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I recently bought a Nokia 2.2, which in in the Android One program. Two main reasons: a removable battery and OS updates for two years and security for 3. At th
by alistproducer2 7y ago
I recently bought a Nokia 2.2, which in in the Android One program. Two main reasons: a removable battery and OS updates for two years and security for 3. At this point, there's very little difference between the hardware of flagships and commodity, especially considering the real-world use of smartphones. I mean, is anyone compiling programs on these things or doing anything particularly intensive? Not really. So given the choice between a $1000 phone and a $140 one, I choose the latter because in 2019 your really paying for the software.
Since Android 9, I really enjoy Android. It feels like a totally different experience with things like split screen, gesture nav, and smart replies. The Android team is doing a great job as of late. I look forward to getting this update. I hope we get to a point where the OEMs stop being the gate keepers of our phone's OSs and these devices become more like laptops, in the sense of being able to run whatever we want.
- nunodonato 7y agoSamsung DeX (or similar) is a very interesting use case for more powerful hardware. But if that's not something you'd use, then I fully agree with you.
- ivankolev 7y agoI am setting myself up on DeX as a full blown Intellij IDEA multi language environment but their locked down Linux distro makes me very uneasy...
- thekyle 7y agoI agree. I recently purchased the Nokia 7.1 on eBay ($200) and it does everything I need in a phone and has nice build quality. I feel that there aren't really many applications that utilize the powerful hardware of modern flagships, so I don't see why I should pay the premium for it.
- Scene_Cast2 7y agoDepends on what you do with your phone. I noticed that even mobile web pages often lag on my 3-year-old (Snapdragon 820) phone. I noticed that most native apps lag on a 4-year-old Galaxy S6. I'm not sure how well new mid-low tier phones do.
- thekyle 7y agoThat's interesting. My old phone was the OnePlus 3 (I used it up until a few days ago) and it had a Snapdragon 820 running Lineage OS Pie. I can't say I really noticed webpages lagging too bad but I use Firefox with uBlock Origin so that could be it.
- distances 7y agoI wouldn't mind the lower power that much, but camera is one of my main use cases for phone. Pixel is just so damn good at taking pictures. The cheap phones do have considerably worse cameras, no way around that.
- _fzslm 7y agoThe Pixel 3a is fantastic for that reason.
- on_and_off 7y agoAt some point cameras are going to be commoditized as well though, partly thanks to all the investment in computerized photography. I bought a mid range phone for my parents, they find its camera amazing. It does not hold a candle to a pixel, but it is adequate. For users that don't feel the need for the best in class phone camera, it is already enough. I wonder what will be the distinguishing factor in 5 years.
- shpx 7y agoThe Pixel 1 XL has a good camera and you can buy a used one for under $200.
- nineteen999 7y agoNot to mention they are still getting updates, I'm installing Android 10 now.
- MattSayar 7y agoDoes it still get regular security updates as well? I read they stop those after a couple years as well.
- nineteen999 7y agoMine got all the regular Android 9 security updates up until I installed Android 10, which I suppose is not bad for a phone that was released 3 years ago. I'll probably replace it soon anyway since the battery life is starting to slip away. That's probably the worst aspect of the phone, since I bought it in Feb 2018.
- andrepd 7y agoI agree that performance is good enough on 100$ phones, but there are other things, namely camera, battery, screen. By the way, have you considered the fairphone 3?
- Eridrus 7y agoI recently started playing some games on my phone that require 3d rendering. Pretty sure it would struggle on an older phone. The 4GB of RAM I have feels slightly insufficient since the game gets closed by the OS if I switch to another resource intensive enough app. I'm not going to say you should pay $1000 for a phone, but just because you have no issues with a $120 phone doesn't mean no-one does.
- jcknight 7y agoI bought a Nokia 3.1 as a lower end test device, which also belongs to the Android One program. The device is so slow to respond to input in every way that it's become the device I use to test our apps absolute worst case performance on. Even knowing it was meant to be a lower end device it routinely gets frustrating to use for even the most simple tasks, such as Chrome tab switching, keyboard response and even just plain navigation. We have had similar, buy not as bad, reactions to other low end device we use for testing. I genuinely feel sorry for people who use these devices as their primary phones.
- brlewis 7y ago> We have had similar, but not as bad, reactions to other low end device we use for testing Let me guess -- Nexus 5X? I use one as my primary phone, and the slowness is noticeable but usually tolerable.
- unicornporn 7y agoHope you have it backed up, because they die sooner or later. For me it was sooner, for my friend it was later. Some soldering problem if I recall things right. A bootloop is the first (and sometimes the last sign).
- prab97 7y agoI can confirm that. My Nexus 5X died with bootloop after the warranty was over and all the googling led me to make peace with the fact that it was a soldering issue, hence a manufacturing defect.
- nineteen999 7y agoYep same here, I didn't understand what went wrong at the time, but I did read here on HN a month or two ago that it was a known issue.
- brlewis 7y agoI do. This is my 2nd Nexus 5X from craigslist, but when this one dies I plan on replacing it with a Pixel 3a.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoI wish they made something like that in an iPhone SE size. Every phone is just so huge these days.
- Havoc 7y agoCamera on the 1k phone will be better than the 200 phone. Somewhat relevant to the instagram generation...
- ProZsolt 7y agoWhen phone cameras got reasonably better (Nexus 5X) I started to carry my DSLR less and less and after a while I completely ditched it. I was still clinging to my 5X before the Pixel 3a came out because there wasn't any reasonably priced phone with a decent camera.
- apexalpha 7y ago>At this point, there's very little difference between the hardware of flagships and commodity, especially considering the real-world use of smartphones. Cameras.
- unicornporn 7y ago> a removable battery and OS updates for two years This provokes me. Are we supposed to be happy with two years? The environmental impact of e-waste and the production of electronics should not be understated. I have a Nexus 5 as a backup phone. It works just as well as my main handset. I know how to duck the G-surveillance and I'm able to keep it alive because I have the knowledge to install roms. Not everyone does. Personally, I much prefer Android over iOS. But when someone asks me what phone they should get I always tell them to buy an iPhone. This is one of the reasons why.
- kllrnohj 7y ago> Are we supposed to be happy with two years? The environmental impact of e-waste should not be understated. Note it's 2 years of feature updates not 2 years and it turns into a brick. Everything will still work and you'll still get new apps and app updates for far longer than 2 years. Security updates go for longer, too.
- neilalexander 7y agoGiven that Apple are still managing to roll out operating system updates to iPhones that are 5 years old, a potent question is why Google and Android device manufacturers are either unable or unwilling to attempt to do the same. Planned obsolescence isn't just an attack on your customers, it's also environmentally irresponsible.
- kllrnohj 7y agoApple does also cut features when they roll out those updates though. Not all iOS versions are equal. It is a shame Android's update story is bad, but realistically it also doesn't matter much. Non-enthusiasts tend to not even want major updates in the first place (it's a chore - especially if anything changed on them). It sucks for app developers a lot more than it matters to the majority consumer.
- megaremote 7y ago
- coryfklein 7y agoApps are going to use whatever CPU and memory is available. It's the same reason a chat app can use hundreds of MB of memory on a desktop. Why optimize that lower when laptops ship with 16+ GB these days? In my experience that $140 phone actually does end up being laggier and less responsive which can be super annoying when scrolling and tapping with your fingers. I'm not a hardware engineer, but somehow this seems to hold true even if the memory is sized the same and the CPUs seem comparable. There must be something deeper in the specs involved that leads to UI slowness.
- godelski 7y agoWhile I think your comment is accurate, I'd argue that optimization is a better use of money and time than changing icons every 6 months to a year just so that the app looks new. Honestly, why do icons change so much? Is it some psychological thing? I'm going to get used to whatever layout it is anyway and most popular apps have gone through a few designs and figured out what works. Like HN has not changed its layout. Why change it? Job security?
- Someone 7y agoI think it’s a signal that says “I run the newest OS, so I have fairly recent hardware, so I’m relatively wealthy”, and that sells phones.
- godelski 7y agoBut how does this help with applications like Slack? Why not make Slack as light weight as possible so you can get it on more devices? Or Skype? Or whatever app? Those apps still do the layout change thing too.
- StreamBright 7y agoDo I need to reconfigure the entire OS + all applications after every OS upgrade back how it was prior? One of the main reasons I switched to iOS.
- flukus 7y ago> OS updates for two years and security for 3 OS updates for 2 years assuming you buy it on launch day, for the vast majority of owners it will be significantly shorter than 2 years. Also as a Nokia 3 owner, don't count on those updates actually working, mines been getting stuck in a boot loop when updating for a year now.
- jhoechtl 7y ago> I hope we get to a point where the OEMs stop being the gate keepers of our phone's OSs and these devices become more like laptops, in the sense of being able to run whatever we want. I own a Lenovo x13 convertible. Bios updates come in Windows executables only and whenever there is a Windows update the GPT is reconfigured, wiping my options to dual-boot Linux. It's been a while in the Laptop segment that there was free choice and you really had the feeling to own your device, sadly.
- leokennis 7y agoOf course one reason you’d want a faster processor is it will “race to idle” faster and increase your battery life (longer life with similar battery / equal life with smaller battery that’s charged quicker): https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/race-to-sleep https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/race-to-sleep Of course there is an optimum between price, workload and battery life that will differ per person.
- makomk 7y agoRace-to-idle only means that it's often more efficient to run a processor designed for a given speed at that speed, complete the task sooner, and then power it down than to run it slower. That's because modern high-speed processors waste a lot of power via leakage just by being turned on. I think it's often still more efficient to design a slower, lower-power processor in the first place, and most modern phones have such processor cores.
- chronogram 7y agohttps://i.ibb.co/DK0SB5h/Android-One-Removable-Battery.png https://i.ibb.co/DK0SB5h/Android-One-Removable-Battery.png Wow that's really not a lot of phones (just 1) available with Android One and a removable battery.