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Comment by waste_monk | Hacker News Reader

Compare a 2016-era phone with the current equivalent (e.g. iPhone 7 vs iPhone 14) and there is a huge difference, many of the specs. are 4x those of the older model.

Don't get me wrong, I really don't like the whole 'disposable hardware' culture, but you can't deny there has been a huge leap in tech over the last ~7 years.

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My mother has an iPhone 7. She just upgraded from an iPhone 5.

It works perfectly fine for her, it runs the two apps that she uses: Camera and WhatsApp. And the price was reasonable, only half of her weekly pension. There’s no way she could afford an iPhone 14, that’s a whole month’s income.

She doesn’t know the specs of her phone, or care.

I still have an iPhone 7. With my usage, the battery lasts 1 or 2 days. I can read the occasional email, my newspaper, use Teams and Telegram when I'm not behind my laptop. It even plays games. What more do I want?

My mom uses an iPhone 7. She took video of us brining out the cake to my child’s birthday. Let me just say, I won’t make that mistake again. The video quality is terrible.

> She took video of us brining out the cake to my child’s birthday. Let me just say, I won’t make that mistake again. The video quality is terrible.

Not to be too salty but that cake must have tasted worse than the video looked terrible.

Yes, I too followed your salty comment down that mental rabbit hole.

I'm with you, apple stans, but it's worth pointing out it's not the apple devices we're talking about here. That iPhone 7 can run iOS 15, which is out of date now, but only by two years. No letsencrypt certificate troubles.

Depends on how you define "out of date". Is iOS 15 getting new features? Nope. Can the iPhone 7 get iOS16 or newer? Nope. However Apple are still releasing security updates for iOS15, the latest update for iOS15 was just 20 days ago - https://ipsw.me/15.7.7 / https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213811

EDIT: However, I don't suspect that iOS15 will be supported for much longer, iOS14 last update was back in Oct 2021.

And apple supports iPhones much better. Both iPhone 5 and 7 I believe have the isrg root now. My wife likes older iPhones for weight / size reasons and the longevity of these is impressive especially if you pay for a battery swap

I'm still using my LG G5 from 2016. On my 4th battery right now and will keep on using it until it dies. Still runs smooth browsing the web or even playing brand new 3d games. Batteries are 10-20eur on ebay. The cameras lack nothing and it unlocks with a finger print scanner on the back. This means that in the past 10 years I've spent about 550EUR on mobile phones.

About a year ago a friend of mine complimented me on a new phone, until I told him that it's my old LG, I just stopped using the case. He seemed annoyed after that. Must be because I got funny looks and giggles years back when I said I'll never buy a phone without a replaceable battery.

I have an iPad Pro (1st gen, 2015) that I continue to use as a (secondary) daily driver.

My laptops are both 2015 MacBook Pros.

I’m sure there’s plenty of use cases where the gains are valuable. If you’re a photographer, developer, gamer, or web browser without an Adblocker, I’m sure it’s immense. For me personally, the gains are questionable.

I'd say you're nearing the cliff.

I have an iPad mini that's only a year or two older than that and software upgrades aren't supported, nor are there many (any?) apps available for that version of iOS

I don't agree, I have an iPad Mini4 from 2015, and that's still good for most day to day tasks (although it feels slower than in the beginning thanks to iOS updates being less optimized).

Same with my mid-2014 13" MBP. While my M1 MBP is a lot faster for things like building complex C++ code bases, for stuff like web browsing the old Intel Mac doesn't feel much different.

Compared to the incredible hardware progress between 1995 and 2005 (where a 2x increase per year was quite normal) it definitely feels like we're on a plateau since around 2010.

It is not a matter of the age of your hardware but your software. Ipad mini 4 got its latest OS update in 2023. The problem is that in the Android ecosystem it is unfortunately common to only have a short window of OS updates from the release date of the hardware.

False, I can use my 12 years old Android perfectly. While I had to ditch my old iPhone 7 (!) because I couldn't install most apps anymore.

iPhone 7 is still a perfectly usable device but bricked now.. Stuck in iOS.

Would you care to elaborate which device it is? 12 years old means it at the most could have come with Honeycomb when you bought it. Has the base OS been updated since? It is great that you bought a device which presumably got OS updates for many years, unfortunately that is not common for android devices. And the problem is, if it did not get an OS update, the truststore did not get updated, and thus it does not trust the LetsEncrypt root CA sometime next year. Except for Firefox which luckily comes with its own root certificate list.

Iphone 7 got an iOS update to 15.7.7 in 2023 and its truststore contains the ISRG Root X1 certificate: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT212773 I am unsure which apps you cannot install but a quick look in the app store indicates that Zoom, LinkedIn, Notability, 1Password, Disney+ and Netflix all support iOS 15.7. And in my anecdotal experience I could find no app with a minimum OS requirement greater than 15.7. As far as I can tell you need to go back to iPhone 4S to find an iphone which does not support the LetsEncrypt root certificate. That device is only 11 years old, so still worse than your Android device. And I do not think there is a workaround by using a different browser like for Android.

My grandmother has a Google TV, still works with a bit of stuff. Running Honeycomb.

Interesting - what apps were working as new installs on 12 year old android but not iPhone 7? That’s unusual. iPhones update cycle is much longer and they usually ship w a recent iOS version when released

Yes, but parent was specifically talking about hardware specs. And a 4x times increase since 2016 isn't much progress compared to the 'good ole times' ;)

There are computing devices that are not mobile phones or laptops that also depend on encrypted connections. Usually these devices last a lot longer.

But usually these other devices can also update their software, it is quite unique for the android operating system to run old and unupdatable software.

Or they should if they are web facing. For security reasons at least.

If your whatever device doesn't support a root CA from 2016, chances you should not let it connect to anything over the internet. Most bad software comes from "hardware" vendors, who think they can handle them the same as any other physical part. Stop blaming software people.

I don't think devices have progressed much in the last 5-7 years. Before that, computers became almost twice as fast yearly. So yes I'm actually denying this. Devices haven't changed much in the last 7 years.

The only thing that feels outdated on a 7 year old work laptop that I'm using is the amount of memory.

Auto manufacturers are required by US Federal Law to have parts available for any models they sold for the period of 10 years.

Something like this is needed for mobile phones, and probably other electronics as well.

My current phone is a pixel 2 released in 2017. It's perfectly great and there's no reason it couldn't continue receiving updates other than planned obsolescence.

This "huge" difference is only at the top. If anything, the software has gotten worse... my parents hate the "new" gestures... if they didn't give the option for the old bottom row buttons it would be doubly worse.

The leap in the Android ecosystem is far less significant

There are many low cost Android devices about whos processing power hasn’t really improved much over the same timespan

And although iPhones have got much better it’s worth remembering how much their price has increased too (SE excepted)

This issue doesn’t apply to the iPhone 7 yet given that that device received the iOS 15 update in 2021.

For all the talk this “disposable hardware” and “planned obsolescence” issue is much more a problem on Android.

OEMs could update the cert store on those old Androids. It's a cheap phone problem.

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