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Essential Phone, available now

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Re: Essential Phone, available now

#441

Post by exabrial »

WalterSear wrote: post #271
exabrial wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about ones that don't have unpredictable 15ms-30ms latency was well...

I didn't mention the insertion of shit codecs, either. Or replacing them every couple of years when the soldered in battery dies (as opposed to my Sony MDRs, that I've been using almost daily for a decade). Or trying to use them for 6+ hours a day, and keep them charged. Or the killer feature of knockabout earbuds: that they cost $10 or so you can use them without worrying about leaving them somewhere, and afford to…

Another thing, there's simply not enough 2.4ghz bandwidth available in a crowded environment [like an airplane] for everyone and their pet dog to have 2 channels of skip free low latency high def audio

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#442

Post by sytelus »

Interesting bits:

- Dual cameras on back with depth estimation

- True monochrome images (digital B&W photography!)

- USB-C port

- Fingerprint sensor

- "full" display

Overall it's great to have a phone with foundational philosophy of keeping it clean, open and play with others nicely.

The biggest missing story is apps. Can I use Google Maps, Drive, Gmail, Now etc? Out of the box? Will Google Play Store be fully supported? Without all these apps, phone is just beautiful thin brick. Also, burning question is how this would stand up against Pixel.vNext which seems to have many (but not all) of same philosophies.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#443

Post by OrwellianChild »

Hasz wrote: post #338

You want fixable and well designed, long software updates, and a good price? Buy an (old) iPhone. I've got a 5S -- still perfectly fast for what I use it for (email, youtube, brokerage account, general internet, some small games), and is getting OS updates and security patches until IOS11. It's $120 on eBay; a new screen can be had for $13, a new battery for $11. it's solidly designed and there's a gigantic field of…

Just be careful about older phones when it comes to radios and antennae... iPhones prior to the 6s did not have the 700 MHz "Band 12" capability, rendering a lot of new spectrum (particularly from T-Mobile) unusable. The latest spectrum auction winners are already deploying 600 MHz as well, which is also unsupported.

The iPhone SE can do 700 MHz, FWIW...

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#444

Post by minxomat »

sytelus wrote: post #442

Interesting bits: - Dual cameras on back with depth estimation - True monochrome images (digital B&W photography!) - USB-C port - Fingerprint sensor - "full" display Overall it's great to have a phone with foundational philosophy of keeping it clean, open and play with others nicely. The biggest missing story is apps. Can I use Google Maps, Drive, Gmail, Now etc? Out of the box? Will Google Play Store be fully suppor…

From your interesting bits, this might just as well be a Xiaomi Mi Mix, wich has been out for a while and is getting cloned already. No B/W sensor though (and expansion pins, but I couldn't care less).

It also has a ceramic body and does hold up really well in drop tests.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#445

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Pxtl wrote: post #376
ariofrio wrote: post #286

Give me software updates for 7+ years, then we'll talk about buying your $700 phone. Lasting hardware means nothing without lasting software. In the meanwhile, I'll keep buying $120 phones (Moto G4 with Amazon Ads FTW) and keeping them for ~2 years until they break or software updates stop. Even though as a Catholic (Laudato Si, Rerum Novarum) it kills me to waste all those materials every couple of years and be part…

Hah, catholic guilt and environmentalism work together so well. yeah, I feel bad for taking a similar lifetime on my phones - I wish there was a company with the kind of reputation for craftsmanship and long-term support that Apple has that would offer stock Google Android devices.

Wanting long term support and Google software are contradictory requests.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#446

Post by throwaway613834 »

Jaepa wrote: post #393
throwaway613834 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your email app will still get updates right? (I guess I'm using Gmail and assuming you are using something like it that gets updates too, but maybe I'm wrong.) Same with SMS - lots of apps that get updates. What's the exact issue?

Most will, some will drop support after its X major release behind. But that's not really the issue, the underlying system has a lot of security issues (as all complex systems do). So just for 2017 there are: - 326 code execution vulnerabilities - 221 memory overflow bugs - 114 memory corruption issues - 309 privilege escalation bugs http://www.cvedetails.com/product/19997/Google-Android.html?... Granted, I'm sure a…

Regarding Broadpwn: I wasn't aware of it, but at the same time -- has it actually been exploited, and has it been patched in more recent hardware or OSes? If the upgrade doesn't help mitigate an actual, existing threat then upgrading doesn't solve anything.

To put it another way: if you learn of a very serious exploit like this in the wild and an upgrade is the only way to solve it -- by all means, go ahead and upgrade. I'm not saying you should never upgrade, nor am I saying serious security vulnerabilities cannot pop up. But neither in any way implies you need a periodic 1-2-year hardware/OS refresh. A refresh could be justified in 1 day or in 10 years; it just depends on what the actual threats and mitigations are. Remember what the original discussion was about: it was about whether the periodic refresh is justified.

As for the rest of those (StageFright and other attacks) -- I've addressed them in other comments. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040745

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#447

Post by throwaway613834 »

veeti wrote: post #388
throwaway613834 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is, even if 100% of your apps are vulnerable, it doesn't mean anything unless the attacker can reach your phone somehow. That can only happen in 5 different ways: (1) Low-level Wi-Fi bug exploit, (2) SMS exploit, (3) Cellular exploit (like a Stingray), (4) Cellular internet connection (open ports, etc.), (5) App-level exploits. I don't know of any critical examples of #1 that I would need to protect aga…

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2017/04/over-air-expl...

Has this (a) been exploited in the wild, and more importantly, (b) even actually patched in more recent phones?

Otherwise, how is this a justification for upgrading your phone? It seems like you may have forgotten what the argument even was. I was arguing against routine 1-2-year upgrades, not against the entire concept of upgrading for something wiht a serious security vulnerability. If a serious exploit appears in the wild and your only solution is to upgrade -- by all means, go for it. But is that the case here? And this happened periodically every 1-2 years for you to justify upgrading equally often?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#448

Post by Avshalom »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #374
lolsal wrote: post #48

> Your phone is your personal property. It’s a public expression of who you are and what you stand for. No, it's really not. It's literally just a tool I use for communication.

> No, it's really not. It's literally just a tool I use for communication. I'm curious, wouldn't that imply you're not the demographic they're seeking? So are you basically saying, "I'm not in their demographic"? Or is there another point to your comment that I'm missing. I ask because often I see people get pissy about statements like this, almost as if they think the web page was curated for them. I could make a we…

Who is the demographic they're seeking that wouldn't just wrap it in a case for individuality or buy a phone with branding for name recognition?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#449

Post by dmoy »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #446
Jaepa wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most will, some will drop support after its X major release behind. But that's not really the issue, the underlying system has a lot of security issues (as all complex systems do). So just for 2017 there are: - 326 code execution vulnerabilities - 221 memory overflow bugs - 114 memory corruption issues - 309 privilege escalation bugs http://www.cvedetails.com/product/19997/Google-Android.html?... Granted, I'm sure a…

Regarding Broadpwn: I wasn't aware of it, but at the same time -- has it actually been exploited, and has it been patched in more recent hardware or OSes? If the upgrade doesn't help mitigate an actual, existing threat then upgrading doesn't solve anything. To put it another way: if you learn of a very serious exploit like this in the wild and an upgrade is the only way to solve it -- by all means, go ahead and upgra…

There is no way I'm going to be continually looking for new incoming CVE that affect my old phone and making sure I have solid workarounds. The risk is too high that I'd miss one, mess up a fix, and then be vulnerable. And even if the risk wasn't that high, we're talking about a lot of time sunk into looking through security postings and verifying my own fixes/workarounds. It doesn't have to take too many minutes per year before it's worth me buying a new $130 moto E or whatever. As in like, 1 hour per three years or something.

This is the same reason why I don't run a computer OS at home that isn't patched to the latest security updates. I am not going to run windows XP at home and just disable / find workarounds for every single one of the probably-thousands of risks. That's insane.

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