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Comment by devwastaken | Hacker News Reader

I'm more concerned about older mobile browsers. Almost everyone can install firefox/chrome on older PC's, but plenty are still running old android or non android phones as their only means of a 'computer'.

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I've got a couple old android devices that won't even load most websites these days. Hell, the play store doesn't even work anymore. It's similar on old apple devices, but not quite as bad.

This is such an utter failing of the ecosystem.

It's why I call out bullshit whenever I hear Android is Linux.

Android is Linux, even if it doesn't follow the philosophy of your favourite Linux distributions. Maybe RMS had a point when suggesting people call it GNU/Linux. Maybe Android/Linux?

Yep: GNU/Linux is very different from busybox/Linux is still different from Android/Linux, because the userland is (often) more important than the kernel; a user of Debian GNU/Linux has more in common with GNU/kFreeBSD than Android/Linux.

It's more like Google Play Services/Linux these days.

Yes, it's a very different experience running Android with Amazon's setup on a Fire Device than on with Google Play Services, even if it's binary compatible.

It's also a symptom of a wasteful greed driven system. By abandoning old hardware the industry at large can quietly force people into 'regular' upgrade cycles. That's two years for their ideal consumers who trade in their old phones and get the latest. At most it's like 6-8 years before the hardware is simply too old to possibly keep running. Many frugal people run a cycle or two behind, eg they're on iPhones (or model year equivalents) 8-11 currently depending on their cycle timeline. There's no way out of the cycle. I had a few coworkers get dropped by their cell providers over the last few years as the carriers dropped support for cell phones they bought in the 20xxs.

Essentially this planned obsolescence is manufactured consent in the population wide crowd funding of cellular technologies by for profit (mainly public) companies providing essential communication services.

I'll leave the moralizing of this to philosophers, but all these dynamics and their externalities undeniably bear further scrutiny.

The way to get out of the cycle is to push back with great force. Unfortunately people are too easily swayed by propaganda.

It’s usually a certificate issue: if you install Firefox things should mostly work.

yes , i also use a old phone which is probably 5 year old which only supports 1 of 10 websites. The chrome crashes all the times that is why i always use pc. The mobile phone market is growing quickly and we have to updates every month. Even window's needs to update montly. But still there are lot of people who wont buy new phone's every year but smartphone brands will never understand.

Not an issue for enterprise though, really.

Edge is also available on android. I don't know if it supports older android versions though

don't androids use chrome by default, which can be updated through the play store?

Chrome requires android 7 (about 5 years old). Firefox requires android 5 (about 7 years old).

Very old phones don't get browser updates.

https://m.apkpure.com/google-chrome-fast-secure/com.android....

https://m.apkpure.com/firefox-browser-fast-private-safe-web-...

My phone is on android 6.0.1 and has Chrome installed (latest version), so the Android 7+ claim on that website seems inaccurate.

How many people use 5+ or 7+ year old phones? I’m sure they exist somewhere but I don’t know any of them.

It isn’t hard to get a 2-3 year old phone for free. A lot of people buy a new phone every 2-3 years and many of those people will be happy to give away their old phone if someone they know needs one

While I think this is mostly true for western countries, I don't think this applies to everywhere in the world.

According to statcounter [1], Android 5.1 and 4.4 account for 8% of the devices in Africa while it accounts for 3% in Europe

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobi...

Mine is about 4 years old.

It's still a great phone, runs everything I've run on it really well, and as far as I can tell it's working as well the day I bought it. Still receives firmware updates too.

Its data connection is still faster than any other 4G device I've used, and faster than my home internet connection. The battery still lasts all day, and the ludicrously high resolution OLED screen is still in perfect condition.

It's hard to see why I'd want to replace it before it breaks.

If it lasts, I'll probably keep it a few more years, and because of the good experience, if it breaks I might get the same 4-year old model again second hand.

Even if you gave me a new phone for free, I'd put it in a drawer because there's no obvious benefit and considerable hassle to moving over.

My previous phone was 8 years old by the time I upgraded, went straight from Android 2.1 to 7. My current one is 3 years old and I don't see any reason to upgrade anytime soon.

Phones sure, but dont forget tablets. There are loads of old outdated but still perfectly functional ones out there.

I do. Because I live in an area where I need to use CDMA. Sure, there is a couple of spots in town that have other cell phone networks as well, but in a lot of spots and basically all buildings you need to use Verizon (or one of the resellers) or be without a cell signal. And sure they have LTE as well, but AFAIK the initial connection to the network is always over CDMA. And except for google maps (that freezes my phone for minutes, but is easily replaced by Osmand) and the banking app for one of my banks (I'd probably use that once a year to deposit a check because THAT technology is also not dead yet), there is nothing that doesn't work well on my Android 6 Samsung J1 Luna.

Mine is 7+. I'd love a phone for free but then I lose my unlimited calling and data as I would have to switch to a more expensive plan.

Buying a phone outright costs more than a computer. $1200 for the latest samsung. A two or three year old phone could cost $500.00.

I do need a new phone as the buttons barely are able turn on the screen but I see no viable upgrade path.

Cintex Wireless is giving away free Kyocera Hydro phones to subsidized users in the US. It's so old it can't connect to any HTTPS website. :-(

think it depends on the manufacturer. Samsung ships with their own (chromium) browser

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