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Essential Phone, available now

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Re: Essential Phone, available now

#501

Post by plaguuuuuu »

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #228
git-pull wrote: post #85

I admire the gumption of making a new phone. But controlled obsolescence kills me. The real feature that improves in phones the past few years for me is the software and apps, not the hardware . My wishlist: - Give me a lighter, snappier OS. Not something clunkier and slower and uses more ram, gpu/cpu (aka battery life). - Actually support updates to the things for longer than 2-3 years. - (Not related to this phone)…

This sounds like a terrible business with a minuscule market. The cost of designing, manufacturing and shipping something as complex as a phone is huge. By making the battery user-serviceable, and the software updates free and indefinite, you would eliminate any possibility for recurring revenue.

Make the batteries degrade really quickly and just charge $300 for a new one

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#502

Post by throwaway613834 »

dmoy wrote: post #449
throwaway613834 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a total straw man. You don't need to keep up with CVE. You really think I learned about e.g. StageFright through reading CVE or expected you to do that? If there's a serious vulnerability that actually needs your attention, you will read about it in the news (certainly on HN, most likely also the general news if it affects a sizable population). You will become aware of it somehow, most likely before a patch is even released. You won't need to put any time into it until it happens, and even then the mitigation (like e.g. disabling automatic MMS download here) will usually be far faster than the time to buy a new phone, set up your apps again, and move everything over. Not to mention that the phone you buy won't be updated to that very day anyway, so you'll have more upgrading to do soon after. Seriously, you're way blowing it out of proportion.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#503

Post by WatchDog »

This phone looks pretty slick, but I really wish it had a headphone jack. My 6p has some issues and needs replacement, and I want a flagship phone with a close-to-stock Android OS. The pixel 2 is ditching the headphone jack, it doesn’t seem like there are any other good choices.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#504

Post by leereeves »

IanKelling wrote: post #487
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.

Proprietary means privately owned.

Who owns Javascript? ECMA is a public standard.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#505

Post by Brakenshire »

rl3 wrote: post #479
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…

> Lasting hardware means nothing without lasting software. The Nexus 6P is a perfect example of this: https://m.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/01/google_eol_for_nexus_... I've had mine a year and a half, and it doesn't even feel close to struggling with things. Performance is great. Yet, it's going to be artificially deprived of the latest Android releases starting one month from now, and won't even receive security updat…

Lineage OS works very well with the 6P, incidentally.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#506

Post by froo »

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

I really don't understand this sentiment.

I've still got my iPhone 6 Plus. I haven't seen the need to upgrade yet. It does absolutely everything I want.

At this rate, the only reason I'm going to upgrade is if I destroy my phone somehow (I've yet to even put a major scratch on any of my smartphones over the years) or if a vendor comes out with some feature where I'm like "yeah, I could really see myself getting use out of that"

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

It's a smartphone for crying out loud. It's a platform designed for communication. Bonus points for having a camera in my pocket and some apps which help me for various tasks.

> The first actually open platform phone is the one that will have longevity.

Exactly, I feel that we're kind of getting there with all of the recent phones that have come out in the last couple of years. There's no real killer feature anyone's come out with, just nice things to have.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#507

Post by makeramen »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #443
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...

If you want to travel internationally though (and you're not on Verizon), get the Sprint SE, which has better international LTE bands.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#508

Post by _xhok »

leereeves wrote: post #504
IanKelling wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Proprietary means privately owned. Who owns Javascript? ECMA is a public standard.

I think he means the unobfuscated code is proprietary.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#509

Post by throwaway613834 »

Jaepa wrote: post #484
throwaway613834 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

re: Broadpwn: okay, so again: having upgraded every 1 year now wouldn't have helped you regarding Broadpwn as far as we're aware now, so I'm not sure what this example is supposed to show.

For StageFright: I assume by "enabled" you mean "disabled"? Yes, I've already mitigated; it took me like 30 seconds. See this comment [1]. I'm not claiming laymen would or should do this, but I wasn't making that claim originally either. I was responding to someone on HN who presumably understands something about technology and who felt guilty about buying phones and polluting the planet periodically just for the security updates. I'm saying he's most likely already more than capable enough to solve that problem without any tangible negative effects to himself. I'm doing that myself and it's working fine for me, I'm not losing any time to this at all, and I don't think I'm any better with phones than he is. It's completely possible and won't really cost you anything at all (it'll save you money and save the planet garbage); you just need to find the willpower. For a non-techy person the story might be different.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040700

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#510

Post by benclauss »

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…

Is it fast? I have a 6. In addition to the bulkier size, apps are often slow and the battery life is atrocious. I'm considering updating when the new iPhone releases in the fall.
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