Hacker News Reader

The Android ecosystem is great for low cost devices. I have a 5 year old Samsung that still serves me great for what I need it: quick web searches, mapping and Waze, communication etc. The screen is cracked in 200 pieces, I literally stepped on it on multiple occasions, the power button has fallen off but I figured I don't really need it anyway except the rare cases where I leave it to discharge completely. Otherwise the phone is still going strong and has acceptable battery life.

Best 150$ I ever spent, I was going to replace it this year for sheer embarrassment of using such a piece of junk, and then the coronavirus happened and I don't need to physically meet any of my tech-judgmental peers.

My experience has been the complete opposite of yours and I’ve discovered cheap Android phones are torture to use. I would prefer to have my testicles removed via Slap Chop than use a 5 year old trash-droid or simply use a five year old iOS device.

Does your 5 year old samsung still get security updates?

Based on my experience using one of those for development, I'd rather not have a phone than rely on one of those daily.

The Apple ecosystem is great in my experience for used devices if you don't mind that. My like now iPhoneSE (old model) was £100 off eBay, works great. The macbook is 7 years old, pretty good - some plastic iffy. Both still run the latest software, are fast etc.

My experience mirrors your somewhat. I bought a refurb Galaxy S5 back in 2015, and have been using it since.

Today, when shopping for devices at a comparable price, their specs are usually worse than S5, a phone that's 6 years old at this point.

Many of the new budget phones today come with 2GB RAM (Laughable), and a less than 1080p screen (Usually some weird resolution like 1520x720?). For me to get the same performance/screen quality as the S5, I would now have to spend around $400-500, not $225 like I did 5 years ago. Mid range now seems to mean $500-700 phones, an amount that wouldn't be out of place for a desktop PC, and way more than I'm willing to spend on a phone.

What was it about tech getting cheaper again? Doesn't hold in my experience.

The Pinephone seems like it's at a decent point now:

https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

Lots of OSS (software) developers have been working with it since the earlier development hardware releases, though I've not bought one yet myself.

Probably will in the next few months though. :)

Not sure what is going on with your power button, but if it's outside warranty repair $300 for a replacement device is pretty good.

On my fifth Android handset, I have really not found the incompatibility you point out to be an issue. Sure, some companies, like Samsung, try to offer some exclusive features. Just avoid them.

I have to use an iPhone for work, there are a lot of critical annoyances, like how poorly cursor selection works, and then some apps don't support the space bar cursor. Everyday things like changing settings are so much nicer in Android.

My 3 year old Pixel 2 has been a fantastic daily handset, absolutely no complaints, before that my Note 2 was also excellent, though I was glad to get away from Samsung's attempts at exclusive features (the Pixel is "pure Android", albeit with some self-contained on-device "AI" features that are actually useful).

Although there are a lot of cheap Android devices to choose from that can drag down the brand reputation, I would really push back against the suggestion Androids are exclusively "cheap" in the pejorative sense. Most are Just Fine at least. Apple is generally much more conservative in rolling out features, and offers less configuration options, so I guess it's a safer choice, but if Apple weren't such a status symbol I think most people would be more than happy with the lower cost (3a, 4a) Pixel line.

> My 3 year old Pixel 2

is no longer guaranteed to receive security updates.

Neither are Apple handsets, though it's true Apple has been good about providing them for around five years. In both cases, it remains to be seen what updates will be available longer term, people expect most major providers to provide security updates past the guaranteed period.

Also worth mentioning, after three years most people who purchased a new handset will have upgraded. If they spend $400 on each handset, their long term expenditure will be lower, and they'll always have an up to date handset (the early cheap Androids were pretty bad, but a decent smartphone is a commodity these days, the main thing more money buys is better image capture, though Pixel kind of defies that for now). The hardware is probably still good, except maybe the battery, which becomes cost ineffective to replace (in this sense, the company that provides the most easily serviceable devices wins, which I heartily endorse). At that point, many Androids can have a third party OS installed for new features. Not so with Apple.

About your first paragraph - No, that's absolutely shit. My friend was one of the first to buy a Pixel 4 in the UK, and unfortunately dropped it and broke the screen. He contacted Google for a repair, and their response literally was that they don't repair Pixel phones, but they can sell him a new one at a slightly(by about £100) discounted price as a "good will gesture". That's absolutely unacceptable . Imagine if a car manufacturer sold you a car and then just didn't offer a repair option for out of warranty issues.

That's surprising, but there are many third party options to get it repaired. You can even DIY for $115 including required tools.

I know someone whose iPhone XR glass back broke after a year (they had a super robust case), Apple's response was it was not cost effective to repair. Ultimately devices designed to be repaired is the best answer (and maybe not have glass backs?), but I don't think there's that much difference in many cases here.

We'll I'm claiming that my pixel 3 is _in_ warranty, and google are claiming £300 for a replacement (not $300 sorry, that was a typo). The phone is less than two years old, but I don't know what recourse I have.

> Sure, some companies, like Samsung, try to offer some exclusive features. Just avoid them.

If your advice is to ignore the largest manufacturer and manufacturers of the most high end devices, that says a lot about the state of the ecosystem. Samsung and huawei have both had massive incompatiblies with other devices and android products - work profiles, pay, fit being my examples.

> Although there are a lot of cheap Android devices to choose from that can drag down the brand reputation, I would really push back against the suggestion Androids are exclusively "cheap" in the pejorative sense

I never claimed they were cheap. My experience is with flagship devices and premium manufacturers, who in many cases are the same price as apple - a galaxy s20 is £900, a oneplus 8 is £800.

Vendor discretion whether something is in warranty is a pain point, I've seen people bitten from all vendors. If they don't respond to pressure (for example, finding other people with the same problem for a united voice), it might be a minor problem. If you don't want to take it apart yourself (don't blame you) you could find a local authorized dealer who could hopefully fix it for not much money. I wish they would just offer hardware like this on a subscription.

I don't mean to avoid Samsung (or any other Android) devices altogether, just don't use anything that takes away your portability within the Android ecosystem (which, granted, has various lines in the sand when you rely on Google, outside going no-identity, which is impossible on iPhone). It was easy enough to do when I had my Note2, there are many people within user communities who care about things like this and make sure it's possible without much effort; for example by putting pressure on vendors to enable choice for what apps are used for what purposes. In my experience, Samsung offers its own App Store, I just ignored it, I used Google's calendar instead of Samsung's default enhanced one, etc.

There are some cases, per your examples, where there's a distinct branch in what's supported. Samsung and Huawei are really competitors to Apple more than Google in this case. I can only say that like repairability is the best answer to some questions, interoperability is the best answer to others. Being locked in to any ecosystem, especially over time as our digital lives become linked to health and wealth, is bad for everyone.

My last comment, about "cheap" perceptions, was intended for another comment in the thread, sorry about the confusion.

Yep it's awful, and something that is only solved by stricter warranty enforcement's. My (anecdotal) experience with apple warranties is the opposite - replacement device shipped that day and the courier picked up my broken one at the same time. Of course, I'm sure this was a one off, but it definitely left me feeling better.

Understand re; samsung, but as a consumer I don't want to spend weeks researching compatibility between all of the devices I own/plan on purchasing. Another example; I bought a sony bravia TV which runs android TV. Android tv advertised that it supports dvr recording features. Except sony force you to use another third party app "youvirw" which they ship an outdated version of which doesn't work with androids flavor of live recording.

Unfortunately this is rife across the android world; watches incompatible with payments, stock launchers that are incompatible with android OS features, the list goes on and on. And the issue is that all of these are sold as "android" devices, and it's not until you're knee deep in the ecosystem that you realise that it's all just lipstick on a pig.

Mt experience with the manufacturer-alternative apps is that in some cases their existence stops the alternative from working correctly (samsung knox vs android work profiles, fitbit pay vs google pay, huawei photos vs google photos),which just sucks. And you can only know about these issues if you research the compatibility of every app you want to use with your planned device...

And understand re; cheap devices, the comment thread is deep here!

I have a bad habit of constantly editing my replies (I think it helps me to think of how other people would read it after I've saved it). I tried to address your point about too much competition within Android in a later edit; that basically Android is a world unto itself, with multiple major players trying to distinguish themselves.

While Google tries to address this by centralizing everything to their services app (which is a nice Open Source solution since it can be swapped; we'll see what happens with Huawei), some vendors still want to claim their turf. I thought that has been getting better, but for the past few years I've found it best to buy Google's version of whichever product, and have been very happy with them (perhaps since I've become more conservative, the crazy pace of innovation lives on in the mainstream Android world, with Apple waiting to see what's sticks before they include it).

I don't "blame" people for buying iPhone, it's certainly a safe choice, but even though I'm not that demanding I just find iPhones to be too limiting (that is partially a Raskin vs Englebart thing). Oh yeah, and Google's on-device AI features are actually useful. However, in the long run Apple is developing a vast closed world akin to a monopoly that will create problems (and if I hear that cheesy default ring tone again or see another film/tv person pull out an Apple device which are the minority in use, I'm going to lose it).

I also had google refuse to repair a Pixel 3 under warranty, claiming it must be drop damage. I had every pixel before and, while the hardware was full of issues, google was always willing to fix them. It was this instance of them refusing to honor their warranty that finally pushed me from buying any more Pixel phones. While I’ve had no fewer hardware issues on apple devices (my 2017 mbp has had nearly everything but the case replaced for defects), at least apple honored their warranty.

I can’t believe that after 5 google phones/tablets they were willing to lose a customer over a minor hardware problem.

It's always worth bearing in mind that Google literally doesn't care.

If you're not someone who can directly generate significant bad PR for them, you effectively don't exist.

The question is, do any of us actually need the flagship devices? The android phones I’ve bought for family members on the budget end of the spectrum seem to last just as long as the flagships and have decent enough feature sets for pretty much everything from what I can see. Granted none of us play a lot of games and we are more of the holiday snaps than artists when it comes to photos.

No one "needs" much of anything. Do you "need" HN?

If I'm buying for an adult, the flagship cameras / imaging software makes a difference.

On Android at least, a LOT of the non-flagship devices stop getting security updates anywhere from 6 months to a year after release.

I damaged the charging port on my android phone. I paid 20 euros plus shipping for a new bottom module and used the screw driver provided by the manufacturer to open the phone and replace it. If you care about repairable phones... Buy a repairable phone, instead of a "flagship".

Ah yes, blaming the customer for making an uninformed choice when the information about whether my choice is informed or not isn't available.

If repairability was top of my list, I'd be using 4-5 year old device that's proven repairable. Silly me, I tried to be "reliable" and choose a samsung - you know the largest manufacturer of Android phones, and when that didn't work out for me I tried Google - the people who make the software. If your advice to people is to avoid all of the premier manufacturers, I think that shows that the ecosystem has major problems, no?

> If your advice to people is to avoid all of the premier manufacturers, I think that shows that the ecosystem has major problems, no?

I've seen you try to make this point everywhere in the thread and I can't for the life of me even understand what you mean by this.

As a developer, I often reach for open source libraries, tools and platforms before any "premium" offerings (databases are far from the only examples, but they are an obvious one: to wit, Postgres vs Oracle or SQL server), and the OSS options are also the ones I suggest when I'm asked.

In another example, my current laptop is from a niche manufacturer instead of by Dell or Apple.

So, yeah, I don't understand what you mean by this question. Then again you also say that repairability is not high in your priority list while TFA is explicitly about that so I don't actually understand the general point you're trying to make in this discussion.

Seems like you should just use Apple products.

It's probably faux pas to mention it in the current environment but my Huawei has easily been the best phone I've ever owned, it's nearly 2 years old and as good as the day I bought it.

I bought a Huawei and while I am overall happy about the phone I am sad that the bootloader is locked. They used to hand out unlock codes but not anymore. It feels like I do not really own the phone now. I am completely at Huaweis mercy in regards to updates. I will not buy a phone with a locked bootloader again.

Yep, my partner has a P20 and I'm much happier using that than my pixel 3. Unfortunately they don't do google services on their new devices which my employer mandates on their devices for 2fa, so my choices are carry two smartphones, or don't use huawei. Similarly my bank(s) don't support huawei phones last time I checked.

I bought a Xiaomi burner for an asian trip a few years ago. Seemed competently done, and the international versions allowed Google.

What kind of incompatibility? Base Android would be same. Pure Android you don't even require Google, you can buy Android one mobile.

My galaxy s10( which was the flagship device at the time) seemed to have an issue with spurious edge taps from holding the phone. Samsung claimed it wasn't a problem, and the workaround online was to use a different keyboard. Except no keyboards other than Samsung's own work with samsung knox, and because samsung knox was preinstalled, I couldn't use the "work profile" feature in the version of Android that was installed.

Fitbit claimed to be fully android compatible, except when I contacted support it turns out they support fitbit pay, not Android pay, which isn't the same thing. And it doesn't work when used with Samsung Pay.

> Pure Android you don't even require Google, you can buy Android one mobile.

If your advice to people is to avoid the largest manufacturerd of premium handsets, don't you think that says a lot about the state of the ecosystem?