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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

> I feel force to buy a new one every 3 years because they become obsolete

Nowadays that's plainly not true anymore because chips hardly get faster year-to-year, but also my 2012 phone lasted 5 years before software support started to get mediocre for Android 4.4 (the hardware was still fast enough and the battery you could still replace in 20 seconds). I've only ever bought new phones for software support reasons (scheduled obsolescence) or because the GPS chip broke after they stopped supporting rooting and so I couldn't get it repaired (out of warranty) without forfeiting that.

What phones do you buy that you feel they're unusably slow after only 3 years?!

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Part of why people think they need to still swap phones is because of either battery degradation, or software bloat.

Generally, a battery swap and a factory wipe would bring most people's phones back to an acceptable performance.

my asus zenfone 6 was a really great phone, but all updates stopped after just 2 years. It still has plenty of power, but due to not getting security updates since 2021 i feel i have to upgrade. getting the fairphone soon.

it's really crazy how wasteful we're being with electronics in general. my old work laptop became unusable with windows 10, just extremely sluggish for even simple tasks. putting linux on it, its working great again (in fact writing this comment on it right now.) I wish we could put more focus on performance in the more mainstream products, but at least there's FOSS for people like me. can't wait until i can put an alpine linux on my phone someday.

>it's really crazy how wasteful we're being with electronics in general.

Indeed. from non-replaceable batteries, to weak headphone and charging port connections, to breaking cables, to mobile phone OSes. Most of consumer-oriented hardware manufacture seems to rely on obsolescent-by-design to get consumers to spend on the same type of device, in short cycles.

Probably similar to the big pharma that may appreciate the economic benefits of a chronic diseases.

While chips probably won't get significantly faster, apps memory requirements are still steadily increasing to the point of current flagships are starting to have 24GB or RAM.

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