> Malware is VERY rare, MUCH more rare than Android,
Until your phone stops getting security updates. Then what? You toss it in the trash? Can you jail break it? Can you run something like postmarketOS on it?
Isn't that kinda the point of the original article? To get off the cycle of buying a phone every few years just because Apple decides it belongs in the trash? And to prevent e-waste from going in the landfills?
I love when people say that and apparently think it's admirable/amazing that a device would still work 6 years after its release.
But most devices used to work a lifetime. My motorcycle was made in 2009 (14 years ago) and is in pristine condition. The previous one was over 25 years old when it got stolen (by someone, presumably, who thought it was worth the risk). Blenders from the 40s still work. Not to mention non-electrical tools like hammers and such, which last for generations.
Parts of my home desktop computer are over 15 years old; the case itself was made in the 1990s.
It's one thing to get newer devices that do new things, and quite another to have to throw away old ones that should still be working fine.
Phones have no moving parts, there's no good reason they should become obsolete.
Well, the iPhone from 2009 was an iPhone 3GS, it had a 320x480 screen, 256MB of RAM and only supported 3G - a networking standard that has been turned off by the major carriers.
If your motorcycle only supported leaded gas could you use it?
> Phones have no moving parts, there's no good reason they should become obsolete.
You’re right, Apple should have made it so the cell radio supported wireless standards that didn’t even exist at the time.
>only supported 3G - a networking standard that has been turned off by the major carriers.
Remember, the US is not the world. What major carriers do in the US is not necessarily a global fact. Where I live 2G and 3G is still a fallback if 4G or 5G doesn't work. It will continue to be that way until 2025.
>If your motorcycle only supported leaded gas could you use it?
Google lead replacement additive or think about whether the engine could be rebuilt/replaced on a motorcycle. I certainly would prefer an engine rebuild/replace over replacing a modem in an iPhone 3GS.
>the iPhone from 2009 was an iPhone 3GS, it had a 320x480 screen, 256MB of RAM
The iPhone from 2009 wasn't that impressive in specs compared to other phones at the time. My even older 2.5G dumbphone had higher PPI on the screen and could run useful j2me apps. In 2010, the iPhone 4 came, had a 640x960 screen and 512MB of RAM. The fact that the specs could be doubled within a year shows that the earlier 3GS wasn't pushing anything spec wise.
> Remember, the US is not the world. What major carriers do in the US is not necessarily a global fact. Where I live 2G and 3G is still a fallback if 4G or 5G doesn't work. It will continue to be that way until 2025.
And it’s two largest markets - the US and China don’t support 3G GSM. What’s the market share of iPhones in your country?
> even older 2.5G dumbphone had higher PPI on the screen and could run useful j2me apps
J2ME games weren’t nearly as advanced as App Store games. The App Store was introduced a year before the iPhone 3GS came out.
> If your motorcycle only supported leaded gas could you use it?
Yes! It was the case with the previous one (the one that got stolen); all I had to do was add a few drops of a special liquid every time I filled her up. No problem at all.
That graph shows iPhone sales year on year. I’d be interested to see recycling stats as I know Apple will recycle iPhones for free but I couldn’t find much with a quick search.
How many Android devices are still in use after 7 years? And receiving updates?
I suspect these are generating e waste at a much higher rate than iPhones but would love to see some comparable figures
I'm in complete agreement here. All phone makers should make their devices last for a minimum of 10 years after purchase. Not just Apple. But Google too.
I too would like to know those stats for both Apple and Android. I suspect it's rather low though. I'm pretty sure e-waste just gets sent to China these days.
This is a shame because there are a lot of old tablets and phones that would be useful as general computing devices.
> All phone makers should make their devices last for a minimum of 10 years after purchase.
I don't think it's necessary. They should just allow full user ownership and let the community use the phones as they wish. Including the Android's closed drivers, which should become FLOSS after 10 years or so.
I have sent at least 8 Android phones to the landfill over the years. They either lost support and had no alternate path to a new OS or a catastrophic hardware failure that made them a paperweight.
I'm on year 2.5 with iOS and all three of our phones are as smooth as the day we bought them and I expect to receive at least another 2.5 years of support.
Well, the iPhone 5s from 2013 got a security update earlier this year. It’s the first iPhone that supports LTE and the older networks are being turned off.
My 14+-year-old laptop not just receives security updates. It runs the latest Debian without any problem and I see no end to this. What's the problem with phones?
My understanding is the chip makers, not just Apple but for Android that's Qualcomm, Samsung, etc.
Apparently only the chip makers have the necessary info to release the drivers for the latest Linux kernel, unlike your laptop where newer versions of Linux can always be recompiled for your hardware without help from Intel or AMD.
This is also why 3rd party Android distribution have to provide separate images for each device, while Debian can distribute a single image that works on any x86 machine.
You are not wrong, but the phone manufacturer could search for chips respecting the users if they really wanted. My GNU/Linux smartphones (Librem 5 and Pinephone) will work just like my laptop, with indefinite software updates.
Apple intentionally chooses proprietary chip designers not respecting users' freedom. It forces users to regularly buy new devices and brings a lot of profit to Apple. (Apple doesn't care about the respective damage to the environment.)
My phone is a general-purpose computer, which can be used to communicate without a mobile carrier if necessary. Also it allows to replace the modem with another one: it's on an M.2 card.
Who else are they suppose to choose that can make a performant 5G chip?
And users don’t “regularly” have to buy new devices. The 2013 iPhone 5s is the first iPhone that supports LTE and it just got a security update this year.
And how much larger and less battery efficient would a phone with a card be? What about the surrounding hardware? Could you just throw a 5G chip in a 2009 iPhone 3G?
Most people don't run 14+ year-old laptops. The market share of those people is too small to care about. You are just lucky somebody still writes drivers for your outdated tech. I wouldn't use a laptop older than 5 years if you paid me.
Why the hell would I torture myself with a laptop from before 2010? The screen quality must be horrendeous. Speakers absolute trash. Battery life also garbage. What is the point of doing this to yourself? Just to be able to show off on HN and other nerd sites where everybody still uses cassette players because they were "tOtAllY cOoL BrO".
This is a strawman. It's not your business why I need an old laptop. This is wrong to prevent me from using it on the grounds of my own (dis)comfort. Did you hear about thin clients or security through isolation? I don't want to throw away a working device if I can find a use for it. Unlike Apple, I care for the environment.
No one is preventing you from using it. Let me put it the other way: why should people work to support your old device? You are causing discomfort for others by forcing devs to pollute their codebase with code to support your obsolete technology.
What if after a number of years (<= 10 years) you would have to pay devs to support your hardware? That seems more fair to me than simply expecting your stuff to still be supported for free. Except I'll tell you what will happen: you will buy a newer device. Because it's cheaper than paying devs' salaries.
I fully expect after a number of years of using a device to receive a message: "Your device is unsupported as of now. Buy a newer one. We won't waste our lives supporting your stuff for free. Sorry, but not sorry."
How much wasted time is there in the linux kernel supporting old devices I wonder? At some point they will surely go for a great purge in the kernel to get rid of the old stuff. The thing is just getting more and more bloated.
Yea. But it still requires carrier support and often carriers won’t allow you to connect a phone to their network if it doesn’t support a compatible standard. I guess you could use Google Voice over wifi.
Until your phone stops getting security updates. Then what? You toss it in the trash? Can you jail break it? Can you run something like postmarketOS on it?
Isn't that kinda the point of the original article? To get off the cycle of buying a phone every few years just because Apple decides it belongs in the trash? And to prevent e-waste from going in the landfills?