Techie Ramblings

Category: Tech

  • HMD Pulse – Its not the phone, it’s you.

    I was planning to wait until the end of my phone history mini series I’ve been doing to write about the HMD Pulse (my current smartphone), and perhaps I still will write about it in the series. The reason I’m writing about the phone today is that I’ve been reading a lot of bad things about the HMD Pulse, and a lot of this negative press seems directed at the HMD Pulse “Pro” specifically. I own the most basic HMD Pulse, so technically this device should be worse than the “Pro” model.

    I simply cannot echo or resonate with what other reviewers are coming out with. I’ve read comments that HMD are being greedy with this line of devices from one reviewer, I’ve read that they’re overpriced and that for the money there are better devices you can get, the phone is underpowered, it feels cheap. The list goes on.

    In reality, anyone reviewing the Pulse “+” or the “Pro” has fallen for a couple of very basic marketing tricks and not done their homework properly. The first tried and tested trick is that given a choice of options ranging from cheapest to most expensive most people won’t choose the cheapest, because they’ll perceive it to be the worst. The second is just a naming convention, call something “plus” and you’ll assume it has something worthwhile over the non “plus, call something “pro” and you’ll assume it’s much better.

    Lets start by comparing the 3 devices in the range visually:

    Straight away you’d struggle to tell the difference. Left is the entry level pulse, middle is the “+” and right is the “pro”. When you compare the specs it’s a similar story. Each of these devices has the same Unisoc T606 chipset, the same 4GB RAM, the same 5000mAh battery, the same storage and the same display. The Pulse and Pulse + are the exact same weight, with the Pro weighing 9 grams more at 196 grams. The only difference between these 3 phones are the cameras and in the case of the “Pro” 20w charging versus 10w on the other two.

    The pulse has a 8MP front and 13MP rear camera, the plus has a 8MP front and 50MP rear camera, the pro has a 50MP front and 50MP rear camera. There is one thing that I agree with these other reviewers on. My HMD pulse takes awful photos. I will guarantee though, that the other two more expensive versions take photos just as terrible. Why is that? Physics. You can tell just by looking at the above 3 photos that none of them are using bigger sensors. With these tiny pinhole cameras it really doesn’t matter how many “megapixels” the camera has, the results will be poor. A sensor needs to be physically larger to allow more light to enter, in turn giving you a better photo.

    Lets have a look at the pricing. On HMD’s website the Pulse is currently £99.99, the Pulse + £109.99 and the Pulse Pro £129.99. Buying any of these phones other than the Pulse at this price would be a mistake, and I can see why people would say they’re a waste of money. The “Pro” is around 30% more expensive than the base model and offers no meaningful upgrades for that extra money. I’d even argue that £99.99 is too much for the standard Pulse. I’ve purchased these as work devices for colleagues for £79.99 from HMD as they regularly offer sales, and that price is a lot better. You will struggle to get anything that’s such a complete package for that money. Shop around a little though and you can get one for even less. My personal HMD Pulse cost me just £60 and it was sealed in the box. When you can purchase it for that much there’s literally not another new phone on the market that comes close to what this phone offers.

    So coming back to my title, if you were fooled into buying the HMD Pulse “+” or “Pro” you got a bad deal. If you got the base model for the RRP I’d argue you still got a good deal, try to find another phone on the market for £100 or less that’s running full Android 14 with 2 OS upgrades promised, NFC and isn’t riddled with bloatware. Go on, I’ll wait.

    The HMD Pulse has a charm that’s hard to put a finger on. It’s very comfortable in the hand, it’s 20:9 aspect ratio helps with that being narrow enough to get a good grip on one handed, the 2.5d glass screen with slightly curved edges aids in comfort too. It has a very clean version of Android which is intuitive and free of bloatware. I’ve never managed to kill the battery in one day, which negates any concerns about charging speeds. It’s operating system is very stable, I’ve never had any apps crash or needed to reboot the device which gives a feeling of reliability. It’s an honest device, it has very modest specs and wouldn’t handle heavy gaming but for everything else it performs admirably, never feeling annoyingly slow. It’s cheap and repairable, meaning you don’t have to baby the device, a replacement screen is just £15 and for that money I don’t even need to think about a case or screen protector.

    Yes the cameras are basic but it’s not a big deal to me. If I have nothing else to hand I will use these cameras for photos or videos and in good lighting they’re passable. If anything it’s just given me more reason to use my actual cameras which were just collecting dust. Using them I’m taking better photos again than I would with any smartphone.

    I do wonder if a lot of the hate comes from the fact they had the licensing rights for the Nokia brand. For a long time HMD rode on that reputation, and played on Nostalgia to sell devices. Had they spent that whole time building up their own brand name would they be in a better place? Maybe, who knows.

    If you ask me HMD nailed it with Pulse, and I really do wish them all the best as a company and hope for their success. They’re building budget devices that tick all the boxes that other brands don’t. Samsung, Google and Apple don’t even price devices this low. Motorola omit NFC from their budget range and any of the other brands at this price point load their devices with bloatware to subsidize the cost. On top of that HMD sell genuine parts through iFixit, design their devices to be easy to work on and offer full guides on how to do it. As a community why are we trying to keep a brand like this down rather than bring them into the mainstream? We’re already struggling for choice with 3 brands dominating the market, riding on their reputations to keep us buying rehashes of the same devices year in year out. Surely it’s time for us to start focusing on the smaller brands like HMD and Nothing.

  • Pixel 6a, Pixel 7a and Pixel 8

    I’ve chosen to bunch these 3 Pixel phones together into one post because in general the experience was the same and the reason I didn’t keep them was also the same.

    I owned the Pixel 6a between the iPhone 13 and the Samsung S23 Ultra. The 7a between the S23 Ultra and the Samsung A14 and the Pixel 8 between the Unihertz Jelly Star and the Samsung S24 Ultra.

    Each time I’ve bought into the idea of the Pixel more than the device itself. They are supposed to be a “pure” Android experience, they never really have flagship specs but the software is supposed to make up for that. They are usually cheaper than other devices from big brands. They offer long software support and have readily available spare parts and repair guides.

    All of that on paper sounds like the dream phone, couple that with an easily unlockable bootloader and a wealth of custom ROM availability and this should really be the perfect device for me every single time. But there is one thing that these devices have in common that lets them all down.

    Tensor Chipsets.

    I absolutely detest Samsung’s Exynos chipsets, they are inferior in everyway compared to their Qualcomm and TSMC counterparts. They get hot, have awful modems and drain the battery like nothing else I’ve ever used. Why am I talking about Exynos chipsets when Google use Tensor? As it turns out a Tensor chipset is an Exynos in disguise. It is made in the same foundry, by Samsung and only has a few tweaks made to it to differentiate it from an Exynos chipset. With that it shares all the same downfalls.

    Google Pixels get hot, they have poor reception, they drain their batteries (particularly on mobile data) and have lackluster performance when compared to their counterparts. You will always get the Exynos and Tensor sympathisers, that will try to tell you it’s not a big deal, they’re not that bad and in some case they’re better than the alternatives. I will tell you categorically that this isn’t true. They are awful.

    Every time I’ve fallen for it, only to realise shortly after purchase. Yes the camera is great, yes the devices are really well designed, yes the software experience is great but fundamentally these hardware issues are always there and always causing problems.

    There are rumours circulating on the internet that Google will be moving away from Samsung’s foundry over to TSMC’s for their Pixel 10 series. If this bears any truth this will be the first generation of Pixel devices I could really recommend. Until then unfortunately my advice has to be to steer well clear of any Pixel with a tensor chipset. The last Pixel device that had a Qualcomm chipset was the Pixel 5, which was one generation previous to the nice hardware redesign. You could still purchase that device today and use it without issue, community support takes even the original Pixel (sailfish) up to Android 15 so I doubt that will become an issue any time soon.

  • iPhone 13

    Image credits bestbuy.com

    At this point in 2022 I was firmly stuck down the rabbit hole of privacy, “de-googling” and security. The problem was I was taking it all very seriously without having a threat model. What was I striving to protect and what was it that I needed to keep private? Obsessing over these things without this information defined is destructive and dangerous to wellbeing. Thankfully I’ve figured this out now, and while I’m well aware of what happens to our information when we hand it over to these companies I’m at peace with it, security and convenience are more factors that I value at this point in life.

    Regardless this was the point I was at. GrapheneOS wasn’t for me, for various reasons and I didn’t want to be handing my data over to Google. So I opted for an iPhone 13. I purchased it very lightly used for a big saving over the RRP. iPhone’s always have very nice build quality and this was no exception. One thing I immediately noticed too was that there was so much more 3rd party accessories of a much higher quality available than I was used to. The screen protectors were a perfect fit, the cases were high quality and fit with such precision it was hard to get them off. This is something I’d never appreciated before and I suppose is a natural effect of a smaller device range with such a large user base.

    I did my usual of going all or nothing when I got this phone. I ended up with an M1 Macbook Air, Airpod Pro’s and an Apple watch. In hindsight this was way too big of a change to be making all at once, and there was no real reason for it. I was excited to experience the Apple ecosystem but in the end it was also the reason I got back out.

    After a short period of use I felt like I’d become trapped in it. My custom domain email was routing through iCloud, all my photos were saved to it, my passwords were all synced to their password app making it near impossible to access anything on a non-apple product. For some I imagine this level of compatibility (for example the Airpod’s would just automatically connect to whichever Apple device I was using) would be a joy, but to me it felt like walls were being built around me preventing me from using anything else. I was also having major buyers remorse at the sheer amount of money I’d spent on all of these products (recurring theme?) and the fact that in just a few short years all of these devices would be near worthless.

    As usual I resold all the devices, and actually lost very little money if any at all as the iPhone and Macbook had already been purchased used to hadn’t really depreciated any more. Another benefit of Apple products is their slow depreciation. If you buy a device that’s a month old or even a year old you can own it for a period of time and generally resell it for the same money or a very slightly lower amount. This isn’t really echoed in the Windows/Android device economy where device prices fall off a cliff very quickly.

    As a stop gap device while I decided what I wanted to do I picked up a cheap Nokia G11. This phone won’t get it’s own post because it wasn’t a device I owned for long. It was very basic but fully functional. HMD generally use Unisoc chipsets in their budget devices, which is fine and allows them to price their devices very low but they’re notoriously difficult to unlock the bootloader on. In that current period of paranoia this was unacceptable to me. I did keep the device around as a backup device for a while, but I think it ended up getting broken in a drawer.

  • Samsung M51

    Image credits gizarena.com

    The Samsung M51 was a bit of an unexpected release in the UK. Normally we don’t get access to the M series, it’s usually restricted to India and other eastern regions. For some reason this one was officially sold through Samsung UK and I went for it.

    Following my new love of big batteries at the time this one had the biggest yet and has still been unmatched since: 7000mAh. It was a battery titan, paired with a Snapdragon 730G it had a 2 to 3 day battery life no matter how you used it.

    I was actually very fond of this, a Samsung without an Exynos chipset is already on to being a winner in my books and paired with a massive battery like this it was a recipe for success. With a high resolution AMOLED panel and 6GB RAM as well it was not simply a budget phone with a big battery, it had specs to match. It’s only downside was weight, but that’s unavoidable with a cell that’s physically bigger than almost every other phone. It weighed 213g. For reference, a little iPhone SE 2020 weighs just 148g. This thing was hefty.

    I owned this phone for around a year taking me into 2021, around this time I was getting paranoid about tracking and developing an interest in privacy focused software, all while trying to battle an ever spiralling screen time problem. I discovered GrapheneOS and with that this phone went and I replaced it with a Pixel 3a.

    I won’t write a whole segment about the Pixel 3a because it turned out GrapheneOS wasn’t for me. In my eyes it’s still the highest quality, secure smartphone operating system out there but it comes at a cost of having to make some sacrifices. I’ll probably write another post at some point about different mobile operating systems so I’ll save the full details for then but essentially privacy and ultimate security do come at a cost of convenience.

  • Motorola G8 Power

    Image credits amazon.co.uk

    For the first decade of my driving I was like a kid in a sweet shop, I wanted so many different cars but could only have one at a time. My average ownership was about 6 months before I’d swap it for something else. It took a good few years before I even had to experience the yearly MOT inspection because I never owned a car long enough. I would generally flip between polar opposites of cars. I’d get something huge with a big engine, and then get sick of struggling to find a parking space big enough or the excessive fuel consumption. I’d then get something absolutely tiny with a engine that would be better suited to a motorcycle to resolve the issue, only to hate the lack of power and space. What I’d not learnt yet was that sometimes a compromise in the middle is the best option.

    This phone was a purchase similar to the manner of how I’d buy cars. I’d suffered with powerful phones with tiny batteries and gone completely the opposite way. A underpowered phone with a huge battery.

    This Motorola G8 was a decidedly basic phone with basic specifications apart from one thing, a 5000mAh battery. This was one of the biggest on the market at the time, with the average only being 3000mAh in 2020.

    Being able to use the phone without having to worry about the battery percentage at all was refreshing and I didn’t want to go back. However everything else about it was lacking in comparison to the phones I was coming from with flagship level chipsets. At the time this was a big deal to me so I resold it after a fairly short time.

    I remember it having a strange stutter, which drove me mad. Scrolling would have micro stutters, even watching high resolution videos did it. Which is strange because I’ve used much lower powered devices since this one and never experienced this again. There’s not an awful lot else I remember about this phone, it was in those murky Covid times where we were all sat about extremely bored and days merged into years.

  • iPhone SE 2020

    Image credits ola.com.ph

    As the English saying goes: Out of the frying pan and into the fire, meaning escaping one bad thing to succumb to something worse.

    Another phrase more commonly used by Americans is: There’s no replacement for displacement, meaning the best car is always the one with the larger engine.

    Both of these relate to my experience with this phone. The first due to having issues with a 2800mAh battery and trying to resolve the issue with a phone that has a 1821mAh battery. The second only applies loosely, as if we were comparing phones to cars the battery would probably be the fuel tank, but for the sake of this phrase it’s the engine. With all the optimisations in the world, and the most energy efficient components a bigger batter is always going to perform better than a smaller one.

    Battery life is and always will be a function of a phone that I prefer to be as good as possible. I’ve got rid of multiple phones that didn’t hold what I would determine a satisfactory charge, and purchased phones solely because they advertised massive battery life. This and the previous phone was the point where I realised how much I valued this. In 2020 we were at home a lot, so I was never far from a charger but even so I use a mobile phone so it can be mobile. If I wanted a device that was permanently tethered I’d use a landline and a computer!

    The strange thing about this phone was that technically it was very efficient. Left on standby overnight this phone would only lose 1-2% battery, and through mild usage it lasted very well. The problem was when you started ramping up the CPI usage. This phone had the flagship chipset the Apple A13 Bionic from the iPhone 11. It could decimate it’s tiny battery in around an hour if you were really pushing it. Apple device have always been very good at idling without using much power at all I will give them that.

    At the time of owning this phone I had what I’d call a beater car. It cost me £500 and was a Citroen C4 1.6 Turbo Diesel, the one where the centre of the steering wheel stayed still while the outer rim turned. It ran OK but the radiator fan didn’t work. In the UK this was never really much of a problem, until it was. It was an extremely hot day and I was stuck in traffic as there’d been an accident somewhere down the road. Traffic was moving a car length every minute or so but just enough that I couldn’t switch off the engine. The temperature gauge started rising until it was in the red. Desperate I put all the windows down and turned the heater and fan on full. I was sweating but the coolant temperature came down, I was using my heater core as a makeshift radiator. What I didn’t think of was that my little iPhone SE was on a vent mount in direct fire of the main heater. I only realised when the phone, which was also being used for GPS did a thermal shutdown. I took it off and almost burnt my fingers it was that hot. When it eventually cooled down and powered back up I’d lost 10% battery health! It was quickly resold after that.

  • Google Pixel 4

    Image credits www.gizmochina.com

    This was the beginning of my descent into mobile phone buying madness. This phone was bought on a contract that heavily subsidised the cost of the device (I later found out why, hint; battery life) and worked out cheaper than a SIM only contract. It seemed a no brainer at a time when I was ready to have my own personal handset again.

    Initially I thought the Pixel 4 was great. The pictures this camera produced were the best I’d ever seen from a smartphone, it also had some quirky experimental features under project “Soli” which gave the phone a little front facing radar scanner. this allowed for very secure face unlocking and meant the phone could detect hand movements and gestures in a bubble area around it. In theory this meant you could swipe the air to change track, it knew when your hand was approaching it to pick it up and other things. Ultimately it turned out to be a gimmick and the entire project was scrapped when the Pixel 5 released.

    My one issue with this phone that made it an absolute deal breaker was battery life. This phone had a powerhouse chipset (Snapdragon 855) and a measly 2800mAh battery. In my ownership I never once made it through a full day without needing to charge. On full days away from a power source I could end up without a phone by 2PM. Google promised the battery would be big enough because their software optimisations would make up for it, they didn’t. They then promised it would be fixed in the next software update, it wasn’t. I lost patience with this, resold the device and paid the contract off. It turns out I was right to jump ship, the battery life issues were never resolved and this device went down as one of Google’s failures.

    The 4XL did slightly better, because of it’s bigger size it packed a larger battery which masked the issues the device had. People still hold that version in fairly high regard today.

    I wonder if blunders like this are why we see little to no innovation from manufacturers today? Fear of failure and losing a generation to their rivals. It only takes having a brief look at the notorious Samsung Note 7 to see what can go wrong in extreme cases.

  • Samsung – Forefront of the Paywall

    Spot the difference! These are the last 4 “Ultra” devices from Samsung, I certainly wouldn’t know which one was in your hand.

    Just one short year ago the S24 series was released, and with it came a new promise of 7 years of OS and security updates. Fantastic news! Or so we thought. We are now a month after the release of the S25 series and starting to see the reality of this promise, and realising it might not be the deal we thought it was.

    I’ve talked about planned obsolescence at length already (Read here) and did touch on the Samsung situation. However it is only getting worse as more time passes, I’m assuming this is due to the sales of the S25 series not being as good as Samsung had initially hoped for.

    As it stands (Feb 25) OneUI 7.0 is currently locked behind a paywall. The paywall is that you must buy a S25 series device to access it. Samsung are claiming they haven’t got the operating system ready for their previous devices yet, I call “Bull Faeces” on that one. Surely porting a OS update to a device the in house developers are already familiar with would be quicker than making it for an entirely new device? At this point when OneUI 7.0 (Android 15) finally releases for the previous generations of devices that are still within their update promise, Android 16 will already be out and being pushed out on other manufacturers devices. It will be outdated from the day it releases.

    We are reaching a point where I feel owners of the S23 and S24 series need to pool together and file a class action lawsuit against Samsung. How can it be legal that a key selling point of a device (staying up to date for x years) can be ignored within a year of release?! I would give more leeway if this were happening on year 6 of year 7 of updates, as the device gets older and more different from the current generation of devices, updates would become more difficult, working within hardware limitations etc. But no, this is 1 year from release, the first Android version the S24 series should have is being held back from them.

    This is clearly an underhand tactic to try and push sales of their new devices, but honestly what impression does this leave on the owner of these devices? I certainly wouldn’t spend anymore money on a company that immediately breaks a promise and tried to extract more money from me. Thankfully I already personally boycotted all Samsung products for the release of substandard Exynos chipsets in our market, so this won’t have any effect on me, but I really feel for all the enthusiast owners of the S24 series that have been the victim of a very shady marketing tactic.

    Samsung are also locking even the S24 Ultra out of certain software features the S25 series has, under a premise of the S24 Ultra not having the performance to handle these tasks. NONE of the AI processing is done on these devices, it is all handled on cloud servers (hence Samsung making their AI features a paid service in 6 months time, they have bills to pay!). In theory this means that even the A06, Samsung’s cheapest device, could run all of these AI features just as well as the S25 Ultra if it weren’t for the fact that Samsung don’t allow it. What hope do S24 owners have 5, 6 or even 7 years down the line through their software updates when 1 update in they are already being locked out of features?

    Samsung need to go back to the drawing board, and fast because I am not the only one noticing this. If the only way they can differentiate their yearly releases is by which software features they allow access to then they clearly are not innovating enough. If progress has slowed down that much they either need to put more effort into their new devices or stop the annual release cycle. Selling essentially the same device and locking last years behind an artificial paywall is not a sustainable way of milking more money from their loyal followers. Loyalty only lasts so long.

    Funnily enough I just checked Samsung’s website to make sure my facts were correct and stumbled upon the following banner:

    This is clearly Samsung’s endgame that they are trying to make seem more appealing. You pay an exorbitant monthly to rent a device from Samsung. You will never own your device and you will be a guaranteed, regular and predictable income stream for them. Prices will increase whenever the Shareholders say so, and you’ll be able to do nothing about it other than cough up the extra because otherwise you’d have to purchase a phone you can afford in full!

    People really need to start pushing back against this behaviour from companies. Yes it disgusts me, but can I blame them? Not really, we keep letting them get away with it.

  • iPhone 16e – Reality check needed

    Image credits msn.com

    I had been eagerly awaiting the release of the iPhone SE4. We thought that was happening at the event yesterday. Clearly it did not happen. Regardless of how Apple try to spin this the iPhone 16e is not the successor to the iPhone SE 2022.

    The iPhone SE platform was Apple’s budget line up. The working man’s iPhone, if you will. You got tried and tested hardware, with long software support for a lower price because Apple were using up the parts they had left over from their old devices.

    This new release is something else entirely. When this device was announced the iPhone SE 2022 and iPhone 14 were removed from the Apple store and discontinued. Currently third party retailers are now offering their remaining stock of iPhone 14’s for £50 off at £549 for the 128GB model. The new 16e starts at £599 for the 128GB model. Immediately we can see that this is priced to high to be an SE replacement.

    For contrast we’ll compare the Apple lineup in 2022 to current. On the left 2022 with current on the right (cheapest version of each model) were:

    • iPhone SE 2022: £419
    • iPhone 11: £489
    • iPhone 12 Mini: £579
    • iPhone 12: £679
    • iPhone 13 Mini: £679
    • iPhone 13: £779
    • iPhone 13 Pro: £949
    • iPhone 13 Pro Max: £1049
    • iPhone 16e: £599
    • iPhone 15: £699
    • iPhone 15 Plus: £799
    • iPhone 16: £799
    • iPhone 16 Plus: £899
    • iPhone 16 Pro: £999
    • iPhone 16 Pro Max: £1199

    Straight away you can see there is one device less on the current list. This is because Apple have prematurely removed the iPhone 14 from sale. This was clearly because the iPhone 14 was also £599, and it would’ve highlighted that this new product isn’t great value at all. Secondly you can see that the rest of the devices haven’t increased by the same percentages over the past 3 years as the SE vs the 16e. The 13 vs 16 has increased by £20, the 12 vs the 15 has increased £20. If this is the new SE then why has it increased by £180? Inflation can’t be used as an excuse if it doesn’t apply to the whole range.

    Reinforcing further that I don’t think this is simply a renamed “SE” are the components used. Yes it appears to be a iPhone 14 chassis and screen, which would be in keeping with an SE but the rest is something we haven’t seen before. Apple are using rejected GPU’s on this model, this is a common practice in desktop CPU’s but not common on mobile. In this case the iPhone 16 has a 5 core GPU, in die creation yields vary and when one core is faulty from production it will now be disabled and used in the iPhone 16e as a 4 core GPU. The modem is also brand new, it is the first modem that Apple has developed in house and they are claiming reduced power consumption, but we’re also seeing reports of lacking speeds.

    The usual raft of omissions has been made for the 16e to ensure it’s not too much of an appealing choice. They have removed magsafe (bizarre choice, locking people out of first party accessories), kept a notch, locked the display to 60Hz and only included 1 camera.

    A lot of people have been left confused by this launch. It feels rushed an poorly thought through, even though there was no expectation for its release. It’s been given the full suite of Apple “Intelligence” including visual “intelligence” (15 Pro series isn’t getting this), it’s bizarrely priced and has strange specs. I don’t know who this device is supposed to be targeted towards and the naming convention doesn’t help. What does the “E” stand for? At this point it feels like it’s most appropriate meaning would be “Experimental”.

    At the beginning of the post I stated I’d been eagerly awaiting the SE release. The excitement was not for myself, Apple devices do not fit into my workflow. No, it was for other people. Because of my profession I’m relied on by a lot of people I know to help them choose a new phone when the time comes, generally people who have no interest in technology outside of normal usage. An iPhone SE was always a solid recommendation for someone who was used to iOS, or was used to the form factor of having a home button and touch ID. Some people simply don’t like or want an Android device, and that’s ok, I don’t aim to change anyone’s opinions, my goal is just to help them get a device they’re happy with.

    I won’t be recommending this device to anyone.

    The average person has zero interest in Apple Intelligence. Most people do not want to spend £600 or more on a phone. I also wouldn’t recommend a device that’s essentially a testing platform for an unproven modem.

    When someone asks me now what iOS device I’d recommend, it’ll be the 14 for now. Retailers will still have new stock for a good length of time, it still has many years of update support left and it’s a reliable and proven device.

    Apple have become even more disconnected from their users. Not everyone is an enthusiast, not everyone is willing to spend rafts of money on a phone and yet some people still want an iPhone. Apple are alienating them, forcing them to hold onto their old devices for longer and longer, hoping that an affordable device that meets their needs will be released at some point. I have a sneaking suspicion it won’t.

    It seems the SE line of devices ended yesterday.

  • Planned Obsolescence; an endemic issue in the Tech industry

    Background

    Looking at the majority of the spending habits of consumers and you’ll see that for the most part with quite conservative with our purchases. We keep our domestic appliances until they don’t work any more. We keep our furniture until it no longer serves it’s purpose or is worn out. We keep our cars until they’re no longer reliable (although this trend is changing with leasing becoming more prominent). We keep our tools usually for a lifetime.

    Why then is the tech industry so different? Arguably there are different levels to the frequency of peoples purchases as the term “tech” is broad. For example my TV is 13 years old and so is my Blu-ray player, my over ear headphones are at least 7 years old, my laptop is 6 years old and my desktop was built from used parts. The newest games console I own is a PS4 released 11 years ago. My phone however is less than 6 months old, and the one I replaced it with worked perfectly fine.

    The problem differs from person to person. Some people will constantly buy the latest games consoles. Some people want the latest TV’s. Others want the latest graphics cards. I’m fairly certain everyone will have a sub-category of technology where they replace their items more often than they would anywhere else in their lives. For the majority of people though, the sub-category is smartphones, which is what I’ll focus on for the rest of this article as it seems to be the most extreme example and most people will be able to relate to it.

    The smartphone

    Just 15 years ago smartphones as we know them today were just beginning to hit the market. At that point you didn’t need one and really would only have had one if you were high up in business or were an enthusiast. There was no part of daily life that required anything other than a mobile phone or landline telephone. Since then the market segment has exploded, and infrastructure has raced to keep up. Covid-19 sped this worldwide adoption up even more. Anyone who doesn’t use a smartphone today would be doing it intentionally, and it would almost certainly add friction to their daily life by not having one. From contactless payments, banking, boarding passes, menus even through to healthcare a smartphone is expected. I’d argue that never in history has an invention become so crucial and integral in such a short space of time before. Close 2nd would probably be the car, however these were around in the late 19th century and only reached mass adoption by the mid to late 20th century. In contrast the smartphone (not including standard mobile phones) did this in less than 20 years.

    As the technology developed rapidly the reasons to upgrade a device were tangible. Each time you purchased a new device there would be major upgrades upon the last one. Be that storage, battery life, features, quality of device or connectivity. However the cost of these devices was substantially higher than their feature phone counterparts, and subsequently many people began opting to split the cost of their phone over a 24 month period by signing up for a “contract”. At this point in time 24 months would feel like a very long time to own a single device, and by the end of it you’d be ready for a new device so users ended up in perpetual contracts, renewing every 2 years.

    Fast forward to today and it could safely be said that the technology has matured. Year on year updates still happen (and they likely always will due to the need of these companies to have ever growing profits), but each year the progress is getting less and less. Therefore the organic reasons for users to upgrade their phones is dwindling:

    • Update promises are now up to 7 years, with about 5 years being the average.
    • Displays have been 120Hz OLED panels for years now.
    • Performance upgrades past a certain point aren’t noticeable to anyone but the 1% of users who really push their phones to the limit.
    • The form factor is standardized, phones have hit their maximum limit in size before they become impossible to hold.
    • Battery technology hasn’t made any major leaps in years, 5000MaH is the average capacity of any modern smartphone.
    • Android versions now aren’t really adding any new features. It’s a mature operating system just polishing up.
    • Manufacturers don’t dare to be different. They are all playing it safe doing the bare minimum year on year to justify a new release, rather than adding new functionality and breaking the mould.
    • Camera technology isn’t improving quickly. For example Samsung has been using almost the exact same camera setup in their “Ultra” series for the past 4 releases.

    Tactics to get you to upgrade

    So what can Manufacturers do to keep you buying their products as regularly as you were doing, despite not gaining enough to warrant the purchase? This is where planned obsolescence, or at least the illusion of obsolescence come into play.

    The simplest way of ensuring you don’t use a phone for too long without explicitly stopping it working is to stop supporting it with Operating system and security updates. If a device is not supported with the latest updates the majority of users will get a new one. However consumers and regulators have been fighting for manufacturers to support their devices for longer periods of time in the name of sustainability, so flagships are now “supported” for much longer. What isn’t specified however is the frequency in which they will do this. At the time of writing this article the S25 series from Samsung has been out for around a month running OneUI 7 (Android 15), while the previous generation and any before it are being held back on OneUI 6 (Android 14). There is no excuse for this other than trying to entice users to buy their new devices.

    The second way would be to artificially make a new device look more enticing. Each year a new phone will be released from the big 3 (Apple, Samsung, Google) and all of it’s headline features will be software based. The current buzzword is AI. They will all come with a shiny new AI feature that will be shouted from the rooftops, but unfortunately for a engineered reason the previous generation of their phones won’t be able to have it (Generally this proves itself to be nothing more than talk and the feature trickles down in a later update).

    Thirdly, marketing. Marketing departments in these big companies will consists of thousands of university educated people in hundreds of teams across the world. In every country they operate they will have a team, and that team will localise their marketing effort to have the maximum impact on the targeted demographic. How many times have you decided you don’t really something only to see advertising in one form of another and find yourself justifying the purchase in your head? Just me? I don’t think so. We are just individuals with teams of thousands of people trying to convince us to do something, the odds are against us.

    So what can we do to fight back?

    The answer is a simple one, but not so simple to put into practice: Whatever it is, don’t buy it.

    In reality though this isn’t practical. With the best intention in the world eventually we will all need something new, but there are ways to combat these tactics:

    • Buy used; buying on the second hand market, especially from a private seller takes away a sale from these companies. If you buy new the company will get two sales (one from the person selling theirs, and another from you buying one brand new). If you buy second hand they only get one phone sale. This hurts their sales figures (which is in turn lets them know you don’t support their practices), saves you some money over buying new and helps the environment.
    • Keep using what you have: Unless your phone is beyond repair or is uneconomical to repair and you’re thinking of a new device, chances are you’re a victim of marketing. I would argue that mobile banking would be the most security crucial activity most people perform on their phones. The current requirement for all UK banking apps is a minimum of Android 8. This released in 2017, so even if you phone received its last update 8 years ago it would still be deemed secure enough by banking institutions to access their app and receive their fraud protection. Food for thought.
    • Be conscious in your choice: If being completely current with updates is a primary concern of yours then choose your device wisely. Opt for a device that promises a long update duration, from a brand that actually keeps their promises. The only brands that are currently doing this and sticking to it are Google. Yes other brands are promising it, but quickly falling behind on frequency and sometimes not even keeping their promises. On the other hand you could opt for a device that has a big community of developers around it. Certain devices with unlockable devices and hardware that is easy to create for tend to continue being supported for years after official support ends. Secondly if you’re planning on keeping your device for a long time you need to make sure it’s going to continue working. Go for a brand with a good track record for durability, ideally one that also has spare parts readily available and is easy to work on. Ifixit would be a good place to start when researching repairability.
    • Vote with your wallet/purse: Finally remember that we are the driving force that ultimately chooses what these companies do. Without our money funding them these companies would not exist. We need to make changes to make this more of a symbiotic relationship than a parasitic one. If you see a company using underhand tactics to make you replace a perfectly good device (recent examples; apple locking iPhones less than the 15 pro series out of Apple intelligence, Samsung withholding the Android 15 update from previous devices, Google locking features to their latest devices) simply do not buy it. We should only be upgrading our devices when we need to, and unless the phone is actually a lot better than the previous one and our current device is still working as intended there is absolutely no need to push more money their way.

    Unfortunately the majority of people won’t do any of this and will continue to upgrade their devices every 1-2 years. The devices will continue to increase in price, masked by the false economy of breaking the cost down into smaller monthly payments. We will see the continuation of drip fed incremental improvements rather than actual innovation. Control over our own devices will continue to be stripped from us, with apps refusing to work on rooted device and removal of the ability to unlock the bootloader.

    Read more on planned obsolescence in the tech industry: