Logged into my banking app for it to tell my that my version of Android is outdated, leaving me vulnerable to attacks, and that I need to update my system. I see no updates and sure enough, the manufacturer just recently declared my phone EOL.
I could still log in to my banking app after dismissing the warning but how long is that going to last? Am I actually in danger of being hacked while browsing the Internet on my phone?
Do I really need to splurge on a new phone now? There’s nothing wrong with this one. Fuck smartphones, honestly- sure, this shit also happens on PCs with Windows, but you usually get at least a decade of support. I’ve had this phone for less than five years, and at least with computers you could stick your preferred version of Linux on your outdated device to get more life out of it
It’s also really cool how everyone in modern Western society is essentially dependent on one of two Yank megacorps to function, since you need an online bank account to verify your identity for basic shit like healthcare, social security and so on and those require either a Google Store or iPhone app
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well the battery goes bad and has to be thrown out eventually
to combat this problem we’ve made the battery impossible to remove so that you’ll throw out your whole phone with the battery too
I still remember when smartphones had removable batteries
that was only back in 2014, it’s not like it’s been a de
Oh they still do. Just, you know, there’s like a 30% chance of bricking it every time you open it up. : (
Well…if you suck at it. It has gotten way harder over the years and a couple iphones are pretty near impossible without specialized and expensive equipment, though.
I absolutely do suck at it. I’ve killed at least one phone and one tablet over the years trying to do screen replacements. : ( i haven’t killed anything swapping batteries tho.
I got in the game early when things were easy, like 20+ years ago and got better as stuff got harder. Now I’m “the guy” people take their stuff to when it’s busted. Diving right in these days would have a harder learning curve, for sure.
My phone still does. It’s just been like 5 years since the automatic updates on the built in apps completely filled up my tiny built in memory
The Fairphone exists, which is (supposedly) pretty easily repairable. You’re definitely gonna pay a price premium on it tho and the hardware isn’t exactly latest. Might consider it for my next phone.
Eh I got it recommended by a comrade who seemed knowledgable about it, but I kinda regret it. It’s expensive and, even if the parts are replaceable, the phone is slow and underperforming enough that it’ll still just need replaced within 5 years due to software requirements from everything around it.
Literally cheaper and just as little (or less) impact in continuously buying used flagship phones from 4 years ago.
That comrade is a bit of a lib so I should’ve seen it coming. Of course I’m a lib so I didn’t.
Yeah that’s kind of what I was afraid of. Maybe they’ll step up with the hardware on the next revision.
you’re supposed to buy a new phone every year and then eat the old phone just like with flatscreen TVs
flatscreen TVs, an item I buy once a decade off craigslist for a few hundred bucks, singlehandedly hold down core CPI. meanwhile housing costs aren’t even counted lmao
7 years ago, I bought a flagship phone in hopes of keeping it for a decade.
Last year, I had to buy a new phone because the cell towers stopped broadcasting on frequencies my phone supported. It became a neat WiFi-only brick, and useless for my purposes, in 60% of my target lifetime.
In short, the entire industry is configured for a sub-decade obsolescence cadence.
Same. Sucks when the infrastructure even drops out.
Amazed your battery lasted that long. I find that after 2 years your phone won’t last a day any more.
My laptop’s charging port broke yet again. I’ve spent money on this piece of crap. This is the third time I’ve repaired, and I just bought a new battery. I’m so fucking frustrated, I want to throw this from the third floor, but I don’t have any money to buy a new device.
I can’t even imagine how horrible modern laptops are to take apart. Mine is an absolute pain to take apart to clean and it’s so old it barely runs Win10
Do you have under $300? You don’t have to answer this just saying I can find laptops really cheap :<
Unfortunately, all I have is ₹3k. I’m probably going to ask money from my parents to procure parts for the shitty laptop, which woube around ₹7k. And they don’t even sell screws, wtf.
I saw a chromebook for $50 you could root
that’s a very repairable problem and if i’m remembering correctly (there are different s540s) you don’t even need to solder anything, just turn it off, unscrew it, unhook the battery, take out the old charging port and put in the new one.
Doesn’t like like that. Its the 14 and 13 inch models that come with a replaceable plastic hook. Mine is the 15 inch model.
Oh yeah, and if you’re new to soldering, practice first and use a heat sink between the joint and the plastic that little metal hook goes into.
An appropriate heat sink might be as simple as some needle nose pliers with rubber bands around the handles clamped up close to the body of the inlet.
That design of inlet can take some real heat to start wicking and without a heatsink it may melt the plastic around the barrel.
that sucks, but at least it’s through hole. looking at the hardware maintenance manual i’d take the board out before i tried to replace it.
from the picture you posted, make sure you use flux, solder wick and alcohol to clean up the area before you try to solder in the replacement. cleaning up other peoples work is a real pain sometimes.
the screw sizes are listed in that manual, they all seem to be m2 or m3 of various lengths, so you ought to have an easy time finding them. just make sure the screw head profile is the same.
What phone? That just sounds like you’re abusing your port.
Not a phone, but a laptop - Lenovo S540 15IWL. I examined the motherboard today, and realized that the guy I gave to repair did the bare minimum by not buying a new jack, but instead using some lofty solder to complete the connection. I have not done any soldering myself, nor do I have a soldering iron yet, but I’ve purchased the jack port myself from an online store.
I got ya. It’s usually not hard to do. A lot of manufacturers have a plastic housing that’s part of the frame of the case to help reinforce the power port. I’ve seen the power cord break away on these before it messes up the laptop jack. Obviously, not every laptop is so diligent.
After repairing it, if there’s room you can cover the area in hot glue and it will help. Hot glue is nice because while it gives a pretty good bit of reinforcement, it’s still fairly easy to remove if you have to repair things yet again.
There’s no plastic holder to unhook. It has to be soldered.
The hook-like wire thingy you see in the back - it broke off, and the reason for that is becaue that idiot lost screws for my device, so the unstable structure and the heavy charger port made it wiggle away and bend. And every time I sent it for repair, that idiot used a solder instead of replacing it.
Test a screw that goes into the hole he was supposed to use and make sure he didn’t do it because that hole was just stripped out. I’d imagine you may be able to replace that board for pretty cheap, instead of just the port.
You can also buy a little box of various laptop screws for like $10 on amazon.
Yeah. I am currently nursing the last keyboard phone ever made (no I don’t care about the titan or whatever it’s called) and I feel your pain.
use the website instead of the native app
There’s two apps. One that’s the banking app and essentially just the same thing as the website and a separate one that handles log-ins
Phones really are in a bad spot, even ROMs that extend lifespan come at a cost to Security a lot of the time. It’s completely up to a manufacturer how long to give a phone security updates, and the phone could die before that due to irreplaceable batteries. When looking at phones that last long, the only options (that I would consider) are the Fairphone and the Pixel, of which only the latter even supports Graphene OS. I do know that Fairphone tries to extend the lifespan even further than they promise, but the phones are really expensive for what they provide.
I would go for one of the Pixel 8s if you need a new phone, a bit more expensive (edit: than a budget phone) but they are promising 7 years of updates, and you can install Graphene OS on it (Graphene OS works with banking apps as well.)
I break my phone after every phone call.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they paid The Rock to do that in Ballers to try to start a trend.
Logged into my banking app for it to tell my that my version of Android is outdated, leaving me vulnerable to attacks, and that I need to update my system. I see no updates and sure enough, the manufacturer just recently declared my phone EOL.
Even worse is they lock the bootloader so you can’t install a costum OS
Check out LineageOs. The point of the phone os is to allow you to keep using your phone for as long as you want. Bit of a pain to initally setup though
Not sure how nicely banking apps play with FOSS operating systems
Mine works fine but i might just be lucky. The phone is still based in android. I havent had issues with anything other android devices can do
You’ll need to get the latest microG on there, its worth a try. Phones are expensive.
You have to flash in google apps (MindTheGapps) when flashing the OS to run the app but you have to do that to get Google Play and install the app anyways. After that the app doesn’t know the difference.
It varies. In my experience Bank of America works fine, Capital One used to work but doesn’t currently
I have a North America note 20 ultra. I don’t think anyone has really been able to properly get around the locked boot loader for them.
Yeah unfortunately root access is a requirement
Probably a stupid question, but are there any “Linux equivalent” for smartphones?
There are some phones like the LibRem 5 and PinePhone, but they are very uncompetitive in terms of price per specs.
price per spec isn’t the worst aspect of it, though I suppose this is true. (the prices aren’t insane but the specs are very bad because chipmakers have very bad mainline linux compatibility)
What’s worse for the average person is the base functionality is a little bit unstable still, the app library is small and requires a lot of fiddling to make common services work that would “just work” on a typical smartphone, and they don’t exactly even solve OPs problems directly since LTE will eventually go the way of the dodo too, and banking apps don’t support it. Banking websites do, and linux phones generally run up-to-date mainline linux applications not out of date abandoned android versions, so it is workable for some people, but its not nearly as good of an experience relative to an android/ios smartphone as desktop linux is relative to windows
Oh and no unified system of push notifications on linux phones, so you have a tradeoff between battery life (sleeping all the time and only waking on calls and texts), vs actually getting non-SMS messages (need to wake up periodically and let every app individually check for messages). And that’s on top of the battery life already being bad
There are custom operating systems for phones but all of them are supported for specific models and may stop being updated after a while on older phones because development depends on volunteer work. Also you need to know how to unlock bootloader for them and may brick the device if you do something wrong while flashing the rom, so be sure to use a guide the first time. The main two custom roms I know are GrapheneOS(only for Pixel models) and LineageOS.
Edit: This is useless for OP though since bank apps don’t work if they detect you are using a custom ROM.
Only affects stone banking apps. Mine works fine for now in Graphene.
Some companies have tried and it’s not going that well.
I really like the phones Unihertz sells and makes. They are unique little pieces and they even offer replacement parts for all of their phones! The battery is dying? No prob, just pop in a new one.
I also like that they are amazingly priced. Other than that, fuck Google and major phone manufacturers. I hate them and this garbo closed down OS.
seconded! typing this on a jelly star rn, they’re incredible phones
Jelly 2E is my daily driver. Love the fucking thing.
Dont buy a fking xiaomi it fking sucks and the build quality is terrible and its full of random software bugs like the qr code scanner just randomly not workinf
If you want to buy a cheap Chinese phone get a oneplus or a huawei or a oppo instead
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Fuck here I am waiting for my new xiaomi to arrive O: I’ve heard HyperOS is better and some models do support custom ROMs. I’m switching from a oneplus which I’ve loved for five years, the xiaomi seemed like good stats for the price.
Edit: It arrived. It feels like an arranged marriage, it might be my phone for five years or more if it holds up, I’m nervous to open the box. I need the ultimate device for efficient commie shitposting.
Mine’s a Xiaomi and my only complaint is that MIUI sucks and the apps that came with it are awful. When I bought it the screen size, resolution, camera quality, specs, etc easily beat out other phones in the same price class. I quickly took a look at current phones and the screen in my phone is still like double the resolution of other cheap phones four years in
It seems like that was the main drawback to xiaomi phones I read but it sounds like they are at least trying to do something to help recently. I really wanted to stay with oneplus but they just seemed too pricey for me for comparable stats.
Edit: it also has a headphone jack though which I am beyond stoked about, don’t give up your 3.5mm input, people, I have long missed it.
It is good stats for the price but I am ticked about two things:
-Battery life starts out good but goes to shit fast
-MIUI sucks and it is a specific pain in the ass to unlock bootloader. My other phone was much older but I only needed to pass the unlock command from ADB, this wants me to use an app that only works on Windows and then wait a week.
YMMV because my phone is the cheapest model possible.
Battery life starts out good but goes to shit fast
Yeah, I’m charging this lithium bomb at 120 watts
Any of the non-mediatek processors should be relatively easy to install a custom rom on
I’ve been pretty partial to Xiaomi phones since their first release but it’s getting to that point in the market where low-mid spec phones do everything I need them to and the Chinese market and the performance of my domestic currency are at a point where it’s not really worth my next phone being a Xiaomi.
For whatever it’s worth, changing the OS on a Xiaomi is a headfuck by design. Also note that if you are avoiding Xiaomi that means you should also avoid Poco, which is part of the Xiaomi brand umbrella.
I’ve had a Oneplus N30 for about a month and I’m mostly happy with it. I’m annoyed at the lack of a notification LED, and I had to do the ADB “pm uninstall” thing on a a few built-in apps to get rid of that idiotic “sign in to red dot club” or whatever the fuck it’s called that clogged the top of the settings app, but aside from that I’m happy.
My last xiaomi was fine (lots of bloatware, obviously) right up until the battery started to swell. Luckily it was removable, so I ordered a spare and wouldn’t you know it the “brand new” spare battery started swelling within a week. Very annoying because otherwise I quite liked the phone.
I need a new phone at some point in the next couple years but idfk what to get. I have a galaxy s7 edge and I don’t want to spend money on something that feels worse in some way
Yeah, I end up replacing my phone every 4-5 years. I always buy the 2 year old flagship phone they are starting to liquidate for deep discounts outright. It’s always good enough. But that’s about how long it takes to either have the battery starting to show it’s age or the charging ports to be fucked or something else to be going bad. What sucks is having to take a phone like that within 2 years to a repair place to fix the port and replace the battery, which I’ve done for 2 phones. After a certain amount of time it gets harder to get parts for old phones.
I just wish phones were more like desktop PCs in that regard
