<div dir="ltr">On 3 April 2013 13:01, Sebastian Reinhardt <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:snr@lmv-hartmannsdorf.de" target="_blank">snr@lmv-hartmannsdorf.de</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">If You have to buy an new smart-phone every two years to get new software, I think this is not fair, too. And this is not good for nature......to throw away an working phone.....</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div style>I agree that an artificial withholding of software updates is a ridiculous reason to buy a new phone. Fortunately iPhones and android phones have typically had a few years of software updates available, and with the android mods there's no reason that some older phones can't continue to get new features past the time that Google or the manufacturer want to stop supporting them. But there are other reasons: physical wear and tear, batteries don't work so well after a couple of years, and it's amazing how fast new features continue to be added even though we can start to expect smartphones to be a maturing category of device. Every year there have been more cores, faster clock speed, more memory, more storage, better GPU, better accelerometers, better touch, wacom stylus, better GPS, other types of sensors, NFC, maybe zigbee will come soon? At this point the smartphone is not mature because there's no end in sight. Next we can imagine using an eyetap and some new types of input devices to avoid having to carry the phone in one hand and touch with the other, which ties up both hands and requires you to look down and be out of touch with reality. Every generation of device, there's at least one new feature that you really want. So while I wish technology could have a longer life, it would have to mean a kind of stagnation too, or else such extreme leapfrogging that there is nothing else that you could want for several years while the competitors catch up (like Apple managed to do for a while). A small indie project has a vanishingly small chance of leapfrogging like that. The Neo phones were obsolete almost from the beginning because they didn't support multi-touch and full-screen GPU rendering, just at the time when you would really begin to want both; and on top of that it's bulky, has relatively poor industrial design and the price is too high. But there is room for open source efforts to add features and extend the life of existing devices, I think. New software features are easier to create than new innovative hardware, and revolutionary features are still relatively rare in software. It's just that the same type of person who wants to be a developer is probably also the one who always wants the latest hardware. (Except when that person is too poor to buy it, or when the category is actually mature, as has just about happened to PC's.) The nanotech refinement of 3d printing should eventually make it possible to homebrew custom devices, and upgrade them a piece at a time, but then we will be living in a scarier world with its own set of problems. And it's still a big piece of engineering; remains to be seen if volunteers can ever out-innovate the big guys.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>So I hope fairphone succeeds, but they will need shoulders of giants to stand on in both the hardware and software areas, otherwise it will be too little too late for too high a price again.</div>
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