The only problem is that Apple is the Mercedes of mobile devices. We really need a Honda and Kia version, a more affordable device that doesn’t track you.
Apple is never going to give up their premium position.
Apple is never going to give up their premium position.
all told 300+400+300 = 1000 which is STILL lower than the cost of the iPhone x max
As devices age, they stop being supported by security updates.
Compared to OnePlus who stopped updated their OnePlus2 past Marshmallow after telling subscribers they would get the Nougat update. This effectively dead ends this model for users. Got rid of my 2 when I found out:
https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/oneplus-2-android-noug...
To some extent, I sort of blame Apple here. When you boot up an emulator, it's an iPhone X that you see. If it defaulted to the SE, I bet we'd see more apps that render correctly on its screen. But it doesn't, so we don't.
The faster CPU also eliminates a lot of problems. I am sure I am guilty of writing code that is only viable because I'm running it on a 32 core Xeon machine. So are app developers. The faster the CPU you have, the less likely you the user are to suffer because of their sub-optimal algorithm choice.
A 5S will still run the latest iOS, and with a new battery wont be under “performance management” mode, so it should be quite fast to use.
I just checked and there are a couple hundred listed on my local Craigslist for $100-$150.
Are you suggesting some official refurbishment route or just find them on Craigslist or Ebay?
It was night and day in terms of performance. In particular, Siri works much better.
Developers assume the performance of the latest, so they don’t realize how slow things act on older devices.
I don't know what it's like in the US, but here (SE Asia) there is a massive market for second-hand smart phones/tablets, usually from places that also do repairs of such devices. Go to any shopping mall in Thailand and (usually on the top floor) there will be dozens of places with devices of varying age.
I don't think Apple's official refurbished stuff will be in the price range you're looking (they only have 7's from what I can see) but I'm sure you can find them somewhere.
The cheapo androids are more like the Yugo of mobile devices, and the nicer Androids basically cost the same or a little more. iPhone 7 is $1 on many promo deals.
If you go to companies with compliance requirements, iPhone owns the market, and is by far the cheapest solution. One of my "side hustles" in a very large org was managing about 40k iOS devices and 400 android devices... it basically cost about $9/year to manage, including staff. Staffing was basically 40-60% of two IT guys and half of 3 interns. If we broke the cost down further, the Androids would have been significantly more expensive, as additional 3rd party software was required as well as many more man-hours.
The iPhone is magic in that way, with sufficient scale, you deliver almost magical capability to your whole company, including network connectivity, for less than the run cost of a PC. And it costs something like 80% less to manage than a PC. If you look at companies in industries like field service, iPhones are almost a profit center.
Says about 44%, which is pretty close to "like 50%"
I focus on the US (and UK and Japan), it's a two horse race. You can segment it all sorts of ways. iOS is somewhere between 40-60% in a given segment, and usually around 43-48% overall. Overall share has been declining as the market growth slows and prepaid plans make total device cost more relevant.
Nothing I said means anything ex US, as the solutions, costs and requirements vary.
But it's way less than that worldwide, in India, for example, it's only 1%l
If you have a long-duration, pre-negotiated contract with carriers, where you are essentially financing the $500 phone cost every 18-30 months via the service plan, the marginal cost is the metric that matters.
I suppose the best path would be to create a new phone that could either boot Android or your privacy-respecting OS, this way you could still get the mainstream sales with Android and you'd target the niche users who value their privacy with your custom system. Still seems very difficult to achieve, if you want your phone to be cheap you need to target a high sale volume to dilute the cost of your R&D.
I think the big problem is that smartphones never really had an healthy open source ecosystem going because it was all about closed hardware and locked bootloaders. Without a decent open source stack available it's hard to bootstrap a new system. And even if you did manage to do it you'd still need to convince people to port their apps to it (because not having Whatsapp or Instagram is going to be a deal breaker for many).
I genuinely hope they succeed but that's clearly not the "Honda or Kia" of smartphones the parent was talking about, at least not in this iteration.
You can get away with smaller teams if you take the full package that Qualcomm gives (they do most or all of driver work for you). You saw what Essential Products was able to create with around 120 people, but they were heavily using work from other companies to launch it.
Used iOS devices are the Kia version.
Wondering if they could accomplish the same thing many car brands do i.e. Honda <> Acura
While the next iOS release may require an iPhone 6 or 6S, I expect it will be quite a while before it changes base requirements again after that.
People behave as if this is impossible, but the options are all right there in the settings. There are a few places you lose some features but not super significant ones, and mostly those are because the tracking is intrinsically involved in the functions of the app.
I've even had 'Saved Places' not render without search history being enabled.
My next phone will sadly be an IPhone. Not because I love apple(I don't), but just because I'm quitting google.
The difference is that on Android, it is possible to set a default maps app that is entirely local, which means that Android wins on privacy for location tracking. (This is before even considering that AGPS location data collection is mandatory on iOS and merely opt in on Android.)
Besides, most people upload their photos without removing exif data which makes your photo archive the best tracker - every place you went that you cared about at all. Most people also keep pictures forever. You an count the people who opt out of cloud storage for photos on one hand...
The only way you can say iOS wins on privacy is if you listen to marketing instead of what the OS actually does.
1. Aside from losing on location privacy, as I showed above,
2. iOS also loses on message privacy because you can't use a secure messaging system like Signal by default,
3. on tracker and advertising privacy because you can't install a system-wide adblocker like Blokada,
4. on user privacy because you can't install an app without an Apple ID,
5. on developer privacy because you can't develop apps for your own device without an Apple ID (and even worse, without a credit card to give up a verified name and address if you don't want to re-sign your apps every week),
6. and on account privacy because Apple does not allow you to delete your account unlike nearly every other service (even Facebook, which comes a close second to Apple as a bad actor) on the Internet.
Sure, you need an Apple ID, but how hard is it to generate a throwaway account for that purpose? Nobody ever said you had to use one that was tied to your actual identity. Heck you can even use different IDs for the App Store vs. iCloud, but anyone who is extremely privacy sensitive would already not be using iCloud. I don’t know where you read that Apple IDs can’t be deleted - on https://privacy.apple.com/ if you sign in there’s a nice big Delete your Account button.
I never said otherwise. Again, you can't install a system-wide adblocker.
> It might not be the system default app, but I’m not sure how that’s a fundamental loss of privacy
Because if it's harder to use on every use, you won't use it.
> Sure, you need an Apple ID, but how hard is it to generate a throwaway account for that purpose?
In that respect, it's exactly like a Google account. I never claimed otherwise. The fact that it's tied to things you do like apps you download and where you search allows deanonymization, just like in the Google case.
> Nobody ever said you had to use one that was tied to your actual identity.
Except if you want to build apps for your own device that you don't want to reinstall weekly. On Android, nobody has to know anything about you, even if you want to develop for your own device, which should not result in loss of privacy on a platform that respects privacy.
> I don’t know where you read that Apple IDs can’t be deleted - on https://privacy.apple.com/ if you sign in there’s a nice big Delete your Account button.
Thanks for this link. Somebody created an Apple ID with my email address, and after I took over their account, I could not figure out how to delete it from the Apple ID Account page, and a search doesn't return that privacy page. It's way harder to find than Facebook's delete account page.
Guess how hard it was? If you start from scratch (i.e. without an existing Google cookie thing your new account to your old one), you have to put in a valid, non-disposable mobile phone number and get a verification.
On the other hand, I just made an Apple ID with a disposable email address with absolutely no real-word verification required.
> Because if it's harder to use on every use, you won't use it.
I don’t see how a non-default app is really so much harder to use in iOS. I use Google Inbox and Facebook Messenger as my daily drivers (not claiming I’m a privacy focused person, hah), not Apple Mail or iMessage, and I’ve never suffered for it. iOS has surprisingly few places where a “default” actually matters.
> Except if you want to build apps for your own device that you don't want to reinstall weekly. On Android, nobody has to know anything about you, even if you want to develop for your own device, which should not result in loss of privacy on a platform that respects privacy.
This is a fair criticism. Apple developer policies have always been quite annoying - being a developer for the platform myself (own phone apps only, nothing released), it’s definitely not as smooth as Android. Plus with Android I get to do fun kernel hacking stuff which is strictly off-limits with iOS.
It would be stupid of them.