We shall demand legislation with enforces that phones and other devices can be used like
normal computers. Ie demand open boot loaders, open specs so that open source software can run well on phone devices.
If we can run open source software the length the devices lifetime last will be greatly extended. This will minimize electronic waste and e-waste pollution.
Its essential that all electronic devices can run open source software. That boot loaders and access to devices are not monopolized or crippled by device vendors.
Vendors have one main interest to is to sell new devices to consumers and maximize profit.
Consumers and the government have different intrest in that devices last longer so we minimize the impact on the environment.
Come on, they don't even make phones with user replaceable batteries anymore, some even caught red-handed deliberately slowing down old devices which were actually perfectly fine. The reason behind all those malicious behaviors is simple: user maintainable and repurpose-able devices are bad for business. I don't believe governments are not aware of that, but nonetheless it still happened, why?
> If we can run open source software the length the devices lifetime last will be greatly extended. This will minimize electronic waste and e-waste pollution.
i think you are overestimating the impact of such legislation. compare how many phones are sold each year with how big the open source community is, then how many devices will actually be used by that community after they’re no longer used by their initial owner. i fear the numbers are so small they won’t even register.
I would love to see a page or README section or something dedicated to showcasing some real-world examples of what can be built with PHONK. I tried googling it and didn't turn up anything, really.
The section Awesomic Libraries should be expanded and made more prominent because I left the site with little idea of what I could actually create using PHONK.
I had a two old smartphone sitting in a drawer for a few years, an old iPhone5 and an old Android phone. A few months ago I looked into using them for security cams and did a search and found https://alfred.camera/
Alfred is pretty cool. They have a free version that does what I wanted and a premium version that's got quite a few nice additional features.
I'm still using an old iPhone 10. Apple has obsoleted it too. I can't install any apps from the "App Store" but it still does what I want most. The phone and the "Maps" and text apps still work fine.
One of my daughters works at Verizon and asked me if I wanted a new iPhone for Christmas last year but I really don't need one. I work from home, do not work for anyone else, and don't need any additional "Apps". My apps are "web apps" so they run fine on those old phones.
I think there should be a law that any phone that loses official support should be able to be jailbroken and boot unlocked by an official tool. The best thing about this is that it will disincentivize companies from dropping support early for perfectly functional devices.
> I'm still using an old iPhone 10. Apple has obsoleted it too. I can't install any apps from the "App Store" but it still does what I want most. The phone and the "Maps" and text apps still work fine.
The iPhone X is still supported with the latest iOS release, iOS 16[1].
Just wondering what exactly isn't working or makes it seem obsolete? :-)
I'm also a big fan of riding iPhones into the ground!
My wife is still using an iPhone XS Max, that runs like new even on the latest iOS! :-)
> I'm still using an old iPhone 10. Apple has obsoleted it too. I can't install any apps from the "App Store" but it still does what I want most.
I still use an iPhone 10 also. But I have no problem installing new apps, so I'm confused by this. Have you updated the iOs and made sure the time is syncing properly? Those are two common problems that block App Store access.
> I can't install any apps from the "App Store" but it still does what I want most.
Apple has made this such a hassle... if you actually install an app on your new iPhone 10... you can go over to your "Purchased" on your iPhone 5 and install the version that runs on it (if it exists). However if you go on the iPhone 5 to the app store, they just say "so sorry, not supported" and it is the biggest slap you can give someone to remind them the product they paid for is not owned by them.
Do you know if they stream the video to the cloud or just connect locally? I am looking for a kid-cam for my son's room, but I do NOT want to have it streaming anywhere outside my LAN. This could work, because I have two old Androids I could use for this.
Your iPhone X is obsoleted? I have an iPhone 6 with iOS 12 and can download alot of current apps from the App store. In fact iOS 12 just got new update from Apple. You should check again about this.
Can it run as a camera on iOS "in the background", or does it require the screen to remain on, and the device to be "unlocked"? The linked page is very light on details.
I tried Alfred with an old Motorola something but the app and/or phone would crash and/or shutdown because of the heat. Your mileage may vary of course.
I strongly believe, after 5 years, every device with more than ~10,000 units shipped should have its bootloader unlocked, and its microcode/any necessary drivers opened up. Failure to open up should result in your license to sell new devices suspended. Unless we do something like this, we're headed towards potentially infinite e-waste. You can make the argument that everything should be a black box for security's sake, but x86/Apple laptops for example have unlocked bootloaders while maintaining security by means of OS encryption. The idea that security and privacy are fundamentally at odds is in my opinion industry gaslighting. People should have 100% control of the hardware they own, and 100% choice of the software they run on it.
While I agree that this sound nice this will virtually guarantee DRM-encumbered features of devices reaching their legally-required unlock date will be set to fail immediately. That'll force those devices to become e-waste anyway. No more streaming videos, no more using your bank's app, etc.
But unlocking the bootloader, even only once official major updates has stopped, is a risky business move due to activation lock and Find My iPhone.
If they did this, there's a good chance phone theft creeps back to high levels, since thieves could just
1. wait until Apple releases new firmware that unlocks the bootloader
2. use that new firmwaare to wipe the memory that handles activation lock
3. re-install a fresh iOS
4. resell the phone
iPhone 8's still go for over $100 on eBay, so it's not unprofitable to 'inventory' stolen phones by throwing them in a desk drawer to sell within a few years.
I don't think that paper considers the issues of the batteries seriously enough. If you're going to build a cluster of old phones, I'd highly recommend disconnecting the batteries.
A quick look at the phones in my drawer show two with swollen batteries and one with a battery that no longer holds a charge, which is the reason they all got retired. My appetite for risk doesn't include setting fire to a building to save money on data centre costs.
I miss being able to change out the battery on a mobile and the push for making un-fixable phones has an obvious recycling issue.
There are some folks in the permacomputing community working on this in a generalized way. Some, like the folks making CollapseOS and DuskOS foresee an eventual collapse, where our civilization is unable to fabricate new microprocessors, and so we have to repurpose and scavenge old ones.
We're talking things like, repurposing z80 (such as in older TI calculators) as an environment for reprogramming microcontrollers.
We help you turn old android phones into robot brains if that's your thing. No bluetooth needed, we use the audio jack as a serial port. https://robots-everywhere.com/ (all designs are free on the wiki, or you can buy it)
There should be something like a 'right to repurpose' for old tech. The only reason I keep old PCs laying around is because the BIOS allows anything to come along and install on it.
My ~$200 Moto G has 8 arm cores, 4G ram and 64G EMMC storage. That is actually significantly more powerful than the VPS I pay monthly for, and could easily host git repos, a website, irc bouncer, and much more, and the hardware is already payed for!
I see people complain about silly things using trivial amounts of electricity killing the planet (like Gentoo & building software from source) meanwhile there are huge targets like this that consume unimaginable amounts of power and resources and a lot of waste to go with it.
> Most of these unwanted smart- phones are neither discarded nor recycled but languish in junk drawers and storage units.
The people who wrote this must not have kids. :)
All of my old smartphones become PBS Kids devices until they are destroyed. Then they get recycled. Except for the one we lost on a plane. I hope whoever found it found a good use for it.
I've been thinking of building a "poor man's cluster" using every old phone, Kindle, or laptop.
They make a good point how phones have batteries that can charge at off peak hours. I figured if I built my cluster I'd remove the batteries to reduce the fire risk.
Has anyone ever looked into repurposing wifi devices like phones as mesh routers? Or open cell networks? They would have to always be plugged in but seems like a good start to an open infrastructure
I fear that these devices are going to become less and less usable, not because they arent physically operable, but instead because companies like Apple are allowing them to become bricks if the owner doesn't pre-empt their demise or recycling. It's done today in the name of theft deterrence, but once these machines end up in drawers and storage lockers for years, I doubt most people will be able to unlock them successfully, rendering them sadly useless.
The use case I'm most excited about for old phones is selfhosting. There's no reason things like a Plex server can't just be an app on your phone. Plug in a USB hard drive, go through a quick OAuth flow to open a tunnel with a service like Cloudflare Tunnel or ngrok and you're set.
My old android phones are repurposed as web camera and single purpose devices (e.g. the local sports complex expects that everyone, including kids, has their smartphone (obviously), so I just installed their stupid app on the old phones for this; they stay turned off otherwise).
Many great ideas both in the paper and in the comments, but people forget that we don't own our devices any more, we just rent them. If we owned them we could have replaced the batteries ourselves, or change the bootloads or do anything we want. Contrary to what happened with TVs, were models are being sold at a lower pricce with the help of spyware installed on the TV, some phones are sold at full price and still we don't own them.
This is impressive, the energy efficiency of even outdated phone tech is way above server/desktop systems. It seems like phone technology will be the only viable computer technology for virtually all use cases soon. Arguably, Apple already realizes this, with their Apple Silicon computers now very similar in design to an iPhone.
I'm skeptical. At a small scale, you could put together a cluster, but other than for the fun of putting it together, I don't see the point. I'd rather have a older Xeon with a high core count and use VMs or processes because it's more reliable and easier to manage. Or rent a cluster in the cloud for an hour.
For large scale, dealing with heterogeneous hardware with questionable life remaining strapped to batteries that might start fires connected over USB or Wifi isn't ideal. Not to mention installing cluster software on all of them. At scale, you'd really want to strip the CPUs and mount lots of them on a single board, but that's not cheap to do. You're also dealing with 3+ year old technology that's been replaced by something more power-efficient.
[+] [-] acd|3 years ago|reply
If we can run open source software the length the devices lifetime last will be greatly extended. This will minimize electronic waste and e-waste pollution.
Its essential that all electronic devices can run open source software. That boot loaders and access to devices are not monopolized or crippled by device vendors.
Vendors have one main interest to is to sell new devices to consumers and maximize profit. Consumers and the government have different intrest in that devices last longer so we minimize the impact on the environment.
[+] [-] mrjin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmlx|3 years ago|reply
i think you are overestimating the impact of such legislation. compare how many phones are sold each year with how big the open source community is, then how many devices will actually be used by that community after they’re no longer used by their initial owner. i fear the numbers are so small they won’t even register.
[+] [-] pabs3|3 years ago|reply
https://wiki.debian.org/Exploits
[+] [-] madduci|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forevergreenyon|3 years ago|reply
no money, no nothing.
[+] [-] anonuser123456|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] victornomad|3 years ago|reply
https://phonk.app
Basically it is a device-hostable framework and IDE that allows rapid scripting to do interesting stuff.
I made robots, IoT controllers, music devices, tools and many more with it!
[+] [-] qup|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tade0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmontra|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Self-Perfection|3 years ago|reply
>Create graphics using a embeded Processing, audio using LibPd (Pure Data) and display maps thanks to Open Street maps, to mention a few
Here is a common misnaming here. OSM project is actually called "OpenStreetMap". Singular and without spaces. Care to fix this?
[+] [-] enobrev|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] didip|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomcam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdchn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oblib|3 years ago|reply
Alfred is pretty cool. They have a free version that does what I wanted and a premium version that's got quite a few nice additional features.
I'm still using an old iPhone 10. Apple has obsoleted it too. I can't install any apps from the "App Store" but it still does what I want most. The phone and the "Maps" and text apps still work fine.
One of my daughters works at Verizon and asked me if I wanted a new iPhone for Christmas last year but I really don't need one. I work from home, do not work for anyone else, and don't need any additional "Apps". My apps are "web apps" so they run fine on those old phones.
[+] [-] belltaco|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] firecall|3 years ago|reply
The iPhone X is still supported with the latest iOS release, iOS 16[1].
Just wondering what exactly isn't working or makes it seem obsolete? :-)
I'm also a big fan of riding iPhones into the ground!
My wife is still using an iPhone XS Max, that runs like new even on the latest iOS! :-)
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iphe3fa5df43/io...
[+] [-] jedberg|3 years ago|reply
I still use an iPhone 10 also. But I have no problem installing new apps, so I'm confused by this. Have you updated the iOs and made sure the time is syncing properly? Those are two common problems that block App Store access.
[+] [-] WrtCdEvrydy|3 years ago|reply
Apple has made this such a hassle... if you actually install an app on your new iPhone 10... you can go over to your "Purchased" on your iPhone 5 and install the version that runs on it (if it exists). However if you go on the iPhone 5 to the app store, they just say "so sorry, not supported" and it is the biggest slap you can give someone to remind them the product they paid for is not owned by them.
[+] [-] mikae1|3 years ago|reply
https://guardianproject.github.io/haven/
[+] [-] EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] officeplant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theodric|3 years ago|reply
Do you really mean iPhone 10, i.e. iPhone X, or iPhone 1? The former are very much still in support. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/supported-models-iphe...
I'm no Apple apologist, but their long-term device support puts all others in the segment to shame...
[+] [-] wkat4242|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ok_dad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hungryforcodes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prvc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnchristopher|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mouse_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EvanAnderson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judge2020|3 years ago|reply
If they did this, there's a good chance phone theft creeps back to high levels, since thieves could just
1. wait until Apple releases new firmware that unlocks the bootloader
2. use that new firmwaare to wipe the memory that handles activation lock
3. re-install a fresh iOS
4. resell the phone
iPhone 8's still go for over $100 on eBay, so it's not unprofitable to 'inventory' stolen phones by throwing them in a desk drawer to sell within a few years.
[+] [-] smackeyacky|3 years ago|reply
A quick look at the phones in my drawer show two with swollen batteries and one with a battery that no longer holds a charge, which is the reason they all got retired. My appetite for risk doesn't include setting fire to a building to save money on data centre costs.
I miss being able to change out the battery on a mobile and the push for making un-fixable phones has an obvious recycling issue.
[+] [-] hosh|3 years ago|reply
We're talking things like, repurposing z80 (such as in older TI calculators) as an environment for reprogramming microcontrollers.
[+] [-] spiritplumber|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1-6|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chlorion|3 years ago|reply
I see people complain about silly things using trivial amounts of electricity killing the planet (like Gentoo & building software from source) meanwhile there are huge targets like this that consume unimaginable amounts of power and resources and a lot of waste to go with it.
[+] [-] jedberg|3 years ago|reply
The people who wrote this must not have kids. :)
All of my old smartphones become PBS Kids devices until they are destroyed. Then they get recycled. Except for the one we lost on a plane. I hope whoever found it found a good use for it.
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|3 years ago|reply
I've been thinking of building a "poor man's cluster" using every old phone, Kindle, or laptop.
They make a good point how phones have batteries that can charge at off peak hours. I figured if I built my cluster I'd remove the batteries to reduce the fire risk.
[+] [-] npretorius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] widowlark|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anderspitman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noisy_boy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JamesAdir|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _yb2s|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|3 years ago|reply
For large scale, dealing with heterogeneous hardware with questionable life remaining strapped to batteries that might start fires connected over USB or Wifi isn't ideal. Not to mention installing cluster software on all of them. At scale, you'd really want to strip the CPUs and mount lots of them on a single board, but that's not cheap to do. You're also dealing with 3+ year old technology that's been replaced by something more power-efficient.
[+] [-] dr_dshiv|3 years ago|reply