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Comment by ab-dm | Hacker News Reader

My iPhone 6S+ is still running super smooth. Maybe because I'm not a huge photography buff or mobile gamer, but each year I wait to see something that will finally make me buy a new one, but each year I just don't see it.

I don't know exactly what I'm waiting for, but this wasn't really it.

(Also enjoying using one of the last TouchID iPhones during Covid 19)

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I hope no one feels 'not needing to upgrade' is a 'bad thing'

It's a testament to Apple's build quality and long term support that you don't need to upgrade.

Samsung and Android are big on the half baked gimmicks and lackluster supports. Those phones you have to upgrade after a few years as they become more bloated than a Windows 95 machine bought from CompUSA.

> Samsung and Android are big on the half baked gimmicks and lackluster supports. Those phones you have to upgrade after a few years as they become more bloated than a Windows 95 machine bought from CompUSA.

Am I missing something? What are the phones getting bloated with?

For some time the software updates I received on my Note made it worse and worse. It’s like each major update was loaded with crap to run on the new hardware, making the experience terrible for the legacy phones.

Apple got sued and settle for the very thing you are describing https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphones-settlement/...

IIRC wasn't Apple throttling the CPU because of battery degradation and to prevent sudden shutoffs even when it showed >25% battery? In my opinion, they should've said what they were doing, and made it clear that replacing the battery would fix the issue, but I'd rather have the battery status be accurate versus an always fast phone that shuts off randomly.

No.

I distinctly remember my Galaxy S4 or something introducing the "innovative" feature of waving your hand in front of the front camera to scroll web pages.

My Galaxy S3 was bloated to hell from Samsung and AT&T. Samsung had half naked eye tracking gimmicks and AT&T would constantly be scanning for WiFi points to connect to draining my battery.

The only way to get out of it was to flash another rom. Samsung never really updated the device while I had it.

> Samsung and Android are big on the half baked gimmicks and lackluster supports

Since when? I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 from 2016, and I honestly don't see any bloatware. It's still running smoothly, and without degraded performance.

How many people do you expect to do the same with a Samsung Fold?

No clue. As I have been rather happy so far with my phone, I haven't followed newer phones much, outside of some bullet points of new and improved functionalities.

Contrapoint: I had an S8 and it was full of Samsung cruft including bixby and would barely let me use the phone without a "Samsung account" (which it often prompted me for... often)- it wouldn't even let me use my CardDAV/CalDAV servers. (which, Apple does. :S)

it was some time ago, but I remember being very angry at this phone and being unable to flash it with another OS which made me even more angry. After coming from OnePlus before (Cyanogen) the software quality was horrifyingly bad.

I had the same experience but somehow managed to circumvent /avoid any such account requirement for the replacement when lost that phone soon after buying it. I actually blamed the Samsung account requirement for losing my phone. At the time I argued that if I hadn't been restricted from using it normally on account of the registration demands Samsung was being so aggressive about, I wouldn't have been so indifferent to where I was keeping my phone about my person and consequently, so I told anyone within earshot, it was their fault that I never kept my new phone in a regular and always double checked secreted location. I would love to be able to force that argument thru court just to vex that company. I really think that I had a fair point even if the ultimate responsibility has fall to me, putting the vendors marketing interests before my ability to even use the device they just sold me outright, is a case I want to hear heard nevertheless.

But Windows 95 wasn't too bad once you removed the bloatware! In fact I think it's faster to use in daily usage due to the lack of animations and GUI candy than modern Windows.

Also, I have an Android device and have had them since the TMobile G1. Early models were hampered by RAM scarcity, and each Android release mentioned the smoother UI (it didn't get great until 6.0 or 7.0?). But in general they were OK (apart from a dreadful Samsung tablet I bought) and the only thing that would "bloat" them is running too many apps concurrently (but then they were "freeze dried" until relaunch) or having too many services running, which recent Android has started to kill vehemently like iOS.

I agree with your Apple build quality support though - my MacBook Pro is 8 years old no problems, and I'm happy with the Air 2 I own that is still supported and useful at decent speeds 5+ years after I bought it.

> It's a testament to Apple's build quality and long term support that you don't need to upgrade. > Those phones you have to upgrade after a few years

Shall I remind you that Apple was sued and lost in Europe precisely because it forced user to either upgrade after after 3 years or be condemned to live with a phone that was throttled at like 50% cpu clock?

This is exactly why I never bought an iphone again, I don't want my phone to expire after exactly 3 years because of a forced update. Apple probably stopped doing this since they lost that case, but let's not talk about a "testament to long term support" as if that was a long standing tradition.

I switched to android 7 years ago because of that and never had that kind of issue, Android upgrades don't brick my phone, and I have not noticed a worse build quality even though I am buying "cheap" (OnePlus).

The only thing that is making me consider Apple is privacy.

The throttling was battery related. They could either have the phone shut off or just throttle down, they chose the latter. The fault is assign there is not communicating what the problem was and how to remediate it. They will still swap out your battery for a new one for something like $80 out of warranty, giving the phone another 3+ years of life.

One might say that the original fault was to include a battery that was somewhat too small, so that after a bit of normal wear, the battery was no longer able to provide the voltage required for demanding situations (e.g., launching the Camera app).

Fortunately, they learned from that mistake and started to make iPhone batteries significantly more powerful. As a nice side effect, even a two-year old iPhone XR, for instance, still has excellent battery life today.

I'm sure this was true for certain phones, but it that case the 'testament to build quality' is clearly unwarranted.

As far as I am concerned my phone never shut off randomly, I was perfectly fine with it. And yes indeed they made absolutely no effort to tell the customer that they could get the battery replaced for like a 10th of the price of a new phone, I don't believe for one second it was a communication error, and not a simple trick to get people to buy a new iPhone.

Batteries are always maintenance parts. The fact that modern smartphones and notebooks don't make changing them a trivial operation is condemnable.

At least you can install new batteries with different form factors now. Technically it would be trivial to just have a lid to install new ones.

Profit orientation is worse than customer orientation. It is also an ecological problem. Instead of changing batteries after 2-3 years, people buy new phones.

> Technically it would be trivial to just have a lid to install new ones.

Lids ruin waterproof designs. Not so trivial.

When they released the iphone SE last year I immediately bought it. It was the fastest processor, best quality camera in an Apple phone with Touch ID.

I refuse to upgrade to an iPhone without Touch ID. Until my phone absolutely dies and there is no choice, then I may consider.

I honestly feel a bit insulted that Apple is releasing a phone without Touch ID during COVID-19. They think I will gladly hand over large amounts of money for a phone that is highly inconvenient to unlock.

When it became clear that people around the world were being legally required to cover their face, in some places at any time they left the house, Apple should have raced to equip the next iPhone with a fingerprint scanner. Apple didn't even apologise for not including one. I would have bought the phone with that feature. Maybe next year.

I imagine that the hardware design was finalised a long time ago and even 9 months would be too short a time to figure out how to include it without reverting to the old design with smaller screens

Apple certainly doesn’t have the cash to afford design changes.

I don't think it's about having the cash, I think it's about whether or not it's a viable change to make.

Given the lead times on iPhone hardware design, and the lead times on building the tooling and machinery to actually build that hardware, these things need to then get locked in well in advance.

It was April before face masks started to be recommended in the USA, which is reasonably the earliest that Apple might be considering that pivot.

Assuming Apple pivoted on the spot, consider the following:

1/ The full scale of the pandemic was even less known then than it is today

2/ China was still not operating normally, and it wasn't known if the lockdowns they imposed would prove to be a success or not, resulting in continued reduced availability of factories.

The implication from your (very terse) comment is that the solution was just to throw money at the problem. The trade off in that scenario is that Apple is then effectively asking it's suppliers to put their employee's health at risk in order to increase their customer's convenience.

We're dealing with a global pandemic. Some things can't be solved just by throwing money at the problem.

The CDC put out guidance in March (not April), but it was in February that anyone involved with US supply chains knew shit was hitting the fan. If you were involved with global supply chains you knew shit was hitting the fan by January at the very latest.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pan...

Also, where do I suggest Apple is fixing a pandemic? I’m saying they failed at design years ago and have stuck to that failure.

Personally I find FaceID far superior to TouchID - wet hands, gloves and so on used to get in my way, whereas FaceID rarely fails (apart from one pair of sunglasses). It's only now that masks are commonplace that it's become an issue.

So, for me "failing at design" is "winning at design" as far as that particular feature is concerned.

Given that, even if they had decided to change course in January, making a design change and scaling production to millions of devices was probably beyond this year.

The addition of FaceID isn’t the design mistake; the removal of TouchID is.

Absolutely. They aren’t mutually exclusive. You can have both. Some phones have fingerprint sensor on back and face sensors on front. You can choose which way you prefer (or both).

Other than Apple wanting to save cost, I don’t see why this wouldn’t have been possible.

Also the commitment of resources and user interaction research and development consequences of user behaviour, I'm sure weren't decisions made by whoever proverbially "slaps on the last button at the bottom of the screen ".

I would be fascinated to learn about how the effects of such a interface change are studied.

Edit to clarify my inquisitive interest is in the Who Moved My Cheese effect on subsequent purchases after a long loyal customer has been made aware of the possibility of their most important attributes of the product which they're buying and paying a premium for, aren't guaranteed to continue to be available at all. If the most frequently used interface is up for unexpected total disruption, what is the effect that has upon the long term purchase plans of previously loyal customers?

The new ipad air has touchid in the power button. They should have done that with the phone too! Maybe next year (here's hoping)...

I would immediately purchase a official TouchID accessory battery case.

Edit: autocorrects

This is pretty much my exact situation. The new iPhones have been so underwhelming and so highly priced that I haven't felt the need or want to upgrade.

Now previously this year, I dropped my phone and the glass broke - but it still works. So I am on the verge of upgrading, but iPhone 12 still doesn't really... make me want to upgrade - if I can put it like that.

So I am rolling with a cracked screen iPhone 6S+ until I can find the motivation to upgrade. Maybe my battery life is becoming one and the problem with charging.

why not just have the glass replaced?

I was about to, but I have some issues with battery life and charger plug, so it would be cheaper to buy a lower end iPhone (like the 12 mini) - so I am in a slight dilemma now.

Most likely if this phones battery gets any worse, I will upgrade to the new iPhone 12 max (or current flag ship) and hope it will last years to come. My iPhone is I think now 5 years old, where the average phone life seems to be 2-3 years, so I am quite happy with the quality and don't mind the upgrade, when it is necessary

edit: For reference, replacing the glass is 200€

Have you checked whether replacing the screen yourself is cheaper?

As an example, I had an iPhone SE with a broken home button. Repairing it would cost 60 euros, which wouldn't be worth it. On the other hand, a single replacement home button was only 8 euros, and it included the tools. It worked.

I had issues with intermittent charging of 6S so I upgraded to 2nd gen SE. I didn’t want larger screen so 11 wasn’t the option.

I personally don’t like SE. The Touch ID is crap, it is not an actual button that presses so touching or pressing button doesn’t wake phone up. I have to pick up the phone to wake it.

I have the new SE and it works as advertised (like a faster 8). Pressing the ‘button’ definitely wakes mine.

In terms of unreliable charging, maybe you have already done it but: clean the lightning port. They did it at the apple store for an unrelated repair and all my issues went away. A year later i even went back and had them do only that because I couldn‘t find a good tool to do it myself.

Same here. I like the improved camera, and the poor man's LIDAR would put me over the line to buy as I could totally use that for 3D mapping, but otherwise, a new phone just doesn't give me much.

Recently, since us in Massively Lucky Tech World mostly work from home now, I've taken to leaving my phone in the bedroom and just wearing my smartwatch for 2FA stuff... and it's made my life better.

The compulsion to look at my Sadness Rectangle has been fading quite rapidly, I'm more focused on whatever my task-at-hand happens to be, and I'm spending more of my break time doing stuff that I want to do for me: reading one of my books, writing stuff, etc.

I'll be borrowing "Sadness Rectangle" readily in the near future.

By all means. That framing has really helped me come to grips with just how psychologically damaging smartphones can be, without proper information hygiene.

I like the "Black Mirror" moniker....

It does often seem that the new feature causing people to upgrade more than any other is that the new model hasn't yet been dropped--parking lot, toilet, etc. #2 is battery. "We think you'll find the new iPhone has been dropped less than any iPhone we've ever made and has a newer battery...."

For all the talk about saving carbon by skipping on headphones/charger, it is quite telling that if Apple (and other manufacturers too) wanted, they could have just made these two parts easily replaceable (batteries used to be conveniently replaceable anyway) and saved a lot more wastage. Talk is cheap etc.

I can almost imagine Apple unveiling a replaceable battery in the future and claiming it as ‘innovation’. It’l never happen but I’m sure they’d market it that way.

I would think they can at least do it for MacBooks. I mean I distinctly remember my MacBook from 2006 had a removable battery and just removing the battery exposed the storage and the memory. The price we paid was a slightly thicker MacBook so no MacBook air but I doubt anyone was complaining.

I think it is the other way round; thinness makes gadgets look good and feel light but more importantly, it provides an excuse to make everything non-replaceable on that altar in the underlying aim of planned obsolescence. Plus once you make it thin, you can always say that we can't go back because that is the new normal and making it thicker will be a regression.

Hopefully, the arrival of the mini doesn't spell the end-of-life of the 7 and 8. Also, has anyone noted the cost for display/battery replacement on any recent phone (including Samsung) has skyrocketed, making it uneconomical?

I picked up a refurbished 8 a while ago, great size + touchID

>So I am rolling with a cracked screen iPhone 6S+ until I can find the motivation to upgrade.

I recently fixed a iPhone 6S+ for a friend, primarily with an aim to retrieve the photos and contacts. It wouldn't switch on, and had a broken screen. I ended up replacing the screen, battery and the charger port+headphone jack flex. It cost less than £40 in parts and some elbow grease; a superb compromise for a phone, which supports iOS 14 albeit it might not receive any future OS updates.

Same here. Broke my 6s and got ... another refurbished 6s for under 300 Euro. Working like a charm for 1 year now

OLED's have vastly superior picture quality and are easier on the eyes. I would say this is kind of the "4.7 inch iPhone" moment where Apple is finally giving iPhone users an acceptable screen at an "affordable" price. OLED displays have been dominant on Android phones and high end iPhones for a reason - they are so much better in picture quality.

Now if only app designers could get dark mode right, and not actually go full black mode.

As someone who only sparingly uses dark mode (almost exclusively at night), I kind of like full black mode. It’s much easier on the eyes at night.

That said, I don’t even bother using dark mode in the day because full black mode makes everything harder to read.

I suppose our experiences differ. I've tried using Pocket at night on an amoled screen and with dark mode, but because it's real black with bright white text I can't tolerate it for long. Would prefer a dark grey with white text, or even a navy blue with light yellow

OLED's are very nice, but if the phone is used for example as a car navigation, then burn in might be an issue. I am very sensitive to it, to the point that I am very happy having an LCD screen.

Modern OLEDs seem to have solved burn-in for the most part.

Not really, No. Not even WOLED from LG can say that on their TV.

On mobile phone it is mostly dodged simply because you dont have the same screen for a long time and your screen time tends to be a lot lower than on PC.

But you can, definitely get burn-in on all modern OLED. And likely an unsolvable problem in the foreseeable future.

This would be delegated to a CarPlay display in a more modern situation.

I've had this feeling ever since the 3G / 4; all the improvements since the app store and mobile internet have been incremental, and sometimes even regressive (e.g. getting rid of the 3.5mm jack). Maybe I'm a luddite though.

Anyway some years ago I got an iphone XR (via work) and it's just fine, it'll do me for the forseeable future. It was an incremental upgrade to my iphone 7 or 8, whichever it was.

I felt the same when I upgraded my 6 to an XR. But when you actually get your hands on the phone, you quickly notice the improvements. There’s no pressure to upgrade, but when you finally do I think you’ll be happy

Will not give up iPhone 6s it is the last iPhone version with a headphone jack. With iPhone 6s and earlier one can use Hifi headphones without carrying extra headphone jack dongle.

Google Pixel 4a is for you.

Anyone who has the X series and later should just wait for the next generation.

It would be nice if they put Touch ID in the lock button like they did with the new iPad Air.

My 6plus became unusably slow and remained that way even after a battery replacement. So I upgraded to a iPhone 11 after 5.5 years with the 6Plus. I expect to keep my iPhone11 for 5-6 years at least.

I encountered this as well, the fix for me was a full reflash (from DFU) without loading the backup from iCloud. Apparently whatever was slowing down the phone was getting loaded back in. I'm guessing there's some internal cache or database or something that is grinding to a halt over time.

Same here, and my wife. That was one of my most infuriating phone experiences. The 6S was working perfectly fine then after some update it was basically useless. This was around the time of the underclocking debacle.

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