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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

There is one small fallacy in the decade old PC versus the decade old smarphone comparison: PCs are not status symbols but smartphones are and fashion is a huge component in why smartphones are replaced.

Another driving force is that a smartphone made a decade ago would simply not be able to use many of todays apps because it is missing certain sensors.

so while I hope this will take off I see some obstacles. Happy owner of a 10 year old Nokia here that serves me well, I've tried quite a few smartphones over the years but I never found anything that I really needed that would make me give up 5 day battery life and being 100% drop proof.

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I think there is a community that would like this. Not sure how big it is.

I drive old cars (newest is a 2004 year) and use old computers (my laptop is a 2009 Macbook Air) because they are a fantastic value and they do what I need.

I use a phone for making calls, texting, light web browsing, as a portable music player, and for maps/navigation. That's really about it. Maybe a 10yo phone would struggle with maps but a 5 year old phone generally would not.

I'd be on this in a heartbeat.

> There is one small fallacy in the decade old PC versus the decade old smarphone comparison: PCs are not status symbols but smartphones are and fashion is a huge component in why smartphones are replaced.

Think about Apple's Macbooks, I'm pretty sure that they are status symbols as well.

People who buy devices as status symbols, to show off how much money they have, are not the target audience of this project. They usually do not care about the benefits of open source and sustainability anyway. This project is about recycling old phones, which would be insecure/useless without an alternative operating system.

> Another driving force is that a smartphone made a decade ago would simply not be able to use many of todays apps because it is missing certain sensors.

That is right, but it is theoretically possible to get the devices from a few years ago running for five more years, and the devices created today for the next ten years.

Macbooks will already run Linux, sometimes with some difficulty but usually not much more than a 'how-to' or a readme is required to get most stuff working. Brand new laptops of any brand find themselves stripped of their default install and turned into Linux machines.

> They usually do not care about the benefits of open source and sustainability anyway.

What market does? Do you have any evidence such a market exists?

Of course there's a market for it. Do you not have at least a few friends who are holding out with their candybar dumbphones or antique iPhones to this day, citing reasons that include but are not limited to 1) I'm not wasting money on a new phone that will have to be replaced every year 2) I hate how much trash electronics generate 3) I want to be more engaged with the people around me so I want my phone to be less capable/less distracting 4) I don't like facebook and the NSA spying on me and I won't get a smartphone unless I'm sure they can't.

I have a good handful of such people in my social circle, ranging in age from 23 to 58, usually higher education levels, and usually non-technical. The biggest common factor amongst them is that Android doesn't work for them.

> Do you have any evidence such a market exists?

Yes. I have evidence there is a market for this, consisting of 1 or more persons, willing to pay at least $0.00.

Not every OS needs a 1-2 billion users install base.

It exists. Desktop Linux exists, works well and maybe has some single digit market share but in a market basically consisting of everybody and their dog this is still an impressive number. It may not be enough for global megacorps but enough to be sustainable.

The most successful business created industries for themselves. In ollieparanoid's case, he's creating a secure and supported OS that runs on any phone, and when you consider that 90% of phones are missing a secure and supported OS, then that market is pretty huge. If this works then his OS dominates any old, unsupported phone.

People don't care about open source and sustainability but they care a lot about not being hacked and having a phone that runs, and runs fast.

>People don't care about open source and sustainability but they care a lot about not being hacked and having a phone that runs, and runs fast.

You overestimate non-technical people. They're not afraid of getting hacked, they don't understand why they should be, and they don't get why unmaintained software is bad.

People don't give a shit to the extent that the device works well. Security is of course a huge part of that but you don't understand people well enough if you think there's a significant group that will sacrifice good UX and reliability for security and rapid updates. That's what nerds like us do.

Then we need a bigger nerd to make a nice UI for it.

Definitely. But you tell this to some Linux nerds and they get worried that people will start using Linux for the "wrong" reasons or whatever.

Not so sure about phones being status symbols. Maybe in some circles, but i have trouble telling brands, models and makes. Smartphones look very alike, small black, no buttons, the same layout.

It's easier to spot the difference when somebody is actively using their device. But its not obvious. I think that vast majority of the population have no clue which model is "the hottest". Maybe geeks, maybe Apple fans.

To me it looks as we all have the same phones, using them the same ways.

Sorry to post this here, couldn't find contact info in your profile. You used to code, what do you do now?

You used the word geek in a way that sounds like you don't identify with that label, so that made me curious.

Why the downvotes? Give some feedback, yo.

I'm currently transitioning out of being a geek, that's why I was asking.

I agree that trying to use a 2007 smartphone wouldn't be a pleasant experience. However I think that running a 2017 phone in 2027 might not be that far fetched. I can't really tell a difference between my previous phone and my current one. I only got a replacement because the old one broke down. The pace of mobile hardware development has slowed down and phones two years from now won't be significantly better than the current generation.

I don't think that smartphones are a status symbol any more. Everyone has got one and they're all pretty similar. It's just a commodity these days.

The planned obsolescence cycle of replacing your phone every two years can't die quickly enough. We need serviceable hardware and long term software security updates and we should have had that a long time ago. The current situation is not sustainable.

> PCs are not status symbols but smartphones are and fashion is a huge component in why smartphones are replaced.

For those who buy the newest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy every year this might be the case but the rest of the world either doesn't care and see it as a tool or simply can not afford a shiny new flagship device and may be grateful if their existing device lasts longer.

> Another driving force is that a smartphone made a decade ago would simply not be able to use many of todays apps because it is missing certain sensors.

I don't see substantial innovation in the hardware space anymore besides bigger numbers on the spec sheet. Chances are high that phones from today will crack the 10 year mark of usefulness. We are already at a point where 4-5 year old high end devices are still perfectly usable for most daily tasks.

Yes, with the deceleration of Moore's law, small players probably have a card to play. When the spec sheet doubles every 6-18 months, only the big players can follow and update their product lines. Small businesses and startups now have access to hardware that is good enough for viable products.

The other factor is if the phone doesn't have a user-replaceable battery then it has a short self-life regardless of the software situation. Batteries don't last.

Maybe Linux phones have that problem. Apple has battery conditioning drivers on MacOS and iOS to ensure batteries last super long. I'm almost 3 years into my my 6 plus end battery life has not degraded substantially. And replacing it is pretty cheap.

Apple is affected. It depends on how you use your device, you can easily kill you iphone battery (as well as any other phone) in two years from normal use. It's one of the main complaints I hear from iphone folks.

That is why "lasts whole day" isn't good enough for a new phone. In a year it will not last a whole day. And it will seriously hurt the longevity of it, but noone cares.

They don't care because Apples batteries degrade much more slowly than others because of that conditioning software. And eventually you always have to replace a battery. Removable makes that a little easier, and a little cheaper, but the tradeoffs (lower capacity, more frequent replacement, worse build quality and packaging) aren't worth it for something an iPhine only need to do every 3 years in normal use.

Anecdote: I'm getting ~9 days to a charge with my Nexus 5. Battery life improved after I moved from CM to LineageOS. Max was about 7 days on CM. I know batteries don't last forever, but the hardware is still perfectly good. Google doesn't care about Nexus 5 owners anymore. It's sad really. They should at least open source the drivers if they don't want to support it anymore. Even if I purchase a new phone, this one could still make someone happy for many more years. It doesn't belong on a rubbish heap.

Is that 9 days idling? That's fantastic for a nexus 5! Mine is running stock Android, it's over 2 years old, and the battery lasts maybe 16 hours with normal daily usage. It's still a very capable phone, but it's a shame it's becoming unsupported and slowing down as makes their apps more sluggish. I switched to an iPhone SE recently, Google's apps run much better on iOS in my opinion.

It will make someone happy, if you put it on ebay.

Often it shouldn't be that difficult to replace it, at least if the phone isn't entirely held together by glue.

Your mileage may vary. Replacing the battery in an HTC One M8 is like performing eye surgery via the rectum.

In most cases, you can still replace the battery. It just isn't that easy.

In most cases, a more powerful inexpensive phone would cost less than trying to replace the battery. Heck, if you value your time a new phone is probably less expensive that trying to salvage an old one.

They also told me on reddit, that it is probably not such a good idea to buy a cheap battery for a device, that has a battery that is not meant to be removed, because the resulting cheap quality may make your phone go up in flames.

Anyway, there are still so many devices where you can remove the battery out there.

And not everyone has money as highest priority, so I'd rather take my time and buy a new battery for an old phone than throwing it away and creating unnecessary electronic waste, just to save a few bucks.

Plus when you buy a new device, you will need some time to transfer your data, and set it up again, possibly experience new bugs and what not. So that also costs some time.

I agree to many their phone seems to be a status symbol and a big part of their connected identity. More than a couple times I have been made fun of for my "ancient" 5 year old smart phone, but I only use it for basic texting and email, so why bother upgrading when it still works fine?

I think brand new shiny mac laptops are status symbols these days (says the guy who lugs around an 8 pound GPU laptop to do machine learning on it, oh excuse me, I mean "Edge Computing").

Which Nokia model since you vouch for its ruggedness? And how reliable is it?

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