Chinese KitKat

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

geoffrey mendelson <geoffreymendelson at gmail.com> writes:

> So all Android 2 devices, almost all 2 year old cell phones, can no
> longer buy or update an app.

<snip>

> So yes, the phones become less useful, and eventually no use at all.

I discern two patterns:

1. App is absolutely critical for me, way more important than making
   calls or looking up addresses (may be, on tablets). Hence, the device
   is literally useless without it. The app developers want to be as
   famous as Linus Torvalds (just trying to stay on topic here), but
   their way to imitate him is to mess up interfaces or protocols on
   occasion (they heard of kernel ABIs but thought of APIs), thus
   breaking client code and screwing up their user base without a second
   thought. Ergo, the original version of X no longer works and the
   earliest working version is not backported to the original firmware
   since the latter is deemed irrelevant to newer HW "everyone" has
   already blown a paycheck on. Bummer.

2. The device is a bloody phone with benefits. As such it is my primary
   means of communicating with others, and hence is a part of my life
   support infrastructure. I should not need to fiddle with it. I should
   do what I can to avoid fiddling with it. It should just keep working,
   I'd say at least for 5-6 years.

   [Just like any part of critical infrastucture, I might say. Hell,
   it's Linux-IL: people used to brag about uptimes here... ;-)]

In practice, my Galaxy S is way older than 2 years. It suffered through
one unintended upgrade. Something (I don't recall what) caused a serious
problem and the solution was to reflash it, obviously with the firmware
version current at the time. Thus it is on 2.3.3/Gingerbread now, and
were it not for that reason it would still be on 2.1 or 2.2 or whatever
the original version was. It is just as useful now, with everything
working just as it did when I got it. Whenever I have a look at the
newest shiny toy someone shows off I see zero noticeable difference with
mine (not to say there are no differences, but apparently those are
quite irrelevant to me since I don't notice them). I have not seen any
compelling reason to upgrade yet, I want to avoid upgrades as long as I
can, and I probably won't change anything in the next 2-3 years or until
I encounter a HW problem. The phone nags incessantly about app upgrades,
too (so much for claims they don't exist), mostly for stuff I never use.

My pattern is very firmly #2. If yours is #1, fine. I might be curious
about specific examples of functionality for which you absolutely must
have the latest incompatible version to keep a device and not throw it
away as useless. The curiosity is not just a sociological survey but a
source of potential hints whose SW I should avoid in the future.

The original statement didn't qualify anything though, thus I thought it
was too harsh.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org