10 Year Smartphone

The iPhone 5s still receives security updates and is now 8 years old. And it&#x27;s not on Apple&#x27;s &quot;vintage and obsolete&quot; list, which means they still have repairs available. So it&#x27;s not quite a &quot;10 Year Smartphone&quot; yet, but it&#x27;s already a &quot;8 Year Smartphone&quot;<p>But I think the call for the Right for Repair is needed. Mandating companies provide (at least security) updates and keep parts availability for 10 years seems like a good thing. I doubt Apple will keep supporting the 5s forever, and even so that&#x27;s currently the oldest smartphone with current security updates. The next closest (outside of iPhones) is Samsung at 4 years and Google at 3 years.<p>Even if the phones will get slower and don&#x27;t get fancy new features, I know plenty of people that are still happily using 5+ year old phones. And manufacturers should definitely be required to provide security updates long past that point.

The main problem with this is it would basically hand the market over to Apple. They&#x27;re the only company with the vertical integration to be capable of supporting all their hardware and software properly for this sort of time span. Hence their ability to already support their devices solidly for twice as long as the longest supported Android devices.<p>All the Android manufacturers, with the exception of Samsung, rely on their parties for hardware components and therefore device driver binaries that would need supporting and patching. And all of them including Samsung rely on Google for OS patches (well, except Google). Third party firmware is why Google struggles to support their devices for more than 3 or 4 years.<p>A lot of manufacturers wouldn&#x27;t even exist after 10 years. Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, all gone in the last 10 years. HTC were big back in 2011 but gave up on phones a few years ago. I&#x27;m sure there are more I&#x27;m forgetting.

In the video he says he has owned 125 smartphones in the last 7 years. Apparently hes going through 17 smartphones a year. Seems ridiculous. I don&#x27;t even think I have surpassed 10 smartphones in my lifetime.

The fake 5 and 1 star reviews on this page are <i>very</i> off-putting, and do not bode well for anyone asking me to trust them for the next decade.<p>And that&#x27;s completely setting aside how unworkable this would be in reality (think about things like hardware support for encryption standards and codecs in use in 2032).<p>Even if the OS gets security patches for 10 years, does anyone think app developers are going to continue improving and supporting their apps on this thing?

The whole concept doesn’t seem thought out at all. First of all, if you want a phone that comes close to this concept, Apple has a pretty good track record. Second, the reason why it doesn’t make sense is because hardware technology changes&#x2F;improves in a decade by a good margin and renders your phone incompatible besides basic functionality.

People seem to be missing the biggest reason why phones can&#x27;t be updated permanently - it&#x27;s because of SoC vendors like Qualcomm.<p>Their SoCs include proprietary drivers in order to run Linux on them, and because of that the kernel can never be updated. This means important features and security fixes can&#x27;t be applied, as you can upgrade to the latest version of Android but the kernel underneath remains ancient.<p>Until SoC vendors are forced to support much longer timeframes, or ideally upstream their drivers, then we&#x27;re never going to get phones which can last 10 years.

I wonder about the software to run such a phone: wouldn&#x27;t it need to be somewhat minimal and not offer feature upgrades -- only security fixes -- over the life of the phone? Otherwise I would think this phone would suffer the same fate as any five year old Android or iPhone: the bloat of new features overwhelms the old phone&#x27;s hardware and you&#x27;re left with a disappointing or frustrating experience. That said, I love the goals of this project and hope it succeeds. And if it can run Graphene OS I&#x27;ll pre-order one now!

Phones from 10 years ago don&#x27;t work any more because wireless companies are dropping 3G. AT&amp;T literally sent me a free phone that just arrived out of the blue. Will this 10 year phone will also include replacing the transmitter, modem, and antenna layout?<p>If the goal is to make parts replaceable to reduce waste, what is the difference between keeping a phone for five years and throwing it away to buy a new one, then keeping that for five years, vs replacing all the parts in &quot;one&quot; phone over a ten year period? Two complete sets of parts are used.<p>My son has a six year old phone. When he lost it, he wanted the same model, which we bought used. It still has the latest software, because it&#x27;s not android.<p>What is the difference between ten people owning ten 10 year phones, and ten people each handing down a phone that one person bought new?

Smartphone for 10 years seems like a bit of a stretch. The technology is evolving exponentially. iPhone is only 13 years old (the phone which popularised smartphones around the world) and I‘m pretty sure in 10 years we would be using something totally different than a smartphone as its replacement. I really don‘t understand why would want to use the same phone for 10 years.<p>Further, this would be a nightmare to developers when it comes to supporting the software for the phone. They would definitely reach a point where introducing new features are arduous due to tight requirement of backward compatibility.

A Fairphone is repairable and, using Lineage, has long term software support.<p>I have a Fairphone 2 as my main phone (released in 2015) and I am running Lineage based on Android 10.

&gt; Each time one of these phones is made, it creates between 40 and 80kgs of CO2 (the same as a 3 hour drive).<p>Is that compelling to anyone? If you asked me to trade my new phone for a 9 year old phone, and in exchange I am allowed to drive for 3 hours, I would keep my current phone. I&#x27;d probably give up driving for a week for a phone that&#x27;s just a year newer.

The best phone of 2011 was probably the iPhone 4S. I didn&#x27;t have this model, but I did use its predecessor the iPhone 4.<p>I remember hanging onto that phone for about 3 years I think, and replacing a battery somewhere along the way, so I thought I&#x27;d remind myself how that process went since it wasn&#x27;t stuck in my memory anymore: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=lI30NPW5Kls" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=lI30NPW5Kls</a><p>Turns out that one could actually open the case with a Phillips screwdriver. 3 screws to pull total. A little bit of glue behind the battery.<p>Obviously things have changed quite a bit, but I could see hanging onto that phone and replacing components as they died. Would I actually want to be using that phone now? Probably not. Should we insist on things being that easy to fix? Almost certainly.

Hardware for smartphones have gotten so good that they can handle all of my core use-cases with ease: texting, web browsing, calling, maps, GPS, photography, etc. I don&#x27;t need the most demanding specs to handle the latest video games and such. The hardware improvements happening every year mean nothing to me. Wow, 20% faster than the previous generation? That&#x27;s great! But it doesn&#x27;t impact me because, again, I already have a great performant experience with current specs. Given this, I see no reason why a cell phone shouldn&#x27;t last ten years as is. Just make battery replacements possible and it should be good to go. Software updates that make the phone sluggish at this point is an excuse for programming laziness as an incentive to continue the churn of giving up your money to the same companies.

I have a nokia candybar phone, bought 60 bucks, I think it&#x27;s nearly 10 years old. It can play videos.<p>Once a device can use sophisticated software, it becomes easy to make it obsolete by changing the software.<p>A 10 year device is not the solution, the solution is very long term software.<p>Developers already know how to write long term software, as opposed to short term software. Ubuntu already has LTS.

A smartphone as reparable and upgradable as a framework laptop would be pretty neat. I’m not sure how possible that’d be though.

Does anyone know why smartphones couldn&#x27;t disrupt the dashcam market?<p>With the wide angle cameras, half a TB of storage, phones should be able to do everything a dashcam can do.

It is amazing how many supposedly technical users from HN believe this is a real product.

I think whoever is behind this website has to make it clearer that this is sarcasm. Most people here missed it (including myself).

&gt;Sorry guys. Because of intense lobbying from Big Tech – and a lack of ambition from politicians – products like the 10 Year Smartphone remain a dream.<p>It smells like bullshit, NO one is lobbying against it...but also not for it.