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Wow HN. I really interesting new product comes out, a really interesting turn in the right to repair debate, and a return of a famous brand.

And instead of talking about that, there are a series of threads about how an iphone costing 5 times as much and is famously difficult to repair is a better phone than this. Get a grip! Can we not have a least one conversation without Apple fanbois wading in?



"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Hi dang. I'm sorry it degenerated like this. I generally wanted to read what the hn crowd had to say about about this new device, but all I saw was the usual trolling by an all too loud group. 90% of the comments were (and still are) off topic at best. However I understand that moderation is not my job and rather than calling it out I should have flagged it for you. Since we are in a rare discussion though, I see a growing number of comments from users who are getting very frustrated by the actions of the fanatically pro-Elon and pro-Apple cabal. Since any criticism of them seems to invite a flamewar, I am concerned that debate is getting stiffled. I really hope they are just enthusiasts and not staff guerrilla marketeers, but the effect is the same. We should be discussing this phone and instead we are reading Apple marketing.


The problem is more the upvotes than the comments because it's the upvotes that stick a post like the GP to the top of a thread, which creates all sorts of unintended escalations, as well as derailing the thread into offtopicness. But the only way to prevent this from happening is not to post such comments in the first place.

I think you're off base about "trolling" in this and similar cases. From my perspective HN readers just like different things and have different opinions. I didn't see any trolling or manipulation in the current thread for example. Internet users are orders-of-magnitude too quick to jump to such conclusions.


The positive (and there's plenty of criticism; search and read) point being made about iphone is that it has a longer support duration. This seems highly complementary to repairability -- both seem important to maximize useful life -- and thus an entirely fair point, no?

I'm recently on my 4th Android smartphone in 12 years (Galaxy S, Moto G, Pixel 2, Pixel 7) and would be still on the Pixel 2 if not for lack of updates, as it's still completely fine hardware wise. I guess if I had been an Apple fanboi, I would've had at least 1 fewer phones in that time period. Really made me think this last time. Hoping my eventual 5th smartphone will have very long support and very good repariability.


FYI you can get LineageOS 20 (Android 13) for your Pixel 2 with the latest updates: https://www.xda-developers.com/lineageos-20-google-pixel-2-a...


Last time I used LineageOS while you got the Android updates on most devices the underlying kernel and drivers were stuck at whatever the manufacturer originally shipped, and that included a bunch of security problems on most phones. Android security and updates is still a mess after all these years. For a while Android One seemed to help and I bought all my phones off that list, but even that's now gone. At this point anything that's not a Pixel within the (very short) support window is probably a big risk. Google really screwed this up.


This is all fixed now. Android 11 based ROMs introduced GSI (generic system images) which allow over the air updates and they even work with LineageOS.

Needs a newer underlying linux kernel though, so all the outdated 2.x kernel ports won't be compatible.

But I agree with you in your general point. Android OEM ROMs are a joke when it comes to support and they usually are out of date within the first year due to lack of maintenance on the vendor side.

I wish there was a more generic platform approach to this where drivers could be just packages instead of this whole statically built images mess that is also unusable for most endusers.


I used to be a fan of LineageOS, but after a few devices, I've found that it's not very robust (for different reasons).

There's a bug where location services don't work (and require a fix). Then my latest phone where I've installed reboots randomly one or more times per day. Both bugs are reported, and affect other users.

The camera app of LineageOS 19 was terrible, and wasn't able to handle the two cameras of one phone where I've tried it.

I will use it in order to make my phone last longer, but I don't have high hopes (and I'm not a big fan anymore).


There is this [0]. Gonna fire up Android Studio tomorrow and try to get the release build going.

0: https://github.com/SebaUbuntu/android_packages_apps_Aperture


That's defnitely a big benefit. I used LineageOS (whatever it was called then) to extend the life of my Galaxy S, but at that time not having a working phone for awhile was a lot less disruptive to life and work, so I didn't attempt this time. But once I'm 100% migrated to my new Pixel 7, I'll certainly put an alternative ROM on the Pixel 2 to extend its non-phone life!


>I used LineageOS (whatever it was called then)

It used to be called CyanogenMod and it was easily hacked by the UK authority's.


Whereas the big vendors don't need hacking, the UK authorities just have to ask


By unlocking the bootloader to use Lineage, I lost ability to do contactless payments. And dm-verity is disabled.


Whose "latest updates"?


I think I've had 3 phones in the time my wife has had 1 iPhone 7. Every time I buy a new phone I'm like "but Android is cheaper", but I'm fairly sure the lifetime cost of "phone" is in her favour at this point. I think my next phone will be an iPhone.


I only ever had one smartphone, and that's Samsung Galaxy S7 (bought in the year it hit the market: 2016). I will have to replace it very soon though because my banking app is going to stop supporting the Android version it has, and Samsung doesn't provide upgrades.

But... it's not really Android's fault anymore than this is Samsung's fault. The phone itself is in a good condition. The battery holds the charge for almost as long as it used to when bought. Maybe I'm not a typical user, or have very modest use patterns that allowed this phone to survive this long. Whichever this is, it shows that it's not really a problem of Android (I don't like the system for other reasons).

Before replacing, I'm going to try to install LineageOS on it, and, we'll see, maybe I'll get another couple years out of it.

At the same time span, my wife burned through 4 smartphones. All of them died for reasons unrelated to the operating system they have (i.e. were dropped, stolen etc.) It's possible that being, in general, cheaper and more disposable, Android phones don't live as long as iPhones, but this doesn't mean they shouldn't or cannot live just as long.


>Whichever this is, it shows that it's not really a problem of Android

It kind of is though because Android allows for phone brands to tweak the stock OS and stop updating even if the OS itself is getting updates.

If Android forced all manufacturers to use the stock OS with updates, the phone could still get updates, no?


At least when I still used Android, some SoC manufacturers made unmaintainable hacky patches for one specific kernel tree (and sometimes the manufacturer would then add more customizations to make it even worse) and you'd be stuck on that kernel forever.


My iPjone XS will turn 4 years old in 2 months. I see no reason to change it.

Maybe in 2 more years…

As for hardware repairs should I need them… there are 3rd party shops. Dont care what Apple says about genuine parts or approved parts or whatever.


I have two teenagers. One has an iPhone and he needed a screen replacement already three times. The other is on android and he just had his screen broken and bought a new one, a cheap Samsung phone. Screen replacements are just as expensive on both ecosystems. But sometimes it is nice to be able to get an affordable, fresh phone, and not have to worry as much about loss or theft

Also the top tier Samsungs are more expensive than iPhones nowadays


Don't forget AppleCare+ if you do. Not worrying about broken screens ($200/each replacement without vs $30 service fee, with $100 one time AppleCare fee for 2yrs) and getting replacement phones on the spot for other damage is really a huge anxiety relief and comes with more savings than the initial cost. That what helps turn a "phone a year" into 3yrs.

Does Google offer something equivalent to AppleCare for Pixel phones? I guess there's think like Best Buy extended warranties but I've never had to use one for a phone. I'm curious how it compares.


They do, with uBreakIFix providing fulfillment: https://store.google.com/us/magazine/preferred_care?hl=en-US


Nice looks like it's the exact same service fees for broken sceens and accidental damage. They copied it wholesale to be competitive. Which is a good idea.


AppleCare will hand you a new phone if you break a new, flagship model before they have spare parts. I suspect “UbreakIfix” will not do this.


Re the AppleCare+ point. If you are unlikely to break a screen more frequently than every 2 years on average, it's more economical to just not get the service. This is ignoring other benefits the AppleCare+ may provide.


I used to never break screens, but the newer larger phones crack, at least on the corners.


> The positive (and there's plenty of criticism; search and read) point being made about iphone is that it has a longer support duration

Yup, and the OTA updates with Tesla are also better than you'd get on a car that's 1/10th of the price. Isn't it just a little bit over-entitled to bring up any iPhone in a discussion about budget phones?

Newsflash: the vast majority of the planet can't afford to drop $1000+ on a mobile device.


Newsflash (just looked it up), an iphone se is $429, a used one is cheaper, and factoring in support duration, may be cheaper yet. A friend who would've been among the last people I'd expect to use an iphone blogged this https://announce.asheesh.org/2022/09/i-switched-to-iphone-fo...

I'm really embarrased by this (I've been a borderline Apple hater basically my whole life) but also acknowledge reality.


> a used one is cheaper, and factoring in support duration, may be cheaper yet

Q: For all those hundreds of millions of people who have paid less than $150 for their phone, how many of them even gave a second thought to the support duration when they decided what to purchase?


I'd guess approximately the same number as those who have given a second thought to repairability, i.e., negligible. I'm all for increasing demand for both at the margins, including as part of savvier consumers' financial calculus.


I had an iPhone 4 many years ago, and Apple nerfed it with software updates when the iPhone 6 came out. These updates significantly slowed down the phone, pretty much forcing me to get a new one after only two years. So I bought an Android and never looked back.


Wouldn't that be 4 years? I also had an iPhone 4 ruined by the last iOS updates, but because of the S years it was: 4->4S->5->5S->6, so 4 years before battery life and performance went bad.


Apple actually lost a lawsuit over this, but of course it didn't matter because the capitalist government theatre is controlled by the ruling class protecting their own, so Apple still came out on top.


IIRC due to the degrading/faulty(?) batteries they had to choose between random shutdowns and slowing down the phone. I'm not sure I agree with the way they handled this but I don't think they did that because of "corporate greed".


I wouldn't be so generous. Slowing down the phone without any notification is a major problem. Had they added a notification this was happening, there would be no problems at all.

Of course, adding such a notification would've prompted many users to seek out battery replacements (and a lot of non-Apple-authorized repair shops would've been happy to meet this demand) and give a new life to their devices, where as silently slowing down their device would prompt those users to eventually upgrade once they get tired of it.


Yeah, they didn't tell Apple Geniuses either IIRC so when users came into the store complaining about a slow phone they weren't recommending a $99 battery replacement but a $699 iPhone 7.


The iPhone 4 slowdown came several years before "batterygate".


i remember my initial ipad2. Yeah new ipads came out, updated, and the old one became too slow to use after the updates. I hated apple products for a long time after that. that was 2013


> This seems highly complementary to repairability -- both seem important to maximize useful life -- and thus an entirely fair point, no?

Repairability is more that once you buy it, you actually own it.

Apple does not support this model. Real repairability is when you can hack all components of hardware and software in your domain (which precludes hacking against cell towers, ISP telecom equipment, etc.).


Nor do most Android vendors.


Correct, though that isn't concomitant to the point under discussion.


Does that compete much against a $150-ish phone with 3 years of software support and super cheap, user replacable parts? I think it's making excuses that the iPhone isn't just a giant burning money pit for customers. Why are folks in a completely different market segment comparing the two?


They're comparing them because software support shouldn't be a problem, regardless of market segment. You can run fully up to date linux on 15 year old computers, but in moving to phones, they destroyed what we took for granted. This is a manufactured problem, and it's no coincidence that it lines the pockets of smartphone makers.


Support costs money, and it's part of the price. This moralizing is ridiculous.


This is disingenuous.

If price was the reason, we'd have phones with longer term support at a higher price point. The problem is that support is cheaper than making new stuff, but the companies would rather sell a more expensive good if they can prevent customers from buying the cheaper option.

Support is cheaper for customers because companies providing support have to invest into something customers want, but doesn't create the same competitive advantage in the market where stakes are always rising. I.e. companies are incentivized to replace rather than support because they need to amortize the cost of R&D that goes into making phones with more memory / storage / cameras / hoo-hoo-ga-ga. If instead the effort is diverted into support, that effort doesn't generate future revenues as much as the effort spent on, well, future technologies.

So, the customers don't get good service not because it's impossible or prohibitively expensive, but because of the lack of a free platform (equivalent to Linux on PC), and a lack of regulation that would make it necessary for manufacturers to provide longer term support to their products (which would've leveled the field, because everyone would have to provide similar length of service, and so the competitive edge would stay the same).

As long as the manufacturers are in the rats race for the fraction of the future market, they'll cut every corner possible to get a bigger slice. The cost and the price today aren't as much of a concern for them as the survival in the next few years.


That’s why this discussion matters: Apple devices have much longer lifespans because their economic model is correctly aligned — Apple doesn’t mind if you hold your iPhone for years because your use of things like the App Store, Apple Music, etc. also fund their OS development.

On Android, that’s fractured: Qualcomm wants you buying a new phone every year or two because they only get paid for CPUs and Google doesn’t want to subsidize them with Play purchases.

This is amplified because the architecture prevents people from doing their own support. A PC user can run Linux even if Microsoft gives up because the boot loader isn’t locked to prevent it, although driver support does show there are still problems here for the fraction of hardware without robust open source drivers or documented firmware.

My ideal fix for this would be legislative, requiring mandatory minimum support lifetimes (say 7-10 years for at least prompt security updates) and some threshold for requiring boot loader unlocking. The only Android device I had was a Lenovo tablet which they never updated to the OS version released a month or so _before_ the hardware, and which became unsafe to use on the internet many years before the hardware failed (we used it as a white noise generator for a baby). That’s a ton of e-waste which could have been avoided if they weren’t allowed to just walk away from support because they didn’t sell enough units to care.


That's my point - it doesn't cost money on PC. I don't need "support" from my motherboard vendor to install the latest linux.


Yeah. Part of that is radio support (open source phone projects have had this problem) and packaging - you still need a separate packaged image per phone model. Openmoko had the support problem (iirc) pretty early on.

Until those ecosystem issues are fixed, dumping on a $150 phone for concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have to make us pretty ridiculous.


> Until those ecosystem issues are fixed

Again, that is my point. No company has any incentive, or has made any moves to, fix the ecosystem. They're happy how there are no standards or documented APIs, how everything is a closed binary blob that changes from one insignificant version to the next. They don't demand any kind of support or openness from hardware suppliers, they don't form any standards or demand adherence to them, despite their massive market power (if Samsung wanted open or standards-compliant hardware, they'd get it), because they directly financially benefit from the broken status quo they created.

> concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have to make

You can spend 2x that on an Android phone, and the software situation won't be any better. This is deliberate.


Actually this phone is less then 1/4th the price


And a raspberry Pi costs even less, made by a firm with negligible resources compared to Nokia, yet has far better software support.


That's neither a phone nor the topic of the article. What are you going on about?


> radio support

What do you mean? Wireless cards on PCs are dirt cheap and have fantastic forwards-compatibility with future OS releases. There's no reason mobile network cards should be any different.

> you still need a separate packaged image per phone model

Only if you insist on packaging the image yourself. If you don't lock bootloaders and provide API/ABI documentation on how to interact with your hardware (through a binary blob if necessary), the community will often do the rest.

The Android update dumpster fire is a self-inflicted problem.


Wifi is unlicensed spectrum. FCC and counterparts have restrictions on what cell transceivers can do and that has repurcussians when the limits may not be enforced with a misbehaving driver. Check out the old openmoko lists for details.

We haven't had an IBM PC-level of openness from a phone hardware platform. Not one. Shitting on incremental improvements (like the serviceability of this Nokia) is counterproductive.


Depends how likely either one is to break. I haven’t had case on my latest iPhones for 4 years and never seen break it at all. Also - how waterproof is this Nokia?


> I'm recently on my 4th Android smartphone in 12 years (Galaxy S, Moto G, Pixel 2, Pixel 7) and would be still on the Pixel 2 if not for lack of updates, as it's still completely fine hardware wise. I guess if I had been an Apple fanboi, I would've had at least 1 fewer phones in that time period. Really made me think this last time.

In regards to longterm OS support, iPhones have been getting better and better[1]. 6-7 years is pretty darn good for the last batch to fall out of support (6+, 7, and SE). It'll be interesting to see when the next batch (8 and X) of iPhones falls off the cliff.

---

1. https://www.statista.com/chart/5824/ios-iphone-compatibility...


On the other hand I can still get modern versions of android with all the security updates for some ancient android phones, you just have to do a tiny bit of tinkering with unlocking the bootloader first. That's something you can't do with any iPhone.


To be clear, the Pixel 2 is unsecurable at reasonable performance against Spectre style attacks.

Might not matter to some.


> The point being made about iphone is that it has a longer support duration. This seems highly complementary to repairability

Seems like you might call that “software repairability”


No, I'd just call it software support duration, or more narrowly software security update duration. "Software repairability" basically means FOSS (though I don't want to underestimate what creative people will do without source or permission).


> The positive point being made about iphone is that it has a longer support duration.

How so? Apple iPhones have one year warranties, are notoriously difficult to repair, and Apple charges an arm and a leg to "repair" them (usually by basically forcing you to do a trade-in and buy a new phone). Apple products will also quickly degrade over iOS upgrades.

For example, my iPad Air 2 can barely browse the web with no other apps open.


> How so? Apple iPhones have one year warranties, are notoriously difficult to repair ...

I think your parent was talking about OS support.


How so? Apologies for not being specific, I was referring to support for security updates.


Thats like the recent thread where someone asked for a good Linux laptop, and the top comment was to buy a mac.

I'll never understand this brand loyalism/consumer mentality, and to what lengths Apple folks will go to promote, justify, and defend their purchase decisions.


I'm not going to wade into this flamewar but I will say one thing. Apple is what it says on the tin. It's a curated garden that mostly just works. At a certain point in your life and your career you don't have weekends to spare on side projects and, especially in the tools that you use the most to interact with the Internet (phone, laptop) you want it to work the first time. I've flirted with Linux and for what it is, it's great, but I'm mostly done with hunting down drivers not working. Apple gives me my time back.


I got the Nokia G-100 about a month ago for less than 200 USD and it worked fine out of the box. In fact I would say it worked better out of the box then my partner’s iphone mini. My nokia has a headphone jack, it came with a charger with the correct ports etc. My partner on the other hand had to immediately purchase all the appropriate dongles and chords to fit the proprietary ports.


> [...] hunting down drivers not working

This sounds like a really outdated opinion about Linux.

If you make a little effort selecting decently supported hardware, everything should work out of the box.

I actually use Linux (NixOS) because for my particular usecases, maintenance burden is lower than macOS.


You don't even need Linux to confirm this for yourself. Nix on Mac is a smoother package management experience than any of the Mac-native ones I've tried.


Sure, but NixOS goes one step further than Nix and also manages system packages.

These include the kernel and kernel modules such as drivers, which was the OP's complaint.


Apple works great if you use it to do the 6 things it supports natively and that's it.

If you want to go outside the walled garden of apple, even windows is better. Old software, incompatible software, weird software? Nope. USB->rs232? Good luck finding that kext, but it just works on linux, and the cd in the box has the windows drivers. Some weird vpn setup? Good luck. Need a non standard hotspot setup with wpa enterprise? Good luck.

So yes... if you just need a browser, sure,.... if you need anything more, as many people here do, then macs might not be the best or most flexible choice.


Oh please. Get a grip.

I’ve honestly got no idea what things are like in this space post-ARM-transition. I don’t really care, either. Historically though, there have been enough people claiming that the hardware quality of a MacBook is so good that it’s worth buying one just to run Linux on it, for it to be considered a ‘serious option’.

Are you sure that “promote, justify, and defend their purchase decisions” isn’t just code for “liking something that I don’t like”?

The undertones of this mentality are so gross and elitist.


Apple fanboys calling others elitist. Now I've heard it all.


I don’t get it. Why a Mac cannot be a good Linux laptop?


I think you'd have to be willing to be extremely enthusiastic dealing with all the shortcomings of the experimental support currently. Maybe older MacBooks are somewhat supported, but the ARM (Asahi Linux) is alpha right now, and a lot of stuff simply isn't implemented.

There's also some individual differences, i.e. from what I've heard you won't ever be able to run something like the Xen Hypervisor as Apple didn't fully implement the Arm spec s.t. some opcodes are missing.


They can, but none of the current ones are well supported.


Ah ok thanks. Is it because of the new M1/M2 architecture?


That's one aspect. They implement UEFI, but no support for user loading of certificates. So you have to disable Secure Boot, making it considerably less secure than alternatives. There's no interface or drivers for T2, so again less secure than alternatives with TPM 2.0.


I think Asahi Linux is where the progress is. Looking promising but rough. Lots of reverse engineering.


T2 chips aren't supported too well either.


I've noticed that modern Americans really really really dispise choice on the market. If it differs even a little bit from the average, watered down "majority" choice, it's immediately attacked and disparaged. You need to be part of the ingroup, have the same brands in your hand and on your body. Like the 1984 Apple ad - everyone with gray iphone, gray MacBook and AirPods in their ears.


Please don't post nationalistic flamebait.


Why do I have such a different impression? I go to a supermarket and see 30 different kinds of toothpaste, 50 kinds of chips, and a dozen different kinds of alcoholic seltzer waters in the liquor aisle. The paradox of choice is tiring!


Do you honestly believe that you’re so much better then the average person? That you’ve unlocked some sort of increased intellectual ability that’s granted you access to The Secret? That you’re just…better than the lemmings?

Statistically speaking, you’re probably of about average intelligence and just have delusions of grandeur relative to “modern Americans”, perhaps based on a fundamental misunderstanding about their thoughts, intentions, and motivations. Do you really think that people “really really really despise” choice in the market? Frankly the most impassioned and vitriolic view…the one that I’d say involves “really really despising” something, or someone, is yours.


An easy fix is to have a modicum of self esteem.


No. I have nothing against choice, I just want the best phone, and it's not this. If only there were a thriving set of standards for mobile/desktop web apps that obviates the need to stick to the iPhone/Android OS duopoly cemented by their app stores, I'd probably change phones.


You just want the best phone? Why not a phone that does the things you want and need? Why the best? The best of today is gone tomorrow. The best phone last year is not the best things year. The worst phone this year is better than the best phone 10 years ago. How long are you going to try to keep up the mirage of having the best? Every new phone release must cause massive panic


I mean the best phone for myself. That happens to be a first-gen iPhone SE at the moment, but I'd be ok with whatever iPhone, and I don't care how repairable it is.


I mean, I have to figure out which peanut butter to buy from a shelf of 37 peanut butters. If anything, there's too much choice in a lot of cases. It's tiring.

I've heard way more Android users disparaging iPhones than vice versa. If anything, the fault of iPhone users is not even knowing or caring anything else exists.


It’s the meta rules:

I agree - upvote

I disagree - leave a comment

But to buck the trend - go Nokia, a phone like an x86 is a great thing for hackers and to break monopolies, fingers crossed it finds and connects with a large consumer segment


I just assumed the repair kit is for anything the Nokia is dropped on rather than the phone itself.


It's worth noting that even if this phone is called "Nokia" it doesn't have much to do with original Nokia phones. It's a new company that bought the rights to use the Nokia brand name.


There’s a funny story here, HMD Global just so happens to have very similar execs and employees as the former Nokia, some of whom work in the HQ that just so happens to be right across from the old Nokia HQ. The company is very much a spiritual successor to Nokia.


Yes, but is not only the right to repair. For how long Nokia is willing to manufacture spare parts for this phone? A year, two? What if after 3 year my phone breaks and I can't repair it not because a repair issue per se but because of part availability. This already happened to me with a Nokia 7 Plus, which is a phone I like because it came with Android One. Now on the tech side, the phone is just fine, camera specs, screen is really good, battery is still good. I broke the charging board and the screen. Original parts for it no longer produced, only OEM ones with lower quality. So I would take this with a grain of salt. So will I need to buy the phone and immediately a pack of spare parts just in case because tomorrow they will be no longer available?


To be fair: “..and genuine parts available for five years via..”

..but even so, it’s still a valid concern.


And instead, I join the comments, and the top-rated post is a counter-rant about Apple fanbois that's frankly no more constructive or useful than the content it's complaining about.


Probably there was enough people tired of fanbois. Even half of this thread is full of them.

There's at least weekly Apple worship thread on HN, about laptop speakers, icons they did 20 years ago or other largerly irrelevant thing, that Apple apparently did kinda well. It's always full of people exclaiming that "Apple is so ahead of competition".

Really it's face-palm worthy.


Right to repair, but the software is uttely unmaintainable & actively rotting.

This is cool, but it shows how bad the Android world is. The hardware is only half the picture.

Iphone just happens to be the obvious comparison.


Seriously, what is meant by this?

I'm asking as someone who way back when had a nokia n900, did some android rooting, then when that got unrewarding essentially switched to "whatever is second cheapest at Best Buy at the time" and have had zero major problems doing pretty much all the regular life things (and this includes e.g. Pokemon Go with the kids?)


Few phones even support rooting anymore. Most phones never ever get a new kernel, & most kernels are incredibly difficult vendor-provided messes whose source is basically useless, utterly incompatible with upstream Linux & unable to be applied at all to newer kernel versions. Maybe maybe maybe the new Android plan of creating stable interfaces for drivers improves this but it's to soon to tell.

The n900 was from an actual Linux era. Versus Android which was a sideways port of Danger's mobile OS onto Linux, & unlike Maemo ignoring the entire Linux userland/freedesktop stack.


Fawning over Apple products is inescapable here. Anything with a CPU must be compared to overly magical interpretations of an M1's capabilities.


> one conversation without Apple fanbois wading in?

Aye. Almost like we shouldn't have a conversation about Android without mentioning the spyware and telemetry that both Android and IOS collect being more than enough reason to use Purism and other open alternatives.

#stallman_was_right


Apple fanboys really need to convince themselves that their phones are better, otherwise it's an existential threat for their egos.


Let me guess. This is a view you picked up in - at the latest - the 2000s, and haven’t once reflected on since then. What’s next? A joke about writing a novel at Starbucks?

People that - especially in 2023 - make your argument, are tying technology choices to personality just as much (and quite likely way more) than any current “Apple fanboy”. I’ve got no doubt that your ego is tied up in your technology choices. You’re on Hacker News for crying out loud. Your impression of the “other team” is just particularly…outdated.


Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's tedious, not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


No, it seems we can't. Welcome to 2023!


Nothing brings people on HN together like technology, business, and valiently defending Apple from any form of grounded criticism.


Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's tedious, not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


[flagged]


Or keeping the price up on the second hand market?


> And instead of talking about that, there are a series of threads about how an iphone costing 5 times as much and is famously difficult to repair is a better phone than this. Get a grip! Can we not have a least one conversation without Apple fanbois wading in?

I agree with your sentiment but think we overestimate how much people value right to repair. This is some proof.


> we overestimate how much people value right to repair.

After all this time, perhaps it's more stockholm syndrome?


I've been looking for a browser extension I could use to filter certain things out from my internet feeds. For example making anything related to Apple completely vanish for me. I wonder could the GPT be utilized for this?


User-scripts is what you're looking for, commonly use to customize your browsing experience with small JS scripts. Can be run with for example TamperMonkey. Writing a script that blacks out or filters comments with a mention of Apple would be trivial ("if .comment's innerText contains Apple, $element.remove()" in short)


I made an Ask HN post on this subject a while back. Got 10 upvotes before it got flagged and hidden. :)


I actually stopped reading HN as much as I used to in the past 10+ years because of this. I found out running a small fediverse server and just curating my own feed keeps all the Apple stuff out from my view, and it's also easy to just hide/ban/filter people. It's sad, because I really don't want to jump in into many HN threads anymore...


Why would I care about a DIY repair phone? Am I to assume that all of a sudden I’m a phone repair expert and when I take my phone apart I’ll be able to put it together perfectly and keep the same waterproof levels as a manufacturer would?

This is at best an out of the box marketing gimmick by Nokia to sell some phones.


So just to be clear: you want to discuss a smartphone, in a vacuum, completely ignoring what - barring a few select Android phones - effectively sets the bar for the industry.

It’s not “fanbois”, it’s just reality. HN isn’t the one that needs to get a grip here.


Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's tedious, not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


I'm pointing out that the comment is inviting a flame war, and that it's natural to compare things to the elephant in the room.


The GP was obvious flamebait and I replied to it with a scolding. But your comment was also flamebait. It's important not to reply with more of the same—that's how we get a downward spiral.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...


People could compare the Nokia to comparable phones perhaps? There are other repairable phones available, although I don't recall any this cheap?

In other news my Ford is not as comfortable as your Rolls Royce, and my Sekonda watch is not going to last like your Rolex....


>People could compare the Nokia to comparable phones perhaps?

They could! And in fact, do.

OP, however, is complaining about the existence of the Apple comparison, which is simply unavoidable. I'm just responding that instead of complaining about it, move on to the discussions that float your boat.


>> and my Sekonda watch is not going to last like your Rolex...

No one tell my Timex! This thing's running for life


Since when has Apple ever made an easily repairable budget anything? This is a niche in which Apple is non existent.


Since last year their phones have best ranking https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability

(Yes Fairphone have excellent score too, but they are basically ancient)


Not sure how you read that as the best ranking. Only among flagship phones, which is a market where repairability is largely an afterthought.

Fairphone is a repairable budget phone. You can't compare budget to flagship on performance or modernity of the hardware. That makes no sense.


TBF Fairphone will be far likely to break over the isolated iPhone 13. Add the lack of software support and it’s far more expensive to own.

All that said, bend it whichever way you like and this Nokia’s value is impossible to beat.


Maybe I'm a luddite with my 2017 phone, but what's meaningfully changed in smartphones in the past 5yrs that Apple is setting the bar on? (Besides pushing screens to the bezel, and the cameras multiplying)


Right, when discussing any car, no discussion can possibly be good unless it includes the Tesla model s, regardless of budget or applicability.


The iPhone does not set any bar for budget phones. Irrelevant.


It's not irrelevant. :)

Buying a "budget" phone that has no guarantee of long term parts availability, OS upgrades, etc is certainly worth comparing to Apple's lowest cost devices factored out over the sheer number of years they offer support/service for. I appreciate the aspect of right-to-repair on this device and I'm not saying the device shouldn't exist, but it's the height of absurdity to think it wouldn't get compared to Apple's devices at some point in the conversation.

Hell, even conversations about the Fairphone end up drawing these same comparisons since Apple's recycling program is pretty good.


That's one way of looking at it.

On the other side of the coin, all Apple devices have an expiry date. Many Android phones unlock their bootloader and enable community support after the vendor has thrown in the towel. Nothing similar exists on iOS, and it's a damn shame - it forces Apple to depreciate usable hardware. In a world where reuse and reduction is preferable to recycling, Apple should stop pretending like it's free recycling program is a replacement for serviceable design and open hardware. Until Apple stops being a necessary step of the recycling process, recycling iPhones is no easier than disposing of Asbestos.

People (rightfully) get pissed when others shit on camera-shy companies like Nokia or Dell trying something repair-friendly. You're like the person who's saying that nobody should buy the Raspberry Pi because your 1u rackmount has better performance-per-dollar. You're not wrong, but it's an apples-to-oranges product comparison.




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