One billion Android devices at risk of hacking

[mr moose]

11 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Out of the options,

 

That's it isn't it, there are only two and the general rhetoric on these forums when anyone tries to enter a third (or heaven forbid MS talks about WP again) is to shit all over the idea like no one can do any good and what we have is fine.  Of course no  one will compete if the the first thing the tech communiy does is poo poo any competition get all fanboy over the current shit fest they want to call "competition".

[Guest]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

That's it isn't it, there are only two and the general rhetoric on these forums when anyone tries to enter a third (or heaven forbid MS talks about WP again) is to shit all over the idea like no one can do any good and what we have is fine.  Of course no  one will compete if the the first thing the tech communiy does is poo poo any competition get all fanboy over the current shit fest they want to call "competition".

It was interesting to hear on the radio today more details of this - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51825089

 

From what was said, it seem the EU are proposing rules to force manufacturers to support products for longer periods, as well as allow third party repairs etc. The proposals are varied and extensive. It will be very interesting to watch this pan out.

[Thaldor]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

That's it isn't it, there are only two and the general rhetoric on these forums when anyone tries to enter a third (or heaven forbid MS talks about WP again) is to shit all over the idea like no one can do any good and what we have is fine.  Of course no  one will compete if the the first thing the tech communiy does is poo poo any competition get all fanboy over the current shit fest they want to call "competition".

I was saying what I would recommend but either way if some product is bad, it's bad and that's it. With mobile OSs for general consumers there's really two options (although the other one is more like a rainbow from wet light brown to dark and chuncky brown) and both of them are kind of same level of bad. For more tech savvy there's couple other options but as said, they are more for tech savvy people and require quite a lot sweat and tears to get even close in features to the consumer options (not to talk about the pricing, Fail... Sailfish is just old Nokia Maemo but without even Nokias support so it's just Linux running on mobile, Jolla was the phone which shipped with Fa... Sailfish and well, it costed around the same as other flagship phones but it's HW was closer to the low- to mid-end competition and so not the best deal out there. And same plague have been affecting other FOSS projects not to even talk about the broken promises and god awful support when those promises have been broken, for example Sailfish earned it's nickname Failfish when first Nokia backed out and took Maemo/Linux-Android -surface with them and later Google backed out and didn't provide Play Store access, but the real kicker was when they tried (still do,probably) to get people move to Fa... Sailfish with Android phones and at least around the launch they really didn't break promises because you could install Sailfish on surprisingly many Android phones but did they work after that was the different story and when some raged over it the answer was "we said you can install the OS, we said nothing about supporting your phone model").

 

Just as with Windows Phone, I think the competition was good, but the product was just terrible. Phones were more or less overpriced for their hardware and competition just walked right over them (phones HW doesn't really matter but apart from looks specs are the only thing people see and when you have side-by-side in same pricerange Lumia with single-core 600Mhz 1GB RAM and some Android phone with dual-core 1Ghz 1,5GB RAM and couple Mpixels "bigger" camera and both look like black rectangulars, it's not really a mystery which one sells more). And the biggest nail in WPs coffin was the developers, good luck trying to even buy and bribe devs to support your system when there is only fraction of the userbase than the competitor and only fraction of mobile devs have the resources to develope yet another version of their app just because your OS isn't very compatible with the others (Android and iOS have become quite well to the point where you just press a button and you have your app mostly running on both, IIRC WP required a lot of work on top of that).

 

TL;DR: I would be more than happy to wave a flag of any company that really can start to compete against Android and iOS as long as they can provide hardware with competitive price, same level of integration (mostly that my Gear S3 can connect and I can control my AndroidTV from it and then just the normal bluetooth support) and at least something more so it's not JALF (Just Another Linux Fork). There just isn't something like that: Devices are overpriced (IIRC best so far has been something like 500€ for HW that can be compared to Samsung Galaxy S3 except way too many years later), accessory support is even worse than Apples (most of the time even the basic bluetooth support is missing) and that extra spice is usually just that it's completely open-source. I can't recommend that to anybody even if it was the last thing they are able to buy because I would rather move back to old landlines and rotary phones before even really touching those things, leave alone pay for them.

[Kisai]

19 hours ago, Thaldor said:

 

SmartTV:s are what they are, as long as they have HDMI-port you can do whatever you like.

That's where you've made a naive mistake. We all have.

 

It costs money to license HDMI, it costs money to license HDCP. I would not put it past the TV manufacturers to drop the HDMI ports so you're forced to use their own apps. USB-C is going to replace displayport and hdmi on the PC, it can also replace it on the consumer electronics end. So if they drop HDCP support, you can still play games on the TV, but you have to play all media from the smartTV software.

 

Like I hope no manufacturer ever does that, but then again, look at the current level of app-lification of various media sources now. We're entering a point where the best TV will be decided by which one Disney(Marvel/ABC), Warner(HBO/DC/VRV), Comcast(NBC/Universal), decide to will have their apps. Those cable STB's? Might even use their own leverage to keep competing apps off their device. I know here in Canada, Shaw's STB only has Netflix on it, nothing else. The Samsung TV has Netflix and Disney+, and Funimation apps, no VRV/Crunchyroll. 

 

Like right now, you might be able to buy a STB that has all the apps you need, but that doesn't mean that STB will work 18 months from now. It's like every lesson learned from the Kazaa era has been forgotten and we're back to fragmented stores on fragmented devices.

 

[Thaldor]

17 minutes ago, Kisai said:

-snip-

If it ever goes to that there's always (trust me, it's always, there is nothing any company or government can do about it) the third option.

Spoiler

 

[jagdtigger]

22 minutes ago, Kisai said:

It's like every lesson learned from the Kazaa era has been forgotten and we're back to fragmented stores on fragmented devices.

Yeah, its quite funny how they bitch about piracy while giving more and more reason for ppl to turn to piracy...

[RocketJump]

This is exactly why people should only consider Pixel or Android One devices, you're guaranteed to get 3 years of monthly security updates. If you have the cash, buy a pixel. If not, there's plenty of cheap Android One phones. I'm using a Xiaomi Mi A1 that I picked up for $300 CAD back in 2017 and it's still getting official monthly security updates.

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, RocketJump said:

This is exactly why people should only consider Pixel or Android One devices, you're guaranteed to get 3 years of monthly security updates. If you have the cash, buy a pixel. If not, there's plenty of cheap Android One phones. I'm using a Xiaomi Mi A1 that I picked up for $300 CAD back in 2017 and it's still getting official monthly security updates.

Still not good enough. Buy a device near the end of its sales life and you will not get three years. This is why the EU and other areas want to step in.

[RocketJump]

On 3/12/2020 at 2:22 PM, Phill104 said:

Still not good enough. Buy a device near the end of its sales life and you will not get three years. This is why the EU and other areas want to step in.

Why would you buy a near 3 year old device though? They wouldn't even make them anymore by then and there's new Android One phones being released constantly. 

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, RocketJump said:

Why would you buy a near 3 year old device though?

Because used midrange is wastly better than an y cheap new phone. And for many ppl buying a new midrange phone is not an option.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, RocketJump said:

Why would you buy a near 3 year old device though? They wouldn't even make them anymore by then and there's new Android One phones being released constantly. 

Phones from a generation or two back are still on sale as new, especially in certain countries. Not everyone can afford, or even wants, the latest model. 

[Guest willies leg]

I guess that really is bad, but I'm sure even current Android devices are subject to hacking. Unless they finally fixed everything? Nah, probably not.

I'll tell you what, I wish I could take the battery out of mine. That'd make it safe.

[RocketJump]

 

8 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Because used midrange is wastly better than an y cheap new phone. And for many ppl buying a new midrange phone is not an option.

Personally, I'd rather spend the same amount or even a little more for a secure device than a device that's no longer supported / near EOL with better specs. There's a lot of cheap Android One devices but if you want to go even cheaper, there's Android Go. For most people use cases, you don't really need a fast device. The only situation that I can see someone wanting bleeding edge hardware in their phones is if they're into mobile games. My phone has a Snapdragon 625 released 4 years ago and it's still more than fine for browsing, running banking apps, youtube etc.

[mr moose]

9 hours ago, RocketJump said:

Why would you buy a near 3 year old device though?

because:

28 minutes ago, RocketJump said:

 

 My phone has a Snapdragon 625 released 4 years ago and it's still more than fine for browsing, running banking apps, youtube etc.

 

As you said yourself, a 4 year old device is just as capable as a new device for most of what people use them to do.  

[Guest]

My Galaxy S5 is still good, why would I upgrade?

[Engineer.AI]

Funny how this headline comes in conjunction with the "Right to Repair Act", passed by the EU

 

Right to Repair ACT by EU

 

We've reached that point in time,  where our not-so older devices, are being antiquated, simply because of industry standards for mass consumerism. This particular headline is most alarming, though. There are these 7+ year old phones that still receive updates, but are easily susceptible to hackers who engineer AI malware, if they do so. The cellphone industry is primed with severe wastage, due to industry practices.

~Vibhor Tyagi (Techie at Engineer.AI)

[jagdtigger]

11 hours ago, RocketJump said:

Personally, I'd rather spend the same amount or even a little more for a secure device

Ppl who buy used are mostly looking in the sub 150€ range. n that price range even new ones are usually outdated from the get go so no point in dwelling about security.