this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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The entire smartphone industry.
I use five year old smartphone (Pixel 4a). I can afford a new one, but I don't need a new one, and it would be worse in ways I care about (bigger, probably without a headphone jack), without being better in any way that really matters to me, so I don't want a new one.
Official software updates ended a couple years ago, but I'm running LineageOS and I got an update this week. Google has intentionally made it hard for most people to use LineageOS or any other Android distribution not blessed by Google as their primary phone by allowing app developers to check whether it's Google-approved. For now, I can usually work around that, but it would be too big a hurdle for most people.
The kernel is getting pretty old though; it's 4.14 when I'm up to 6.17 on my laptop. This is because SOC vendors don't release open source drivers, nor maintain the proprietary ones for very long.
Finally, there's the battery. Mine is in great shape because I use AccA to limit charge to 60% most of the time, but charging to 100% as most people do would have greatly reduced its capacity by this point. Replacing it requires melting glue and some risk of damage. Most phones are like that now (though that's changing due to EU regulation).
My GF had one. Battery was bad, normal consumer use OFC. Somewhere last year the play services security check changed. It was just invalidated by Google like 2 years after she bought it or something? Crazy.
But the thing that killed it was Google purposefully downgrading the battery so it was almost literally unusable. Would just die at 50%. She got 50 USD back. Not worth it at all.
I will take my bloated Samsung eith amazing hardware over Google's piece of shit policy any day now. My phone is almost 5 years old and works without any issues. OS updates stopped but we have intermittent security updates this year.
EDIT: I forgot to mention I spent literal over a hundred hours trying to fix a charging issue on the 4a that came with it which was a software bug. Worst I have ever experienced in tech actually.
That sounds like a very negative experience, pretty much opposite to my experience with the same model.
50 USD was one of the compensation options Google offered; a battery replacement was another. The latter might have been wise if she wanted to keep using the phone.