On the issue of planned obsolescence, I had my iPhone 4S for over five years, and it got updates from Apple through that whole time. I paid it off long before the five years was up. It was getting long in the tooth at the end, and I did notice a significant improvement in performance when I replaced it with an S7 from Samsung, but it was still usable when I retired it. -- Christopher (AKA CJ) Chaltain at Gmail > -----Original Message----- > From: blinux-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx <blinux-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx> On > Behalf Of Linux for blind general discussion > Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2020 10:55 AM > To: blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > Subject: Re: Prospects for an accessible and open version of Android? > > While I agree price is an issue(even at it's minimal specs, the Meerkat is about > 5.5 times the price of a 4GB Pi 4 with case and all the needed accessories to > power the Pi from a wall socket, and all you really get for that extra money is a > SSD for holding the OS, a second 4GB of Ram and the greater flexibility of > running an x86 distro), but I don't really get the size argument. The 10cm cube > engraved with a 1cm grid I keep around for making rough measurements won't > fit in my pocket, but a plastic container I have that, comparing it to the cube is at > least 4.5 inches wide, 5 inches long, and two inches thick fits no problem and the > Meerkat is only 4.5*4.5*1.5 inches if I remember correctly. Hell, I'm pretty sure > the Meerkat is smaller than a Nintendo DS classic and Playstation Vita combined, > and if I were to pull those out of my box of old hardware, I have no doubt both > could fit in the same pocket. > > Now, admittedly, maybe I'm just lucky to have decently sized pockets and > normal pockets really are as tiny as implied, but I don't hold my Pi 3 in my hand > and think"I wish this thing was smaller), and while the only Smartphone I own is > a dinosaur from the Android 2.x days, whenever I think about trying to > repurpose the old thing, if anything, I wish it was big enough that the keys and > key spacing on it's built-in keyboard where on par with a TI-83 graphing > calculator and that it had a full-sized SD slot and everytime I hold someone else > smartphone, I tend to think along the lines of "would it kill them to add enough > bulk to fit a higher capacity battery, physical keyboard, full-sized SD slot or any > of the other things that have been sacrificed in the name of miniaturization as a > terminal goal? > > That said, it'd be great if planned obsolescence didn't render phones borderline > unusable by the time the average person has paid one off and if Android wasn't > stuck in proprietary driver hell that prevents all but the most popular models > from ever getting aftermarket support. > > _______________________________________________ > Blinux-list mailing list > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list