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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
If Nokia is serious about fighting e-waste they need to provide a longer lifecycle of updates.
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.
I remember having spare batteries for my Motorola, and an external battery charger, because charging via the built in would take ages.
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...
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.
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.)
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!
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.
That previous phone (Moto G Falcon) had a bunch of custom ROM issues too. Eventually I found one that worked OK but that's just not acceptable to have a glitchy third-party build where some random shit doesn't work less than 6 months after purchase.
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).
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.
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).
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.
That's not entirely true. There's plenty that bundle a custom kernel.
Browse some device-specific development topics on XDA developers for examples.
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.)
"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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Practically a fully patched iPhone or Pixel without sketchy apps is a very hard target and exploits have a limited lifetime. There is a vast gulf between that and a phone running a 5 year old release without patches.
Why are governments so bad at mandating security? Paralysis in Congress and the EU?
Re Huawei, they were sure there were exploits that could be used against it, and they could never be sure it was exploit-free. (We know that major vendors like Cisco have bugs constantly, so it only requires early access to the code to discover them to produce a ready stream of exploits.) Which is totally what we would expect.
Yes, those are two well-known quantities, and possibly best in the world.
Now try to tell security of something random - if I take a random Linix server, or a wifi-connected bosh dishwasher, ir smart TV, and I ask 100 IT proffeshionals, which one is insecure, how many of them can tell?
> Why are governments so bad at mandating security? Paralysis in Congress and the EU
Why are corporations so bad at securiry?
My internet provider ships a router so obsolete, first google search explains how to PWN it, eith instructions any 12 year old can follow
The problem is the whoke industry is engaged in deception, "we are taking security seriously".
If they were selling garage locks, there would be lawsuits seeking conpensation for stolen car due to negligence in design and lying to the customer
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.
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-5116
Fortunately, this was patched. Not sure if there are newer ones
Not surprisingly, it's another JS one.
I use JS whitelisting not only on my PCs for that reason.
The majority of Android devices will have updated Chrome and web view soon after the Chrome team released a fix.
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.
At this point I consider Apple's commitment to long term support to be a key element of my loyalty to them.
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.
Alas, Apple also supports some highly anticompetitive business practices (App Store exclusivity/tax, EMS/iMessage) which I do not want to support.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
> The Nokia G22 will cost from £149.99
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.
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.
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.
It's just 5 years old now, and I have a funny feeling it'll be more than powerful enough for a while yet.
Of course, then I looked into what windows 11 provided and decided I'd wait a bit either way.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Oh dear, why is Microsoft upgrade assistant and documentation so misleading? I just got a new CPU!
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Is it not possible to emulate phones in the same manner?
The two most ready examples of this sort of thing are that (I think) 32 bit apps aren't supported any more, and that the HID guidelines specified the fixed pixel dimensions that iphones were. That isn't something you can assume any more.
But if I want to run an ancient version of flappy bird, I don't really need it to run on my modern iphone - just like I don't need modern windows to support 1991 QBASIC in order to run my old qbasic programs from when I was a kid. We need two things:
- Access to old versions of iOS app binaries. I have no idea how to get these, if they're available anywhere in the app store (or can be backed up), or if apple deletes them.
- Access to an early iOS simulator / emulator to run those apps on. Apple has had fantastic iOS simulators going all the way back to the first app store releases, though I think they only ran ios apps compiled to x86.
It'd be great if there was a way to run old ios games and apps and things. I don't want those heady days of early ios apps to be lost to history.
The switch to App Stores and the too fragmented OS updates made everything just a mess like this
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.
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.
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.
I'm kind of surprised that isn't more popular in general, because the hotspot lets you connect all your devices with one plan for <$10/month if you don't use a lot of cellular data, e.g. because you mostly use it in your car and spend most of your time connected to some other WiFi.
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.
Linux can do something very similar. You can run the latest version of Gentoo Linux today on an Intel 486 from 1989.
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?
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?
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.
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%
The Core 2 Duo is so old they don't even test it against the modern benchmark suites, but the Pentium Dual Core is the same chip with a different amount of L2 cache:
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/65?vs=67
The difference between these and modern CPUs is stark:
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2693?vs=2911
But the Core 2 Duo is still useful for many of the things it could do at introduction. As is the original iPhone.
> A 2007 iPhone has a crappy display, not enough memory or processing power to run a modern web browser
"Modern web browsers" are more efficient than old ones. It's modern web pages that are resource hogs, but that depends on the page.
> What are children going go do with it if it can’t even use the modern web?
I hear the kids are into texting.
> They would be much better off getting one of the many $40 unsubsidized unlocked phones you can buy on Amazon.
The ones that aren't actually unsubsidized because they're full of crapware?
> 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.
Google designed ChromeBooks as a mechanism to get people into their ecosystem. They allow the administrators to externalize the cost of that onto the kids, and they're under enough resource constraints that they're willing to do it, but that doesn't make it in the best interest of the kids.
Given the choice between Chromebooks and "Core 2 Duo laptops" running some Debian derivative, the kids would get more out of the latter, even if they're slower. And have higher administrative costs because the kids can mess with them -- that's how they learn about computers.
> The first gen iPhone couldn’t support hotspot functionality nor could it do wifi calling.
You don't use the phone as a hotspot, you use a hotspot to connect the phone to the internet via WiFi as a workaround for its obsolete cell modem that Apple chose not to make replaceable. And WiFi calling is an app, not a characteristic of the hardware.
> Again, why try to keep an old half functioning phone when you could buy a much more capable $30 Android phone.
Less crapware, less e-waste, save $30 (recurring, since the crap Android phone will probably be out of support again in a year).
> 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%
But many of those devices don't have significantly better hardware than the original iPhone...
> And on top of that, Apple only sold around 10 million first gen iPhones. How many do you think are still in the wild?
Not as many as there would have been.
But even if they don't want to support it themselves, what's their excuse for not publishing their hardware documentation so someone else can do it?
And that doesn’t obviate the fact that I know from personal experience that it could run Chrome, Windows 10, the latest version of Office365 and it could be used as a Plex server to serve standard definition and low complexity high def video.
> Modern web browsers" are more efficient than old ones. It's modern web pages that are resource hogs, but that depends on the page.
Modern web browsers are much less memory and resource efficient than old ones.
The first gen iPad from 2010 - 4 years newer can’t handle modern web pages except for HN. It had 256MB RAM. The original iPhone had 128MB of RAM.
> Given the choice between Chromebooks and "Core 2 Duo laptops" running some Debian derivative, the kids would get more out of the latter, even if they're slower. And have higher administrative costs because the kids can mess with them -- that's how they learn about computers
Yes because the ROI of old Linux devices that aren’t centrally managed without standardize hardware or any MDM solution is going to be much easier to manage.
> You don't use the phone as a hotspot, you use a hotspot to connect the phone to the internet via WiFi as a workaround for its obsolete cell modem that Apple chose not to make replaceable
So yes. There is nothing else that you need to do with an iPhone with a 400Mhz processor, a really slow bus, 128MB of RAM and a total of 4GB - 8GB of storage except make the modem upgradeable.
> Less crapware, less e-waste, save $30 (recurring, since the crap Android phone will probably be out of support again in a year).
So instead, Apple should keep supporting the original iPhone that sold around 10 million in the first year…
> But many of those devices don't have significantly better hardware than the original iPhone...
This is a $70 phone from Amazon.
Are you really going to say it’s not any better than an iPhone from 2007, with a 30 pin iPod connector, 128MB RAM, a low resolution camera that couldn’t do video, 4-8GB storage, and a 400Mhz processor?
And an original iPhone could do texting and stream music and doff around on HN.
> Modern web browsers are much less memory and resource efficient than old ones.
Modern web browsers have more efficient javascript engines and do things like unloading background tabs to deal with people opening hundreds of tabs of porky websites that could otherwise take down even desktop computers. But the same improvements allow you to e.g. open multiple Wikipedia tabs on an older device.
> Yes because the ROI of old Linux devices that aren’t centrally managed without standardize hardware or any MDM solution is going to be much easier to manage.
You're telling me why Google was smart to make their "get 'em while they're young" tech appeal to administrators, not why this is better for the kids.
> So yes. There is nothing else that you need to do with an iPhone with a 400Mhz processor, a really slow bus, 128MB of RAM and a total of 4GB - 8GB of storage except make the modem upgradeable.
Nothing else you need to make phone calls.
> So instead, Apple should keep supporting the original iPhone that sold around 10 million in the first year…
Why not? Their OS is portable. 10 million is not a small number of devices. The effort is negligible for a company that size. They would get more PR value by claiming the longer support lifetime than it would cost them to release the updates.
And the only reason they're the only ones who can support it is that they don't publish sufficient documentation for anyone else to make drivers for it. They could do that once at the end official support and no one would have any complaints.
> Are you really going to say it’s not any better than an iPhone from 2007, with a 30 pin iPod connector, 128MB RAM, a low resolution camera that couldn’t do video, 4-8GB storage, and a 400Mhz processor?
You can get a Core i5-4590 PC for less than $50. Are you really going to say it's not any better than a Core 2 Duo with no AVX, a max of 8GB of RAM and USB2?
That doesn't make the Core 2 Duo useless.
I dusted off my old iPad from 2010 - a device that was four years newer a couple of years ago. It couldn’t handle many web pages.
I also dusted off my old 1st gen iPod Touch a couple of years ago it had the same hardware - except for the cellular modem - as the first gen iPhone. Do you remember that with the first gen iPhone, it didn’t have enough memory and processing power to hold an entire page in memory? If you scrolled too fast, you would get a checkerboard pattern while the rendering caught up. The iPhone couldn’t even handle what was the modern web then.
It definitely couldn’t handle inline video. It didn’t even have enough memory to allow you to have a background image on the Home Screen.
> And an original iPhone could do texting and stream music and doff around on HN.
Texting and SMS always goes over the carriers network. The carriers don’t support their 2G network anymore.
> Nothing else you need to make phone calls.
You remember that whole problem that the 2G original iPhone works on a network that is not supported anymore?
> Why not? Their OS is portable.
The “modern” version of iOS is not “portable” to a phone that only has a 400Mhz processor and 128GB of RAM. iOS 5 could barely run on the first generation iPad that was 4 years newer. The original iPhone struggled with iOS 3.
> 10 million is not a small number of devices. The effort is negligible for a company that size. They would get more PR value by claiming the longer support lifetime than it would cost them to release the updates.
> Modern web browsers have more efficient javascript engines
They are “more efficient” because they have multistage just in time compilers that cache the pre compiled code. Caching takes memory - modern iPhones have 3GB - 6GB RAM. The original iPhone had 128MB of RAM.
A modern iPhone also has multiple cores. Some of those cores can be used to do JIT on the JavaScript code while other cores are used to make sure that the UI is responsive. The original iPhone had one slow 400Mhz slow core compared to the 4-6 multi GHz cores.
> and do things like unloading background tabs to deal with people opening hundreds of tabs of porky websites that could otherwise take down even desktop computers.
Desktop operating systems have swap where they can swap memory to disk and they also have a larger 64 bit memory space. The original iPhone didn’t have swap and it only has a 32 bit processing space.
Even today, Safari will unload pages when it runs out of memory and refresh it losing context. But do you remember that whole issue that the original iPhone couldn’t keep the graphic context of one entire page in memory?
> But the same improvements allow you to e.g. open multiple Wikipedia tabs on an older device.
That’s not true on mobile even today.
> Why not? Their OS is portable. 10 million is not a small number of devices.
Back when the iPhone was introduced, Jobs said he wanted to capture 1% of the cellular market by selling 10 million devices. The iPhone only made up 1% of the cell phone market as it existed in 2007. How many users do you think were still using an original iPhone in 2010 let alone 2023?
> That doesn't make the Core 2 Duo useless.
The Core2Duo is not useless precisely because it can do what a modern computer user wants to do - run the latest OS, run the latest browser, use a decent wireless network standard (802.11n), mine had gigabit Ethernet which is still the highest speed commercially available to most consumers, run the latest version of Office365. It has a front facing camera and a nice screen. Low end computers today still come with 8GB of RAM. The average low end computer today still comes with less than 500GB of hard drive space.
The original iPhone can’t function as a phone. It has 40-60x less memory than a modern iPhone, 8-16x less storage, an outdated wifi technology (802.11g)
I've also a laptop built in 2006, it runs [any flavour of Linux I want] and will be supported indefinitely.
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.
We need a good standardized phone and bootloader system so that software comes back into the control of users on cell phones.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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."...
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.
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.
You still get the same amount of years of security updates though, if you buy the cheapest model from Apple or not.
It’s a bummer that this is normalized.
It seems like people's wants and needs change with whatever the hell Apple decides to do.
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.
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.
And for those, you need security updates.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
But if you think about it, it doesn't even work here. First of all, no one can tell you that your battery has a poor capacity, because you test it daily. And people are pretty sensitive to this issue, because we have tricked the manufacturers to create phones that have just enough capacity. (By requiring faster phones, larger, better screens and thinner phones. And not requiring a battery that lasts much more than a day.)
Actually that 'narrative' has the opposite effect: there are a lot of articles online that tell you how to enhance the life of the batteries. (Whether it's really needed or not doesn't make a difference.)
Regarding charging it from 50%: this is not something that hurts Li batteries. Actually it's better than allowing it to drain (or go into some unspecified low percentages, probably below 20 or 10). Charging to 100% is said to have a negative effect. I mean it probably wears faster than if you charge to just 85%.
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.
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).
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…
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 :)
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.
Sorry, but can you explain this a little more. It's coming off as pretty offensive.
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)
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.)
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.
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.
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?
Is it a pain to support old SDKs? Yep. But that doesn't make it inherently a waste of time to do so.
But most of that can be done with polyfills and transpilers, which the android gradle plugin does automatically nowadays.
But the apps still work and get updated and that for her and most people is enough.
It's not ideal and as she is not tech-literate, the day might come where she clicks on something which exploits an unpatched vuln :/
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.
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.
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.
This collective delusion is the main justification for SaaS which is what the tech industry in current year is dependent on .
Do you wish to hear the endless stream of CVE numbers that allow remote exploitation, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module vulnerabilities that don't even require an active Internet connection?
Have you ever tried to expose a new server to the Internet and watched the endless barrage of probing requests coming seemingly within seconds?
Have you been a target of DDoS coming from unpatched appliances and modems?
The only place for an unpatched phone is offline, within Farady cage.
It's a dangerous life given phones are now used for everything from banking and 2FA.
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.
Support seems to vary even between models though, so there's no guarantee support for continue as long for any others.
I guess tech people are way too much worried about security/software updates.
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.
However, you can run alternate Android versions and get security updates even longer, outside of security updates for component firmware.
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.