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Comment by snarg | Hacker News Reader

> If they can be used like that, why couldn't they be used... as phones?

To facilitate planned obsolescence, manufacturers stop providing OS updates after a relatively short time. And then they cease providing security patches after a... still relatively short time.

If you unlock the device and install a custom ROM, which may or may not function adequately for you to begin with, then you're probably also compromising secure boot, which is a problem for the security model of how many people use phones -- and many apps simply refuse to work with this setup (whereas the obsolete OS with no security patches is considered fine, apparently).

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> To facilitate planned obsolescence, manufacturers stop providing OS updates

I don't think it works like that. Manufacturers stop providing OS updates as soon as they can because providing any kind of support has a cost. Planned obsolescence means "they care about making it obsolete" (active). But the reality is that they just "don't care about keeping the product alive" (passive). And the only way to make them provide updates is to force them by law.

> If you unlock the device and install a custom ROM, which may or may not function adequately for you to begin with, then you're probably also compromising secure boot

You can relock the bootloader with the FairPhone. You will still have a message saying it's a custom OS, but I don't think it compromises the secure boot, does it?

> many apps simply refuse to work with this setup

I heard that there are apps that refuse to work with an unlocked bootloader, but I haven't heard of apps refusing to work with a relocked bootloader. Is that a thing?

Manufactures care about support for as long as they think consumers will care. If phones stop working one month after you buy them consumers would revolt. They have decided that 2 years is an acceptable number for customers - long enough that most will be willing to pay to upgrade after that long. If you are one of the "cheap" customers who want to keep your phone longer they want to force you to spend money and most customers seem to be willing to pay then so they are happy.

And that is why we need regulations that force them to make phones that last longer.

Why should someone who is going to throw their phone away in 2 years (or less) anyway be forced to subsidize those who want to keep theirs longer? There is a cost to supporting old hardware and that needs to be paid by someone.

I was assuming that we as a society would rather want to survive this century, but you're right, maybe we don't. We surely act like we really, really don't.

But hypothetically, if we were to want to survive, such regulations would be some of the very easy steps to take (and by far not enough, of course).

And again, I think you're right: it's far more likely that we as a society will just collapse, so maybe it's not even worth wondering what we would do if we didn't want it.

Throwing phones away is not going to cause society to collapse.

Why should someone who is going to throw their phone away in a day (or less) anyway be forced to subsidize those who want to keep theirs longer? There is a cost to supporting old hardware, and that needs to be paid by someone.

Why couldn’t manufacturers proclaiming to espouse longevity, such as Fairphone, release the vendor source code for out-of-support hardware which are supposedly no longer relevant and so doesn’t matter if the competition can see the code? Or is it an issue of signing certificates?

I wonder, but it could be that some of the hardware they use doesn't offer an open source firmware. Qualcomm for instance isn't super open.

IMO we should put in the law that manufacturers have to mainstream their device and provide a way to flash an updated firmware. There is no way they do it without being forced, because it's a pure source of cost for them.

That's how it works: companies optimise in the legal framework we give them. Regulations set that framework.

Contracts with vendors, usually. Vendors who make not much of their profit from Fairphone and would happily cut them off if they wanted terms like that.

There's a reason Pine64's devices (which are made out of parts with available public datasheets as much as possible - they don't do the software side of things) are mostly made with parts from a few generations ago, whose manufacturer doesn't care much any more.

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