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I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

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Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#51

Post by vanilla_nut »

Jaxan wrote: post #12
tunnuz wrote: post #6

I feel your pain. I also had to give up my 2017 iPhone SE, too bad. The good thing is that I managed to change the battery myself at least 3 or 4 times, effectively extending its lease. I have since then picked up an iPhone 12 mini, which is only slightly larger and I love it.

What’s wrong with the old SE? I still use mine daily. (Indeed I had to replace the battery too.)

I held onto my 2016 SE until last month, through 3 battery changes as well.

It's no longer receiving updates to the latest iOS, and only gets limited security update backports. Sadly, it won't be long before certain crappy-but-necessary-apps like banking and 2FA auth insist on you installing an update that doesn't exist on iOS 15.

Apps increasingly don't bother testing for the 4" screen dimensions, and if you report that a button or something renders off screen, app devs dismiss your device as "legacy".

I finally got fed up jumping through hoops to make Safari bearable.

I ultimately ended up upgrading to an Xperia XZ1 Compact running Lineage 20. It's the last small android phone with a headphone jack andna flagship processor. Runs beautifully and it's actually a bit smaller than the iPhone 12/13 Minis.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#52

Post by timvisee »

mnw21cam wrote: post #36

On a similar note, I have a Motorola G8+, Android 10. It has 4GB of RAM, plenty of free space in storage, and the CPU isn't actually that bad still. The battery is in good condition. A brand new phone doesn't necessarily have any better stats. For some reason, it is slow . As in, it will still usually run apps at full speed, the framerate in a flight sim is just as high as before etc, but then it will just freeze up…

I still use my OnePlus 5 which is now (almost) 5 years old! It has 8GB of memory with Android 13 and a custom ROM.

It's still faster than some phones that are released today.

I agree though that some apps are extremely resource intensive for the sometimes seemingly things they have to do.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#53

Post by javchz »

Aachen wrote: post #10

> Feel free to skip this aside, unless you’re stingy like me. [...] If I’d buy a new phone today, I’d consider these options: It goes on to list only Apple devices. That's a bit dubious when being self-proclaimed stingy. One might recommend an off-brand device for a fifth of the price that will last half as long, or a competing brand for half the price that lasts just as long. Perhaps longer if you're interested in d…

Sadly vendor lock it's a hard pill to swallow by design, making the switch harder. Most people already have a lot of apps purchased, exclusive messaging apps, or workflows that are too embedded into a platform.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#54

Post by medstrom »

dncornholio wrote: post #13
terhechte wrote: post #8

If they want to use an old phone, they can just stop updating their apps and not installing new apps. I still own a iPad 3 with the same, old, software stack from 2013. It still works, I can do things. I just don't expect todays developers to make a herculean effort so that I can run their apps on my old device. It is not just the overhead of supporting multiple different OS versions with different technologies, it i…

Hard agree. I was happy running old iOS. Until my banking app required me to upgrade my phone. If it wasn't for this, I'd still be running with my iPhone 7. I also used my Samsung S2 way beyond reasonable terms, think maybe 6 years I have used that one and it was still perfectly usable when I switched to iPhone. It's my festival phone now.

That's interesting, someone I know just upgraded to the iPhone 7. It's got iOS 15, which is just behind the current iOS 16.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#55

Post by ericabiz »

I run phone repair shops and the app starting up slowness is often caused by a failing battery.

In fact, at our shops, on older iPhones, I can test the battery state by opening the camera app. If it takes 10-20 seconds to open, it’s usually the battery causing it. (The other cause is storage being close to full.)

This won’t help the app resetting issue, which the author correctly identifies as a RAM problem (that I also encounter on my personal iPhone 13 Pro. Apple is horribly stingy with RAM even on the Pro models.)

In general, if you use your phone daily, I recommend getting the battery replaced every 2-2.5 years.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#56

Post by ClumsyPilot »

terhechte wrote: post #8

If they want to use an old phone, they can just stop updating their apps and not installing new apps. I still own a iPad 3 with the same, old, software stack from 2013. It still works, I can do things. I just don't expect todays developers to make a herculean effort so that I can run their apps on my old device. It is not just the overhead of supporting multiple different OS versions with different technologies, it i…

> I also don't expect to be able to run VSCode on a 1996 Pentium 60.

You don't?

I can run VsCode on my laptop from 2005. I dont have anything older, but Debian does run on servers from 2005, and can probably run VsCode

Sure, mobile phones changes a lot between 2005 and 2015.

But in the past 5 years there hasn't been much progress

This sits with OS first and foremost, and we do this shit because we can get away with it.

We will have to change, this isnt sustainable

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#57

Post by lordnacho »

gambiting wrote: post #45

Yeah I have an iPad Mini 2(from 2014!) Which works absolutely fine - it even still receives security updates from apple. I thought it would be a great tablet for my kid to watch cartoons on, but nope, even though you can download the latest version of Netflix and Disney+ both apps just crash after 5-10 minutes of playback. And I'm guessing there's no one at either company interested in fixing this. I've restored the…

I have old tablets that are barely able to show a clock app, which is essentially the last thing they can be used for. Every single thing you try to do with it is slow as molasses.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#58

Post by jon889 »

Says it's a perfectly functioning phone and then lists how it's not because it's old and got worn out. apps requiring later versions is an issue but the % of people on old iOS versions is really quite small. It makes no sense to waste development time on implementing something for <1% of customers on iOS 14, when you could use a newer API in one line of code.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#59

Post by londons_explore »

mnw21cam wrote: post #36

On a similar note, I have a Motorola G8+, Android 10. It has 4GB of RAM, plenty of free space in storage, and the CPU isn't actually that bad still. The battery is in good condition. A brand new phone doesn't necessarily have any better stats. For some reason, it is slow . As in, it will still usually run apps at full speed, the framerate in a flight sim is just as high as before etc, but then it will just freeze up…

This is caused by the emmc storage inside getting slower due to wearing out. emmc firmwares are universally crap at wear levelling, so after a few years use a card that could read/write data at 200 Mbytes/sec before might now be as low as 2 Mbytes per second for reading the most read/written sectors.

The effect is compounded by the fact that modern apps are larger, taking up more RAM and flash storage. That in turn means the emmc has to work much harder - since there will be less free RAM for caching, there will be far more random reads.

The overall effect is a huge storage slowdown that makes the device unusable.

Re: I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one

#60

Post by idontwantthis »

terhechte wrote: post #8

If they want to use an old phone, they can just stop updating their apps and not installing new apps. I still own a iPad 3 with the same, old, software stack from 2013. It still works, I can do things. I just don't expect todays developers to make a herculean effort so that I can run their apps on my old device. It is not just the overhead of supporting multiple different OS versions with different technologies, it i…

I wonder if you could run modern Vim/Emacs or if even they are too resource hungry by now.
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