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How long have you had your current mobile phone?
| 6% | 14 votes |
| 9% | 21 votes |
| 14% | 32 votes |
| 29% | 67 votes |
| 15% | 35 votes |
| 5% | 12 votes |
| 0% | 1 votes |
| 19% | 45 votes |
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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How long have you had your current mobile phone?
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(1)
(1)
You will be married within a year.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KritonK on Monday May 26, @05:50AM
I have a Nokia 3310 (2017 edition) [wikipedia.org], which I bought in December 2017. Apart from a few minor scratches on its screen, it's just as good as it was when I bought it. When/if it breaks, I'll probably replace it with whatever retro Nokia model is available at that time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 27, @05:41AM (1 child)
A former colleague of mine works for a wireless provider. They are keeping their 2G service running way past their original deadline because of a couple of important users refuse to switch to something newer. One of those is a very high level individual at that company that uses a bar phone from the 90s as their personal phone. They can't convince him to change it and the fact he abhors the fancy iPhone that has to use for work doesn't help. My colleague told me they are now doing a graduated phaseout. However, they are specifically avoiding parts where said individual frequents until his projected retirement date.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 01, @07:37AM
2G has higher peak radiation than 4G[1]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935121001961 [sciencedirect.com]
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBMWgiQujPw [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by number11 on Tuesday May 27, @05:53AM (1 child)
Bought phone used off eBay to: 1) get a phone whose USB-C connector wasn't dying (those connectors are not designed for daily use), and 2) get something that Google hadn't stopped issuing updates for. I rarely use it for anything except voice & very occasionally (every few weeks) texts. I miss flip phones that would easily fit in my pocket.
(Score: 4, Funny) by HeadlineEditor on Tuesday May 27, @12:21PM
This right here. I miss my old RAZR. When I was young and skinny enough to wear skinny jeans, these didn't disrupt my sleek profile quite so much. :)
Now I'm old and fat and I can't see, so I have a huge new iPhone that fits fine in my big baggy cargo pants and I can actually read what's on the screen.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday May 27, @02:28PM (6 children)
My prior phone (Pixel 5a 5G) was purchased almost exactly three years ago early next month. It worked great. No complaints. Last November I was thinking of replacing it when it turned three years old.
So I was browsing for the possible replacement I would get when June 2025 came. I never buy leading edge and try to buy close to trailing edge. Google successfully tempted me with a discounted Pixel 8a that had 256 GB of storage. My last two phones have had 128 GB. I moved my existing SIM to the new phone. Everything good. I was surprised how completely, how easily, and how seamlessly Google makes it for everything, apps, data, music, etc to transfer from one Pixel phone to another.
So what do I do with a perfectly good old phone? It continues with the job it did before I bought the new phone. Playing mp3s or YouTube Music all night.
In fact, other than making calls and using SMS, the old phone is totally functional on WiFi. I can play games on it and not run down the battery on my primary phone.
I've always wanted, since my first cell phone in, I think, the 1990s, to be able to upgrade phones and still keep my old phone in good condition. For various reasons this never happened. Until now. Often the old phone was a hand-me-down. Or someone in my house wanted it for "yet another camera".
I like for a near trailing edge phone to last for at least three years.
There is nothing wrong with trailing edge phones these days. New phones offer very little meaningful improvements. A trailing edge phone today beats a top of the line phone from ten years ago. The improvements with each model year seem very unimportant to me.
Especially AI.
If we work together, we can cut all homeless people and poor people in half by the end of 2025!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 27, @09:05PM (3 children)
> New phones offer very little meaningful improvements.
The enshitification of the OS and preinstalled software is accelerating. I don't want a vendor approved email account, app store, messenger system, cloud storage or anything else.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 28, @02:35PM (2 children)
But what about AI Everything! A phone with AI features touching everything you do!
If we work together, we can cut all homeless people and poor people in half by the end of 2025!
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Thursday June 12, @05:43AM (1 child)
I actually canceled the update to Android 16 today when I read that included Gemini in all the things. I'm going to have to look up switching to GrapheneOS or LineageOS for my Pixel 7.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 12, @01:24PM
If the AI actually made my device more useful or made my life better in some way, I would be less unhappy about Google shoving their Gemini down my throat whenever they want, unasked, unbidden and without my true consent.
From your sig:
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
EXCEPT EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO LENDING THERE
USE THEM TOGETHER
USE THEM IN PIECES
If we work together, we can cut all homeless people and poor people in half by the end of 2025!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28, @02:02AM
A few months ago I bought a Pixel 5a specifically to run one of the alternate OSes- I think it's Graphene. Haven't had time to mess with it though. But you might look into that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 30, @09:27PM
Staying on the trailing edge allows you to avoid things like the Pixel 2 or whatever it was that we got three of in the family and then every single one proceeded to die of infinite boot loops about 16 months after launch.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday May 28, @01:49AM (1 child)
I only retired my Cat S60 when G3 was dropped. Now I'll stay on the Cat S62 Pro until G4 is dropped.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28, @10:17PM
You've got at least 7 years then. The 4G LTE sunset isn't scheduled to begin until at least 2032. And that assumes you live in the US and they vote to begin the phase out process at their first opportunity.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday May 28, @12:38PM (4 children)
How do you keep your battery running longer than a couple years, when phones are designed to have unreplaceable batteries to encourage sales?
I use accubattery on several phones now, and I'm consistently losing 5 to 15 percent of capacity annually. Eventually capacity dips below a day and then I need a new phone as I'm not playing the "charge the phone multiple times per day" game, which will certainly kill the battery even faster.
Individual phones vary. My current cheap $50 phone has lost about 15% of capacity in the last two years, which isn't bad. I can still go almost two days between charges.
My use has probably declined some over the years, although I still read ebooks and listen to music and audiobooks a couple times per week, pretty much daily on average I'd guess. Gaming on phones seems to have died except for addiction apps, and I'm not addicted to those so I have no reason to game. I remember when the idea of a pocket gaming device seemed so futuristic and exciting and then all we got was repetitive animated slot machines, which is either hyper addictive to some fraction of people or utterly boring to most.
I have a LG V.35 that I use as a mini-tablet I guess where the battery life is about an hour, had a google branded phone that eventually decayed below 8 hours of battery...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Wednesday May 28, @06:35PM (1 child)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday May 29, @12:23AM
> too much on my plate
That's the problem I have with phones. I used to go to some trouble to install custom ringtones, backgrounds, sideload indie games, delete crapware, and so forth. Then the provider pulls the rug out from under me by deprecating the phone. At least they sent me a new phone for free. But I don't care to spend the time customizing a new phone every year. I suppose I could use that online backup feature to transfer contact lists and settings and all to a new phone, but I really don't like the idea of others having my contact list.
One thing I did was let voice mail fill up. Text me, don't voicemail me. I would prefer not to have voicemail at all, but it seems that shutting that off is not an option. So letting it fill up is the only way I have found to disable it. I get spammed that I need to make room in my voicemail box. There's no telling the system that I purposely let that happen, and to just shut up about it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Wednesday May 28, @08:26PM
I'm running an iPhone 13, that's from 2021, and as of this morning it says I'm at 88% capacity. Now that's Apple telling me that, but I feel like the number's probably correct. As for what I'm doing to maintain it, the answer is it's rarely discharged. I sit at a desk all day for work then I come home and sit in front of my TV and I have Qi chargers at both those places. To put it another way if you were to stop me when I'm out picking up my daughter from school or something you'd find my phone charge at 100% or really close to it.
Now I do want to mention that this is my first "work from home" phone, so it's not going with me to the office every day or anything like that. My previous phones, despite having a similar setup with Qi chargers all over the place, all showed more significant degradation. I honestly don't know if that's because I was discharging them more often OR if a tech improvement is showing results. My job used to have me travel regularly enough it's hard to find a level ground to do some reasonable estimates on.
On a side note I wanted to mention that Apple did make one change that, to their detriment, is helping me hold on to my phone longer: 120hz refresh. I remember making a fart-noise when I first heard about it... I mean, really, 120fps on a mobile? BUT... Apple made a big spectacle about that. My previous phones, aged with updates, would start stuttering, etc. Sooner or later I'd want a new phone because everything's soooo slooooowwwwww. Planned obsolescence, right? Well when you advertise such frame rates stuttering becomes a much larger eyesore! Long story short, this is the OLDEST iPhone I've had with no perceptual lag with the interface. Heh.
I expect to go another year with this phone. Hopefully Apple doesn't read my critique in the mean-time.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 01, @02:12PM
So maybe your assumption is wrong and you're doing it wrong? Keeping the battery between 20% and 80% is better for battery life.
Charging multiple times a day does not necessarily kill the battery faster. Depends on how you charge it.
I usually slow charge them (some USB ports won't supply more than 500mA, go figure) and to not more than 80% or 4.2V whichever is lower. On previous phones I was usually stopping at 70% (4.1V), but I found my batteries were lasting longer than the other stuff on the phone. My current phone has an option to automatically stop at 80%, so now 80% is it.
I also try to avoid charging them when the battery is hot (e.g. > 34C).
If it's a sunny and/or hot day and you're using your phone as a nav device in the car and it's exposed to sunlight, the phone tends to heat up a lot.
I have Tasker set to play a sound and alert when the battery is too hot. It also plays a different sound + alert when too cold. If the phone is too cold, there can be condensation if you suddenly transfer it to a humid spot. Condensation can damage the phone.
(Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Wednesday May 28, @01:43PM
I'll keep phones a relatively long time. I'm not a heavy user and I haven't had much trouble with battery degradation. The thing that gets me looking for a new phone is when the oleophobic coating gets worn off the screen. For me, sometime in the 2-3 year range I notice the screen is always a smudgy atrocity that is way harder to clean and has to be cleaned more often. That gets me looking for a replacement phone.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Thursday May 29, @07:56AM (3 children)
Still working on the original battery, recharged every day. The last OS update I applied allows me to charge to 80%, which still gives me more than a full day's use. It handles my email and web-browsing, although the browser doesn't work on more recent websites, which is irritating. Other heavily-used functions are the timer (cooking, parking) and the calendar (appointments, birthdays), and a note-taking application. I often take a picture of things like prices in shops and other items I need a record of that in past times I would have noted down on the small reporter's pad I carried with me always.
Re note-taking - I would really like a combined database/spreadsheet - something easily do-able with SQLite, but no-one else has that itch, apparently, and I don't have the time to code it up myself. I frequently want to keep track of things that have multiple similar records and some simple arithmetic.
I read the occasional pdf on the phone, in landscape orientation. And I use a calculator app, either the built in one or an RPN HP-35 emulator, depending on my mood.
There's a couple of games I play every so often, one of which is Sumplete [sumplete.com].
I'm currently two revisions behind on OS updates: I have not got around to upgrading it yet. Too many other things to do.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday June 01, @10:50AM (2 children)
I have my old phone loaded with all sorts of apk's. Networking. Offline stuff. Wikipedia ( AARD ), thesauruses, all sorts of sensor apps, calendars, compass, gps, wire tables. Refrigeration tools. Car fix tools, spectrum analyzers. Music. File backups for my other systems, file transfer tools. Voice recorders. Note pads. Eatery discount apps.
It's a Star Trek Tricorder. 256 Gig of it.
The one thing it doesn't do is place/receive telephone calls! But I can still tether to my paid phone to get discounted hamburgers! Or download stuff off the 'net, or FTP files to or from my other machines.
I don't have any personal info and all the loyalty apps point to my avatars.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday June 04, @08:45AM (1 child)
How do you do the tethering?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday June 04, @09:37PM
Tethering is a service provided by T-Mobile ( A mobile phone retailer / internet provider in the USA ) which will configure the WIFI interface of the subscription phone ( provided by T-Mobile ) as a WIFI Internet access point. This permits me to share the T-Mobile 5G network internet connection with other wireless WIFI devices by advertising it's SSID like any other wireless router.
Once I have asked my T-Mobile subscription phone to allow me to share my internet connectivity ( Motorola Android phone - Settings - Network & internet - Hotspot & tethering - mobile hotspot - on ), my subscription phone SSID shows up on the public list of available connections that other WIFI interfaces display when searching for a connection .
Now, let me call my other phones ( expired burner phones - but they still run apps or can log onto WIFI ) "TriCorders" ( named after a Star Trek movie prop gadget that does everything imaginable - but voice communicate ). They have the most memory I can put in them, and are loaded with all sorts of tools and backup storage for other things. Personally, I much prefer the older Motorola phones. Seems the phones are more and more restricted ( i.e. useless ) with every OS update they get.
I can now log on to my subscription phone with my TriCorder. I have various programs in both phones for filesharing via WiFi ( FTP server, FTP client, TrebleShot ( F-Droid.org ).
Once I have my subscription phone providing a live hotspot, then i can share files through the TCP interface. Or I often use another TriCorder as a wireless router. I have about a dozen expired phones repurposed as TriCorders.
Forgive me if I am a little wordy here. I am aware this is an international forum and things may not be done, or known by the same name, as I know it, but if I say enough, we catch on. I remember all too well the confusion I have before things "snap into place" for me. And there are likely many readers. People at all levels read all the technobabble and try to make sense of it, just like I do. If I think I've got something down pat, I'll try to teach, as others have done for me.
I am just "paying it forward."
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Thursday May 29, @07:11PM (1 child)
A better question might be,
How long did you keep your previous mobile phone?
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday May 30, @09:39AM
Not more than 5 years, going by its launch date.
I had not realised how long I had kept my current one. I have already bought the replacement, just not made the time to move over all the data and 'apps'. The replacement is probably obsolescent according to many people.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 02, @10:31AM (5 children)
Back in the day, in Ancient Greece, we had phones, or sounds, but were a little short on the Tele. So the best was to shave the head of a slave, tatoo your text message on the bald head, wait for some hair to grow out enough to encrypt the message, and send him off to the recipient, with instuctions to shave his head again, when he go there. Lost a few long the way, with with highweigh men Making Attica Great Again, and liberty calling. But at least there were no monthly fees!
philoetecles
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 02, @02:27PM (4 children)
First off, you really should learn the difference between cryptography and steganography. You aren't describing encryption at all.
Second, I'm quite certain you personally need an actual mobile phone that's modern enough to work with current cell phone towers. The primary reason is that you want to receive text messages letting you know when your monthly delivery of Bluechew is shipped and when it goes out for delivery. The rest of us also want you to get your Bluechew and to use it more often so that you have better things to do than post low quality comments.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 03, @04:06AM
Haircryptography is not the same a steganography, the art of writing secret messages on bony plated dinosaurs. Did you have an actual criticism, besides deriding my post as "low quality"? Is this the Bleucheu speaking?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04, @11:02PM (2 children)
Yeh..this is steganography - communication of secrets in public. But the public doesn't know what to look for.
I've also read about that tattoo on the head trick. Few people had mastered the written word. And you don't want the messenger losing the message along the way. If the messenger arrived, so did the message.
It's a shame hate and politics gets into. engineering comm channels...but it happens everywhere. Ever seen what happens to the creative sector once they ingest a MBA?
Dream chasing dies, financial targets become the new goal, and the company that ingested the MBA now has to outsource innovation. They can no longer foster the time to carefully consider lifetimes of experience, seasoned by interconnection to other practitioners of the art. The fundamental paradigms of innovation, that is maximizing design-to-form and function are incompatible with the fundamental paradigms of business and maximal profit, trade secrets, litigation, and something they call "leadership" that gives them economic leverage to compel suboptimal technical effort.
I'll post ac, as I am terribly off-topic, but I do see where the OP is coming from, and I suppose I share a lot of disgust over the "war" that goes on between the "ownership" class and the "artist/maker" class.
I am quite sure most of you know who posted this anyway. My contempt of "leadership" types using politics to destroy the workplace by ranking, compartmentalization, classification, micromanagement, and privilege-of-rank to compel suboptimal work from the worker-bees is probably well known by now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, @01:50AM (1 child)
I posted the comment you replied to. I'm honestly not sure who you are, and that's okay. You're obviously posting in good faith, and that's good enough for me.
I had also been familiar with the tattoo on the head approach to sending messages. It's relatively inefficient if you need your message to arrive in anything resembling a timely manner. In the past 100 years, there have been better ways to do one-way communication such as numbers stations. Although there aren't a whole lot of numbers stations still operating, I find the concept rather interesting. But instead of having a series of numbers that stand out from the other transmissions on that frequency, it might be possible to hide the message by slightly varying the repeating transmission.
For example, what if you took the Lincolnshire Poacher [wikipedia.org] but introduced small errors into the tune as it plays. Perhaps a particular note is wrong, and a person listening carefully might be able to hear how far off the note is and get a message that way. It might be less efficient, but it would also be less obvious than having a repeating string of numbers after the tune plays.
Perhaps messages could have been sent that way, anyway, and the numbers are just there to confuse everyone about the real message. That would be clever. And numbers stations are better for timely communication than turning someone into a human carrier pigeon. Unfortunately, even though numbers stations seem to mostly be obsolete, I doubt anyone wants to come forward and explain what they were for. I wouldn't be surprised if janrinok knows what the Lincolnshire Poacher really did, but I'm quite certain he wouldn't reveal anything. It would be very interesting if the real uses for the Lincolnshire Poacher, UVB-76, and other similar stations were eventually revealed.
I suppose one advantage of the tattoo on the head is that the message understands how to reveal itself to its intended recipient. With a numbers station, you have the initially exchange some information with the recipient of the message about what frequencies to listen to, when to listen to those frequencies, and a one-time pad to decode the messages.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14, @02:28AM
Tump just announced a 160% Tarriph on Steal, so you can no longer afford to be deleting comments. You will have to hire an illegal offshore operator to manage the site.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04, @04:59AM (6 children)
Dot Dalek has seen fit to close his journal to comments for all but sycophants and Bubbledwellers. Such is Soylent, these days. Less participation is actively being sought. Time to just shut it down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04, @11:14PM (5 children)
Do you blame him?
I'll bet you don't want people who disrespect you in your house either!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04, @11:44PM (3 children)
Reserving the right to refuse service to anyone does not confer a right to refuse service to anyone. All I am asking for is Equal Opportunity Extermination, not some kind of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Critical Race Theory Social Justice World. Lighten up, Francis!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, @01:44AM (2 children)
You replied to me. I am not Francis.
I don't know Dalek either. I have read his writings and from them, gained a very high level of respect. Very few people can author posts that demonstrate such wisdom. I learn a lot just by reading them, and am grateful for the share. He is a role model for me.
One can not simply barge in and take, even though that paradigm seems to be taught as leadership in environments of compulsory obedience to men of privilege, conferred by degree. Amongst the rest of us, anything we have was given by someone else.
Anything I have ever gotten through dishonorable means has been a pox on my house.
I consider it a fundamental right for anyone to refuse to do anything. Even granting an audience is a gift. It's obvious what happens when people try to force an audience ... ad blockers or a sudden urge to pee.
Dalek doesn't owe any of us ( including me ) a thing.
It's all a gift. Treat it as such. Be what you want to see.
Or, as my ancestors say: "Walk the Red Road". That's the exact phrase in English, from the Native American peoples, should you want to pursue it.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, @08:54PM (1 child)
Your certainly sound like Francis. Whose sockpuppet are you, then?
Are you serious? Do you realize what you have just revealed about yourself? I think I am going to be sick. Excuse me. [BBbbbbbaaaaaaarrrrrf!]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 08, @01:50PM
"The shoe leather tastes like shoe leather"
Not sure if it is better or worse than snozberries
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, @11:13AM
Leave my wife and kids out of this!
Runaway1956
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, @07:55PM
https://soylentnews.org/politics/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=64337&page=1&cid=1406177#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Thursday June 12, @05:40AM
I've had my previous Pixel 7 Pro for nearly 22 months. Dropped it right on the edge and cracked the screen. Luckily I had insurance for that device and got a replacement Pixel 7 Pro the next business day. So, it is technically a new phone, but essentially, it's just a forced migration and software update on all the apps and OS but the same form factor and performance of the old device. By the time I've got myself logged into all the apps and restored the app state, I shouldn't notice a difference. Perhaps at that point I should recast my vote for to closest to ceiling at 2 years.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Kell on Thursday June 12, @10:55AM
I used a 2010 Nokia 2730c until Australia switched off 3G in 2024. It was magnificent. I miss it so much.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14, @11:50AM
Janrinok is a Fink! No Kings! Happy Flag day, with extra comment deletion.