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Comment by Hasz | Hacker News Reader

You want fixable and well designed, long software updates, and a good price?

Buy an (old) iPhone.

I've got a 5S -- still perfectly fast for what I use it for (email, youtube, brokerage account, general internet, some small games), and is getting OS updates and security patches until IOS11. It's $120 on eBay; a new screen can be had for $13, a new battery for $11. it's solidly designed and there's a gigantic field of accessories and apps.

Maybe titanium and no bezels are worth a price premium, but there's no way it's worth a 5x increase in price.

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Plus you have a great piece of industrial design.

I love the look of the 5S/SE. It looks premium, it feels nice in your hand, it's solid, and those chamfered edges are so nice.

It's a shame they went from that to the iPhone 6 design and stuck with it all this time. It might make bigger phones easier to hold but man it just doesn't look as nice IMO. It looks like a generic round phone. Nothing stands out about it at all.

Having sold hundreds of iPhone 5s's when I was selling B2B, I have to say I was fairly unimpressed. Not great battery life over time, if an employee left with iCloud enabled it was a whole affair with Apple to get them to reset the device and allow it to be reused, and the brick style design is not very comfortable overall.

My favorite is the curved back, as is on most Motorola's and some LGs. Personally, I stick with cheap LG phones ($100 or so) that are rootable/rommable. If the phone gets damaged or I want a newer phone, no skin off my back, biggest concern is just moving Signal Private Messenger over to the new phone I get :P

Off topic but do you have recommendations for cheap rootable phones? (LG or otherwise)

If iCloud was your problem, it's because you weren't using an MDM.

That's an OS-independent problem ;)

We use MDM (Air-Watch) and it's still a problem. If the employee uses their personal iCloud account you cannot remove it. You can unlock the device remotely via MDM but you have to have their password for their iCloud account to remove the iCloud account.

You have to contact Apple and provide proof of purchase for the device to have them remove the iCloud account.

I'm aware of what happens when Activation Lock happens when personal iCloud accounts are allowed to be installed.

The issue is allowing that to happen in the first place, instead of locking it centrally. That's either a limitation in your MDM's capabilities, or its setup. ;-)

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202804

>if an employee left with iCloud enabled it was a whole affair with Apple

We would just send the phone number to our Verizon account manager and he'd send us proof of purchase for that device and we'd forward it to Apple. Wasn't a terribly difficult process, at least in my experience.

I'm not bothered about my phone standing out. The 6 and later models are actually big enough for me to hold properly and read text on, without holding them up to my face. I first bought an iPhone when the 6(s) came out.

Just be careful about older phones when it comes to radios and antennae... iPhones prior to the 6s did not have the 700 MHz "Band 12" capability, rendering a lot of new spectrum (particularly from T-Mobile) unusable. The latest spectrum auction winners are already deploying 600 MHz as well, which is also unsupported.

The iPhone SE can do 700 MHz, FWIW...

If you want to travel internationally though (and you're not on Verizon), get the Sprint SE, which has better international LTE bands.

The se, if you're lucky, can even be found for less than $200 USD. Amazing battery and performance, enough that I can forgive the smaller display and 1st generation touch ID.

Those screens are so cheap, its really amazing. I fixed an old iPhone 4 and the screen cost me about €15 with shipping. I couldn't believe it.

One caveat to this though: If you do buy an old iPhone, make it at least a 5. The iPhone 4 was cut off at iOS7 and can't run most of the apps in the store as they require iOS8 or higher.

Better make it a 5s for 64bit support. The 5 won’t be getting iOS 11 next month.

And no SD card support, which is a deal breaker for many people.

Is it fast? I have a 6. In addition to the bulkier size, apps are often slow and the battery life is atrocious. I'm considering updating when the new iPhone releases in the fall.

I have none of these problems with a 6 plus. Maybe backup, factory wipe + restore, or go to an apple store and ask for help?

Also, what do you mean by "atrocious"? I get 1-2 days with heavy use.

Finally, the 5 phones I've seen this week seem snappy enough, and so does my 6 plus. It really sounds like your phone is screwed up.

I usually do a backup, wipe, and restore every couple of months which temporarily resolves the issues. I'll definitely go to an Apple store soon. Checking Instagram and Snapchat (No Facebook) every few hours, playing music, and using 30-60 minutes of Google maps each day will kill the battery in about 4-8 hours. It has gotten to a point where when I go to an event, I'll make sure to turn off my phone to save enough battery life so I can use maps later.

I just went from a 5 to a SE and the SE handles the newer OSes much better. It's too bad, because if it wasn't for performance-hog-OSes the 5 would have been great for years to come (though after a battery swap)

This is a great view to take. I might consider this for my wife who refuses to use an iPhone (that old chestnut, "Apple suck!") yet sees the missed opportunities almost daily when we want to share stuff between each other.

Couldn't live with a 16GB phone(assuming based on price) but otherwise yes this does work. Also tend to get slower the more you update them which is annoying.

iPhone SE is available for as little as $150 from best buy depending on your carrier and it's guaranteed updates until at least 2020 (assuming a 3 year update schedule).

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