if she is leaving her phone behind, it’s specifically in a context where she doesn’t want to be distracted but does want to be able to communicate with people.
I have an Apple Watch just because, but I really don’t get that much usefulness out of it. I work from home now. I haven’t gone inside a gym in years where the idea of having a phone with me all of the time was irritating - I have a fully equipped workout room at home. Besides, women often wear clothes without pockets. Men usually don’t - except maybe at the gym or while running.
As far as texts. Siri’s voice recognition works surprisingly well for responding to them.
I just think the "companion" aspect was always dumb. You would have to manage two devices and keep them with you anyway, all that would do is increase personal toil. It only became viable for me once I could replace my larger phone with it entirely.
They seem to be selling an always on battery saving mode as a quality of life feature. Which is fine for me having do not disturb activated 90% of time on my phone.
All the smartphones I had in recent years I had to charge overnight. Not because they were depleted completely, but enough so that they usually run out some point the next day. And I prefer to just plug the devices in at home insted of carrying around cables and charging banks.
And related question: How well does the apple or other smart watches do with audio interactions only? I have been playing with the tought of instead of having a phone, using a smart pocket watch. So not even wearing on the wrist. But just take it out once in a while and use headphones, for things like accepting call, dictate messages/notes and chose spotify playlist.
Third party reviews have said that it could last 18-24 hours
All the smartphones I had in recent years I had to charge overnight. Not because they were depleted completely, but enough so that they usually run out some point the next day. And I prefer to just plug the devices in at home insted of carrying around cables and charging banks.
That’s the same reason I bought my iPhone 8 Plus. At the time it had the best battery life of any iPhone.
Now the iPhone 11 Pro Max can easily last two days on a charge but that phone is ridiculously large.
How well does the apple or other smart watches do with audio interactions only?
We tested ours when we first got them. I had my watch on, arms down, no headphones and we couldn’t tell that you weren’t on a phone. Of course with a headphones you couldn’t tell the difference. Apple Music works well with voice interaction. I’m not sure if Spotify has been updated to take advantage of the new APIs and Siri integration Apple introduced last year. Text messaging using voice only works well. But, if I know my wife is out and about. I try to ask simple questions in text where she can just use a quick reply - yes, no, etc.
I don't mind buying the watch and the airpods, but having to buy a phone AND two data subscriptions (thanks Canada telecoms)? Not worth it.
Now, the ZuneHD that was a sexy piece of hardware. And the screen was brilliant!
I think the ZuneHD was Microsoft starting to finally get hardware right. But of course the software was terrible. Well, the client was. The “twisted” interface for the ZuneHD was actually much easier to use than music app or Spotify even today.
Why the delay? The chipset manufacturer only recently came out with the BSP for Android 9. So, cost.
nobody who owned a zune would consider that a negative comparison
It now sells with 8.1, but I haven't been able to find any option to upgrade on their site.
All the apps I want to use are still available, F-Droid works great, I have the latest Chrome (which I use as Bromium). I've been able to disable most of Google apps, though I'm a bit sore that most of the OS breaks down when I disable Chrome.
1. If it is shipping with Android 8 - an old version of Android. What are the chances that it will ever see any updates?
2. My wife would have been the target audience for this form factor - pre Apple Watch. Her phone is her least favorite device. She will leave it in the car in a heartbeat. She won’t think twice if she leaves at home.
But now, she has a cellular Apple Watch and AirPods with a third party ear clip. She doesn’t have to carry any phone.
3. The battery life is atrocious. Even the Apple Watch has better battery life for normal day to day use.
4. I seriously doubt it has 16GB of memory - the cellular Apple Watch does. That’s more than enough for local music playback without using cellular.
5. This is the Zune of phones to me. But, yes I realize that the cheapest entry point to our setup - phone + Watch is $800 if we did get A cheaper headset. With AirPods it would be $959.