why open source friendly phones are so expensive ?

Posted Feb 6, 2026 1:55 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (guest, #55989)
Parent article: Open source for phones: postmarketOS

Real question:

I did listen to music, took pictures and bank stuff many years ago, and feel no need to change my phone except battery was soldered and more expensive to change than to buy a new phone.

i don"t understand phone ecosystem :
- There is a trend to transform our computers into terminal, with all our data in random not so secure cloud.
- Our phone looks more and more like super computer (and are much more powerful than y2k ones)

Why are phones evolving so quickly (with zero added value for many "normal" users), when computers are mostly identical with no real improvement (moore's "law" is dead).

I just need a phone with xfce philosophy : it works, it does not seem to change.
And if i could buy one kit and do it myself like Zx81 it is fine. (ok i am from previous millenium)

This simple phone should work with Opensource stack for years.

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why open source friendly phones are so expensive ?

Posted Feb 8, 2026 16:03 UTC (Sun) by jch (guest, #51929) [Link] (1 responses)

> Why are phones evolving so quickly

Not really. As you note yourself, there's virtually no difference between a phone from six years ago and a modern one, except that the new one is larger, has a large camera bump, and has some pointless AI crap included.

If you buy a cheap phone once every ten years and keep it until it breaks, then you're not generating any significant revenue for the industry. You're a bad consumer.

If you buy a new, expensive phone every two years, and contribute to filling landfills with expensive e-waste, then you generate "value", and you're a good consumer. Bonus points if you produce CO₂ by using a cloud-based "AI assistant" rather than checking your calendar yourself.

It is in the interest of the hardware companies to coerce you into being a good consumer. If cheap, robust phones from a few generations ago were supported by recent versions of Android, then most people would probably prefer to keep their old phones.

> when computers are mostly identical with no real improvement

That's an interesting question. Probably because the computer companies do not control what software you run on the hardware they produce: my desktop is eight years old, and I use it to run the latest Debian, whether HP like it or not. (I don't know if I could install a recent version of Windows on it, but I'd probably manage.) Not so with my smartphone: I've stopped getting software updates a couple of years ago, so now I have to run LineageOS, which means giving up on banking apps.

(Microsoft have been trying to obsolete older hardware by requiring a powerful NPU for their AI features, but for some reason they couldn't bring themselves to obsolete older computers altogether.)

why open source friendly phones are so expensive ?

Posted Feb 8, 2026 18:05 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

([…], but for some reason they couldn't bring themselves to obsolete older computers altogether.)

They're doing a pretty efficient job on that by way of the Windows 10 EOL scam/outrage/imposition. That should do wonders for the adoption of Linux by people whose computers can't be updated to Windows 11 but are otherwise perfectly functional.