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Comment by dont__panic | Hacker News Reader

If you pick and choose your hardware correctly (waiting for reviews and news of major defects to come out), you can do fairly well -- my SO has the 4a, and it works admirably for her. Had a 3a before that and she only upgraded because the screen broke and it would cost more than the phone to replace it.

But I'm inclined to agree. Just look at the 6 and 6 Pro. They rolled out an upgrade, ruined cellular connectivity for a good chunk of users, and then all of the engineers peaced out for the holidays, with no way to downgrade to a usable release for effected users other than wiping their entire phone and starting from scratch. For their flagship phones.

With word that the 6a is ditching the headphone jack and rear fingerprint sensor, and also inching up in size to gargantuan phablet dimensions, it'll be easy to switch away in the future.

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I respectfully disagree. I had a 3a until very recently and was happy with it.

Then it downloaded the update for Android 12 (I think), and got corrupted, and essentially became unstable and unusable - things like bluetooth headsets would crash the device.

This was a phone that was working great, until it wasn't. I wasn't able to find others with the same issue. Their customer service is non-existent. End of the line.

This is what pushed me to get an iPhone recently - at least I can walk into an apple store if the thing crashes completely. I've bought multiple android devices over the years, and its always been underwhelming and disappointing. The only upside has been that its been cheap. Now that I can afford one, I think an iPhone is the only viable choice (for me).

I know there are people who own Google devices and this has never happened with them, but this has been my experience of being a life-long android user.

I'm having exactly the same issues with bluetooth on my Pixel. You are not alone. I can't connect to my car or any wireless device, it just crashes the phone.

This is a fantastic point, thanks for bringing it up. I mentioned in my original post that my S.O. uses a 4a these days -- I'm still using an iPhone from 2016, the SE. Which is still receiving current iOS updates. Things aren't all rosy on the iPhone side of things (some iOS updates, particularly iOS 12, iirc, were full of bugs, and battery estimation has occasionally fallen apart after system updates)... but overall it's nice that I've been able to use the same phone for 6 years now. And it only cost me $400, so... the same as the 3a.

It's very, very nice that you can go into an Apple store for iPhone support. Mailing in your phone to another manufacturer to deal with an issue is a miserable experience, and Google's uBreakifix relationship is not perfect for regular customer service and manufacturer defects.

If there is an Apple store nearby, being able to walk in with a broken phone and walk out a half hour later with a new/replacement phone is more valuable than people realize.

I was an Android user back in the Nexus days, and had something similar happen to my Nexus 7 tablet. It worked fine, updated Android, became unusable. I read they finally addressed it later, but I had already moved on.

> If there is an Apple store nearby, being able to walk in with a broken phone and walk out a half hour later with a new/replacement phone is more valuable than people realize.

And if not, my single experience with Best Buy is that I can get my iPhone replacement the next day.

Like many others in this discussion, I switched to Apple after Google screwed me with one of their phones.

Yeah, they pushed an update that made the device completely unusable. I'm not sure if that was related to the issue with the storage on it also degrading. I still have it and I managed to load a custom rom on it but it's still remarkably slow. It's too bad, too. The device itself was (and still is, IMO) something that I'd love a modern version of without all the issues. I also had a nexus 5 phone which was great (and aesthetically it's still my favorite phone ever)... until it got stuck in a bootloop 2 weeks after warranty... which they helped me out with and sent me another one out of warranty, but that replacement also almost immediately started bootlooping.

After that I just can't trust Google at all with hardware and since then my opinion of Google as a whole has largely soured. The Galaxy S6 I got to replace it worked quite well but after several years went back to the iPhone .

Chiming in to say I had the same bluetooth issue that resulted in the phone telling me that my storage was corrupt shortly after pairing a new device. Managed to resolve it by updating the Google app and all other Google Play Services related apps that I could.

>Now that I can afford one, I think an iPhone is the only viable choice

On a low budget used iPhones are pretty good choice. I've a couple of 2016 SEs bought for ~$100 each. Work well, usual Apple plus points. Easy to get fixed when you break screens, batteries etc. too - go to any phone fixers.

I've still got a pixel 2 and it works swimmingly. Sometimes the 4k video stops recording and sometimes there's a bit of slow down but it hasn't convince me to change devices just yet.

Does it still get security updates, or don’t you do anything sensitive on the phone?

Also rocking a Pixel 2 (XL) 128GB here, even recently swapped the battery and its like new again. Replacing it with an equivalent or better phone would cost a good bit of money.

What security issues should I be concerned about? It's difficult to spend the time going through the CVE database to figure this out, I see a lot of privilege escalation issues but I don't install apps that I don't trust anyway. I still get browser updates. I care less about the bugs and more about the attack vectors.

What does trusted app mean? A priv esc means you're now worried that any other app has a vulnerability. You might trust your default weather app to not be malicious but do you trust it and hundred other standard apps to be secure?

I'd rather have a secure sandbox with untrusted apps then have insecure sandbox with a ton of attack surfaces in trusted apps.

This just in: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/01/andro...

Quote from the article: "The malware spread primarily through Google Play but also through third-party marketplaces, push notifications on compromised websites, sponsored links on Google, and messages delivered by WhatsApp or SMS. At the time, Brata targeted people with accounts from Brazil-based banks."

With browser updates, limited browsing, restricting app downloads, you might be in the clear. But looks like malware makers also use WhatsApp or SMS.

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