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I only recently moved from a 6-year old LG flagship phone to a shiny new Galaxy, and the performance difference is staggering. It shouldn't be - that was a very
by ryukoposting 3y ago
I only recently moved from a 6-year old LG flagship phone to a shiny new Galaxy, and the performance difference is staggering. It shouldn't be - that was a very high-end phone at release, it's not that old, and it still works like new. I know it's not just my phone, because the Galaxy S9s I use to test code have the same struggles.
I would like to have seen Amazon in the tests. IME Amazon's website is among the absolute worst of the worst on mobile devices more than ~4 years old. Amazon was the only site I accessed regularly that bordered on unusable, even with relatively recent high-end mobile hardware.
- eric__cartman 3y agoI have noticed with two 7 year old Snapdragon 835 devices that RAM and running a recent Android version makes a huge difference. I daily drive a OnePlus 5 running Android 14 through LineageOS and the user experience for non-gaming tasks is perfectly adequate. This phone has 6GB of ram, so it's still on par with most mid-range phones nowadays. My only gripe is that I had to replace the battery and disassembling phones is a pain. Meanwhile a Galaxy S8 with the same SoC, 4GB of memory and stock Android 9 with Samsung's modifications chugs like there's no tomorrow. I can understand that having two more gigabytes of memory can make a difference but there is a night and day difference between the phones. Perhaps Android 14 has way better memory management than Android 9? Or Samsung's slow and bloated software is hampering this device? Either way it's irritating to see that many companies don't test on old/low-end devices. Most people in the world aren't running modern flagships, especially if they target a world-wide audience.
- hinkley 3y agoThis is what I miss from the removal of serviceable components on MacBooks. Was a time I would buy the fastest processor and just okay memory and disk, then the first time I got a twinge of jealousy about the new machines, buy the most Corsair memory that they would guarantee would work, and a bigger faster drive. Boom, another 18 months of useful lifetime.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoIs the total useful lifetime more than MacBooks with non serviceable components? I see people around me easily using Airs for 5+ years.
- kome 3y agoMy MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2014) is my only computer. I still don't feel like changing it so far...
- genewitch 3y agoi have an Air from 2011 or 2012 that is out of storage with just the OS installed. I can't update or install any other software because the most recent update installed on it capped out the storage. Low-end windows laptops (the $150-$300 at walmart type) have this same issue. 32GB of storage and windows takes 80% of the space, and you can no longer fit a windows update on it. I still have the air with whatever the macos is, but as soon as i have a minute i'm going to try and get linux or BSD on it. I'm still sore at how little use i got out of that machine - and i got it "open box" "scratch and dent", so it was around $500 with tax. I got triple the usage out of a 2009ish eeePC (netbook)
- youngtaff 3y agoYou could try ChromeOS Flex on it?
- Baguette5242 3y agoAmateur… I am using a 2009 15’ MacBook Pro Unibody, with a swapped SuperDrive to SSD, another main SSD and RAM boosted to 8Gb. OpenCore Legacy to update to a relatively recent version of MacOS. The only thing that is so annoying is the webcam that doesn’t work anymore, and a USB port is dead also. So sad this kind of shenanigans are not possible anymore.
- hagbard_c 3y ago
- ryukoposting 3y agoI don't think the RAM is the difference-maker. The old LG phone in question is a V35, which has 6GB and a Snapdragon 845.
- dleink 3y agoI want to research this route more but the camera is an important component to me. I suspect their is a model of phone from 5-10 years ago that has a an under-the-radar stellar camera and I would find "perfectly adequate". ("perfectly adequate" is my favored state for most tech solutions.)
- eric__cartman 3y agoYeah the camera is the only feature that would really make me want to switch phones. In my case it's more about being a broke CS student without a job lol. But the low-end device thing still stands. At least here in Argentina where I live most people can't buy a $1000+ phone without going into debt or saving money for a stupid amount of time to get it. Some people that really can't afford to do so still buy them though. Maybe it is reasonable for some but I never saw any appeal in spending so much money (comparatively to a monthly salary) on a non necessity. I happily spent that kind of money on a PC to use for work/study, but a phone? Nah.
- dleink 3y agoSame! The camera is the only part of the phone I want to spend real money on. Beyond personal preferences, I live and work in an area of California where people could greatly benefit from easily accessible phones so I'm interested in what's possible.
- ragall 3y agoThe Huawei P10+, released in 2017, has very good Leica optics, on par with much newer iPhone or Galaxy devices. https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_p10_plus-8515.php https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_p10_plus-8515.php
- zuhsetaqi 3y agoInteresting that you have such problems with Amazon. I‘m using an iPhone XR (5,5 years old) and don’t have any problems using Amazon in the browser (Safari). And I’m on the latest iOS (17.4).
- ryukoposting 3y agoOS version may have an impact. The Galaxy S9s both run Android 9. That LG phone is stuck on Android 8 because AT&T sucks and never got around to updating their shitware-riddled Android fork. If they had, I wouldn't have needed to spend spend $800 on a new phone. I'm not bitter about it at all, though.
- kalleboo 3y agoThe iPhone XR was 4x as fast as the Galaxy S9 in web browsing https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph13912/95169.png https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph13912/95169.png
- callalex 3y agoiPhone browser performance has run circles around android browser performance on equivalent hardware for like the last 10 years or so. It’s really the secret sauce of iOS.
- walteweiss 3y agoYeah, by the way browsing on iPhone 6S Plus is quite okay, compared to even MacBook Pro (2011, but that’s a laptop!), I would say.
- ww520 3y agoiPhone has exceptional long lasting performance. I have a 5 year old iPhone and it still runs smooth like silk.
- seam_carver 3y agoI have no issues with Amazon on my iPhone 8 running latest iOS 16
- Accacin 3y agoDid you try disabling JavaScript on Amazon? It actually doesn't function too badly. I know, I know, you shouldn't need to do it and I agree.
- ryukoposting 3y agoI fiddled with NoScript but I must have done something wrong because I broke the site entirely.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoI recently visited Brazil and had my shiny new phone snatched from my hand ... now with my spare 4 years old phone, frankly dont see any difference. But I use Firefox with all the ad blockers, maybe that helps.
- ryukoposting 3y agoI run Firefox with uBO and NoScript. Based on the other replies, OS version may play a role.
- MiddleEndian 3y agoI have a Palm Phone. I generally consider web browsing to be almost impossible no it at this point lol
- aembleton 3y agoAre you able to change the DNS on it to NextDNS or LibreDNS: https://libredns.gr/ https://libredns.gr/ Blocking ads and trackers might help you to browse the web.
- MiddleEndian 3y agoI block ads with uBlock Origin in mobile Firefox. I can use simple sites like hacker news, and I can actually use old.reddit.com if I'm willing to zoom in and out a bunch. The Palm Phone lags with just about everything honestly, but I like the form factor of having a phone the size of a credit card. But since software only gets slower, most of the web is just beyond it at this point.