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

Essential Phone, available now

essential.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 695 posts

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#601

Post by teekert »

colordrops wrote: post #422
teekert wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, what are those apps then? Also, what accessories? There's just a charger right? Supposedly Lineage runs well on them btw.

That's another annoying thing. OnePlus uses a specific type of charger, the Dash(tm) charger, so you can't just buy any random USB charging unit, or else it will take all day to charge. And the chargers are expensive. The other problem is that the screen is not flat, so you need to buy a curved screen protector. For the OnePlus 3, they've been sold out for months, and have no plans to restock them. Furthermore, there…

Hmm I charge it overnight with a slow charger, that feels like it's better for battery life time, on the other hand, when I need it quickly recharged, it's over half full in 30 min. That really changes they way you deal with charging and is worth some annoyances (which I personally don't experience) to me.

Also, the phone came with a screen protector which is still on after 1 year of use.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#602

Post by roryisok »

ariofrio wrote: post #286

Give me software updates for 7+ years, then we'll talk about buying your $700 phone. Lasting hardware means nothing without lasting software. In the meanwhile, I'll keep buying $120 phones (Moto G4 with Amazon Ads FTW) and keeping them for ~2 years until they break or software updates stop. Even though as a Catholic (Laudato Si, Rerum Novarum) it kills me to waste all those materials every couple of years and be part…

> Even though as a Catholic (Laudato Si, Rerum Novarum) it kills me to waste all those materials every couple of years and be part of the environmental degradation of our planet

It's not your Catholicism that makes you feel bad for polluting, it's your humanity. If Pope Francis turned around and said there's no climate change and we should all have tyre bonfires for christmas, would you be on-board with that?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#603

Post by roryisok »

Hasz wrote: post #338

You want fixable and well designed, long software updates, and a good price? Buy an (old) iPhone. I've got a 5S -- still perfectly fast for what I use it for (email, youtube, brokerage account, general internet, some small games), and is getting OS updates and security patches until IOS11. It's $120 on eBay; a new screen can be had for $13, a new battery for $11. it's solidly designed and there's a gigantic field of…

Those screens are so cheap, its really amazing. I fixed an old iPhone 4 and the screen cost me about €15 with shipping. I couldn't believe it.

One caveat to this though: If you do buy an old iPhone, make it at least a 5. The iPhone 4 was cut off at iOS7 and can't run most of the apps in the store as they require iOS8 or higher.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#604

Post by on_and_off »

BoorishBears wrote: post #535
patrickthebold wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I've still got my iPhone 6 Plus. Not the parent, but that's pretty new. I used a 4s earlier this year and there were several apps that couldn't be upgraded and/or stopped working.

I got my pair of Nexus 6 dev phones a month after my iPhone 6 Plus. The Nexus 6 reached it final OS update with N but the 6+ is about to get iOS 11. The iPhone 5s is about to get iOS 11. If it weren't for the 64-bit transition I wouldn't be surprised if it had gotten on the iPhone 5 as well. Apple gives about 5 years of iOS updates, which makes keeping the same phone a lot more feasible. Meanwhile my Google sourced N…

The device does not stop working after that period

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#605

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #593
steeve wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Devices become outdated because shitty vendors refuse to open source and mainline drivers for their components. YES. This one of the major reasons of the Android versions fragmentation. However, most of them don't even have mainline-able drivers. See Amlogic which got rejected because of "shitty code".

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-33/p... For some fun reading, 357 CVEs in the linux kernel in 2017, 191 of them remote root, 95%+ of the total in closed source ARM drivers. (basicly everying labeled broadcomm and qualcomm). For those keeping score, 2017 ALONE has produced 1/3rd of the linux kernel vulnerabilities ever observed. We need to demand vendors do better.

[deleted]

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#606

Post by wooter »

column wrote: post #595
leereeves wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be. It's not obfuscated > // Polyfill for creating CustomEvents on IE9/10/11 > function EmailInput(e,t,i,n){function r() but it does contain some proprietary code from GreenSock.

But is js really needed on such a page? Wouldn't css-grid do the job just fine?

id imagine the company has web apps (internal and external). why support multiple stacks for what is not even remotely close to their core competency? isomorphism, for example, is a big advantage for both maintainability, community support, and rapid delivery

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#607

Post by steeve »

mscdex wrote: post #533
steeve wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Devices become outdated because shitty vendors refuse to open source and mainline drivers for their components. YES. This one of the major reasons of the Android versions fragmentation. However, most of them don't even have mainline-able drivers. See Amlogic which got rejected because of "shitty code".

Amlogic is being supported in the mainline kernel, see the work going on for the Odroid C2 for example, which uses an Amlogic S905. See this[1] site for more information and the incoming patches page[2] for a more up-to-date view on what's being worked on. [1]: http://linux-meson.com/doku.php [2]: https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-amlogic/list/

Yes, and this is awesome, but this still ongoing and was not always the case [1] [2]. Following the "shitty code" debacle, Amlogic announced a two year effort to mainline their drivers.

[1] https://github.com/steeve/linux-amlogic

[2] http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/08/19/amlogic-releases-linu...

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#608

Post by coldtea »

column wrote: post #595
leereeves wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be. It's not obfuscated > // Polyfill for creating CustomEvents on IE9/10/11 > function EmailInput(e,t,i,n){function r() but it does contain some proprietary code from GreenSock.

But is js really needed on such a page? Wouldn't css-grid do the job just fine?

Because 1/100000 of their customers might have JS turned of?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#609

Post by on_and_off »

Pxtl wrote: post #376
ariofrio wrote: post #286

Give me software updates for 7+ years, then we'll talk about buying your $700 phone. Lasting hardware means nothing without lasting software. In the meanwhile, I'll keep buying $120 phones (Moto G4 with Amazon Ads FTW) and keeping them for ~2 years until they break or software updates stop. Even though as a Catholic (Laudato Si, Rerum Novarum) it kills me to waste all those materials every couple of years and be part…

Hah, catholic guilt and environmentalism work together so well. yeah, I feel bad for taking a similar lifetime on my phones - I wish there was a company with the kind of reputation for craftsmanship and long-term support that Apple has that would offer stock Google Android devices.

I wish that Google could start supporting that.

I am not that convinced that it is in their best interest though .. Last time I got saw numbers on this, non-geeks did not care at all about updates.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#610

Post by Joeri »

froo wrote: post #530
patrickthebold wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I've still got my iPhone 6 Plus. Not the parent, but that's pretty new. I used a 4s earlier this year and there were several apps that couldn't be upgraded and/or stopped working.

That doesn't seem to be a manufacturer issue though is it? In case of tablets, my partner is still using her iPad 2 and Netflix has a version of their app that still runs on that. The core software on her tablet, like the core software on my older phones that were given to family members still work fine. Its the 3rd party apps that seem to be abandoned by software developers. That's going to happen regardless of what…

I have an original ipad and netflix is pretty much the only thing that still works fine on that. You can't use it to browse the web anymore because web pages have gotten so heavy it runs out of memory trying to render them. The app store is also broken to the degree of being unusable, even if you could find apps. If it wasn't so locked down it would still make an excellent linux device, but as it stands it's basically a dedicated netflix viewer.

So in my view it's a bit of both. These devices could have a longer life with manufacturer support, but the app developers are the ones driving the obsolescence.

Post reply on HN