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The CPU, Display, etc of a car is designed extremely conservatively. Cars lasting 20 years are not uncommon, vibration, temperature extremes, and direct physic

by sliken 10y ago

The CPU, Display, etc of a car is designed extremely conservatively. Cars lasting 20 years are not uncommon, vibration, temperature extremes, and direct physical abuse (kids, fingers, ice cream, feet, fists, pounding, etc). Not to mention being turned off for months. Car buyers are also pretty sensitive about monthly costs (thus no data connection). Your smartphone is designed to die around 2 years (expoxied battery), is designed for something like 40F - 100F, and will survive a light rain if you are lucky. All the while charging you $50 a month. The 2 year phone replacement cycle used to be driven by innovation and large performance/capability increases. Which have pretty much stopped. 2 year contracts on sponsored phones used to drive them as well, mostly stopped. So manufactures seem to have decided on making phones 0.6mm slimmer and expoxing in the battery to drive the replacement cycle.

hx87 10y ago
Swapping out a unit every 2 years (or why it craps out) for $200 sounds like a good deal compared to a terrible one that lasts 20 years and costs $10000 to replace.
duaneb 10y ago
You just made a great argument for investing MORE in GPS software in a car than in the phone: get it right the first time so you aren't stuck with useless software for two decades–that's a waste of everyone's time and money.
- sliken 10y ago
  I'm all for awesome car nav in a car. Nice touch screen, fast updates, current traffic, up to date maps, etc. Unfortunately every car I've seen (including some rather expensive cars) look like Maemo Mapper from my ancient (pre-android pre-iphone) Nokia 770 tablet. However I'm weird, I have a note 4 with a replaceable battery, wireless charging, 3GB ram, and a microSD slot. A phone that could easily last 5 years. It's VERY hard to find similar on the market today.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Unfortunatley cars need to get over NIH for software. I'll admit CarPlay/android auto seems like the way forward.
smileysteve 10y ago
> and direct physical abuse (kids, fingers, ice cream, feet, fists, pounding, etc) Considering that tablets in the hands of babies are commonplace (with special distraction apps) it seems that phones / tablets have or need to have this too.

by sliken 10y ago

hx87 10y ago

Swapping out a unit every 2 years (or why it craps out) for $200 sounds like a good deal compared to a terrible one that lasts 20 years and costs $10000 to replace.

duaneb 10y ago

You just made a great argument for investing MORE in GPS software in a car than in the phone: get it right the first time so you aren't stuck with useless software for two decades–that's a waste of everyone's time and money.

sliken 10y ago
I'm all for awesome car nav in a car. Nice touch screen, fast updates, current traffic, up to date maps, etc. Unfortunately every car I've seen (including some rather expensive cars) look like Maemo Mapper from my ancient (pre-android pre-iphone) Nokia 770 tablet. However I'm weird, I have a note 4 with a replaceable battery, wireless charging, 3GB ram, and a microSD slot. A phone that could easily last 5 years. It's VERY hard to find similar on the market today.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Unfortunatley cars need to get over NIH for software. I'll admit CarPlay/android auto seems like the way forward.

smileysteve 10y ago

> and direct physical abuse (kids, fingers, ice cream, feet, fists, pounding, etc) Considering that tablets in the hands of babies are commonplace (with special distraction apps) it seems that phones / tablets have or need to have this too.