Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone • Hacker News Board

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#451

Post by bionade24 » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:27 PM UTC

ryukafalz wrote: post #382

dmix wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't complain about availability of phones (or any electronics) while being in the US. Try living anywhere else like Canada.

We have decent variety in the US, but I think it's fair to want phones for specific purposes that aren't generally served here. The more repairable phones are hard to come by, and as someone who likes trying alternative OSes the phones that seem best served by e.g. Ubuntu Touch (Volla Phone and Fairphone) aren't available.

There are plenty devices that work well with UT and are available in the US, e.g Google Pixel 3a/3a XL. Mentioned devices still have an Android Kernel and many limitations. Waydroid on the Volla phone isn't stable, Ubports itself mediocre compared to SailfishOS and suffers from competing for developer time over other Linux on Mobile OSses.

You're overestimating the Volla phone and Fairphone, 1st one still doesn't support VoLTE which I heard is essential in the US, 2nd thing isn't even recommended by UT.[1]

Either go with an Xperia + SailfishOS [2] if you want more than a toy or Pinephone + PmOs [3] if you love to tinker on your daily driver. Both have VoLTE support.

1. https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/

2. https://shop.jolla.com/

3. https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/PINE64_PinePhone_(pine64-...

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#452

Post by smoldesu » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:28 PM UTC

nextos wrote: post #423

willhslade wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to wade into this flamewar but I will say one thing. Apple is what it says on the tin. It's a curated garden that mostly just works. At a certain point in your life and your career you don't have weekends to spare on side projects and, especially in the tools that you use the most to interact with the Internet (phone, laptop) you want it to work the first time. I've flirted with Linux and for what it is…

> [...] hunting down drivers not working This sounds like a really outdated opinion about Linux. If you make a little effort selecting decently supported hardware, everything should work out of the box. I actually use Linux (NixOS) because for my particular usecases, maintenance burden is lower than macOS.

You don't even need Linux to confirm this for yourself. Nix on Mac is a smoother package management experience than any of the Mac-native ones I've tried.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#453

Post by dang » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:28 PM UTC

Klonoar wrote: post #438

dang wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's tedious, not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm pointing out that the comment is inviting a flame war, and that it's natural to compare things to the elephant in the room.

The GP was obvious flamebait and I replied to it with a scolding. But your comment was also flamebait. It's important not to reply with more of the same—that's how we get a downward spiral.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#454

Post by paulmd » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #56

gandalfian wrote: post #30

Shame no compass or gyroscope, both of which I value. I hope the idea catches on though the toolkit looks suspiciously like ever other mobiles. Lift screen with sucker while prying with pick. Then unscrew battery and admittedly wrestle with glue... Still a way from the old fashioned, pop off the plastic back and lift the battery straight out in 20 seconds.

I worked for a client in 2019 which wanted to make something similar to what Nokia is doing now. They wanted a barebones, no effort to catch up to top competitor phone, with more practicality, and everyday convenience in mind than putting in 10ghz CPU inside a phone. We went for a year, and bang... Google probably seen client's PR, and banned Android phones without a superfluous gycoscope/accelerometer/etc stuff. We…

In fairness though I had an android phone from 2014 with no gyroscope and it was a problem. Accelerometer, gyro, and GPS are all complimentary features that are used to keep each other calibrated. That phone was absolutely terrible in cities (NYC and LA) because the GPS would get confused by GPS signals echoing off skyscrapers, and all of a sudden it decides you're randomly bouncing around 1/4 mile going random speeds and directions. Navigation was unusable in dense cities.

Going without a gyro or accelerometer is fine under normal conditions because you've got 2-of-3 so you can synthesize the output from the remaining sensor (my phone had synthetic gyro). But once you lose GPS fix you've lost your last degree-of-freedom and the only remaining sensor is the accelerometer, at which point the system goes into gimbal lock and the platform loses its fix.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#455

Post by dzhiurgis » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #300

dzhiurgis wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since last year their phones have best ranking https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability (Yes Fairphone have excellent score too, but they are basically ancient)

Not sure how you read that as the best ranking. Only among flagship phones, which is a market where repairability is largely an afterthought. Fairphone is a repairable budget phone. You can't compare budget to flagship on performance or modernity of the hardware. That makes no sense.

TBF Fairphone will be far likely to break over the isolated iPhone 13. Add the lack of software support and it’s far more expensive to own.

All that said, bend it whichever way you like and this Nokia’s value is impossible to beat.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#456

Post by lucakiebel » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:30 PM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #439

Does anyone notice the irony of it being partly repairable, while offering just three years of security updates, after which you basically have to throw the thing away? The repairability sounds nice, but it is very irrelevant compared to the limited software updates. Imagine buying a Windows laptop and only receiving three years of security updates. (I know, most other phones aren't better.) It would have been better…

Yes, though they can always make it easy to run a custom rom and rely on the community for (security) updates

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#457

Post by 999900000999 » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:35 PM UTC

peterlk wrote: post #391

And it comes with a 3mm headphone jack! Hallelujah!! I’m so, so glad someone is stepping up to fill this niche. My only complaint, and it’s kind if a big one, is that the screen is too damn big. I’m tired of phone manufacturers forcing me to carry a television in my pocket. I want something small that I can hold in one hand without a pop socket. I’ll trade performance, camera quality, basically anything for a phone w…

Plenty of jacks if you know where to look. Midrange phones like the Moto G line still have them.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#458

Post by lolinder » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:36 PM UTC

lucakiebel wrote: post #456

cubefox wrote: post #439

Does anyone notice the irony of it being partly repairable, while offering just three years of security updates, after which you basically have to throw the thing away? The repairability sounds nice, but it is very irrelevant compared to the limited software updates. Imagine buying a Windows laptop and only receiving three years of security updates. (I know, most other phones aren't better.) It would have been better…

Yes, though they can always make it easy to run a custom rom and rely on the community for (security) updates

Custom rom support would be helpful for a very niche audience, but it's not something that's going to make a dent in e-waste at all. I'm a pretty tech savvy user who runs Linux on my desktop and I'm too intimidated to try a custom ROM on my phone. The average Nokia customer isn't going to even know it's an option, much less be willing to take the plunge.

If Nokia is serious about fighting e-waste they need to provide a longer lifecycle of updates.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#459

Post by paulmd » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:40 PM UTC

solarkraft wrote: post #397

IceWreck wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a 150 EUR phone, what more do you expect >

At least 5 years of updates. So much so that I think it should probably be legally mandated and clearly marketed as the device's life span.

Yes, EU needs to step in and deal with the software lifespan problems on Android just as they have with ports and repairability on Apple. It is obvious that this is a market failure leading to negative social outcomes (e-waste) and phone vendors clearly are not going to deal with it on their own.

This really should be from date-of-purchase and not date-of-launch as well. Otherwise you're leaving refurbished phones out in the cold too. We should be encouraging refurbishment and not giving those users a worse experience - if anything the law should attempt to favor them, they're doing the thing we want.

Requiring bootloader unlock when support ceases is another fantastic idea someone pointed out - and that one will hit Apple too honestly. But if you're not going to support the thing then at least let someone else do it.

Re: Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone

#460

Post by lucb1e » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:40 PM UTC

abliefern wrote: post #358

IceWreck wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a 150 EUR phone, what more do you expect >

I expect manufacturers not to offer bad options like a 150 € phone with 3 years of updates. Give me a 200€ phone with 5 years? Or a 10€ service fee per year of updates.

The problem is: you and ten other persons might genuinely pay for that after three years (also considering the specs of this thing). In silicon valley, I suspect devs can't open up their env for that money and still put food on the table in the evening after paying for their morning outdoor coffee and rent.

I'm curious how much work honestly goes into these updates, though. How many patches do they maintain on top of Android that security updates would cause them to need to fix their patches again? Or how many parts of Android are even changed by those updates in a given month? I don't really have any idea of either proportion. How much money would it require us to pool to get one month longer security updates? One year?

May be something to ask Fairphone, they seem like the type of business that might be willing to share this for the purpose of pressuring the market to offer the support after a successful crowdfunding campaign.