Nokia XR20 Mobile | Hacker News Reader

Nokia XR20 Mobile

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26 pointsd99kris36 comments

In my experience, the harder and more scratch resistant the glass the easier it shatters. Maybe the more sustainable option would be to have normal glass or some kind of plastic that you can easily replace every 1-2 years? I guess it is a hard problem though since for phones the glas is usually bonded to the touch sensor and the LCD. Maybe you can make the screen protector a first-class citizen.

Also I'm not a huge fan that every capacitive touch screen is glossy. The anti-glare coating doesn't really work well for me. You can get matted displays (for example car GPSes often have them), but they have a diffusor that reduces the visual quality. I think it would be nice to try a non-matted, but non-glossed display like what you have on certain desktop monitors. Then you could also try other top cover materials instead of gorilla glass.

My observation is slightly different: Phones made from metal (ie iPhones and high-end androids) tend to be the ones with shattered screens. My cheap plastic phones will bend and bounce when I drop them, as in the energy of the drop doesn't go into the screen.

Yes, you're probably right. I've had two all-glass or glass with metal trim phones break from a very small height (falling out of my pocket on a small stool). There is no where for the energy to go. I wonder if there is a way to put a crumple zone into the phone?

The hardened glass by itself is probably fine.

So:

> better for the environment, lasts 5 years

and:

> Battery type: Non Removable

You can't really live up to your bold claims, can you?

I think no company has yet figured out how to make affordable waterproof phones that are also user serviceable. The moment you open your phone, you destroy the adhesives and say goodbye to IPS6. Watch makers have solved this problem long ago, is it just not scalable for bigger devices?

Gaskets are hardly a new technology. And even if that is not sufficient, there are silicon glues that you can just apply like caulk, then put the parts together and wipe of the excess with a bit of IPA. But then I guess you still have visible creases and screws, so it won't look so good. (Source: working at a company that makes IP65 touch devices for industrial uses).

I don't care about waterproof phones. At least give me the choice between models that have it or not.

I do hope that this phone will be their breakthrough product. They used to be the monopoly of the phone industry yet fell off since the rise of the smartphone era.

"Nokia XR20 is designed for the long run. A phone that can stand up to anything life throws at it [...] with up to 3 years of OS upgrades and 4 years of monthly security updates, so your phone will be up to date into 2025. And because you’ll be using it longer, it’s better for the environment."

So, you end with users running an unpatched life-centric device for years after 2025. That's better for the environment...and for the ransomgangs.

As a point of comparison, the nearly 6-year old iPhone 6s is still getting updates to the latest iOS versions, including the upcoming iOS 15.

And the nearly 8-year old iPhone 5s is still getting security updates.

Is it really that much of a comparison? I think a more fair comparison would be an Android device with a similar update horizon. As far as I am aware, no such Android phone exists.

Google promises 3 years of updates on Pixel devices.

In my experience, Google largely bets that the pixel won't live that long, considering how quickly after 2 years my Google phone broke.

Updates that slow down the phone. Apple has built planned obsolescence into the phone. Good luck repairing an iphone.

> the nearly 6-year old iPhone 6s

How is the 6 years (non-user replaceable) old battery holding up?

It's true that the batteries don't last 6 years, but they are perfectly user-replaceable for someone with moderate technical skills and a few basic tools. Here's a kit that has everything you need:

https://www.ifixit.com/Store/iPhone/iPhone-6s-Battery/IF314-...

Otherwise, Apple will replace the battery for $49 while you wait:

https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/battery-powe...

Combined with "A phone designed for the long run" that reads like a joke. 3 years is the "long run"? My Raspberry Pi's uptime is probably longer than that. For comparison, Ubuntu LTS releases have 5 year support.

Is that really so different from people buying a phone that will be supported for a year or two and using it for years afterwards? From what I've been able to gather, many Android phone vendors either don't give any promises regarding software updates or they only provide them for a couple of years.

I suppose there could be some genuine reason for why that's a specific problem for Nokia's support claim here, but I'm not sure if you've actually got something like that in mind or if you're just being negative.

I'm not claiming this to be worse than any other manufacturer's policy. It's simply another bad policy. Also, IMHO selling the phone as "insecure but ecological starting 2025" is a very bad selling point.

I don't need to critize any other manufacturer out there to make a point about this one.

I agree that's a problem. But at least 4 > 2, and being secure until 2025 is at least better than being secure until 2023. (It also allows those who mind the security of their devices to use them for longer compared to a lot of the competition, which is an ecological improvement, although not a sufficient one.)

I'd also like to see longer life cycles that aren't limited to a few years due to unhealthy economical incentives. However, although you may not have meant it that way, your comment seemed to attack this particular policy, and that seemed a weird thing to do considering that it's at least better in that regard than the vast majority of the Android phone market.

You're right. Being secure until 2025 it's much better than what we have right now in the Android ecosystem.

My comment was about that specific statement praising as "eco" the use of an unpatched phone for the long run, which I find funny (well, sort of) from a security perspective. But re-reading it, you're right and it sounds like an arbitrary attack. I think my crappy english played against me, because I didn't want to be (so) negative :-)

Still better than most Android OEMs and above all Pixel devices, you know, those phones produced by the company that develops Android.

Mind that this is not Nokia producing this phone, but a company called ‘HMD Global Oy’ as visible in the cookie warning and the space below the footer that the cookie warning covers. They’re just licensing the Nokia name.

Considering this phone heavily advertises its long term support, it is pertinent to point out that the producer of this phone is not, in fact, Nokia, and its real producer has not yet stood the test of time.

HMD Global has been making phones under the Nokia brand for years now. They're not going to disappear in 6 months.

Many of the former Nokia Mobiles employees are also part of HMD Global Oy, and so far they have been the best Android phone experience outside the overpriced Pixels, impossible to buy in most European countries.

Microsoft hollowed out what was left of Nokia years ago. HMD has been making phones under the Nokia name since 2017.

Nokia is now a boring telecom infrastructure company like Ericsson. When Microsoft killed the Windows Phone brand altogether, a number of engineers left for HMD and Jolla.

I used my E6 for almost ten years (replaced the battery once). 3~4 years is just the life of the lithium battery. Nowadays it is the software's fault that perfectly serviceable devices are out of use. I give about 1½ years before they give up.

Nokia phones guarantee 3 years of OS and security updates.

True, I have had my Galaxy S7 since 2016 and the battery conks out after about 2-3 hours of use (Youtube, web browsing, Reddit). I keep it around for the small form factor, which is useful to test websites on.

£400 in the UK:

https://www.clove.co.uk/products/nokia-xr20?variant=39417134...

Gosh, I want Nokia to come back to the smartphone game so much. Especially with their crazy unique cameras! Does anyone remember the N95 and how revolutionary it was with its 8GB tiny spinning hard drive?

Well, my Nokia 7+ has served me quite well.

They have been in the smartphone game for a few years now. What made you think they weren't?

Nokia could make crazy devices like the N95 and others because they had their own factories and supply chain back then. HMD buys off-the-shelf components from Samsung, Sony and others and makes mid-range phones that are indistinguishable from most Chinese and Indian OEMs, who are using the same parts.

And even then, their best features seem to be going away. My Nokia x6 in 2018 came with a stock version of Android. This one has a free trial of Spotify and ExpressVPN, i.e. bloatware.

All the features I wanted and a 3.5mm headphone jack...

I will always support a phone that keeps the jack; my current Samsung has one as well.

That said, I was wearing wired headphones recently while cooking and it was a shock reminder of how easily they get snagged on things around the house! Incredibly frustrating when it happens.

I've been using BT headphones for nearly a decade, so I had forgotten the sensation. Of course, this is a moot point if you're seated. Then, a good pair of wired headphones probably provided way better SQ.

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