13 ms·

I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

121 points by zdw 4y ago

xupybd 4y ago
>You decided that if less than 1% of your users use a certain old device, it’s no longer relevant. Which is odd, because to many businesses, 1% of users can make the difference between profit or loss. That is not the developer that is the business. They are trying to make more money. If 1% of their users don't matter or are going to upgrade why wouldn't you use the latest tech. >You decided that you wanted to use some framework/feature/API and save developer time. Which is odd. Because consider how much time you spend trying to not harm the environment in your free time: shopping for sustainable products, bringing your reusable cup, recycling. And then think of the minutes you save with new programming stuff compared to the number of iPhones discarded because of that. I can assure you moving with the times saves more than minutes. Legacy code bases stop working with the world around them and require crazy hacks to keep them running.
- Levitz 4y ago
  Yet, we really aren't doing that much nowadays. Current phones are absolute powerhouses, capable of rendering 3d graphics in real time while doing God knows what more. And what does the vast majority of the public do? Mesagging, vídeos, social network. That's it. That's really it. Why in Gods name do we require modern phones for this? If someone could do that almost a decade ago, why should requirements go UP? It's maddening, how in the world are we doing stuff worse rather than better with time? To make developers life easier? Is the entirety of the market subsidizing app creation? It's madness
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
    And take sweet pictures. That alone is worth upgrades for a lot of people. Though we are pretty fast approaching a ceiling on what is actually visible to the human eye in terms of improvements. I bet we will start to see diminishing returns in camera tech in the next few years.
    - layer8 4y ago
      Recent iPhones have arguably become worse with all the AI processing they are applying to photos.
    - asdff 4y ago
      We already do see diminishing returns. The lenses on a phone like the iphone 14 pro show pretty bad lens flair in certain lighting situations. I've compared it side by side between a friends 14 pro and my SE2 and I just don't get these effects with my much simpler lens. I suppose the solution is some sort of a hood or more elements for that big lens on the 14 (the way a larger camera would solve these issues), but its already large enough where the phone no longer sits flat on a table even with a case. Some threads showing the double imaged effect which is especially pronounced with neon signs: https://old.reddit.com/r/iPhoneography/comments/yhsy8s/iphone_14_pro_edited_with_vsco/ https://old.reddit.com/r/iPhoneography/comments/yhsy8s/iphon... https://old.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/zu7jmj/iphone_14_pro_photos_with_neon_lights/ https://old.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/zu7jmj/iphone_14... Apparently this has been going on since at least the iphone 12 and 13: https://old.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/q06u1y/insane_lens_flares_as_of_a_week_ago_any_fix/ https://old.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/q06u1y/insane_lens_...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lucasmullens 4y ago
> You decided that you wanted to use some framework/feature/API and save developer time. Which is odd. Because consider how much time you spend trying to not harm the environment in your free time: shopping for sustainable products, bringing your reusable cup, recycling. And then think of the minutes you save with new programming stuff compared to the number of iPhones discarded because of that. "Minutes"? It doesn't take minutes of time to support old phones, it can take hours, sometimes days or weeks. And I barely spend minutes recycling; I just pick the right bin.
vanilla_nut 4y ago
Funny to see an article whose title I agree with and realize I'm in the exact same situation. Same phone, actually -- the last iPhone with a small size, headphone jack, touchID, and SIM card slot all in one device. I've just eliminated most apps from my phone, but the web browser is the ultimate killer for this phone. Stuck on iOS 15's version of webkit, no real ad blockers, no real tweaks (as admirable a job as Hyperweb does) I'm being forced to upgrade thanks to the end of iOS updates. I've decided to try another small phone: the Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact, which is roughly the size of the iPhone Mini with a headphone jack, fingerprint sensor, usb-c, and (most excitingly) a notification LED. Of course software support for this 2017 phone is also long gone, but I'm hoping LineageOS + Android's open software environment (giving me Firefox support for years) will keep things going for a while, at least. I really wish there was a way to keep software support on smartphones for longer. Now that society basically requires every participant to own a smartphone with a data plan, it's as important as allowing walkability and public transit in cities so folks can live without cars, IMO.
- captn3m0 4y ago
  Was in exact same situation, and made the same spreadsheet even, except my prices were higher in India. I force upgraded to iPhone 13 a few months after it came out, once the leaks confirmed that that 14 wouldn’t have TouchID.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > Now that society basically requires every participant to own a smartphone with a data plan I feel so very fortunate that this isn't true in my area.
- whatever1 4y ago
  At the very minimum companies should be obliged to unlock the eol devices and provide the firmware of their components. Many of the components could have a second life. The main camera for example of the the 2016 iPhone is still better that most webcams. One could use these salvaged sensors to build new hardware.
  - 4y ago
JohnFen 4y ago
Yes, this is one of the big reasons why I've decided not to replace my smartphone when it dies. Phones are getting more expensive, omitting more of the features I value, getting more intrusive, and the software more intolerable, but nothing is getting better in terms of real benefit to me. Just the opposite. I'm getting off this treadmill. Dumb phone, here I come!
- dmm 4y ago
  Which dumb phones have you considered using? I'm thinking of using an android phone without apps or a browser so I could still use it for photos, messaging(signal and matrix), and music.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I'm going dumber than that. I have a couple of $20 dumbphones sitting around that I've used as burners. I couldn't find any that didn't have apps at all, but these have minimal functionality in that department. I can't install any that didn't come with the phone, and those that are there are very basic. If I can find one that lets me tether, that would be ideal, but not a showstopper requirement. My intention is to separate computing from the phone, so I'll also carry a real pocket computer for my other needs. The key is that it will be a real computer that I have complete control over, and that doesn't have cell connectivity.
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      This: "My intention is to separate computing from the phone, so I'll also carry a real pocket computer for my other needs." I'm increasingly of the opinion that wedding comms, data storage, and compute within a single envelope, and specifically one controlled by third parties (known and otherwise) with intents adversarial to yourself ... was a cardinal error. A largely-featureless dumbphone (Light Phone ... seems about right), either capable itself of tethering or with an additional data-only tether (making burnering all the more viable), seems best. An Actual Compute Device of some description --- laptop, small-form-factor computer, very possibly a tablet or e-ink device (though most of these are effectively identical with smartphones, and share all their disadvantages, including short useful life) --- for Actual Compute Tasks, would round that out. I'm also increasingly of the view that using phones for voice comms is also a nonstarter given spam and privacy violations. Good alternatives are not immediately obvious, though F/OSS voice chat / meeting tools (e.g., Jitsi) seem promising.
everyone 4y ago
I rarely use a smartphone, but I do use a Samsung Galaxy S7 as my phone.. for, phone calls and txts, as an mp3 player, as a GPS when driving and hiking, to read books on when in a waiting room or something. That's about it. I smashed up my last one and had to buy a new phone. My requirements were... * Not too big (S7 is bigger than I want already) * audio jack * micro sd card slot * Some waterproofness * nice screen (eg. oled) that I can see in direct sunlight I ended up buying another new-old S7 as I couldn't find any new-new smartphones that fit my requirements.
phuzybuny 4y ago
This article strikes close to home as I'm still using my 16GB iPhone 6. A lot of apps have stopped supporting iOS 12, forcing me to to reluctantly replacing them with webpage shortcuts where possible (even then it is not a particulary enjoyable experience). Seeing as how most apps follow a minimalist design language, it bothers me that I need an increasingly powerful phone for apps that are simpler than before (at least visually).
- xwolfi 4y ago
  Dude I have a Huawei (amazing otherwise) and I cant even install most american apps, while they'd work perfectly... But I have to admit the sheer force of the Google detox made me stop a lot of their products, use throwaway gmail accounts everywhere, no cross device sync and all that stuff and I feel... free and light. Ironic isn't it ?
- dylan604 4y ago
  was there a large difference between the iPhone 6 and the 6s Plus? i have a 6s Plus as my only iPhone, and it is running 15.7.2 (with an update scheduled for tonight i just saw). why is your 6 stuck on iOS 12?
  - acdha 4y ago
    The 6S had twice as much RAM (2GB vs 1GB) and the processor was not only a good bit faster but throttled less, too. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/09/a-3d-touch-above-the-iphone-6s-and-6s-plus-reviewed/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/09/a-3d-touch-above-the...
  - sys_64738 4y ago
    Some apps still work on my 6S but it's getting to the point where we've long since been cast adrift.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
shepherdjerred 4y ago
It shouldn't be surprising that quality of life decreases as hardware ages. Hardware gets faster, software gets slower, speed for the users stays about the same. If you're not making your hardware faster (upgrading your phone every few years), then the software is getting slower resulting in a worse experience. This isn't at all limited to phones. It applies to any hardware/software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law
MBCook 4y ago
Apple provided 5 years of full years of updates. 2016 through 2021. I understand the writer’s issue. It seems clear some amount of support should be mandated. After all no one should be able to drop support after 1 year. But what is the correct length to mandate? Until the radio standard is no longer usable (so when 4G gets turned off)? Just a specific number (5, 7, 10, whatever)? I can’t think of a single consumer device that has mandated support for any length of time past the warranty, so I don’t think there is precedent. In fact the only mandatory support I can even think of is parts for cars. So how do you choose the timeframe?
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  I think you misunderstood him, it's not Apple that he's blaming.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    Oh you’re right. I hadn’t caught that on my first read through somehow. Thanks.
porphyra 4y ago
> Switching back and forth between apps resets their state. That’s particularly annoying trying to decide if I should change trains at the next station and switch between the train ticket app and Google Maps. This really drives me nuts. It seems this is due to iPhones having very little ram (even the newest 14 Pro Max has 6 GB whereas my 11 Pro Max has 4 GB). But Android phones regularly have double the ram. iPhones could get away with less ram since the CPU is very fast and the OS and apps seem to be faster too, but considering that ram is very cheap, I really wish they would just add more ram. Then again this is also true of the Macbooks which starts at 8 GB, the same as my 2018 Thinkpad.
- AgentOrange1234 4y ago
  I think dram chips use a lot of power? Could be the lower ram helps with battery life?
- MAGZine 4y ago
  I was thinking about switching TO iPhone to avoid this phenomena. Apparently, I might as well just stick on Android.
  - throitallaway 4y ago
    What apps/phone do you experience this with? I really only see this happening with finance-related apps on Pixel devices.
    - fluidcruft 4y ago
      That's also been my experience on Pixels.
- s1mon 4y ago
  This problem was one of the things that drove me to get a new iPad Pro recently. I assume it is a RAM issue. And the fact that Apple doesn't sell first party cases for devices as old as my last iPad Pro, and my case was falling apart. Oh, and my first gen Apple Pencil wasn't charging and the charging UX for it sucks.
luxuryballs 4y ago
Not a fan of regulation as a solution for most things but it would be kinda nifty if device makers were required to provide an optional jailbreak update for devices once they stop supporting them.
prosaic-hacker 4y ago
I decided a long time ago to buy the cheapest unlocked android phone I could get at the time. 6 phones for 2 people over 10 years. I paid 140 to 200 (100-150 US$) pretax for each. This has been mostly Motorola E or G phones. This has kept us current with apps resource needs. The total cost of 6 phone is less than the current cost of an iPhone 14. I have kept all of them and reuse them as night table Alarm clocks or second screens to settle question like "How old is that actor" while watching something.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  You should wire them together and make a little K8s cluster to power some services in your homelab
  - jacooper 4y ago
    Running containers on android is unfortunately isn't that easy. https://gist.github.com/FreddieOliveira/efe850df7ff3951cb62d74bd770dce27 https://gist.github.com/FreddieOliveira/efe850df7ff3951cb62d...
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
      > Bear in mind that you'll have to root your phone, mess with and compile your phone's kernel and docker suite. So, be prepared to get your hands dirty. You weren’t kidding
causality0 4y ago
I convinced my entire family to move from Verizon to AT&T because their open device policy meant we could buy the phones we wanted online and save money. Two years later AT&T went to a whitelist model that meant half our phones would no longer be compatible with the network. I had to give up a phone I adored, my OnePlus 6. Probably the last phone OnePlus ever released that still reflected the desires of their customers, with a headphone jack, flat screen, alert slider, and rear-mounted fingerprint reader that was a godsend when everybody else was struggling to use face unlock without taking their masks off.
throitallaway 4y ago
FTA: "[my old phone is] like that proverbial old pair of jeans" Your jeans don't have 0 day exploits whereby someone halfway around the world can steal your banking credentials, private photos/emails, cryptocurrency, etc. Forced obsolescence exists, but I wouldn't put it at fault here. If you want to blame anyone, blame Apple for locking down their hardware. I still use my old Nexus 6 (released 2014) with an up to date version of LineageOS from time to time. That's impossible with iDevices without a lot of hax or workarounds. 5-6 years is a generous amount of time for a vendor to support a software/hardware stack on a consumer device. It's more time than I've gotten from Google officially.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > Your jeans don't have 0 day exploits whereby someone halfway around the world can steal your banking credentials ...does anyone know if this is actually happening on a significant scale? There are said to be tons of unpatched Android devices in the wild, but when I hear about accounts getting hacked, it mostly seems to be from leaked website databases and/or reused credentials.
  - asdff 4y ago
    If this wasn't happening to people during the jailbreak.me era where people were installing cydia right in the apple retail store on the demo units, then you can be sure its fud that's not rooted in any hard evidence.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Your jeans don't have 0 day exploits [...] >[...] I still use my old Nexus 6 (released 2014) with an up to date version of LineageOS from time to time. If you're paranoid about 0 days, you really shouldn't feel safe with an "an up to date version of LineageOS". Even though they might technically be receiving updates, the kernel and proprietary blobs certainly are not.
- venachescu 4y ago
  > Your jeans don't have 0 day exploits whereby someone halfway around the world can steal your banking credentials, private photos/emails, cryptocurrency, etc. I dunno a lot of my jeans end up with a hole right in the middle of the crotch and it actually kinda feels similar
metacritic12 4y ago
I have to really disagree with this. This isn't something like a microwave we're talking about where the tech hasn't changed in decades. This is literally something on the bleeding edge of chips and technology, where the ability to compute really does go up a ton every 5 years. Add on to that the fact that most people use it many hours a day, this equal something like a thousand hours a year. So even a top of the line phone that you refresh every 3 years is something you pay cents an hour to use -- quite low. If you're from a developing country or the low end of a developed country, I can see how not upgrading your phone every 3 years can be important. If you have moderate resources from a developed country, not being willing to upgrade your phone is frankly a utility mistake for most people. If phone makers have to support old devices, there is a lot of developer time, testing, etc that is needed. In the end, I think the flaw of the article is the same flaw as below: some people get upset that if a small streak damages something like 10 pixels on a 4K screen, it's cheaper to replace the entire thing than to fix it. Replacing the entire thing seems like "waste". Not so: repairing the screen is actually waste, because it requires lots of skilled human time. Replacing the screen is mostly cheap automatic assembly. Likewise, it "feels bad" to throw away a working phone, but actually the societal cost of supporting very very old phones would be a lot more than having an ecosystem where most people want to upgrade every couple of years -- in a arena that is actually changing fast.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  You are considering only the economy, but I think people keeping older phones are also considering the environment (carbon dioxide, other pollution, mining etc). That's the main reason I'm using a 5 year old phone.
  - camillomiller 4y ago
    Apple has an amazing recycling program (I know because I’ve seen Daisy in action). If you care about all that, bringing your iPhone to Apple at the end of its lifetime is the best decision you can make.
    - KoosL 4y ago
freitzkriesler2 4y ago
Apple has been iTempting me but I've resisted simply because on the pixels I can run grapheneOS well beyond what google commits to in terms of updates. I also like kiwi browser and it's support for chrome extensions. Regardless, I miss the days when we had more mobile OS diversity. IOS, android, windows phone, BBos, and palms WebOS.
- onewheeltom 4y ago
  I miss Windows Phone. IMHO one of the few hardware items MS did right.
- ZekeSulastin 4y ago
  I thought GrapheneOS specifically drops support for devices once Google does - they even mention on their FAQ* that the Pixel 4/XL is only still getting releases as a stopgap for users until they can go buy a newer device. * https://grapheneos.org/faq https://grapheneos.org/faq
  - freitzkriesler2 4y ago
    Well I'll be damned. Forgot about that one. Thanks for letting me know!
    - jacooper 4y ago
      Though they will still be realesing new Android versions, even if the device is on extended security support. that matters with the Pixel 6 and 7 series that have such a long security support cycle, but a rather short feature support cycle.
magnuspaaske 4y ago
Apple is providing 6 years of support for old phones. As the author notes that's more than in the past, where they offered 4 years of support. My experience has been that the first generations had a lot of difference year to year and so when I moved from the 3GS to the 5 it was a massive difference and it would probably have been hard for Apple to support phones for as long as they do today with those handsets. That doesn't mean it's easy to support those old models and if Apple did 8 years of support instead of 6 we would still get these articles (but with ... iPhone 6s?). At the end of the day things have a design life and Apple does offer pretty good support – and if we do indeed see newer handsets receiving updates for longer the authors argument ends up kind of being negated. If people were willing to pay for software updates after a certain number of years it might be viable but ultimately the author kinds of expect everyone else to support his phone without offering much in how he'll pay for said support with something that can tangibly be used to pay rent. And so it's probably easier the author just buys a new phone and remembers to turn the old one in for recycling.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  It sounds like the author wants Apple to let you unlock those device's bootloaders so that they can have an elegant depreciation/recycling lifecycle instead of becoming e-waste that can only be salvaged by a proprietary Apple-designed robot. That would be good enough for me too, I think.
  - magnuspaaske 4y ago
    Seeing as Apple sometimes release patch updates to previous iOS versions (as they've done with iOS 15 just this year) suggests they take security somewhat seriously. Jailbreaking them would have some interesting security implications, especially as it relates to distributing apps via the App Store. The easiest way out of this remains to just buy a new phone and recycle the old one.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      They certainly don't have to stop updating people on OFW, I just want the option to unlock the bootloader for my iPhone. Bonus points if I can do it without an iCloud account, but I guess beggars can't be choosers. It's less about jailbreaking and more about ensuring your hardware stays usable even if Apple doesn't think it should be.
throwanem 4y ago
I felt the same way, right up until I started working on mobile apps myself. One of the first things I figured out after making that jump was that the constraints involved in making an app run smoothly and be just as comfortable to use on something like a 1st gen SE - which is what I used myself, from 2016 through most of 2021 - can't be supported alongside the capabilities and display real estate provided by current models, without an indefinite expenditure of costly developer effort that just isn't economical in supporting a use case that's relevant to something like sixty users out of every thousand. We've been through this before, with the PC revolution. Things settled down on that front, GPUs excepted, right around the time smartphones became a thing. The complaints are more or less exactly the same, and so are the reasons they receive little of consequence by way of response. None of which is to say you should upgrade your phone if you don't really want to, but - speaking as one who has done so himself, prior to having discovered firsthand why things are the way they are - yelling at the entire industry to change how it functions at a fundamental level has much more of King Canute about it than of any really worthwhile expenditure of effort.
- bb88 4y ago
  > without an indefinite expenditure of costly developer effort that just isn't economical in supporting a use case... How much would it cost? $1B US? Okay. Apple reported a net income of $99.9 Billion dollars from $350B of revenue. That seems like a good use of $1B to keep electronics waste down and improve resale value. That, number btw is 1000 developers at a cost of $1M apiece per year. Honestly I don't think it would cost a $1B. I think the true cost is in loss of revenue from forced upgrades -- which might be $100B of Apple's revenue. My circa 2016 Dell XPS 15 still runs pretty good with Windows 10. Not sure why MS forces me to upgrade my hardware to go to Windows 11.
  - golergka 4y ago
    > How much would it cost? $1B US? Okay. For a game developer that barely raised $1m for the first title?
    - 4y ago
v01dv01d 4y ago
The sad part of this article is that the author seems to be bound with iOS, not even considering Android. They might be trapped in the Apple ecosystem :( That said, I know this is the same thing with Google Suite...
- kelnos 4y ago
  I mean, it's worse on Android. I have a Pixel 4, and it stopped even receiving security updates this past October, at the ripe old age of three years old. Fortunately I can still run all the apps I want to run, everything works, and performance is good, but I don't imagine that will still be the case if I try to keep using it another three years. And that's ignoring the fact that no new security issues will get patched, and I won't get any new OS-level features. I've accepted this, and will likely reluctantly buy a Pixel 7a when it's released, even if that phone is even larger and more unwieldy than my Pixel 4, and has the ridiculously-ugly camera bar on the back.
lawgimenez 4y ago
> But most of the time, web developers can apply new features as enhancements. As an iOS developer, I wish we could do the same in web development and save the author the time in posting this blog. But in reality, this is just hard to do. iOS is very poor in backwards compatibility compared to Android. In iOS we only support 3 major version down, compared to Android we still support up to Lollipop up until last year.
- cudgy 4y ago
  Adoption of newer OS versions on iOS occurs much quicker than Android. There is less benefit from supporting more than 2 or 3 ios versions back. Also, it is arguable whether an app customer that would rather have a flip phone is valuable enough to worry about retaining.
  - lawgimenez 4y ago
    I'm in Southeast Asia, significant number of our users are still using very old Android phones from 5 years ago.
    - cudgy 4y ago
      I assume that means there are not many iOS users in your area. Luckily Android is easier to provide backward compatibility with Androidx, and there are more users with older devices (maybe 2-3 yrs old) even in the North American market make it more worth the effort.
      - lawgimenez 4y ago
        Yes Androidx library is a godsend. Definitely more Android users than iOS.
belimawr 4y ago
I get the author's sentiment. But speaking as an Android developer, we are forced to use newer APIs due to the following: 1. Deprecation - Google is notorious for deprecating APIs (it's a meme among Android devs) and we as developers are forced to move to using newer APIs 2. Google Play policies - From Google: "New apps must target Android 12 (API level 31) or higher; except for Wear OS apps, which must target Android 11 (API level 30) or higher." 3. Some APIs such as Jetpack Compose require a certain minimum SDK version (API 21). Therefore, if you want to use new APIs, you are forced to stop supporting old devices. We wish we could continue supporting old devices but it's mostly out of app developers' hands.
- dmayle 4y ago
  I just wanted to correct a little bit of misunderstanding here about how target SDK works (and min SDK). Having a target SDK e.g. at Android 12 doesn't prevent you from supporting versions of Android before 12, it prevents you from fully supporting Android devices newer* than Android 12. The target SDK defines what is the minimum feature set that you have access to (and sometimes what you're required to implement). If you target API level 31, you can add all of the latest features (e.g. improvements around network usage to save energy that wasn't present in older SDK versions). You, as a developer, decide on your "min SDK", which is the lowest level of Android that you're willing to accept. That is determined by how much you're willing to work around missing or buggy features in old SDK versions, something with is really helped out by using AndroidX (née Support Library), which is a shim you install that provides compatible implementations of newer features when your APK is installed on older phones (similar to polyfill on web). * During the beta of a new target SDK, old phones won't run an app targeting it, this is to prevent people from building and shipping apps against a beta SDK.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Perhaps I am alone here but I yearn for the fingerprint reader on the iPhone. I can't get used to the new swipeUI
Krisjohn 4y ago
Between "iOS" and "System Data" my original 16GB SE doesn't have enough space to do an OS update even if I uninstall every last app on it. My 3rd gen Apple Watch is also full of "other" and will need to be factory reset and re-paired again to keep going. Apple know they're ruining old devices by not cleaning up temp files, they just don't care.
cramjabsyn 4y ago
“Phone companies can’t support their hardware forever” Ok, fine, it should be mandatory then that EOL hardware be unlocked and able to run FOSS operating systems. iPhone 7, for instance, has plenty of life left in the hardware, yet are being “recycled” due to ended IOS support.
- dijit 4y ago
  The issue isn't really that the phone stops working, it's that the apps do. My primary reason for not jailbreaking or rooting my phone is that my banking apps detect it and fail to run. One of those banking apps (Called BankID) is basically mandatory for living in the Sweden (Similarly in Norway & Denmark). It's basically an identity verification system that keeps some kind of signed private key in your phone, meaning you can identify yourself for basically everything. Without that App, the other apps that control my life (my Digital mailbox, my electric company, my phone company, my bank, even paying for things online) do not work.
  - courgette 4y ago
    that's insanely shitty. I saw the same thing in France with the Postal service. I thought "oh good, good old post-office is providing identity, good for them". But yeah, pretty sure it wont be open as well.
    - themoonisachees 4y ago
      "L'identitee numerique la poste" can work under latest magisk. Delete all app data, enable exclusion list and add the app to the exclusion list. You need the app for good old CPF.
      - courgette 4y ago
        I lives outside of the country since a while and they have been hounding me down to onboard. Hm
- scarface74 4y ago
lapcat 4y ago
I was forced to replace my iPhone 7 because it doesn't support iOS 16. I ended getting a new iPhone SE (3rd generation), which is practically identical in form to the iPhone 7 and so much cheaper than other iPhone models. Not sure I gained much as far as hardware is concerned, but at least I minimized the upgrade fee. It seems like a big waste, because my old iPhone still works perfectly fine.
courgette 4y ago
I have the same exact phone and it's my "daily driver". Work provide me with a newer Iphone, so I know what I miss. ( Camera is insanely better on a newer iphone, once or twice a year I will go get my work phone if it's nearby to take a better picture ) For me it's the battery life, I don't install app anymore really, unless absolutely forced. ( City specific parking apps..) I changed the battery twice, the first time it did wonder, the second : meh. I started carrying a battery pack just in case. It would need 2 charges a day easily. The front facing camera became capricious, too. I can't take selfie anymore. Haha. I do not experience the issue that the autor has with safari, but I did notice the context switching that can loose state. I became weary of doing it without copying whatever I'm typing. Also, the 32go drive is constantly full. Not great. Otherwise: Great. I was actually thinking that this situation starts to be a bit annoying. But I'm probably not getting a new smartphone. Probably going back to flip-phone. Or a fancy dumb-phone. And keeping my work phone when I'm in a place I don't know, so I can conjure the internet anywhere. But that would be an exceptional situation. ( I use maps and car-gps a lots for navigation) Or : having a portable 5G router handy and a laptop. ( not much worse than the battery pack I carry now )
ufmace 4y ago
Funny thing about this, by the time my phone gets to 2-3 years old, I tend to want to replace it anyways. Not so much because I'm craving the new thing, but because the battery now lasts for like 2 hours and is impractical to replace, the case and display have accumulated some small cracks and defects, or I accidentally destroyed or seriously damaged it.
wackget 4y ago
Software bloat really is an epidemic. As a web developer of 20+ years it's a source of constant frustration and sadness for me. Seriously, your app does not need to be an app; it should be a website. And seriously, your six-page website with slideshow and photo gallery does not need a React-Angular-Vue hybrid frontend, Firebase logging, analytics, local storage, or any of the other 75 JavaScript files served from eight different external domains. I have an iPad Air 2 lying around. It's ridiculous how slow websites are on that, what is [/was] a decent piece of hardware from 2015. Even attempting to load the YouTube home page - never mind playing a video - is basically impossible. There's just no reason for it. It's fucking ridiculous.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Generally agree with your points, but prefer apps over web sites. My IDE, text editor, paint programs, etc. better not require the internet to function. I'm preferring offline more and more.
  - stolenmerch 4y ago
    Most people generally don't use their phone or mobile device for these tasks, so an installable application makes sense. I think what OP is talking about is this phenomenon of needing an installed app taking up storage space just for fairly simple tasks the web can handle just fine. Most of the time the installed apps require internet to properly function anyway.
    - JKCalhoun 4y ago
      Yes, you're correct about tasks that need the internet. And yet, while I hate Instagram asking me to use their app when their web site is more than adequate, I am beginning to wonder if there was an offline utility to Instagram. Like, perhaps I could prepare and enqueue a post or two offline and when there is connectivity — up it goes. That would be the only reason I would prefer their app over their site. But I think a lot of apps just sort of sayonara if there is no internet. Obviously browsers do....
deafpolygon 4y ago
The only real way to address this is for Apple to open up the platform and allow us to install what we want.
olliej 4y ago
I really feel the complaint about the ever increasing physical size of phones. On the one hand I appreciate more battery life, but I have big hands and holding the “small” models is annoying compared to the old form factor :-/
- mrbigbob 4y ago
  i cant understand that. im probably going to be getting a new phone in about a year (still on my S9) and i like some of the features of the galaxy ultra or the iphone pro max but i do not need a phablet sized phone. to be honest if they really want to increase the size of the battery a bit they could make the phones just a little thicker. i hate the whole camera notch sticking out thing so how about we just make the phones a little thicker and remove the camera notch entirely
  - olliej 4y ago
    "I cant understand that" - typo here? It sounds like you're agreeing with me completely. We both know we'll eventually need a new phone, and that new phone will be bigger because there is no option to not get an ever more phablet-like device. And yeah, saving a half mm of "thickness" over most of the phone is just dumb. I would absolutely take more battery life and a phone that doesn't rock without a case :-/
plaguepilled 4y ago
Radical approach: don't consume content on your phone. Not going to work for many, but it is viable to a growing contingent.
pjmlp 4y ago
This for me is making up justifications after the fact. I only buy new phone after they actually die (get stolen, lost,..), and see no reason to ever change that, even with a few more ms, or not being able use the very latest app of whatever.
voytec 4y ago
> You’re making me buy a new phone. No not you, you! I mean you people who decided how apps are built and distributed. This wasn't a huge issue back when iOS was shipped with useful built-in apps (OS X as well). Over the few last years I find myself switching from some built-ins to AppStore equivalents, or not switching (due to privacy issues etc) and using decreasingly useful Apple built-ins. I don't need nor want rich text in Notes, Reminders nor Mail but I am forced to have a thick bar taking screen size to show 4-5 rich text icons. I am hiding these "screen decreasers" every time I open up Notes. Then this huge "+" icon persists. Mail is less friendly and doesn't allow me to hide this crap. For some time, I was forced to see some silly emojis whenever I wanted to type text. The "Emoji Keyboard" could be removed in keyboard settings, though. Oh, and wish I could easily type letters on iPhone keyboard - it used to type what I wanted but now the device plays some ridiculous guessing game and types other letters than pressed, when it "thinks" it knows what word I want to type in. I no longer seem to be able to take natural photos with my iPhone. I can turn HDR off but remaining ML auto-correction just destroys most pictures. Why do I see some other person resembling myself, after taking a selfie? There is a way to get into raw pictures with some apps but I am longing the times when I didn't have the need for 3rd party apps to make use of an Apple-provided app. At the same time, with increased bloat, comes less and less configurability. "My" iPhone has to behave like Tim wants it to.
barbs 4y ago
I'm in the same boat - bought the iPhone SE 2016 4 years ago for the form factor, haven't seen anything similar since. I haven't had many compatibility issues though I'm sure that's likely to change. There was a page generating interest for a small Android phone, looks like the project is underway. https://smallandroidphone.com/ https://smallandroidphone.com/
Havoc 4y ago
I just completed a 5 year phone leap. (7+ to 14+). And even that was more of a case of want rather than need. Mostly the camera which motivated it. So I’d say they’re doing pretty good on this topic. Keeping a smartphone much longer than 5 is questionable on a hardware level given advances
jbd0 4y ago
I grappled with this for a long time. It really went against my frugal ethos to spend so much on consuming disposable, locked down hardware. I'm in a position now where I am able to use my desktop for computing and the cheapest TCL A3 that money can buy as a phone. It has Google Maps, my bank app on it for mobile deposits, a web browser, and a few other small apps from F-Droid. Works just fine.
yoz-y 4y ago
There are many things in play here. 1. Platforms only ever allow one version of an app to exist, and its requirements can only reasonably go up. (e.g.: want to use the new Swift feature? you need to target iOSN+1) 2. Most apps now have cloud components. Maintaining old version with evolving backend APIs is a huge pain. One could of course version their API and keep the old version working for a long time. 3. User expectations have changed, if you haven't updated your perfectly working app in 6 months, they consider it dead and move (I don't get this, but it does happen). 4. Tons of apps are made by small teams or even single people. Maintaining a version that is compatible with all devices is a soul-crushing job. This is also why apps from gigantic corporations usually have better old device support. If 1% of your users is 100k+ people, it's way more lucrative to keep them happy.
rchaud 4y ago
I have a 2016 Galaxy S7 I won't part with, because it is the last flagship Samsung phone with a 16:9 screen, at a reasonable 5-inch diagonal width. Every phone since then (from every OEM) has been a narrow 18:9/21:9 monstrosity where your navigating thumb cannot reach the top of the screen. There was no reason to switch away from 16:9, except for one: to make endless scrolling the default use case.

121 points by zdw 4y ago

>You decided that if less than 1% of your users use a certain old device, it’s no longer relevant. Which is odd, because to many businesses, 1% of users can make the difference between profit or loss. That is not the developer that is the business. They are trying to make more money. If 1% of their users don't matter or are going to upgrade why wouldn't you use the latest tech. >You decided that you wanted to use some framework/feature/API and save developer time. Which is odd. Because consider how much time you spend trying to not harm the environment in your free time: shopping for sustainable products, bringing your reusable cup, recycling. And then think of the minutes you save with new programming stuff compared to the number of iPhones discarded because of that. I can assure you moving with the times saves more than minutes. Legacy code bases stop working with the world around them and require crazy hacks to keep them running.

Levitz 4y ago
Yet, we really aren't doing that much nowadays. Current phones are absolute powerhouses, capable of rendering 3d graphics in real time while doing God knows what more. And what does the vast majority of the public do? Mesagging, vídeos, social network. That's it. That's really it. Why in Gods name do we require modern phones for this? If someone could do that almost a decade ago, why should requirements go UP? It's maddening, how in the world are we doing stuff worse rather than better with time? To make developers life easier? Is the entirety of the market subsidizing app creation? It's madness
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  And take sweet pictures. That alone is worth upgrades for a lot of people. Though we are pretty fast approaching a ceiling on what is actually visible to the human eye in terms of improvements. I bet we will start to see diminishing returns in camera tech in the next few years.
  - layer8 4y ago
    Recent iPhones have arguably become worse with all the AI processing they are applying to photos.
  - asdff 4y ago
    We already do see diminishing returns. The lenses on a phone like the iphone 14 pro show pretty bad lens flair in certain lighting situations. I've compared it side by side between a friends 14 pro and my SE2 and I just don't get these effects with my much simpler lens. I suppose the solution is some sort of a hood or more elements for that big lens on the 14 (the way a larger camera would solve these issues), but its already large enough where the phone no longer sits flat on a table even with a case. Some threads showing the double imaged effect which is especially pronounced with neon signs: https://old.reddit.com/r/iPhoneography/comments/yhsy8s/iphone_14_pro_edited_with_vsco/ https://old.reddit.com/r/iPhoneography/comments/yhsy8s/iphon... https://old.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/zu7jmj/iphone_14_pro_photos_with_neon_lights/ https://old.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/zu7jmj/iphone_14... Apparently this has been going on since at least the iphone 12 and 13: https://old.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/q06u1y/insane_lens_flares_as_of_a_week_ago_any_fix/ https://old.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/q06u1y/insane_lens_...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lucasmullens 4y ago

> You decided that you wanted to use some framework/feature/API and save developer time. Which is odd. Because consider how much time you spend trying to not harm the environment in your free time: shopping for sustainable products, bringing your reusable cup, recycling. And then think of the minutes you save with new programming stuff compared to the number of iPhones discarded because of that. "Minutes"? It doesn't take minutes of time to support old phones, it can take hours, sometimes days or weeks. And I barely spend minutes recycling; I just pick the right bin.

vanilla_nut 4y ago

Funny to see an article whose title I agree with and realize I'm in the exact same situation. Same phone, actually -- the last iPhone with a small size, headphone jack, touchID, and SIM card slot all in one device. I've just eliminated most apps from my phone, but the web browser is the ultimate killer for this phone. Stuck on iOS 15's version of webkit, no real ad blockers, no real tweaks (as admirable a job as Hyperweb does) I'm being forced to upgrade thanks to the end of iOS updates. I've decided to try another small phone: the Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact, which is roughly the size of the iPhone Mini with a headphone jack, fingerprint sensor, usb-c, and (most excitingly) a notification LED. Of course software support for this 2017 phone is also long gone, but I'm hoping LineageOS + Android's open software environment (giving me Firefox support for years) will keep things going for a while, at least. I really wish there was a way to keep software support on smartphones for longer. Now that society basically requires every participant to own a smartphone with a data plan, it's as important as allowing walkability and public transit in cities so folks can live without cars, IMO.

captn3m0 4y ago
Was in exact same situation, and made the same spreadsheet even, except my prices were higher in India. I force upgraded to iPhone 13 a few months after it came out, once the leaks confirmed that that 14 wouldn’t have TouchID.
JohnFen 4y ago
> Now that society basically requires every participant to own a smartphone with a data plan I feel so very fortunate that this isn't true in my area.
whatever1 4y ago
At the very minimum companies should be obliged to unlock the eol devices and provide the firmware of their components. Many of the components could have a second life. The main camera for example of the the 2016 iPhone is still better that most webcams. One could use these salvaged sensors to build new hardware.
- 4y ago

JohnFen 4y ago

Yes, this is one of the big reasons why I've decided not to replace my smartphone when it dies. Phones are getting more expensive, omitting more of the features I value, getting more intrusive, and the software more intolerable, but nothing is getting better in terms of real benefit to me. Just the opposite. I'm getting off this treadmill. Dumb phone, here I come!

dmm 4y ago
Which dumb phones have you considered using? I'm thinking of using an android phone without apps or a browser so I could still use it for photos, messaging(signal and matrix), and music.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I'm going dumber than that. I have a couple of $20 dumbphones sitting around that I've used as burners. I couldn't find any that didn't have apps at all, but these have minimal functionality in that department. I can't install any that didn't come with the phone, and those that are there are very basic. If I can find one that lets me tether, that would be ideal, but not a showstopper requirement. My intention is to separate computing from the phone, so I'll also carry a real pocket computer for my other needs. The key is that it will be a real computer that I have complete control over, and that doesn't have cell connectivity.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    This: "My intention is to separate computing from the phone, so I'll also carry a real pocket computer for my other needs." I'm increasingly of the opinion that wedding comms, data storage, and compute within a single envelope, and specifically one controlled by third parties (known and otherwise) with intents adversarial to yourself ... was a cardinal error. A largely-featureless dumbphone (Light Phone ... seems about right), either capable itself of tethering or with an additional data-only tether (making burnering all the more viable), seems best. An Actual Compute Device of some description --- laptop, small-form-factor computer, very possibly a tablet or e-ink device (though most of these are effectively identical with smartphones, and share all their disadvantages, including short useful life) --- for Actual Compute Tasks, would round that out. I'm also increasingly of the view that using phones for voice comms is also a nonstarter given spam and privacy violations. Good alternatives are not immediately obvious, though F/OSS voice chat / meeting tools (e.g., Jitsi) seem promising.

everyone 4y ago

I rarely use a smartphone, but I do use a Samsung Galaxy S7 as my phone.. for, phone calls and txts, as an mp3 player, as a GPS when driving and hiking, to read books on when in a waiting room or something. That's about it. I smashed up my last one and had to buy a new phone. My requirements were... * Not too big (S7 is bigger than I want already) * audio jack * micro sd card slot * Some waterproofness * nice screen (eg. oled) that I can see in direct sunlight I ended up buying another new-old S7 as I couldn't find any new-new smartphones that fit my requirements.

phuzybuny 4y ago

This article strikes close to home as I'm still using my 16GB iPhone 6. A lot of apps have stopped supporting iOS 12, forcing me to to reluctantly replacing them with webpage shortcuts where possible (even then it is not a particulary enjoyable experience). Seeing as how most apps follow a minimalist design language, it bothers me that I need an increasingly powerful phone for apps that are simpler than before (at least visually).

xwolfi 4y ago
Dude I have a Huawei (amazing otherwise) and I cant even install most american apps, while they'd work perfectly... But I have to admit the sheer force of the Google detox made me stop a lot of their products, use throwaway gmail accounts everywhere, no cross device sync and all that stuff and I feel... free and light. Ironic isn't it ?
dylan604 4y ago
was there a large difference between the iPhone 6 and the 6s Plus? i have a 6s Plus as my only iPhone, and it is running 15.7.2 (with an update scheduled for tonight i just saw). why is your 6 stuck on iOS 12?
- acdha 4y ago
  The 6S had twice as much RAM (2GB vs 1GB) and the processor was not only a good bit faster but throttled less, too. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/09/a-3d-touch-above-the-iphone-6s-and-6s-plus-reviewed/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/09/a-3d-touch-above-the...
- sys_64738 4y ago
  Some apps still work on my 6S but it's getting to the point where we've long since been cast adrift.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

shepherdjerred 4y ago

It shouldn't be surprising that quality of life decreases as hardware ages. Hardware gets faster, software gets slower, speed for the users stays about the same. If you're not making your hardware faster (upgrading your phone every few years), then the software is getting slower resulting in a worse experience. This isn't at all limited to phones. It applies to any hardware/software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law

MBCook 4y ago

Apple provided 5 years of full years of updates. 2016 through 2021. I understand the writer’s issue. It seems clear some amount of support should be mandated. After all no one should be able to drop support after 1 year. But what is the correct length to mandate? Until the radio standard is no longer usable (so when 4G gets turned off)? Just a specific number (5, 7, 10, whatever)? I can’t think of a single consumer device that has mandated support for any length of time past the warranty, so I don’t think there is precedent. In fact the only mandatory support I can even think of is parts for cars. So how do you choose the timeframe?

BlueTemplar 4y ago
I think you misunderstood him, it's not Apple that he's blaming.
- MBCook 4y ago
  Oh you’re right. I hadn’t caught that on my first read through somehow. Thanks.

porphyra 4y ago

> Switching back and forth between apps resets their state. That’s particularly annoying trying to decide if I should change trains at the next station and switch between the train ticket app and Google Maps. This really drives me nuts. It seems this is due to iPhones having very little ram (even the newest 14 Pro Max has 6 GB whereas my 11 Pro Max has 4 GB). But Android phones regularly have double the ram. iPhones could get away with less ram since the CPU is very fast and the OS and apps seem to be faster too, but considering that ram is very cheap, I really wish they would just add more ram. Then again this is also true of the Macbooks which starts at 8 GB, the same as my 2018 Thinkpad.

AgentOrange1234 4y ago
I think dram chips use a lot of power? Could be the lower ram helps with battery life?
MAGZine 4y ago
I was thinking about switching TO iPhone to avoid this phenomena. Apparently, I might as well just stick on Android.
- throitallaway 4y ago
  What apps/phone do you experience this with? I really only see this happening with finance-related apps on Pixel devices.
  - fluidcruft 4y ago
    That's also been my experience on Pixels.
s1mon 4y ago
This problem was one of the things that drove me to get a new iPad Pro recently. I assume it is a RAM issue. And the fact that Apple doesn't sell first party cases for devices as old as my last iPad Pro, and my case was falling apart. Oh, and my first gen Apple Pencil wasn't charging and the charging UX for it sucks.

luxuryballs 4y ago

Not a fan of regulation as a solution for most things but it would be kinda nifty if device makers were required to provide an optional jailbreak update for devices once they stop supporting them.

prosaic-hacker 4y ago

I decided a long time ago to buy the cheapest unlocked android phone I could get at the time. 6 phones for 2 people over 10 years. I paid 140 to 200 (100-150 US$) pretax for each. This has been mostly Motorola E or G phones. This has kept us current with apps resource needs. The total cost of 6 phone is less than the current cost of an iPhone 14. I have kept all of them and reuse them as night table Alarm clocks or second screens to settle question like "How old is that actor" while watching something.

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
You should wire them together and make a little K8s cluster to power some services in your homelab
- jacooper 4y ago
  Running containers on android is unfortunately isn't that easy. https://gist.github.com/FreddieOliveira/efe850df7ff3951cb62d74bd770dce27 https://gist.github.com/FreddieOliveira/efe850df7ff3951cb62d...
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
    > Bear in mind that you'll have to root your phone, mess with and compile your phone's kernel and docker suite. So, be prepared to get your hands dirty. You weren’t kidding

causality0 4y ago

I convinced my entire family to move from Verizon to AT&T because their open device policy meant we could buy the phones we wanted online and save money. Two years later AT&T went to a whitelist model that meant half our phones would no longer be compatible with the network. I had to give up a phone I adored, my OnePlus 6. Probably the last phone OnePlus ever released that still reflected the desires of their customers, with a headphone jack, flat screen, alert slider, and rear-mounted fingerprint reader that was a godsend when everybody else was struggling to use face unlock without taking their masks off.

throitallaway 4y ago

FTA: "[my old phone is] like that proverbial old pair of jeans" Your jeans don't have 0 day exploits whereby someone halfway around the world can steal your banking credentials, private photos/emails, cryptocurrency, etc. Forced obsolescence exists, but I wouldn't put it at fault here. If you want to blame anyone, blame Apple for locking down their hardware. I still use my old Nexus 6 (released 2014) with an up to date version of LineageOS from time to time. That's impossible with iDevices without a lot of hax or workarounds. 5-6 years is a generous amount of time for a vendor to support a software/hardware stack on a consumer device. It's more time than I've gotten from Google officially.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
> Your jeans don't have 0 day exploits whereby someone halfway around the world can steal your banking credentials ...does anyone know if this is actually happening on a significant scale? There are said to be tons of unpatched Android devices in the wild, but when I hear about accounts getting hacked, it mostly seems to be from leaked website databases and/or reused credentials.
- asdff 4y ago
  If this wasn't happening to people during the jailbreak.me era where people were installing cydia right in the apple retail store on the demo units, then you can be sure its fud that's not rooted in any hard evidence.
gruez 4y ago
>Your jeans don't have 0 day exploits [...] >[...] I still use my old Nexus 6 (released 2014) with an up to date version of LineageOS from time to time. If you're paranoid about 0 days, you really shouldn't feel safe with an "an up to date version of LineageOS". Even though they might technically be receiving updates, the kernel and proprietary blobs certainly are not.
venachescu 4y ago
> Your jeans don't have 0 day exploits whereby someone halfway around the world can steal your banking credentials, private photos/emails, cryptocurrency, etc. I dunno a lot of my jeans end up with a hole right in the middle of the crotch and it actually kinda feels similar

metacritic12 4y ago

I have to really disagree with this. This isn't something like a microwave we're talking about where the tech hasn't changed in decades. This is literally something on the bleeding edge of chips and technology, where the ability to compute really does go up a ton every 5 years. Add on to that the fact that most people use it many hours a day, this equal something like a thousand hours a year. So even a top of the line phone that you refresh every 3 years is something you pay cents an hour to use -- quite low. If you're from a developing country or the low end of a developed country, I can see how not upgrading your phone every 3 years can be important. If you have moderate resources from a developed country, not being willing to upgrade your phone is frankly a utility mistake for most people. If phone makers have to support old devices, there is a lot of developer time, testing, etc that is needed. In the end, I think the flaw of the article is the same flaw as below: some people get upset that if a small streak damages something like 10 pixels on a 4K screen, it's cheaper to replace the entire thing than to fix it. Replacing the entire thing seems like "waste". Not so: repairing the screen is actually waste, because it requires lots of skilled human time. Replacing the screen is mostly cheap automatic assembly. Likewise, it "feels bad" to throw away a working phone, but actually the societal cost of supporting very very old phones would be a lot more than having an ecosystem where most people want to upgrade every couple of years -- in a arena that is actually changing fast.

Symbiote 4y ago
You are considering only the economy, but I think people keeping older phones are also considering the environment (carbon dioxide, other pollution, mining etc). That's the main reason I'm using a 5 year old phone.
- camillomiller 4y ago
  Apple has an amazing recycling program (I know because I’ve seen Daisy in action). If you care about all that, bringing your iPhone to Apple at the end of its lifetime is the best decision you can make.
  - KoosL 4y ago

freitzkriesler2 4y ago

Apple has been iTempting me but I've resisted simply because on the pixels I can run grapheneOS well beyond what google commits to in terms of updates. I also like kiwi browser and it's support for chrome extensions. Regardless, I miss the days when we had more mobile OS diversity. IOS, android, windows phone, BBos, and palms WebOS.

onewheeltom 4y ago
I miss Windows Phone. IMHO one of the few hardware items MS did right.
ZekeSulastin 4y ago
I thought GrapheneOS specifically drops support for devices once Google does - they even mention on their FAQ* that the Pixel 4/XL is only still getting releases as a stopgap for users until they can go buy a newer device. * https://grapheneos.org/faq https://grapheneos.org/faq
- freitzkriesler2 4y ago
  Well I'll be damned. Forgot about that one. Thanks for letting me know!
  - jacooper 4y ago
    Though they will still be realesing new Android versions, even if the device is on extended security support. that matters with the Pixel 6 and 7 series that have such a long security support cycle, but a rather short feature support cycle.

magnuspaaske 4y ago

Apple is providing 6 years of support for old phones. As the author notes that's more than in the past, where they offered 4 years of support. My experience has been that the first generations had a lot of difference year to year and so when I moved from the 3GS to the 5 it was a massive difference and it would probably have been hard for Apple to support phones for as long as they do today with those handsets. That doesn't mean it's easy to support those old models and if Apple did 8 years of support instead of 6 we would still get these articles (but with ... iPhone 6s?). At the end of the day things have a design life and Apple does offer pretty good support – and if we do indeed see newer handsets receiving updates for longer the authors argument ends up kind of being negated. If people were willing to pay for software updates after a certain number of years it might be viable but ultimately the author kinds of expect everyone else to support his phone without offering much in how he'll pay for said support with something that can tangibly be used to pay rent. And so it's probably easier the author just buys a new phone and remembers to turn the old one in for recycling.

smoldesu 4y ago
It sounds like the author wants Apple to let you unlock those device's bootloaders so that they can have an elegant depreciation/recycling lifecycle instead of becoming e-waste that can only be salvaged by a proprietary Apple-designed robot. That would be good enough for me too, I think.
- magnuspaaske 4y ago
  Seeing as Apple sometimes release patch updates to previous iOS versions (as they've done with iOS 15 just this year) suggests they take security somewhat seriously. Jailbreaking them would have some interesting security implications, especially as it relates to distributing apps via the App Store. The easiest way out of this remains to just buy a new phone and recycle the old one.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    They certainly don't have to stop updating people on OFW, I just want the option to unlock the bootloader for my iPhone. Bonus points if I can do it without an iCloud account, but I guess beggars can't be choosers. It's less about jailbreaking and more about ensuring your hardware stays usable even if Apple doesn't think it should be.

throwanem 4y ago

I felt the same way, right up until I started working on mobile apps myself. One of the first things I figured out after making that jump was that the constraints involved in making an app run smoothly and be just as comfortable to use on something like a 1st gen SE - which is what I used myself, from 2016 through most of 2021 - can't be supported alongside the capabilities and display real estate provided by current models, without an indefinite expenditure of costly developer effort that just isn't economical in supporting a use case that's relevant to something like sixty users out of every thousand. We've been through this before, with the PC revolution. Things settled down on that front, GPUs excepted, right around the time smartphones became a thing. The complaints are more or less exactly the same, and so are the reasons they receive little of consequence by way of response. None of which is to say you should upgrade your phone if you don't really want to, but - speaking as one who has done so himself, prior to having discovered firsthand why things are the way they are - yelling at the entire industry to change how it functions at a fundamental level has much more of King Canute about it than of any really worthwhile expenditure of effort.

bb88 4y ago
> without an indefinite expenditure of costly developer effort that just isn't economical in supporting a use case... How much would it cost? $1B US? Okay. Apple reported a net income of $99.9 Billion dollars from $350B of revenue. That seems like a good use of $1B to keep electronics waste down and improve resale value. That, number btw is 1000 developers at a cost of $1M apiece per year. Honestly I don't think it would cost a $1B. I think the true cost is in loss of revenue from forced upgrades -- which might be $100B of Apple's revenue. My circa 2016 Dell XPS 15 still runs pretty good with Windows 10. Not sure why MS forces me to upgrade my hardware to go to Windows 11.
- golergka 4y ago
  > How much would it cost? $1B US? Okay. For a game developer that barely raised $1m for the first title?
  - 4y ago

v01dv01d 4y ago

The sad part of this article is that the author seems to be bound with iOS, not even considering Android. They might be trapped in the Apple ecosystem :( That said, I know this is the same thing with Google Suite...

kelnos 4y ago
I mean, it's worse on Android. I have a Pixel 4, and it stopped even receiving security updates this past October, at the ripe old age of three years old. Fortunately I can still run all the apps I want to run, everything works, and performance is good, but I don't imagine that will still be the case if I try to keep using it another three years. And that's ignoring the fact that no new security issues will get patched, and I won't get any new OS-level features. I've accepted this, and will likely reluctantly buy a Pixel 7a when it's released, even if that phone is even larger and more unwieldy than my Pixel 4, and has the ridiculously-ugly camera bar on the back.

lawgimenez 4y ago

> But most of the time, web developers can apply new features as enhancements. As an iOS developer, I wish we could do the same in web development and save the author the time in posting this blog. But in reality, this is just hard to do. iOS is very poor in backwards compatibility compared to Android. In iOS we only support 3 major version down, compared to Android we still support up to Lollipop up until last year.

cudgy 4y ago
Adoption of newer OS versions on iOS occurs much quicker than Android. There is less benefit from supporting more than 2 or 3 ios versions back. Also, it is arguable whether an app customer that would rather have a flip phone is valuable enough to worry about retaining.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  I'm in Southeast Asia, significant number of our users are still using very old Android phones from 5 years ago.
  - cudgy 4y ago
    I assume that means there are not many iOS users in your area. Luckily Android is easier to provide backward compatibility with Androidx, and there are more users with older devices (maybe 2-3 yrs old) even in the North American market make it more worth the effort.
    - lawgimenez 4y ago
      Yes Androidx library is a godsend. Definitely more Android users than iOS.

belimawr 4y ago

I get the author's sentiment. But speaking as an Android developer, we are forced to use newer APIs due to the following: 1. Deprecation - Google is notorious for deprecating APIs (it's a meme among Android devs) and we as developers are forced to move to using newer APIs 2. Google Play policies - From Google: "New apps must target Android 12 (API level 31) or higher; except for Wear OS apps, which must target Android 11 (API level 30) or higher." 3. Some APIs such as Jetpack Compose require a certain minimum SDK version (API 21). Therefore, if you want to use new APIs, you are forced to stop supporting old devices. We wish we could continue supporting old devices but it's mostly out of app developers' hands.

dmayle 4y ago
I just wanted to correct a little bit of misunderstanding here about how target SDK works (and min SDK). Having a target SDK e.g. at Android 12 doesn't prevent you from supporting versions of Android before 12, it prevents you from fully supporting Android devices newer* than Android 12. The target SDK defines what is the minimum feature set that you have access to (and sometimes what you're required to implement). If you target API level 31, you can add all of the latest features (e.g. improvements around network usage to save energy that wasn't present in older SDK versions). You, as a developer, decide on your "min SDK", which is the lowest level of Android that you're willing to accept. That is determined by how much you're willing to work around missing or buggy features in old SDK versions, something with is really helped out by using AndroidX (née Support Library), which is a shim you install that provides compatible implementations of newer features when your APK is installed on older phones (similar to polyfill on web). * During the beta of a new target SDK, old phones won't run an app targeting it, this is to prevent people from building and shipping apps against a beta SDK.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Perhaps I am alone here but I yearn for the fingerprint reader on the iPhone. I can't get used to the new swipeUI

Krisjohn 4y ago

Between "iOS" and "System Data" my original 16GB SE doesn't have enough space to do an OS update even if I uninstall every last app on it. My 3rd gen Apple Watch is also full of "other" and will need to be factory reset and re-paired again to keep going. Apple know they're ruining old devices by not cleaning up temp files, they just don't care.

cramjabsyn 4y ago

“Phone companies can’t support their hardware forever” Ok, fine, it should be mandatory then that EOL hardware be unlocked and able to run FOSS operating systems. iPhone 7, for instance, has plenty of life left in the hardware, yet are being “recycled” due to ended IOS support.

dijit 4y ago
The issue isn't really that the phone stops working, it's that the apps do. My primary reason for not jailbreaking or rooting my phone is that my banking apps detect it and fail to run. One of those banking apps (Called BankID) is basically mandatory for living in the Sweden (Similarly in Norway & Denmark). It's basically an identity verification system that keeps some kind of signed private key in your phone, meaning you can identify yourself for basically everything. Without that App, the other apps that control my life (my Digital mailbox, my electric company, my phone company, my bank, even paying for things online) do not work.
- courgette 4y ago
  that's insanely shitty. I saw the same thing in France with the Postal service. I thought "oh good, good old post-office is providing identity, good for them". But yeah, pretty sure it wont be open as well.
  - themoonisachees 4y ago
    "L'identitee numerique la poste" can work under latest magisk. Delete all app data, enable exclusion list and add the app to the exclusion list. You need the app for good old CPF.
    - courgette 4y ago
      I lives outside of the country since a while and they have been hounding me down to onboard. Hm
scarface74 4y ago

lapcat 4y ago

I was forced to replace my iPhone 7 because it doesn't support iOS 16. I ended getting a new iPhone SE (3rd generation), which is practically identical in form to the iPhone 7 and so much cheaper than other iPhone models. Not sure I gained much as far as hardware is concerned, but at least I minimized the upgrade fee. It seems like a big waste, because my old iPhone still works perfectly fine.

courgette 4y ago

I have the same exact phone and it's my "daily driver". Work provide me with a newer Iphone, so I know what I miss. ( Camera is insanely better on a newer iphone, once or twice a year I will go get my work phone if it's nearby to take a better picture ) For me it's the battery life, I don't install app anymore really, unless absolutely forced. ( City specific parking apps..) I changed the battery twice, the first time it did wonder, the second : meh. I started carrying a battery pack just in case. It would need 2 charges a day easily. The front facing camera became capricious, too. I can't take selfie anymore. Haha. I do not experience the issue that the autor has with safari, but I did notice the context switching that can loose state. I became weary of doing it without copying whatever I'm typing. Also, the 32go drive is constantly full. Not great. Otherwise: Great. I was actually thinking that this situation starts to be a bit annoying. But I'm probably not getting a new smartphone. Probably going back to flip-phone. Or a fancy dumb-phone. And keeping my work phone when I'm in a place I don't know, so I can conjure the internet anywhere. But that would be an exceptional situation. ( I use maps and car-gps a lots for navigation) Or : having a portable 5G router handy and a laptop. ( not much worse than the battery pack I carry now )

ufmace 4y ago

Funny thing about this, by the time my phone gets to 2-3 years old, I tend to want to replace it anyways. Not so much because I'm craving the new thing, but because the battery now lasts for like 2 hours and is impractical to replace, the case and display have accumulated some small cracks and defects, or I accidentally destroyed or seriously damaged it.

wackget 4y ago

Software bloat really is an epidemic. As a web developer of 20+ years it's a source of constant frustration and sadness for me. Seriously, your app does not need to be an app; it should be a website. And seriously, your six-page website with slideshow and photo gallery does not need a React-Angular-Vue hybrid frontend, Firebase logging, analytics, local storage, or any of the other 75 JavaScript files served from eight different external domains. I have an iPad Air 2 lying around. It's ridiculous how slow websites are on that, what is [/was] a decent piece of hardware from 2015. Even attempting to load the YouTube home page - never mind playing a video - is basically impossible. There's just no reason for it. It's fucking ridiculous.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Generally agree with your points, but prefer apps over web sites. My IDE, text editor, paint programs, etc. better not require the internet to function. I'm preferring offline more and more.
- stolenmerch 4y ago
  Most people generally don't use their phone or mobile device for these tasks, so an installable application makes sense. I think what OP is talking about is this phenomenon of needing an installed app taking up storage space just for fairly simple tasks the web can handle just fine. Most of the time the installed apps require internet to properly function anyway.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    Yes, you're correct about tasks that need the internet. And yet, while I hate Instagram asking me to use their app when their web site is more than adequate, I am beginning to wonder if there was an offline utility to Instagram. Like, perhaps I could prepare and enqueue a post or two offline and when there is connectivity — up it goes. That would be the only reason I would prefer their app over their site. But I think a lot of apps just sort of sayonara if there is no internet. Obviously browsers do....

deafpolygon 4y ago

The only real way to address this is for Apple to open up the platform and allow us to install what we want.

olliej 4y ago

I really feel the complaint about the ever increasing physical size of phones. On the one hand I appreciate more battery life, but I have big hands and holding the “small” models is annoying compared to the old form factor :-/

mrbigbob 4y ago
i cant understand that. im probably going to be getting a new phone in about a year (still on my S9) and i like some of the features of the galaxy ultra or the iphone pro max but i do not need a phablet sized phone. to be honest if they really want to increase the size of the battery a bit they could make the phones just a little thicker. i hate the whole camera notch sticking out thing so how about we just make the phones a little thicker and remove the camera notch entirely
- olliej 4y ago
  "I cant understand that" - typo here? It sounds like you're agreeing with me completely. We both know we'll eventually need a new phone, and that new phone will be bigger because there is no option to not get an ever more phablet-like device. And yeah, saving a half mm of "thickness" over most of the phone is just dumb. I would absolutely take more battery life and a phone that doesn't rock without a case :-/

plaguepilled 4y ago

Radical approach: don't consume content on your phone. Not going to work for many, but it is viable to a growing contingent.

pjmlp 4y ago

This for me is making up justifications after the fact. I only buy new phone after they actually die (get stolen, lost,..), and see no reason to ever change that, even with a few more ms, or not being able use the very latest app of whatever.

voytec 4y ago

> You’re making me buy a new phone. No not you, you! I mean you people who decided how apps are built and distributed. This wasn't a huge issue back when iOS was shipped with useful built-in apps (OS X as well). Over the few last years I find myself switching from some built-ins to AppStore equivalents, or not switching (due to privacy issues etc) and using decreasingly useful Apple built-ins. I don't need nor want rich text in Notes, Reminders nor Mail but I am forced to have a thick bar taking screen size to show 4-5 rich text icons. I am hiding these "screen decreasers" every time I open up Notes. Then this huge "+" icon persists. Mail is less friendly and doesn't allow me to hide this crap. For some time, I was forced to see some silly emojis whenever I wanted to type text. The "Emoji Keyboard" could be removed in keyboard settings, though. Oh, and wish I could easily type letters on iPhone keyboard - it used to type what I wanted but now the device plays some ridiculous guessing game and types other letters than pressed, when it "thinks" it knows what word I want to type in. I no longer seem to be able to take natural photos with my iPhone. I can turn HDR off but remaining ML auto-correction just destroys most pictures. Why do I see some other person resembling myself, after taking a selfie? There is a way to get into raw pictures with some apps but I am longing the times when I didn't have the need for 3rd party apps to make use of an Apple-provided app. At the same time, with increased bloat, comes less and less configurability. "My" iPhone has to behave like Tim wants it to.

barbs 4y ago

I'm in the same boat - bought the iPhone SE 2016 4 years ago for the form factor, haven't seen anything similar since. I haven't had many compatibility issues though I'm sure that's likely to change. There was a page generating interest for a small Android phone, looks like the project is underway. https://smallandroidphone.com/ https://smallandroidphone.com/

Havoc 4y ago

I just completed a 5 year phone leap. (7+ to 14+). And even that was more of a case of want rather than need. Mostly the camera which motivated it. So I’d say they’re doing pretty good on this topic. Keeping a smartphone much longer than 5 is questionable on a hardware level given advances

jbd0 4y ago

I grappled with this for a long time. It really went against my frugal ethos to spend so much on consuming disposable, locked down hardware. I'm in a position now where I am able to use my desktop for computing and the cheapest TCL A3 that money can buy as a phone. It has Google Maps, my bank app on it for mobile deposits, a web browser, and a few other small apps from F-Droid. Works just fine.

yoz-y 4y ago

There are many things in play here. 1. Platforms only ever allow one version of an app to exist, and its requirements can only reasonably go up. (e.g.: want to use the new Swift feature? you need to target iOSN+1) 2. Most apps now have cloud components. Maintaining old version with evolving backend APIs is a huge pain. One could of course version their API and keep the old version working for a long time. 3. User expectations have changed, if you haven't updated your perfectly working app in 6 months, they consider it dead and move (I don't get this, but it does happen). 4. Tons of apps are made by small teams or even single people. Maintaining a version that is compatible with all devices is a soul-crushing job. This is also why apps from gigantic corporations usually have better old device support. If 1% of your users is 100k+ people, it's way more lucrative to keep them happy.

rchaud 4y ago

I have a 2016 Galaxy S7 I won't part with, because it is the last flagship Samsung phone with a 16:9 screen, at a reasonable 5-inch diagonal width. Every phone since then (from every OEM) has been a narrow 18:9/21:9 monstrosity where your navigating thumb cannot reach the top of the screen. There was no reason to switch away from 16:9, except for one: to make endless scrolling the default use case.