HMD also doesn’t provide any mechanism for unlocking the bootloader
This is the part that’s inexcusable.
Nothing is built to last. Not in the customer class of products in the capitalist world. Basically, if you can buy it retail, it’s made to sell. Not to last. Planned obsolescence included at no extra cost.
Nothing is built to last? No. One little Company still holds out against this concept.
Btw, their 5th phone has an industrial Snapdragon so they can deliver software updates for a couple years longer.
their phones don’t have specs that work today, letalone 5 years from now.
I like the fairphone idea, I really do, and I realize that maintaining the fairphone ecosystem is expensive… But! 550€ on sale for a 128GB storage and 6GB RAM phone? GTFO. Update promises are great, but a small company promising 7 years? I hope that the fairphone company survives that long, and even longer, but I wouldn’t be basing my phone purchase on that promise.
For my usage I can get comparable phones for the same cost per day, but with less of an initial investment, and without the risk of time.
This is the main reason they got rid of the headphone jack. Some headphones lasted forever.
Now you have Bluetooth earbuds with tiny batteries that goes in a case with another small battery. Batteries that small will last 5 years tops. On top of that sound quality hasn’t improved and latency got worse.
This is true, but for whatever reason people always overlook the fact that you can still use your wired headphones with a USB-C adapter on most modern smartphones (I believe Samsung devices need one with a DAC). And that, depending on the quality of the phone’s DAC, the wired headphones may actually sound better through a USB-C DAC than they do through the headphone jack. You can even charge your phone and listen through wired headphones at the same time using the USB-C port. Wired headphones are only incompatible with modern smartphones if you choose for that to be the case - there are plenty of ways to solve this problem without clinging to an older phone (though there is nothing wrong with that solution either).
Yes that is true but speaking on clinging on to an older phone, a headphone jack had a superior physical hold. My phone got saved a few times because my phone was connected to my wired headphones.
These dongles that came with phones were also usually very thin. It also sticks out and made of plastic. It just adds another weak point. They somehow added a weak point to a great piece of technology… On top of that phones no longer comes with the dongles.
Also dongles aren’t sexy. It looks like a hack to make something work. Phone companies made headphones unsexy while making wireless earbuds really sexy.
Some people said that a headphone jack made dustproofing and waterproofing more difficult. Maybe but it had be done before. They also said it brings down the price of the phone to get rid of them. Weird considering the Google A series and Samsung mid range phones had it but their flagship phones didn’t.
You made a lot of great points. Thank you for those.
I actually have bluetooth earbuds either came bundled, or I was gifted them. They have come a long way. Easier to connect. Better latency and better sound quality compared to the older version of bluetooth.
I like them, I am not a complete hater but I really am annoyed that this stuff will just turn to ewaste while my headphones have lasted me decades.
I’m just an old head yelling at the clouds.
There’s some good point’s here, even the articles author seems to have doubt’s as to the validity of such devices where updates are concerned.
Putting all those aside for a moment, to me the silver lining is the ability to easily swap out a failing battery or charging port, especially if your a ham-fisted user who regularly rams the connection in. I’ve had no end of these fail over the years and more often than not, simply disposed of the device.
The other thing I miss from back in the day was the ability to disconnect the battery when a device gets frozen, it’s not resolving the underling issue but a great way to get things up and running again.
This is not really directly comparable to those older designs (or the Fairphone). It’s more of a middle-ground - you still need to undo multiple screws and use a prying tool to gain access to the battery, so it’s not something you can do anywhere or in a handful of seconds like you could with older models. You don’t get particularly great dust or water proofing for these inconveniences either (reminder that the Galaxy S5, which is over 10 years older than these phones, had an IP67 rating with a back cover and battery that could be removed in seconds with your hands).
The issue isn’t the software has limited support, the issue is the software doesn’t get open sourced when support ends.
