
On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 05:03:17 Andrew McGlashan wrote:
Well, if you want to keep the device long term, then that is great for all aspects except 3G/4G/4Gplus - LTE.... over time the radio frequencies have varied a lot and they will vary more again -- this is the single best reason to sort of /force/ people to replace otherwise good mobiles; why put yourself through that with a tablet?
What 3G devices have become obsolete in Australia due to this? The Xperia X10i phone which is the first Android device I owned is still running and appears to work OK for my mother on Aldi's (Telstra) network. The phone in question has been used on Virgin (Optus) and Kogan (Telstra). The Xperia X10i has 384M of RAM and Android 2.3.x which seriously limit the applications that can run. It also has only 1G of built in storage for the OS and apps which limits the number of applications that can be installed. I recently sold a Samsung Galaxy S for $50. That phone is newer than the Xperia X10i, has more RAM, and more storage. So if the Xperia X10i stops working well enough for my parents then they may have to spend $50 on ebay to get something better. It seems to me that devices can remain useful on the 3G network after their use for running Android applications has diminished. My Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is 7 months old and is showing signs of screen burn- in. It seems that frequency changes are only going to become an issue if a device doesn't get serious screen-burn, doesn't get dropped too badly, and if app developers keep supporting the device for long enough (IE Google doesn't introduce too many new Android APIs). When a new phone costs $400 to $700 and in a few years it will be worth $50 there doesn't seem to be any financial benefit in trying to keep it going for more than a few years. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/