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Reponsible nations should forbid to sell a phone without providing at least 7 years of updates. How that, we are living in free world? Obviously under environme

Reponsible nations should forbid to sell a phone without providing at least 7 years of updates. How that, we are living in free world? Obviously under environmental legislation, avoiding a lot of completely avoidable electronic waste. Some people break their phones much earlier, but far from all do. Wouldn't that hinder technical progress? It might slightly slow down it. But looking at the current bloat of nonsense that a current Android phone contains, that would not be a bad thing. If you need more than 2GB of RAM for a phone to run smoothly it's just bad engineering. To answer your question: This SailfishOS phone runs a 3.10 kernel. It was built only 2 months ago, but I would not bet my head it is really well-patched throughout. The browser is based on Firefox ESR 78. So although formally still maintained I'd not be surprised it contained unpatched known vulnerabilities. Nothing has happened to me ever, but I don't use this phone to do really sensitive stuff. For a mainline Android phone the risk might be higher. What were the last big drive-by attacks not requiring user interaction?

BjoernKW 4y ago
Why 7 years? Where does that number come from? Apple usually provides software updates for their devices for about 5 years, for instance, which seems reasonable, since that's a common depreciation period as well. You'd probably also be hard-pressed to find a significant number of people who own 7-year old phones. That's not to say those don't exist, just that they're probably not numerous enough to justify making this a generally applicable law.
- usr1106 4y ago
  7 was just a figure. 5 would already be a significant improvement where many vendors don't even offer 3 years after the devices were sold last. I am fully aware that 7 year old phones are not common. My point is that the current rate of obsolescence is not sunstainable from an ecological standpoint, so this has to change.
- muzani 4y ago
  App dev here. We haven't seen an Android phone older than 2017 (so yeah, 5 years too). And we're catering for a poor country that doesn't change phones often.
  - metadat 4y ago
    How many installs though? I still power on my old Nexus 6p occasionally.

BjoernKW 4y ago

Why 7 years? Where does that number come from? Apple usually provides software updates for their devices for about 5 years, for instance, which seems reasonable, since that's a common depreciation period as well. You'd probably also be hard-pressed to find a significant number of people who own 7-year old phones. That's not to say those don't exist, just that they're probably not numerous enough to justify making this a generally applicable law.

usr1106 4y ago
7 was just a figure. 5 would already be a significant improvement where many vendors don't even offer 3 years after the devices were sold last. I am fully aware that 7 year old phones are not common. My point is that the current rate of obsolescence is not sunstainable from an ecological standpoint, so this has to change.
muzani 4y ago
App dev here. We haven't seen an Android phone older than 2017 (so yeah, 5 years too). And we're catering for a poor country that doesn't change phones often.
- metadat 4y ago
  How many installs though? I still power on my old Nexus 6p occasionally.