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Comment by Rinzler89 | Hacker News Reader

>Given that ASUS has one of the worst software support commitments in the Android world [...] It started removing posts about bootloader unlocking in its ZenTalk forums.

Which is why I never understood why Asus Zenfone kept being recommended on HN all the time when people asked for good android phones to buy. I thought this community appreciated long SW support. I think the people recommending it were not dogfooding it.

Why not go for something that has 5-7 years of SW updates like a Pixel or a S-series? The Zenfone wasn't any cheaper than those either(at least in EU) so you were also getting a poor value for money.

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Asus allowed bootloader unlock up until a few months ago, which is why I bought the device, i.e even if the company abandons it I can just unlock the bootloader and slap on LineageOS on it. Seems like a mistake now.

> Why not go for something that has 5-7 years of SW updates like a Pixel or a S-series? The Zenfone wasn't any cheaper than those either(at least in EU) so you were also getting a poor value for money.

SW updates aren't the only criteria when choosing a device, if you're looking for a small phone with a headphone jack and a non-glass/metal back, the number of options are very limited (iirc, Zenfone 9 is literally the only phone which satisfies the constraints).

The Zenfones mainly carved out a following because they're the smallest flagship-tier Android phones on the market. Asus has terrible support, but if you want a small-ish device there isn't a great deal of choice nowadays.

Indeed, today if you want a phone that isn't gigantic the options are really limited. Zenfone also had benefit of being quite sturdy since the back wasn't made from glass/metal, so you can go without a protective case. I have dropped mine a couple of times, but it hasn't suffered any damage until now.

You can go without protective shell, but it is so slippery you want one just to avoid airborne phones.

Also, it's one of the rare remaining flagship-tier phone who still allows headphone jack, which is the main reason why I bought a Zenfone last year.

>they're the smallest flagship-tier Android phones

They're the same size as the Galaxy S series

https://phonesized.com/compare/#2261,2398

Does the Galaxy S series have headphone jacks as well?

No, but can't you use a USB-C earphone?

Not while charging.

USB C to 3.5mm Headphone and Charger Adapter, 2-in-1 USB Type C to Aux Jack Dongle Cable with PD 60W Fast Charging

$8.99

I like headphone jacks too but I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t a solved problem.

Yeah I bet that 9$ widget definitely won't induce audio quality issues while you pump 60W through it...

Let’s keep moving the goalposts…

Unless you own the product and know it has that problem I don’t know why you would invent it out of nowhere.

Can we also acknowledge that this is a general purpose smartphone and not an audiophile playback device? A ton of phones with headphone jacks had/have terrible DACs because they are general purpose devices designed to be good enough for the average person.

Someone who wants an audiophile playback device should buy an audiophile playback device.

People up-thread were talking about high end IEMs not general purpose devices.

They were connecting high end IEMs to consumer smartphone headphone jacks.

I bet it’s better to just have a product like this compared to a smartphone headphone jack with a run of the mill DAC:

https://www.fiio.com/ka3

yep! i've got a k5 kicking around on my desk, a proper dac is good stuff. they've still gotta make one we can cram 60W through though!

ed: i guess i should add that i just use a pair of bluetooth cans or even bone-conducting set when i am listening to stuff from my phone 'cause it's just podcasts and youtube videos

For some people, the ability to use wired headphones/earphones while charging has a lot of value. Additionally, some invest in quality earphones or IEM's and replacing those with the lower-quality limited selection of USB-C earphones is not desirable. Likewise with Bluetooth.

The 3.5mm audio connection is nowhere near dead yet.

FWIW for IEMs with detachable cables, which pretty much all of the good ones do, you can get replacement USB-C cables now. That has the advantage of decoupling the sound quality from the highly variable quality of the phones internal DAC since the DAC is instead part of the cable, and some of those cables even have configurable hardware DSP features. It doesn't solve the charging problem though.

That's more expensive and less convenient.

>The Zenfones mainly carved out a following because they're the smallest flagship-tier Android phones on the market.

They're literally the same dimensions as the basic Samsung S23, which was cheaper than the Zenfone as had better SW updates.

what good is SW updates on a pixel that can't even get cellular connectivity

Honestly, I switched from Pixel to Zenfone for the form factor.

Ever since the visor redesign with the Pixel 6, the Pixel series has been too big for my hands.

I do miss the great Pixel software though...

Same thing here. Zenfone android is similar to pixel android while I find Samsung's android insanely ugly. I just miss some of the Google app integrations

We'll, TIL that the Zenfone 11 is now a big phone. So I guess I'm going back to Pixel whenever I buy my next phone.

https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Asus-Zenfone-10,Asus-...

> Why not go for something that has 5-7 years of SW updates like a Pixel or a S-series?

Or an iPhone. People love to hate on Apple, but they actually support their devices.

On top of the iOS restrictions vs Android, an iPhone comes with a set of constraints that the type of user that cares about bootloader unlocking doesn't want to deal with. From apps that are not on the store to custom ROMs that have features that the stock OS doesn't have... iPhones are terrible for this.

iPhones are good, but in this case it's a bit like recommending a Chromebook to someone that is used to build their own computers and runs linux.

Tbh I don't share the sentiment that the community appreciates long SW support. Otherwise we'd see Windows being recommended over Linux more often.

This is more about device support for updated OS, which any PC does. Especially with Linux, unlike Windows 11 that can't be installed on older PCs without some hacks.

Lol, I guess Linux did just drop 386 and 486 a couple years ago.

You mean Microsoft Windows which dropped support for Zen 1 with Win11 not even 5 years after Zen 1 was released? Meanwhile, Linux will still run on a 30+ year old CPU...

Isn't Windows 10 still supported?

I looked into it. Consumer installs of Windows 10 have updates until 2025.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10#Support_lifecycle

They said software support, not hardware support.

You can take a win 95 gui app and run it on windows 10 without issue. You can’t do the same on Linux.

Pretty much.

For the sake of nostalgia, I downloaded an Encarta 2000 ISO form Internet Archive, then spun up a Windows 98 VM to run it on but that VM had a lot of sound issues in Virtual Box, then I realized that Encarta would also run just fine installed on Windows 11 lol.

This kind of backwards compatibility is not something I need on a daily basis but it's pretty neat that I can just run very old SW on my main OS without fiddling with VMs.

In context, it looks like they meant software updates, which is closer to what your calling hardware support.

This is not 100% true. Some legacy Windows software does not run on current Windows. Never got Slave Zero running on Windows XP or Windows 2000 after upgrading from Windows 98 & ME. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Zero

For many old windows games (and probably other apps) you'll actually have better luck running them on linux than a modern version of windows, thanks to wine/proton.

E.g. see this user report: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/1743cec/almost_s...

Windows 10 support continues until October of 2025. Zen 1 will be 8 years old at that point.

It’s pretty much guaranteed that Microsoft will add an extended support period to windows 10. Windows 7 just left extended support last year.

It's really not the same kind of support. We get plenty of active support and development in the Linux world, and open source more broadly.

Windows only offers essential life support, trying to ensure that something written 20 years ago still runs today, despite being completely abandoned for 19 years with no reasonable way of fixing it.

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