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The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

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Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having spent some time reading Qualcomm/broadcom/mediatek patches, I don't really consider any Android phone to be secure against anything more than script kiddies. If you want security, you go iPhone or no-phone. There are 'security by obscurity' benefits to having a minor brand though, simply because the attacker will probably have to adapt the exploit rather than use it straight off the shelf.

Please elaborate more about security. What can be so seriously wrong on non-rooted device?

Qualcomm and Mediatek drivers are an absolute mess. Look at any hardware driver and there'll probably be a couple of buffer overflows right there. There will be lots of world read/writeable devices in /dev, and many of which any random app can write a magic string to enable some debug feature, execute some code, probe some physical memory address, or anything else unwanted.

A few years back, Google got annoyed with them for clearly having nobody review any of the code, and they tidied up the worst loopholes (making it harder for apps to directly communicate with device drivers and native vendor extensions), but there are loads left for anyone happy to spend some time looking.

I would consider Android phones reasonably secure if you're browsing the web, but for there to be very little security from a malicious app.

Google contents that "there can't be any malicious apps because we scan all the code in the store", but we all know that scanning for evil code is snakeoil and it's easy to make an app which only reveals it's evil functions when not running on a "NEXUS 5 (emulated)" as googles scanner uses.

Broadcom isn't as bad, but they mistakenly open sourced a lot of their firmware years ago, and still use most of that code today, so finding bugs is far easier considering their hardware doesn't do ASLR, DEP, stack canaries, or any modern code protection method.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As much as I wanted to love the iPhone SE, it always felt like last year’s model. It wasn’t a differentiated product that had a proper update cycle. A lot of people in the community were hoping for a proper update to the SE. I have an SE and appearance aside I disagree. It had the guts of the current model including touch id and performs quite well for me. Now, sure, it feels a little bit left behind. Maybe. It's s…

> It had the guts of the current model including touch id IIRC iPhone SE does not have the second generation Touch ID sensor that iPhone 6s does.

Yeah the SE doesn't have the updated reader, the haptic system or 3D touch. Having gone back and forth between my SE and a 7 for work, I really only miss the 3D touch.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, my iphone says it is an MG5W2LL/A whatever the hell that is.

It’s an iPhone 6. You’ll notice that Apple will market it that way, instead of by its model number.

Specifically, a 16 GB Space Gray model

https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Models

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#344

I recently got a Umidigi A3 Pro [1] as my main phone. It's an iPhone X clone for $85. Is it as good? No. But it's nearly as good, and has the flexibility of Android (tethering when the carrier doesn't allow it, side loading 'dodgy' apps, multi-sim so I can always get coverage even indoors, hackable headphone volume, call recording without hassle). Overall, I'd value the iPhone and fake iPhone the same for my uses. An…

Honestly I'm shocked that my phone could disallow me tethering just because some third-party operator told him so, without any technical reasons. I paid my money to Apple, they got their salary from my money, yet they don't respect my freedom. The same with recording the calls. It's an extremely basic feature which is present in almost any Android phone AFAIK. That's what I don't like about iPhones, they have no resp…

You're complaining that your carrier doesn't allow tethering without paying up and Apple enforcing it as being Apple's fault? That's your carrier's fault.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#345
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the 5s got iOS 12 is more of an exception than the rule. The 5 stopped at iOS 10, and the 4s stopped at iOS 9, so the general trend should have stopped the 5s at 11.

Aren't Apple OS updates typically tied to actual hardware constraints (vs a x-year obsolescence cycle)? With the 5 and iOS10, Apple stopped supported 32-bit hardware, right? I don't recall a time where Apple just said "that phone is too old and slow" - it's always been "that phone doesn't have [hardware architecture X]". Point being, the cycle isn't known. The iPhone 7 could be supported for many years. Or, hardware…

If that was true, the 3GS, 4 and 4S should also have gotten iOS 10.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#346

Apple's problem is that their rate of innovation has slowed down. iPhone generates over a 100 Billion dollars in revenue. Per year. If any company has the resources to innovate it is Apple. Apple, here are some free ideas. Some of these ideas go beyond the phone and into cell networks. If Google can do that ( https://fi.google.com ) why can't Apple? - Improve cellular reception. We are now heavily reliant on our cell…

>Fix design. Fire Jony Ive's a$$ and hire some real designers. I think that's almost certainly unfair on Ive. I do strongly suspect that Apple has a culture problem because of the secretive nature of their design lab. A very small team working in absolute secrecy enabled them to create disruptive new categories of product, but it carries a substantial risk of stagnation in the long term. It's difficult to sustain a c…

I don't know anything about what's actually going on, but it seems to me that any contribution by Ive has been seriously diluted. How much time did he spend on Apple Park? That's years of non-focus on products, right? Lately, he's working on diamond rings[0]. I'm happy for him doing whatever he wants to do; he's earned that. But Apple does seem to have lost design mojo, and it looks like a lack of leadership is part of the problem.

[0] https://www.dezeen.com/2018/11/16/jony-ive-diamond-ring-marc...

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#347

Apple's problem is that their rate of innovation has slowed down. iPhone generates over a 100 Billion dollars in revenue. Per year. If any company has the resources to innovate it is Apple. Apple, here are some free ideas. Some of these ideas go beyond the phone and into cell networks. If Google can do that ( https://fi.google.com ) why can't Apple? - Improve cellular reception. We are now heavily reliant on our cell…

How about some more sensors. No phone can tell me the temperature, without checking weather online. What if I want to know the room temperature. Could put humidity, atmospheric pressure sensors in there too, IR cameras, all kinds of cool stuff. Think of the software applications, right know my "smart" phone has no way of knowing if I'm outside or inside. Then, voice mail. Why doesn't this still not work locally? Ther…

I've felt that expensive (> $300) phones should have more than basic functionality for a while now.

In fact it does work the other way: for less than 300 euros, you can get a totally _normal, functional_ phone. See moto c plus, moto g line, moto e line, wileyfox spark x.

For more than 300 euros, you get essentially the same phone with a slightly better camera, which I suspect is mostly (custom) software doing the hard work. Or alternatively you get a finally FOSS device, which I understand pushes the price up.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#348

I must confess I don't know the difference between the iPhone X, XR, XS, XS Max. It all seems very confused and stinks of marketing getting their claws into it. It was simple when they were numbered sequentially. Now I wonder if there will ever be an iPhone 11 as that suggests there can't be a premium on the iPhone X* as people will poo-poo that.

Three of these are easy to understand, especially if you know anything at all about how Apple has been naming iPhones since the beginning of the product line. The fourth is the XR. Which is, as TFA indicates, a head-scratcher of a product.

Oh right I see it now. Thanks.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competing on price is not in Apple's DNA and that's a good thing for a company that obsesses on providing top end user experience. But eventually all products and innovations become commoditized and providing differentiation becomes harder every day. A primary thing that has kept Apple alive 'n kicking is establishing new product categories and exploit first mover advantage to the fullest. Mac > iPhone > iPad > Watch…

> and that's a good thing for a company that obsesses on providing top end user experience Do they actually do that though? Feels like BOM reduction exercises like removing the short power cable from their $3000 laptops and headphone dongles from their $1000 phone, laptops still shipping with painfully low space that triggers space warnings on their OS after you add just a few files to them (complete nightmare if you…

Agreed, GF has an iphone 8.

I have a Nokia 6.1 (the black copper one).

Side by side if I knew nothing about either I'd be hard pressed to tell which was the 800 quid phone and which was the 200 quid phone.

Throw in AndroidOne and recent Android and the experience is largely similar, I mean sure the processor in hers would murder mine in a benchmark but in real world use do I ever care about it, they feel equally fast on a human time scale (and I have a better adblocker).

There was a time that putting an iphone next to a 200 quid phone would have been a laughable comparison not so much anymore.

Re: The Phone That’s Failing Apple: iPhone XR

#350
Remember Gateway computer stores in the 90s?

they behaved as if people were replacing their computers every year.

We are simply seeing that pattern again. there is simply no need to upgrade my iphone8, it works well, it does all that I need. I hope to have it for several years.

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