this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
2448 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
60060 readers
2898 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm curious how software can last shorter. Could you maybe give me an example ?
The only way i can think of is companies reducing software support.
It's possible that Apple may do this, but for android - it'd just result in a thriving community for Custom ROMs.
I think that what @[email protected] is saying, is that now that companies will no longer have the option of planned obsolescence via a shitty battery, companies will pivot into sunsetting software technologies faster, so users can keep replacing their devices at the same pace they do today.
I felt like Google and Verizon really dropped the ball with the galaxy nexus. Then again with the Moto X. Community support was mixed for the moto and better on the nexus. Which eventually led me to drop android in favor of iOS. However, none of it has compared to the level of OS support I’ve received from my Apple products.
What I really wonder is what happens to water resistance capabilities for phones that are not sealed?
It's not just support. Companies like Google and Apple can do a lot to pressure third party developers to remove compatibility for older versions.
This includes:
limiting compatibility for new versions of the API. So if you want to be compatible with the latest Android/iOS version, you have to drop compatibility for older versions.
make the newest version of the toolchains incompatible with older versions of the OS.
In Google's case, they can mandate things like SafetyNet, which directly targets the custom ROM community.
For example they are not provoding security upgrades. Now you can unlock your bootloader and install your own Android Rom built by yourself or fron someone else. However with Safetynet, many applications are not working if you jave unlocked your bootloader. So, you can run the latest version but without lockec bootloader, you cannot use for example some banks. They enforce you to have Google Play Services controlling your phone to have access to your money. So they can pretty easily just sop providing updates and then you sre enforced to buy a new one. The last years Samsung and Pixels are getting more than 5years of support however nowadays our devices are powerful enoughto be used for almost decade.
Apple could do this but they’d be driving away their customer base, the hardware is fine but software is really the reason to get an iphone.