Hacker News Reader

Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah but there was a big jump in performance / new features between early iphone generations.

Nowadays the difference is really marginal for every day use. You are only going to take better photos in marginal low light conditions, if you even take lots of photos, everything else will be pretty much the same experience. I'd argue that we are even in removal of features mode (audio jack, touch id) which is putting off people like me who normally wouldn't mind a high price tag for a smartphone.

There are enough apple fans out there to buy any piece of plastic that apple will sell at the price of gold. But for a wider wealthy and techie audience, I think the value added of spending more on an iphone is becoming hard to justify.

View on HN

Its surprising how good a used, $50 phone is today. You can get something on par with a Note 3 or Note 4 from LG and get two solid years of use out of it, perhaps more with ROMs.

This is part of why I stopped buying the latest flagship, just didn't make sense for me to worry so much when I could avoid that entirely, and get 98% of the same performance and features.

im still rocking my nexus6 because i dont see a reason to upgrade. before that i was rocking note line from samsung.

the only thing that im missing in comparasion with current phones is camera.

Nexus 6 isn’t even 3 years old. Many people keep phones that long.

that was not the point, the point was that the phones crossed some threshold in performance/features where cheap phones are good enough or flagships from 3 years ago, that you do not get that much more from current flagship vs older ones/cheap phone in comparison to some years ago

There's still no September update, while other phones got it last week. https://developers.google.com/android/ota#shamu

> 98% of the same performance and features

You’re talking about phones with hardware from half a decade ago. How exactly are you getting the same performance and features, let alone even support or updates from manufacturers?

In what world is a chip from 2014 a half decade old? Most of the phones in that price bracket will be using a Snapdragon 410 or similar.

Hmm…it looks like the Note 3 is actually only 4 years old.

Got a five years old Jolla which still receives updates every other month

My criticism was mainly aimed at Android, which has a tendency to drop support for devices within 1-2 years.

which is why should use Lineage OS.

And with 8.0 we will start to see commercial roms with even better and longer support

Source: Paul oBrien

Not every device has an unlocked bootloader or support in the Lineage OS device tree.

That's odd, considering their first phone was launched in stores less than 4 years ago.

In any case, I used to have one too until about 2 weeks ago when it finally broke down (tbh, possibly due to moisture). While it's not odd they still release updates for their phone OS for the only phone they've ever sold to regular customers, I can't brush away GP's point entirely. The hardware is definitely sub-par by now (it wasn't that good to begin with), not to mention the trade-offs made in the construction of the phone (loudspeaker issues are rather common, and my phone started later to have problems with the display back-light, too).

Maybe he is using an android converted to Jolla?

Naye, you could get one in late 2013

…that's less than four years.

How's the battery on those used phones? That feels like the main blocker for me.

New battery is about $10, not exactly a blocker, but they do increase the price.

Hmm OK, so I guess you just make sure you buy a phone with an easily replaceable battery then? Or is it that cheap when you have it done too?

You don't even need that. Phones like the LG Fortune, which I own and works totally fine, can be bought for $25 new and out the door, no contract, at mainstream retailers like Best Buy.

I also have a moto e4 which I'm using to type this. I think it cost me about $65. (I also have a variety of iDevices and flagship phones for testing stuff I write)

We are in the age of adequate, super cheap phones that aren't awful. I have the option of, but choose not to place my sim card in one of more expensive and flashy devices I own because I'd rather have the thing I carry with me be a "worthless commodity" that could get lost without my caring at all.

Last time my phone broke I just swapped the sim card that day, not caring in the slightest. This is a liberating experience.

You can also do this with prescription glasses - you can pay under $7 a pair online. Anti-scratch, investment preserving upgrades and the feeling of preciousness are all gone. Not having to emotionally invest in things is wonderful.

True, but avoiding the production of new phones is one of the draws for me, and batteries that quickly run out one of the hurdles :)

It's actually not too bad, even on phones without "easily" replaceable batteries.

Speaking for the OnePlus One and Nexus 5 the procedure is pretty straight forward: pop it open using plastic trim tools (which are often sold with batteries) disconnect the ribbon cable and pry the battery off any adhesive. Drop the new one in, reconnect it and snap it back together and you're done.

Depends on the phone I guess, but the whole thing takes maybe 15 minutes.

And obtaining a battery? That sounds pretty difficult for a years-old phone of which the battery is not meant to be replaced...

eBay is your friend, you can get batteries for ancient phones like the Samsung Intercept for $4 still, brand new. Luckily for us, batteries are a highly commodified component, you can replace the cells yourself with minimal effort if you so choose.

When I'm feeling like an uber-cheapskate I rebuild laptop batteries, recycling the failed cells and replacing them with good cells from other batteries.

There's no way I'd buy a used Android phone, unless it was from Google and was less than two years old. Android phone makers are terrible about security updates.

Actually things have improved considerably this year. You may still not have the latest OS version, but the security patches are arriving every 1-2 months.

Oreo is supposed to improve things even further, but for know its just a theory.

> Yeah but there was a big jump in performance / new features between early iphone generations. Nowadays the difference is really marginal for every day use.

You can say the exact same for PCs, which could have stopped getting any performance improvements about 5 years ago and the general populace wouldn’t have complained at all.

And you can see the effect on sales. The only reason to replace a laptop these days is if you spill some coffee on it.

Yup. I'm still happy with my 2013 15" MBP, and my wife just down-graded to a more portable 12" MB.

There are still reasons to replace a laptop before it breaks. For example, my 2012 Asus Zenbook has only 4 GB of RAM and cannot drive an external 4K display. Both are not urgent problems for me since I also have a desktop PC with plenty of RAM and a 4K display, but if I did not, I'd be looking into a replacement for the notebook around now.

Or you start getting into editing 8K+ images in Photoshop. That's not much fun on a Macbook 12" (I mean, it's doable but ... slow ... ly ... and ... clu ... nk ... ily.)

Computers haven't gotten much faster in the last half decade or so. This includes the MacBook 12".

GPUs and SSDs are a different subject...

It's that and Photoshop (understandbly) chewing RAM like an absolute demon - 8GB isn't really enough for Photoshopping large images with multiple layers. I would use my 24GB Windows 10 machine but ... that's even worse due to Windows 10.

What the hell are you doing with your windows?

I am doing nothing with it because it's clunky and slow and practically useless for anything except the occasional game.

Yes, some people have Windows 10 installations that run perfectly fastly and greatly and God's own nectar spews forth from their machine and feeds their family etc.

Which is nice for them but doesn't help -me- with -my- machine that runs like a dog with Windows 10 (but was perfectly fine with Windows 8.)

I keep reading that MacBooks have been selling well compared to the rest of the PC market, year after year.

And yet people keep buying iPhones in the tens of millions every year, so obviously there is something off with that logic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com