Smartphone upgrade treadmill

[Babbylonian]

You might be surprised what is out there.

Consider the Motorola Moto G6. When it first shipped two years ago it was $250. Now you can find them, unlocked, for $150 (yeah, I know, not $100) with 4GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. All day long. Sometimes you can get the 64GB model at that price. Better CPU. Screen resolution far better than the S4. Cameras comparable to, if not better than the S4. Dual SIM (or SIM/microSD up to 128GB, which is twice what the S4 could manage.)

There is literally no spec for the S4 which it can't exceed. Usually by quite a bit. Often by a factor of 2. For $150. Less, mebbe, if you shop around and/or are willing to settle for the 32GB version.

I got my G7 for under $200 early this year. There are a ton of options in the low price range these days and you're not sacrificing much unless you're a big phone gamer or obsessed with having the absolute best camera.

I will note that there's one feature missing from the [US] versions of most, if not all, of Motorola's mid-range phones: NFC. It's kind of a bummer because I'd gotten used to paying with a previous phone, but it's not like I'd cut up my cards.

 

[Darat]

ios14 launched today, and can be installed on everything back to the iPhone 6, which launched in 2014. So that's exactly 6 years of support. I wouldn't be surprised if ios15 next year only went as far back as the iPhone 7, but it's certainly feasible it'll still be viable on the 6.



I think it's not just that they want people to buy new products (although they certainly do), but the changing technology allows them to do more. If you've got more processing power and more memory, etc., then your OS can use more processing power and more memory, etc.. And there comes a point where supporting old devices means compromising the abilities of new devices which, even with the best will in the world, wouldn't be a good move for a tech company.

6S.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

And I think it is important to remember that your $600 phone could be replaced by a $100 phone that is better in every measurable way. I don't think that applies to the rest of the things you mention.

TVs maybe, I think the acceleration of change in TV standards may be storing up problems for the future, but thechanges in the underlying technology have reduced prices to an incredible degree.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

6S.

You're right. The website I checked with yesterday lied to me.

So that's 5 years, then. Although, of course, you can still use older iPhones, just not with the new operating system.

 

[malbui]

My 6 is blocked on 12.4.8 which is fine except, as discussed above, for running certain new apps. Which is a pity. My 6S Plus is running iOS 14 happily enough since this morning, though.

 

[Dr. Keith]

I expect that you (Dr. Keith) know most of this, but it does require a bit of familiarity with the Android smartphone market.

Nah, I'm an iPhone user. I had to have a non-iPhone for a few weeks once and I was so confused it was pathetic. The word embarrassing is not enough to capture my complete and utter shame at how hard it was for me to operate this phone. But, I did note that the very cheap phone I had was still quite capable. Really, amazingly capable for the price. If I had needed to rely on it I'm sure I could have gotten used to the interface and it would have done everything I needed it to do at a much cheaper price than my iPhone.

I know I pay extra to maintain an interface that I am comfortable with. But I also know there is fierce competition in the non-iPhone market and there are very capable phones to be had for very reasonable prices. That makes me happy even if I am not a part of that market. I remember tinkering with discarded stereo equipment as a kid an I get the feeling there are lots of kids out there right now learning about the world around them through discarded mobile tech. That is exciting to me, and likely completely off topic.

 

[Babbylonian]

Nah, I'm an iPhone user. I had to have a non-iPhone for a few weeks once and I was so confused it was pathetic. The word embarrassing is not enough to capture my complete and utter shame at how hard it was for me to operate this phone.

There’s no reason at all to feel that way. IOS and Android are very different in the ways the user interacts with anything more complicated than opening an app. I was given an iPad recently and it took a while to figure things out that I could do easily on an Android device (I’ve been on Android almost exclusively for a decade). I’m still slowly learning more. If you’d been committed to a permanent change, you’d probably have had less trouble.

 

[Dr. Keith]

There’s no reason at all to feel that way. IOS and Android are very different in the ways the user interacts with anything more complicated than opening an app. I was given an iPad recently and it took a while to figure things out that I could do easily on an Android device (I’ve been on Android almost exclusively for a decade). I’m still slowly learning more. If you’d been committed to a permanent change, you’d probably have had less trouble.

It was one of those aha moments where I was once again reminded that I am not as technologically literate as I used to be.

As you say, if it were a permanent change I would have thrown myself more into it.

 

[Wudang]

It was one of those aha moments where I was once again reminded that I am not as technologically literate as I used to be.

As you say, if it were a permanent change I would have thrown myself more into it.

On the other hand, why would you want to learn a new way of interacting with what is essentially a convenience device? Your thumbs know where to go to send that message, take that photo, etc and that muscle memory is worth a lot. I swapped to an iPhone for a while as my then phone experienced an unscheduled energy transfer with a gravel road so I bought a used s6 to try. Nice but when the battery started losing longevity I went back to android.

 

[Dr. Keith]

On the other hand, why would you want to learn a new way of interacting with what is essentially a convenience device?

Because I was clinging to an image of myself as someone who was well versed in many technologies and could easily navigate in any consumer interface. Such images are hard to let go of.

 

[alfaniner]

I did the upgrade on my old iPhone 6GS (yes, I did a full backup first!). Considering I do so little with it, I haven't noticed a superficial difference. But I do see that almost all the apps have the little cloud icon next to them - indicating that a new download needs to be made. The few I need are still active so I doubt I'll bother.

I do see that every app I've made is "No longer available" even though the icons remain. But I knew that would happen when I left the Developer Program. (You can't have your apps for sale on the store unless you're an active subscribing Member. You can't even re-download them if you've had them before. You can't even recompile them for your own use from your own computer!)

 

[quadraginta]

I did the upgrade on my old iPhone 6GS (yes, I did a full backup first!). Considering I do so little with it, I haven't noticed a superficial difference. But I do see that almost all the apps have the little cloud icon next to them - indicating that a new download needs to be made. The few I need are still active so I doubt I'll bother.

I do see that every app I've made is "No longer available" even though the icons remain. But I knew that would happen when I left the Developer Program. (You can't have your apps for sale on the store unless you're an active subscribing Member. You can't even re-download them if you've had them before. You can't even recompile them for your own use from your own computer!)

They don't call it "a walled garden" for nothin'.

 

[Darat]

Because I was clinging to an image of myself as someone who was well versed in many technologies and could easily navigate in any consumer interface. Such images are hard to let go of.

This is key to what Apple has done so well, made it inconvenient to move from Apple to another provider of hardware and software.

 

[Darat]

They don't call it "a walled garden" for nothin'.

Yeah, it’s 30%.

 

[CORed]

Flash has been dying on all platforms, and invites to its funeral and its tombstone has been ready for some time, no one can say they have been taken by surprise about it going the way of the Dodo.

It's been awhile since I've seen a website that uses Flash. HTML5 and newer Javascript extensions have pretty much made it useless (well even more useless that it used to be) anyway.

 

[quadraginta]

And in the new news for inexpensive smartphones, Nokia has a new model coming out. Available for pre-order at $139.

The Nokia 2.4 uses a MediaTek Helio P22 processor and sports a 6.5-inch 720 x 1600 display. It has 2 GBs of RAM, and 32 GBs of storage, along with a microSD card to expand its storage.

You get a single 13-megapixel camera with a 2-megapixel depth sensor and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. You can unlock it with the rear fingerprint sensor, and it even has a Google Assistant button. The 4500 mAh battery is likely enough to get you through the day. It comes with Android 10, and HMD promises two years of updates.​

There's also a bigger, faster, better 3.4 model for an additional $40.

If you need something with a little more oomph, the $179 Nokia 3.4 does step up in specs for the extra $40. It uses a more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 460, paired with 3 GBs of RAM and 64 GBs of storage. Naturally, you can use a microSD card to expand that if needed.​

 

[P.J. Denyer]

It's been awhile since I've seen a website that uses Flash. HTML5 and newer Javascript extensions have pretty much made it useless (well even more useless that it used to be) anyway.

Oddly, the very day I was last on this thread my wife complained a training website she was using wouldn't run properly on her fairly old laptop, so I threw an ssd in and installed Ubuntu to try and revitalise it a bit only to find that she now couldn't use the site at all because it used Flash...

Fine, back to Windows.

 

[jeremyp]

Oddly, the very day I was last on this thread my wife complained a training website she was using wouldn't run properly on her fairly old laptop, so I threw an ssd in and installed Ubuntu to try and revitalise it a bit only to find that she now couldn't use the site at all because it used Flash...

Fine, back to Windows.

You should have just done the SSD first and perhaps thrown in a bit more RAM. Most people who don't use Linux don't view it as an upgrade.

 

[quadraginta]

You should have just done the SSD first and perhaps thrown in a bit more RAM. Most people who don't use Linux don't view it as an upgrade.

Being that the person in question in this instance is his wife, that means that there is a live-in, on-call 24/7 IT guy, tutor, and customer service tech available to her. So the switch may not be as onerous.

I agree with you about "most people".

 

[malbui]

So today I finally picked up my new corporate phone. I configured it from a cloud backup of my previous phone and carefully followed the 24-step instructions to install, configure and activate our corporate secure mail application. Even sent a couple of mail replies to confirm it was working.

Five minutes later the phone spontaneously rebooted and while doing so wiped itself.

I reconfigured and reinstalled but am locked out of the mail app with only an unhelpful error message for company.

I really miss my old iPhone 6 and it's only been a few hours.