6 ms·

I was thinking the same thing the other day. I just updated my parents' computers (which are 10 years old) to Windows 10. They still work great for their needs

by Guest19023892 6y ago

I was thinking the same thing the other day. I just updated my parents' computers (which are 10 years old) to Windows 10. They still work great for their needs and they're up-to-date. I'm running a 7 year old ultrabook also on Windows 10. I'm planning to upgrade this year, but at least it's secure with the latest updates. I feel like we've been able to get a ton of use from these devices. Meanwhile, I have a Samsung Note 2 phone which is 8 years old. It's fast enough for what I do (browse the internet for 10 minutes a day, send a dozen WhatsApp messages, book an Uber). That thing was released in 2012 and could no longer upgrade to new Android releases in 2014. That's pathetic. I need to replace it this year, not because it's too slow, but because it's insecure and no longer supported by anything. I was going to buy a smart scale the other day, but the app doesn't support my Android version. Also wanted an app for syncing the time with my Bluetooth GShock. Not supported. Sonos speakers? Not supported. It's a garbage phone now not because of the hardware, but because of the lack of support.

exmadscientist 6y ago
You're talking about three different classes of device: PCs, phones, and IoT (IoS)/deep embedded. Embedded development is hard. Really hard. And much of that difficulty is intrinsic to the problem space, so it isn't going away anytime soon. But much of it is just embedded developers being masochists and embedded tool developers being sadists. For phones, the pain is probably 90% avoidable. 90 percent! No, I don't know why we live with it either. The reason your phone is different than your PC is that the PC's OS has all the drivers for everything built in, then loads whichever drivers your specific machine needs. Embedded Linux images are built specific to one model of hardware, with weird crappy OEM-provided drivers baked in and nowhere else available. It doesn't _have_ to be this way. But it is. So to support your phone, the vendor basically maintains a custom-patched kernel with a bizarre build process. And that's done more or less independently for every model they're supporting. It's a huge headache! Why deep embedded is this way is a little more understandable. (It's also where I prefer to work if I'm doing software; I don't like embedded Linux. It's just not my thing. So if I'm wrong when talking about it, that's why.) Deep embedded is often working with very limited hardware, custom circuits, and general strangeness. It also can serve the industrial, automotive, or medical markets, which naturally tend to longer product cycles. So the product is generally less standard, meaning it makes more sense (at least to me) why the support flow is so bespoke.
- vidanay 6y ago
  That "custom-patched kernel with a bizarre build process" is a self-inflicted wound on the part of both Google and the carriers. It could have been corrected years ago.
  - cogman10 6y ago
    Yup, and to that point, the fix is really stupid simple, push the drivers into the linux kernel mainline and give google (or whoever) a kernel build profile for your device. Done. You don't have to support the device for an eternity and, as a bonus, you can benefit from OS improvements to your drivers/etc. Hell, you and other manufactures using the same broadcom SOC (and hear me out... this might sound crazy) wouldn't have to spend the same engineering effort building drivers! Of course, that would require manufactures to actually give a damn about driver quality, whereas the current situation allows them to push out the most broken patch imaginable to pass whatever conformance tests google asks for. That would also cut into manufactures bottom line which is why I suspect they've not gone down this route. Gotta sell them phones every year... (they'd cut support to 1 month if they could)
    - ebg13 6y ago
      > Yup, and to that point, the fix is really stupid simple, push the drivers into the linux kernel mainline and give google (or whoever) a kernel build profile for your device. "If only the bad people would just stop being bad!" This mantra continually assumes goodwill from people who continue to show that they have none. At some point one needs to stop gaslighting themselves and their users and make the system more robust to bad actors. Manufacturers don't want to mainline their drivers? Fine. You can work on getting drivers mainlined while also stabilizing the interface so that it doesn't injure a billion customers when they don't.
      - cogman10 6y ago
        Yeah, there definitely needs to be some sort of enforcement that keeps bad actors from misbehaving. Google seems like the natural point for that. Maybe a law is needed? Too bad most law makers are completely tech illiterate. But I agree, it won't change without some central force to kibosh it.
scns 6y ago
You can put LineageOS on the Note 2 if it is the LTE version.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  More and more apps break with custom ROMs now though. Netflix is the big one. Still probably worth the trade off though - Lineage OS is great.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    The answer is to start using open ROMs before you get sucked into attractive nuisances like Netflix. However if you're stuck now, get a second device and work on weaning yourself off.
    - theodric 6y ago
      Hear, hear. Who wants to watch TV for 19 minutes on a phone before it overheats and the battery dies, anyway? And then how am I supposed to compulsively doomscroll while ignoring the show I'm ostensibly watching? Hard pass.
ffpip 6y ago
Since you are planning to replace it, first unlock the bootloader of the old device. Then install whatever version of android is available for your device on xda-developers.com Always check exact version/model (US model, Indian Model, etc) before flashing ROMs Full Guide to unlock - https://gearallnews.com/how-to-unlock-the-bootloader-of-samsung-galaxy-note-2/ https://gearallnews.com/how-to-unlock-the-bootloader-of-sams... Your phone's XDA page - https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-2 https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-2 Check out what Custom ROM you want here https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-2/orig-development https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-2/orig-developm... Use TWRP to flash ROM - https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1938733 https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1938733
knorker 6y ago
That's not a fair comparison. PCs have barely gotten faster in the last 10 years. 20 years ago you could spend $2000 every 3 years and get a 10x better computer. Not so last 10 years. Aside from graphics cards the hardware has not gotten noticeably better or faster for day to day work. So of course you can upgrade to windows 10. Phone hardware has. Very much so.
- hyko 6y ago
  PCs have gotten a lot faster in the last 10 years. Not 10x every three years better, but significantly better. The high end PC of 2020 would crush the high end PC of 2010.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    Performance has increased, sure, but it's different. Compare the best PC from 1990 with the best one from 2000. That change makes 2010-2020 look like it was standing still. Phone evolution for maybe 5-10 years after 2007 was more like the nineties, though it's definitely starting to slow now. And Windows 2000, from 1999, for instance, only supported ~4 year old hardware. Windows 10 has it much easier!
    - hyko 6y ago
      Yes, the rate of change for PC performance in the 90s was insane, and the effect was magnified by the fact that most horizontal applications benefitted from the extra power. The OP was claiming that there’s barely been any change in performance in the 2010s, which is just not true.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    Yeah, but does it make any difference in day to day usage? I don't think it does. I'm using a 4770K at the moment. A Ryzen 3600 compiles my C++ project 30-40% faster, but that's literally the only time my old CPU is a bottleneck. If I wasn't working with C++, I can't see any reason I would want to upgrade the CPU -- even 7 years later.
cowmoo728 6y ago
Desktops and laptops are commodity hardware with standardized drivers and interfaces. Phones are secretive buggy hardware running secretive buggy binary blobs. It's difficult to get manufacturers to upstream anything or even give you any information at all about their hardware, and it's a herculean task to work around all the firmware oddities to upgrade devices yourself.
swebs 6y ago
This is the exact reason why my next phone will be a Pinephone (just waiting for it to ship now). I'm expecting it to last a good 10 years just like any decent Linux laptop.
ogre_codes 6y ago
I don't think comparing the phone to a PC is entirely fair. A smartphone gets used everywhere and more or less constantly. Even a laptop is mostly used on a desk or other flat workspace where it's less likely to get dropped/ flushed/ etc. Also, up until 4-5 years ago, smartphones were moving pretty quickly in terms of capabilities. On the other hand, comparing the useful life of this to the iPhone is entirely reasonable, particularly since its the price of a mid-high end iPhone. It's pretty sad when you realize that the new iPhone SE released just 6 months after the Pixel 4 will almost certainly be supported for 2-3 years after Google has abandoned the twice-as-expensive Pixel 4.
- _nothing 6y ago
  They're not talking about hardware durability though. They're just talking about software support. Wear and tear on the physical device should have nothing to do with the company's willingness to continue supplying software/security updates to the phone years down the road.

exmadscientist 6y ago

You're talking about three different classes of device: PCs, phones, and IoT (IoS)/deep embedded. Embedded development is hard. Really hard. And much of that difficulty is intrinsic to the problem space, so it isn't going away anytime soon. But much of it is just embedded developers being masochists and embedded tool developers being sadists. For phones, the pain is probably 90% avoidable. 90 percent! No, I don't know why we live with it either. The reason your phone is different than your PC is that the PC's OS has all the drivers for everything built in, then loads whichever drivers your specific machine needs. Embedded Linux images are built specific to one model of hardware, with weird crappy OEM-provided drivers baked in and nowhere else available. It doesn't _have_ to be this way. But it is. So to support your phone, the vendor basically maintains a custom-patched kernel with a bizarre build process. And that's done more or less independently for every model they're supporting. It's a huge headache! Why deep embedded is this way is a little more understandable. (It's also where I prefer to work if I'm doing software; I don't like embedded Linux. It's just not my thing. So if I'm wrong when talking about it, that's why.) Deep embedded is often working with very limited hardware, custom circuits, and general strangeness. It also can serve the industrial, automotive, or medical markets, which naturally tend to longer product cycles. So the product is generally less standard, meaning it makes more sense (at least to me) why the support flow is so bespoke.

vidanay 6y ago
That "custom-patched kernel with a bizarre build process" is a self-inflicted wound on the part of both Google and the carriers. It could have been corrected years ago.
- cogman10 6y ago
  Yup, and to that point, the fix is really stupid simple, push the drivers into the linux kernel mainline and give google (or whoever) a kernel build profile for your device. Done. You don't have to support the device for an eternity and, as a bonus, you can benefit from OS improvements to your drivers/etc. Hell, you and other manufactures using the same broadcom SOC (and hear me out... this might sound crazy) wouldn't have to spend the same engineering effort building drivers! Of course, that would require manufactures to actually give a damn about driver quality, whereas the current situation allows them to push out the most broken patch imaginable to pass whatever conformance tests google asks for. That would also cut into manufactures bottom line which is why I suspect they've not gone down this route. Gotta sell them phones every year... (they'd cut support to 1 month if they could)
  - ebg13 6y ago
    > Yup, and to that point, the fix is really stupid simple, push the drivers into the linux kernel mainline and give google (or whoever) a kernel build profile for your device. "If only the bad people would just stop being bad!" This mantra continually assumes goodwill from people who continue to show that they have none. At some point one needs to stop gaslighting themselves and their users and make the system more robust to bad actors. Manufacturers don't want to mainline their drivers? Fine. You can work on getting drivers mainlined while also stabilizing the interface so that it doesn't injure a billion customers when they don't.
    - cogman10 6y ago
      Yeah, there definitely needs to be some sort of enforcement that keeps bad actors from misbehaving. Google seems like the natural point for that. Maybe a law is needed? Too bad most law makers are completely tech illiterate. But I agree, it won't change without some central force to kibosh it.

scns 6y ago

You can put LineageOS on the Note 2 if it is the LTE version.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
More and more apps break with custom ROMs now though. Netflix is the big one. Still probably worth the trade off though - Lineage OS is great.
- mindslight 6y ago
  The answer is to start using open ROMs before you get sucked into attractive nuisances like Netflix. However if you're stuck now, get a second device and work on weaning yourself off.
  - theodric 6y ago
    Hear, hear. Who wants to watch TV for 19 minutes on a phone before it overheats and the battery dies, anyway? And then how am I supposed to compulsively doomscroll while ignoring the show I'm ostensibly watching? Hard pass.

ffpip 6y ago

Since you are planning to replace it, first unlock the bootloader of the old device. Then install whatever version of android is available for your device on xda-developers.com Always check exact version/model (US model, Indian Model, etc) before flashing ROMs Full Guide to unlock - https://gearallnews.com/how-to-unlock-the-bootloader-of-samsung-galaxy-note-2/ https://gearallnews.com/how-to-unlock-the-bootloader-of-sams... Your phone's XDA page - https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-2 https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-2 Check out what Custom ROM you want here https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-2/orig-development https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-2/orig-developm... Use TWRP to flash ROM - https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1938733 https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1938733

knorker 6y ago

That's not a fair comparison. PCs have barely gotten faster in the last 10 years. 20 years ago you could spend $2000 every 3 years and get a 10x better computer. Not so last 10 years. Aside from graphics cards the hardware has not gotten noticeably better or faster for day to day work. So of course you can upgrade to windows 10. Phone hardware has. Very much so.

hyko 6y ago
PCs have gotten a lot faster in the last 10 years. Not 10x every three years better, but significantly better. The high end PC of 2020 would crush the high end PC of 2010.
- majormajor 6y ago
  Performance has increased, sure, but it's different. Compare the best PC from 1990 with the best one from 2000. That change makes 2010-2020 look like it was standing still. Phone evolution for maybe 5-10 years after 2007 was more like the nineties, though it's definitely starting to slow now. And Windows 2000, from 1999, for instance, only supported ~4 year old hardware. Windows 10 has it much easier!
  - hyko 6y ago
    Yes, the rate of change for PC performance in the 90s was insane, and the effect was magnified by the fact that most horizontal applications benefitted from the extra power. The OP was claiming that there’s barely been any change in performance in the 2010s, which is just not true.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  Yeah, but does it make any difference in day to day usage? I don't think it does. I'm using a 4770K at the moment. A Ryzen 3600 compiles my C++ project 30-40% faster, but that's literally the only time my old CPU is a bottleneck. If I wasn't working with C++, I can't see any reason I would want to upgrade the CPU -- even 7 years later.

cowmoo728 6y ago

Desktops and laptops are commodity hardware with standardized drivers and interfaces. Phones are secretive buggy hardware running secretive buggy binary blobs. It's difficult to get manufacturers to upstream anything or even give you any information at all about their hardware, and it's a herculean task to work around all the firmware oddities to upgrade devices yourself.

swebs 6y ago

This is the exact reason why my next phone will be a Pinephone (just waiting for it to ship now). I'm expecting it to last a good 10 years just like any decent Linux laptop.

ogre_codes 6y ago

I don't think comparing the phone to a PC is entirely fair. A smartphone gets used everywhere and more or less constantly. Even a laptop is mostly used on a desk or other flat workspace where it's less likely to get dropped/ flushed/ etc. Also, up until 4-5 years ago, smartphones were moving pretty quickly in terms of capabilities. On the other hand, comparing the useful life of this to the iPhone is entirely reasonable, particularly since its the price of a mid-high end iPhone. It's pretty sad when you realize that the new iPhone SE released just 6 months after the Pixel 4 will almost certainly be supported for 2-3 years after Google has abandoned the twice-as-expensive Pixel 4.

_nothing 6y ago
They're not talking about hardware durability though. They're just talking about software support. Wear and tear on the physical device should have nothing to do with the company's willingness to continue supplying software/security updates to the phone years down the road.