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SILICON SILIC CHIP www.siliconchip.com.au Publisher/Editor Nicholas Vinen Technical Editor John Clarke – B.E.(Elec.) Technical Staff Bao Smith – B.Sc. Tim Blythman – B.E., B.Sc. Advertising Enquiries (02) 9939 3295 adverts<at>siliconchip.com.au Regular Contributors Allan Linton-Smith Dave Thompson David Maddison – B.App.Sc. (Hons 1), PhD, Grad.Dip.Entr.Innov. Geoff Graham Associate Professor Graham Parslow Dr Hugo Holden – B.H.B, MB.ChB., FRANZCO Ian Batty – M.Ed. Phil Prosser – B.Sc., B.E.(Elec.) Cartoonist Louis Decrevel loueee.com Founding Editor (retired) Leo Simpson – B.Bus., FAICD Silicon Chip is published 12 times a year by Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. ACN 626 922 870. ABN 20 880 526 923. All material is copyright ©. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Subscription rates (Australia only) 6 issues (6 months): $77.50 12 issues (1 year): $145 24 issues (2 years): $270 Online subscription (Worldwide) 6 issues (6 months): $55 12 issues (1 year): $105 24 issues (2 years): $200 For overseas rates, see our website or email silicon<at>siliconchip.com.au * recommended & maximum price only Postal address: PO Box 194, Matraville, NSW 2036. Phone: (02) 9939 3295. ISSN: 1030-2662 Printing and Distribution: 1 Huntingwood Dr, Huntingwood NSW 2148 54 Park St, Sydney NSW 2000 2 Silicon Chip Editorial Viewpoint Looming smartphone obsolescence We will soon reach the point where hundreds of millions of perfectly usable smartphones are made obsolete through software rather than hardware failure. Flagship and midrange phones released around 2019 still have hardware that is perfectly adequate today, with good cameras, good screens and processors fast enough for everyday use. Yet many of those phones will be abandoned. Some 2019 Android phones are stuck on Android 10 or 11, with no further updates from the manufacturer. Increasingly, apps are dropping support for those older versions. That means people with otherwise usable phones may soon be unable to run important apps, including banking, authentication, payment and other essential services. That is not because the hardware has suddenly become useless. There is nothing about a five- or six-year-old smartphone that makes it inherently incapable of doing its fundamental job. The problem is that the software support chain has been cut off. Whether or not this is deliberate in every case, the result is indistinguishable from planned obsolescence. The industry has created a system where software support is tied to hardware replacement cycles. When updates stop, app support gradually disappears, and consumers are pushed toward replacing devices that may still work perfectly well. Drivers and firmware may depend on the chip vendor. Testing and certification also take time and money. But those explanations do not change the end result: usable hardware is being discarded because the software ecosystem has been designed that way. Compare this with a laptop or desktop computer, where you can usually install a newer operating system yourself. That is true even though there is a much wider variety of hardware in PCs than in smartphones. The operating systems are designed to cope with that variety. Smartphones are more locked down than PCs, and that is part of the problem. It prevents otherwise serviceable hardware from having a longer life. If a phone is powerful enough to run a newer version of Android, users should not be entirely dependent on the original manufacturer choosing to provide it. We do not rely on Dell, Hewlett Packard, Asus or other PC makers to keep our desktop and laptop computers up to date forever. The operating system vendor provides updates, and in the case of Linux, you can still install a current operating system on very old hardware. I know because I have done it. It may be slower or limited in some ways, but you can keep using the computer as long as it remains practical. Five-to-six-year-old hardware should not be considered obsolete, especially when the advances in smartphone hardware over that period have been fairly modest for normal use. Windows 11 has attracted criticism for artificially excluding older PCs that are still capable of useful work. We should be just as concerned about smartphones. In fact, the smartphone problem may be worse, because phones are replaced more often, sold in much larger numbers, and contain batteries, rare metals and other materials that are costly to produce and recycle. This is going to create a giant pile of unnecessary e-waste. This is not just an Android problem either. iPhones have the same basic problem, although they are generally supported for longer. An iPhone can be physically fine, but eventually it stops receiving major iOS updates. Once that happens, app support gradually drops away as developers raise their minimum supported iOS version. At the time of writing, Apple’s current iOS compatibility list starts at the iPhone 11 generation, so anything older than that is already outside the current major iOS line. A device that still works and has a usable battery should not become useless because the software update chain has been cut off. That is wasteful, unnecessary and one of the more indefensible aspects of the modern smartphone ecosystem. Cover robot image: UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering www.flickr.com/photos/jsoe/46570014664 (CC-BY-2.0) Australia's electronics magazine by Nicholas Vinen siliconchip.com.au