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They're comparing them because software support shouldn't be a problem, regardless of market segment. You can run fully up to date linux on 15 year old computer

They're comparing them because software support shouldn't be a problem, regardless of market segment. You can run fully up to date linux on 15 year old computers, but in moving to phones, they destroyed what we took for granted. This is a manufactured problem, and it's no coincidence that it lines the pockets of smartphone makers.

lallysingh 4y ago
Support costs money, and it's part of the price. This moralizing is ridiculous.
- nhchris 4y ago
  That's my point - it doesn't cost money on PC. I don't need "support" from my motherboard vendor to install the latest linux.
  - lallysingh 4y ago
    Yeah. Part of that is radio support (open source phone projects have had this problem) and packaging - you still need a separate packaged image per phone model. Openmoko had the support problem (iirc) pretty early on. Until those ecosystem issues are fixed, dumping on a $150 phone for concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have to make us pretty ridiculous.
    - nhchris 4y ago
      > Until those ecosystem issues are fixed Again, that is my point. No company has any incentive, or has made any moves to, fix the ecosystem. They're happy how there are no standards or documented APIs, how everything is a closed binary blob that changes from one insignificant version to the next. They don't demand any kind of support or openness from hardware suppliers, they don't form any standards or demand adherence to them, despite their massive market power (if Samsung wanted open or standards-compliant hardware, they'd get it), because they directly financially benefit from the broken status quo they created. > concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have to make You can spend 2x that on an Android phone, and the software situation won't be any better. This is deliberate.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - lallysingh 4y ago
        Actually this phone is less then 1/4th the price
        nhchris 4y ago
        And a raspberry Pi costs even less, made by a firm with negligible resources compared to Nokia, yet has far better software support.
        lallysingh 4y ago
        That's neither a phone nor the topic of the article. What are you going on about?
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      > radio support What do you mean? Wireless cards on PCs are dirt cheap and have fantastic forwards-compatibility with future OS releases. There's no reason mobile network cards should be any different. > you still need a separate packaged image per phone model Only if you insist on packaging the image yourself. If you don't lock bootloaders and provide API/ABI documentation on how to interact with your hardware (through a binary blob if necessary), the community will often do the rest. The Android update dumpster fire is a self-inflicted problem.
      - lallysingh 4y ago
        Wifi is unlicensed spectrum. FCC and counterparts have restrictions on what cell transceivers can do and that has repurcussians when the limits may not be enforced with a misbehaving driver. Check out the old openmoko lists for details. We haven't had an IBM PC-level of openness from a phone hardware platform. Not one. Shitting on incremental improvements (like the serviceability of this Nokia) is counterproductive.
- acdha 4y ago
  That’s why this discussion matters: Apple devices have much longer lifespans because their economic model is correctly aligned — Apple doesn’t mind if you hold your iPhone for years because your use of things like the App Store, Apple Music, etc. also fund their OS development. On Android, that’s fractured: Qualcomm wants you buying a new phone every year or two because they only get paid for CPUs and Google doesn’t want to subsidize them with Play purchases. This is amplified because the architecture prevents people from doing their own support. A PC user can run Linux even if Microsoft gives up because the boot loader isn’t locked to prevent it, although driver support does show there are still problems here for the fraction of hardware without robust open source drivers or documented firmware. My ideal fix for this would be legislative, requiring mandatory minimum support lifetimes (say 7-10 years for at least prompt security updates) and some threshold for requiring boot loader unlocking. The only Android device I had was a Lenovo tablet which they never updated to the OS version released a month or so _before_ the hardware, and which became unsafe to use on the internet many years before the hardware failed (we used it as a white noise generator for a baby). That’s a ton of e-waste which could have been avoided if they weren’t allowed to just walk away from support because they didn’t sell enough units to care.
- crabbone 4y ago
  This is disingenuous. If price was the reason, we'd have phones with longer term support at a higher price point. The problem is that support is cheaper than making new stuff, but the companies would rather sell a more expensive good if they can prevent customers from buying the cheaper option. Support is cheaper for customers because companies providing support have to invest into something customers want, but doesn't create the same competitive advantage in the market where stakes are always rising. I.e. companies are incentivized to replace rather than support because they need to amortize the cost of R&D that goes into making phones with more memory / storage / cameras / hoo-hoo-ga-ga. If instead the effort is diverted into support, that effort doesn't generate future revenues as much as the effort spent on, well, future technologies. So, the customers don't get good service not because it's impossible or prohibitively expensive, but because of the lack of a free platform (equivalent to Linux on PC), and a lack of regulation that would make it necessary for manufacturers to provide longer term support to their products (which would've leveled the field, because everyone would have to provide similar length of service, and so the competitive edge would stay the same). As long as the manufacturers are in the rats race for the fraction of the future market, they'll cut every corner possible to get a bigger slice. The cost and the price today aren't as much of a concern for them as the survival in the next few years.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

lallysingh 4y ago

Support costs money, and it's part of the price. This moralizing is ridiculous.

nhchris 4y ago
That's my point - it doesn't cost money on PC. I don't need "support" from my motherboard vendor to install the latest linux.
- lallysingh 4y ago
  Yeah. Part of that is radio support (open source phone projects have had this problem) and packaging - you still need a separate packaged image per phone model. Openmoko had the support problem (iirc) pretty early on. Until those ecosystem issues are fixed, dumping on a $150 phone for concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have to make us pretty ridiculous.
  - nhchris 4y ago
    > Until those ecosystem issues are fixed Again, that is my point. No company has any incentive, or has made any moves to, fix the ecosystem. They're happy how there are no standards or documented APIs, how everything is a closed binary blob that changes from one insignificant version to the next. They don't demand any kind of support or openness from hardware suppliers, they don't form any standards or demand adherence to them, despite their massive market power (if Samsung wanted open or standards-compliant hardware, they'd get it), because they directly financially benefit from the broken status quo they created. > concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have to make You can spend 2x that on an Android phone, and the software situation won't be any better. This is deliberate.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - lallysingh 4y ago
      Actually this phone is less then 1/4th the price
      - nhchris 4y ago
        And a raspberry Pi costs even less, made by a firm with negligible resources compared to Nokia, yet has far better software support.
        lallysingh 4y ago
        That's neither a phone nor the topic of the article. What are you going on about?
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    > radio support What do you mean? Wireless cards on PCs are dirt cheap and have fantastic forwards-compatibility with future OS releases. There's no reason mobile network cards should be any different. > you still need a separate packaged image per phone model Only if you insist on packaging the image yourself. If you don't lock bootloaders and provide API/ABI documentation on how to interact with your hardware (through a binary blob if necessary), the community will often do the rest. The Android update dumpster fire is a self-inflicted problem.
    - lallysingh 4y ago
      Wifi is unlicensed spectrum. FCC and counterparts have restrictions on what cell transceivers can do and that has repurcussians when the limits may not be enforced with a misbehaving driver. Check out the old openmoko lists for details. We haven't had an IBM PC-level of openness from a phone hardware platform. Not one. Shitting on incremental improvements (like the serviceability of this Nokia) is counterproductive.
acdha 4y ago
That’s why this discussion matters: Apple devices have much longer lifespans because their economic model is correctly aligned — Apple doesn’t mind if you hold your iPhone for years because your use of things like the App Store, Apple Music, etc. also fund their OS development. On Android, that’s fractured: Qualcomm wants you buying a new phone every year or two because they only get paid for CPUs and Google doesn’t want to subsidize them with Play purchases. This is amplified because the architecture prevents people from doing their own support. A PC user can run Linux even if Microsoft gives up because the boot loader isn’t locked to prevent it, although driver support does show there are still problems here for the fraction of hardware without robust open source drivers or documented firmware. My ideal fix for this would be legislative, requiring mandatory minimum support lifetimes (say 7-10 years for at least prompt security updates) and some threshold for requiring boot loader unlocking. The only Android device I had was a Lenovo tablet which they never updated to the OS version released a month or so _before_ the hardware, and which became unsafe to use on the internet many years before the hardware failed (we used it as a white noise generator for a baby). That’s a ton of e-waste which could have been avoided if they weren’t allowed to just walk away from support because they didn’t sell enough units to care.
crabbone 4y ago
This is disingenuous. If price was the reason, we'd have phones with longer term support at a higher price point. The problem is that support is cheaper than making new stuff, but the companies would rather sell a more expensive good if they can prevent customers from buying the cheaper option. Support is cheaper for customers because companies providing support have to invest into something customers want, but doesn't create the same competitive advantage in the market where stakes are always rising. I.e. companies are incentivized to replace rather than support because they need to amortize the cost of R&D that goes into making phones with more memory / storage / cameras / hoo-hoo-ga-ga. If instead the effort is diverted into support, that effort doesn't generate future revenues as much as the effort spent on, well, future technologies. So, the customers don't get good service not because it's impossible or prohibitively expensive, but because of the lack of a free platform (equivalent to Linux on PC), and a lack of regulation that would make it necessary for manufacturers to provide longer term support to their products (which would've leveled the field, because everyone would have to provide similar length of service, and so the competitive edge would stay the same). As long as the manufacturers are in the rats race for the fraction of the future market, they'll cut every corner possible to get a bigger slice. The cost and the price today aren't as much of a concern for them as the survival in the next few years.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]