Hacker News Reader

Comment by cautiouscat | Hacker News Reader

I used to be a "cutting edge phone guy" where I'd get the latest iPhone ever year and the thought of having the older phone just didn't sit well with me. These days though the upgrades are so marginal I don't even care. I'm looking forward to upgrading my three year old phone this year, but not because I expect it to be more than "better camera, faster and thinner" but just because its time.

These updates are so boring now!

View on HN

Why is it "time" after 3 years? They should hopefully still be getting software updates, at least security updates.

I'm on an iPhone 13 since launch (almost 5 years ago) and still see no reason to upgrade. There just hasn't been anything 'exciting' in phones in many years.

EDIT: should add, I've only used 50% of the 256GB storage and battery life is still fine (comfortably gets through an entire day+night). But I'm not a heavy phone user so that's perhaps atypical for a 5yo phone.

It’s a fair question. The battery is on the border of needing to be replaced, which is a $79 repair and would probably buy me another three years or so. But at this point I want something a bit snappier and I’ll probably replace the battery and use it as a backup phone.

Not a fix for the battery, but if you're on Android, enable developer settings and change your animations to 0.5x speed (there are three settings to change). Every OS animation will take half as long. It makes an aging phone feel much snappier.

Won't 0.5x speed make it slower (Driving 20mph instead of 40mph will get you somewhere in double the time).

I just checked my phone, the phrasing is "Animation scale .5x" (Among other numbers), meaning it's scaled to take n times the time.

Thanks for the assist, I typed it up from memory.

That really did make using my old phone less painful, thanks for the tip!

This, but set it to disable all animations. It makes using the phone so much quicker, not having to pause for pointless animations.

There used to be a jailbreak app for iphone to increase animation speed, it was soooo nice, it felt like you were actually using the phone instead of the phone using you. Anything out there for iPhone right now? Edit: cowabunga on iOS 17 (broken in iOS 18+) https://cowabun.ga/

If you like taking pictures with your phone, the cameras are still improving steadily enough that you'll see meaningful improvements if you upgrade every three years

Anecdotally, every iphone I've tried since my iphone 11 pro seems to take worse photos. I do take a lot of photos with a standalone camera though so I imagine I am biased.

I can't remember which generation exactly had this shift, but yeah around the iPhone 12 they went really heavy on the processing, so instead of a noisy but sharp image you got a smudgy mess. Later generations improved on that but you still see this when zooming in or in low light.

The processing pipeline also started imposing its own opinions on your photos, adjusting the brightness of dark areas and bright areas to even things out, increasing saturation, etc. This has generally trended towards more processing over the years.

In a picture from a standalone camera (or an old phone back when the processing pipeline was basically just debayering, white balance, chroma denoise, and a gamma curve), you'll actually have contrast between shadows and highlights, which, when done well, looks great. When done poorly, it looks terrible (blown highlights, noisy shadows), which is the whole point of the processing pipeline -- on average (random user, random scene), you're better off reducing the overall contrast in the image with local adjustments, even if that turns some excellent photos into boring ones, because it'll turn a lot more bad photos into acceptable ones.

I recently picked up an old Olympus OM-D EM-1 to play with, along with a couple of prime lenses. The photos it produces aren’t as high-resolution than those of my iPhone 16 Pro Max, but they look a lot nicer regardless.

Part of that is due to the larger sensor which no phone is going to be able to compete with, but it’s also because it allows contrast to exist and photos don’t turn into smudge/blotch soup when zoomed in a little. Thanks to that, its photos capture mood better and feel closer to what I see (or remember seeing).

I’ve toyed with alternative camera apps (of which many exist on iOS) and those are a bit better, but still fall short of an decade+ old standalone camera.

You can avoid a lot of the smudgy processing on an iPhone by shooting ProRAW with the default camera app, or using something like Halide to take a single shot RAW.

I used to adjust exposure a lot on phones like the iPhone 5s, so I would, for example, get the highlights exposed properly and have the rest be nice and dark. Can't do that anymore, or not as well at least, because my modern phone will bring those shadows back to make it all even. I really miss those older phone cameras.

I miss non-computational phone cameras. I remember really enjoying the camera in my iPhone 5s.

Anecdotally, I can't tell much of a difference between the newer phone of my girlfriend (latest iPhone) and my iPhone 13. Maybe if I nitpick on it, but for my untrained eye they all look 'good enough'.

Plus, many people who take photos on their phone will upload it to a service like instagram/discord which compresses the photos so you lose some of the quality anyway.

I have seen huge improvements in low light performance. Not worth a brand new phone, but very cool.

Same here. Battery health is 84% which is not disastrous. But charging is a chore. The charging port doesn't work half the time (a problem in the car especially). I would also like it to be lighter, which I probably won't get.

The charging port might just need cleaning. I’m still using an iPhone 11 and the charging port was getting super unreliable. I cleaned it a couple of weeks ago - gently, with a toothpick and a flashlight, there was some lint stuck inside - and it’s worked perfectly since then.

This - I have the iFixit cleaning kit which has a really tiny plastic pick / brush thing - I think it might be a dental crevice cleaning tool, like floss but for bigger gaps. I got a wad of lint out of my lightning port and all of a sudden CarPlay works perfectly. Same thing happens to USB-C ports.

Is it just me, or was Lightning the most prone port to get clogged up with crap and have moisture end up inside it? Used to happen to me all the time, but USB-C hasn't been a problem at all.

>The charging port doesn't work half the time

Give it a blast with an air compressor.

Thank you. We need to hold corporations accountable to make devices that continue to work and don't include planned obsolescence. When people buy into the psychology of needing to buy the newest version every year or even that "it's just time" to upgrade without any specific need for it, they undermine that

So we're going to ask them to not advance their operating systems and apps to take advantage of newer hardware?

What?

Devices get slower over time due to their operating systems becoming increasingly complex as they're updated. This increased complexity is due to the OS developers taking advantage of the newer models' improved hardware. This leaves owners of older models facing a decision between staying on the older OS version and retaining the current performance vs. updating to the latest version and risk performance degradation. But it's not even that simple. Over time, app developers stop targeting older OS versions, which means you could be stuck with old versions of apps, some of which will refuse to do anything until they're updated.

The way to solve this is for device vendors and their OS developers to simply stop updating the OS in a way that takes advantage of new models' improved hardware because that same code slows down older devices.

I've upgraded from iPhone 12 to 17 a few months ago and I agree, I could have waited 1 or maybe 2 more years. At this point I just upgraded because I wanted to and could afford it, not because I needed to (even though I'm a heavy phone user, unlike you according to what you're saying).

The iPhone 12 was my first iPhone and I've been really impressed by how long it lasted, and I'm only hoping I won't need to upgrade before the iPhone 22 release.

My iPhone 13 is likewise still ticking along, most nights I put it on the charger with over 70% battery remaining. Of course, about the only thing I use it for is reading e-books, which isn't very taxing. Also a little photography.

If the upcoming folding iPhone supports the Apple Pencil Pro, that'll be the first tempting phone feature in years. It would be fun to have a digital sketchbook in my pocket. Of course the price tag will probably cancel the temptation.

Part of me is sad to see so little innovation in new phones, but another part of me enjoys keeping my money.

what a strange comment! It's totally fine, you do whatever you want, but it sounds like "I used to be an alcoholic drinking two 12-packs a day, now I don't even care about beer: I just have 6 a day and that's not because I want to be drunk but just because I feel like it". Like, sure it's quantitatively better but... it's not really qualitatively very different is it

I agree; but I'm not sure it is fixable. Without some technological advancement to actually move the needle, most manufacturers are just stuck with marginal hardware changes and then some cheesy software-locked exclusive to the latest models.

Phone advancements between 2007-2017 was insane. I wonder how much of it was Apple catching up to the cutting edge of phone tech leveraging its iOS advantage, vs just natural pace of innovations. Feels like there had been an invisible war.

I'd like my next phone to be a flip one. But really what I want is a Linux phone.

As someone that has used pre-paid phones most of my life, starting with TMN Mimo in 1997, I have always replaced my devices when they break down or got stolen, and that was it.

Back in the day there were no updates anyway, until Symbian or Windows CE/Pocket PC became common, and even them had at most a single firmware update during their lifetime, which had to be installed via the developer tools SDK.

Nobody wants to cut the edge, when it comes to foldable phones, it seems.

Also, more than 5 yrs after Galaxy Fold (I've never seen or held one IRL):

is it really that valuable to have "marginless" foldable displays?

Often times, users will divide the screen into halves, at least, when using large resolution.

And users are also not too interested in curved or mangled output surfaces, the ideal is an evenly lighted 2D surface.

If you were working on military technology, that's irrelevant of course. Then, the consumer tech is just a small venture capital driver.

No "foldable" real currently comes close to two flexable screens placed close to each other.

Consumers have repeatedly rejected this hype.

The only interesting value is in completely flexible material with fixed-distance OLEDs on it, and that's a very complicated engineering problem approaching a digital "invibility coat".

In-between these extreme uses, I struggle to see the benefit of foldable screns.

A cheap and robust e-ink screen would be a welcome exception, but I have no idea how much the science overlaps with marginless, foldable LED panels.

Foldable screens are amazing when it comes to looking at code changes in pull requests

true, though for me it’s an ipad mini, just small enough to fit on my pocket but big enough to read a whole page of code (and it only goes for a few hundred bucks vs thousands)

... and for older eyes.

I used the Microsoft Surface Duo, and the experience was terrible. I carry a Pixel 10 Fold, and 90% of the time I use it closed. But when I want to watch a video, or I want to show someone something. The bezel very much ruins that experience. And the Duo went even further by having hidden pixels, which made some UIs completely unusable.

That said, I hardly think that foldable is the peak. I'd prefer a rollable phone that I can expand the screen on, with maybe an edge display.

And the price is the real kicker. For the vast majority of the Android population, a phone at a price point about $1000 is just a non-starter.

> but just because its time

If you already know the new phone isn’t going to do anything better for you, why is it time?

Might be cheaper than replacing the battery. Might want more storage.

I have a Pixel 7 I'm still happy with other than 2 issues. Battery wear is starting to be noticeable. There's a loose cable or something that causes the screen to go to static sometimes. If I press firm on the bottom it's good again. With the cost of getting these issues repaired, I just started looking into getting a new phone instead.

An official OEM battery for the Pixel 7 along with all the tools you need is $50. It is not expensive. The process to replace it is easy. Certainly nerve racking the first time but I've opened up my pixel phones at least 6 times now and it is pretty trivial (on the non-folding pixel phones).

https://www.ifixit.com/products/google-pixel-7-battery-genui...

And you can easily find someone in any city who will replace it for cheap

I have never got a phone repaired before. Got quoted $130 for parts and labor for a Pixel 7 battery

That sounds like a lot, I’ve never paid more than 70€ for iPhone battery replacement

I’m also getting ready to upgrade from my 3yo iPhone. For me, my phone is running out of storage, starting to feel a little slower, and the battery has less capacity. I’m sure I could wait another year, but I’d rather be a little ahead on updates than be behind on updates where my phone is creating problems for me.

What the hell are you doing to your phone to make it slower after only 3 years? I am running a pixel 6a, so lowest end and 5 generations behind current models and it doesn't feel slow, even compared to the phone my partner bought new last year. Or is it just psychologic?

Given the price increase in storage chips, are 2026 phones even coming with more storage than 3 years ago?

Could be psychological tbh. It’s really not a big issue, but I’d rather refresh earlier. Although the storage problem is real and frustrating. And despite the chip shortages, the newer iPhones still come with far more storage than what I have now.

Have you tried just wiping your phone and starting fresh?

Have you tried… deleting data and apps you don’t actually need?

Almost weekly at this point

Damn, that does sound frustrating. I have an iPhone SE with 32GB (I think) and have to remove things maybe twice a year to make space for something. I never understood how people fill their storage, but 32GB already sounds pretty large to me, and I see that apps size has increased a lot over time :(

It’s purely psychological

I don't remember which iPhone I even have. I have a phone that does what I need and doesn't annoy the crap out of me. That's all I want.

My last Pixel was rendered useless by a software update though.

And sometimes the updates are a step backwards. For example when Apple went to the Intel modem. Perhaps when they move to their own modem this year there might be a repeat, we'll have to keep our eyes peeled.

I have a Z Flip 7. The Z Flip 8 is practically indistinguishable except for the SoC where they've gone from an Exynos to a Snapdragon.

My wife's iPhone is 11 years old now, and it's still better than having a latest flagship Android

it is a phone. you use it to look up content and maybe endlessly scroll. i am very sure a new iphone is not boring to a young person getting their first phone. i am sorta sure that phones feel they've plateaued because present day app store policies no longer support high quality ideas.

I find this to be great, less e-waste.

Let's hope we can have phones that last 10+ years.

between the cost, lack of interesting new features, and often addition of features i do not want, it’s starting to seem like i may never get a new phone, and i’m ok with that

But you can fold it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com