this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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I never had to change my phone because of something other than the battery
I could see someone wanting to change their display glass and if that's not feasible due to availability or cost I could see that as a valid reason for a new phone but I agree that the battery is by far the biggest reason to change a phone.
Yeah I have a Note 9 That's not my primary phone by a long shot but I do not want to get rid of it because it's a really unique phone and has a lot of cool features to use as a standalone music player or something.
But the battery is at 75% health. And I just can't decide if it's worth trying to fix it myself which has a pretty high degree of difficulty for someone that's never done it. Or do I spend 60 bucks --when you can find refurbs for well under $200.
Or just a retire the phone completely. But I absolutely prefer the Note 9 to the s23 ultra, outside of the failing battery and the lack of security patches.
I never had to change my phone because of battery issues.
How often do you up date and what for then?
Not OP, but I'd just replace the battery. Why get rid of an otherwise perfectly good phone? I still use my OP6 as a backup phone, replaced it's battery recently and installed a new ROM and it flies. Could be mistaken for a brand new phone, if one didn't know any better.
Not sure how long I had the S4, a few years I guess. Started with android 4.3 and dropped it some time after 6 was current (which I couldn’t get). My Fairphone 2 broke, not that long for that one. The iPhone 6s lasted about 5 years, my 12 is still going strong.
Lack of security updates would be a big one. With Android products that has been my most common reason to switch. With Apple, its usually battery and/or wear & tear.
You've got to be on a very old phone before you stop getting updates pushed through though? I know Apple are actually pretty good at legacy updates, but Android has got to be 5 or 6 years? Although the challenge is probably more to the variety of Anroid options out there in both the OS configurations and the hardware, where iOS is just iOS and the hardware is known.
I feel that when you get to that age then your battery is pretty much cooked anyway unless it's had very light use or the owner has been absolutely meticulous in it's care.
Got a Sony Xperia premium XZ from 2017 with the latest update being from 2019, android version 9
I don't think I've gotten an update on my 2019 era android phone for 3 years? Samsung before that usually stopped after a 1.5 years. Maybe it's better now? I'd like to see a mandate to unlock bootloaders and give us root on our own darn phones, and maybe some standard like we have for PCs where MS and Linux both make generic OSs. I still don't get why Android phones can't just have generic Android updates provided by whatever distro you run.
I don’t know the current state, my Galaxy S4 mini was shipped with android 4.3 and it never even got 5 from Samsung. Custom rims delivered but 6 wasn’t available at all (plus the hardware struggled at that point).
Yeah, it's years. I always keep my phone as long as possible, but I was forced to replace my previous phone because my bank app was going to stop functioning on Android version X and lower. My current phone is now 4 years old and I hope I won't have to replace it any time soon. I hate setting up new devices. :p
Updates are for techminded folks like us, average people hate updates.
I'm sure they dislike oil changes too - but they probably don't like the outcome of never doing either even less.
With Android you can just flash a custom ROM. Phones from the last 5 years even have treble support, meaning you can flash a generic ROM on any phone.
Not if you need to use apps that require Safetynet
It does until it doesn't. Joy to one morning discover I can't pay for my bus ticket, while I'm already on the bus.
Magisk and Safetynet do.
Yes because Google totally can't change Safetynet on their end... which is what happened last time I ran a custom ROM, in November 2021.
You do realize Safetynet is Google's service, running on their servers, right? If they change how it works in the background, it will break on your phone.
No, they don't. And even if they needed to, they can do it without me knowing it. When was the last time Play gave you an update notification, let alone one that contained Play Services?
You can't disable those without breaking GMS. Feel free to try though! And again, there is no guarantee that is what actually breaks Safetynet.
Let's compare this to videogames. You can get banned without an update being pushed to you, because Safetynet is a server side DRM "service"
I've been running rooted Android phones for more than 10 years now and have been using Google pay for about 4 of those years. Never had that happen. That seems very much like something you screwed up.
I've been running rooted Android phones for more than 10 years now and have been using Google pay for about 4 of those years. Never had that happen. That seems very much like something you screwed up.
You are free to think so, but it's hard to screw up something that worked for months and without any configuration changes breaks itself