| ▲ | stavros 8 days ago |
| More devices we no longer own and that are bound to become trash in a few years, and for what reason? So companies can make more profits? |
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| ▲ | jjbinx007 8 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| I decided to part with my Huawei Mate 20 X after about 7 years of ownership not because it was a bad phone - on the contrary, it has a nice big screen, decent enough camera, is still plenty fast enough etc - but because the OS hadn't received any updates in a long time. Rather than see it go to landfill I donated it to a friend who's happy to use it but what an absolute waste. Bought a Pixel purely because they are committed to updating their phones for a long time. |
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| ▲ | stavros 8 days ago | parent [-] | | I've been using Xiaomi phones but I had to buy a new phone every year or two just because they get so sluggish. My other Android phones kind of had the same, except my Nothing 2 has been going strong. Has this been your experience as well, or have your phones been OK with responsiveness? Seven years is a long time, I imagine the phone must have been unusable by then. | | |
| ▲ | asimovfan 8 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I've used a xiaomi redmi note 4 (mediakek) for many years before i got it stolen. I've purchased a xiaomi redmi note 10 after that (i am supposing there were six years in between). I was still using it but then I needed one of these big folding phones and bought a samsung z fold 5. It broke down in 2 years, i am back to my redmi note 10. Still going strong. I will never buy an expensive phone again it was a dumb move. Just the cheapest android on aliexpress. | |
| ▲ | jjbinx007 8 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | My Huawei was still absolutely fine for me speed-wise. I moved to a Xiaomi 14 for a little while which was obviously faster but not in a "holy shit it's fast" sort of way. The Pixel is slower than the Xiaomi in benchmarks but I can barely tell any difference in day to day usage. Maybe if I went back to the Huawei it would feel slow but honestly I would still be using it if it had been updated. Unless the new OS slowed it down. | |
| ▲ | catlikesshrimp 8 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | unlock the bootloader and flash Lineage OS. |
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| ▲ | baq 8 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They should be economically incentivized to pick up their trash. |
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| ▲ | rickdeckard 8 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is already in place in the EU via the WEEE directive (Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment), but the costs have apparently been absorbed just fine already by this industry, so it doesn't seem to hurt them sufficiently to be incentivized for longevity. As much as I hate it, the strongest incentive would maybe be to legally define vendors who supply hardware with a non-interchangable OS-ecosystem as service-providers and put restrictions on the price they can charge for the hardware to render the service (like i.e. a cable-modem from an ISP). This could force the large players to decide between high-margin hardware or high-margin OS-ecosystem instead of aiming for both. Come to think of it, these market-dynamics would be interesting to observe... | |
| ▲ | charcircuit 8 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is any other product forced to do such a thing? Considering a phone lasts for years and is very small, it produces very little garbage over time compared to disposable product people use. Think how big a garbage can is compared to a phone. | | |
| ▲ | baq 8 days ago | parent [-] | | I dump a whole bin of paper every two weeks; most of it is recyclable. Phones are electrowaste. Recyclability of electronics is... not good. |
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| ▲ | wiseowise 8 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| But think of banks and music services, comrade! Banks need the waste to protect you, and poor music services will go out of business if you control your own phone! |
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| ▲ | charcircuit 8 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| You still own the device even if the bootloader is locked. It's like saying you don't own a CPU because you can't add your own instructions. There are always going to be limits to what you can easily customize for a device. |
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| ▲ | account01011100 8 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Adding cpu instructions is something that you can't physically do, however unlocking the bootloader is something you can do via software, and if a vendor chooses to lock it down they're basically taking away your ability to do anything you would want to do with a device. Sadly this is has been the case for a while and it's probably going to continue being the case. | | |
| ▲ | charcircuit 8 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You can physically do it with a microcode update. Nothing is being taken away since this change is for new products. They just are not providing an additional feature to these products. | | |
| ▲ | gkbrk 8 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > You can physically do it with a microcode update. It's also anti-consumer that CPU vendors don't let customers who own the CPU perform whatever updates they want because they don't give out signing keys. | | |
| ▲ | charcircuit 8 days ago | parent [-] | | If malware could install microcode it could break the security of the system. There is more consumer benefit than harm by locking it down to trusted updates. | | |
| ▲ | EvanAnderson 8 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The security model could allow the end user to install keys for the root of trust for the CPU, much like how UEFI Secure Boot allows you to install your own keys. That CPUs don't have this functionality may not be purposefully anti-consumer (and just laziness), but the net effect is anti-consumer. As it stands, besides preventing the user from making modifications to CPU functionality, the user is also forced to "trust" updates that might be created for specific anti-consumer purposes (say, compelled by government security services). | | |
| ▲ | cesarb 8 days ago | parent [-] | | > As it stands, besides preventing the user from making modifications to CPU functionality, the user is also forced to "trust" updates that might be created for specific anti-consumer purposes (say, compelled by government security services). That would be less of an issue if the updates were auditable (that is, security researchers could read and study them), even if users weren't able to modify them. Unfortunately, other than some early CPU designs, AFAIK microcode updates are always encrypted. I suspect that their reason is to protect "trade secrets" on details of their CPU design. |
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| ▲ | g-b-r 8 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Trusted, sure |
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| ▲ | cesarb 8 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > > Adding cpu instructions is something that you can't physically do > You can physically do it with a microcode update. Do these ARM CPUs even have microcode? Unlike on x86 CPUs where there are some very complex instructions which have to be microcoded, on ARM all instructions are simple enough that their decoding into micro-operations can be completely hard-coded in the decoder logic. | | |
| ▲ | charcircuit 8 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes, it's too risky to make CPUs without microcode. Being able to fix bugs, or at least disable things so you don't have a complete paperweight is still important even for ARM. | | |
| ▲ | cesarb 8 days ago | parent [-] | | Disabling things can be done through "chicken bits" on configuration registers, no microcode necessary. Do you know of any ARM cores used on smarphones which actually have updatable microcode? I've never heard of any. All errata fixes I've seen are of the "set this bit in a specific register" kind. | | |
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| ▲ | stavros 8 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I disagree. If they have to go out of their way to remove functionality the previous phones had, that's anti-consumer. | | |
| ▲ | charcircuit 8 days ago | parent [-] | | It being your own device and removing a feature being anticonsumer can both be true. Every feature comes with trademarks off from the company providing them. It's up to consumers to validate products by buying them if they think the features offered is worth the price. If removing this feature doesn't hurt the sales of the device this feature may be more trouble than it's worth for them to provide. |
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| ▲ | blueflow 8 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > they're basically taking away your ability to do anything.... ... with your property, with is a violation of your rights in most western jurisdictions. |
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| ▲ | e2le 8 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't believe a user lacking the ability to perform a microcode update impacts their freedom in any meaningful way. The CPU still executes whatever instructions it's given unless the user is deprived of that freedom. |
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