So I’m making my cold way around the railways of England today, and enjoying Minecraft on the station platform, when the (fantastic) iPhone gives up the ghost. With recent experiences, I’m coming to understand that it just doesn’t like the cold.
So I always have to have a zombie phone with me. A much discussed topic at BB over the ages.
I’m a little wtf, right?
You know, it seems really odd to me that we pay so much for these phone-gadget thingies, and obviously, we are going to be carrying them around, using them in all sorts of places and situations, yet they seem so fragile in a lot of ways–like they can’t handle the cold (I have an android, and live in a not so cold most of the time place). How long have you had the thing? Also, it seems like Apple was blazing a trail on the revival of planned obsolescence. You have to replace it every few years.
I don’t know… am I wrong, or does it all seem so wasteful?
It is wasteful, and the whole resources from Africa business is nasty. They’re incredibly useful though, I use mine the whole time. I don’t replace often.
They’re fragile though - we’re on a tech curve and hopefully they’ll sort that out. I’d hate to discover this little glitch stuck in a mountain valley with a broken leg.
The resources from is another issue, of course–probably a thornier, more important moral issue, but the whole mass production/consumption society is just littered with those. but I too use my phone quite a bit.
Was it foucault who said that there is no “outside” to all this?
Many’s the time I’ve had to restrain an impulse to hurl my lagging, glitchy, or otherwise misbehaving Android phone into the nearest hard surface.
Once or twice I’ve failed to restrain that impulse…
I think what’d go a long way to constraining the waste is avoiding the tendency to squeeze so much eye candy and so on out of the hardware, and concentrating on delivering something robust and consistently responsive. Remember how XP would run on a P4? It was so consistently solid that when it wasn’t, you knew you had a problem.
I’ve run the stock firmware on a few Android phones, and various versions of CyanogenMod and other ROMs on most of them, and although some are better than others, none is what I’m after.
There’s no way an iPhone is what I’m after either, not in a pink fit… and I’ve got enough hate for Win8 on the work laptop that I’d be mighty surprised if I liked Metro on a phone.
I have had my iphone4 for a long time, but I don’t know this word “cold” so I cant talk to that. The other day I lost my temper at something and threw the phone into the bed of my truck with some force. Immediately cringed and slapped my forehead, again. I was sure it was toast, but it was fine. Gulp. I replaced the back once, total cost $10. Total time five minutes. When I had the back off I noticed it would be quite easy to change the battery. It is even provided with a little tab to help you lift it out. Not something you would do everyday to get another couple of hours, but not the big deal everyone seems to worry it is. The new ones are a little tighter, I suppose.
( notices he is fanboying and slowly backs away from keyboard. )
Hmm, the iPhone 4 must have been close to peak repairability for iPhones.
http://www.ifixit.com/smartphone_repairability
Actually, looks like they’re mostly grouping together with a score of 6/10 for anything recent. Though to be fair any modern fancy/small smartphone seems to be about 6/7 tops.
And LOL check out the HTC One and original iPhone.
I think maybe Foucault and chaos theory are staring at each other across a wide chasm, incoherently yelling at one another…
The new Apple Christmas teevee ad makes me laugh. Snowy scenes, wintry cold - exactly the conditions my phone dies a death in.
I love Apple - don’t get me wrong - but this is ironic.
Is it that cold in the Smoke, Peregrinus? It’s been quite balmy in the Frozen North. I was outside in a t-shirt eating lunch in the Cumbrian hills this time last week.
You Northerners are a hardier lot.
It’s been +1C down here, with wind and rain. Had to pack the motorbike away!
Anyone who thinks London is cold right now is proper nesh! My Samsung Galaxypants agrees. Have noticed that the touchscreen gets a bit sluggish but that’s it.
It’s a little cool now, but an hour ago I was in a lightning thunder and rain storm. Cold rain, danger, wind and all - it’s the end of times, my friends, the end of times.
Aye, I was walking down Tottenham Court Road when that struck. I didn’t expect the lightning; until the thunder, I thought someone had been caught on camera for not paying their Central Charge! It wasn’t too much of a problem for me as I’m very fussy about my leather-soled shoes, so I habitually carry a pair of galoshes.
Man, I had to get home for the kids. I’m not a fan of being in lightning, and the storm was pretty weird - not sheet or stick lightning, but diffusing massively without branching from a central point! There were people with umbrellas, I wished each would just pack them away and wait for the storm to pass. I got soaked head to toe, but made it back to happy kidzes.