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Comment by dzqhz | Hacker News Reader

In the meantime, the iPhone 6s, released more than three years before the Pixel 3, is still receiving updates.

If you buy an Android you already know the deal. It's not like they are stabbing you in the back.

It's strange that it has to be this way though. I just retired my iPhone 6s because the battery didn't last very long anymore. I don't really need anything but text/phone/email so I didn't feel like shelling out for a new iPhone. I got a Moto G Power. It's a good phone, except for all the absolute shit loaded onto it. So much to turn off in so many places.

Specifically, needed to get rid of:

- Google Assistant

- Google Location Services

- Avoid accidentally signing up for Verizon's "cloud" and "digital secure"

- Disallow Verizon's app from collecting location when not using the app

- Disable and de-permission Verizon Cloud, which has tons of permissions even though I never accepted using it

- Turn off Google "location accuracy"

- Turn off personal results for ads

- Turn off tracking for ads in apps which is a separate setting

- Change the default messenger from Verizon's "Message+" to normal messaging to avoid having my messages copied all over the place

- Get confused by some weird "premium" upsell in the Voicemail

- Turn off "monthly driving stats" in google maps which is enabled even though I have location tracking disabled, what the hell even is this?

And that's just the stuff I remember.

And I still get a nag screen on maps for having web history turned off.

I guess Google wants everybody's data and Verizon wants to sell "premium" things for more money, but I wish there was just one button to shut all this shit off. There should be a "good Android" option that costs less than an iPhone for people that would pay a little more money for less garbage.

The Moto G costs less precisely because they get the money back from those practices.

So get a used Pixel for the same price or less, and flash proper software onto it.

The iPhone doesn't even let you turn off its version of Google Location Services (unless you don't want to get your location at all), so after that one-time setup, you ended up with a better phone.

> The iPhone doesn't even let you turn off its version of Google Location Services

Can you elaborate on this a bit more?

You cannot get your location on iOS without also sending your location to Apple. As far as I know, iOS is the only platform that has this deficiency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21708157

Why not replace the battery in the iPhone? It would have cost less than the G Power and probably continue getting updates for exactly as long.

Didn't think of that. Just saw my iPhone rocket down from 50% to 10% one time too many and instantly ordered the new Android phone.

> There should be a "good Android" option that costs less than an iPhone for people that would pay a little more money for less garbage.

There is, actually: Android One. E.g. Nokia makes phones that have minimal crapware preinstalled.

You will still have to deal with Google's own crap... like the retarded Assistant that just won't fucking die. Even with absolutely every setting in every google settings page in every google app explicitly disabling the Assistant, if you dare speak words resembling "ok google" it will still "helpfully" pop up asking if you'd like to enable it. And sometimes spontaneously. While you're typing, hoping you'll fat-finger "yes please".

I just tried saying "OK google" to my phone and it did not summon the assistant. (Hooray!)

I have the generic "Google" app disabled, which I think is the thing that listens on the microphone for that. I don't really know what else it does, so I'm not sure what else is unavailable once it's disabled. I don't expect I'll be missing much though.

>like the retarded Assistant that just won't fucking die

Sadly I can't describe all actions I've done (I just don't remember) but one of the most crucial is to replace you home screen app.

Zim/Omega launcher is a good starting point - Zim doesn't know about assistant, Omega has the options to not to use it.

Along with Hacker's Keyboard, F-Droid/FoxyDroid and methodologically going through the Apps and Permissions in Settings helps to tame this Hydra.

Or, don't start caring about your experience/security/privacy after buying a device,

do a few minutes of research in advance to buy a phone that has a prayer (Pixel 3a is popular in this thread),

and install Graphene on it from day 1...

Nokia is never an option, because they do not open the bootloader on any phone. Worse, in the beginning they lied they would, to get people to buy their crap. Also, don't be blinded by their brand, that brand is actually chinese HMD now, with the chinese attitude to running random closed binaries on your phone. So if you go down that route, better get a properly supported phone, like from OnePlus.

As others have said, replacing battery is fairly straightforward for 6s, I did it a couple times on mine until replacing a few months back. Look for the higher capacity batteries, I had luck with Amazon. Will take you probably 30 mins to switch out.

Alternatively - I just upgraded to an iPhone SE which seems like essentially the same phone as 6s but a little faster/smoother. Fits my minimalist needs which sound similar to yours. Dealing with the Android crapware sounds a lot less fun to me.

You might have luck with a cheap battery replacement. These could be had for about 30 bucks two years ago (by an Apple Authorized Reseller). Displays were also dirt-cheap, unlike today's devices where the display is almost as expensive as a new device.

Edit: meant as reply to throwhauser

It's also true that the user experience of a 6s running iOS 15 isn't going to be very good.

> It's also true that the user experience of a 6s running iOS 15 isn't going to be very good.

Are you basing this on real experience or just fishing for HN anti-Apple upvotes?

Just asking because my kid is using an iPhone 6s with iOS15 and really experiencing absolutely no problems whatsoever.

Buying an iPhone 6s was an excellent if lucky choice, the luck was that the original SE was based on it so the support guarantees of the SE carries the 6s with it. With Apples usual 5 years there'll probably be another 1.5 years of support since the orignal SE was discontinued. (After that I suspect that a bunch of other devices will be discontinued quickly again)

Definitely the latter.

I'm in the same boat, my kid is now the third owner of a handed down 6S and it still does everything without being slow or lacking app support. The features it is missing are mostly neural engine related and are conveniences not vital functionality. I could 100% use that phone as a daily driver and not be frustrated if I swapped in a new battery.

I’ve got more than enough karma and a secure enough ego to have no need to go fishing for votes on HN thanks. Don’t the site guidelines say something about being charitable in your interpretations of other people’s comments?

Anyway I have used a 6s on recent versions of iOS. It works but don’t kid yourself if you think the experience in any way compares to using a recent device.

I use a 6s on iOS 15. It runs well.

It's actually not true. I bought a 6S last year (or previous year) for use in testing iOS apps. My main phone has since died, and I've switched to the 6s. And the experience is excellent. In fact, in many ways it's superior to newer iPhones: it TouchID, and a headphone jack! The only thing that I wish it had is a better camera.

The lack of a headphone jack was one of the reasons I was reluctant to get a new iPhone.

I had the same issue with my old 6s but I recently changed the battery and it is shockingly fast now. The battery replacement only cost me $34 which is cheaper than buying a new phone. I have a SE 2 but since it doesn't have a headphone jack I will be sticking with 6s.

I use an iPhone SE (mk 1) that's basically a 6S, mostly works fine (have had to replace the battery). Things like web browsing, general apps are fine, nothing feels slow. Most things are responsive etc. Have no need to update as it does everything I want it to do with no issues.

I have had an oddity in the last year or so (so iOS 14 and onwards?) is that music playback software seems to get background killed (OOM?) fairly often if it isn't playing. Main issue for me is my general pattern with driving would be to cue up music / podcasts beforehand, pause it and when I select bluetooth for sound in car it would start playback. Now I seem to have to be careful not to actually do anything with my phone (like check websites or whatever) after preparing audio, otherwise there's a strong chance you'll just get nothing.

So not perfect, but this may be a weird edge case I'm running up against. Doubt the phone is going to get iOS 16 though, so will have to think about what to do.

I think those first few years of iPhone where phone power was really leaping up between models, and iOS was jumping in complexity alongside it did give Apple bit of a bad reputation. We got software updates (good) but they just didn't perform at all well on older phones (bad). It seems to have settled down a bit nowadays where iOS isn't outgrowing the old hardware as much. But of course then we had the infamous "people think we're intentionally slowing down old phones, lets ship a feature that protects the battery by intentionally slowing down old phones and not tell anyone" thing.

My 2016 oneplus got an OS update sometime in the last year or so. So it's not all of them.

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