Its also about not using slave labor for the manufacture of your next phone, and about having an open unlocked bootloader with multiple OS options when standard support is no longer possible.
If its entirely about sustainability, we would keep the same phone we already have until it dies. Fairphone is good at this, probably the best in the Android market, although the iPhone is better because they support their phones a little bit longer if you include security backports.
Regarding the LCD; there are real problems with people having eyestrain from using OLED phones; it’s why /r/pwm_sensitive exists. So for a lot of people, myself included, Fairphone 4 hit all the right spots except the camera could use improvement.
I paid something like $700 for my phone. If I keep it for two years from purchase, that’s less than a dollar a day for my pocket tricorder and it doesn’t cause eyestrain for me.
Less with Flatpak. It is, IMHO, the wrong solution to a real problem; I install n flatpaks and suddenly I have n+1 openssl, libpng, etc. library versions to worry about, and unknown capabilities and policies for responding to security issues in each of them. Give me Debian unattended-upgrades any day!
Seriously, Flatpak is nice as a “backup repository” for when your actual repo lacks a certain package, but it is a workaround rather than a true solution. It’s the problem of “we have too many standards so let’s create another standard”. It just adds extra copies of dependencies on top of your system’s packages. The thing that I loved about Linux’s package management most when I first switched is just how damn efficient it all was. One package manager updates the ENTIRE system and dependencies all get properly shared. Why are we all clamoring to go backwards?
OnePlus was wonderful, it was just the kind of support (helpfully and covertly making apps slow down to increase battery life) that I needed to switch to Apple iPhone.
I switched to iPhone because the OnePlus brand-enhancements was the “last straw” of my experience with devices in the Android ecosystem. Other problems:
Updates. Major operating system updates maybe only lasted about a year. With OnePlus I think they even tell you that you’ll get two major updates and after that, the “device” is practically “end of life” if you wanted to avoid security issues.
UX jank. Even if you had infinite major Android updates, Android itself was perpetually moving goal posts with how applications “looked.” This was most prominent when you tried to assist someone with a different (older or newer) version of Android. “Where things were supposed to be” for settings etc was always different between versions. If you asked them which application they were using for a function, you invariably got a “blank stare” because they did not in fact know because they were using the default…
Shovelware. Every phone came with uninstallable applications which were nearly always crap, but somehow essential and were configured to be the default for messages, calling, contacts, etc.
I’m not going to say that iPhone does not also have these kinds of issues, but combinatorially iPhone has less of them because you are not multiplying configurations with different screen resolutions, microprocessors, Android versions, manufacturers, carriers and promotional rate plans. I won’t buy locked devices, because for me, it is better to consider the mobile phone as a tool you buy, and not a flavor-of-the-season vessel for a carrier’s service plan. The prices of unlocked devices are closer to the true value of the device.
Oneplus is dead for me since der Switched their underlying OS to ColorOS. On month after the update my device bootloped and the only option was to wipe all the data. I don’t rooted the device everything was stock. Second thing is I got only 2 mayor Android updates on my Oneplus Nord.
Exciting times.
And hopefully Cosmic
Absolutely. Thanks for mentioning; I thought about editing the post to add it, but then didn’t.
I’m hoping for the new fairphone, I think its gonna be my next phone after my oneplus 9 kicks the bucket.
You’re gonna downgrade to an LCD screen and snapdragon 750g and still pay more than $500?
You must really love the planet.
You joke but yeah, I really do
Its also about not using slave labor for the manufacture of your next phone, and about having an open unlocked bootloader with multiple OS options when standard support is no longer possible.
If its entirely about sustainability, we would keep the same phone we already have until it dies. Fairphone is good at this, probably the best in the Android market, although the iPhone is better because they support their phones a little bit longer if you include security backports.
Regarding the LCD; there are real problems with people having eyestrain from using OLED phones; it’s why /r/pwm_sensitive exists. So for a lot of people, myself included, Fairphone 4 hit all the right spots except the camera could use improvement.
I paid something like $700 for my phone. If I keep it for two years from purchase, that’s less than a dollar a day for my pocket tricorder and it doesn’t cause eyestrain for me.
Really there with you on Debian bookworm!
Less with Flatpak. It is, IMHO, the wrong solution to a real problem; I install n flatpaks and suddenly I have n+1 openssl, libpng, etc. library versions to worry about, and unknown capabilities and policies for responding to security issues in each of them. Give me Debian unattended-upgrades any day!
Seriously, Flatpak is nice as a “backup repository” for when your actual repo lacks a certain package, but it is a workaround rather than a true solution. It’s the problem of “we have too many standards so let’s create another standard”. It just adds extra copies of dependencies on top of your system’s packages. The thing that I loved about Linux’s package management most when I first switched is just how damn efficient it all was. One package manager updates the ENTIRE system and dependencies all get properly shared. Why are we all clamoring to go backwards?
Has OnePlus improved? I have the 7 Pro but their newer phones and customer support got terrible.
They have gone backwards in my opinion, I’d rather hold out and see what the Nothing Phone(2) will be like. (Using a OP6T)
Have been waiting for a new device from Nothing for quite a while c:
OnePlus was wonderful, it was just the kind of support (helpfully and covertly making apps slow down to increase battery life) that I needed to switch to Apple iPhone.
Wait, did you mean you switched from iPhone because they do that, or did OnePlus start doing it too?
I switched to iPhone because the OnePlus brand-enhancements was the “last straw” of my experience with devices in the Android ecosystem. Other problems:
I’m not going to say that iPhone does not also have these kinds of issues, but combinatorially iPhone has less of them because you are not multiplying configurations with different screen resolutions, microprocessors, Android versions, manufacturers, carriers and promotional rate plans. I won’t buy locked devices, because for me, it is better to consider the mobile phone as a tool you buy, and not a flavor-of-the-season vessel for a carrier’s service plan. The prices of unlocked devices are closer to the true value of the device.
Oneplus is dead for me since der Switched their underlying OS to ColorOS. On month after the update my device bootloped and the only option was to wipe all the data. I don’t rooted the device everything was stock. Second thing is I got only 2 mayor Android updates on my Oneplus Nord.