I'm still daily-driving an iPhone 7, so I sympathize. A few apps have complained about the older OS; so far I've been able to react by deleting the apps.
Smartphones cause a truly astonishing amount of waste (https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/12/11/right-to-repair-...: ~151 million phones discarded in the US each year, as of 2018), to say nothing of the various social follow-on effects that are being argued to death elsewhere. I was a very late smartphone adopter and I'm already trying to reduce the amount I depend on this thing; too much of their marketing always struck me as being more akin to new sneakers than life-improving tech.
As a dev I understand the challenges of supporting older hardware. As a conscious consumer, I wish there were another option available in the market, and I haven't yet decided what I'll do when my current device finally needs to be retired.
That article is awfully short on estimating environmental impact.
Other sources on the web say that, including 4 years of electricity usage, an iPhone's total carbon impact is ~175 pounds of CO2, or about 9 gallons of gasoline. Which is roughly 0.25% of emissions from driving a car the average amount for four years.
Imperceptible changes to urban planning to shave off a few miles of driving would have a bigger impact than doubling the lifetimes of mobile phones.
Let's not define "environmental impact" solely in terms of carbon emissions and then do a trivial comparison to some mundane activity.
Smartphones may have a low carbon emission footprint relative to some other things (numbers I found varied widely) and that still wouldn't be a good argument for discarding them unnecessarily.
Their production and disposal has a great deal of other side effects that aren't defined by carbon emissions, including the mining and refining of rare metals. I would very much like to link a comprehensive examination of this here but I regret that I haven't got one in my bookmarks already and search results are being as useless as usual. If anyone else has a particularly great link to share I'd love to see it too.
You're definitely helping me prove my point, what are those other environmental impacts?
Let's imagine we can stop a single car from needing to be produced: that will dwarf all the mining impacts from probably thousands of phones! Cars are soooo much worse along any angle you can possibly imagine, yet people are misdirected from their use of cars to worrying about miniscuke rounding errors from their phones.
Suppose (made up scenario) we can stop a million phones being discarded every week by mandating that camera modules have to be replaceable by third-parties.
We can drop that legislation tomorrow, basically no problem.
Are you gonna say, no we have to wait and do cars first because a car is equal in carbon to 20 phones (or whatever).
Cars are one of the large container targets, but it takes years to change urban environments, to build transportation infrastructure, to change building zones, etc., to prepare the way for people using alternative transport (or none). Unless you can win over your citizens (and politicians who are in lobbies pockets) for a grand plan like 'no more new cars from now on'.
That cars are such a slow mover is the reason that we need to focus on it now, rather than later.
I don't think you hypothetical would change even a tiny fraction of phone replacements, but even if it did, legislative bandwidth in the US is extremely low and should be reserved for the high impact changes. Anything that distracts from the must-do messages is quite likely to be harmful.
We make people jump through all sorts of hoops for plastic straws and plastic bags that have approximately zero environmental win compared to far smaller changes to their car use.
The real problem is the social attitude that cars can not be touched or criticized. That needs to start changing.
Our phones are not the core of climate change, our cars and all the massive environmental damage from mining the necessary minerals for them really are.
The first step when doing optimization is to measure, so that one knows where efforts have significant results.
I am arguing that our efforts should be in proportion to their payoff for environmental efforts as well.
Or more precisely, we should spend our environmental efforts in ways that maximize their returns.
Thus, here I am spending lots of time commenting on how a tiny minor change in driving habits will have bigger effects than large changes in phone habits.
Urban planning in the US responds to the demands of the residents. We should be asking all residents demand alternatives to driving.
Urban planning in the US was a result of the oil lobby. It has nothing to do with the demands of residents except insofar as they were also brainwashed by the oil lobby.
It can't be limited to just the oil lobby, it was a general movement with lots of different proponents, not the least the car companies! In fact the car companies quite a bit more. But the urban planning establishment definitely adopted car-only infrastructure with gusto, without any direct oil or car money behind it.
"Our analysis shows that a 1-year lifetime extension of all smartphones in the EU would save 2.1 Mt CO2 per year by 2030, the equivalent of taking over a million cars off the roads. A lifetime extension of 3 years would save around 4.3 MtCO2. And a 5-year extension would correspond to about 5.5 MtCO2."
The extra global warming contributions come from "manufacturing, transportation and end-of-life phases", and the increasing dependency on remote servers.
Exactly, it's the production of the phones where most of the carbon is generated.
As for the comparisons there, it's hard to make head or tails of the meaning, because the "context" provided is apples to oranges. A million cars versus how many phones? Or a million cars versus how many cars in Europe? Citing a big number does not mean much unless we have something to compare that big number to, and I question the intentions of such "bald big numbers" because I see it so often used to muddy the waters and confuse people on many topics. For example, nuclear advocates will often disparage solar, talking about X million square kilometers without giving any context on whether that's actually a big number or not.
2.1Mt CO2 (over how many years with that "by 2030") versus how many Gt Co2 per year? Seems to be 2.5-3.1Gt/year based on a web search..
And what percentage of total EU emissions are from cars?
These numbers also make the argument that phones are a small rounding error compared to other much bigger actions.
Should we mandate repairability? Of course! It's good! But getting bent out of shape on the impact of phones compared to far more common and wasteful practices is a bad use of our limited amount of time to make drastic action.
And the EU is far better on cars than the US, so perhaps it makes more sense for them to take action on phones, but in the US, our car addiction makes for far better and practical environmental action.
I would argue that not lowering our car use drastically is a tragedy, and that our phone waste is a rounding error in comparison. And that the second tragedy is that so much media effort is spent focusing the public on rather meaningless phone waste rather than something meaningful like car use.
There are a lot of carbon emissions from a variety of sources. Coal fired power generates more CO2 in the US than all US automobiles combined. Does that mean we should completely ignore automobiles and focus on coal power?
Focusing on the "smallest" problem at the expense of the "biggest" is the wrong approach. But ignoring small problems that are easier to fix is also the wrong approach. The author is using a phone that is more than 6 years old and still functions; making it easier to continue using it feels like an easier problem than changing urban planning.
Coal is a dead man walking, not just in the US, but around the world. Systematic market forces have eliminated any financial advantage to coal. China uses it to fill in for gaps in renewables, but has very low capacity factors for their plants.
IMHO we should spend lobbying efforts on the things that will have greater effects, like approving apartment buildings in walkable areas.
I agree with your assessment that we should change what we can and should optimize how we spend our time creating change, but IMHO the best possible outcome of advocating for phone change is that people think "hey yeah let's change this," but then get told "oh so you are OK with that change, how about something far far bigger for small effort?"
We seriously only need to do very small changes to urban planning to effect massive change compared to phones. And those small changes have the effect of growing. And they are necessary urban planning changes, and the longer we put them off the less likely we can have the snowball rolling where we need it to be.
> cannot be pinned on consumer choices. Which is why it would never become the locus of attention.
Can you explain your reasoning here? I think you are saying that we focus all of our environmental action through the lens of consumer choice, which is something that I also think is true.
We can encourage the public to make better individual choices, but a far better approach is to change the system so that the default choice is the best choice.
But when it comes to phones, a lot of the policy action seems to be set on forcing companies to behave in a certain way, which IMHO is perfectly cromulent if the environmental payoff is proprotionate to the effort.
My focus has been on changing the attitudes towards policy changes that broaden the choices of individuals, to allow them to even choose a better path that is not currently available, because urban planning has banned walkable neighborhoods in nearly every part of every city.
I am using it because it's the only impact that I see measured anywhere on electronic waste, and I have spent a fair amount of time trying to figure it out on my own.
If you have a better quantification of species lost, of ecological diversity lost, of land lost, I would absolutely love to hear it, but I have not found anything better despite my research!
Also, the environmental and ecological damage that we are facing from global warming is so utterly massive in comparison to all other ecological damage that we do, that any other avoided damage needs to be placed in the context of halting global warming. Humans will survive climate change, and a lot of other species will survive too, but the dieoff of species from it is so shocking that focusing on the small amounts of mining for phones in comparison to the massive amounts of mining and e-waste from cars seems, well, at best misguided. And if I'm being more honest, I think it's actually quite harmful to environmental action to focus any attention on phones when action on cars is so much more impactful.
> A few apps have complained about the older OS; so far I've been able to react by deleting the apps.
Not about the phone (I have iPhone 12), but I have an app called Trunk Notes which is a wiki reader / editor. It was one of the only wiki apps I found that could work cooperatively with my own markdown vimwiki that I keep on my desktop (and sync via Dropbox or similar).
A few years back, it complained that it would no longer work in iOS version something-or-other and the author apologized because he could no longer maintain it. I never got around to deleting it, and to my surprise it still works to this day.
Yearly phone upgrades are akin to new sneakers. People want the latest thing, they do not need it. Phones have not improved for years in significant ways. There has been no new features. Only improvement has been cameras, but really how good of a camera does your average person need in their daily lives?
I only replaced my iPhone 7 in 2021, with an SE, because it's a work phone and they didn't want to deal with battery replacement. It was (/is) is a perfectly capable phone for the vast majority of people.
I love that Apple locks other people out of using even genuine parts for repairs and servicing, but is happy to collect them from people to reuse, themselves.
The main message I take from this story is that a decent quorum of consumers want Apple to offer a smaller phone in each generation. The OP seems not to have minded having to upgrade eventually, just not to a “virtual tablet.” I’ve heard others express the same desire.
+1 for the 13 mini if form factor is your primary concern (and given the sizes of even the 'small' mobile phone offerings of recent years I completely understand why that would be).
I upgraded an eight year old SE (first generation) to an SE3 thinking it would be the obvious choice, then promptly replaced it with the 13 mini within a week (fortunately still available at the time).
The difference is small on paper but noticable in your hands, and I honestly feel like the 13 mini is the spiritual successor to the SE series while the SE3 is a weird relative that you don't really want to have to interact with.
For some reason the slightly more boxy and grip friendly design of the SE1 and SE2 was changed in the SE3 to have the curves that were introduced in (I think?) the iPhone 6, despite the SE series having a slightly more square design up to that point. But the SE3 also inherited the lower raw technical specs that were expected from the SE series.
So somehow the 13 mini wins in terms of both form factor _and_ tech capabilities/new Apple features (such as Face ID over Touch ID).
The problem with the 13 mini is it's lack of touchid. it's fine otherwise and I'd pick one up in a heartbeat if it did, but it doesn't, so I won't. really waiting to see how the SE4 goes. I'm. envious of some of android's devices and features, the main thing keeping me locked into apple's ecosystem is iMessage.
Agree, Touch ID is the one thing I still really miss from the SE. Face ID is usually not an issue, but there are always cases that result in more friction than with Touch ID.
Sometimes you don't quite catch it at the right angle (and sometimes it sees you when you're not even looking), and other times you just don't quite have enough fave visible for it to work (for me usually when I'm doomscrolling in bed with my face squished into a pillow, so maybe that's a sign).
Yea I really want the iPad Air 4th gen TouchID on the power button which would keep the screen layout and size but still have the security of a fingerprint.
The only, only reason I ever buy anything but the smallest phone they offer is because the best cameras are never on the smallest devices. The extra size is pure down-side for me, and I don't really give a shit about slightly faster processors or what have you (I hardly burden the low-end ones), but I do find when looking back at older photos I always appreciate when I've had better cameras, so I hesitate to go too low-end on those.
I'd pay about the same (or maybe even exactly the same, but feel a little annoyed about it) for a small Apple phone with the same camera as the expensive big models.
I choose the cheapest technically up-to-date one. I really don't care about the camera, the gap between generation is mostly not interesting. Actually the only reason I had to replace the last one is that Apple stopped supporting it with the latest iOS...
I'd be scared to break the thing: it is so big and directly connected. It wouldn't fit into a pocket anyway...
Also I wouldn't choose one with a lightning connector, better with a USB-C (or A) female port, so I could also use it for some other devices too if necessary.
The impression I get is that these consumers who want a smaller phone are a very loud minority. They also often seem to overlap with the set of consumers who are extremely cheap. To Apple they are just bad customers who they will always have a hard time making money from -- not super worth catering to.
> they are just bad customers who they will always have a hard time making money from
The iPhone 12 mini still ended as one of the top 10 smartphone models sold in January 2021.[0]
There was also a new iPhone SE model that was half the price and roughly the same size. I wouldn't be surprised that most decided the iPhone SE was a better deal at the time. In fact, the iPhone 11 and iPhone SE were the top-selling iPhone models of 2020.[1]
Both of those sources paint the picture GP was telling. For 2020 the iPhone SE sells 2nd place in unit count... nearly tied with a unit that was out for 6 fewer months that year with twice the ASP. Nearly 1/3 the sales of the previous generation model that year. Same for the top 10 best selling models in Jan 2021, combine both the iPhone SE 2020 and iPhone 12 Mini and you've got the monthly sale volume of the previous generation iPhone 11 at half the sale price and 2 models worth of R&D. This data for a the year after a slump of smaller models not being available.
If this was OnePlus or someone those would be decent numbers. The problem is they are Apple, they already held the top 4 spots by significantly larger margin with premium devices. Building low cost devices to only make 8th and 10th place with them isn't necessarily a win for them. They can just cut margin on the older versions of the popular models if they want to capture that price point without stifling their focus on their new products each year.
The way people talk about smaller phones around here you'd expect the 2020 model was outselling new models through this day and the masses were waiting with bated breath for updates. Truth is there is just a smaller portion of the market that actually wants such phones when it comes time to upgrade but you here from them more often because they are one of the least common and least valuable segments of the market to try to service.
I also suspect that (at least on HN), the loud minority are heavy users of laptops and desktops. For the average person who has an old laptop for writing reports for school, or a crappy locked down laptop from their job, the phone is their main computing interface, so they want it to be bigger and nicer.
I would gladly pay a bit more for a phone with a more manageable form factor and if I could be so lucky a battery life that's more than two days. Sadly it seems like I have to pay more for a product I want _less_, just because the demand for large form factor phones is high enough for Apple to consider just not bothering with. I understand market supply and demand, but eh...
Funny how the German word for mobile phones exactly what most modern mobile phones aren't. Handy.
I was going thru a box of old things the other day and came upon an old iPhone 4. God, what a beautiful device. In my opinion, the peak of iPhone design. I would love to have a phone that small again.
I felt like 3GS was the best form-factor. Fits so nicely in the hand and you can reach almost the entire screen with your thumb while holding it (more or less). I wish I could have just kept using that forever.
I'm not clear where that read comes from? There is a single mention of "veritable tablets" in this post, and I'm not at all seeing this backed up with any evidence of latent demand?
The author appears to be someone who gets angry or very annoyed when he does not get his way. The author may also just not like change. Basically, he is upset he had to buy a new phone after 6 years and the new phone was different from his old phone. I do not think his behavior is productive or helpful.
Which, to be fair and clear, there is nothing wrong with getting upset about having to upgrade. Nothing wrong with complaining. Sometimes, can probably be good?
I'm just confused as this article doesn't even try to present this as a latent demand from others. Such that I don't understand the opening comment. Reminds me hearing folks complain about bad pockets in formal wear. Is largely a true statement, but I think it is also clear that the demand does not exist for it. Despite how vocal some people can be.
1. The article outright states that hes not pissed at Apple for 'only' supporting the phone for 6 years.
I read that criticism as aimed at the software developers withdrawing support for older OS versions.
I read the article more as a lament, rather than angry or annoyed. The author had a perfectly usable phone that he was forced from due to external factors, and the replacement doesn't improve upon its predecessor.
And really "every other generation" would be pretty nice too. An actually small phone, actually supported for a few years (included in the guidelines for app writers and to remind web page designers that this exists). We could live with "every other generation".
That would be better than "Eh, we don't believe in it anyway" kind of reluctance.
I'd be happy with a new mini even every third generation. My 12 mini is still great except for the battery life (even after getting a new battery less than a year ago).
To play devil’s advocate here, I actually think iPhones have some of the best longevity and resale value, compared to virtually any other product or brand - except perhaps if we go back decades to appliances made near the middle of the century. The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years is pretty good compared to most other things I find myself buying and replacing in less time.
Otherwise I think the only real “solution” to this is to rethink your notion of a phone. Personally I tend to use WhatsApp, email, and other non-phone-specific applications, and don’t use the actual phone feature very often. So theoretically I could use any small computing device and upgrade its components as needed, and not need to have a phone at all.
I'm typing this on my 5-year old Samsung A30 that, aside from a screen crack I take full responsibility for, is still in perfect working conditions.
I never encountered any app that refuses to install despite my device being stuck on Android 11. The only reason this sometimes happen is because of geofencing, or apps built for Pixel phones.
I only started to look for acquiring a new device because telecom operators are readying for a 5G launch next year, for which my current device is incompatible hardware-wise.
And unless something unexpected is happening, I'm going to get the A35, ie the latest version of the same lineage.
Just out of curiosity (I’m not familiar with the current state of android software support) does your phone still get security updates and, assuming it does, how much longer do you expect them to continue?
There's no such a thing as "the current state of android". Each manufacturer has its rules and priorities. Heck even within the same manufacturer there are different rules for different tiers; and obviously, pricier devices get more updates.
Samsung is however among the best in that regard. The last security update received on my phone was in February of last year, so almost 4 years after the release of the device. However I forgot how many os updates the device got, but there's at least one received during the first year.
But the company improved its updates policy since. I purchased a galaxy tablet 3 years ago (iirc) and it already received 4 os updates so far. The latest such update, received last month, was just 6 months or so after the previous os update.
But again, this varies from company to the other. I bought phones from Motorola and Nokia that they claimed would receive 2 or 3 os updates, but never delivered even a single one.
Samsung is top-tier by Android standards. 4 years of security updates and 3 years of OS upgrades (minimum - some devices, such as the premium models, get more than that).
Better than Google themselves when last I checked, which is shameful.
What would such an assumption have to do with anything? I put my seatbelt on even when I don't intend to get into car crashes.
Arbitration clauses and class-action waivers universally favor the corporation -- in this case Google -- and should not be legal. I'm proud to retain my basic legal rights.
I think with Apple it's all or nothing. For Android it stops gradually: first you stop receiving OS updates, then system updates and after a while also security updates [1] and then finally maybe also apps.
[1] although they have in past updated very old phones when something really bad has happened.
>I never encountered any app that refuses to install despite my device being stuck on Android 11.
A lot of 2-factor and identity verification type things technically install, but will be blocked as being insecure by the companies that use them and demand a higher security level. Things like Microsoft Authenticator and Duo Mobile, certain time card systems, etc. Working in tech, I'm generally forced update every few years because older phones stop getting android updates, especially since the android updates are generally the responsibility of the vendor and sometimes the carrier, and not google directly.
I can’t buy anything online without the bank app, I need it to pay my phone bill, my electricity bill and many other things. Each time it sends verification code to the phone through the app.
> The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years is pretty good
No. No, it's not good at all. For almost every other product it would be deemed unacceptable. Beyond unacceptable even. We should not normalize this.
My car is > 10 years old. My desktop computer is > 10 years old. My laptop has had both the screen and battery changed. And the fan, multiple times. I don't know how old my laser printer is, probably twice as old, it doesn't see much use.
Users would never accept if Linux or Windows stopped supporting five year old architectures. It would be an uproar, and rightly so.
A phone no longer a toy, it is a tool among others. Five years is hardly enough to get to know a tool. You should just swap out the battery when it goes bad. You should not have to worry about software at all. That people accept this is a travesty.
For most people a phone is a monthly payment. One of the rewards that keeps them paying is that every few years they get an "upgrade." The phone companies and the mobile carriers very smartly followed the car model of selling: they sell a payment, and when the balance is paid off they offer a trade-in/upgrade (and a new loan). If you resist, you eventually stop getting support.
For the same reason, many car dealerships don't work on cars more than 10 years old. They keep their techs focused on the newer stuff, and increasingly pressure owners of older cars to trade them in.
Fortunately for car owners, there is a robust market of, and legal requirements to allow, parts and independent service shops for older cars. We don't have nearly that kind of support for older phones.
This is very country-specific. I can think of quite a few countries where the norm is to just buy the phone, or at least finance it through a regular personal loan, not something tied to your operator.
Yeah, you can do that here, and it's what I do. I do the same with cars. But most people in the USA have a car payment and a phone payment that is just a perpetual part of their monthly budget.
The big travesty is third party software developers. They just give up after the OS vendor releases a new major version and they stop working on older major versions. This should be totally unacceptable. The software works on iOS N one day, and then the next day when iOS N+1 comes out, the developers give their users the big “up yours” and stop caring about iOS N.
It's because older computers don't support TPM, the hardware is generally fine because Windows 11 doesn't really need anything that isn't supported by Windows 10 or realistically what was required by 7 or 8.
What other things? In my home most appliances are 15+ years old -- ovens, washing machines, even most Sonos things are around 20 years old. My Yamaha PF-P 100, bought in 1994, still works perfectly well.
A smartphone is certainly more complex than a MIDI keyboard, but why would we need to upgrade the OS constantly.
Nothing inherent makes security on 7 year old hardware any more difficult than on 2 year old hardware.
Also, we're getting into the differences between upgrades (what OP said) and updates (the thing necessary to keep up with security) here. I'm having a really hard time coming up with an OS feature introduced in a full OS upgrade within the last 10 years that I actually want. I would have been perfectly content with only getting security updates since.
> I'm having a really hard time coming up with an OS feature introduced in a full OS upgrade within the last 10 years that I actually want.
- Live Photos. I won't consider any device that doesn't have something analogous, now. They're magical. Non-kid-havers may feel otherwise, but making every photo I snap of my kids a "Live Photo" is one of the most important improvements any technology thingy has provided in my entire life. (I think these are under the 10-year line? Very close, if not)
- Transparent OCR and text selection in images. The first time I used an image for a couple full minutes, copying text out of it, before realizing only when I went to share it with someone that it wasn't a PDF but a PNG, was when I knew this had to be a table-stakes your-OS-is-incomplete-without-it feature for me. Sure it could just be a feature of some program I've got installed, but having it in any native image view is way better than having to open some specific program to use it, a thing I could long have done, but never did. Making it first-class, fast, and transparent to the user, makes all the difference. I rely on it all the time now.
You could already OCR. What made me actually use it was exactly its becoming an OS feature. Now it seems weird if there's an image with text and I can't select the text I can plainly see on my screen.
> I'm having a really hard time coming up with an OS feature introduced in a full OS upgrade within the last 10 years that I actually want.
which both of those easily clear for me. I bet I could come up with a few more if I read over some OS release notes from the last few years—"oh yeah, that! I use it so much I'd kinda forgotten it was a thing" sort of stuff.
This is.. not true. A lot of hardware change is involved in modern mobile device security. Apple has come a long way from the iPhone 7 in hardware security and no amount of patching software is going to introduce a new cryptographic coprocessor.
This is true, but most of that hardware security makes the devices harder to access once stolen/confiscated. For everyday use, against online threats, 7 year old hardware can be made extremely secure - it's what Windows 10 and Linux do every day on much, much older hardware.
And sure, a cryptographic coprocessor will make accessing encrypted data a lot more snappy. But decrypting that data in software instead will work just as well, albeit slower. Which really doesn't matter for 90%+ of phone users.
How much additional complexity do we tolerate in order to target hardware with diverging feature sets?
How much should we hold new software back in order to target older hardware that can’t do the same things without chewing through battery?
Frankly I think it’s fucking amazing what Apple has done here, especially when you compare against the Windows ecosystem (at least as of the last time I used it ages ago). The rate of adoption of OS upgrades is such that app developers can actually reasonably target new OS APIs without having to wait a decade for a critical mass of users.
I think we should expect basic software security updates and third party app compatibility to continue until the last device’s hardware fails. This idea that a device that millions of people still use is “old and icky and we just don’t wanna support it anymore” is user-hostile and should not be tolerated.
I've still got a working Android Dev Phone 1 here. Updated fully to Android 1.6. Got a massive 256MB of internal storage (basically none usable, mind you, all taken up by the OS) and a zippy 500MHz processor with a single core to share between the OS and apps.
What you're proposing is a massive waste of effort and talent--attempting to accomplish something bordering on impossible with a benefit of practically nil.
In fact I'd go so far as to say "negative benefit". It's going to encourage solutions targeting the lowest common denominator and hold back improvements for others. And even on the individual level--_hardware_ security has improved leaps and bounds in the last couple decades. Even with all the software updates in the world, nobody should be using that thing anymore.
Though I mean, it might finally encourage me to get rid of it. We'd be in a situation where it would be cheaper for one of the big companies to hire someone to have me and my family have an "accident" than it would be to actually maintain that hardware.
My first observation is that the differences between a Dev Phone 1 and a phone 5 years later, is not the same as the differences between a phone of today and 5 years ago. The industry has matured, changes are much smaller.
Second, I'm having trouble putting my finger on an actual limitation. I have a 5 year old camera, on my 5 year old phone, I'm not asking for the drivers to be updated for evermore, just a stable api, so takepicture() works. If you want to add takepicturemacro() then fine.
But you don't even need that. My C compiler can target many different instruction sets.
Third. Modern phone OSs are walled gardens. I don't really have to option of doing all this myself. If the phone companies and OSs aren't going to give me full control of my hardware, they should have a duty to support things for longer.
I wouldn’t take it too seriously. It’s just a HN opinion that always gets upvoted because it’s the right intersection of anti-Big Tech, pro-environment and not wanting to change your own workflow (https://xkcd.com/1172/).
People who’ve actually had to maintain software that supports old hardware understand that it is a business decision. Is the cost of supporting older hardware (harder to maintain software, unable to use newer APIs, need to maintain multiple, rarely used code paths) greater than the benefit (revenue, network effect of keeping users)?
At Meta with billions of users the network effect and revenue means that they’ll never stop supporting Android 5 and up. But for a small app with a couple million users and a few thousand users on the oldest OS, it won’t make sense.
People actively throwing their toys out their pram choose not to understand this trade off. They think this can be solved with regulation like it’s a magic wand that makes economic trade offs disappear.
Where do you handle that stuff? Doing them on a desktop seems like the same thing but less secure and less convenient, and sometimes with fewer features (mobile deposit from a laptop camera would be... awkward at best). Do you instead avoid using computers for things like banking?
[EDIT] FWIW I'm in the so-called "Oregon Trail" mini-generation, so have definitely lived in and remember a world far more low-tech and connected than the current one, was a very late smartphone adopter, and have only reluctantly and recently come to admit that my phone is basically the only really useful computer I own for my personal life, and the "real" computers are mostly just toys for me that, at best, can replace only part of my phone's useful-in-my-ordinary-life functionality, in its absence. A high-quality internet-connected sensor and I/O suite in a pocket-sized package is just too damn useful, I've found.
For banking specifically, I use the bank's website. I always prefer websites to apps, because they aren't tied to a particular platform or device. Mobile deposit isn't something I really need, though if I had to deal with a lot of paper checks I could see that being convenient.
I could lose my phone tomorrow and it would be a bit of an inconvenience but (by intention) nothing approaching "half my life" is tied to my phone.
> mobile deposit from a laptop camera would be... awkward at best
I was doing at-home deposits using a flatbed scanner and the bank's website (maybe a java applet?) before the iPhone was released. It wasn't too hard, assuming one had a flatbed scanner.
If you are saying his experience (which is bad) is the best experience you can get. Rather than playing devils advocate, I think you are supporting his argument.
If we were to play devils advocate, I think the best argument is that in an early technology cycle (which arguably smart phones still are). There is a reasonable expectation that the phone will move into obsolescence before the hardware expires.
How you square the concept of sustainable/long-lived products and technological advancement is of course the predicament we find ourselves in. The answer is of course modularity and repairability. So companies like Framework or Fair Phone is who you should be buying from (both with their own foibles). Whereas if you look at the philosophy of Apple you shouldn't ever think they value agency of the user/owner.
> The fact that a device can be perfectly usable for 5+ years is pretty good compared to most other things I find myself buying and replacing in less time.
Woa. Nearly every other device in my house lasts for 10+ years. Coffee machine, printer, laundry machine, oven, TV, every single one of those is over 10 years old. Our car isn't yet but I very much expect it to last at least that long. The only device I replace about as often as a phone is my laptop. At least the laptop is noticeably better. I concur with the author that phones haven't gotten meaningfully better at all over the last years, yet we're forced to upgrade. It's all planned obsolescence.
I still have a 10 year iPhone 6 and a 8 years old iPhone 7 both still working just fine.
Apple stopped releasing OS upgrades with NEW features, but they are still releasing security updates. (In this aspect it’s better than most (all?) modern TVs.
Those iphone are still working the same way as when they were released. The only issue is that some apps doesn’t works anymore.
So part of the blame is on app developers.
Sure, maybe the app needs some feature which the old phone doesn’t have, but more likely is that the company just can’t bother to maintain their app in older OS versions.
I still have an O.G. iPad 1 stuck on iOS 5.1. It’s essentially useless. The App Store is a ghost town. No software even exists that runs on it anymore, and the App Store doesn’t even let you download the last working version of third party apps. It’s just totally useless.
If I fired up my vacuum cleaner one day and it said “sorry, this device is just too old and the manufacturer just doesn’t want it to function as it did when you bought it” we’d have regulators jumping down their throats. But it’s a-ok to do with devices that rely on a software ecosystem…
I think you’re probably buying higher quality items, yes? Because there’s no way a $50-100 coffee machine or printer is lasting a decade.
This can probably be explained by the fact that an iPhone is a “cheaper” (comparatively) high end item. In other words, it’s one of the few high end items that many middle and low income people own. And thus compared to the coffee machines, printers, and other cheap electronics that break after a couple years, the iPhone seems rather durable.
> Because there’s no way a $50-100 coffee machine or printer is lasting a decade.
There absolutely is.
Viz. the no-name drip machine I picked up at Goodwill for $10 and is probably older than me. The heating element makes the water boil, and it trickles over the grounds and becomes my morning salvation.
Viz. the Brother laser printer ca. 2013 for $99 (in, admittedly, 2013 dollars). I had to replace the toner once, it was slightly annoying.
Neither of these items has an app.
Longevity ≈ Quality / Complexity
where Quality ≠ Price
I'm using the same $9 (yes, 9) drip coffee machine to make my daily coffee for more than 10 years currently. It has an on/off switch and no 'smarts'. It works fine, why should I change it? It's plugged into a smart outlet that I use to make sure it's turned off after an hour. That plug is getting close to 10 years old as well.
You must not have hard water. We get a >$20 mr. coffee every year or so. They'd likely last longer if we cleaned them more often because if you wait too long, it doesn't seem to help.
Every year? Good lord what do you do to those things. I've lived in hard water areas my whole life and have never experienced people churning through coffee machines that fast.
> They'd likely last longer if we cleaned them more often
So yeah, just put some vinegar through them every now and then and they'll be fine and last a decade. Take care of it and it'll last you a long time. If they're burning out and not incredibly scaled up, there's potentially something wrong with your home's wiring.
Yeah, it's more about the fact that my wife doesn't like running vinegar through because she swears you can still taste it later. A year's worth of the liquid coffee pot descaler costs as much as a new pot. Looking on amazon, it does look like you can get little powder packets affordably though, so I might look into that.
It's not always because of scale though, if you break a carafe, a replacement costs as much as a whole new pot. If the little spring in the basket that interacts with the carafe breaks, there didn't used to be a replacement, but looks like amazon carries a generic now.
The idea that an iPhone (any computer, really) is a high end item is pretty ridiculous.
I would like a good phone that was not made out of glass to require future replacement purchases, and I’d be thrilled to pay for it. Up front, in cash.
This rental economy’s final destination is the same in all categories: cheap junk.
You can't really be playing devil's advocate when you agree with the author, who wrote "Apple seems the best at supporting older devices, and yet I don't actually expect them to support hardware for longer than that."
> except perhaps if we go back decades to appliances made near the middle of the century
That could work (given sufficiently good build-out of the data network), but for the mid-term you'd still need to have a way to receive SMS for 2FA etc.
It gets worse, the banks I use have phased out sms for 2FA. Only using their app on a non-rooted phone is allowed. So getting a dumb phone doesn't work either.
What's even worse that these bank apps always force an update to the latest version, which also sometimes requires updating the OS of the device. Then you are captive audience so they don't care about UX or your experience, so e.g. at my bank confirming an action takes three taps: "confirm" button inside the app, then checkbox with some kind of consent they always sneak in (dark pattern), then the "yes" system popup.
SMS for 2FA is being phased out due to security concerns, but I don't get why they aren't using plain TOTP, so you can use any authenticator app you'd like.
My bank did solve the issue in a pretty clever way though. Their phone app is so terrible that I refuse to use it. Sadly there new web version is also terrible, e.g. you can't copy paste when doing a transfer, so rather than being 100% sure the amount is correct, you get to type it in and double check it.
> but I don't get why they aren't using plain TOTP, so you can use any authenticator app you'd like
Compared to the non-app solutions I'm familiar with in Germany, TOTP lacks at least two things:
1. There are no guarantees as to what happens to the shared secret (whereas at least some of these alternative solutions use your debit card as a smartcard to securely store the secret). From an individual point of view I guess that's perhaps a welcome trade-off (no backup solution except for manually registering a second key everywhere is part of the reason I'm not keen on Yubikeys and the like for replacing all my logins), but banks might have differing opinions.
2. Perhaps more importantly, you can't really authenticate the individual transaction, because the TOTP is only based on the (fixed) shared secret and the current time. The TAN generator solutions I'm familiar with on the other hand also include the destination account and sum of money to be transferred in the TAN calculation (and those get displayed for confirmation on the TAN generator's display), so a malicious website impersonating your bank's online banking can't forge those things.
> Perhaps more importantly, you can't really authenticate the individual transaction,
> also include the destination account and sum of money to be transferred in the TAN calculation
Which banks have it implemented? You are giving them too much credit. In most cases their 2FA is simply code consisting of digits or tapping multiple "confirm" without any context inside of their losy apps. In my personal anecdotal experience only SMS 2FA contain some additional information what exactly are you confirming.
In Germany all banks here (https://www.kontofinder.de/ratgeber/tan-verfahren-ueberblick...) that are listed as supporting chipTAN [1], plus probably most of those that are listed as supporting photoTAN [2] allow using a hardware photoTAN generator instead of an app, too (though sadly some banks like Ing-Diba require their own proprietary photoTAN generator instead of a standard photoTAN-device as supported by some other banks).
[1] That one is using your debit card as a smartcard for the shared secret.
[2] That one requires the shared secret to be transmitted to you in some form (probably a QR-code or something similar in a letter) and set up in the photoTAN generator app/hardware device on first use.
The real question, IMO, is why the need to release a new model every year? I think a lot of the churn of both hardware and software had nothing to do with technological progress, and everything to do with generating sales.
If you consider one person in isolation it sure does not make sense to release a new phone every year.
If you consider all users though, they most certainly do not buy/upgrade at the same time. So let's say a new generation is released every three years, for a given user when buy-time comes they'd be buying a brand new phone that is 1.5 years old tech on average, 2.9 worst case. Releasing a new phone each year means there is the opportunity to buy the up-to-date technology (whether it's a flagship or an economic version) at any particular point in time.
Opportunity does not mean necessity. By and large once people buy a phone and are happy with it they don't change it til it's dead or slow. Most I've seen keep it even way beyond the major version support threshold, or even security update threshold (which can happen faster than expected when people buy refurbs or older models, which they do). They're appliances. There are new models of cars or TVs or washing machines every year, yet virtually nobody changes those every year. One just buys the best one within their budget x identified use case at a given point in time.
In my experience the persona that buys a new phone every year used to exist in the early smartphone days, but today is by and large an outlier figure.
Not that mobile carriers like that, instead they try to keep the churn alive against the tide, because they want customers locked in so they have you buy carrier-locked phones at a rebate under a 1y contract and dearly want you to renew at the end, which means enticing you to get a new, carrier-locked phone.
The only ones I see changing phones regularly are the ones buying phones as consumables instead of appliances - less "washing machine", more "toilet paper", the kind of phone that is cheap and underpowered, borderlining on unusable (or outright so, which I consider to be defective by design) e-waste right out of the assembly line. They don't care about the device, so they don't pay attention, so they break it every rand(0..6) mo, and then the cost to repair is barely lower than the price new plus "it was so slow anyway", so they buy a new cheap one and the circle starts again; which doesn't quite work out financially of course, they'd be better off buying a good phone and paying attention to it (which they would simply because it's not cheap). But back to the point, this kind of persona doesn't care at all about the device "newness".
Well, it does obviously have to do with generating sales. But to play devil's advocate, I never have enough battery life, even with a fresh battery. There are incremental improvements, year-over-year, in terms of processor efficiency. I take a lot of photos, and I definitely notice having a 5x optical zoom now. There are details that some people would say are worth upgrading. But it is not the case that all people fit this template.
> Well, it does obviously have to do with generating sales.
I don't think it's that obvious, and I don't think manufacturers count on it ("it" being short length updates)
Instead I think it's about handling competition: say a manufacturer updates their product line every 3 years, should a user that kept their phone for a while need to buy in the middle to last bout, they'll look at the market and see "oh that other manufacturer has released an update to their product line a month ago, so I'm going to buy that instead of a 2yo product from my current manufacturer". The comparison may be done on any kind of metric but it ultimately comes down to what's state of the art at a given point in time.
It doesn't mean the user hasn't kept their previous phone a long time. But to be competitive across the time continuum the product line needs to be fresh enough.
In that sense it generates sale, or rather, helps with retention, not by having one update every year or other year, but by creating the opportunity to stay within one's current brand.
I think leading manufacturers have realised a long time ago that satisfied customers are what generates reliable sales and growth long term. Even Samsung, king of the shiny "innovative"-but-useless bullet-point feature list have somewhat gotten their act together.
I don't think it's unreasonable to release new hardware every year. Apple is iterating on CPUs on an annual basis, and the new CPUs make for a better phone. It probably doesn't often make sense for a user to upgrade a single step (anymore), but if you're buying, the newer one has a better cpu, so it's worth considering.
That'a separate from software churn though. Desktop OSes tend to support hardware for much longer than mobile OSes. Apple does better than Android here, but they both should do better. My perception is that most android apps support much older versions of Android than iOS apps support of iOS, but I don't know how that ends up looking for age of device supported.
I'd say that is correct. In a sense it's like part availability for cars or washing machines, and is similarly quite an outrageous situation too: around here law mandates 10y of parts availability; trouble is, reliability has progressively improved to the point that this becomes ludicrously insufficient.
An example: I bought a car five years ago, it's well tended and shows no sign of being anywhere close to the scrape yard five years from now, yet parts will become hard to come by; case in point my other car is turning 16 (sixteen!) and barring the need for a full body paint job because the varnish is gradually peeling away (which is kinda expected), is equally in such good order as to most probably be in similar condition for another 10-15 years with proper maintenance; but will I be able to? Parts are getting rarer as they've been in a stock-remainder only basis for five years.
Another example: my washing machine had a part fail at the 7 year mark. Fine, parts are supposed to be available, so just repair? Well, the part moved out of production to stock-basis because they evaluated statistically that they have enough stock to cover the 10y mark. Problem: the stock is a sort of archival with glacial operation speeds, the time quoted for part shipping was shy of 6 months, and I couldn't find a replacement. So I bought a new machine out of sheer necessity.
10y is way too short for parts. Software, notably OS and its compatibility primitives for third party software, should be counted as parts. 7y for software is better than before but still way too short.
> Desktop OSes tend to support hardware for much longer than mobile OSes.
I feel like this is increasingly less true, at least to the point that the difference becomes immaterial to the problem.
Windows 11 needs an SSE4.2, which limits to Intel Nehalem and newer (2008+), although I don't know what revision Atoms are needed, and AMD Bulldozer and newer (2011+).
You'll most likely need to bypass the cpu model check, and the tpm check for an older machine, but otherwise should work. Windows 10 support's more hardware, of course. I forget where Linux cuts off now, I think it's somewhere between a 486 and a Pentium Pro/II. Although I'd expect you do need a 64-bit CPU to run modern software.
> I don't think it's unreasonable to release new hardware every year.
It wasn't ten years ago, but now they seem to be struggling to give you an actual reason for the new models to exist. The argument that not everyone upgrades at the same pace is not unreasonable, but still, it makes absolutely no difference if you get the iPhone 13, 14, 15 or 16. The number of people who needs the 16 for something in particular is so small that it wouldn't be a market in it's own right.
You say this like it’s a bad thing, and maybe it is, but it’s hardly a surprising thing.
Literally everything Apple does is entirely about generating sales. They’re not running a charity for the benefit of their fans. The only reason to come up with designs that people like is to sell them.
This situation doesn't happen with hardware running an open source OS. For example laptops running Linux can upgrade basically forever. Why are community maintained open source OSes better at this than commercially maintained proprietary OSes?
It is more about hardware / software bundling than the openness of the source code. Windows is as proprietary as it gets. I was able to upgrade my desktop PC from 2008 to Windows 10. It required removing quite a bit bloatware but it works.
Actually, I have a negative example for FOSS for you. I have a laptop with an Nvidia GPU on it from 2012. I cannot use it under Linux since Linux world is terrible at API / ABI stability. So Nvidia driver has stopped working. I can still use the laptop fully functional with Windows 11.
> Actually, I have a negative example for FOSS for you. I have a laptop with an Nvidia GPU on it from 2012. I cannot use it under Linux since Linux world is terrible at API / ABI stability. So Nvidia driver has stopped working.
Your example of FOSS not working... is the proprietary nvidia driver breaking? Even though it would almost certainly work if your card were supported by the open source drivers?
Linux is very explicit (and always has been) about not having a stable driver API or ABI; if nvidia tries to target that unstable interface, they are absolutely responsible for the result.
If your application uses raw NT syscall (which Microsoft explicitly says is an unstable interface) and an upgrade breaks it, then the application certainly is at fault. Like, this isn't some incidental case where you accidentally depended on unspecified behavior or an official interface broke; if there's a big warning on an interface that says this thing is unstable and will break your code, and it breaks your code, that's definitely on you.
Yeah, I finally had to replace my old LineageOS phone when all the plastic clips in it broke from replacing the battery so much. My current phone has a web browser, and email client, a Hacker News app, and Signal, and all but the last are from F-Droid and will probably work forever. But it's just the last one that needs to stop being updated and I'll be forced to stop using probably good hardware
Open source OS's also don't do anything for the typical person in a feature sense so there's way less to go wrong and way fewer users to ever discover/report issues. Non-technical users want to run specific hardware like new displays or accessories or use apps like a game or a specific commercial program, not run an OS. Without those users, there's no need to grow the feature set as aggressively.
When you make the decision to not support older hardware (whether directly or indirectly), you're making a decision that the maintenance burden you're trying to avoid is more important than the environmental impact of users disposing of & buying hardware.
Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities for other people. But it would be nice for engineers and businesses to at least think about this and make such a decision consciously.
The environmental impact grows a lot more with the number of sold product than the maintenance burden.
For a business that sold a thousand units with a handful remaining, the calculation is going to be a lot less dominated by impact than for a giant who sold millions and has thousands still in use.
And if there's a giant in this industry, that's Apple.
Ah yes, the company that famously designed their headquarters with zero regard to the environment. The company that included a leaflet titled 'Why the brown box?' back in the 90's when they switched to unbleached cardboard shipping boxes for their computers. Nope they have never given a though about the environment. It's just not in their corporate dna.
Wow, they changed bleached with unbleached cardboard! They made some token environmental changes to their $1B headquarter glass, metal, and concrete behemoth.
I'm pretty sure they have switched to paper straws on their cafeteria too!
You're being sarcastic but they actually did design their new headquarters with zero regard for the environment. They built it in an area where there is not enough housing for their employees and public transportation is non-existent. The parking structure is larger than the office building. The building itself is like a giant greenhouse requiring cooling even in the winter.
>you're making a decision that the maintenance burden you're trying to avoid is more important than the environmental impact of users disposing of & buying hardware.
Companies don't care for the "environmental impact". When they pretend to, it's a token gesture to make certain customer demographics feel good. At best they will sacrifice a slither of their margins, but if there's a conflict between environmental impact and any bigger slice of their profit, they'll go for profit anytime.
>Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities for other people
Environmental impact is about the commons, so it shouldn't be just about whatever personal priorities each has.
This is an example of the difficult (politically not technically) problem of companies externalizing costs. Apple washing their hands of the burden of maintaining software for old hardware is no different than Exxon washing their hands of the burden of capping abandoned oil wells. In both cases the company saves money by costing society more.
>Which... maybe it is; who am I to suggest different priorities for other people
I mean, I get the sentiment. But I live in this world too, and the E-Waste and forced obsolescence(or whatever you'd call it in this particular instance) does have an effect on me, personally. So yes, we should absolutely have a say, despite the fact that at this time we actively do not. In the US, our environmental policy is laughably inadequate, and with what happened in the election, we're about to be on a path of complete self-annihilation, environmentally speaking.
It's a bit of a long-winded way of explaining myself here, but we definitely shouldn't refrain from serious issues because you feel you may be stepping on others' toes.
Let's be real here: Most of us detest forced upgrades because it is Fucking Inconvenient(tm). We don't want to move away from Space Bar Heating[1] once we've gotten established, and screw everyone who tries taking it away.
I'm sure a small minority might also have an environmental beef, but arguing green isn't going to grab peoples' hearts.
>We don't want to move away from Space Bar Heating[1] once we've gotten established, and screw everyone who tries taking it away.
This implies what people want to stick to is some inefficient BS workflow.
As opposed to what's usually the case: more stable, tested, and loved features, changed due to tech fads, to make the product appear new for marketing, to squeeze extra profit despite inconveniencing users, or just for change's sake.
>I'm sure a small minority might also have an environmental beef, but arguing green isn't going to grab peoples' hearts.
That's kind of what it so disheartening about this whole issue. It's seriously urgent, and yet I routinely meet people who actively deny what is actual undeniable fact, claiming various sources of deception (deepstate, lizards, Nancy Pelosi, etc). A good amount of the rest don't care.
This also counts for desktop Macs. Twice in the last 20 years I have had to explain to my elderly Dad that even though his expensive Mac could last another thirty years, it's now a paperweight, or something to be 'repurposed'.
I have wondered sometimes if hardware manufacturers actively seek out significant road-mapped hardware changes (such as Intel>ARM, etc., in case of Apple) in order to keep sales rolling in and stop folks 'sitting on' their well-functioning tech.
You have to be quite cynical if you see Apple's transition to ARM only as a ploy to get people to replace their Intel based machines. I am sure it is a nice bonus, but performance and efficiency just went through the roof.
With yearly iPhone releases it is harder to justify upgrades. Like for author - upgrading from working phone to newer model while not gaining anything significant is stupid.
If the computer here is 20 years old, then we are talking about PowerPC based Mac. So two transitions over this devices lifetime: PowerPC -> Intel -> ARM.
Apple had good reasons for both transitions. In the scheme of 'forced upgrades' these are about as good as you're going to get. Also, if the OPs dad is using the computer for so little that it would last another 30 years, they certainly have no need to upgrade computers. No reason one can't keep using an intel iMac to browse the web
The blog post reminded me of my last laptop upgrade (Macbook Air) as well. I was perfectly happy with the old laptop, nothing wrong with the hardware for me, but software releases started depending on new OSes and then I couldn't install those any longer. No "graceful degradation", and as far as I could tell the limitation was just the size of the storage drive for the OS in particular — not the nature of the chip itself or drivers or anything like that.
I don't necessarily attribute anything nefarious to anything, but collectively the whole thing seems like madness to me. What's ironic is I bet if I put linux on that machine, it (a) would be totally feasible to install recent versions, and (b) all the latest versions of the software I needed would be there for those versions. It seems like there needs to be some principled way of maintaining installs on older hardware... or I guess I just have to weigh this issue more heavily in my decision making about OSes in the future.
Why can't your dad keep using his existing computer? Sure, if you make your living on the computer the new laptops are great. But if he's just checking email, photos, etc - I don't know why his computer needs to become a paperweight
At some point you no longer get security upgrades. Or new web browser versions aren't available and you're unable to access certain sites. In some cases there are workarounds like installing an open source OS but that's too much hassle for most consumers.
Specifically because in each case, no updateable web browser was available any longer. To have your main machine increasingly unable to render web pages, and to suffer growing security vulnerabilities, pretty much bricks the machine for any purpose other than a scanning workstation, etc.
Fair :) I was overlooking that this latest computer could be an older intel machine that didn't receive the latest OS, thus won't still still have years of security only updates.
As someone who just upgraded from an intel to M4, I feel this. But I do wish I had known about OpenCore [0]. Ironically, I learned about it while on a bit of YouTube binge of Mac videos in preparation for my new one arriving. As much as the ecosystem has moved on from Intel, I think I'll be able to keep using my old MBP for a while longer if I can keep it on the latest version of MacOS.
Yup my dad bought an iMac back in 2014. It was that one model that didn't support targeted display mode. It broke about a month back (looks like drive failure) but had been having tons of issues before this due to newer software dropping support.
He should be able to just buy a cheap mac mini second hand and plug it into that gorgious 5k imac display, but nope. Cant do that.
Apple just like every other company could not give less of a crap about ewaste. There is absolutely zero reason why they couldn't relax the limits on older hardware to allow it to be repurposed.
What's now going to happen in my dads case is he'll buy a cheap 4k monitor, probably a second hand mac mini and send the iMac to a charity for recycling.
The whole Intel -> ARM thing though was absolutely about performance and Intel's utterly awful processors holding them back. The forced upgrades were just a bonus for Apple.
I think people forget how new and dynamic these devices are. Maybe in a couple of decades we can have evergreen devices, but for now the changes of the devices and capabilities is still driven by new releases and proliferation. These types of changes still require a ton of human effort and hardware restrictions. In the 60s and 70s car lifespans were much shorter (around 100k miles), but today those are much longer, double that of 50 years ago. You can already see this shift happening in smartphones -- as evidenced by consumers not recognizing improvements between devices that are 5 years newer, although if I'm going to be honest, I find it really odd that you wouldn't notice some of the improvements between iPhone 8 to 16.
It's wasteful, but also not really all at the same time. We're combining a lot of devices and functionality into one unit which can reduce waste, and there's not a lot of things in your life you use as much as a smartphone -- even if you cycle it out every 5 years. There are components of these that are easily recycled as well. For many households the costs of smartphones are cut down as the devices are passed down based on seniority or priority, this makes for a really functional reuse system.
> I find it really odd that you wouldn't notice some of the improvements between iPhone 8 to 16.
I'm sure they notice some improvements, when I was out shopping for a new phone I could tell the then-flagship iPhone 13 having a slightly better display and a slightly better camera than 11 even by playing with it at the store.
But then, I've upgraded from an iPhone 6S+ to iPhone 11, and even 11 was unnecessary to me. I just had to because I bought the 16GB model back then, the lowest storage option, and with ever larger iOS updates my phone wasn't usable anymore.
With that a perfectly usable iPhone 6S became electronic waste, and I was out 600 euros, to do exactly what I've been doing on 6S: browsing, instant messaging, Uber and Uber-likes. Now the fonts look a little nicer, and camera is so much better, and that's.. about it for noticeable features for me. I wouldn't pay that much for either of those if I could.
My point is, I think smartphones hit a ceiling of useful features a long time ago. The big features, all the important stuff, the GPS, camera, browser, IM and a few other things have been figured out since a decade now. There are some smartphone "power users" who don't have a computer or maybe a TV and use it for watching movies, playing games or they are amateur photographers/influencers and such, for them maybe these new models still offer something. For everyone else an iPhone 16 does what an iPhone 6 does, just a little fancier.
Personally I keep two phones. I keep a very old Android phone that I like to use, then a new iPhone that I keep "normal". I use the Android phone for as much as possible, but bank apps don't work any more and many apps dropped support for my version years ago. In these cases, when required, I drop down to the iPhone and pretend to be a "normal" user; I install all my updates, use the stock browser, sign into all the cloud crap, pick the easy sign-in options to everything. The most expected, everage user that everybody is catering towards.
Using the iPhone sucks, but owning it lets me mostly use the Android phone I actually like, while still being able to do everything I would otherwise be arbitrarily restricted from doing.
I felt this way when I was forced to upgrade from IPhone 6s. That was a little different in that with that phone iOS had become too much for the device's limited RAM, and UI concepts meant for the edge-to-edge phones were being forced on phones on which they make no sense.
In early 2023 I "upgraded" to an iPhone XS 256GB. It took a while to get used to FaceID from TouchID, but it's fine. Perhaps this will be its final year? I'm conscious iOS 19 might abandon support. Apple have replaced the battery once and replaced a speaker at the same time (I guess there know the go bad but it's not enough to do a recall). It's a great phone and I too will be a little bit when I'm forced to abandon it.
Just "upgraded" to a Pixel 8 from a 4a (it wasn't even my intention to do so, went to have my 4a battery replaced but the shop botched the job and I needed a working phone quickly), I agree with every point made by the author. It does the same things as the 4a did, just marginally faster. Screen is better but I don't really care, and using it with one hand is harder.
On top of that, I'm praying the dreaded green screen issue does not appear (it did on a coworker's Pixel 8).
Oh well, at least I got security updates now...
Same here. Pixel 5 has been amazing and would love to keep it but the arbitrary stopping of OS and security updates is forcing my hand. I have searched long and far for the technical reasons (some security chip, ram requirements, processor features, etc) but can't seem to come up with anything. Makes it hard to reason about this in any other way than they want to sell more things.
An additional regulation that will come into effect soon (fully only in 2027) is the Cyber Resilience Act which will require all manufacturers to provide at least security updates for however long a "reasonable user" expects to get security updates.
The recitals say:
"In determining a support period, a manufacturer should take into account in
particular reasonable user expectations, the nature of the product, as well as
relevant Union law determining the lifetime of products with digital elements."
and
"The support period for which the manufacturer ensures the effective handling of
vulnerabilities should be no less than five years, unless the lifetime of the product
with digital elements is less than five years[...]"
So....it's a bit up to us to ask vendors for updates for older devices so that we can maybe slowly move the baseline of what a "reasonable user expectation" is.
It's sad that we consider 5-10 years to be "legacy" in any way shape or form. It does seem to very much just be at the consumer level. We've still got servers chugging away in datacenters that are pushing 15 years old and still have several years of life left in them.
> It does seem to very much just be at the consumer level. We've still got servers chugging away in datacenters that are pushing 15 years old and still have several years of life left in them.
The datacenter is temperature controlled and the air is filtered. The server is locked in the rack and never moves. By comparison, your laptop or your phone go through hell on a daily basis.
What is to me frustrating is how artificial these lifecycles feel. Even more so on Android side. Just upstream your drivers and "support" should be pretty much free.
"Just" is a fine word to use when a solution is not technically complicated, and it's important that people with technical understanding express that it really is "just" that simple. That way, if the reason they don't do that is that they and their business partners don't want to, citizens know it's reasonable to ask their governments to make those companies release driver/firmware source code and/or hardware documentation as part of consumer protection laws.
Upstreaming stuff is complicated. You can't just throw your barely working driver over the wall at Linus. You have to put effort into it, and keep putting effort into it.
Sure, if you're writing barely working software to start, but then you'll probably have to put in more effort to maintain a fork for whatever support period you do offer.
Though for the purposes of extending the useful life of a product, throwing it over the wall would be a huge improvement. Publish your garbage code and whatever documentation you have, and people can pick it up themselves, which you already find people doing today but with the added barrier of having to reverse engineer it.
Upgrading to an iPhone 16 seems like a weird choice, given that the SE3 exists and it pretty much perfect. One argument that I can see it that the 16 is two years newer, and should get updates at least two year more. The price difference between the two phones however is much to big to justify getting the 16, unless there's some feature you really need.
Hey, author here. I decided on the 16 since its support lifetime started this year. If I'd gotten the SE (which I seriously considered since it has a more appealing form factor and touchID) I would only have a 4 year support lifetime as opposed to the full 6.
On the other hand the SE3 is 54% of the price of the 16 (assuming base models of both), so long term it could be cheaper to go with the SE3 even though you would have replace it sooner.
> As far as I can tell Apple has the longest support lifetime of 6 years, followed closely by Samsung with 4 years of major Android OS upgrades and 5 years of security updates.
Anecdote of Samsung support from a few years ago on a decidedly-not-flagship phone (just straight-up copying from a comment I wrote a couple of years ago—):
In April 2019, I needed to rapidly obtain a device, and purchased a Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) from a major retailer in Australia. I later discovered that this model had already been EOL for over a year when I purchased it. (It was released with 5.1.1, got its last security patch in November 2017, and was actively unsupported no later than March 2018. The handset should very obviously have been updated to Android 6, if not released with it—Android 6 was announced and in beta 7½ months before, and was the stable release 3½ months before, the handset’s January 2016 release.)
I refuse to believe they didn’t notice a key difference in the phones - the iPhone 16 will feel much, much snappier. Games aside, just opening any old app will be much faster. I notice this every time I upgrade, even when it’s just going up 3 versions, not 8.
I'm curious which apps were the purported problem. Apple's recommendation for app developers is targeting 16.1 as the min device, which the 7 and 8 support (devices that are 7+ and 8+ years old, fwiw), and doing a quick check of the app store, every top app I looked at required 16.1 or earlier. And FWIW, while Apple offers no specific guarantees, they're still providing security updates when necessary. There was one a few months ago.
Could there be a specific app that used some super new API or just wanted to force users to have recent devices? Sure, there absolutely are. But a simple survey demonstrates they're the fringe. For most people, iOS being stuck on iOS 16.x will remain irrelevant for a few more years.
I can give you an egregious example: FlightAware. Not only do they not offer updates that support 16.x (fine, I’d just use the last version that still works on my phone) but instead, their last update puts a full screen modal dialog up, telling me the app will no longer run and that I need to buy a new phone that supports the latest iOS. You can’t even dismiss the modal, so the app effectively no longer works. Total “fuck you” to users!
I’d love 5 minutes in a room alone with the bonehead PM or eng lead who decided this was a good way to treat your users.
Software engineers are notorious for not wanting to support legacy devices and software. You see this all of the time on Hacker News. If you want more venders to support older devices, you need to change the culture. You also need to acknowledge the costs. Here are the costs:
1.Increased software development costs - Costs increase because software has to be designed to fallback to alternative implementations when the newest OS, browser, database, etc. features are not available.
2. Increased performance optimization costs. Older devices tend to be slower and this means software engineers will have to spend more time optimizing programs.
3. Increased testing costs - You need to test all features on older and newer devices.
The other problem is it might not be worth it to support older devices. Basically, supporting older devices may not be profitable (i.e. too few users who do not generate enough revenue to justify the increased costs).
None of those points incentivise software developers to deliberately block me from using the “last working version”. That last version already exists: it was already tested, already performed well, and had all of its engineering costs already spent. Suddenly stopping me from using it does not impact their profit in the slightest.
I was an iOS developer in a past life. It doesn’t take that much effort to keep the lights on on the older OS. But even if it did, it makes zero sense to suddenly make that already working older version stop working.
I can find some recent internet posts noting that FlightAware dropped iOS 15 support, but at present it claims to support iOS 16.4 or later devices, which would include the 7 and 8 if updated. I don't use iOS 16 or FlightAware, so it's possible that they allow you to install it from the store and then do some runtime check and refuse to actually run, but that would be super weird behaviour.
I get why devs do this sometimes. iOS bakes a lot of support into the OS (so does Android, though increasingly because of slow uptake of new versions Google baking everything into the Play API), and iOS 16 is necessary for a variety of APIs, and even a lot of SwiftUI functionality if they went down that route. And then your APIs start changing so you end up invariably doing breaking changes so you can't just ignore the old versioned apps in the wild.
> I don't use iOS 16 or FlightAware, so it's possible that they allow you to install it from the store and then do some runtime check and refuse to actually run, but that would be super weird behaviour.
This is exactly what they appear to be doing. It should be against Apple’s guidelines to release an app that simply says “go away until you buy a new phone.”
Ah, sorry, mea culpa I thought the 7 and 8 were getting the same updates.
So the 7 is stuck on 15, and it is the one being left out courtesy of 15. Still doesn't address the submission though that is claiming this about the 8 and 16, which as of now is still very widely supported. I assume the author is just reading the tea leaves and predicting what is ahead. Eventually 16 will be deprecated too, though it isn't right now.
FlightAware on the App Store likely works perfectly, though it would require 16.4+ on devices like the 8 or newer. The "you can't use this anymore" is likely a startup API check on previously installed and no longer updatable versions.
Unusability preservation law:
Whenever a technology gets into a state where it becomes usable, when it starts to suit you, you get into it and you are satisfied with it, something always happens that either completely impairs it or makes working with it significantly uncomfortable.
I used an iPhone 6 way past its expiry date. It also became slower over time for no reason until it was essentially unusable.
Finally I bought a refurbished iPhone SE 2020 for 200 euros in 2022. It felt almost like going back to a brand new iPhone 6 in both performance and features.
I hope to keep it until the inevitable performance drop makes it annoyingly slow, then buy a refurbished iPhone SE 2022 and repeat.
After the SE 2022 becomes unusable there will be no good alternative left in the market for someone who only wants a small, simple phone without an abundance of stupid features, then I guess I’ll just stop using smartphones.
What do you like about Touch ID? I think I'd switch platforms before going away from Face ID, it's so trivial to authenticate without even moving a muscle that I don't even think about it.
I have an older iPad with touch ID, and I simply turned it off because it felt like an anachronism in the experience.
It doesn't fail as often as Face ID - you can touch the phone on table and don't have move your head to get it right (especially on the iPad).
Its more secure because it requires an active action (touching) vs passive (looking).
Fingerprint vs Face shines while (for instance) having a conversation and, because you have manners, want to maintain eye contact while pulling up a photo of that thing you are describing, or to make sure that's just a robocall and not your wife with an emergency.
It also shines first thing in the morning where your hair and eyes are so disheveled that even Siri didn't recognize you. Your thumb is probably still the same shape.
Android phones are kinda better in this regard because if you really insist, you can take matters into your own hands and install a custom ROM. Especially now that GSIs (generic system images) are a thing.
Really though, why do we keep updating OSes? I understand security updates, but why do these major yearly releases have to keep happening? What do they solve? Why can't we for once just settle for something in this cursed industry? Why can't we release finished products?
Yeah I don't know....custom ROMs feel less trustworthy than a publicly traded corporations locked down OS. Things like Graphene can't run some bank apps because of security concerns from the banks. I would rather run a pixel missing a few security updates than a custom rom. I also don't visit shady sites or install non mainstream apps.
I’m in a similar situation with my iPhone 8. The battery currently shows 81% capacity, so needs changing, but it doesn’t make much sense considering it’s not getting anymore software updates. It sucks, because outside of that, the phone is fine!
Really wish that we got updates for longer; feels as though companies are forcing you into upgrades just to sell more devices.
I still target Android JellyBean as the minimum version with my apps. I have never increased the minimum version since I created the app. Google makes it difficult, but I refuse to give into their quest to annoy users. I love my 3 JellyBean users as much as the rest of my users and they deserve to not have their software break for no reason.
My ancient MacBook air is also working perfectly well except for the lack of OS support. I finally got a newer model this weekend and my wife asked me what new features the new one had, and I struggled to explain that it had no new features (useful to me) really, except OS updates.
The feeling of upgrading to something worse has always been my gripe. I think the last time a phone upgrade was purely positive for me was the switch from flippy phones to touchscreens. I don't need whatever new gimmick they're pushing that year, which usually just serves to get in the way. I certainly don't see how I benefit from this new "feature" where my old earbuds don't work without a dongle.
I use Android, and I agree that the Android ecosystem is worse about this, although neither option is acceptable. At this point I would pay more for a newly-manufactured model from 2010 than for the current model, if it could still support modern apps (even though it alludes me how the price keeps going up and not down).
This is one of the reasons I decided to buy a fairphone, because I noticed the effort that company was putting in supporting older devices with android updates, even though the hardware vendors like qualcomm don't support it anymore.
Once a computer (a smart phone is a computer) stops getting security updates, it should not be connected to a network. The reason is that device will get hacked and that is not good.
This person should have upgraded his iPhone 8 as soon as Apple stopped offering security updates. He either already got hacked or would have eventually got hacked if he continued to use an insecure phone. Note that not all hacks are visible. For example, information stealers (malware which steals passwords and data) are designed to run silently in the background. They don't want to victim to know they have been hacked.
I see this statement all the time. And it's frequently a universally-applied authoritative statement like this comment. I think it's incorrect and short-sighted to unilaterally decree things like this.
Instead, I think the correct way to approach this is on a case-by-case basis that takes into consideration the function of the computer, the needs/priorities/legal obligations of the users, and importantly their risk tolerance and risk appetite. A security policy that is not in some way modulated by risk is a policy that does not account for the real-world complexity of its systems. There is an increased risk to using out-of-date software, but without knowing this person's risk tolerance or priorities, we are not in a good place to advise a security policy.
This kind of “security ransom” should not be acceptable. Oh I should throw away my perfectly working phone because the OS vendor just up and decided to stop fixing its security, leaving the device useless? Shouldn’t they compensate me for making my perfectly good hardware useless, since I should not be connecting it to the web now?
This person is doing the right thing: complaining loudly about corporate practice that should not be accepted by consumers.
If I want to produce a device, am I required to put work in to maintaining it forever? An iPhone 8 is really old by this point, honestly I’m impressed it still works.
What timeline would you recommend that is fair to both consumers and producers?
Maybe not forever, but we have really short timelines for product longevity in this industry, even at the hardware level. A washing machine or kitchen appliance that had to be replaced every <7 years (taking the timeframe from the post) would be considered low quality; furniture that can't last 10-15 years is considered nearly disposable. Cars -- maybe the thing closest in comparison in terms of complexity and engineering required to build, even if several orders of magnitude more expensive -- are expected to last decades with proper maitenance.
Certainly there is a trend towards this in a lot of industries besides computers, but given how powerful and expensive these devices are now, the current upgrade cycles are crazy fast. I think consumers are souring on them a bit as well (both because of the price, and because the annual new models have really slowed down in the visible feature improvements they offer).
I know the economic incentives for the producers are aligned towards repeated purchases, and that's super tough to realign, but how long can the market and the environment support four-digit phone price tags that are upgraded every 1-3 years?
I have been using an iphone6s (ios 15. Received an update 4 months ago). for some time already. It works fine. Granted, I don’t use it for “important” stuff, but it works fine for browsing, checking train timelines, Uber, radio, youtube, whatsapp, Slack, camera, maps…
The problem will not be solved by laws requiring corporations to act ethically. That will never work as long as their incentives are what they are. IMO the only way to address these issues is to have a free software phone-OS alternative that users can have control of.. that is to say if you want the government involved, it would be best served by funding an free software project along these lines.
I agree that this area is more complicated than simple statements will be able to cover, but at first thought I like the idea of some sort of rule for opening up any device that is not being maintained. That when a company decides a device will no longer receive updates, some amount of source code/documentation needs to be released to allow third parties to take over.
Tying software support to how long the hardware lasts will ensure that every hardware manufacturer builds in a time-based killswitch into every device they make.
Then users should be compensated when the manufacturer decides to remotely kill their devices (whether by a kill switch or by stopping maintaining the software).
Then we will simply see fewer and more expensive models available for sale as some manufacturers and investors decide these regulations are too much and exit; others will raise prices to pay for the compensation and extended software support.
Companies have a need to make money, for better or worse, that’s how it is. Companies like Apple have to balance the economic viability of maintaining developers on software - for them to keep being updated - with keeping users happy.
Modern smartphones are not analogous to gas cookers. They’re about 100 times more complex, with third party, hardware, software, security and economic interplay.
Reducing it to “My fridge worked for 20 years why doesn’t my iPhone?” is just a stupid argument. Your phone is not a banana.
I tried to go back to using an old but trusty iPhone 5 in 2018. I found that I couldn't get a signal in half the locations I used to get signals fine previously. Technology had marched on, and so had the mix of 2G, 3G and 4G bands.
Given that our beige computing boxes used to be out of date within two years, I'd say six years for a phone is good going. Time to get a new iPhone.
Still rocking an iPhone 7. I’ve encountered a few apps that have dropped iOS 15, but surprisingly not that many.
I feel the same way the author does. With a new battery the phone works fairly well and I don’t need to upgrade.
With the exception of the SE models, all newer models are too big, have a notch, and Face ID. There’s just no compelling reason to upgrade other than being forced by the company.
I think a big part of this is that upgrading from iPhone 8 to 16 is such a huge jump that all the muscle memory that you've built up has changed. You might as well switch to an Android phone. I wonder how OP's opinion would change in a few months once they're used to the phone.
I went from an 8 to a 15. My muscle memory adapted in about a day or two. I’m not old, but I’m also not young.
I love the 15 and still keep the 8 around for music and other things. For me, Face ID is superior and I get confused when I look at my 8 and it doesn’t immediately unlock. And I was super worried about losing Touch ID.
I'm currently in the same position, upgrading from an iPhone 6s (2015) to an iPhone 16.
The thing is, it is mostly not the apps which forced me to upgrade. I can't get newer ones, of course, but the old ones still work. (Except a supermarket app which practically deactivated its current app and asks me to update to a newer version which I can't install. There is no need, no new APIs except maybe developer convenience.)
But the real villain is the web.
Browsing simple websites becomes a chore, Safari becomes unresponsive for minutes at a time. Sometimes it feels worse web experience than the one an iPhone 1 with the checkerboard background.
I blame React for having to pay money just to stand still.
I'm in the same boat. I need to update my Apple Watch but can't because I can't update my iPhone 8. I love Apple stuff but there's no ignoring the costs (beyond the purchase price).
The supply and demand optimizes for cost extraction, ignoring customer preferences, health, and sanity. So here we are sitting in our crossovers scrolling our phablets with unlimited data for tiktok and instagram.
The older iPhones are nice products. It's a shame there are so many gaps in driver support for these devices. A lot of people would be happy to run something like GrapheneOS on them.
From looking at their website, that is 8 years of software updates. Not 8 years of Android version updates. Apple has released security updates for 10 year old devices such as iOS 12.5.7 which released in 2023 and runs on iPhone 5s.
FP5 owner here. IIRC, this is a guarantee for security updates at least, yes. There was some promise on how many major android updates they guarantee I think, but I forgot the details. I also wonder if and how far the promised minimum will be exceeded.
That said, I am just glad Fairphones are usually relatively well covered by open source versions of android and other operating systems. Even if I may need another phone for banking apps and all that annoying stuff in 2030 or so, I can at least safely re-use it for other purposes. My "old" Android is now nothing more than an offline mp3 player, which is kinda sad.
I feel the same as the author. I also can’t come up with any satisfying solution. I empathize with apple and don’t expect them to support old hardware forever. The only solution I can think of is allowing people to support older hardware themselves. This is one of the strongest arguments for loosening the walled garden for older devices.
It's completely ridiculous that these phones are as non-hackable as they are. When maintaining the illusion they sell of their stuff being "magic" (so therefore you can't hack on it) over the seriously big fucking issue of pollution and E-waste, I'd go a bit further than saying it's annoying. It's deeply immoral.
iPhone SE3 might've been a better upgrade path. Substantially cheaper (than the 16), still has a good few years of updates left, still has touch ID, and the exact same form factor as the iPhone 8.
Yeah that sucks but it’s already the best out there. Some would say that you can use lineageos indefinitely on Android when the boot loaders is unlocked but the cold truth is that app requiring minimum os version also require the phone not to be unlocked and pass Google safetynet, which lineageos (even with magisk) can’t.
Smartphones cause a truly astonishing amount of waste (https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/12/11/right-to-repair-...: ~151 million phones discarded in the US each year, as of 2018), to say nothing of the various social follow-on effects that are being argued to death elsewhere. I was a very late smartphone adopter and I'm already trying to reduce the amount I depend on this thing; too much of their marketing always struck me as being more akin to new sneakers than life-improving tech.
As a dev I understand the challenges of supporting older hardware. As a conscious consumer, I wish there were another option available in the market, and I haven't yet decided what I'll do when my current device finally needs to be retired.
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