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Christ, being happy for “2 years of Android os updates” reminds me how awful is the android ecosystem. IPhone 5s, a phone from 5 years ago is running the latest

Christ, being happy for “2 years of Android os updates” reminds me how awful is the android ecosystem. IPhone 5s, a phone from 5 years ago is running the latest iOS without any problem.

snipem 8y ago
It also trashes the resell value of Android devices.
aetherson 8y ago
These phones are also way cheaper than the iPhone5s was at its launch. If you pay $350 for your phone and replace it after 2 years, that seems to me to be better than paying $700 for your phone and replacing it after 4 years?
- leadingthenet 8y ago
  Why? That's just consumerist thinking. With iOS 12, my 3 and a half year old phone works even better than when I bought it. Why create useless waste?
  - aetherson 8y ago
    Because, for example, your 3.5 year old phone has a way worse camera than a modern phone. It doesn't have wireless charging. Its hardware has deficiencies that are noticeable even if the raw speed of the CPU is still fine.
  - jsight 8y ago
    "consumerist thinking"? What other kind of thinking should a consumer have? And waste? My old Android phones are pretty useful even with marginally older software. None of them have non-patched remote execution bugs that would make them risky, thanks to the fact that some of the more risk prone components (built in browser, play services, etc) get updated independently from the OS.
- thebruce87m 8y ago
  What are the resale values in your example?
  - aetherson 8y ago
    Not very much. The resale value of a 4 year old iPhone is sub $100. Even if you get literally $0 for a 2 year old Android, you aren't changing the cost calculations very significantly.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  That's just a lot of waste. Cause you know most people aren't going to find a way to recycle those old phones.
  - aetherson 8y ago
    I don't think that +/- 1 more phone per person per two years is a terribly big deal in the grand scheme of things.
    - GijsjanB 8y ago
      You'd be mistaken. That would be a lot of phones and hence a lot of (rare) metals being delved. Sadly, even something as precious as a mobile phone is a throw away product nowadays. I have no solution, it's us, consumers, who are doing this. But please don't pretend it doesn't matter. Maybe, just maybe, if we could innovate on the recycling of our old phones, it would matter less.
      - aetherson 8y ago
        How about you quantify how much of an increase in waste it would be? My prior is that almost all appeals to waste conservation fall apart when you examine them in depth.
        GijsjanB 8y ago
        Ok, shooting from the waist. Say on average people use their phone 3 years. Say, we could stretch that to 4 years. Roughly 2/3 of the world population owns a phone, that's 5 billion phones. That means we would save 5 billion phones every 12 years, or: more than 400 million phones every year. I love innovation as much as the next guy/gal, but getting all those products to 7.5 billion people is probably not (yet) sustainable for our planet. What if we could make (in this case mobile phone) producers (partly) responsible for the waste disposal/recycling of their products?
        8y ago
eertami 8y ago
>without any problem. If you don't consider "completely unusable performance" to be a problem then yeah sure I guess it is "running" it.
- scaasic 8y ago
  iOS 12 has been widely praised for breathing new life into old devices with its performance upgrades. And even in the cases where there is a performance tradeoff, updating isn't mandatory, but it's still an option for those who want it.
  - drcongo 8y ago
    iOS 12 is actually excellent on a 5S, my daughter's 5S still out-performs a huge chunk of the current Android market.
    - FireBeyond 8y ago
      How was iOS 11?
      - drcongo 8y ago
        Appalling on every generation of iPhone that it ran on.
  - FireBeyond 8y ago
    It was widely praised, because it breathed new life into old (and not so old) devices that were utterly hamstrung by iOS 11 running them into the ground. "Apple completely ignored performance on older devices for several generations until the complaints got too loud. Now let's act like that never happened, because they have put some effort in now." > And even in the cases where there is a performance tradeoff, updating isn't mandatory, but it's still an option for those who want it. Yeah. Except that many of the new Xcode updates to support iOS 12 involve builds that remove older compatibility. So sure, "you can still use your older iOS! Just ignore the fact that if your favorite apps are actively being maintained the chance they'll retain old iOS compatibility will be a rapidly shrinking one".

Christ, being happy for “2 years of Android os updates” reminds me how awful is the android ecosystem. IPhone 5s, a phone from 5 years ago is running the latest iOS without any problem.

snipem 8y ago

It also trashes the resell value of Android devices.

aetherson 8y ago

These phones are also way cheaper than the iPhone5s was at its launch. If you pay $350 for your phone and replace it after 2 years, that seems to me to be better than paying $700 for your phone and replacing it after 4 years?

leadingthenet 8y ago
Why? That's just consumerist thinking. With iOS 12, my 3 and a half year old phone works even better than when I bought it. Why create useless waste?
- aetherson 8y ago
  Because, for example, your 3.5 year old phone has a way worse camera than a modern phone. It doesn't have wireless charging. Its hardware has deficiencies that are noticeable even if the raw speed of the CPU is still fine.
- jsight 8y ago
  "consumerist thinking"? What other kind of thinking should a consumer have? And waste? My old Android phones are pretty useful even with marginally older software. None of them have non-patched remote execution bugs that would make them risky, thanks to the fact that some of the more risk prone components (built in browser, play services, etc) get updated independently from the OS.
thebruce87m 8y ago
What are the resale values in your example?
- aetherson 8y ago
  Not very much. The resale value of a 4 year old iPhone is sub $100. Even if you get literally $0 for a 2 year old Android, you aren't changing the cost calculations very significantly.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
That's just a lot of waste. Cause you know most people aren't going to find a way to recycle those old phones.
- aetherson 8y ago
  I don't think that +/- 1 more phone per person per two years is a terribly big deal in the grand scheme of things.
  - GijsjanB 8y ago
    You'd be mistaken. That would be a lot of phones and hence a lot of (rare) metals being delved. Sadly, even something as precious as a mobile phone is a throw away product nowadays. I have no solution, it's us, consumers, who are doing this. But please don't pretend it doesn't matter. Maybe, just maybe, if we could innovate on the recycling of our old phones, it would matter less.
    - aetherson 8y ago
      How about you quantify how much of an increase in waste it would be? My prior is that almost all appeals to waste conservation fall apart when you examine them in depth.
      - GijsjanB 8y ago
        Ok, shooting from the waist. Say on average people use their phone 3 years. Say, we could stretch that to 4 years. Roughly 2/3 of the world population owns a phone, that's 5 billion phones. That means we would save 5 billion phones every 12 years, or: more than 400 million phones every year. I love innovation as much as the next guy/gal, but getting all those products to 7.5 billion people is probably not (yet) sustainable for our planet. What if we could make (in this case mobile phone) producers (partly) responsible for the waste disposal/recycling of their products?
        8y ago

eertami 8y ago

>without any problem. If you don't consider "completely unusable performance" to be a problem then yeah sure I guess it is "running" it.

scaasic 8y ago
iOS 12 has been widely praised for breathing new life into old devices with its performance upgrades. And even in the cases where there is a performance tradeoff, updating isn't mandatory, but it's still an option for those who want it.
- drcongo 8y ago
  iOS 12 is actually excellent on a 5S, my daughter's 5S still out-performs a huge chunk of the current Android market.
  - FireBeyond 8y ago
    How was iOS 11?
    - drcongo 8y ago
      Appalling on every generation of iPhone that it ran on.
- FireBeyond 8y ago
  It was widely praised, because it breathed new life into old (and not so old) devices that were utterly hamstrung by iOS 11 running them into the ground. "Apple completely ignored performance on older devices for several generations until the complaints got too loud. Now let's act like that never happened, because they have put some effort in now." > And even in the cases where there is a performance tradeoff, updating isn't mandatory, but it's still an option for those who want it. Yeah. Except that many of the new Xcode updates to support iOS 12 involve builds that remove older compatibility. So sure, "you can still use your older iOS! Just ignore the fact that if your favorite apps are actively being maintained the chance they'll retain old iOS compatibility will be a rapidly shrinking one".