they make older phones become useless after ditching their support
My S21 is on the verge of losing regular security updates, and I hate it. The battery is fine, the camera is more than adequate, I do not want to upgrade.
I’m rocking an S8 as long as I can, but no updates in 5 years is starting to cause compatability issues. I’ll have to look into /e/OS soon I think.
I’d still be using my S8, but I got a free phone sent to me from Visible because I refused to upgrade.
I have an S10e in service, it’s perfectly fine.
I saw whoever has the Nokia name now is selling smart phones designed to be end user disassembled and repairable, but they’re really mum about how long their software support is.
Mine decided to randomly start rebooting about a year ago. :( Tried everything I could think of to get it to work normally, but nothing helped. I couldn’t rely on it, so I had to replace it. Like you, I hadn’t planned to replace it any time soon.
That’s what you get, honestly.
Hopefully you can learn from this and not waste your money on garbage.
k
So would you not recommend me getting a refurbished s20? That’s the most recent model that still has microSD slots and I’ve seen them for 200. But I’m not sure about security…
How about you get some courage and drop your brand loyalty?
I flat-out refuse to do business with any that requires I use an app. I won’t even scan a QR code for a restaurant menu; that’s my cue to go eat elsewhere.
Worst thing about qr menus for me is that when I finally order, I have to give my phone number and address. Bro, I’m sitting across from the kitchen and just want dumplings. Why I gotta dox myself for that?
Scan QR code. Order on your phone. Pay on your phone. Asks for a tip.
So uh, what exactly am I tipping you here for dawg?
that stuff is nice as an option. There’s a bar I go to that I can order my food and drink to the table my friends are at, while I’m walking to the place, and everything just arrives shortly after I sit down. Other people get offended about how fast I get served, it’s always amusing. I also enjoy not interacting with the staff, nothing against them, brain just doesn’t brain sometimes.
But what if I didn’t have a phone? or if I left home without it? 24/7 pocket rectangle is not natural.
Losing your phone now is like losing not just your wallet but simple access to everything.
Can confirm. Brother had his phone stuck in LA for 2 weeks.
- Hard time signing into some sites as they only had text for 2 factor
- Modern alarm clocks are awful, you only get two options and must be plugged in, so if you want 3 alarms while you’re outside of your house? Fuck you.
- Harder to track public bus routes as not only can you not call dispatch, you can’t check with the app.
There’s probably more but those affected him the most. Genuinely weird that in 2025 alarm clocks are stuck in 1985.
Dennis Takes a Mental Health Day is probably the most accurate portrayal of me ever written.
I don’t mind the whole online menu thing. It’s probably an environmental net positive, but it’s bs if they don’t have ANY physical copies for those who can’t or don’t want to for whatever reason.
If they wanted me to install something, though, that’d be a 100% instant nope.
I mean I simply refuse to ask QR code phishing is a thing
You might enjoy SecScannerQR then. It makes it easier to vet QR codes by giving an option to search for the URL instead of going there directly.
Ooh. Now do iOS.
Ew
No, you stop doing iOS.
Isn’t that standard behavior though? I’ve never seen anything that opens a URL directly instead of just showing it to you with an option to access it.
I mean you just need to audit the URL before going there.
An online menu requires power to be used (on people’s phones and the server). Is that really a minor contribution in comparison to printing paper and maybe laminating it?
Considering your average printer is a piece of shit that needs to be replaced quite often, yes, using a website is probably more energy efficient.
This person has never seen the power bill for running a high-availability server with several failovers once in their lives.
In fairness neither have I - though I suspect it’s not as insignificant as other’s claim.
It’s not insignificant at all. Servers are beefy and take more power than a standard PC… a lot more. Further, failover servers mean you have to have exact copies of the same server up and available, which means you’re doubling, tripling, quadrupling power demands. Finally, you also have to have Uninterruptible Power Supplies, those take an amount of power as well.
It’s a huge power draw. I know because I have a bunch of low-power devices runnig 24/7 as microservices and it still increase my power bill and use by a lot. I regularly get letters from the power company about how I’m using like 3x the power of the average person in my type of unit.
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You can host a webserver on a Raspberry Pi. I don’t know what you’re doing with your setup but you absolutely do not need hundreds of watts to serve a few hundred KB worth of static webpage or PDF file. This website is powered by a 30 watt solar panel attached to a car battery on some guy’s apartment balcony. As of writing its at 71% charge.
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An Ampere Altra Max CPU has 128 ARM cores (the same architecture that a raspberry pi uses), with a 250 watt max TDP. That works out to about 2 watts per core. Each of those cores is more than enough to serve a little static webpage on its own, but in reality since a lot of these sites get less than 200 hits per day the power cost can be amortized over thousands of them, and the individual cores can go to sleep if there’s still not enough work to do. Go ahead and multiply that number by 4 for failover if you want, its still not a lot. (Not that the restaurant knows or cares about any of this, all this would be decided by a team of people at a massive IT company that the restaurant bought webpage hosting from).
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I had not considered that an uninterruptible power supply would be consuming power after charging. I suppose no electronics are 100% efficient at what they do.
I’ve been playing with a Proxmox server on an ITX system for local services and rare game hosting for friends. I’d love something low power I could have on all the time.
I regularly get letters from the power company about how I’m using like 3x the power of the average person in my type of unit.
I’m also using a lot of self hosted things but have never received any of those.
Where do you reside generally where they’re sending them because it ain’t a thing here in the UK?
Most companies will be using laser printers, some of which may outlive me. Toner is cheap and lasts an age.
Inkjet printers are cheap for a reason. They’re a scam.
That and those servers are going to be running anyway. Powering a simple restaurant website is a grain of sand on the beach of internet usage.
Yeah, exactly. If you’re worried about the power draw to host a few hundred KB PDF file, you probably shouldn’t be using Lemmy, because scrolling through your feed probably uses 100x that in energy costs.
You have to remember that the shared hosting or aws, or wherever is going to be cheapest to host a simple website is also going to be very power efficient. Wasting power is just throwing away free money, and if there’s one thing corporations don’t do, it’s throw away free money.
Generally companies use service contracts to keep those things working so mo they wouldn’t be replaced often. They are just a piece of shit
The funny thing about qr codes for restaurant menus to me, as someone that studied menu design. Is that actual menus are designed specific ways make the restaurant more profit and make it easier for people to find what they want. Whereas qr codes often bring one to a hastily designed list of categories which are not only less intuitive but also less manipulative. So people will end up taking longer to order less profitable dishes.
Hell yeah, consumer win. I like selecting an item and it offers me changes or addition options that I never would have considered!
But really, it means they can hire less people so they gain profit anyway.
I’ve been to some that try to upsell you during the checkout process. Big pop up comes up “Add x to your order for $y.99!” Shut the fuck up!
One of these seems to be one of the best ways to order pizza from Papa John’s.
They usually have a special for a Large Pizza for pickup, and at the checkout, you can ignore the add-ons and choose “make it extra large” and it’s the best deal I’ve seen for papa johns XL pizza.
I for one cheer and root for my flip phone friends.
I’d never do it, but we have one at work and he’s singlehandedly causing so much grief at work. Because none of the engineers wanna use a security app for login. They want a fob.
IT refuses to pay for fobs and wants us to use an app, but they also don’t want to pay for a phone for anyone in engineering just to use the security app because it opens a floodgate of people with company phones.
It’s just wonderful to watch this fight from the sidelines sipping tea.
I for one cheer and root for my flip phone friends.
Why are you cheering for a lack of self-control?
Smartphones are great. You just need to be smart enough to not let them use you.
It should put into perspective who is a useful idiot, and who is not.
Perhaps his friends do not have smart phones, because they do not want smart phones.
Yes, but why don’t they want smartphones?
what’s the rationale for IT not wanting to pay for the fobs?
My job does this too. It’s literally just cost cutting. The fobs expire and need to be replaced every so often but the app lasts “forever”.
IMO the fobs pay for themselves because what they are spending on fobs is the same as what they’re spending on IT members answering calls all day for employees that are having login issues with the app.
I worked a job where I had to have an app that tracked me wherever I went. I finally had to tell my boss I couldn’t use it anymore because it was killing my battery in like 3 hours.
If I was still working and a job wanted me to put an app on my personal phone I’d tell them to go fuck themselves.
Just another way capitalists thieve money from its workers.
Managers probably sold apps as a cost cutting measure
Presumably they’re expensive and someone needs to manage them.
My company’s approach is “we’ll pay your phone bill if you use an Authenticator app on your phone.” Cheaper for them, plus they don’t need to buy company phones or fobs, and who’s going to complain about their phone bill getting paid?
A previous company tried similar but required putting your phone under enterprise management. A lot of us disagreed with that
They’re not expensive at all.
Well, my old company sure made a ridiculous profit selling them. You may be looking at the cost per fob hardware, but not including the management cost. They are much more expensive than an authentication app, plus authentication apps are mostly managed by someone else, and you don’t have distribution overhead
what exactly is the management cost here?
at my old company they simply ordered a yubikey for you amd forgot about it. nobody kept track of it. i didn’t even need to return mine when i was leaving. the part they manage is the user account. the hardware you get once and use for added security…
In my experience, the only thing that really made them more difficult than managing end users who were using an authentication app instead was having to facilitate getting the fob to the users and replacing them occasionally and they were dirt cheap… Like less than $5 apiece.
I have no smartphone and am unable to access any of my college resources or email from home because you need a security app for remote login. I’ve got in trouble a few times for it but idk what I’m supposed to do. I wasn’t able to access my Exam Timetable because of this and had to ask some friends when the exams were because my teachers didn’t know (somehow). It’s very annoying.
You could install an android emulator on your personal computer then run the authenticator from there.
The OC said in a different comment that you must be on the college network to set it up.
You don’t need to tag me, by the way; I get a notification if someone responds to me directly.
sorry, I’m viewing this from mastodon so the setup’s different.
All good. Hope you have a great day!
The authenticator requires you to be in the college’s network to set it up for the first time and I don’t have a laptop.
I’d never do it, but we have one at work and he’s singlehandedly causing so much grief at work.
tell him the funny internet man that replied to you told him that he was based and that we collectively appreciate his efforts of basedness.
The whole using your phone for everything from grocery shopping to just doing whatever Like getting deals or whatever?, Can it please go away?
They’re collecting our data anyways.
For some things it’s more convenient for customers. For others, it’s more convenient for businesses.
We, as customers, need to promote what’s convenient for us while ignoring what’s convenient for businesses.
Keep in mind: we are not on the same side as the people taking our money.
I have an app for that.
This affects me a lot day to day. I have a phone, but it runs postmarketOS, not iOS or Android. It really shows me the importance of open standards. I feel that every business should be required to support open standards for each of the services they offer.
For me, buying train tickets used to be ok, but is getting harder now. Some train operators are really pushing you to use their app now, and getting rid of the option to download a PDF. It really frustrates me: it’s not like it costs them more to offer PDF download - if anything, it’s much cheaper to offer that functionality than to build and maintain an app for iOS and Android.
Back when I had an Android phone, I used Monzo, and it was so easy to send money to friends, set up standing orders etc. I wish they offered a proper web interface. Now, I use Natwest’s online banking, and it’s a real pain - I use the card reader to authenticate, then the website logs me out seemingly every 2 mins of inactivity. Some features, like pre-notifying that you’ll be travelling abroad, are only available on the app. I only see this trend continuing.
The concert tickets example in the article is insane to me. I can’t think of a use case that is better suited for PDFs, and that’s what we’ve been doing for the last 10+ years without any issues. It really is user hostile and excludes people on the edges of society who don’t fit, for whatever reason, with what the 80-90% do.
The reason venues don’t allow PDFs is so that you’re forced to use their own platform for resale where they take a commission.
apps allow user tracking and advertising though. Much more valuable to the corpos than a few lost customers.
Also mich More valuable to Google, as they are the biggest Advertising company. I looked it up and according to this source they have ~70% of the pay-per-click market.
Get $50.
I recently shared a meal with a female friend. Imagine how I’d look if I wasn’t able to get money transferred from her, because of not having a mobile banking app.
Y’all not heard of cash?
Hey, I usually like to have about 50 PLN (~$12.50) in my wallet, but you can’t expect everyone to keep loads of cash on them.
In this thread we ask: Can we expect everyone to use a banking app either? How is that more reasonable, if one of them is democratically controlled and the other is corporate controlled?
Any time I’m required to use an app for something that could be a website, I leave the app a one star review.
also those who dont want to install that spyware shit on their phones. Even if you dont care about the data collection it still consumes battery faster as more and more data is being transferred
Yeah, I couldn’t be arsed to install that shit. I’m also not taking out my phone for this kind of bullshit. I’m sick and tired of smartphones.
McDonald’s (in Germany at least) needs your location to “see when you arrive at the restaurant”. What the hell?! That doesn’t even work properly and they force it on me! I uninstalled the app and now I am actually happy, because without the promotion and discount stuff, I don’t eat McDanks that often anymore.
I use an app for OTR (petrol chain in Aus) and they’ve removed the requirement for location which is… Unexpected, to say the least. Anything except using the pumps on the app no longer needs it when all orders previously needed it.
Thats actually pretty nice. And on the subject of cars: I don’t get why (some) people with E-Cars say they are so much “greener” and then use like 10 different apps for the car, recharging, etc. Those servers produce so much, really, so god damn much CO2… (Not saying combustion engines are better, but…)
My Kia Sportage PHEV came with a “Kia Connect” app. There is a monthly charge but I get first 3 years for free. It’s got some sort of useful things but I don’t really use it much anymore. More likely than not I won’t bother to pay for it when the free years are up.
Understandable. In Germany it isn’t customary to have an AC, but I got one. It’s from Mitsubishi and has some cloud remote control app thing. I mean, ok, controlling the temperature from not home is maybe useful, but I haven’t and will never use it. I just set the Temperature and go on Auto mode…
McDonald’s wants your IQ too. Seriously, it’s in their privacy policy.
Ok, that is crazy.
Hello McDonalds. My IQ is 500, so do I get like, free stuff or something?
That is what I noticed. Everything these days require app to get shopping vouchers, book tickets, go in to your local gym, pay in store (we are being weaned off from using cash) etc.
I can’t even go to a high school football game without having an app.
I’m open to hear if you guys disagree with me, but that is not simply about not having a smartphone as much as it is about not having cell service, not using data service. If a person uses a libre VoIP app, there is no need for cell service, and people actually can live happy lives disconnected from internet when they are outside or in public.
Society must revert their mentality and not expect constant immediate access to everything. Absolutely nothing happens on the internet for personal activity that can’t wait a few hours or the next day.
I use phone only for direct communication, zero multimedia, zero social media on phone. Everything else is done on computer. Especially banking, that is on computer website only for security, never on phone. I despise and resent using a phone for websites
If a person uses a libre VoIP app, there is no need for cell service
I don’t follow. Don’t you need internet for VoIP? Unless the point is to have a phone that gets zero connection while outside a wifi, which sounds kinda pointless?
Correct, use VoIP with wi-fi service instead of cell and data. It also makes the calls untraceable for location for best privacy practices. There’s no way to trace where in the world a phone is if using wi-fi to call standard phone numbers. For personal calling, not a work phone, some people don’t care about messages and calling when they are out walking, shopping, attending events. They want to focus on the real world around them, not phone stuff.
Society must revert their mentality and not expect constant immediate access to everything. Absolutely nothing happens on the internet for personal activity that can’t wait a few hours or the next day.
yeah ok so, counterpoint, you pull up to an EV charging station (it’s tesla because of course it’s tesla) please show me where the card reader is. I’ll wait.
oh but what about the non tesla charging stations you might say. those are still iffy right now, i’m hopeful they’ll improve in the future, but a lot of them have readers (that may or may not work) and a phone app (that may or may not work) also whose to say they don’t just fucking disappear.
Bad example. Tesla chargers don’t use an app, they assume you have an account set up with a credit card on file. Most people do that through the app but I don’t think you have to. Once it’s set up, it just works with no further interaction.
Or are you doing this as a non-Tesla customer? Yeah that’s not as smooth yet
Bad example.
what are you going to do setup android emulation so you can install the tesla app (which might not work in emulation because that’s sus, but maybe they dont have good security anyway lmao) sure, you can set it up once, but like, what do you do if your credit card is cancelled, or the app suddenly stops accepting purchases because “you haven’t been online in a week” and it’s for “security purposes” or some other stupid shit like that. This is the entire reason card based payment exists lmao. Why are we just reinventing it.
i guess theoretically if it’s a webapp you could do it on the browser, but then like, how is it going to link information back to you personally? Unless you own a tesla, where you basically just save your payment info on the car directly at that point. Maybe they will invent credit card 2 electric boogaloo. Are they going to start installing NFC/RFID into charging ports for payment link info? Seems silly to me.
If you own a non tesla, this is as you mentioned, a huge issue, considering that NACS is the charging standard for all of north america now.
Worst case scenario, call support to put a credit card on file with your account. This is what I did when I ran into problems with the app (turns out I was too eager trying to use it before they were done setting me up).
When you use a supercharger, at least as a Tesla, there is a handshake where your car identifies what account to use, then it just works
You definitely lose a lot of convenience features if you don’t use the app, but I believe you can do it, if you want it enough
Edit: just use a web browser. I verified I can login through my web browser to manage my account, my products, my payment method. Not the car features though. I have no idea if this is new, but just use any web browser
i’m really not sure how the non tesla super charger experience looks, that concerns me. Though i assume that must be a somewhat solve problem, if people are using it so.
just use a web browser. I verified I can login through my web browser to manage my account, my products, my payment method. Not the car features though. I have no idea if this is new, but just use any web browser
that’s good, there should definitely be some available features for the card, but you can at least handle payment. Though i would still prefer not needing to provide my payment info to a third party anywhere except for time of transaction. Just opens me up to more bullshit.
For sure. Most of my objection is when the purpose is automatic renewal of subscriptions (which ought to be treated as a type of theft because it’s non consensual stealing my money), and at least it’s not that.
My credit card does rotate the numbers a bit but I keep meaning to find one that can generate different virtual cards per service so I can turn a virtual card off when they get abusive with it or when they leak it
my two biggest concerns are accessibility, and privacy. I want it to be both, accessible, and private, card readers accomplish this to a significant, and universally accepted degree. I can understand a subscription service being based on something a little different, or an auto charge mechanism similar to tesla super chargers, but that should be an option, not the sole means of interacting with it, because then it lends to really shitty behavior on the side of the company operating it.
The subscription thing is understandable, but the unfortunate reality is that this is going to be a contract law problem, rather than any other problem, you are legally agreeing to a monthly payment model at some point in the checkout, otherwise it wouldn’t be legal. Shitty laws and consumer protection problems really.
My credit card does rotate the numbers a bit but I keep meaning to find one that can generate different virtual cards per service so I can turn a virtual card off when they get abusive with it or when they leak it
it’s funny actually, i wonder if checks will see a comeback, with all the shitty services that exist now, it’s a very explicit way of paying for a transaction. I don’t really have a huge problem with auto charging systems, most of the time banks can even unfuck some really funny shit if you need them to, though that gets into a different world very quickly. The subscription problem is an interesting one though, my solution is just avoid them at all costs, because it’s a parasitic drain. So far i’ve succeeded in that. Also having a minimal amount of subscriptions really helps you to keep them in check, because there are only so many that can exist.
It is more about being able to constantly spy on everyone. Funny how this exact sentence would have labeled one as a conspiracy nut not too long ago.
Constantly online means constant (more or less) analytics, means constant data to throw in the big computer to make you buy more shit or vote for the shit party.
I think I would agree due to when I have been sitting in public somewhere with others sitting around, they have clearly been programmed by their phone, subservient to their master. I do also wonder if there is an IQ element to it. Having a lower level of personal intelligence so they have been conned into believe that they must have a phone that is connected to internet at all times everywhere.
Spend 2 months without cell service, without mobile service, and you will see how far gone many, many people are. I’m fully serious about live without cell service for 2 months, the world does not look the way you think it does.
Cloudalist’s and their technofuedalism
I use a dumbphone. I’m not buying a smartphone just so I can play these stupid games, and I’m installing an app for every fucking business I interact with. I realize there will one day be a point where I won’t be able to do things I need to do without one, but until then I have no desire for one. Fortunately they haven’t made the parking meters here require a smartphone yet.
My grocery store still uses loyalty cards for most discounts (which is irritating enough), but also has “digital coupons” that require an app so I can’t get that. Theoretically I could go to their website and print them off but that’s not worth the effort. I have to pay close attention to the price signs they put up because some of them say “with digital coupon” in small print, meaning “not for you, bitch”. You know who doesn’t pull this kind of shit? Walmart. So I wind up getting a lot of my groceries there so as not to be discriminated against.
Flipphones… I want a full keyboard phone again. Maybe even a slider full keyboard. Those were the days.
Apps… I evade most apps as much as i can or if i must use closed source apps, i will put them in a secondary profile.
I have a flip phone with a touchscreen so I can type via the onscreen keyboard. When I bought it I wondered how well it would work since the screen is so small, but it works great! So much easier than using the keypad. BTW it also has maps with voice navigation.
Oh that is pretty cool!
holy balls that thing looks amazing, is it good?
Do NOT give these fucking cunts any fucking money. I was a backer for this phone on indiegogo.
They are liars when they eventually did communicate any updates during the project. They produced around 2000 units, most of which were sent to people who backed the project years after the first backers on indiegogo because they backed on a different platform.
Ultimately they just shut down the kickstarter giving no actual details. They stole thousands of peoples money through that. They made a product with the money people contributed to back the project and then just shuttered the project so they wouldn’t need to deliver a device to these backers.
I didn’t realise they were now trying to sell them again but the units that did get shipped were massively out of date and barely worked as it is.
If you want a keyboard on a phone Unihertz are about your only option right now.
Fuck planet computers, thieving fucking cunts
It’s probably too late to do anything about it, but what you described there does directly violate Indiegogo’s TOS in regards to perks, so I’m surprised that people weren’t able to reach out to the platform itself and issue chargebacks against the Creator in order to get their backers payments back.
They are actually obligated under the campaign owner obligations that in the case they can’t fulfill a perk, they are supposed to issue refunds to any contributor that was not fulfilled
Didn’t know, thanks for the info
Yeh sorry for the little rant there, not aimed at you personally, just being reminded of it pissed me off a new xD
Those are laptop keys on a phone, i have seen one of these before, i wonder if there are those with older “phone like” keyboards?
Walmart doesn’t let you use contactless pay unless you use their app. several times now I’ve gone there to grab a few things, not realizing i didn’t have my card with me, and had to leave a full cart behind because i will not install their adware.
Walmart doesn’t let you use contactless pay unless you use their app.
By “contactless pay” I assume you’re talking about paying by using a smartphone app? Obviously I don’t care about that because the whole point of my post is that I’m not using a smartphone, so obviously I have no apps of any kind.
But if by “contactless pay” you meant paying with your debit card by tapping it or holding it near the card reader, yes they do have that like everyone else.
