Ask HN: How about a modern phone that actually lasts?
You probably remember there was a time when we weren't buying new phones every two years. And when we did, the improvements weren't as trivial as a fourth camera or falsely promised extended battery life, partially because we could actually replace the battery.
It would be so nice if there was an old school Nokia approach, something that lasts a long time and is actually durable because it's not a glass child's flip flop that needs to be covered in after market rubber at all costs.
A modern phone REALLY doesn't need that much, Android seems to be a lot more lenient than iOS with requirements. All these curved, bendable screens do nothing but adorn our 2007 darling rectangle.
Business is business, but I think there's a market for people concerned with all the waste these things produce and a well made one could tap into that, even if it was 30% more.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadThat said, my main phone is a Nokia 105 that I haven't had to replace yet. For 'smart' capability, I own an iPhone 8 that I don't bring out in public. I use it as a mini-tablet and do online banking etc. This is the trade-off I make. It sucks not being able to take a good photo when I'm out and about. As for online banking, I do that at home and always make sure I know my balance prior to going out so I don't need to check it when I'm out.
I miss my old Nokia.
This should be possible via a software setting, but it generally isn't. Instead you can use a dongle.
https://chargie.org/
on ios it's available natively through the "optimized battery charging" option. On android with root you can use https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-root-4-0-battery-char...
It's different than chargie. It's hard to say which is better, I think I'll stick with chargie. But it's optimized battery charging is close enough that if I didn't already own a chargie I wouldn't buy one...
Current daily is a Samsung s20, my battery will last all day for normal usage, though drains quickly with GPS.
Your question seems to start from a wrong premise, maybe ask yourself why you replace phones every two years for (according to you, minor) feature upgrades.
does your phone have a replaceable battery, or have you just not found it to be a deal-breaker?
i upgraded from a 2016 SE to the iphone 13 mini last year, in largest part because it would die after like 2 hours of casual web browsing (even with ads disabled/etc). one major feature of the newer iphones is the clip-on battery packs. not as good as replacing the interior battery, but means i can get expect more than 5 years of life from this one without hacking it too much.
I don't want to be apologetic of practices like glueing in batteries, I'm a fan of right-to-repair. I was just taken aback by the statement that didn't square with my experience (I'm not the only one in my social bubble with a phone older than four years, by far).
other android phones are a bit scary, even if you're running an oss os that gets patches to the userland, are those proprietary drivers and kernel bits all getting patched after the official support ends?
proprietary drivers/blobs: no way in hell
kernel: since the kernel is GPL, you can theoretically patch it yourself but it's a massive undertaking.
I have to admit I miss having a better cam - but I will never pay 1000Usd for a phone.
My iPhone is 4 years old now and works just fine.
I think the reverse is true. The current version, iOS 15, works on the iPhone 6S, a seven-year-old phone.
Even if modern versions of Android did work on such old hardware (and I don't know, maybe it does), Android phones simply don't get those updates because they are deprecated much faster.
So to repeat most of the other comments here, what you're looking for is an iPhone.
I don't even think they're that expensive, the iPhone SE starts at $429 new, and less if you buy a refurbished model, which still comes with a brand new battery.
Alternatively, the FOSS community (e.g. postmarketOS) are working on bringing plain old Linux to smartphones. It's not ready yet, but they're making good progress.
Many phones now support replaceable battiers: PinePhone Pro, Librem 5, Shift6mq.
Instead of being stuck with a phone from 5-6 years ago, you can buy last year's flagman device for half the cost, if you feel like it.
I did not buy a brand new phone for last 14 years. Keeping the same phone for all that time would be rather limiting.
(I have a working Motorola phone from 2007, it runs Linux and has a web browser! It lacks 4G connectivity, GPS, wireless charging, and the camera is so-so by modern standards.)
In my opinion people choose to change their phone more than they have to change their phone.
LineageOS was which actually made it last that long software wise.
I would install LineageOS, but it looks like a pain to install without wiping secure keys or whatever, and I'm worried my banking app (which still works) won't on the new OS.