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posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 29 2014, @09:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the its-not-just-me-then? dept.

Harvard economics professor Sendhil Mullainathan writes in the New York Times about the interesting correlations between the release dates of new phones and OSes and search queries that indicate frustration with the speed of the phones that people already have. Mullainathan illustrates with graphs and provides plausible explanations for the difference on just how different the curves are over time for the search terms "iPhone slow" and "Samsung Galaxy slow."

It's easy to see with the iPhone graph especially how it could seem to users that Apple has intentionally slowed down older phones to nudge them toward upgrading. While he's careful not to rule out intentional slowing of older phone models which is a possibility after all. Mullainathan cites several factors that mean there's no need to believe in a conspiracy to slow phones, and at least two big reasons like reputation and liability for companies involved like Apple, Google, and other cellphone manufacturers like Samsung not to take part in one. Mullainathan points out various wrinkles in what the data could really indicate, including genuine but innocent slowdowns caused by optimizing for newer hardware. It's an interesting look at the difference between having mere statistics, no matter how rigorously gathered, and knowing quite what it means.

Newer OS versions is likely to optimize for new hardware together with more demanding GUI. In addition larger default buffers and new animations may add to this impact. Another more subtle aspect is accumulating things like the trashcan not really emptying and containing a directory called ".faces" that seems to archive every single picture that the AI software characterize as a face. Or just plain large logfiles. Removing those files has given some (smart) phones back their original speed. The Apple initiative to demand iOS 7 on all iPhone devices in order to take part of the app-store regardless of if the phone is suitable for the demands of iOS 7 is also something in the lines of not bricking devices remotely. But not far from it.

Apps also do their part to slow the phone by "phone home" every 15 minutes and ignoring your preferences and turn on auto updates. One offender on this is The ABC News app. There's no reason for apps to be active when you don't make use of them. Then there's the built-in apps that require rooting and custom ROMs to be terminated.

So in essence it seems to have a long lasting phone with original speed a custom ROM and OS like CyanogenMod, Replicant, Fire OS, etc seems to be a requirement and something to look for when buying the phone. Not to mention security. As the default OS is usually compromised by default perhaps devices like Blackphone is worth considering. To ensure hardware support OpenMoko or GeeksPhone (Firefox OS) might be a good choice.

What do you think - and will it change your next purchase?

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  • (Score: 3) by keplr on Tuesday July 29 2014, @09:58PM

    by keplr (2104) on Tuesday July 29 2014, @09:58PM (#75278) Journal

    It's a computer. That's all you need to know. They accumulate cruft and garbage all over the place because of sloppy programming. Updates just compound the problem. If you never update, never install any new software that doesn't come in the base OS, and reformat every year, then it'll always run exactly as well as it did when you first got it.

    --
    I don't respond to ACs.
    • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:08PM

      by Subsentient (1111) on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:08PM (#75280) Homepage Journal

      "reformat"? What is this you speak of? Do you mean "bricked"? We in smartphone land don't know what a interchangeable operating system is! Now excuse me, I need some itch cream for my Borg implants.

      --
      "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
      • (Score: 2) by cykros on Wednesday July 30 2014, @02:24PM

        by cykros (989) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @02:24PM (#75531)

        I dualboot my nexus 7 just fine...

        • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Thursday July 31 2014, @09:02AM

          by Subsentient (1111) on Thursday July 31 2014, @09:02AM (#75830) Homepage Journal

          Nexus is a Google phone. Try that on anything else that isn't really, really rare and/or really, really expensive.

          --
          "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
          • (Score: 2) by cykros on Friday August 01 2014, @05:03PM

            by cykros (989) on Friday August 01 2014, @05:03PM (#76445)

            I'm not sure if you'd call the HTC One really really expensive (the original model is coming down at this point anyway), but these guys [naldotech.com] seem to have that down no problem. Similar instructions are available for a good number of other devices.

            There are of course the majority of Android devices which are cheap crap with all sorts of restrictions. In my experience if you're buying anything halfway decent, it's not all that hard. Going with a brand like Alcatel, Huawei, etc probably would yield less in the way of options.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by datapharmer on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:33PM

      by datapharmer (2702) on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:33PM (#75289)

      Minus component wear and tear... You can format all you like but I've seen quite a few computers run terribly from worn out capacitors, etc. Sometimes parts just wear out... that's why many of the specs have usage ratings available (usually in thousands of hours).

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:36PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:36PM (#75290) Journal

      The big problem with "smartphones" is that the microcontroller (MCU inside a SoC chip) demands a signed bootloader. The bootloader demands a signed kernel and the same for any program you want it to load. At the same time the kernel and userland comes pre-loaded with vendor provided backdoors and software that steals your attention span, bandwidth and battery capacity. All for the manufacturers convenience, not yours.

      This means you are not really or fully in control of what you have bought. Documentation on the hardware is also scarce and it changes every few months anyway. Consider yourself lucky if you even get a decent display running because the GPU is of course also undocumented.

      This makes "clean install" something really hard. The phone will always be filled with crud and when it physically wears out you are yanked into a new platform where all your previous drivers are irrelevant. Which is why Openmoko and GeeksPhone is so interesting.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:54PM

        by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:54PM (#75297)

        I'd like to ad ... stop rewarding the people with your money. If you can't run *any* available software that you choose, you're only renting your device.

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 30 2014, @12:45AM

          by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @12:45AM (#75327) Journal

          I think this is a really good meme: "If you can't run *any* available software that you choose, you're only renting your device".

          Perhaps.. "Only when the choice of software is entirely up to you, it's your device".

          Smartphones is one affair. But when it comes to cars with radio modem supplied firmware updates where your life is on the (on) line. It becomes quite a different affair.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by aitmanga on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:00PM

    by aitmanga (558) on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:00PM (#75279)

    Google seems to have realized this predicament and seems to be moving their focus into making sure that the newest Android version runs in more modest hardware, but still gets to use every feature from more cutting edge devices.

    --
    Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
    • (Score: 1) by Wootery on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:16PM

      by Wootery (2341) on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:16PM (#75283)

      That's a mighty relevant sig you have there.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by cafebabe on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:37PM

    by cafebabe (894) on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:37PM (#75291) Journal

    There are a few causes for slowdown. Some of it is psychological. People notice their old phone isn't as shiny as a new phone.

    Extra animation in the interface and suchlike is an obvious source of slowdown. If you upgrade an operating system, there's no guarantee that it'll work smoothly on old hardware.

    Compiler optimization was a common problem on MIPS and SPARC. New code could be run on old hardware but with a penalty such as extra pipeline stalls. Or an increased frequency of unimplemented instructions cause more software interrupts. I understand that similar problems occur with ARM and Java.

    However, I think the biggest culprit is fragmentation. Some apps use SQLite or embedded MySQL to store information and memory cards are FAT32 format. To conserve write cycles and energy (supposedly), these structures aren't getting defragmented. So, when you endlessly add people to your address book, the indexes become increasingly unbalanced. And when log files are rotated, the deletion of old logs leave an increasing number of holes in the volume.

    --
    1702845791×2
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by iwoloschin on Wednesday July 30 2014, @01:57AM

      by iwoloschin (3863) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @01:57AM (#75348)

      Fragmentation doesn't really matter on flash...there's not a huge difference between a sequential read and a non-sequential read since you don't have to move the head to a new track or wait for the data to be under the head, and sending a few extra bytes to indicate a different block isn't all that time consuming. Why do you think SSDs are so popular in the enterprise, even though they have a "limited" lifespan? Also, I'm fairly certain that both Android & iOS do not use FAT32 for internal flash, though they may default to FAT32 for removable storage (well, Android at least), though most phones are avoiding removable storage now since it creates a bit of file system chaos for "regular" users.

      • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Wednesday July 30 2014, @07:32PM

        by cafebabe (894) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @07:32PM (#75651) Journal

        Fragmentation doesn't really matter on flash...there's not a huge difference between a sequential read and a non-sequential read since you don't have to move the head to a new track or wait for the data to be under the head, and sending a few extra bytes to indicate a different block isn't all that time consuming.

        Fragmentation interacts badly with read-ahead, regardless of the underlying storage. If we take the case of a MyISAM index walk on an extent-based read-ahead filing system, the ideal case will be sequential reads from contiguous blocks, limited by available buffers and/or progressively loosened caps on the read-ahead. Where index blocks are interleaved or slightly fragmented by inserts, OS level read-ahead will be curtailed but non-contiguous blocks will still be retrieved and cached inside the storage device. This particularly applies to SSDs which have internal block sizes which are significantly larger than harddisks. Regardless, when moderately sequential blocks are cached in OS buffers or storage device buffers, subsequent accesses do not incur the full round-trip time. In this case, read time is amortized. (Write amortization is a different problem.)

        When disk blocks are scattered across a volume, there is less opportunity to amortize reads. Assuming a moderate internal SSD block size of 64KB, reads will be 2-8 times slower once read-ahead kicks in. And this doesn't take into account the extra blocks required for unbalanced indexes or the additional filing system overhead.

        --
        1702845791×2
  • (Score: 1) by b on Wednesday July 30 2014, @12:27AM

    by b (2121) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @12:27AM (#75321)
    The article gives two theoretical reasons why planned obsolescence in iPhones might not maximise profits.

    First, the legal risk. Second, competition and consumer rationality should combine to thwart this strategy. All a competitor needs to do is to offer a smartphone that doesn’t become a brick as quickly, and more people should buy it.

    Firstly, Apple is certainly not scared of going to court. Secondly, arguing that iPhones are popular because they perform better than Android phones is ridiculous. Consumer rationality has nothing to do with purchase of an overpriced underperforming (but trendy) iPhone.

    • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday July 30 2014, @10:21AM

      by isostatic (365) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @10:21AM (#75445) Journal

      Really, every android phone my wife has had has been crap. Every iphone I've had (3gs, 4s, 5s) has been great.

      Handsets are basically free compared with the actual phone bills.

      • (Score: 1) by b on Wednesday July 30 2014, @10:32AM

        by b (2121) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @10:32AM (#75448)

        Really, every android phone my wife has had has been crap. Every iphone I've had (3gs, 4s, 5s) has been great.

        I was being slightly inflammatory, but that's certainly counter to my experience. I suppose much of my opinion is based on UX "power-user" stuff, so this is probably highly subjective.

        Handsets are basically free compared with the actual phone bills.

        I pay A$11 per month for my phone bill (in Australia). No contract, 1.5 GB data, more calls than I'd ever need. In comparison, I paid A$570 for my grey-import Samsung S3 a couple of years ago.

        • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by isostatic on Wednesday July 30 2014, @11:50AM

          by isostatic (365) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @11:50AM (#75470) Journal

          My phone bill regularly tops US$1200 a month. The logistics of keeping 20 sim cards, dealing with various different bills, and not being able to receive calls when I'm abroad make it far easier to simply roam.

          The phone which is something like $600 every 2 years doesn't really factor in to the equation.

          As for power user, all I want from my phone is the ability to make and receive calls, messages and emails, take photos, and play a couple of games. My power usage gets done on my linux t410s (with a real keyboard), which has a built-in sim card. I sometimes use my macbook air too, as the battery and weight is brilliant.

      • (Score: 2) by cykros on Wednesday July 30 2014, @02:47PM

        by cykros (989) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @02:47PM (#75544)

        Comparing iPhones to "Android phones" is like comparing...well, a $700 computer an a $200 computer. The only points of interest in the comparison are where the iPhone outperforms the Galaxy S5 and the HTC One. OR, how perhaps your $300 Android phone does everything you need it to, so you saved ~$350.

        It's telling, however, that these aren't the specific comparisons I've seen made. The amount of people that'll jump to tell you about how the iPhone was WAY better than the last gen Android device they got for $50 from a prepaid plan is a bit amusing.

        • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday July 30 2014, @03:54PM

          by isostatic (365) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @03:54PM (#75570) Journal

          You're right, but to the average person, iphone means quality, android means crapshoot.

          You can't even rely on "Samsung", or even "Samsung Galaxy", as a reliable indicator, as the Samsung Galaxy Ace is rubbish.

          With an iphone you know exactly what you're getting. The larger the number, the newer, and thus faster and less time before obsolescence (which tends to be about 4-5 years for a casual user who doesn't drain the battery twice a day)

          My laptop cost twice as much 4 years ago ($3000 with the 3g, 8GB ram, 160GB SSD) as my macboook air ($1400 I think), and it's worth every penny as a workhorse, but only because I put linux on.

          I get the feeling the an android handset is a "pc", varying range of crap depending on who you buy it from and what model. An iphone is a "mac", it just works, there's no step 3.

          The PC can be made usable by removing windows. Perhaps android phones can be made usable by putting custom roms on them. Life is too short for windows, life is too short for android, just give me linux and an iphone for work, and an air and ipad for play.

          • (Score: 2) by cykros on Thursday July 31 2014, @02:56AM

            by cykros (989) on Thursday July 31 2014, @02:56AM (#75776)

            The android handset to pc analogy I'd say is pretty spot on (though sadly I can't buy build-your-own smartphone kits on newegg...yet).

            My biggest real gripe with iOS is the walled garden being...well, opt out with a vengeance. While jailbreaking isn't the hardest thing in the world, you shouldn't need to void your warranty just to run some code that Apple doesn't approve of in their infinite wisdom. Or hell, your OWN code without jumping through developer hoops.

            That's how some (hell, a LOT of) people like things. And Apple tailoring products to meet their desires is fine. That they hold customers in such a state of contempt that they don't even offer the option to shrug of the advice of Apple is where they can count me out of their customer base. It's the same insanity from the 80s when they went out of their way to use hardware that required proprietary tools to open the Macintosh. If I buy a device, it's mine. I'll take a pass on "but we know better...".

    • (Score: 2) by RaffArundel on Wednesday July 30 2014, @01:14PM

      by RaffArundel (3108) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @01:14PM (#75504) Homepage

      For the sake of discussion - Apple isn't afraid of going to court, but they are afraid of "brand damage" that could result. People have to believe the hype, and if they were in fact caught intentionally slowing down phones the media and their competition would have a field day with the inevitable class-action to follow.

      You say the iPhone underperforms, but I have had some pretty painful experiences with an entry-level android phone we used for the on-call around here. Amusingly enough - it had a slide out keyboard - but it sucked in about every way imaginable. When it comes to phones I go way beyond contract before upgrading, so not sure what the current market looks like, but I seem to remember iPhone being competitively priced with the Nexus/Galaxy phones at the time. Perhaps storage is your need, and if you don't want to carry around/manage/lose SD cards, perhaps the larger iPhone capacity is what gets you to buy it. More likely than not the "performance" in question is "runs [the prefered store, probably iTunes] and all the stuff I bought already" or "when I watch netflix on my [whateva] how often does it stutter and how does it look" which often has more to do with network considerations and screen quality. I seriously doubt the average consumer knows anything about the processors/chips (didn't Apple go 64bit recently?) rather than "look at the pretty screen".

      The premise that you just have to make your phone last longer (not bricked? really, is that in TFA?) than an iPhone is probably wrong unless they completely screw up consumer confidence. Apple's got the marketing, the store (iTunes) and a mostly unified platform. Making the Galaxy 5(whatever is current) last longer as a useable data consumption device isn't going to change any of that.

    • (Score: 1) by jon3k on Wednesday July 30 2014, @01:55PM

      by jon3k (3718) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 30 2014, @01:55PM (#75519)

      That "under performing phone" tops the benchmarks every time it's released and continues to do so for months afterwards. Do you honestly think people buy an iPhone because it's trendy? You don't think it might be the unquestionably fantastic, stutter free performance, the guarantee of immediate software updates for YEARS after you buy your device, the rave reviews from every tech outlet or the massive app store or total lack of malware?

      Personally for me it's the bizarre and annoying latency [appglimpse.com] associated with using Android phones and the fact that the last Android phone I bought got one update then was left to die by the carrier.

      • (Score: 2) by cykros on Wednesday July 30 2014, @03:07PM

        by cykros (989) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @03:07PM (#75549)

        Total lack of malware...someone's been drinking the koolaid.

        That iOS has less malware speaks not to any great security advantages, but to how much of a locked down environment you're being thrust into (but you didn't want that Wikileaks app anyway, right?).

        As for the app store... 1.2 million apps, while the play store is at 1.3...so while that doesn't send Android leaping far and beyond the available offerings, it does mean that you can stop pretending the App store is some draw to iOS now (especially when remembering that the Play store is only one of a good number of places to grab content for Android devices).

        As for the updates...you have a point. While I personally am more than happy to just keep things up to date myself with custom roms, this is an area that Android manufacturers can get a bit sloppy with (sometimes). Shopping around on this basis does tend to avoid the issues, but it is another thing to pay attention to, and I'd rather not be apologizing for sloppy behavior on their part anyway.

    • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by cykros on Wednesday July 30 2014, @02:39PM

      by cykros (989) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @02:39PM (#75540)

      Overpriced? My HTC One M8 goes for more than the latest iPhone. Iirc when I was at the Sprint store, the iPhones were also cheaper at full face value than the Galaxy S5. All within the same ballpark of course...

      I wouldn't call the iPhone overpriced. I'd call it a piece of shit for people who want a computer that doesn't make them know how to use a computer. Something you give to your grandma, or that blonde girl with shoulder pads. $650 for a device that my mother can actually figure out? It's a steal. And if I had to, I'd consider paying that much just to NOT have to use it.

      Apple did a great job making a number of devices for idiots. Just because they're not really all that useful if you don't happen to be an idiot doesn't mean they are bad at their jobs, just that you're not the target audience.

      *I'm not saying Android is harder to use. I'm saying having a device capable of doing more things is inherently problematic to certain groups of people. With the right target market, people will happily pay more for you to take the choice making out of their technology altogether.

  • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Wednesday July 30 2014, @11:08PM

    by meisterister (949) on Wednesday July 30 2014, @11:08PM (#75743) Journal

    Is this even a question? New software/webpages are doing an amazingly good job of running like crap on old hardware. (Has anyone here ever SEEN how much worse flash has gotten over the last few years?*) Combine that with the fact that CPU performance in mobile devices** is growing at '90s rates and you have a perfect storm of degraded performance.

    * Fun fact: I can watch Youtube videos with Flash 10 at 240p (or 360p if I want a lively slideshow) on a 450 MHz Pentium III. Try THAT with Flash 14!

    ** As a bit of an anecdote, I just got a new smartphone after I realized that my phone from 2011 really wasn't cutting it. I basically went from a single core @ 1GHz with 700 or so MB of RAM to a quad core at double the clock rate, close to 3x the RAM, twice the internal storage (including SD card), and other significant improvements in the architecture itself. Let me just say that the rate at which these phones are getting better is just INSANE.

    --
    (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.