this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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Man, I'm getting tired for all this corporate apologists.
Yeah, it's easy to just say "customer should do this, customer should do that"
Why don't we ask why the customers are like that in the first place. Let's start with the fact that most consumer devices only get a few years of support.
What happens after that support ends? At best you'll be vulnerable to security exploits. At worst, you won't be able to use it in the modern world (3G, anyone?).
While I cannot blame the technological advancement, I do blame the fact that vendors like to make their stuff like black boxes.
Screen or battery broke? Gotta pay hundreds of dollars to get that specific part that doesn't work on other model (of the same brand even). Kernel 6.6 is the new LTS? Too bad your board is stuck with 4.19 due to all the vendor-specific stuff. Wanna try to embody the spirit of open source and get that vendor-specific to mainline? Too bad you cannot run it to see that it works because we locked the bootloader for reasons you can't understand.
All that bullshit, and we're still the one to blame?
To be fair, 3G cellular is technology that is more than 20 years old now, superseded by 4G which is almost 15 years old. It's not like there haven't been viable replacements for 3G for more than a decade before it was retired.
The problem is devices still made LONG after 4G came out with 2 or 3G. My friends 2016 Hyundai has 2G for its blue link service that now doesn’t work. My 2018 Outback uses 3G for its Starlink system, but I ripped that box out long ago.
2G is still operational pretty much everywhere. It's still the lowest level fallback for telecommunications.
https://www.phonearena.com/news/carriers-shutting-down-2g-networks_id151923
This is probably rather US specific, 2G is used for emergency services many places in Europe so it's not easily disposed of.
2G was decommissioned in Australia too