Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Essential Phone, available now

essential.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 695 posts

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#481

Post by beezle »

jordanlev wrote: post #35
nicktelford wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They stated 2 years OS updates, 3 years monthly security updates in the blog post.

It's kind of funny what they follow that up with: > Essential Phone will get guaranteed Android OS updates for 2 years and will get monthly security updates for 3 years, so your phone will always be secure and have the latest features. I do not think the word "always" means what they think it means :)

I am mostly moving on from an LG G2 to the new Essential Phone. For the past year I have been running AICP, currently at Android 7.1.x Prior to that I had about a year of Cyanogenmod.

Granted, third party roms are not for the average user but it amazes me how few on HN seem to run them and instead whine about why their 3 or 4 year old phone is no longer getting the latest greatest. People here like to point to Apple/iOS but really, how many of the iPrecious users are still on an iphone 4 or 5? Seems that crowd rolls over every 12 to 18 months so what difference does it make?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#483

Post by zanny »

Since no one else has, I'll take the piss out of this "hollier than thou" bullshit.

> Devices are your personal property. We won’t force you to have anything you don’t want.

Devices are your personal property. The SoC is still a proprietary trade secret, the baseband is still spying on you for the NSA, the GPU is still a closed blob piece of shit. No mainline driver support, bootloader is closed source, firmware is closed source. We own this phone, you don't.

> We will always play well with others. Closed ecosystems are divisive and outdated.

....

> Devices shouldn’t become outdated every year. They should evolve with you.

Devices become outdated because shitty vendors refuse to open source and mainline drivers for their components.

> Technology should assist you so that you can get on with enjoying life.

Technology should be trustable, and a device where you cannot tell if or when the microphone and/or camera are recording and being remotely accessed is anything but.

Not wanting to single Essential out too much here - every vendor goes on and on about how great this phone is for you, while holding as much of a vice grip over the operation of the device as possible to make sure you need to buy another one as soon as possible through planned obsolescence. It is just the stick up the ass language announcements like these use is really infuriating when the people making them know full well how much they are screwing you over.

The first actually open platform phone is the one that will have longevity. The rest are snake oil about how good they will take of you because you can't take care of yourself with your own software that you can trust.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#484

Post by Jaepa »

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…

With Broadpwn; Largely yes. Android and iOS both published security fixed before this was presented at Blackhat. But:

1. Android is kind of tricky though, as firmware updates generally come from the carrier not the manufacturers, and even if its from the manufacturers its still down stream of the actual patches. But the factor is kind of moot if a phone isn't getting security upgrades.

2. Google has been trying to decouple security and firmware updates, but this is only on more recent phones.

As for how much of an issue this is. Its kind of impossible to tell. It been out for less than a month at this point. And of course there are all the devices that are now unsupported and will not receive updates.

Ok for StageFright. Do you have those enabled? How many users do you think will?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#485

Post by microcolonel »

remir wrote: post #463
microcolonel wrote: post #453

I think this company gets a lot of things right. Frankly, some of their marketing really speaks to me, like this bit from the home page[0]. Your phone is your personal property. It’s a public expression of who you are and what you stand for. Just because we played a part in making it doesn’t mean you should be forced to advertise that fact to everyone in your life. Now you know why we don't have any logos on the phon…

The only problem I see with the Essential Phone is that you'll only receive 2 years of OS updates. For a $700 phone, that's a bit insulting.

That is indeed a bit alarming. Maybe that's how they manage to hit even that price point with the kinds of materials they're using.

That said, 2 years is the standard replacement period for most postpaid carriers, so it might be that way effectively anyway for many customers.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#486

Post by steeve »

zanny wrote: post #483

Since no one else has, I'll take the piss out of this "hollier than thou" bullshit. > Devices are your personal property. We won’t force you to have anything you don’t want. Devices are your personal property. The SoC is still a proprietary trade secret, the baseband is still spying on you for the NSA, the GPU is still a closed blob piece of shit. No mainline driver support, bootloader is closed source, firmware is c…

> Devices become outdated because shitty vendors refuse to open source and mainline drivers for their components.

YES. This one of the major reasons of the Android versions fragmentation.

However, most of them don't even have mainline-able drivers. See Amlogic which got rejected because of "shitty code".

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#487

Post by IanKelling »

zanny wrote: post #483

Since no one else has, I'll take the piss out of this "hollier than thou" bullshit. > Devices are your personal property. We won’t force you to have anything you don’t want. Devices are your personal property. The SoC is still a proprietary trade secret, the baseband is still spying on you for the NSA, the GPU is still a closed blob piece of shit. No mainline driver support, bootloader is closed source, firmware is c…

And without running proprietary javascript, their page displays no text. So, ya.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#488

Post by hueving »

busterarm wrote: post #346
vturner wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that box is oh so hard to check. ;)

Is it? I need my phone to do three things: 1) Make and receive calls & texts. 2) Run a small number of ubiquitous apps (maps, ride hailing) 3) Not get hacked at DEFCON. Phones with the Apple logo on the back do this job best. Their security posture is just so much better and you don't have carrier-enforced forced obsolescence from the software side. You literally can always run the latest iOS until the hardware _just…

>I'm an open source guy only as much as it makes sense.

That means you're not really an open source guy. You're just using whatever is best on the market at the time.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#489

Post by baddox »

hohghitlblkh wrote: post #372
baddox wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the draw of a tiny physical keyboard? I can type much faster on an iPhone than with any similarly-sized physical keyboard. The only advantage I can think of is the ability to touch type without paying attention to the screen as closely, but for a phone that doesn't seem like a very big deal.

I could type faster (and without looking) on the old Nokia style keypads than I can on a touchscreen.

That's surprising to me. The physical phone keyboards I have used have require far too much activation pressure for me to type anywhere near as quickly as I do on an iPhone. I do think my error rate would be lower with a physical keyboard, and I could obviously type better without looking at my keyboard, but the former isn't enough of a difference and the latter isn't something I would need to do anyway except perhaps in very unusual circumstances.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#490

Post by dijit »

busterarm wrote: post #346
vturner wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that box is oh so hard to check. ;)

Is it? I need my phone to do three things: 1) Make and receive calls & texts. 2) Run a small number of ubiquitous apps (maps, ride hailing) 3) Not get hacked at DEFCON. Phones with the Apple logo on the back do this job best. Their security posture is just so much better and you don't have carrier-enforced forced obsolescence from the software side. You literally can always run the latest iOS until the hardware _just…

I have been having difficulty finding a good android phone that could replace the iPhone 5SE.

If I go apple again, I no longer have the ability to sync my phone, since my Mac died under a glass of wine and I "replaced" it with a Dell Precision 5520 running Arch because the MacBook Pro lineup was untenable.

I'd go apple again if I could actually backup,sync,etc my phone. It's a good device in isolation. But don't dare step out of the apple ecosystem.

Post reply on HN