I often hear, “You should never cheap out on a good office chair, shoes, underpants, backpack etc…” but what are some items that you would feel OK to cheap out on?
This can by anything from items such as: expensive clothing brands to general groceries.
Smartphones. Most people don’t need to buy the latest and greatest iPhone every year.
Going to respectfully disagree here. Outside of my glasses, my phone is the tool I use most often, many times daily. It’s worth getting a quality device, and if there’s an issue with the current one (battery, cracked screen etc) it’s worth replacing. But you’re right, it doesn’t need replacing just for the sake of newness.
Gonna respectfully disagree back at you. You don’t have to get a $100 crapsung, but most people whose work depends on a good phone still don’t need a $2000 top of the line phone.
An iPhone SE or Pixel ?a phone is more than sufficient for almost anyone anything more I’m probably going to call opulence.
Well the prompt was what are things you should cheap out on. I have a pixel 6, I think it was $600 or something like that? But to me cheaping out on a phone would be like a $100 device.
Because of how often I use it, it’s worth it to me to not have bloatware, to have a good camera, for the battery to last, resistant to water, etc.
Pixel 7a is currently $500 new, so good mid tier device. https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_7a
But really what you should do is get a used mid or top tier phone that’s one or two generations behind. Depreciation on phones is so great that you get a lot of bang for your buck.
For example mint condition Pixel 7 is $300
https://swappa.com/listings/google-pixel-7?carrier=&color=&storage=&modeln=&condition=mint&sort=
Think outside the box. Get a previous generation. Pixel 8 was about to be released. To move inventory, Google discounted the 7 series by like 30-40%. I got the 256GB 7 Pro for $600. Without the sale, $600 is the same price as the 128GB 7. I got a top of the range flagship phone for the cost of a midrange. My mom did something similar with a Samsung phone. She got an S20 when the S22 released. Huge discount when Verizon offered it for $449.
I second this, especially with Android you can breath new life into a phone by installing a custom ROM
Damn right. I bought myself a redmi note 12 last year and now I am back to using my 5 year old OnePlus 6 with lineage OS as it just runs better somehow.
You should try replacing LineageOS with DivestOS, it’s a much more secure build of Los.
Also, the oneplus 6 is such a great phone
What if my phone isn’t supported by any ROMs? Is there an easier alternative to building it for your device on your own, following the given instructions, for example?
Sadly the best bet is to only buy devices that you know have good custom ROM support
I’m in that situation right now with my OnePlus N10, the plan is to buy a second hand device that is supported by LineageOS
Smh Nope, you don’t want to go down this ROM hole!
Why?
Because they doesn’t know what their talking about.
I’m on my phone 8 hours a day. Quality counts. Slow is bad. Lacking features is bad. Crappy cameras are bad. Get a good phone. Use it until one of the following happens:
That is generally not good and shouldn’t be common. I’d argue folks should consider whether a nice phone will lead to overuse, and if so, buying a cheaper phone.
Before I had a phone I was on a computer for all that time. And before that I was reading in bed for all that time. And before that I was watching TV for all of that time. This is so much healthier than anything else I’ve done in 5 decades.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t trying to be critical of you. I know some people can’t actually reduce their screen time due to their job or way of life. I’m curious though, could you elaborate on what you mean by this being healthier for you?
I used to sit, or lay, for all those hours. Now I’m up moving around. Talking to my geese, trimming trees, painting rooms, figuring out what some idiot electrician did 60 years ago that’s causing me a problem today (stupid loopbacks and hot neutrals, aluminum wiring optional), going someplace to hike and get the physical therapy I need after breaking my back falling off a ladder, etc. Living life while managing my ADHD and still consuming massive info dumps while also having one of the 200 podcasts I listen to play in my ear at 2.5x speed.
For me it’s just the last one that counts.
Just for my personal understanding. How often have you heard about security issues from missing updates in older phones? In real life, I mean, not in some blog or video? I’m having a hard time finding any information about real cases. There are hundreds of articles from tech-sites and security companies.
To me it feels like selling pick-proof locks, a market without actual use-cases. You can pick them all anyway, but nobody actually does it.
I used to do phone security for a living. I’ve seen a handful of cases in person. The bigger issue is that most of the time you don’t know it was the phone that caused your problems. One day your bank is drained and you don’t know why.
There have been several zero days that gave anyone that wanted to the ability to own your phone with a text that you never even saw because the phone doesn’t show you command texts.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/apple-zero-click-imessage-exploit-used-to-infect-iphones-with-spyware/
Unlike the good ol’ malwares that let you know that you’re infected by deleting your files or messing up your system, modern malware authors are profit-oriented and will do everything they can to make you unaware that your devices are infected. Then they’ll exfiltrate your data and sell them on various underground marketplace such as this one.
Definitely. If you know your device is infected then someone drastically messed up. The new stuff isn’t like the old stuff.
Don’t tell people that!
I always get a refurbished phone which are last years model that someone traded in when they got the newest and greatest thing. If people stopped doing this I might have to actually shell out for a new phone!
I usually try to stay about 3–5 years behind whatever the newest one is. It’s good enough for what I need and helluvalot cheaper than current phone prices.
Another way to do that is one year old manufacturer refurbished phones. I generally spend $250-$300 for a year old phone that will last me 4-5 years
It is the one device most people use literally all day everyday. Having a great one is worth the money. But it does not need replaced every year. Mine is 4 years old and still works like new (one battery replacement). I will likely replace it next year.
Lemmy hates Apple, but my five year old iPhone XS Max is still beastly fast, and I have like 40k pictures and all of my texts back nine years on it.
Better make a backup of those pics sooner than later
The beauty of iTunes (and the ONLY good thing about iTunes) is that I can make an encrypted incremental backup image of exactly what’s on my phone with one click.
Those pics have always been backed up.
The oldest pics are from my previous iPhone, so maybe eight years ago?
When I get a new phone (maybe soon, now that USB-C) I just plug into my computer and now my new phone is the same exact phone and layout as this phone, with all pictures and texts and files and everything.
There’s a reason my phone has no trouble with the Roku, works immediately when I use microHDMI, and gets updates for games on time and my roommate’s does not. Hardly a day passes where I’m not convinced he’s relegated to a worse quality of life because his phone just isn’t allowed to do things right. His phone doesn’t even run the transit app properly.
Now I’m not saying but a new phone every year for the incremental improvement, but don’t get something from a crap factory pushing high volume for small margins. Get something good.
What phones would you consider worthwhile in terms of price, i.e. those you can cheap out on, but not suffer the consequences of it being slow even in the simplest tasks?
One Android phone I had, Nokia 5.1, had to be replaced in less than 5 years because it often froze and lagged when I had to make or receive a phone call, open a single tab in some light-weight browser, etc.
I’m not a big fan of the smartphone industry and especially the reviewers because they seem to have a very twisted idea of a budget device. Or maybe I’m a cheapskate.
To combat this generally, you can buy one with more RAM. Also, right now there is a bit of a “race to the top” for longest phone support with Google announcing 7 years of support in November. Repairability is coming around too, which is great for replacing old batteries and broken charging ports.
I’ve adopted a policy of buying the latest iPhone every 5 years, which is about how long they tend to last in my experience. So far it’s worked out well.
Yes and no. For apple you can use their phones for quite a long time securely. For Android that is a very different story. As far as I know only Google with their new pixel phones and Samsung have offered more than 2 years of updates. After that time your phone becomes a security risk. So make sure your devices receives updates or can be used with a custom ROM (though that can be insecure as well).
It’s 2 years of FEATURE updates, usually longer for security.
Sometimes. It depends on the manufacturer. Some do more some don’t promise anything. You have to know what you have. Also the support time starts usually at the start of sale not at the time of purchase. That means if you buy a new phone that was released a year ago on clearance or something you might have only half the time.
What a load of crap. My phone is 5 years old and the only security risk is me blindly installing questionable APKs off the Internet or clicking pop-up ads or something. It’s not like I’m walking around with a time bomb or anything when all I do is browse a few apps and text and call.
Also the new pixel 8 supposedly is supposed to come with 7 years of updates. It’s entirely possible Google abandons that plan though, given their track record.
There have been a few bugs in the past years that let you take over a phone without user interaction. There was one where you only need to receive an SMS (it was invisible even) and your phone is infected. Another one was a vulnerability in wifi calling and voice over lte.
A phone is not a passive device that only gets something when you request it. You take also it with you to public places, use it in open wifi networks and you get calls. All that while being used for security critical stuff like 2FA, banking and payment.
You shouldn’t use a phone without current security updates for much more than calling. It is a time bomb. If you want to educate yourself further you should look at “zero click vulnerabilities”.
And if you happen to be in Vegas during Def con you should probably just turn off your phone and leave it in the room.