4 ms·

Or they'll start making cheap phones with <=2GB of RAM again and people will have to write software that uses memory efficiently (the horror).

dist-epoch 4mo ago
As the HN saying goes, people who can't afford an iPhone or a MacBook will not be your paying customers anyway, so don't worry about them.
a-french-anon 4mo ago
You underestimate how poorly optimized Android (both the OS and ecosystem) is.
- AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
  Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser and all the people who just need a phone will buy it to save $200. Also, when software is poorly optimized that implies it is possible to optimize it.
  - xienze 4mo ago
    > Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser I think we're quite a ways past the point where most people would be satisfied with phones that only do voice, text, and web browsing. People have become quite accustomed to phones that can run arbitrary applications and games. There's quite a sizable population for whom phones are their only computing device.
    - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
      There is nothing stopping it from running arbitrary applications, those applications just wouldn't be Android apps. Which is just as well because 99% of Android apps are just a bloated skin over a web page anyway. I can't actually think of the last time that I wanted to (rather than was forced to) use a non-messaging non-browser app on my phone.
      - ChildOfChaos 4mo ago
        Because you need these apps to do almost anything. I went to a music festival last weekend, ticket has to be on the ticketmaster app which is android or iOS, the official app for the festival has timings and updates for the event which are very important else you will miss stuff that is announced, even safety warnings. My train tickets were on the app, I needed it to book the Uber as well. 20% off drinks and food if you use the paypal app. You just can't do things without Android or iOS. Thousands of people parked in random fields, parked in daylight, need to find car at night = Airtag/ map. Everything is an app these days. It's a lot harder to do everything without such things. You wouldn't have been able to attend without such a device.
        ta8903 4mo ago
        Are you sure you can't do those thing through websites? You can definitely order an Uber with the browser on your phone, for instance.
  - IshKebab 4mo ago
    For a start, most of the world does not use text messages. They use WhatsApp. (Apart from a few countries where WeChat, Telegram or Line are more popular.) As far as I know the US is the only country that still uses SMS/RCS.
    - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
      So write a WhatsApp client for your phone and convince the EU to make them interoperate with you.
      - IshKebab 4mo ago
        Unfortunately that EU WhatsApp interoperation thing isn't really what we wanted. I assumed it would mean that you would be able to communicate with WhatsApp contacts using a non-WhatsApp app (kind of like Pidgin back in the day). Meta obviously don't want that and they've done a sneaky thing to make it useless: if you connect a third party app to WhatsApp, from that third party app you can only chat with other WhatsApp contacts that have also connected the same third party app to WhatsApp. So if you write your own WhatsApp client that runs on this low power phone it will be completely useless because to chat with your friends they would all have to manually connect their WhatsApps to your client, which of course they won't do. See https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability/ https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability... - check the `WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability User Experience - Android` I guess we'll see if the EU lets this stand but my guess is they will.
        jurgenburgen 4mo ago
        That’s pretty screwed up. So even if I setup e.g. Telegram as an allowed app in my WhatsApp account, I can’t communicate with friends on Telegram because they haven’t (why would they, they don’t even have WhatsApp) configured their WhatsApp to use Telegram?
        IshKebab 4mo ago
        You can communicate with your Telegram friends using WhatsApp. You can't (in practice) communicate with your WhatsApp friends using Telegram.
  - citrin_ru 4mo ago
    Web browsing is the most resource intensive task given how bloated modern websites are. It’s easer to imagine a cheap phone with a set of optimised native apps but the problem is tech giants are not interested in reducing footprint of their apps at the same time actively hostile to 3rd party clients.
    - ethbr1 4mo ago
      > given how bloated modern websites are. It’s easer to imagine a cheap phone with a set of optimised native apps The age old truism in tech is that it's easier to hyper-optimize a single chokepoint (i.e. the platform) than trust distributed actors to each optimize their own thing (i.e. app developers). Because optimization takes money. Sometimes lots. And distributed non-platform actors have their own priorities like features. That's why you get enormous success stories like x86, TCP/IP, HTTPx, and Javascript engines providing increased performance, but the "developers as a whole self-optimize" dream remains a perpetual mirage. (Outside of gaming console hardware, and even there arguably true before middleware)
  - TFNA 4mo ago
    As already pointed out, your awareness is very geographically limited. In my country (and in a few others I’m familiar with), what I most need a smartphone for is as the obligatory second factor for strong authentication to all kinds of services both governmental and private. That’s done through a bank app that only runs on Android. Elsewhere, people might find that their local public transportation or similar things can only be paid using an app.
- patapong 4mo ago
  But haven't you heard, software is solved? "Make this OS and ecosystem more efficient. Make no mistakes."
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago
Glad me and my wife both bought a pixel 1 year ago, see you in 6 years! Lol
type0 4mo ago
> nd people will have to write software that uses memory efficiently (the horror). Not possible since we all "need" AI in our phones
kilroy123 4mo ago
This is low-key a dream of mine. That we _start_ hyper-optimizing code to use less RAM and resources overall.
- mort96 4mo ago
  Forget hyper-optimizing, how about we just stop throwing away gigabytes for no reward? If we get there, then we can start thinking about maybe actually optimizing anything
  - andrekandre 4mo ago
    > we just stop throwing away gigabytes for no reward jira/confluence and google docs browser tabs are perfect examples... what does a single page need literally gigabytes of data for?
    - mindslight 4mo ago
      browser tabs are the perfect examples, period. These things were being done with native widget toolkits twenty years go. Or going back even further, TUI forms. Rich text with straightforward inline graphics is nice, but we're paying an extremely heavy price for it. Personally I might not even mind so much about the memory except the latency from the garbage collection, swapping, etc absolutely kills interactive performance. My TI-85 had a snappier interactive experience than my "modern" phone. I think a large part of the problem, at least on the embedded side, is that people really just don't have standards for these things should feel. When I tried out the first gen Nest in a store, my first thought was it was a joke and who would actually buy it with 100ms+ jittery UI lag. But lo and behold, people did.
stein1946 4mo ago
How much cheaper will a phone with 2gb vs one with 4gb? What changes in the supply chain?
- krieger_857 4mo ago
  10 to 30 usd aprox
rurp 4mo ago
I would personally love it if efficiency actually became a priority again, but I don't see it happening. Instead we'll get an even more K shaped economy where people with enough money absorb the extra cost without much care, but everyone else will be materially worse off with a slower more limited phone. Apple has a long history of not caring about budget-concious consumers. I doubt the wealthy decision makers at Apple and other companies are suddenly going to start caring about them now.
lynndotpy 4mo ago
Moore's lesser known cousin predicted this as Leslie's Law. Accounting for cost, Moore's law has practically jumped backwards in time over 15 years in the past six months.

dist-epoch 4mo ago

As the HN saying goes, people who can't afford an iPhone or a MacBook will not be your paying customers anyway, so don't worry about them.

a-french-anon 4mo ago

You underestimate how poorly optimized Android (both the OS and ecosystem) is.

AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser and all the people who just need a phone will buy it to save $200. Also, when software is poorly optimized that implies it is possible to optimize it.
- xienze 4mo ago
  > Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser I think we're quite a ways past the point where most people would be satisfied with phones that only do voice, text, and web browsing. People have become quite accustomed to phones that can run arbitrary applications and games. There's quite a sizable population for whom phones are their only computing device.
  - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
    There is nothing stopping it from running arbitrary applications, those applications just wouldn't be Android apps. Which is just as well because 99% of Android apps are just a bloated skin over a web page anyway. I can't actually think of the last time that I wanted to (rather than was forced to) use a non-messaging non-browser app on my phone.
    - ChildOfChaos 4mo ago
      Because you need these apps to do almost anything. I went to a music festival last weekend, ticket has to be on the ticketmaster app which is android or iOS, the official app for the festival has timings and updates for the event which are very important else you will miss stuff that is announced, even safety warnings. My train tickets were on the app, I needed it to book the Uber as well. 20% off drinks and food if you use the paypal app. You just can't do things without Android or iOS. Thousands of people parked in random fields, parked in daylight, need to find car at night = Airtag/ map. Everything is an app these days. It's a lot harder to do everything without such things. You wouldn't have been able to attend without such a device.
      - ta8903 4mo ago
        Are you sure you can't do those thing through websites? You can definitely order an Uber with the browser on your phone, for instance.
- IshKebab 4mo ago
  For a start, most of the world does not use text messages. They use WhatsApp. (Apart from a few countries where WeChat, Telegram or Line are more popular.) As far as I know the US is the only country that still uses SMS/RCS.
  - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
    So write a WhatsApp client for your phone and convince the EU to make them interoperate with you.
    - IshKebab 4mo ago
      Unfortunately that EU WhatsApp interoperation thing isn't really what we wanted. I assumed it would mean that you would be able to communicate with WhatsApp contacts using a non-WhatsApp app (kind of like Pidgin back in the day). Meta obviously don't want that and they've done a sneaky thing to make it useless: if you connect a third party app to WhatsApp, from that third party app you can only chat with other WhatsApp contacts that have also connected the same third party app to WhatsApp. So if you write your own WhatsApp client that runs on this low power phone it will be completely useless because to chat with your friends they would all have to manually connect their WhatsApps to your client, which of course they won't do. See https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability/ https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability... - check the `WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability User Experience - Android` I guess we'll see if the EU lets this stand but my guess is they will.
      - jurgenburgen 4mo ago
        That’s pretty screwed up. So even if I setup e.g. Telegram as an allowed app in my WhatsApp account, I can’t communicate with friends on Telegram because they haven’t (why would they, they don’t even have WhatsApp) configured their WhatsApp to use Telegram?
        IshKebab 4mo ago
        You can communicate with your Telegram friends using WhatsApp. You can't (in practice) communicate with your WhatsApp friends using Telegram.
- citrin_ru 4mo ago
  Web browsing is the most resource intensive task given how bloated modern websites are. It’s easer to imagine a cheap phone with a set of optimised native apps but the problem is tech giants are not interested in reducing footprint of their apps at the same time actively hostile to 3rd party clients.
  - ethbr1 4mo ago
    > given how bloated modern websites are. It’s easer to imagine a cheap phone with a set of optimised native apps The age old truism in tech is that it's easier to hyper-optimize a single chokepoint (i.e. the platform) than trust distributed actors to each optimize their own thing (i.e. app developers). Because optimization takes money. Sometimes lots. And distributed non-platform actors have their own priorities like features. That's why you get enormous success stories like x86, TCP/IP, HTTPx, and Javascript engines providing increased performance, but the "developers as a whole self-optimize" dream remains a perpetual mirage. (Outside of gaming console hardware, and even there arguably true before middleware)
- TFNA 4mo ago
  As already pointed out, your awareness is very geographically limited. In my country (and in a few others I’m familiar with), what I most need a smartphone for is as the obligatory second factor for strong authentication to all kinds of services both governmental and private. That’s done through a bank app that only runs on Android. Elsewhere, people might find that their local public transportation or similar things can only be paid using an app.
patapong 4mo ago
But haven't you heard, software is solved? "Make this OS and ecosystem more efficient. Make no mistakes."

Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago

Glad me and my wife both bought a pixel 1 year ago, see you in 6 years! Lol

type0 4mo ago

> nd people will have to write software that uses memory efficiently (the horror). Not possible since we all "need" AI in our phones

kilroy123 4mo ago

This is low-key a dream of mine. That we _start_ hyper-optimizing code to use less RAM and resources overall.

mort96 4mo ago
Forget hyper-optimizing, how about we just stop throwing away gigabytes for no reward? If we get there, then we can start thinking about maybe actually optimizing anything
- andrekandre 4mo ago
  > we just stop throwing away gigabytes for no reward jira/confluence and google docs browser tabs are perfect examples... what does a single page need literally gigabytes of data for?
  - mindslight 4mo ago
    browser tabs are the perfect examples, period. These things were being done with native widget toolkits twenty years go. Or going back even further, TUI forms. Rich text with straightforward inline graphics is nice, but we're paying an extremely heavy price for it. Personally I might not even mind so much about the memory except the latency from the garbage collection, swapping, etc absolutely kills interactive performance. My TI-85 had a snappier interactive experience than my "modern" phone. I think a large part of the problem, at least on the embedded side, is that people really just don't have standards for these things should feel. When I tried out the first gen Nest in a store, my first thought was it was a joke and who would actually buy it with 100ms+ jittery UI lag. But lo and behold, people did.

stein1946 4mo ago

How much cheaper will a phone with 2gb vs one with 4gb? What changes in the supply chain?

krieger_857 4mo ago
10 to 30 usd aprox

rurp 4mo ago

I would personally love it if efficiency actually became a priority again, but I don't see it happening. Instead we'll get an even more K shaped economy where people with enough money absorb the extra cost without much care, but everyone else will be materially worse off with a slower more limited phone. Apple has a long history of not caring about budget-concious consumers. I doubt the wealthy decision makers at Apple and other companies are suddenly going to start caring about them now.

lynndotpy 4mo ago

Moore's lesser known cousin predicted this as Leslie's Law. Accounting for cost, Moore's law has practically jumped backwards in time over 15 years in the past six months.