HTC U11 Life: Google tries to tame the midmarket We rarely single out midrange phones for special attention here. Most are me-too models that don’t bring anything new to the marketplace. Exceptions to this rule need a jolly good reason: the Honor 7 dramatically shook up the market in 2015, while the industrial chic BlackBerry Motion was a business-oriented phone (rare) that …
"... conform to our strict standards, and we'll give your devices two years of monthly patches and updates."
What's the betting that in the not-too-distant future, we start seeing blanket advertising of Android One devices all over any pages that Google has control over (search landing/results pages, I'm looking at you), plus other aggressive marketing strategies, all based off the back of claims of altruism...
Next step - Google starts subsidising manufacturers who subscribe, so that they can lower prices and undercut their non-Android-One competition, thus leading to an eventual dominance of devices indirectly controlled by Google via these "strict standards"
And because the device manufacturers are not direct subsidies of Google or Alphabet, no risk of any anti-trust action...
Thankfully, it is entirely possible to manage whilst rarely visiting these pages you speak of so let them plug away advertising heavily to those that accept it and I will keep using the BBC for news, offline maps and selecting non-YT videos from video results wherever possible (surprisingly often).
But (bar a bit better processor as my el cheapo phone is older kit) - my cheapo "generic" phone has similar spec, but bonus of headphone jack, removable battery, dual SIM...
Only advantage this phone has is guaranteed OS updates for a while, but its a hefty price to pay as my phone was way below 200 quid
It may be mid range price , but overpriced on spec.
(Caveat, I use proper camera & interchangeable lenses for photos so no idea (nor do I care) how cameras compare on the phones as camera quality is not on my phone requirements list so comparison ignores camera specs)
Over a five year timescale, brands can rise and fall so no Android vendor can rely on your repeat custom then - they might not be around (or competitive enough) to take advantage of the good will they can foster in you by updating your £350 phone for that length of time. Nor does it help that in two years time an equivalently specified handset might only be half the price, so most buyers will likely buy a new handset after a few years for reasons beyond discontinued software updates, such as a failing battery or cracked screen.
If you want a three year software update cycle, you can either buy a handset that looks likely to be well supported by the ROM crowd, put your faith in Google's Project Treble, or buy whatever the successor to the iPhone SE will be.
That's not true, it just requires Android to be a more platform-agnostic OS. Google is working on that, but as soon as you can update the OS without needing to update the whole system platform underneath there is no technical reason Google couldn't just ship updates out to every Android phone on the planet.
Well Google need to get on with sorting this out then. My nine year old laptop still gets regular OS updates and security patches, and it's original cost was comparable to an upper mid range smartphone now.
Why do I get the impression no one seems to have a genuine interest in solving this problem expediently? Oh, that's right, they'd all rather sell new hardware as often as possible instead...
A PC isn't a mobile phone.
1/ There is no standard BIOS or basic HAL (well there is now in 8.0 and going forward with project Treble).
2/ You can't install drivers manually on a mobile phone.
3/ There is no IBM_PC spec that everything has to adhere to.
You clearly show virtually no technical understanding if you can't see how mobile phones and PCs work. Next you will be asking why your kettle doesn't need security patches.
Over a five year timescale, brands can rise and fall so no Android vendor can rely on your repeat custom then
Surely the point is that we want to buy a phone and not give a flying f*** about whether the hardware maker is still in business? That's their problem. Google get their dirty money simply by us peons using their devices, I really don't think Pen-y-gors is being unreasonable in expecting Google to support the device for five years as a minimum.
If customers were a bit more savvy about security, the period for updates would be an important factor in what people buy now, not so much for repeat custom.
I'm sure people who don't upgrade for the sake of it are a very significant market. These folks just want a phone that works and does basic functions, not the latest technology with changes that mean that they are going to have to re-learn things. I bet even many of the tech-savvy readers of this item are using phones more than 2 years old. For these longevity is a selling point.
Remember when all cars used to rust badly after a few years? Then a few manufacturers introduced non-rusting guarantees. Now cars almost never rust (and not just because a lot of the bodywork is plastic, there's still a lot of steel.) It needs a big manufacturer with imagination.
Am I lucky? I've bought my Galaxy S5 Neo phone over 2 years ago and my networks still provides me with upgrades. I've received the latest one this month. The security patch level is November 1st.
I'm not saying which network (and county) it is but I hope that means things are improving.
Clearly nobody wants to pay for patches. That is clear. It essentially hints that your 2 years of patches on this phones will cost you £100 over a similar phone without patches.
So would you pay £250 on-top for 5 years of patches on a £350 mod range phone? Of course not.
Time to grow up and realise things don't come for free..
Presumably Edge Sense doesn't work if you keep your phone in a case..
and, as others have said...£350 is MIDRANGE? Look....just because the new iPhone is vastly overpriced doesn't mean everybody has more money to spend. Please learn the difference between mean and median. One or two outliers don't affect EVERYBODY.
If Google was smart they'd rebrand all of HTC's phones to Google. Keep the Pixel as the top of the line and bring in a few lines under it, They could even reuse Nexus for mid-range phones. Google has the good mindshare that HTC doesn't. Maybe they're waiting until they have some products that Google had design influence over first, that sounds like a brilliant move. Maybe they'll just do what they did with Moto.
If my dumb feature phone can tick all those boxes for less than the price of a pizza, that supposedly "smart" phone had better do it as well if it wants me to lay down a couple hundred for it.
I'll vote with my wallet, & my wallet is evidently smarter than your phone.
...and surprisingly, it wasn't even *that* part that got "Life" voted worst lyric in pop.
It was "I don't want to see a ghost/It's the sight that I fear most/I'd rather have a piece of toast/Watch the evening news". Which is nice.
@Reg - Oreo does not necessarily mean circular icon masks: my Nexus 5x has square icons. But, yes, it's a daft idea to force icons into a mask as it means the information in the icon has to fit into a smaller space, making it harder to find the app you're looking for.
Speaking of which, isn't it a bit odd that this brand new device doesn't ship with Oreo 8.1?
Oh yes, and too expensive.
Speaking of which, isn't it a bit odd that this brand new device doesn't ship with Oreo 8.1?
No, define latest....
Latest major version, or latest patches...
Google release patches for 4, 4.4, 5, 6, 7, 7.1, 8, and 8.1 every month. Any of these versions could mean you are fully supported and running the latest...
How hard is this concept to understand? Very it seems. Some people are too stupid to understand the Android servicing model isn't the same as iPhone or PC.
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