Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

kooslooijesteijn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 300 posts

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

#101

Post by creshal »

ericabiz wrote: post #55

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 a…

> Apple is horribly stingy with RAM even on the Pro models.

6 gigabytes of RAM on a phone is hardly stingy, when laptops with 8 gigabytes are still considered reasonable.

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

#102

Post by hpaavola »

jon889 wrote: post #58

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.

Apps don't support older OS versions -> Nobody uses old OS -> No point supporting old OS as nobody uses those -> Apps don't support older OS versions -> ...

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

#103

Post by LtWorf »

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…

> If they want to use an old phone, they can just stop updating their apps and not installing new apps.

Here in Sweden taxi and public transport apps need to be kept up to date or they stop working.

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

#104

Post by puika »

When it comes to phones, I tend to stick to lower-mid range ones that I know allow custom ROMs and have a certain community behind it and somewhat well supported. For instance I am running Android 12 on a 2016 ZUK Z2 shipped with 7, and if we ignore battery life and decreased performance it's still like having a new phone now. Same thing for my Redmi note 7 with Android 13. I cannot say the same for my iPad Air 2 from 2015, stuck on iOS 12 since I don't even know when, and can barely use it for anything apart from youtube and (supported) websites.

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

#105

Post by volleygman180 »

Apple is to blame, honestly. Android at least releases support libraries to allow older devices to receive more patches as well as some newer platform features. This is unheard of on Apple's platforms. If Apple changes any code, then they simply push out a new version - if a framework has bugs since iOS 12 and they've fixed it, the fix will only rollout for iOS 16+ users and leave everyone else behind. Security updates are the one exception, but Apple is capable of much more. The company continues to step away from being a steward of good technology.

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

#106

Post by pcdoodle »

This makes me wonder if some people don't even get into writing software because of how ephemeral our platforms are today.

"Not worth it." "This work will have to be redone every few years now."

I still use 10+ year old software and hardware for getting very cool things done, and it really put things into perspective.

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

#107

Post by mnw21cam »

londons_explore wrote: post #59
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 m…

Is there an app that can tell me the wear stats from the storage device? A bit of googling tells me that a service called storaged processes them, but I can't immediately find an app that does this.

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

#108

Post by popol12 »

Reason077 wrote: post #74

C’mon, he’s still using a phone from 2016 (which was the low-end model even in 2016), and by his own admission it’s still pretty usable for most things. I think that’s a pretty good run. All the Android users I know have been through at least 3 or 4 phones in that period. And so have some of the iPhone users who obsessively upgrade every 2 years even though they don’t need to! (Typing this on an iPhone X from 2017…)

It wasn't low end ! It was released with the same flagship SoC that was inside the last iPhone released (iPhone 7)

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

#110

Post by thr717272 »

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.

My Samsung S2 was the last Android phone I was happy with.

Every one I personally owned since that was either janky or pulled some stupid tricks on system updates or something.

Post reply on HN