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You must have gone without security or other OS updates then, which I would consider a deal breaker with a phone. Google only recently extended the Pixel OS sup

You must have gone without security or other OS updates then, which I would consider a deal breaker with a phone. Google only recently extended the Pixel OS support timeline to be on par with Android.

JohnFen 3y ago
Yes, I don't care about getting updates. If they're important to you, that's fair. But the phones don't suddenly stop working without updates. They're still perfectly fine.
- jjav 3y ago
  > Yes, I don't care about getting updates. If they're important to you, that's fair. Hardware devices with embedded software couldn't get updates (or was a difficult job so didn't happen) until somewhat recently. It is unfortunate that the ability to do updates is used as a crutch to ship faulty software that then needs updates. A phone shouldn't ever need an update in its lifetime if it was properly built in the first place. I only recently stopped using my Motorola cellphone from 2005 (only because they decommissioned the towers). It never received any update in 17 years. It also never needed any. I would like to buy devices with that level of quality today.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Well, yeah, and I'd like a pony. The main issue is security updates. I'm guessing you weren't accessing things like a banking app with highly sensitive financial data on your 2005 Motorola.
    - jjav 3y ago
      > I'm guessing you weren't accessing things like a banking app with highly sensitive financial data For anyone who has done any serious threat modeling exercises would never ever do that from a 2023 phone (I'm fully aware many people do it regardless).w
      - lofaszvanitt 3y ago
        So what phone do you recommend for someone who is looking for a new phone?
        flagrant_taco 3y ago
        If security is a concern, getting a newer Pixel and installing GrapheneOS is your best bet. It's still not perfect and nothing beats just not having a cell phone, but that's a choice very few are okay with today. The trick with GrapheneOS, or any privacy setup, is that it requires attention to stay reasonably secure. The OS won't matter if you enable Google services and install apps that track and sell all your data.
        lofaszvanitt 3y ago
        What about the Exynos RCE bugs? Now that they are patched they are secure again or how is this supposed to work? What about the intentional backdoor unearthed in the pixel phone (the sim swap thingy)? Who was that for? My problem is, as a user, whose expertise is not 100% security, how can a layman decide which device to trust? Trust the neighbor, trust the expert who thinks is an expert, but doesn't see his own limitations, trust the newspapers parroting whatever they find (or their security advisor), trust the marmots or trust the looks, because you don't know what the silicon does. You might know one domain, but not multiple ones, like you might know the IT domain, but doesn't know the underlying physics domain, so you might think the phone is secure in the IT domain, but since you don't know jackshit about the physics, you have to again rely on someone's advice. The iPhone is locked down tight, even security experts have complained in the past because analysing the core internals is cumbersome. But that's a double edged sword, when you can't even get basic info about phone's status without resorting to some hacking shenanigans. Any way to know your firmware has not changed? How come there are zero tools for the layman to verify the status of his device? You don't know whether your usb's firmware is intact, whether your motherboard is a-ok and the list goes on. According to newspapers, it is/was the panacea of security (iPhone), yet sec bugs after sec bugs are coming out all the time. You don't even have complete control over the phone, since the software switches (like wifi) are not actually disabling the wifi circuitry. How come banks are sitting on ancient systems and are seemingly fine? Should you trust zerodium's bounty prices, should you trust exploit brokers? (they ought to see what's an emmentaler right?) Encrypted secure phones? Look how many criminals got caught, by putting their trust blindly into something, that someone parroted about how secure that is. GrapheneOS says they are secure, but where are tools that show you that yes we do this and that and that solves these kinds of attacks, thwarted these attacks in the past, demonstrated? Or should I go with an old blackberry? What about this article? https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/14/11434926/blackberry-encryption-master-key-broken-canada-rcmp-surveillance https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/14/11434926/blackberry-encry... Should you consider Mikko's advice. Use a phone that is made by a country, whose intelligence agency is not a threat to you? But how do you know that a phone, which is made in X country is actually controlled by that country's IA? And how do you know which IA is not a threat to you? :DDDDD Do you even have to fear against a nation state's capabilities or since they have unimited budget you are fucked when somehow get in their crosshairs? It's like flipping a coin, putting your trust into someone's solution blindly.
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    Hardware devices with embedded software used to be air-gapped. As soon as phones got Bluetooth, you got Nokia Bluetooth viruses that would spread via public transit, and you had to go to a service center to fix it since it wasn't designed to be updated. Even in the days of "software was complete on launch", security was absolutely abysmal and we just relied on most people being honest.
    - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      Yeah, saying "embedded software used to be complete and final back in the day" is such a rose-colored glasses take. When I was a kid we could occasionally pick up car phone (that's what we called cell phones back then) conversations by changing to a particular channel on the TV.
- lenkite 3y ago
  > But the phones don't suddenly stop working without updates. They're still perfectly fine. Only if "perfectly fine" means filled with security vulnerabilities and open to dozens of working exploits.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
  Is not like flagship Android phones are cheap. They cost just as much as iPhones with much worse support. I agree if you are happy non flagship Android phones. Those are a bargain.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Why do you say "with much worse support"? That's not the case anymore, at least for Pixels.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
      Because it’s true? The pixel 6a will get 3 years of updates and 5 years of security updates. On a phone that was released 12 months ago. So it hasn’t been tested yet. Plenty of time for google to renege on that. The Pixel 6a is at least a cheaper phone. But the Pixel 7 are flagship prices for the same support. iPhones have been getting this level of updates since almost day one. The last iPhone I ran into the ground was a 6 and that had 5 years of OS updates. iOS 8 through 12. My current XR has been getting updates for almost 5 years and will get iOS 17. So at least 6 years of updates?
      - graeme 3y ago
        To add to this, Apple is still adding security patches for iOS 15. That reaches all the way back to the iPhone 6s, released in 2015, eight years ago.
      - kingrazor 3y ago
        This is exactly why I own an iPhone. I don't even personally like apple as a company. I don't like Mac computers. There are things that really irritate me about iPhones, but I use them anyway because of how long they get updates for.
      - mikae1 3y ago
        When I got my last Pixel Google were giving 3 years of security updates. I bought it one year after release. For an average consumer doing the same thing they would have had an unsecure doorstop with very low resale value after two years. Should be criminal. I installed some ROM and kept it alive (not by far as secure as using an iPhone, of course).
- brobinson 3y ago
  I hope you don't do banking or anything critical on your phone.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I certainly don't. Security updates or not, I don't trust my smartphone with anything of critical importance.
- rootsudo 3y ago
  The phones do stop working properly, e.g. unicode doesn't work, and unsupported android OS's aren't no longer developed, not to mention security updates. It's risky, especially in todays world where financial information is stored endlessly on a cell phone. 5 years+ for iphones make a very nice deprecation curve / alongside a viable resell market. It's nice to sell a 2yr old iphone for 70-80% of it's purchase price and then buy a new one and not have to worry about anything for another 5 years.
opan 3y ago
If you only buy devices with LineageOS support, you can continue to get updates for a very long time. I would not want to be at the mercy of the manufacturer for the software.
- pja 3y ago
  LineageOS is great, but they can’t fix security holes in device firmware, which includes the graphics libraries which are available to every app. With LineageOS you get OS updates (great!) but are still vulnerable to exploits that target binary-only firmware.

JohnFen 3y ago

Yes, I don't care about getting updates. If they're important to you, that's fair. But the phones don't suddenly stop working without updates. They're still perfectly fine.

jjav 3y ago
> Yes, I don't care about getting updates. If they're important to you, that's fair. Hardware devices with embedded software couldn't get updates (or was a difficult job so didn't happen) until somewhat recently. It is unfortunate that the ability to do updates is used as a crutch to ship faulty software that then needs updates. A phone shouldn't ever need an update in its lifetime if it was properly built in the first place. I only recently stopped using my Motorola cellphone from 2005 (only because they decommissioned the towers). It never received any update in 17 years. It also never needed any. I would like to buy devices with that level of quality today.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Well, yeah, and I'd like a pony. The main issue is security updates. I'm guessing you weren't accessing things like a banking app with highly sensitive financial data on your 2005 Motorola.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > I'm guessing you weren't accessing things like a banking app with highly sensitive financial data For anyone who has done any serious threat modeling exercises would never ever do that from a 2023 phone (I'm fully aware many people do it regardless).w
    - lofaszvanitt 3y ago
      So what phone do you recommend for someone who is looking for a new phone?
      - flagrant_taco 3y ago
        If security is a concern, getting a newer Pixel and installing GrapheneOS is your best bet. It's still not perfect and nothing beats just not having a cell phone, but that's a choice very few are okay with today. The trick with GrapheneOS, or any privacy setup, is that it requires attention to stay reasonably secure. The OS won't matter if you enable Google services and install apps that track and sell all your data.
        lofaszvanitt 3y ago
        What about the Exynos RCE bugs? Now that they are patched they are secure again or how is this supposed to work? What about the intentional backdoor unearthed in the pixel phone (the sim swap thingy)? Who was that for? My problem is, as a user, whose expertise is not 100% security, how can a layman decide which device to trust? Trust the neighbor, trust the expert who thinks is an expert, but doesn't see his own limitations, trust the newspapers parroting whatever they find (or their security advisor), trust the marmots or trust the looks, because you don't know what the silicon does. You might know one domain, but not multiple ones, like you might know the IT domain, but doesn't know the underlying physics domain, so you might think the phone is secure in the IT domain, but since you don't know jackshit about the physics, you have to again rely on someone's advice. The iPhone is locked down tight, even security experts have complained in the past because analysing the core internals is cumbersome. But that's a double edged sword, when you can't even get basic info about phone's status without resorting to some hacking shenanigans. Any way to know your firmware has not changed? How come there are zero tools for the layman to verify the status of his device? You don't know whether your usb's firmware is intact, whether your motherboard is a-ok and the list goes on. According to newspapers, it is/was the panacea of security (iPhone), yet sec bugs after sec bugs are coming out all the time. You don't even have complete control over the phone, since the software switches (like wifi) are not actually disabling the wifi circuitry. How come banks are sitting on ancient systems and are seemingly fine? Should you trust zerodium's bounty prices, should you trust exploit brokers? (they ought to see what's an emmentaler right?) Encrypted secure phones? Look how many criminals got caught, by putting their trust blindly into something, that someone parroted about how secure that is. GrapheneOS says they are secure, but where are tools that show you that yes we do this and that and that solves these kinds of attacks, thwarted these attacks in the past, demonstrated? Or should I go with an old blackberry? What about this article? https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/14/11434926/blackberry-encryption-master-key-broken-canada-rcmp-surveillance https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/14/11434926/blackberry-encry... Should you consider Mikko's advice. Use a phone that is made by a country, whose intelligence agency is not a threat to you? But how do you know that a phone, which is made in X country is actually controlled by that country's IA? And how do you know which IA is not a threat to you? :DDDDD Do you even have to fear against a nation state's capabilities or since they have unimited budget you are fucked when somehow get in their crosshairs? It's like flipping a coin, putting your trust into someone's solution blindly.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  Hardware devices with embedded software used to be air-gapped. As soon as phones got Bluetooth, you got Nokia Bluetooth viruses that would spread via public transit, and you had to go to a service center to fix it since it wasn't designed to be updated. Even in the days of "software was complete on launch", security was absolutely abysmal and we just relied on most people being honest.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Yeah, saying "embedded software used to be complete and final back in the day" is such a rose-colored glasses take. When I was a kid we could occasionally pick up car phone (that's what we called cell phones back then) conversations by changing to a particular channel on the TV.
lenkite 3y ago
> But the phones don't suddenly stop working without updates. They're still perfectly fine. Only if "perfectly fine" means filled with security vulnerabilities and open to dozens of working exploits.
2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
Is not like flagship Android phones are cheap. They cost just as much as iPhones with much worse support. I agree if you are happy non flagship Android phones. Those are a bargain.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Why do you say "with much worse support"? That's not the case anymore, at least for Pixels.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
    Because it’s true? The pixel 6a will get 3 years of updates and 5 years of security updates. On a phone that was released 12 months ago. So it hasn’t been tested yet. Plenty of time for google to renege on that. The Pixel 6a is at least a cheaper phone. But the Pixel 7 are flagship prices for the same support. iPhones have been getting this level of updates since almost day one. The last iPhone I ran into the ground was a 6 and that had 5 years of OS updates. iOS 8 through 12. My current XR has been getting updates for almost 5 years and will get iOS 17. So at least 6 years of updates?
    - graeme 3y ago
      To add to this, Apple is still adding security patches for iOS 15. That reaches all the way back to the iPhone 6s, released in 2015, eight years ago.
    - kingrazor 3y ago
      This is exactly why I own an iPhone. I don't even personally like apple as a company. I don't like Mac computers. There are things that really irritate me about iPhones, but I use them anyway because of how long they get updates for.
    - mikae1 3y ago
      When I got my last Pixel Google were giving 3 years of security updates. I bought it one year after release. For an average consumer doing the same thing they would have had an unsecure doorstop with very low resale value after two years. Should be criminal. I installed some ROM and kept it alive (not by far as secure as using an iPhone, of course).
brobinson 3y ago
I hope you don't do banking or anything critical on your phone.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I certainly don't. Security updates or not, I don't trust my smartphone with anything of critical importance.
rootsudo 3y ago
The phones do stop working properly, e.g. unicode doesn't work, and unsupported android OS's aren't no longer developed, not to mention security updates. It's risky, especially in todays world where financial information is stored endlessly on a cell phone. 5 years+ for iphones make a very nice deprecation curve / alongside a viable resell market. It's nice to sell a 2yr old iphone for 70-80% of it's purchase price and then buy a new one and not have to worry about anything for another 5 years.

opan 3y ago

If you only buy devices with LineageOS support, you can continue to get updates for a very long time. I would not want to be at the mercy of the manufacturer for the software.

pja 3y ago
LineageOS is great, but they can’t fix security holes in device firmware, which includes the graphics libraries which are available to every app. With LineageOS you get OS updates (great!) but are still vulnerable to exploits that target binary-only firmware.