101–110 of 474 posts
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Hosted on a dubious server with no guarantee at all there is no malware in it.
I trust the community on XDA composed of actual users and developers who are also users, more than the faceless corporation whose profit largely comes from extracting as much of your personal information as possible and monetising it.
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Apple has allowed you to download the last compatible version for years - that ability goes as far back as at least iOS 5 that came out in 2012.
Sure, but will (networked) apps still work? Is it possible to download apps for previous versions still? If you can revert OS but can't run netflix/facebook/whatever then it's not very useful.
Apple's productivity apps (Pages,Numbers, and Keynote) also still work and sync with iCloud.
On the other hand, I also rediscovered an old first generation iPod Touch (iOS 3). Nothing that requires network access except for the built in apps still works.
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Apple has allowed you to download the last compatible version for years - that ability goes as far back as at least iOS 5 that came out in 2012.
Sure, but will (networked) apps still work? Is it possible to download apps for previous versions still? If you can revert OS but can't run netflix/facebook/whatever then it's not very useful.
With current and older devices working perfectly well, and new devices being even less serviceable and more user-hostile with greater efforts towards planned obolescence, is it any wonder that people just aren't "upgrading" any more? I don't consider this a problem, but a sign of an ecosystem that is gaining stability. In fact I'd say it's even better, from an e-waste perspective, that the amount of churn has decreas…
Example: Last time I updated my iPhone, the music app got an update and now they are trying to shove iCloud down my throat. Not to mention needless UI changes when I was more than satisfied with how it was before.
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Hmm. It's all Google's fault. I don't have to wait for the manufacturer to update my Windows PC. Heck I was able to install Windows 7 on a Mac Mini without any support from Apple. Not to mention I updated a 9 year old Dell Core 2 Duo to Windows 10.
Windows has mostly kept a stable driver API. And whenever they broke that API, that actually happened — suddenly updates stopped being usable by your system. Also, be aware that ARM has nothing to enumerate devices, has no BISO or UEFI. An OS image will only ever work on a single device. As I detailed in another comment in this thread, the issue is this collision of the Linux concept of mainlining everything, short s…
Isn’t that the purpose of a device tree?
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Security, basically. If you care about your privacy, you should care about security (can't have one with the other). You need updated phone for that.
I have a rooted device, so I can basically make apps do what I want and stop them from doing what I don't want. IMHO that's far better than Google's vision of "security" where they want to be in control and even consider the user an attacker.
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did you see the new AndroidOne phones? google does updates for them and they are quite affordable. The Moto one is $400-ish and Xiaomi is $200-ish
As a developer, I need a device that gets Android DevPreview releases, so I can see it my apps work on real hardware before users will try them. (The emulator sucks, and you never know if a bug is caused by the emulator or the app). Currently that's tonly the Pixels, which sell between $900 and $1300 in Germany.
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The real problem with it is Linux. Here's a few facts: The Kernel has no stable ABI for drivers. Manufacturers only ever develop a driver for their chips once, and then send that to the OEM. They never update. The Linux Kernel LTS gets 2 years of updates, Google's fork about 4. From the day a Kernel is released, to the day it ships in a phone, usually 2 years are spent integrating the blobs and code drops from the ch…
That's only a problem because they're keeping driver support closed. If they contributed a driver for their hardware upstream it would be maintained (by others) as the internal interfaces and standards change. Whenever a security issue or design change happened, their driver would also get updated and fixed with the rest of the kernel. What the hardware manufacturers SHOULD do is create hardware with a well defined c…
For example, SAMSUNG might build your device, and get all of their own code openly.
But now for the US model, due to CDMA, they need to use a Qualcomm processor.
That needs a blob, and Qualcomm won't release that under an open license, nor update it.
So the OEM can either just not have CDMA support, or accept foreign blobs.
It works like this all way down the stack, down to even camera chips.
And then these devices all have custom hardware. Often hundreds of customly designed parts, with custom drivers, only ever for a single device.
Think of the Moto Z Play, withthe replacable components. Samsung phones with facial scanners. LG phones with 3D display.
One-off features that'd never get mainlined.
I've got a 7 or 8 year old Google Nexus phone. Google stopped updating the OS 5 years ago. The only impact I've noticed is that newer apps won't run on and older OS. For me, however, that really isn't a problem since I use it for making and receiving calls and texts, and checking my email. Right now, I'm in no hurry to lay out hundreds for a new phone, Apple or Android, that will be obsoleted in just a couple years w…
The only impact? You are a walking vulnerability. KRACK, Blueborne, just to name a few recently highly publicized vulnerabilities. You are like the perfect exploit, just waiting to get pwned. You are, Bill Harper.
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Windows has mostly kept a stable driver API. And whenever they broke that API, that actually happened — suddenly updates stopped being usable by your system. Also, be aware that ARM has nothing to enumerate devices, has no BISO or UEFI. An OS image will only ever work on a single device. As I detailed in another comment in this thread, the issue is this collision of the Linux concept of mainlining everything, short s…
> Also, be aware that ARM has nothing to enumerate devices, ... Isn’t that the purpose of a device tree?