On 1/6/2014 2:26 AM, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote:
Sounds a bit harsh. A device cannot possibly become less useful with time than it was when you bought it (barring a HW malfunction). If it did then what it says on the tin it will still do it now, won't it? Without any new software...
Eventually apps stop working. Android is based on the idea that you buy an app from someone, and it automatically updates when new versions come out. Even apps that cost $0.00 (free). So an app developer can be reasonably sure that if he changes the protocol in version 1.3 that by version 1.5 he can drop the old protocol.
Since most apps connect to a server for something, whether it be authentication, information shared or received or both, and so on, they just start to die of old age. The answer is to update them. And there lies the rub.
For example, the big releases of Android were 2 and 4. Android 3, does not seem to exist in the wild as it were. I am sure it did at one time, and there were major changes between Android 2 and 3. So all Android 2 devices, almost all 2 year old cell phones, can no longer buy or update an app.
I laugh every time I see someone selling an Android 2 phone. The price they are asking will get you a similar set of hardware running Android 4 brand new. It also comes with a brand new battery, and since these phones need to be charged daily, a two year old phone has a battery with about 700 charge cycles on it, which means it may need to be replaced or if not now, soon.
No manufacturer is updating their Android 2 phones to Android 4, however most Android 4.1/4.2 phones (Jellybean) are giving their owns the option to update to 4.4 (KitKat).
So yes, the phones become less useful, and eventually no use at all. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson 4X1GM/N3OWJ Jerusalem Israel. _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
