Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It is a feature, not a bug.

For those that are not chronically online, a mobile phone from a decade ago has everything they need. If you only have to phone the family, WhatsApp your neighbours, get the map out, use a search engine and do your online banking, then a flagship phone is a bit over the top. If anything, the old phone is preferable since its loss would not be the end of the world.

I have seen a few elderly neighbours rocking Samsung Galaxy S7s with no need to upgrade. Although the S7 isn't quite a decade old, the apps that are actually used (WhatsApp, online banking) will be working with the S7 for many years to come since there is this demographic of active users.

Now, what if we could get these people to upgrade every three years with a feature that the 'elderly neighbour' would want? Eyesight isn't what it used to be in old age, so how about a nice big screen?

You can't deliberately hobble the phone with poor battery life or programme it to go slow in an update because we know that isn't going to win the customer over, but a screen that gets tatty after three years? Sounds good to me.



> the apps that are actually used (WhatsApp, online banking) will be working with the S7 for many years to come

I have several apps that no longer work on my otherwise good phone bought in 2018 because I can no longer update the OS that they require.


Can you give any examples? My apps only stop upgrading, not stop working out of the blue.

Edit: This is a honest question.


Banking apps are a common example that requires you to be on latest, yet my phone is stuck in Android 10 land.

Whatsapp also no longer works on it, thus the phone is useless.

Which is sad, as it has a great camera, battery life and is very light.


That sounds like LG. Amazing camera and audio and I'm never buying one again.


Should be easy given they haven't made them for over 4 years.



Samsung Galaxy A40 checking in.

It's small, has dual sim card sockets, and a headphone jack.

I'm not sure how I'd replace it to be honest.


I'm still want a phone with expandable storage and a headphone jack. Sony had one, but I don't know if they're selling them and I've heard they have their own issues too.


Honest question here - is there a situation where you need to be able to use the headphone jack and USB-C at the same time?

Because there are very cheap, lightweight adaptors to headphone jack from USB-C.


One extra 'thing' to need - at the moment I know that I can play music through anything that has a line-in, with just a cable. However Bluetooth seems to work ok - for devices that support it.


Not OP but my concern is putting strain on the charging port by walking with headphones while my phone is in my pocket.

Wireless chargers are pretty good but it’s still a pain to wear out your port.


There are some 90-degree adapters that would probably minimise that.

I can dual-SIM my iphone by using one e-Sim and one physical. The only thing it is not, is small...


It's the software updates that's the problem. Apple aren't too bad, but their hardware support only seems to last 7 years.

The S7 you mention lasted 4 years, and received the last patch in 2020.

Not convinced that doing online banking on a phone that hasn't had software updates for 5 years is a good idea.


It's definitely a bad idea but people hate being coerced into spending $500+ just to continue doing what they already do.

A lot of us the techies can be strong-armed via FOMO and other tropes but good luck convincing the elderly neighbors.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: