Re:You're making me buy a new phone
by zelphirkalt on Tuesday March 28, 2023 @09:30AM
(#35340756)
> If you want to continue to use older hardware, just accept that you also have to use older software.
This sounds like making an excuse for completely unnecessarily obsoleting hardware and ignorantly continuing to make hardware that is completely fine spec-wise obsolete. It all be damned, as long as we can make software how we want. No need to see beyond one's own nose, as long as the rare earths can be mined. The planet be damned.
If at least we kept supporting older client side software, I guess people could live with that, but without a doubt, software businesses are a driving force behind the need felt by many people to have a new phone every 1-2 years. Another driving force are manufacturers that try to convince us, that we need their newest ever more dystopian products.
I personally keep using my now more than 12y old phone as a music player and my phone with broken display (not worth the repair costs) which is approximately 8 years old. Some software like Signal or Syncthing can still be installed (some from Fdroid) and I am not using iPhones, but older Android phones. Some day I might have to look into rooting them and install another OS, because I dread the day, when they will stop working and I have the choice of buying an even more dystopian spyware device.
But you know what I could not install, or even find in the app store? The Covid warn app! So these idiots made the app only for newer phones, creating a huge incentive for people to get newer phones and again wasting perfectly fine hardware. All that of course without proper justification. Even my old phones have WLAN and bluetooth and whatever. So I ended up not being able to use the Covid warn app at all, just because I do not like to trash perfectly fine hardware or unnecessarily buy a new phone every year. Great. Just great.
This sounds like making an excuse for completely unnecessarily obsoleting hardware and ignorantly continuing to make hardware that is completely fine spec-wise obsolete. It all be damned, as long as we can make software how we want. No need to see beyond one's own nose, as long as the rare earths can be mined. The planet be damned.
If at least we kept supporting older client side software, I guess people could live with that, but without a doubt, software businesses are a driving force behind the need felt by many people to have a new phone every 1-2 years. Another driving force are manufacturers that try to convince us, that we need their newest ever more dystopian products.
I personally keep using my now more than 12y old phone as a music player and my phone with broken display (not worth the repair costs) which is approximately 8 years old. Some software like Signal or Syncthing can still be installed (some from Fdroid) and I am not using iPhones, but older Android phones. Some day I might have to look into rooting them and install another OS, because I dread the day, when they will stop working and I have the choice of buying an even more dystopian spyware device.
But you know what I could not install, or even find in the app store? The Covid warn app! So these idiots made the app only for newer phones, creating a huge incentive for people to get newer phones and again wasting perfectly fine hardware. All that of course without proper justification. Even my old phones have WLAN and bluetooth and whatever. So I ended up not being able to use the Covid warn app at all, just because I do not like to trash perfectly fine hardware or unnecessarily buy a new phone every year. Great. Just great.