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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

The second proposed legislation from the article seems to require that at least 5 years of updates must be provided after the device was last sold. This is far more than many low-end and mid-range Android phones, moreover many Android phone manufacturers start counting after the device was released, not last sold.

Interestingly, they also seem to put upper bounds on how quickly these updates should be rolled out. Eg. functionality updates must be rolled out within 6 months after another phone from the same brand has that update. So eg. if Samsung makes Android 12 available on their flagship phone, they also need to make it available within 6 months on the other phones that were sold to up to 5 years ago.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...

This is such an improvement over the status quo.

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It would be interesting if a side effect of this proposed legislation, Android manufacturers stop pumping out new models as aggressively. It would make sense if that's how it turned out, because these manufacturers would effectively be crafting their own support nightmares by continuing to put out new models at a high cadence.

This in turn should make for better parts availability since the window that any given model is manufactured in is wider. It'd also incentivize sharing parts between models where possible.

All in all, positive for the end consumer. It might've been a problem in the earlier days of smartphones, but the category has more or less plateaued by now and so the benefit of high model churn with each new model sharing little with its predecessor is dubious at best.

Or it actually accelerates the model pumping. If the software has to be supported for 5 years after it’s last on sale there could be a perverse incentive to roll SKUs like crazy even if there are not any actual changes so you only have to support for the shortest possible time.

That would still effectively be 5 years of updates which is a hell of a lot better than what most manufacturers currently offer.

Sure it would be, but I think the implied point above was that including the period the device is sold (what's that? say three years), the total support time is much closer to the ten years that was being discussed up top, and pumping out more new devices may shorten that back to closer to five years.

Does having 3 devices that you are supporting for 10 years make more work than 10 devices you support for 5?

Because while that doesn't make sense in my head, I could easily see that being the methodology used by the Android device manufacturers.

If these ten devices are mere SKU updates, then maybe yes, they create a sliding five year support window (plus however long they're being sold), instead of a ten year one. Keeping software working for a five year old hardware platform sounds a lot easier than doing that for a ten year old one. A lot less Git branches also.

If the ten devices are mere SKU updates made solely for the reason of getting around the regulations, then the company can expect a rather huge fine :^)

Of course, but any increase is an upgrade to the current situation.

Fantastic point. Chinese manufacturers pump out SKUs like crazy - several new models every six months or so.

Of course, it might turn out as theluketaylor says but I doubt it

Maybe that's just waiting on some settled precedents on what's really a new model. Could this be brought before a judge who'd then possibly rule that SKUs 1, 2, and 3 are essentially the same device and should thus count as such for the purposes meant here?

I would love if this software support needed to be printed on the box. Sort of like EnerGuide or the Nutrition Facts. Feature updates: N years, Security Updates: M years ... This way consumers can actually try to factor in the lifetime of the device when purchasing. Oh this device costs 10% more but will get security updates for 2/3 longer, so it is actually more economical. Then if the company doesn't comply with the label they need to provide full refunds or a replacement that will get updates.

Is it? It is going to meant that Android can't take advantage of the high end features of the new phones that are being released, and that old and slow phones are going to get updates that makes them run even slower.

To top it of, it is not like manufacturers are into throwing away money, so this will likely mean that prices on the cheapest phones will increase more.

> It is going to meant that Android can't take advantage of the high end features of the new phones that are being released

That's perfectly ok, what you don't have you can't use.

> and that old and slow phones are going to get updates that makes them run even slower.

It would be up to the manufacturers to ensure that this is not the case. One way to do it would be to reduce bloat.

> To top it of, it is not like manufacturers are into throwing away money, so this will likely mean that prices on the cheapest phones will increase more.

This makes no sense: manufacturers are competing with each other, if the prices on the cheapest phones will increase more then surely someone will exploit that.

Maybe it'll play out differently on the low-end, but on the high-end it seems there's been some "soft collusion" where one manufacturer raised prices, and others saw that as a signal they can also raise their prices.

Yes, that is a problem, but that's a different kind of regulation (anti-trust). The EU also tends to be pretty good at busting such things, but they take their sweet time to do it.

In the low end, surely you'd get more standardisation. Same processor, screen, Bluetooth and mobile chips.

So that from an update pov it's easy. They can always differentiate with cameras, batteries, cases etc.

So a communist phone for the lower class?

That’s the not-nice way of saying the same thing.

I’m not sure if I am for or against that without more thought.

I'm still on a dumb phone and that's because I think spending $800 on a phone is ridiculous. And it's not like I can't afford it.

An iPhone SE is half that. A budget Android half again. Both completely usable, just won't replace your mirrorless camera just yet.

There are other reasons.

I spend money where I spend time: phone, chair, monitor, mattress.

I rarely drive so my car is 19 years old.

I use my phone daily (right now!) so I have the newest one.

Why explicitly the newest one?

I’m on the apple upgrade program. So I just pay monthly. I could skip a year and own the phone, but don’t really care. I want the best cameras. Life is too short.

Exactly. Normal people have already replaced their computer with phones so how old is the PC that HN commentators use? Five years?

Phones are appliances that are being used up to 10 hours every single day. And sure you can keep repairing them but at some point buying a new one will actually be cheaper.

I'd love some honest mattress advice.

I'm on a pixel 6A. It cost me under £200 factoring in the trade in deal that let me trade in a 10 year old phone (if you don't have one eBay one for £5).

And there are plenty of reasonable smart phones for less than £100 these days. You can get something like a Motorola E13 for under £70 that will do everything most people use their phones for well (beyond the camera being nothing special, but we're comparing to a dumb phone).

Standadized parts are an idea from the industrial revolution, not communism.

White-labeling an oem part is not exactly the kind of communism Marx was known for

I think it's more that higher price = more flagship. A higher price is in itself a sales argument to a certain audience. If you just want a competent phone there's no reason to buy a flagship one.

Yes - at the very high end, smartphones are a luxury goods market. There's an old adage in luxury goods that "if your product isn't selling fast enough, raise the price".

IDK, I always save up and buy flagships, and convinced my wife to do the same, because that's the only reliable way to guarantee neither of us will have to suffer through a phone that chokes under its own stock software, and is a constant pain to use. So yes, I'm one of those for whom "higher price = more flagship" is an argument, mostly because so far, "most flagship = bestest specs" and "= most care taken by the vendor".

The "collusion" was 5G. Everyone raised price, thanks to Qualcomm?

>This makes no sense: manufacturers are competing with each other, if the prices on the cheapest phones will increase more then surely someone will exploit that.

You assume it costs nothing to maintain software for old phones.

It wouldn't if they opened up the hardware.

So release a handful of budget models and support them well instead of 60+ per year.

If the hardware was more open it wouldn’t even be a problem. People could pick and choose ROMs best suited for their phones and use cases, just like Linux. Newer phones could use bleeding edge features for their HW, and older phones could use more stripped down versions to preserve battery life.

That is the first good suggestion I have seen in this thread. We just need to make it illegal to not allow you app to run on an open device.

I mean realistically there's never been a good reason that phone OS's are as specific as they are. The driver situation is absurd. The most common highly integrated feature - the camera - doesn't even really run on the phone OS anymore since there's usually an image processor of some sort inline.

I have absolutely no problems with running a USB-C on the phone and component manufacturers to get their act together and figure out an open standard to support common components (i.e. basebands, cameras, audio routing, security chips) so hardware can be supported after release (which I would hope in practice would just be "in the Linux kernel tree").

What percentage of consumers want to pick the ROM their phone runs?

This is great because the more expensive phones get, the less likely people will want to replace their 2-year old phone with a new one.

Plus, those new high end features...there have been barely any new features in a smartphone in the last 5+ years (I'm exaggerating a bit of course). Check out Fairphone. That's an interesting project!

Isn’t this the ultimate “let them eat cake” argument? There are many people in the world who can’t afford anything but the cheapest phone.

Those people don't live in the EU. And anyhow the higher cost of the phone are balanced out by the increased longevity and support of the device. Lifetime cost may very well be lower when people end up replacing their phones less frequently and just have to swap a battery.

Has the EU also made poverty illegal?

Sort of? Almost all EU countries have social welfare nets and public services strong enough to have people's basic needs covered. I think in most countries welfare even directly covers basic phone plans.

We aren't in a situation where we need to allow environmentally damaging products here for the sake of the poor because they're not out on their own. This sounds like the old pro-sweatshop arguments people sometimes made about developing countries.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/they-have-homelessness-in-europ....

Poverty is a relative thing, not absolute. As for your link downthread - homelessness has many more causes than just not being able to afford a place to stay.

So what are those many causes where people have money and choose to live on the streets?

IDK, cheapest phones don't work, and I don't think the store price was ever that clear a differentiator, as telcos routinely disrupt this signal. You can easily get the newest flagships, and phones from the next price group below, cheaper than you can get mid-range phones - as long as you're willing and able to sign up for a 1-2 years contract.

Outside of the US and a few other companies, people pay full price for phones.

Eventually, always, but not up front. Poorer people "prefer" somewhat higher price that gets spread out over years, to paying full price up front.

(I put "prefer" in quotes, because it's less of a choice, and more the only option they can afford.)

Most countries don’t do two year contracts - people have to pay the full price up front.

It means you'll be getting a "This phone isn't available in your country" pop-up when shopping online and all SKUs sold in Europe by the maker's subsidiary will have different model numbers. Of course, because of the need to support the phone for longer on patched kernels and the impossibility of charging for updates, the phones will be more expensive. The removable battery will also mean that the phone isn't waterproof.

Wasn't the Samsung Galaxy S5 waterproof despite having a removable battery?

It was less so than later phones, but it absolutely handled its intended use case of browsing reddit in the shower

In recent years I think phone hardware has managed to outrun software bloat. My latest phone doesn't feel any faster than the previous one and it didn't noticeably slow down after three Android updates. Five years of updates would probably be fine.

Phones nowadays are pretty powerful, even on newer softwares older devices are pretty usable. I actually still daily drive an MSM8974-powered Android phone with an Android 11 custom firmware, and it still runs much better than some of the cheapest phones on the market.

Not necessarily. Software support can just mean security updates, which would already be great. Newer versions can also roll out features dependent on hardware strength only to devices that have the necessary hardware for them. And (if the manufacturers don't do the exact opposite on purpose) could lead to longer usable operation without doubling ram every 3 years.

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