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Comment by nelblu | Hacker News Reader

> It has 4 GB of memory, and reviewers say that its specs are pretty outdated.

In my imaginary world, I wish someone stood up to this type of insanity. This would be a good time to force Apple / Google to revive old devices and allow the supply chains to adjust manufacturing things outside of China while the rest of the world pauses and lives with some outdated hardware technology. I know this is probably not feasible because Apple and Google probably survive on selling of new phones, but hey I can at least dream!

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In this case, part of the criticism is that the phone doesn't function well. Even when it was new, it was slow and clunky, and the issue seemed to be the CPU wasn't up to the task. They may have optimized it a bit since, but fundamentally they chose an under-powered CPU to hit certain open source requirements.

I agree though that for many things (such as their laptop), specs often don't matter. Either I need a high-end, GPU accelerated computer, or I need a terminal. Having the newest CPU doesn't matter if it achieves other desired goals.

> and the issue seemed to be the CPU wasn't up to the task.

This is definitely not true, the issue is in the non-optimized software. I tried SXMo [0] on a Pinephone (which is much slower than the Librem), and it was unbelievably fast, including watching videos and looking a maps in a split-screen mode, simultaneously and smoothly. Android had 10 years and a huge team of developers to optimize the UI.

[0] https://sxmo.org/

Sxmo is based on a keyboard-driven tiling window manager. Yes, it is as bad as it sounds. Touch gestures suck so much[1] that the most comfortable way to navigate it is with the volume buttons and power button. Each of these buttons has like 3 different functions with double, tripple click etc. Changing the volume is not one of the functions[2].

Auto screen orientation only works 50% of the time, because the whole thing is based on a pile of shell scripts.

There is no lock screen included.

No, I'm not kidding.

[1] https://sxmo.org/docs/gettingstarted/

[2] https://man.sr.ht/~anjan/sxmo-docs/USERGUIDE.md#strongglobal...

It's just an example that the UI on a Pinephone and Librem 5 can definitely be snappy given enough optimizations.

Are you going to use a 10 years old phone just because it still receives software updates? If so, good for you, but overwhelming majority of people will opt buying a new one.

Why buy a new phone when old one still receives updated and has a working battery? Honest question, I only replaced my old phone because it stopped getting security updated. Up to some limit, ancient nokia wouldn't work well, but i would gladly use my pixel from 2018.

What's the point in buying a new phone when the old one works flawlessly and continues to receive not only security updates but also all software improvements, and is getting more optimized and fast with time? Sent from my Librem 5.

consumers were taught that and they can be taught something different

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