[HansHamster]

LineageOS unfortunately dropped support for my Moto G4 relatively quickly after I installed it and it only was supported up to Android 7.1. I have been running an unofficial build of 8.1 ever since, but that is also horribly outdated by now.

[hexagonwin]

Maybe you can try getting DivestOS running. They only have 14.1 (Android 7.1.2) but unlike old LineageOS builds they patch security vulnerabilities and include some hardening.

[heavyset_go]

You can build it yourself, although it's a pain in the ass.

[tortoise_in]

Dude buy something new

[nicoco]

Oh yes, more e-waste, more consumerism. We don't have enough of those. Sending text messages and viewing images requires a 90's supercomputer. It's fine.

[HansHamster]

But why waste the money? I intend to use this thing until it breaks...

[meristohm]

Same here. I've benefited from hand me down devices for a long time, and I wish I could still be using the Samsung S3- so light, I have several spare batteries, it fit in most pockets, and it has a 3.5mm headphone jack. The iPhone SE from 2015 that recently I gave to one of my parents was nice, too.

My laptop is also from more than a decade ago, and I'm happily running LMDE 6 on it.

[Brian_K_White]

This is all correct and valid.

Everyone doesn't have to live like this, but it's utterly valid, and no one has any right or justification to try to tell anyone else not to.

I can buy anything any time, but I miss swappable batteries, headphone jack, sd card. These were all basic utility features than made a device interoperable and more generally functional. Removing them only benefits the people selling new phones, wireless headphones, and cloud storage.

My old vaio 3 laptops ago is actually still perfectly fast enough at what I do today, it just only has usb2 ports, which eventually became too big of a pain point. But it also had a real docking station that you plop the machine into, not the stupid "docks" we have today that are not docks but just mega-dongle-hubs where you connect a usbc cable. I miss that dock every day since 5 years ago. I could easily still be using it today even though it must be 15 years old or more by now. And if I were, no one else would have any justification for trying to say that I shouldn't, and no software or service provider would have any justification for artificially creating some incompatibility that only serves their goals instead of mine.

[slikrick]

it's not a waste of money, that android version is a security mess

[HansHamster]

It is for me. And there is nothing important on my phone so it is not a huge concern. And why do we have to accept that phones just turn into garbage after a few years? Even my old 2009 laptop* still runs an up-to-date OS but my 2016 phone is obsolete after 2-3 years?

* but I have to admit that the hardware is quite slow

[eks391]

> And why do we have to accept that phones just turn into garbage after a few years? Even my old 2009 laptop* still runs an up-to-date OS but my 2016 phone is obsolete after 2-3 years?

It is because computers run one of a few available OS's. The OS is being maintained by the distributer (MS, Apple, Google) and your hardware is good as long as the drivers are still receiving updates.

Phones are different because even though everyone only uses iOS or Android, every Android manufacturer puts their own layer onto Android, so Google can continusously update it but the manufacturer might not. Most companies only maintain their phones for about 3 years, giving a significantly reduced lifetime than computers.

It still works fine, from from a security perspective, keeping the phone without patch support is a bad idea.

[HansHamster]

I mean, I know why it happens, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about accepting it.

It is really annoying how every vendor cobbles together a Frankenstein abomination of a kernel with just the right drivers and patches and good luck trying to run anything else. But I also understand that they (except maybe for Google) have no interest or incentive to clean up this mess.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Even if your phone really has no access to anything that you wouldn't want leaked (although most people would object to a third party having access to their phone calls, text messages, and location data), a compromised device is still a great way to launch attacks on other devices including taking part in botnets. None of this is an objection to old devices, mind; I'm a big proponent of running new software on old hardware, but the security patches are important.

[creatonez]

Moto G4 was released in 2016, only 7 years ago.