Other than your carrier give it for free or cheap, I don’t really see the reason why should you buy new phone. I’ve been using Redmi Note 9 for past 3 years and recently got my had on Poco F5. I don’t see the point of my ‘upgrade’. I sold it and come back to my Note 9. Gaming? Most of them are p2w or microtransaction garbage or just gimped version of its PC/Console counterpart. I mean, $400 still get you PS4, TV and Switch if you don’t mind buying used. At least here where I live. Storage? Dude, newer phone wont even let you have SD Card. Features? Well, all I see is newer phones take more features than it adds. Headphone jack, more ads, and repairability are to name a few. Battery? Just replace them. However, my Note 9 still get through day with one 80% charge in the dawn. Which takes 1 hour.
I am genuinely curious why newer phone always selling like hot cakes. Since there’s virtually no difference between 4gb of RAM and 12gb of RAM, or 12mp camera and 100mp camera on phone.
I mean, most of the population isn’t buying a new phone every year, it’s just that there are enough people using phones in general that at any given time there are people buying new models. It’s the same reason why there are people buying cars every year.
I personally use my phones for about 3 years. Sometimes up to 4, but usually year 3-4 is when the battery degradation gets so horribly bad and performance stutters so much that I figure if I’m going to do a full reset and buy a new battery and all that, I might as well get a new phone.
See thats where im with OP.
Lots of people do switch every 1-2 years.
And swapping a battery costs idk 40€ and an afternoon, full reset costs nothing and takes 20 minutes. Why would i generate that much trash and spend a thousand bucks on the latest shit thats 99% the same instead?
Capitalism and Marketing, bro.
I had a 4 year old phone that I had to charge twice a day. I figuered I switch the battery with an official branded replacement which had costed around 100€. The difference between the old and new battery were unnoticable and I still had to charge the phone twice a day.
Perhaps the replacement battery was manufactured a while ago?
tough luck. Sounds like it was straining to keep up with background apps / OS updates rather than a broken battery.
Guess trouble shooting is half the battle in these cases.IPhone maybe? I know they restrict your battery capacity with software as your phone ages, so the short lifespan has nothing to do with the actual condition of the battery. Iirc some other brands do it to, but I don’t know which ones.
It‘s the other way around. Capacity decreases on its own just through usage. What Apple (and other manufacturers, as you said) does is decrease clock speeds of the CPU and RAM to make degraded batteries last longer. Basically trading performance for battery life. And that feature should deactivate automatically if the device senses a new battery being put in. At least it did with my old iPhone 6S.
Not charging my old phone to 100%, rather to 85% or 90% has helped with battery longevity immensely. After almost 5 years in use, accubattery still shows 80% battery health, and even if that’s not accurate, it still lasts quite a while. The SD625 that phone had was very sluggish though, so in the end I still replaced it
I used to do that, but it was a chore to keep monitoring my battery life. I wish there were a “charge phone to 80% and stop” option.
My samsung has the feature built in, but on that old phone I rooted and installed Advanced Charge Controller. (Not feasible for most people i know)
Samsung phones let you restrict the battery percentage to 85 percent. I think Apple does the same now.
Because they welded the one consumable that needs replacement to force you to buy new every few years: the battery
Luckily for us Americans, the Europeans have their head on straight and can force companies to fix this by the end of the decade. So that’ll be nice at least
welded??
Probably soldered.
I don’t think a phone where the battery is welded to the body exists.
I know you’re probably being hyperbolic, but sealing a phone’s body construction to make it waterproof is very different from ‘welding’ the battery in.
Gaskets, o-rings, and screws exist. The waterproof argument is a weak one that doesn’t hold water. There’s no reason why it needs to be glued together and past phones have had waterproofing with a removable back and replaceable battery.
I’ve had a waterproof phone with a removable battery. It’s not crazy. Within the last 6 years or so even
Samsung galaxy s5 👍
Yeah I’m sure you’re more informed of the engineering trade-offs with regard to smartphone manufacturing than literally every major smartphone manufacturer.
Yeah I’m sure phone companies communicate engineering truth to us, and not what their marketing departments find most in their interest.
Of course they don’t, I’m not saying anything about what phone companies communicate, I’m talking about what they do.
The smartphone market is extremely competitive, they are very highly motivated to find the most efficient way to engineer a device that maximizes consumers’ purchasing preferences.
A world class product team produces a design that matches customers’ preferences according to world class market research. World class engineers figure out how to maximize features that satisfy those preferences. That virtually always involves trade-offs.
When one company does a better job of maximizing features that match consumer demands, their market share goes up.
When a company focuses on maximizing features that a vocal minority of users want, they struggle to move units.
It’s not some conspiracy to provide inferior products, it’s just capitalism being capitalism. Companies make what people will buy.
Marketers do not just passively give users what they already want. They also manipulate what users want. This isn’t some conspiracy theory, the marketing discipline is quite open about this. When something is in the interest of the company making more profit, they convince users that it is in their own interest. This is just capitalism being capitalism. Not being able to easily replace your battery is as clear an example of such a thing as you could ask for.
Except it’s not, you just live in an echo chamber where people endlessly repeat the misconception that the average consumer as any interest in replacing their own battery. They don’t. Marketers aren’t manipulating millions of people into thinking they don’t, either.
If companies like Apple wanted to force people to upgrade, all they would have to do is stoop to the level of the competition by not offering 6 years of OS upgrades on new phones. Or they could not offer first-party, warrantied battery replacements for ~90 dollars. Honestly, apple constantly goes out of their way to make their devices last longer than the competition, and still the bigbrains on Internet forums walk around with their heads in the sand.
You go ahead and do you homie, nobody is going to be able to change your mind from something you’re so desperate to believe.
Implying manufacturers want us to be able to repair our devices more easily yet can’t design them that way because of some impossible feat of engineering required to add an o-ring and some screws? Give me a break dude. None of this is groundbreaking territory.
That’s not what I’m implying at all.
Manufacturers want to give consumers a device that meets consumers’ purchasing requirements better than their competitors’ products do.
They only want us to be able to repair our phones inasmuch as consumers will buy more easily repairable phones instead of more tightly sealed phones, which is absolutely not the case. Sealed phones consistently sell waaay more than non-sealed phones, likely because they can be slightly thinner with marginally larger batteries. Every once in a while an OEM will release a phone that has a hot-swappable battery, but nobody outside of niche online electronics communities cares.
What I’m debating is the idea that there’s some nefarious conspiracy to withhold hot-swappable batteries from consumers to force them to upgrade their phones. That’s ridiculous. OEMs make sealed phones instead of easily disassemblable phones because consumers buy sealed phones instead of disassemblable ones when given the choice.
And it’s not that hard to figure out why, honestly. Personally, I would rather take my phone to an Apple Store and have them swap the battery for what I can be certain is an OEM replacement for $90 than spend $50 on eBay on a probably fake battery, take time out of my day to swap it myself, and assume the liability in the event of an improper seal. And consumer purchasing patterns show that I’m in the company of the majority of phone buyers in the US.
Sealed phones consistently sell waaay more than non-sealed phones
OEMs make sealed phones instead of easily disassemblable phones because consumers buy sealed phones instead of disassemblable ones when given the choice.
Give some examples of the phones you’re referring to here because I’d bet you’re referring to recent phones like the XCover Pro which use ancient hardware that appeals to nobody.
For 30 years, manufacturers sold phones with replaceable batteries and consumers gobbled them all up with nobody demanding that they instead glue phones together.
You claim phones are thinner when glued yet my Note 4 from 2014 is thinner than my current Galaxy S21 Ultra even though the former had a removable back and replacable battery.
The reason why they’ve all gone to sealed phones is because they ran out of innovative ideas years ago with the yearly release cycle and have now resorted to raising revenue by making phones harder to repair yourself, removing accessories, locking down firmware, and building them with more fragile materials. It’s the same enshittification that we’re now seeing in social media and streaming services. Don’t fall for the marketing propaganda that these companies are pushing because it’s all bullshit.
My guy, you’ve got absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and it’s embarrassing.
Manufacturers used to sell phones that you had to have plugged into the wall at your house, and consumers gobbled them up. The market has innovated, and now consumers expect something different. How is “consumers used to buy x when it was all that was available so obviously they must prefer it over y” anywhere close to a rational argument?
My claim was that phones are thinner with bigger batteries. Your s21 ultra has a 5000 mAh battery, the note 4 had 3200 mAh battery. The s21 ultra has a much bigger battery in a smaller footprint.
The smartphone market is insanely competitive, if any manufacturer were deliberately making their phones worse, other manufacturers would be capitalizing on that and taking their market share. Phones are easier to repair today than they were 3-5 years ago, you can check out the ifixit repairability scores if you want. Phone firmware is no more locked down now than it has been in the past, unless you’re specifically talking about how much worst modern pixels are than they and nexus’s were in the past. I don’t know about Androids since 2020, since that’s when I switched, but the steel bezels and flat glass on iPhones since the 12 pro make them FAR more durable than any phone I’ve used. Haven’t had my phone in a case for 3 years, and there have been a handful of times it’s fallen out of my pocket while getting into my truck. The stainless bezel doesn’t deform like aluminum, so side impacts aren’t transferred to the glass. Countless drop tests corroborate this.
You think phones are getting worse because you want to think that, despite the objective reality. You personally want a feature set that’s not widely popular, and you’re mad about it. Which I actually totally get.
They’ve been a “not user serviceable” component since before phones got water proofing.
Additionally plenty of things can be disassembled with screws and such, that are waterproof… Watches come to mind.
The fact that they’re making it impossible for we the people and owners of the products, to change the battery isn’t a technological limitation, nor a practical one. They did it so people will be forced to seek help to get a new battery, at which time, the vendor/carrier/whomever, can simply upsell the end user.
They did it to sell more phones. If you believe anything other than that, I have some land in Alaska to sell you.
Yeah, of course they did it to sell more phones. Phone OEMs sell more units when the units are as compact and water/dust proof as possible. Sealing phones with adhesive maximizes both of those metrics, with virtually no (non-hypothetical) trade-off to the vast majority of users.
Maximizing profits by maximizing the characteristics of smartphones that customers care about is not only a perfect explanation for sealed internals, but it’s the only explanation that stands up to any amount of critical thinking.
The “they want to force you to upgrade” narrative is popular because people want to believe it. I mean, obviously they want you to upgrade, but they also know that consumers are more likely to buy their products over competitors’ if the product has a reputation for longevity. Which is why OEMs like Apple support their devices for as long as they do, and even tailor software to provide a consistent experience with a degraded battery. If they wanted to plan for there devices to become unusable after a certain time, it would be a lot more straightforward for them to just stop doing the things they’re doing to make sure devices are usable for 5+ years.
The point is that virtually every mobile on the market has a non-replaceable battery, and that’s a huge factor driving over-consumption via planned obsolescence.
They do? That sucks. I’ve only had iPhones and have gotten the battery replaced in both of them. It’s increased the lifespan of my phones by a couple of years, but it doesn’t double it. I usually start to sick of my hardware after about 5 years.
Your iPhone is the same and requires you to take it to a service center and pay someone else to do something that we’d been doing ourselves in 5 seconds for the previous 30 years.
The person you’re replying to is trying to push the narrative that modern smartphones (iPhones in particular) have bodies that are sealed with adhesive in order to force people to upgrade sooner, instead of to provide waterproofing/dustproofing.
That claim makes no sense in light of how Apple meaningfully supports phones for significantly longer than any other major OEM and goes to great lengths to preserve the usability of older devices. That doesn’t deter people from making that claim because they’d much rather believe apple bad, and other phone manufacturers bad because they’re trying to copy apple.
Inb4 but x phone from 2016 had a removable backplate and was “waterproof,” or but y phone with 0.01% market share is serviceable with a spudger and is “waterproof”.
Apple literally admitted it engages in planned obsolescence practices and has been fined in multiple jurisdictions for doing so.
Not sure why you feel the need to support shady business practices. There are designs that achieve waterproofing/dustproofing while still enabling replaceability. The obvious question then is why would the majority of manufacturers choose a design approach which restricts replaceability?
Gosh, that narrative is one of the most pea-brained things that I’ve seen circulating on the internet in my lifetime.
As the link you provided clearly states, apple was fined for not disclosing to users that iOS was underclicking the CPUs on phones that had batteries that were too degraded to provide the required power consistently under heavy load.
Anyone who used an Android phone from that era can tell you about how a >12 month old phone would start randomly powering off between 10% and 30% remaining charge. When a lithium ion battery degrades, it’s no longer able to output its original nominal voltage in a sustained way. Instead, I’ll output the requested voltage, then suddenly the voltage will drop. When the CPU in an older phone was under heavy load, it would put heavy load on the battery, and the battery would fail to provide consistent voltage, which would cause the phone to power off.
On the Android side of things, we could try to replace the battery if we knew that was the issue, but most people would just feel pressured to buy a new phone.
The obvious solution to that problem is just to undervolt the phone’s CPU if the battery isn’t capable of providing consistent peak voltage. Doing this is objectively the opposite of planned obsolescence, it lets people use older phones reliably for longer.
Ironically, a small minority of weirdos are so desperate to hate Apple that they spun a feature that’s obviously intended to increase the longevity of an iPhone into an entire narrative about apple slowing your phone down to get you to buy another one. Which doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, because not undervolting the CPU in a phone where the battery can’t provide consistent peak voltage is way more likely to push people to want to replace it.
I hate consumerism and mega corporations way more than most, and I’m definitely not suggesting that Apple is any kind of moral or ethical company. They’re a company that exists to maximize profits at the expense of anything else, on the backs of exploited workers.
But when the most widespread complaints about a company are things that make the complainers look like idiots who are desperately searching for something to complain about regardless of how disconnected from reality it is, it makes it seem like there aren’t any legitimate complaints about the company. If I were wearing my tinfoil hat, I’d be inclined to speculate about whether that’s actually intentional. The ‘Apple is slowing down my phone to make me buy a new battery’ narrative is so ridiculous that I can almost believe that Apple’s behind it to draw attention away from valid criticisms.
This is so pedantic and competely misses the point.
The literal second sentence of my comment clearly demonstrates that I understand the point that the other commenter was making, that I’m aware that they’re being hyperbolic, and gives a direct response to the point being made.
If you can’t manage reading past the first dozen words of a comment, maybe you’d be better served by keeping your reply to yourself.
The world around you uses Instagram daily. They do need a better camera and all the AI photo enhancement filters. Plus, consumerism, you know.
Other than that, there’s no technical reason to buy anything better than what flafhsips were a few years back. I have one and it’s constantly underutilized.
I mean, maybe 5G or wifi 6 could be a reason to migrate.
Or – Christ it’s 2023 – Apple’s first fucking USB-C phone. Holy mother of god, having one stupid cable for the devices I want was a siren song of a mad god, but we’re finally here.
In 2023
maybe 5G or wifi 6
This is why we need phones with swappable modules. I’m pretty sure my current phone could last for decades if I could replace it’s radio equipment to keep up with modern standards.
Framework Phone When
Fairphone
I would love to build a smartphone like a Desktop Pc.
It used to be that a new phone came with a relatively substantial new feature set. People have become accustomed to this and businesses have been built around this. At this point, it’s mostly about consumerism.
I’m still rocking an iPhone 12 Mini without the slightest hiccup as well as an original iPhone SE as my main music player. I used to be the person who got every new phone because there used to be such a jump in performance and hardware features. Now I have no reason to upgrade at all. Honestly, I’d love to get rid of my phone all together and just use an iPad, Apple Watch, and my camera and journal.
Yeah this is really it. The answer is that there used to be significant technical reasons to do so. Technology improved enough each year that last year’s phones were really showing age.
At this point even basic phones are so fast and so feature rich that no one except niche groups needs anything faster than what came out several years ago. Everything basic like watching videos, maps, internet browsing, and messaging works perfectly fine on anything.
So the reasons shifted to renewing battery life and OS updates. Which are both at least somewhat artificial since manufactures could easily implement longer updates or replaceable batteries.
I buy used flagships.
A 1.5 year old flagship costs the same as a brand new midrange phone, but is significantly better.
I just got a S21 Ultra for cheaper than I would have paid for an A54. (Also Exynos is hot fucking garbage. I wanted to get away from Samsung altogether, but the price on this made sense and I has a snapdragon. Significantly better)
I agree. I only replace my phone when it stops working.
Battery life is decent for 3-4+ years nowadays.
Check out the Fairphone; you can replace parts like battery and the production line tends to be (more) sustainable. They also provide security updates for 5+ years.
They don’t have really high-end phones though, but personally I think most moderate phones nowadays are fine for practically all usecases. For me it works out fine, as I already used mid-range phones for a couple of years.
I hope they will do something like a subscription for even longer updates (if enough people are interested). Don’t need a new phone if this keeps working / being repairable.
I love the idea of Fairphone but it’s too pricy for me unfortunately. my current phone (Redmi Note 10 Pro) only cost £150 ($195) and it’s pretty much the perfect phone for my minimal needs.
That’s of course fair (yes… intended). They are indeed expensive compared to many other phones, especially mid-rangers. It took me a while to decide to switch.
For anyone who can easily afford it though, it might be something to keep in the back of your head perhaps in the future :) I hope this small trend of replacable parts and longtime security support in phones continues.
deleted by creator
Vanity, marketing and buying shit unnecessarily.
I have a Fairphone 3 that I got in January 2020. Its a great device. I want to using it daily for between 5 to 10 years. And I have no doubt it will do that.
Meanwhile my brother has bought 3 Samsung devices in that time. And each one still works fine. He doesn’t need a new phone each time but he will still insist on it.
How’s the camera on this phone? Really the only thing I care about, next to battery life
The camera on the Fairphone 3 is only okay. But there is an upgraded camera module you can buy from Fairphone.
I’m not much of a photographer so it doesn’t bother me. But if you take a lot of pictures, it’s something to keep in mind.
My number one reason: battery life
deleted by creator
Selling the thinnest phone, but ship it with a silicone case because the thin-ness makes it too fragile. And also one bit of the phone will just be thicker anyway.
It seems almost like parody. Phones are literally too thin for their own components. If anybody knows of a decent line of phones that aren’t overly skinny, please let me know for when I need a new phone.
That’s why I support the “right to repair”
Sadly a lot of devices are losing that ability by design
deleted by creator
Its less of a belief and more of a fact at this point.
Its still really sad either which way
I buy a new phone when my current one breaks. So like every five years.
Lots of people are bad with money or don’t prioritize the same things I do. I try not to worry about this. I worry about other unimportant shit like why do people roll for stats in DND 5e.
why do people roll for stats in DND 5e.
Because having a wizard with 6 CON, a chronic disease, and a built in death wish is funny as hell
I’m the same, use the phone until it refuses to function any longer then jump on a Chinese site and get the cheapest pos with a decent camera and then once it arrives watch a yt video on how to change the language to English
In the early 10s Smartphones evolved quickly and it was worth it to upgrade every 2nd year or even every year.
This changed when the tech stagnated. But smartphone was much cheaper in the early days so financially it probably isnt much different if you are buying flagships later now.
The big reason is updates. Phones will only get Android and security updates for so long. After that point, you buy a new phone or run the risk of being exposed.
Yeah but not one year. Even the shittiest brand will give you security updates for at least 3 years.
Yeah I should bite the bullet and get a Pixel, they normally get the longest updates support or am I wrong? This habit of going for a budget phone and it becoming unusable/unsafe after 3 years is just a hidden cost I’m in denial over 😞
The Pixels get 3 years of major version upgrades and 5 years of security updates from Google. After that point if the battery is still working well enough for you, you could always try installing something like Graphene OS on it.
The only real issue are updates. After just 3 years my previous phone didn’t get any security updates and I had to get new hardware. I actually liked my previous phone more than my current one. But it is how it is.
That’s the reason why I switched to iPhone after many years of Android, security updates are vital nowadays with all the sensitive data and apps we use on our phones, Apple is the only one that guarantees al least 5 years, iPhones are not too expensive if you don’t buy the latest models and I’d rather avoid supporting companies that don’t understand the importance of security.
Pixel actually guarantees 5 years now and if you put GrapheneOS on it, then you’ll have one of the most private and secure operating systems available
just a side note for graphene: i have the feeling that it’s not for everyone. “too much” security tends to get in the UX way
Chances are if you know how to use an Android, using Graphene isn’t too much harder. You can still download from the play store and run apps like normal. If you’re reading this post then you probably have the technical knowhow to plug your phone into the computer and press the start button.
Fair point with not being for everybody though, I wouldn’t be comfortable giving it to my non-techy family and friends. You do have a fair point.
I’ve been running GrapheneOS on my Pixel 3 for three years and I have few complaints. I still cant figure out how to get automatic updates to work in Android 13 with the Neo or Droidify stores but atleast the stock GOS apps auto update. BTW, to clarify what you said, we have to use the Aurora app to download from Google Play Store.
You’re right it’s not for most people. Not having Google services installed might be a major blow for people who have become accustomed to the conveniences they provide. I just use a separate vanilla Pixel for Google services if I need them, but the phone with my SIM card is the one with GrapheneOS.
You can turn Google Services on if you would like. I personally do have it turned on as some of my apps wouldn’t get notifications without it. You could use it as a normal android downloading through the play store and nobody would notice that it’s degoogled. All the apps are sandbox and you can change what permissions that have, I previously used CalyxOS and this is much more private and secure.
Does it send telemetry? Why is CalyxOS more secure?
Well, Google isn’t famous for being reliable in the long run with their services, Apple is proven at this point, tho who knows, I’ll wait a few years and see if Google is still at it with their Pixels.
Googles already been doing this for years.
You can do even better than five years with Fairphone (…Speaking as a Pixel user)
But will Fairphone be around in 5 years?
It has been around for 10 years and 4 phones by now, and only gaining in popularity and market share. No reason to predict an early demise yet. The Fairphone 1 controversially only received 3 years of updates, but since then it’s 5 years.
Fairphone is also guaranteed only 5 years. If not, then they are probably using a custom ROM that is not directly supported by Google. I’ll keep my eye out for this company though, the repairability is great and I love the repairability of the phone.
The article I just linked says they’re extending support to 7 years: Out to 2026 for their 2019 model, the Fairphone 3. The article also links to an older article talking about how the Fairphone 2 ended up with 7 years.
I’m in the US so the Fairphone was never really a consideration for me, but if it’s available whenever I need my next phone I’ll definitely look into it. It’s pretty annoying to be using Google’s own phone, and still only have access to 3 years of OS updates.
Apple isn’t the only one that guarantees many years of updates. The fairphone (although currently only sold in the EU, they’re coming soon to the USA) has 5 years of promised support, Google Pixel 6 and later also have 5 years of promised updates, Samsung Galaxy, has 4 years, while one year less than its competitors, still much better than the 1-2 years most phones used to have. Android phones these days aren’t like the wild west back then, Android phones are on par with iPhones, the choice is merely personal preference.
Happy to hear companies are finally getting it.
I have just done the same.
Although Google are now promising 5 years of support for Pixel phones, Pixel phones are not a core business for Google, and as they have shown many times, Google will end projects at the drop of a hat with no regard for their customers.
There are secondary Android companies like Samsung that promise long term security updates, but are always behind the publishing curve compared to Google. This means that malicious actors have the opportunity to study Google’s published updates to reverse engineer cracks that they then exploit.
The current Android security update model is inherently insecure due to this issue. Until manufacturers are forced to update in a timely manner ( by which I mean simultaneously with Google) I won’t buy another Android phone.
Removed by mod
This is why we need law to mandate security updates for 5+ years.
I hope I dont jinx myself with this but I dont think security updates at the OS level are that important nowadays.
If you are using an android phone, you can change the ROM to one that still gets updates, it’s like changing the os in a computer. The process will delete all of the user data inside the phone but you’ve got nothing to lose if it doesn’t get any security updates.
I recommend lineageOS to anyone wanting to go down this route because of its compatibility with every phone, old or new.
deleted by creator
that “security update” quickly gets irrelevant as the exploits for lineage (or any non-standard rom) sells for pennies compared to a stock exploit. also no one’s paying security researchers to assess lineage - also it would be completely impossible with the amount of updates and devices they release
remember that (unfortunately) security is all about money
But more people using stock roms could potentially mean any exploit is more easily found compared to custom roms. Not saying that’s the case, but it’s a factor to consider.
as more people use a software it’s not easier to find exploits but much more profitable - and you see that propagate, as in:
- More people start to use a software
- Inevitably it gets hacked - by a kid most probably
- The company starts panicking due to bad press
- They start fixing the security bugs
- (some years pass)
- Now its quite difficult to find exploit as many security bugs have been fixed
- Exploit prices skyrocket since it would affect many users and it’s difficult to develop
- Bug bounty skyrockets since the exploits are so pricey
Now the last 2 steps tend to cycle since the security of the product fluctuates
Now the above have nothing to do with “residual” products - such as custom roms. And actually, you have so many deeply specialized people around the main product that finding a bug and developing an exploit on the residual is just a matter of “who the fuck cares”.
So you’re basing your security of your phone on “care”, also known as security through obscurity (some times at least).
Another example of “who cares” security is libreoffice. When I started as a security engineer the veteran (and boss) referred to it as training material to find security bugs. I found some, but who cares? Ain’t nobody gonna pay for them as “nobody” uses the software (keep in mind that we’re referring to millions of daily users rather than thousands per month)
Sorry for sheet! ❤️ Be safe and use a password manager
How difficult is it to change ROM?
It depends. For Graphene OS, there is a web installer that the people who have used it said it was the easiest custom rom they’ve installed. Unfortunately, it only supports for Google Pixels.
For other custom roms… maybe not as easy…
Graphene OS Web Install: https://grapheneos.org/install/web
Removed by mod
Yes that’s true, but I’ve heard from others that the person involved has since stepped down from Graphene OS development, so it should be safe from now on.
There are people that like new things, there are people who prefer older things. I am willing to spend money on a new phone every 2 years because it is my main computing device. I, also, don’t miss a lot of things of older phones. I never used as SD card, I never replaced a battery, and I haven’t used wired headphones in a decade.
I like my iPhone 14, the LiDAR gives me a ton of cool applications, the camera takes the best photos I’ve ever taken before, it will be kept updated for the next 5 years and the always-on screen is very useful for unlock-free info.
If you trade-in a fairly new phone, you can heavily discount a new phone purchase as well. It’s more like leasing a car vs owning a car. Pay for the time you use the phone, return it while it still has value in the 2nd hand market and get a fresh phone.
On the other hand, my brother sticks his phone in his pocket all day and doesn’t look at it at home. He bought an iPhone SE a few years ago and it just works. He would argue buying a new phone is silly as well. But we use our phones very differently and so our purchase habits will be different.
The main reason to do it is when the manufacturer no longer releases security updates for the phone. Given the security history and the typical corporate attitude of caring little for the customer, I want to minimize the risk posed by not having a very out of date operating system.
You don’t need a new phone every year to get this.
Some manufacturers drop support after a few years. It’s usually less frequent than every year but if you were worried about spyware or someone getting all those weird pictures you have saved to your camera roll it could make sense to upgrade for peace of mind.
“After a few years”. So if you have a few years why are you buying a new home every year?
Be honest with yourself. You’re addicted.
I was at work last week and two colleagues loaded on an apple update to their phones. Their phones slowed to a crawl and lost battery charge quickly through the day. The next thing I saw was one of them with the internet browser open putting his credit card details in to buy a new iPhone £650 gone just like that. iPhone users wouldn’t balk at expensive contracts or spending £600 quid on a new iPhone. It seems to me apple deliberately trash their phones and users accept it and upgrade to a newer model. I could understand if it was a cheap phone but jeeze crazy money for something with such a short lifespan. Would you buy a ln expensive TV if you thought it wouldn’t last you any more than a couple of years?
Plenty of iPhone users rocking iOS 16 on the iPhone 8 (from 2017) with no trouble. For many iPhone users the longevity is one reason they use it. Others will always update to the latest and greatest.
Exactly. iPhones are one of the longest if not the longest supported phones. Having said that, there’s no convincing Android users and vice versa.
