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Comment by kkarakk | Hacker News Reader

why not just buy an older device? bought a brand new iPhone se as soon as the new iphones x maxx was announced. mobile phone development as plateaued imo, there is nothing out there you really need unless you're fooling yourself. photos - I bought a nice mirrorless with the money I saved. apps - se runs everything tolerably fast except for snapchat and Instagram, which I've decided to cut down on anyways.comparison is the thief of joy and all the new social media apps promote comparison as the primary feature. games - bought a Nintendo switch and it has fortnite as well.

all told 300+400+300 = 1000 which is STILL lower than the cost of the iPhone x max

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This has been my strategy all along. I am always at least two versions below, sometimes more. I still own my iPhone 6, and get all updates. I bought it for 200 bucks, 2 years ago!!

Apple supports old devices well, but app developers seem to have different ideas. I upgraded my SE to an Xs recently, and I had the realization that iOS is not a bug-ridden piece of garbage... it's just that nobody ever tested their app for the SE's screen size and other capabilities. All the apps that I thought were buggy work amazingly on my Xs.

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.

I just got a 7 for $250 from a co-worker. I finally untangled myself completely from any Google services, which is a nice feeling.

That’s my strategy for my family. Especially hand me down devices. My Mom still has my 5S and it’s still supported.

>why not just buy an older device?

As devices age, they stop being supported by security updates.

This is what always bugs me about recommendations to buy older devices as a solution to all problems. Updates = security.

Apple, unlike many Android outfits, supports their hardware for a pretty long time. This chart (https://www.statista.com/chart/5824/ios-iphone-compatibility...) suggests that they're supporting devices up to 5 years old; since the SE is just 2, it has a good 3 years of software and security updates to look forward to.

The iPhone 5S, released five years ago, runs the latest iOS version.

Microsoft is still supporting several of their smartphones running Windows Mobile. The latest update (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4316692/june122018k...) was in June of this year. I still have a Lumia 950 and it works fine.

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...

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