Phone Redundancy - is it real?

[stevel05]

I've had my current Android phone (Sony Xperia Z) for nearly 2 years, the contract expires next month. Fortunately on O2 I can just keep paying the talk/data tariff after that while the phone is working, which will halve my bill.

The battery life was down to just over a day, and I was considering getting a new one. I can't really remember what it was when it was new. So I decided to spend a bit of time pruning the data connection, so that I don't get notifications from apps that I really don't need all the time.

So turn on Stamina mode and white list mail and fb messenger (that's all I really want continuous notifications for), and lo and behold, after 3 days I have 50% battery left.

Stamina mode is automatically turned off when when the phone is charging, so I'll get all of the other notifications once a week.

I don't use the phone a lot for browsing etc, just now and again (that's why I have a PC and a tablet), but it just shows that older devices can still be useful.

Manufacturer's and developers trying to be in your face with push notifications all the time kill the phones battery.

Now a new phone would be nice, but these days the improvement in two years is pretty negligible. It's running Android 6.01, which is fine for me at the moment. If a new device or OS has a facility I need or want to develop an app for, then I will upgrade. But for the sake of a slightly higher res screen, or bigger memory, I will keep the one I have.

I may be the exception, and if you use your phone as your main device for an app that uses location services, then you'll just have to charge it more often, turn it on when needed, or get one with a bigger capacity battery.

That's my annual rant and probably an unusual stance for a developer. Any one else have an opinion on this?

 

[lemonisdead]

Yep, I do have some opinion about : since I bought my latest personal Android phone with a 10A battery capacity, I have not bought a phone for me (about one year ago). Previously, I did look for the new market entries, was interested in new functionalities, etc. But, I am probably got fed up because, now, I do consider the phone as a phone. Even more : if I was used to take pictures with my phone, I bought some old argentic camera some months ago.
Probably I was fed up with technology. VR was great for some months but the offer was poor and not convincing.
But I get fed up with computers too (OSX I dislike it now, Windows 10 is for my work with B4X and some others, Linux and its community, I can not stand them more)...

And looking what Android 7 has become with its animations, colors... Something new has to be invented

 

[Cableguy]

I was expecting a different kind of "rant"...
I really don't see the phone redundancy in what you wrote.
A five year old phone can be just as productive to me as an S8, as long as I respect it's limitations.

I was expecting something along the lines of the Samsung USA thinking about dropping gsm altogether, as use only WiFi and Bluetooth, due to the free hotspots network they have over there; or even the fact that a keyword and mouse can be plugged in to an S8 cradle and use offimatics on a regular TV or computer screen...

 

[stevel05]

The redundancy I see is that the Battery life is eroded to a degree where it becomes almost unusable. I went to a festival a couple of weeks ago (working), and had to turn my phone off most of the time so that I had some battery left at the end of 4 days. I know I have now solved the problem, for me. But it's just frustrating.

If you have no means of charging it every day, it just isn't up to the job that it's supposed to do.

 

[ac9ts]

Is it because it's a worn battery that doesn't hold a charge as well as before or is it the phone not being efficient on battery use?

 

[andymc]

It's a good idea to replace your phone battery after a few years if you can. But there is also the problem that OS updates require more processing power so older phones seem to die faster and get slower. The phone isn't really getting slower, it's the software that's slower.
I got my wife's old iPhone 4s and I find it un-usable as Apple have crippled it by allowing it to have a new version of iOS that it's just not capable of running well. It's a bad way that they force people to upgrade by crippling they're old devices.

 

[stevel05]

Is it because it's a worn battery that doesn't hold a charge as well as before or is it the phone not being efficient on battery use?

I think it's probably the latter. It's not possible to change the battery on this phone.

 

[rboeck]

I had the z1 compact for three years, and i have changed the battery myself; in youtube you will find many clips about. My problem was, that my phone problem stayed after changing and time and money was lost. The second problem is, that i am not sure, that the original looking batteries are really origninal. I never got the usage time back like it was, when the phone was new. In the last months i have invested much time in my phone, at last i had installed lineageos mostly successfully - only the camera had problems. But last week i got an zte axon 7 and dont want to go back... The screen and sound is really outstanding.

 

[ac9ts]

I think it's probably the latter. It's not possible to change the battery on this phone.

If the battery is 2 years old, it might actually be the former. The chemistry in the battery will degrade and not be able to hold the same charge it once did.

 

[An Schi]

I think the main problem are the contracts and the lazyness of the people.
Most of my friends do have those all-flat-contracts including a new phone every two years for 40-50€/month.
I have a contract for flat data traffic and i pay the rest. There is also no new phone included. My monthly bill ranges from 10 to a maximum of 14€ per month. I'm a very "saving" (greedy is the wrong word, but i think you know what i mean ) guy, and i don't need the new flagship every year. I will even keep my s4 till it dies (see the other thread ). I save a lot of money this way for my family, save some rare ressources needed to build smartphones which other people just throw away and i am sending my sign to samsung and apple that innovations are good but a new 'flagship' every year is a waste of natural ressources.