• Would you pay less for hardware without updates?

    Posted on June 22, 2017 at 03:19 CDT by • Comment in the Forums

    Some smartphones come with an unaffordable price tag, and some of those phones don’t even come with good backup service or a long product life expectancy. The cost to purchase often far exceeds the benefits of ownership, if all you want is a mobile phone. The market offering of phones that are just a mobile phone has shrunk dramatically in the last few years, with smartphones being the market leader.

    Michael Horowitz’ June 20th article “Are Android bug fixes worth $510 when buying a phone?” addresses this and goes into the security risks which some cheaper smartphones face, as they do not share the same update schedule given to pricier models.

    Most cheaper models have older OS versions, and one even came with pre-installed monitoring (spyware). The question becomes, is the risk of not updating worth the extra cost of buying hardware that is updated more often? The after-sales service also figures in the long-term cost of ownership.

    Your decision will depend on how you plan on using your smartphone – if phone calls and SMS are your only uses for the device, a cheaper phone may well suffice, but if you plan on doing online banking, accessing cloud documents and online shopping, that might not be such a smart idea.

    Reported life expectancy of a smartphone is less than two years. Even if it does last longer than that, obsolescence often catches you out – think of an iPhone 4 that still works to communicate, but would you want to connect it to the internet now? Its iOS doesn’t work for secure apps any more, and it can’t be updated… planned obsolescence, presumably. Even if you have apps installed, access to them may be blocked. Either you buy a newer model, or just use it as a phone.

    Michael’s article on computerworld.com is an interesting read.

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