• hypertown@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    I still can’t understand how I can install modern Windows or Linux on a 20 year old PC but the same can’t be done with 4 year old phone… 8 year is cool but it’s nothing compared to 20 years.

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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      11 days ago

      It is understandable that the answer is “because they can”. But another jarring thing is how common locked bootloaders are. You can make pretty much any random laptop privacy-respecting by installing Linux, but there is a good chance your random given phone cannot have things like Lineage?! Or they can but it is so complicated that might as well not count, like Xiaomi…

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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      12 days ago

      Phones have a hard life compared to a computer, I suspect the number of phones that last four years would be very small, never mind 8.

      Who’s the sad sack that downvoted this? When was the last time you dropped your laptop in the sink?

      • hypertown@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        Do people really treat their phones so badly? I have a Galaxy Note II (Almost 12 year old phone!) that still works. Thanks to community support it has Android 12 installed and it’s currently working as a radio in my garage.
        My uncle is using my old S8 as his daily driver and it works no problem.

        • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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          12 days ago

          They get carried around all day, charged every day, dropped, ports wear out etc. Compared to a computer, they have a hard life, even the most kindly treated ones.

  • SavageCoconut@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    This is great news. It’s unfortunate that the 8 years of updates is limited to qualcomm flagship chip, anyway it’s still a step in the right direction. My phone will be 8 years this year and it survived this long because of custom ROMs that don’t support this device anymore, so i’m all in for this types of policies.

  • Xed@lemm.ee
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    12 days ago

    The good thing about android is you can flash some custom OS on them if they run out of updates easier than iOS

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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      11 days ago

      Yeah, but even them you’d need to be careful in choosing the model, because so many manufacturers make it either impossible or very hard to unlock the bootloader!!

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Fuck Android. I want a vanilla phone that I can install Linux into…fully open source so we can be sure Walmart is not gathering ideas of what to sell me next.

    • waitmarks@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Have you looked at grapheneOS? Its essentially a fork of the android open source project with extra privacy features. So, regular android apps still work for the most part, but you dont have google spyware built in.

      • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        That may be the best option right now, but it’s still a far cry from an upstreamed device

        They aren’t able to support devices longer than Qualcomm and Google maintain the random out-of-tree drivers for a chipset, and even state such in their “legacy support” for harm reduction