5 ms·

I will bite : what's the point of upgrading at each release cycle ? I am a mobile dev looking at my phone a lot .. and even in that case I am now changing phon

I will bite : what's the point of upgrading at each release cycle ? I am a mobile dev looking at my phone a lot .. and even in that case I am now changing phones every 2 to 3 years. The ecological waste is one of my main motivations, but tbh I don't really get much from a new phone. It goes so slightly faster and that's pretty much it.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jvagner 7y ago
I held at the iPhone 7 until the XR. I didn't actually need to upgrade, but I knew I wouldn't upgrade to whatever they released this year if 5G and other nice hardware things were coming next year. The 7 is fine. Went to my partner, could've gone to my teenager, but he's not interested in a phone. The question I've asked myself a bunch of times in the past and which could be super relevant next year: if there's a 120hz iPad with 5G, I could absolutely live with that as my only device. I barely want a phone these days and work hard not to pull it out. I do use it for running though (heart rate band). Easily replaced by something else, but I definitely don't want to just buy gadgets on an annual basis anymore.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  > could've gone to my teenager, but he's not interested in a phone. You’re going to have to explain this one.
  - jvagner 7y ago
    He's homeschooled. He loves Minecraft and Kerbal. But I think what did it the most is that the adults in his life are all self-employed and a bit stuck on their phones/laptops/tablets. I'm thinking this may end up skipping a generation.
    - on_and_off 7y ago
      The kids are going to be all right
wlesieutre 7y ago
Camera upgrades are another major reason for phone upgrades. Processor bumps are nice, but the camera improvements are dramatically bigger and probably also more noticeable to your average user. To some extent the processor goes hand-in-hand with that, since Apple's new computational photography features are driven by their new processors. I'm still running an iPhone SE, but if I were to upgrade it would be for the camera.
drawkbox 7y ago
As a mobile dev for games/apps I like to have as many versions of devices as possible, newest one if possible. However, the older phones/tablets/devices are best to start and do most of the development on, somewhat like making sure a game runs on an older PC or laptop. If you tune your app to the lower end (older) devices, scaling up is easier than scaling down. If all you have is the latest devices it will lead to bloated apps and slow games. Similar to how John Carmack does parallel implementations and starts with the lower end renderers in game engine design [1]. > However, some of my most effective uses of this strategy have been more aggressive. Over the years, I have done a number of hardware acceleration conversions from software rendering engines. In the old days, I would basically start from scratch, first implementing the environment rendering, then the characters, then the special effects. There were always lots of little features that got forgotten, and comparing against the original meant playing through the game on two systems at once. > The last two times I did this, I got the software rendering code running on the new platform first, so everything could be tested out at low frame rates, then implemented the hardware accelerated version in parallel, setting things up so you could instantly switch between the two at any time. For a mobile OpenGL ES application being developed on a windows simulator, I opened a completely separate window for the accelerated view, letting me see it simultaneously with the original software implementation. This was a very significant development win. [1] http://sevangelatos.com/john-carmack-on-parallel-implementations/ http://sevangelatos.com/john-carmack-on-parallel-implementat...
lunchables 7y ago
Apple has a recycling program you might want to consider: https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/ https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Don't, they'll just shred it. Sell it on Ebay and let it be harvested for spare parts.
  - on_and_off 7y ago
    Even if they reused the parts, the less wasteful phone is the one you already have. I am not trying to be overly moralistic though .. just trying to understand if there is any value people see in getting a new phone each year outside of social/new and shiny. It made a lot of sense 8 or 10 years ago where each year there was a big leap. But nowadays, even for e.g. camera, the improvements are very incremental at best (when they are not mostly algorithmic so backportable) .

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jvagner 7y ago

I held at the iPhone 7 until the XR. I didn't actually need to upgrade, but I knew I wouldn't upgrade to whatever they released this year if 5G and other nice hardware things were coming next year. The 7 is fine. Went to my partner, could've gone to my teenager, but he's not interested in a phone. The question I've asked myself a bunch of times in the past and which could be super relevant next year: if there's a 120hz iPad with 5G, I could absolutely live with that as my only device. I barely want a phone these days and work hard not to pull it out. I do use it for running though (heart rate band). Easily replaced by something else, but I definitely don't want to just buy gadgets on an annual basis anymore.

Scoundreller 7y ago
> could've gone to my teenager, but he's not interested in a phone. You’re going to have to explain this one.
- jvagner 7y ago
  He's homeschooled. He loves Minecraft and Kerbal. But I think what did it the most is that the adults in his life are all self-employed and a bit stuck on their phones/laptops/tablets. I'm thinking this may end up skipping a generation.
  - on_and_off 7y ago
    The kids are going to be all right

wlesieutre 7y ago

Camera upgrades are another major reason for phone upgrades. Processor bumps are nice, but the camera improvements are dramatically bigger and probably also more noticeable to your average user. To some extent the processor goes hand-in-hand with that, since Apple's new computational photography features are driven by their new processors. I'm still running an iPhone SE, but if I were to upgrade it would be for the camera.

drawkbox 7y ago

As a mobile dev for games/apps I like to have as many versions of devices as possible, newest one if possible. However, the older phones/tablets/devices are best to start and do most of the development on, somewhat like making sure a game runs on an older PC or laptop. If you tune your app to the lower end (older) devices, scaling up is easier than scaling down. If all you have is the latest devices it will lead to bloated apps and slow games. Similar to how John Carmack does parallel implementations and starts with the lower end renderers in game engine design [1]. > However, some of my most effective uses of this strategy have been more aggressive. Over the years, I have done a number of hardware acceleration conversions from software rendering engines. In the old days, I would basically start from scratch, first implementing the environment rendering, then the characters, then the special effects. There were always lots of little features that got forgotten, and comparing against the original meant playing through the game on two systems at once. > The last two times I did this, I got the software rendering code running on the new platform first, so everything could be tested out at low frame rates, then implemented the hardware accelerated version in parallel, setting things up so you could instantly switch between the two at any time. For a mobile OpenGL ES application being developed on a windows simulator, I opened a completely separate window for the accelerated view, letting me see it simultaneously with the original software implementation. This was a very significant development win. [1] http://sevangelatos.com/john-carmack-on-parallel-implementations/ http://sevangelatos.com/john-carmack-on-parallel-implementat...

lunchables 7y ago

Apple has a recycling program you might want to consider: https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/ https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/

Scoundreller 7y ago
Don't, they'll just shred it. Sell it on Ebay and let it be harvested for spare parts.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  Even if they reused the parts, the less wasteful phone is the one you already have. I am not trying to be overly moralistic though .. just trying to understand if there is any value people see in getting a new phone each year outside of social/new and shiny. It made a lot of sense 8 or 10 years ago where each year there was a big leap. But nowadays, even for e.g. camera, the improvements are very incremental at best (when they are not mostly algorithmic so backportable) .