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> When was the last time you felt your smartphone really couldn’t cope? Every day since a couple years now. > I struggle to recall the last time an app jerked
by loup-vaillant 2y ago
> When was the last time you felt your smartphone really couldn’t cope?
Every day since a couple years now.
> I struggle to recall the last time an app jerked and juddered into life.
I don’t. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t that way at first. It’s just that over time my phone just slowed down. Purging it of its data and unused software did nothing, I just had less and less available memory over time, and maps grew slower and slower, and it was becoming increasingly impossible to open several, sometimes just two applications at the same time.
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That being said, I do agree with the core point of the article: phones are plenty fast enough.
Heck, I’m pretty sure a snappy modern UI with all the bells and whistles except perhaps a voice assistant requires less than a tenth of the computing power of the average phone. We just need reasonably performing software. Not crazy optimised software, just something that makes decent use of the CPU and GPU, and doesn’t consume too much RAM.
But the market won’t even give us that. You know what, keep that up a few years and I’ll seriously think of switching back to a flip phone.
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Edit: I have a Xiaomi M1804C3CG.
- flerchin 2y agoThis has not been my experience, and I suspect an unusual situation on your part.
- riehwvfbk 2y agoYou are just thinking iPhone. There are many Android phones on the market that are woefully underpowered for anything beyond store demo mode.
- rchaud 2y agoYeah, iPhones being throttled? Unheard of! /s https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67911517 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67911517
- riehwvfbk 2y agoYes, but that's battery degradation. Cheap Android phones are inadequate out of the box. Also, despite Android fanboys getting triggered, I never said that there are no good Android phones. There are. And the median Android phone is more powerful than an iPhone for the money (especially non-US models). The differentiator is that Apple doesn't ship iPhones that are too awful.
- rchaud 2y agoNot my experience at all. I have a 2016 Galaxy S7 in a drawer that would still be fine as a daily driver were it not for the worn-down battery. I have a separate phone from 2020 that I was using as a TikTok device (quite resource-heavy app) and it runs fine even now.
- jventura 2y agoWhy don’t you replace the battery? Third party batteries are usually quite affordable and good enough! Even yesterday I’ve replaced a worned out battery on a very old iPhone 5S (2013) for my son to watch things on youtube kids..
- xethos 2y agoBecause iPhones are not layers of glass glued together from either end, with a battery sandwiched in-between. Apple gets a lot of shit (deservedly or not), but they have taken pains to make refreshing their phones (battery, screen, etc) a not-garbage experience If you want to replace a battery on a relatively modern Samsung flagship, you will likely swear, drink, and/or curse the engineers that decided "Glass and glue is good enough"
- mattlondon 2y agoNot experienced this at all. Spare storage space (different from RAM, which is not where data is stored long term) should not impact performance. Perhaps you have malware installed on your device?
- loup-vaillant 2y agoThen the malware is hiding in the system space, which for some reason takes over 70% of all my available memory. I’ve heard that as systems update, they keep the old stuff around until you run out of memory. I haven’t checked, and I have yet to reset my phone to factory setting, but if that’s what’s really happening, that’s still unacceptable. One reason for low memory being responsible for slow loading times, is on the fly (de)compression, to save what little memory the phone has left.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoDon't bother. Flip phones have enshittified, too. (Alarms don't consistently trigger unless you disable and re-enable them after setting them; sometimes the sound just breaks until the phone's restarted; if any voicemail expires then the phone's voicemail indicator is stuck there forever; J2ME support has been removed, so the only available games are the ones you have to text a premium number to "buy" (even though the software comes pre-installed).) Multiple different brands have the same buggy OS, even those which used to be household names. This must've saved the companies at least $20 000.
- exe34 2y ago> It’s just that over time my phone just slowed down iPhone? They throttle the CPU to make the battery look like it's not dying.
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoThe reason for throttling after battery health dips below a certain point is to prevent the SoC from creating spikes in power demand that the battery is unable to service (which becomes progressively more likely as the battery degrades) so the phone doesn’t crash at inopportune times. Back in the mid-2010s when I was broke and getting by on a worn out hand-me-down iPhone I would’ve loved to have that feature. It really sucks when your phone dies in the middle of a business call at 40% battery thanks to one of those aforementioned spikes.
- exe34 2y agoAny idea why it only happens to iPhones? I don't think I've noticed this on Androids, where the only impact of longevity is the lack of updates from the manufacturers and then Google Play Services starts to fill up the storage with updates.
- rangestransform 2y agoIt does happen to androids (at least my old Xperia xz2)
- tekla 2y agoIt does happen to Androids. Its just that by the time it matters, the manufacturer has abandoned it.
- exe34 2y agoaha that makes sense!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- alex23478 2y agoThis happened to one of my previous Xiamoi Phones too. Apparently the Flash Storage degrades over time, which makes everything that uses I/O super slow. For instance, starting Firefox took almost a minute, but it was usable as soon as all needed data was available in RAM. This is a known issue in the respective community, and sadly kills devices that would still be usable with the latest Android thanks to Custom Roms.
- bhelkey 2y ago> Edit: I have a Xiaomi M1804C3CG. It looks like that model has 2GB of ram. I can certainly understand running into performance issues with those specs.
- loup-vaillant 2y agoI don’t. 2GB ought to be enough for everyone. The only reason it may not is if apps are ludicrously memory hungry.